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More "Grope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Nance; but, by a desperate effort, the old man succeeded in freeing himself from his bonds. He then essayed to examine and explore the dismal pit into which he had been thrown—which, in the intense darkness that prevailed, was a task of no little danger. However, he cautiously began to grope about, and soon became satisfied that the place ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... mountains were wrapped in smoke so dense and blinding, that the explorers, if by chance they separated, could only find each other by shouting. Often, too, they had to grope their way through the yet burning forests, in constant peril from the limbs and trunks of trees, which frequently fell across their path. At length they gave up the attempt to find a pass as hopeless, under actual circumstances, and made their way back ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... of Earth That help us more Than those of heavenly birth That all implore— Than Love or Faith or Hope, For which we strive and grope. ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... the Babylon where I was born, The lips that gape give back, the hands that grope, And noise and blood and suffocating scorn An eddy of fierce faces—and ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... threshold of the disused farm-kitchen, holding the little wooden box carefully in both his dogskin-gloved hands. He crossed to the hearth, stubbing his toe against a jutting floor-brick, and as he did so he caught his breath. Then he stepped down under the yawning gape of the chimney, and seemed to grope and fumble at the back of the hearth. He raised himself then, stepped back, and called ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and blacker and the tepid air more and more breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.] One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture: the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room, and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... they are bad; irredeemably bad. In this state of mind, he will fancy that the Chimes are calling, to him; and saying to himself 'God help me. Let me go up to 'em. I feel as if I were going to die in despair—of a broken heart; let me die among the bells that have been a comfort to me!'—will grope his way up into the tower; and fall down in a kind of swoon among them. Then the third quarter, or in other words the beginning of the second half of the book, will open with the Goblin part of the thing: ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... cup amassed Five beetles,—blind and green they grope Among the honey-meal: and last, Everywhere on the grassy slope I traced it. Hold ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... day's funeral pyre?" No answer came from thee, only thine eyes smiled like the edge of a sunset cloud. It is night. Thy figure grows dim in the dark. Thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my sadness with its scent. My hands grope to touch the hem of thy robe, and I ask thee—"Is there thy garden of death beyond the stars, Lady of my Voyage, where thy silence blossoms into songs?" Thy smile shines in the heart of the hush like ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... inferiority, but knew no remedy, and all worked busily, copying and distorting Giotto, until they and the public were heartily tired. A change at all costs became necessary, and it was very simple when it came. "Why grope about for the significant, when the obvious is at hand? Let me paint the obvious; the obvious always pleases," said some clever innovator. So he painted the obvious,—pretty clothes, pretty faces, and trivial ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... and some of the dry moss he had put there were lying on the ground at its roots. He could not remember whether they were there when he had last visited the spot. He began to grope in the cavity with both hands. His fingers struck against the sharp angles of a flat paper packet: a thrill of joy ran through them and stopped his beating heart; he drew out the hidden object, and was ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... scientists grope doubtingly in these twilights of history, the romancers relate boldly. One of them, M. Henri Lavedan, has been calling up the Parisienne of the Lacustrine age, "gran' maman archi-centennaire" of her of the present day. This is how ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... be conceded that these are half-views of half-men. The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakespeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... to find herself rather faint when she finished her ironing. However, she took heart to believe that the clothes looked better, in spite of one or two scorched places; and she carried them upstairs to her husband's room before increasing blindness forced her to grope for the nearest chair. Then, trying to rise and walk, without having sufficiently recovered, she had to sit down again; but after a little while she was able to get upon her feet; and, keeping her hand against the wall, moved successfully to the door of her own room. Here she wavered; might ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... understood what she meant when she spoke to him with an air of badinage about his picture. And certainly it was plain enough. It was clear enough; only he would not see what was before his eyes, nor hear what was in his ears, and so had to grope a little further until Lawrence Newt suddenly struck a light and showed ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... speaking, at the very first sight decides the question for us without argument; but if we do not listen promptly to this secret monitor, its light goes out at once, and we are left to the mercy of mere conjecture, and grope about with but second-best guides. Then seeming arguments in favour of deceit and evil compliance with the world's wishes, or of disgraceful indolence, urge us, and either prevail, or at least so ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... preparatives towards that perfection which wee may exspect by the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ, wherein the Communion of Saints, by the graces of the Spirit, will swallow up all these poor Rudiments of knowledg, which wee now grope after by so manie helps" ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury
... dark?" sleepily, even fretfully, I asked myself. And yet, was the tent dark?...It had been, I remembered that. I remembered that Anthony had got to bed first, and I had extinguished the two candles on the washhand-stand. Afterward, I had had to grope my way to the bed. Now, however, there was a light...a very faint, rather curious light. There seemed to be only a square of it, a square sloped off at the top. It was opposite my eyes, which really were open now, I felt ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... been there and know what the place is, but no one but myself can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still clinging to a wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that mouth of hell for the spring she had chattered about in her sleep, to find it, press it, and then to hear, down in the dark of the fearsome recess, the sound of something deadly strike against what I took to be the cushions of the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... no answer; but continued to grope on through the path in the thicket, which he evidently knew well; though even in daylight, so thick were the trees, and so artfully had their boughs been left to cover the track, no path could have been discovered by one unacquainted ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... science of psycho-analysis he has already begun the work of bringing an infinity of subconsciousness into the light of day; it may be that in the evidence of telepathy which the psychic researchers are accumulating, he is beginning to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which may come to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars, and of the dark stars which the spectroscope ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... inside there flitted to and fro a cloud of familiars, who have been compared by the enemies of the great Committee to the mutes of the court of the Grand Turk. Any one who had business with this awful body had to grope his way along gloomy corridors, that were dimly lighted by a single lamp at either end. The room in which the Committee sat round a table of green cloth was incongruously gay with the clocks, the bronzes, the mirrors, the tapestries, of the ruined court. The members met at eight in the morning ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... I, "but we pass an old log cabin about which there hangs a ghostly superstition. At a certain hour in the night, during the time the bark is loose on the hemlock, a female form is said to steal from it and grope its way into the wilderness. The tradition runs that her lover, who was a bark-peeler and wielded the spud, was killed by his rival, who felled a tree upon him while they were at work. The girl, who helped ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... to grope around for the other assailant. But no sign of him could he find. He had evidently been able to get away, and Douglas was thankful that he had not killed him, no matter how much ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... nothing to free the mind? Is it nothing to civilize mankind? Is it nothing to fill the world with light, with discovery, with science? Is it nothing to dignify man and exalt the intellect. Is it nothing to grope your way into the dreary prisons, the damp and dropping dungeons, the dark and silent cells of superstition, where the souls of men are chained to floors of stone; to greet them like a ray of light, like the song of a bird, the murmur of a stream, to see the dull eyes open and grow ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... incredible ill-luck seemed to dog his footsteps, compelling him to grope about at random, without permitting him to use the elements of success which his own persistency or the very force of things placed within his grasp. Gilbert gave him the crystal stopper. Gilbert sent him a letter. And both had ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... stabs you in a spot so vital that you die in a few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing; you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward; you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa which you fall upon, and finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice; your clinched hand comes down with a thud ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the sunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... had forced it on him, partly. Sitting now in his room, where he was counting the cost of becoming a merchant prince, he could look back to the time of a boyhood passed in the depths of ignorance and vice. He knew what this Self within him was; he knew how it had forced him to grope his way up, to give this hungry, insatiate soul air and freedom and knowledge. All men around him were doing the same,—thrusting and jostling and struggling, up, up. It was the American motto, Go ahead; mothers taught it to their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Why can't I give it, too? He's there in that house, and I'm here in this. His heart is aching for grief, and mine because I don't know how to comfort him—and all because the glimmer of light that leads me on isn't strong enough. It's better than nothing; I don't deny that. I can grope my way by it when I might expect to be utterly bewildered—but, oh, mother ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... relieved to find it dark, and to all appearance, untenanted. He drew a long breath. Here he was, home again in safety, and this should be his last folly as certainly as it had been his first. The matches stood on a little table by the bed, and he began to grope his way in that direction. As he moved, his apprehensions grew upon him once more, and he was pleased, when his foot encountered an obstacle, to find it nothing more alarming than a chair. At last he touched curtains. From the position of the window, which was faintly ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I am a Scotchman, and so I call things by old-fashioned names. That is what we call a three or four-pronged fork in my country. The word comes from the same root as the German greifen, and our own grip, and gripe, and grope, and grab—and grub too!" he added, "which in the present ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... first-floor. It's the door straight afore you when you get's to the top of the stairs"—with which the dirty slipshod in black cotton stockings disappeared with the candle down the kitchen stair-case, leaving the unfortunate arrivals to grope their way up as they best could. Welcomed rather dejectedly by Bob on the first-floor landing, where Mr. Pickwick put, not, as in the original work, his hat, but, in the Reading, "his foot" in the tray of glasses, they were very soon followed, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... bed and began to grope for the matchbox. But this passed away. The face of Death grew mild, and then seemed to smile. He lay down on his side, his face turned from the open window, composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and fell softly into the deepest of ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... heartlessly? Are they hands that drag downward? Are they hands that pull backward? Are they hands that strike in cruelty? Are they hands that slap insultingly? Are they hands that tear pitilessly? Are they hands that grope into the dark places and do more harm than good? Think about it! ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... the white foam rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage, tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed, the hunters had much ado to saddle their horses and grope their way along the bridle-path that led ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... sighed back, Yea; but if we grope With care through all this Limbo's dreary scope, We yet may pick up some ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... nice question," said the lawyer, as he edged his chair imperceptibly along and tried to grope behind himself, unperceived by his visitor, for the electric button, placed against the wall. "It is a nice question, and I would like to have time to consider it in all its bearings before I gave ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... shortly hereof, that a physician visiteth oft the houses and countries of sick men. And seeketh and searcheth the causes and circumstances of the sicknesses, and arrayeth and bringeth with him divers and contrary medicines. And he refuseth not to grope and handle, and to wipe and cleanse wounds of sick men. And he behooteth to all men hope and trust of recovering of health; and saith that he will softly burn that which shall be burnt, and cut that which shall be cut. And lest the whole part should corrupt, he ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... all at once, the arrest of Jesus was announced, and everyone was aroused, both his friends and foes, and numbers immediately responded to the summons of the High Priest, and left their dwellings to assemble at his court. In some parts the light of the moon enabled them to grope their way in safety along the dark and gloomy streets, but in other parts they were obliged to make use of torches. Very few of the houses were built with their windows looking on the street, and, generally speaking, their doors were in inner courts, which gave the streets a still more ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... say how long it was after my senses had gone when I began to grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms below. Any attempt to speculate pitched me back into darkness. Gifted with a pair ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were, and they met often—in the ward for a few sentences that meant much to each of them; down town by arrangement in a cafe, or once or twice for dinner; and once for a day in the country, though not alone; and he was always the same. Sometimes, on night duty, she would grope for an adjective to fit him, and could only think of "tender." He was that. And she hated it, or all but hated it. She did not want tenderness from him, for it seemed to her that tenderness meant that he was, as it were, standing aloof from her, considering, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Kaiber, if you talk of mussels again, I'll beat you." "What spoke I this morning?" replied Kaiber; "you are stone-headed. We shall be dead directly; wherefore ate you the mussels?" This was beyond what my patience in my present starved state could endure, so I got up and began to grope about for a stick or something to throw in the direction of the chattering blockhead; but he begged me to remain quiet, promising faithfully to make no more mention of the mussels. I therefore squatted down, in a state of the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... chord in the music That's missed when her voice is away!" Though I listen from midnight tel morning, And dawn tel the dusk of the day! And I grope through the dark, lookin' up'ards And on through the heavenly dome, With my longin' soul singin' and sobbin' The words "Do ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... comments on this monstrous inequality with which the penal codes of slave states treat slaves and their masters. When we consider that guilt is in proportion to intelligence, and that these masters have by law doomed their slaves to ignorance, and then, as they darkle and grope along their blind way, inflict penalties upon them for a variety of acts regarded as praise worthy in whites; killing them for crimes, when whites are only fined or imprisoned—to call such a 'public opinion' inhuman, savage, murderous, diabolical, would be to use tame ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... But he could not, for a time, get himself beyond the pounding of that name in his brain. It was not merely that he had heard the name before. There was something significant about it. Something that made him grope back in his memory of things. Boulain! He whispered it to himself, his eyes on the slender figure of the woman ahead of him, swaying gently to the steady sweep of the paddle in her hands. Yet he could think of nothing. A feeling of irritation swept over him, disgust at his ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... elsewhere, but that those who hated the thought of such change could, by taking thought, prolong life and live for a thousand years, like the adder and tortoise or for ever. But no, he would not leave the poor boy to grope alone and blindly after that hidden knowledge he was burning to possess. He pitied him too much. The means were simple and near to hand, the earth teemed with the virtue that would save him from the dissolution which so appalled him. He ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... every temple I see those who see thee, and, in every tongue that is spoken, thou art praised. Polytheism and Islam grope after thee, Each religion says, 'Thou art one, without equal,' Be it mosque, men murmur holy prayer; or church, the bells ring, for love of thee; Awhile I frequent the Christian cloister, anon the mosque: But thee only I seek from fane to fane. Thine elect ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the desired box. "Only one more left; I shall presently have to send for more. Twice already have I been put to that trouble. I don't know what has come over the town." And he slams down the shutter with a fretful jerk. I grope my way home in Egyptian darkness, thanking in my heart the town council for its forethought in painting the lamp-posts white. It was when a dispute sprang up about the price of gas, or something. Danish disputes are like ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... field and alight near a rock-strewn hill. Candles are given us and we grope our way through narrow passages till we come to the centre of the hill. Here is a chamber some twenty feet in height. On the great stones which support the roof are mystic emblems. On the floor is a large stone hollowed out in the shape of a bowl. It suggests human sacrifices. My ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the keep. They had scarce reached it, however, ere they found that the wooden joists and planks of the flooring were already on fire. Dry and worm-eaten, a spark upon them became a smoulder, and a smoulder a blaze. A choking smoke filled the air, and the five could scarce grope their way to the staircase which led up to the very summit of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that beauty is the manifestation of God to the senses, you wish you might understand him, you grope for a deep truth in his obscurity, you honour him for his elevation of mind, and your respect may even induce you to assent to what he says as to an intelligible proposition. Your thought may in consequence be dominated ever after by a verbal dogma, around which ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... flashing within his sunken eyes and quivering across his wrinkled visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward, compelling our eyes to grope for one another's features by the dim glow of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam, had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the province-house when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight. And now, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Both psychology and science grope when they would explain to us the strange adventures of our immaterial selves when wandering in the realm of "Death's twin brother, Sleep." This story will not attempt to be illuminative; it is no more than a record of Murray's dream. One of the most puzzling phases of that strange waking ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... But if any shut their eyes, and will not behold the light thereof, not for that must the sun be blamed, or scorned by others: still less shall the glory of his brightness be dishonoured through their silliness. But while they, self-deprived of light, grope like blind men along a wall, and fall into many a ditch, and scratch out their eyes on many a bramble bush, the sun, firmly established on his own glory, shall illuminate them that gaze upon his beams ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... the alert against the hostile spirits, threw wild garlic in the animal's eyes, causing so violent a smarting pain that it died. At once a dense mist descended upon the hill-slopes and the path vanished, leaving the army to grope onward in danger and dismay. But at this moment of dread a white dog appeared—a god again, but a friendly one this time—who led the bewildered soldiers in safety ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... mind and sperit loved to grope around more and find out things to praise and blame by rote and not by note, and Dorothy and Robert Strong ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... sharp whistles from the water shrilly pierced the air and penetrated into the darkened room, and, while the tumult around Hermon gradually died away, he strove, tortured by burning pain, to grope his way toward the door; but here his foot struck against a human body, there against something hard, whose form he could not distinguish, and finally a large object which felt cool, and could be nothing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it is and glad it is That men who hear it madden and their eyes are wet and blind, For the lowlands and the highlands Of the unforgotten islands, For the Islands of the Blessed and the rest they cannot find As they grope in dreams to England and the love they left in England; Little feet that danced to meet them And the lips that used to greet them, And the watcher at the window in the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... who, when "deep calleth unto deep," have no such "strong consolation" to enable them to ride out the storm; who, when sorrow and bereavement overtake them—the lowering shadows of the dark and cloudy day—have still to grope after an unknown Christ; and, amid the hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for the first time, ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... fog which had been called out for Petrel's error harbored many birds of evil omen, and these, guided by Petrel, swept through the fog and attacked the Men of the Light. The fog covered all things and caused every one to grope about, seeking to find one another and escape from the mist that hid the ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... I could have gone almost straight to that cleft, steering my course by the sea rocks I had noted from the window. But in the dark it was different. I could only grope along in hope, with many a stop to wonder where I had got to, and many a stumble and many a bruise. Stark darkness is akin to blindness, and blindness in a strange land, and that a land of rocks and chasms, is a vast perplexity. I wandered blindly and bruised myself ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Oh, my!" as a clap of thunder sent her plunging in headlong. "Why, where—" for grope as she might, clear up to the end, among the clothes and the shoe-bag, no Miss ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... life with pygmy hands, Not in those earliest days when men ran wild And gashed each other with their knives of stone, When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows And their flat hands were callous in the palm With walking in the fashion of their sires, Grope as they might to find a cruel god To work their will on such as human wrath Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, Could hate have shaped a demon more malign Than him the dead men mummied in their creed And taught their trembling ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... but found nothing more than the usual assortment contained in the desk of a healthy schoolboy. The raised lid shut off the light from the window, and the desk's interior was rather dark. They had to grope in the corners, and occasionally their hands touched. Every time this happened Ralph thought of the decision that he ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... who was watching as Daddy Skinner had watched the slowly opening gates of eternal life, through which he must pass, alone and afraid. Ah, if she could make him less so! If she could give him a little faith to grope on and on and up and up into the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... dream, with a horrible vision of Archimage and the false Una somehow stealing upon his mind, he could not tell how. It was quite dark inside, for the moon was late of rising that night, and the faint stars threw no effectual lustre down upon the trees. He had to grope before him to know where he was going, asking in a troubled voice, "Who is there? What is the matter?" and falling into more and ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... nook and corner of the tunnel with dense smoke, which creates a darkness by the side of which the natural darkness of the tunnel is daylight in comparison. Here is a darkness that can be felt; I have to grope my way forward, inch by inch; afraid to set my foot down until I have felt the place, for fear of blundering into a culvert; at the same time never knowing whether there is room, just where I am, to get out of the way of a train. A cyclometer wouldn't have to exert itself much through here ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... out. And he was only goin' shearin' for a month. I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little while. He's been away drovin' in Queenslan' as long as eighteen months at a time since then. But' (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more than ever) 'I don't mind,—I somehow seem to have got past carin'. Besides—besides, Spicer was a very different man then to what he is now. He's got so moody and gloomy at home, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... it tickling in England) is good sport. You go to a stony shallow at night, a companion bearing a torch; then stripping to the thighs and shoulders, wade in; grope with your hands under the stones, sods, and other harbourage, till you find your game, then grip him in your "knieve," and toss ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... on his knees. He could not at once answer her, but could only grope toward her blindly. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... not grope and it succeeds very well. Its gallery is still contained within one plane, the first condition of the minimum of labour. Moreover, of the different vertical planes that can pass through the eccentric ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... vaporous veil of smiles. Illusion is the first appearance of Truth. She advances towards her lover in disguise. But a time comes when she throws off her ornaments and veils and stands clothed in naked dignity. I grope for that ultimate you, that bare simplicity ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... heart and beat his puissant wings against the stone which confines him,—oh! then, in prey to a frenzy without a name, to a despair without bounds, I invoke the unknown master and friend who might illumine my spirit and set free my tongue; but I grope in darkness, and my tired arms grasp nothing save delusive shadows. And for ten thousand years, as the sole answer to my cries, as the sole comfort in my agony, I hear astir, over this earth accurst, the despairing sob of impotent agony. For ten ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... old, The blynd boy, Venus baby, For want of cunning, made me bold In bitter hyve to grope for honny: But when he saw me stung and cry, He tooke his wings and ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... But we grope in darkness! The most ancient Greek book that has come down to us is the Iliad, with its tale of the great war against Troy.[14] Critics will not permit us to call the Iliad a history, because it was not composed, or at least not written down, until some centuries after ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... cave, the edifice has arisen and gloriously flowered like an architectural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulcher, into which the visitors descend with torches; pilgrims keep close to the dripping walls and grope along in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... Mr. Bernard, and let them rest upon him, without a thought, seemingly, that she herself was the subject of observation or remark. Then they seemed to lose their cold glitter, and soften into a strange, dreamy tenderness. The deep instincts of womanhood were striving to grope their way to the surface of her being through all the alien influences which overlaid them. She could be secret and cunning in working out any of her dangerous impulses, but she did not know how to mask the unwonted feeling which fixed ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... away my children's eye-sight. Henceforward, all that is hideous I will love!' I saw that her brain was topsy-turvy, and it rejoiced me. Her children were still pretty, though they were blind; and it almost made me laugh to see them grope their way to their mother's side, and turning their sightless eyes toward her, ask, in childish accents,—'Mamma, what made the naughty man put out our eyes?' Well, the woman, with a singular perversity of human nature, liked me, and commenced to place ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... moan, Joyce had wakened, and realizing that it came from Mary's corner of the room, began to grope on the table beside her bed for matches. Her fingers trembled so she could scarcely muster strength to scratch the match when she found it. Then she glanced across the room and began ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... any bravery or presence of mind, but from utter annihilation of both qualities in the shock and surprise of it all. At last I began trying to grope my way toward the door. I found it. Some people—I heard and felt rather than saw—were standing about the battered-in door, and there was the sound of water hurrying past the door-way. The Rhine ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... in folk-lore and custom occasionally show themselves even in the midst of our highly developed and complex civilisation of to-day. The thought of early man on the problems of his being—for after all his superstitions reveal thought—deserve respect, for in his efforts to think he was trying to grope towards ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and plumy meadow-sweet sprang in tall tufts and garlands, which though beautiful to the eyes in day-time, were apt to entangle the feet in walking, especially when there was only the uncertain glimmer of the stars by which to grope one's way. Helmsley's age and over-wrought condition made his movements nervous and faltering at this point, and nothing could exceed the firm care and delicate solicitude with which his guide helped him over this ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... two had elapsed before Constable F 18, the point policeman at the corner of Marylebone Road, arrived on the scene, and, having first of all whistled for any of his comrades on the beat, began to grope his way about in the fog, more confused than effectually assisted by contradictory directions from the inhabitants of the houses close by, who were nearly falling out of the upper windows as they shouted out ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... who are blind and not those who have not eyes nor sight. Think ye that ye will go unpunished? Do ye not know that if God prevent not your impious violence, if he suffer you to grope on in darkness and in error, it is that he is preparing for you a greater sorrow and a greater punishment? As for me, in good sooth, were I not occupied with the English wars, I would have already come ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... public liked to know that the Causeries de Lundi were by Sainte- Beuve, just as they now like to see the signature of Mr. J. C. Squire at the end of an article. To push the point to extremes, who would care to grope through a nameless Georgian Anthology in which each poem had to be taken on its intrinsic merits? Even if the public could stand the test, I feel certain that the critics could not. I have always had a good deal of sympathy for the dramatic critic ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... immortal as a star. You promised true, yet how the truth can lie! For now we grope for hands where no hands are, And, deathless, still we cry, Nor ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... it, and the corner near the ruined fosse, which was always liable to be shelled unexpectedly? In cellars beneath the unwholesome and dilapidated town our men found billets. They were really quite comfortable, but at night when the place was as black as pitch, and one had to grope one's way in the darkness along debris-covered streets, shaken every now and then by the German missiles from the sky, one longed for Canada and the well-lighted pavements of Montreal ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... the concussion was so great that we could not keep our lights going. Fritzie was certainly making up for lost time. The Corporal said, "Well, Jack, we might just as well go up and see what is doing," so we started back to the shaft; our candles were out, so we had to grope our way along. We had not gone far when we heard some one calling for help. Following the sound, we came to a hunch of men belonging to the infantry; they had come down for protection from the shell fire, and a shell had blown in the entrance to their tunnel. Not being used to ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... that the wind-flower would grope its way Out of the darkness into the day; That the rain would fall and the sun would shine, And the rainbow hang in ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... that the carpenter was right, and Peter, hearing his opinion, volunteered again to do down and grope about until he could discover it. The same precautions were taken ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the table felt his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on the table for his ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... two peoples should, within the space of nine months, abjure their friendly relations and furiously grapple in a life and death struggle over questions of secondary importance leads the dazed beholder at first to grope after the old Greek idea of ate or Nemesis. In reality the case does not call for supernatural agency. The story is pitiably human, if the student will but master its complex details. It may be well to close our study with a few general observations, though they almost necessarily involve ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme? And for that lethargy was there no care, But to be cast into a calenture? Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance, And rather in the dark to grope our way, Than, led by a false guide, to err by day? Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand What barbarous invader sack'd the land? But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring This desolation, but a Christian king, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the power of "Beelzebub, the chief of the devils," was revived. The utter foolishness of such a conception was demonstrated, as it had been on an earlier occasion to which we have given attention.[921] The spiritual darkness, in which evil men grope for signs, the disappointment and condemnation that await them, and other precious precepts, Jesus ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... lecture on commercial honesty. I am inspired by it, and I reverence your scruples, but—I grope for the moral ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the elephant Is very ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... climbed out on the wing and then upon the running gear. To trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The bombs fell—nobody cared where—and the two imperilled ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... To grope in the valley of despair one moment and skip along the summit of beatitude the next was a little ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... piazza, and out along the street for daily-increasing distances. For Charlie, all this was like coming back into life once more. In spite of the darkness of his room, he could yet see the dim outlines of objects in his narrow line of vision, and grope his way about without being dependent upon his cousins for his every need; and after a month of perfect helplessness, even this was a relief, and ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... began to grope her way toward the door, holding out her white, expressive hands in front of her. It was pitiful and beautiful to see her, and my emotions welled up in my throat till I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... certain intervals to take separately for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes the boys whom he was preparing for confirmation. He wanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously serious step in their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of their souls; he wanted to instil in them his own vehement devotion. In Philip, notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the possibility of a passion equal to his own. The boy's temperament seemed to him essentially religious. One day he broke off suddenly from the subject ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of her whole body; at another, like a rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of her hands over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over the floor. She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to grope her way out—he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the edge of the half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first footfall on the stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn along the wall; then the lessening gasps of her affrighted breathing as she gained ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... just possible I can make 'em hear with the trumpet, now they be to leeward,' he said, and proceeded with two or three others to grope his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing to keep the unwary from tumbling off. At the water level the piles were eaten away by the action of the sea ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... and I had to grope for an answer that would convince not only Duncan but myself. That every healthy boy likes to try his strength against his fellows is a fact that we cannot ignore. Mr. Arthur Balfour's desire to beat his golfing partner and Jock Broon's desire to spit farther than Jake ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... Ruggieri was not a little disconcerted by the fall, but, finding that thereby the chest was come open, he judged that, happen what might, he would be better out of it than in it; and not knowing where he was, and being otherwise at his wits' end, he began to grope about the house, if haply he might find a stair or door whereby he might take himself off. Hearing him thus groping his way, the alarmed women gave tongue with:—"Who is there?" Ruggieri, not knowing the voice, made no answer: wherefore the women ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... presented, and he leaned farther forward that he might obtain a better view of the awaited personage. In the silence he caught a rustle of silk. A flowered petticoat appeared—as much of it as may be seen from the knee downwards—and from beneath this the daintiest foot conceivable was seen to grope an instant for the step. Another second and ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... only for a second. His strong nerves soon restored him, and he stooped and picked up the baby, although he was so blinded with glad tears that he had to grope for ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... vast stores of gold and silver. All this time the poor people were being reduced to the utmost poverty, and every right and opportunity for personal and civil advancement was taken from them. They were left to grope on in intellectual darkness. They could have no commerce with foreign nations. If they made any advance in national wealth, it was drained away for royal and ecclesiastical tribute. Superstition reigned under the false teachings of a corrupt ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... things in darkness grope, The Statesman's aim, the Poet's hope; The Patriot's impulse gathers fire, And germs of future ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nearly all the races differing from our own, except the primeval savages who dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses of uncultivated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they obtain from volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way in the dark, as do many creeping, crawling and flying things. But certainly you cannot be a member of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem to belong to ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the most part through open glades amid a huge pine forest, with a green sward beneath their feet, made beautiful by the white euphorbia, the golden rod, and the purple aster. Sometimes, however, the great trunks closed in upon them, and they had to grope their way in a dim twilight, or push a path through the tangled brushwood of green sassafras or scarlet sumach. And then again the woods would shred suddenly away in front of them, and they would skirt ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... small, the sun swings down out of the sky— littler'n a star, little as a spark little as a fierce red spider on a burning thread... and then the light goes out... shivers into blackened bits.... You hold on to a wall that whirls around and the gate is a black hole. You grope your way in like a toad that's blinded by a stone... and mama puts on cold wet rags that get hot soon.... Hush! don't let's talk about ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... no one in the sleeping mews; and doubling back noiselessly through the passage, I took up my station beside the one low window which opened upon it from the blank back premises of the house. Even with the glimmer of snow to help me, I had to grope for the window-sill to make sure of my bearings. The minutes crawled by, and the only sound came from a stall where one of the horses had kicked through his thin straw bedding and was shuffling an uneasy hoof upon the cobbles. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... him are far greater than the resemblances between them. Giant force was in both of them; both were enigmas; but the deeper we penetrate into Borrow, the more we like him; not so with the blue-eyed Dean. Borrow's depths are dark and tortuous, but never miasmic; and as we grope our way through them, we may stumble upon treasures, but never ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... curtained back From my exploring eye, And I seemed left to grope in night, And there at last ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... been athirst of dreams! And all earth's common goals and gifts have been But fuel to flame. O strange and piteous heart! O credulous and visionary heart! Desirous of the infinite—from defeat Arising still to grope again for light And the high word of vision! And in vain! Till, not having found, its bitterness corrodes Inward—like one betrayed ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... thought and wish are formed in us. I answer you that I have not the remotest idea. I do not know how ideas are made any more than how the world was made. All that is given to us is to grope for what passes in ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Press astonished the land. They were these: "Medical World is Baffled by the 'Flu'."—"Exhaustive Experiments Leave Doctors Mystified."—"Every Test a Failure."—"Explosion of Accepted Theories Causes Science to Grope ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... leading to the church. The storm had passed. Aloft, in a clear space of the sky, the moon rode and a few stars shone down whitely, as if with freshly washed faces. Hester carried a dark lantern under her cloak; but, within, the church was light enough for Rosewarne to grope his way to his accustomed pew. Hester saw him take his seat there, and choosing a pew at some distance, in the shadow of the south aisle, dropped ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... many waters." Sometimes a wonderful light visits me in sleep. Such a flash and glory as it is! I gaze and gaze until it vanishes. I smell and taste much as in my waking hours; but the sense of touch plays a less important part. In sleep I almost never grope. No one guides me. Even in a crowded street I am self-sufficient, and I enjoy an independence quite foreign to my physical life. Now I seldom spell on my fingers, and it is still rarer for others to spell ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... sharp scratching was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank in front of the Austrian ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... little boy caught it, and went into the water, feeling very carefully before him, lest he should unguardedly go beyond his depth; at length he reached the blind man, took him very carefully by the hand, and led him out. The blind man then gave him a thousand blessings, and told him he could grope out his way home; and the little boy ran on as hard as he could, to prevent ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... that we may know how to instruct and direct those (if such we should meet with) who are being afflicted and tormented by such thoughts of the devil to tempt God, when he entices them to search the devious ways of God outside of revelation, and to grope about trying to fathom what God plans for them—whereby they are led into such doubt and despair that they know not how they will survive. Such people must be reminded of these words [Rom. 11], and be rebuked with them (as St. Paul rebukes his Jews and wiseacres) ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... spoke; it was to him that this voice recounted her feverish agitation for the unknown, her insatiable ideals, her imperative need to escape from the horrible reality of existence, to leap beyond the confines of thought, to grope towards the mists of elusive, unattainable art. The poignant tragedy of his past failures rent his heart. Gently he clasped the silent woman at his side, he sought refuge in her nearness, like a child who is inconsolable; he ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... immortality allures yet baffles us. No fleshly implement of logic or cunning tact of brain can reach to the solution. That secret lies in a tissueless realm whereof no nerve can report beforehand. We must wait a little. Soon we shall grope and guess no more, but grasp and know. Meanwhile, shall we not be magnanimous to forgive and help, diligent to study and achieve, trustful and content to abide the invisible issue? In some happier age, when the human race shall ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a result of that sort of mistaken judgment, some students are known to conclude that AM contains nothing of use to them when they look for one or two things and do not find them. It is difficult to discover that middle ground where one has a sense of what the system contains. Some students grope toward the idea of an archive, a new idea to them, since they have not previously experienced what it means to have access to a vast ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... she pleaded. "I'm talking as if I knew all about it. I don't really. I grope in the dark; and now and then—at least so it seems to me—I catch a glint of light. We are powerless in ourselves. It is only God working through us that enables us to be of any use. All we can do is to keep ourselves kind ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... now took was, at this point, so extremely winding that, for the most part, it received no benefit from the flares at either corner, so that he was forced practically to grope his way in the dense shadows of the arcade. The street became a little straighter just before he reached the next flare, and as he came within sight of it he saw silhouetted against a patch of light the figure of a lion. The beast was coming slowly down the street ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Muse, And, to no rules and orders tied, Roughly deny to be her guide, 830 She must renounce Decorum's plan, And get back when, and how she can; As parsons, who, without pretext, As soon as mention'd, quit their text, And, to promote sleep's genial power, Grope in the dark for half an hour, Give no more reason (for we know Reason is vulgar, mean, and low) Why they come back (should it befall That ever they come back at all) 840 Into the road, to end their rout, Than they can give why they went out. But to return—this book—the ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... was empty and the lights were out when they emerged from the dressing-room. They had to grope their way in darkness. It was raining when they reached the street, and the only signs of life were a moist policeman and the distant glare of saloon lights down ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... very decidedly behind a veil—indeed, behind many of them. And how can it see God through them? Mankind just grope about all their lives back of these veils, not knowing that God is right before them all the time. God has got to be everything, or else He will be nothing. With or without drugs, it is God 'who healeth all thy diseases.' The difficulty with physicians ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... whom he had loved on earth. And she was searching for him, but they described always the same circle and never met. And then, finally, after millions of years, an invisible hand clutched him and bore him upward onto a plane, hitherto unexplored, then left him to grope his way as he could. All was blackness and chaos. Around him, as he passed them, he saw that dark suns were burning, but there was nothing to conduct their light, and they shed no radiance on the horrors of their world. Below him was an abyss in which countless souls were ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... home-life, perchance Roger would Have evolved his best self, that pure atom of God, Which lies deep in each heart like a seed in the sod. 'Tis the world's over-virtuous women, ofttimes, Who drive men of weak will into sexual crimes. I pity him. (God knows I pity, each, all Of the poor striving souls who grope blindly and fall By the wayside of life.) But the love which unbidden Crept into my heart, and was guarded and hidden For years, that has vanished. It passed like a breath, In the gray Autumn morning when Roger faced death, As he thought, and uncovered his heart to my sight. Like a corpse, resurrected ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... absorbed in prayer at the bottom of an inaccessible cave, the edifice has arisen and gloriously flowered like an architectural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulcher, into which the visitors descend with torches; pilgrims keep close to the dripping walls and grope along in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... been given such a treasure. And she's my own! I can watch her little body grow and help to make it strong and beautiful! I can help mould her little mind—see it opening up, one chamber of wonder after another! I can teach her all the things I have had to grope so to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... me to grope in the dark, guided only by our books in the treatment of the sick—to prescribe according to this or that fanciful view of the nature of diseases, substances that only owed to mere opinion their place in the Materia Medica. I had conscientious scruples ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Cap'n, but they ain't no blessed good, an' I bet my head on that. See, if you drives all them plugs well through her, and they sticks out good an' proper outside, it ain't so hard to grope around under the mud an' grab a holt on 'em. Then 'tain't very hard, genelmen, to paddle away a bit o' mud about each bunch o' plugs, an' when that's done, 'tis about all done. I'll lash a wire to them long plugs, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the nations of Europe is so tragic as this. That two peoples should, within the space of nine months, abjure their friendly relations and furiously grapple in a life and death struggle over questions of secondary importance leads the dazed beholder at first to grope after the old Greek idea of ate or Nemesis. In reality the case does not call for supernatural agency. The story is pitiably human, if the student will but master its complex details. It may be well to close our study with a few general observations, though they almost necessarily ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... never turn grey, Never. We will never doubt the world and shut our eyes to ponder. Never. We will not grope in the maze of our mind. We flow with the flood of things, from the mountain to the sea, We will never be lost in the ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... beyond recovery. Still, he felt convinced that he was in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where the cave had been, and, bidding Flora to sit down and rest while he further investigated, he began to grope about here and there among the confused mass of rocks, studying them intently as he did so. For upwards of two hours Leslie searched and toiled in vain; but at length he came upon a piece of rock face that seemed familiar to him, and upon removing a number of blocks ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... inside his greatcoat, with much care, three or four matches. By lighting, first one and then the others, he was able to grope around until he found the hearth of the cabin. Cold ashes marked the remains of a fire long since extinguished. His foot struck against something which proved to be a small piece of dry pine-wood. With the flame from his last match Watson succeeded in lighting this remnant ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... narrowly, lest this should be a deception, but were at length convinced that the long absence of light had rendered him blind. They now permitted him to descend frequently to the lower chambers of the tower, and to sleep there occasionally, during the heats of summer. They even allowed him to grope his way to the cistern, in quest of water ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and the trees distinctly hears someone walking along the avenue ahead of him. A March night, cloudy and foggy, envelopes the earth, and it seems to the watchman that the earth, the sky, and he himself with his thoughts are all merged together into something vast and impenetrably black. He can only grope his way. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and shadows to grope in, Stretching out hands to the starbeams to guide us, Finding no place but our life's loves to hope in, Doubt to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from one string Dangle and dance in the same ring. Tom, of your piping I've heard said And seen—that you can rouse the dead, Dead-drunken men awash who lie In stinking gutters hear your cry, I've seen them twitch, draw breath, grope, sigh, Heave up, sway, stand; grotesquely then You set them dancing, these dead men. They stamp and prance with sobbing breath, Victims of wine or love or death, In ragged time they jump, they shake ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... other door," said Rose after they had screamed themselves hoarse. "We must not be frightened, Anne, for father is sure to look for us. Let's go round the room and try and find a door. We can feel along the wall," so the two girls began to grope their way ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... should have seen them: they'd slipped death's clutches, But sadder a sight you will rarely find; One had a leg off and walked on crutches, The other, a bit of a boy, was blind. And they both sat down, and the lad was trying To grope his way as a blind man tries; And half of the women around were crying, And some of the men had tears ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... these are half-views of half-men. The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakespeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... intellect, spirit and sex find their perfect mate. Love is the great enlightener. And in my own mind I am fully persuaded that comparatively few mortals ever experience this rebirth that a great love gives. We grope our way through life. Nature's first thought is for reproduction of the species; she has so overloaded physical passion that men and women marry when the blood is warm and intellect callow. Girls marry for life the first man that offers, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair. I am speaking of comparative strangers, people who are forced to stay a certain time by the eccentricities of trains, and in whose presence you grope about after common interests and shrink back into your shell on finding that you have none. Then a frost slowly settles down on me and I grow each minute more benumbed and speechless, and the babies feel the frost in the air and look vacant, and the callers go through the usual form ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... and, as compared with instinct, it is a power which acts in clearly denned, isolated, intermittent movements, each one of which has a definite beginning and a definite end. As compared with imagination, intuition is passive and receptive; as compared with instinct it does not fumble and grope forward, steadily and tenaciously, among the roots of things; but it suspends itself, mirror-like, upon the surface of the unfathomable waters, and suspended there reflects in swift sudden glimpses the mysterious ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... seconds. His lips moved, but no words escaped them. His hand remained within his shirt, and his fingers continued to grope about mechanically. And all the time the dazed, strained look burned ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... sounds that reached me in the melee that they also were at work. By this time Barraclough and Jackson and the Prince had arrived on the scene, the last with a lantern which he swung over his head. Barraclough joined me, and Jackson was despatched to grope his way into the saloon to assist Ellison. The Prince himself took his station with Lane, and I heard the noise of his weapon several times. My door had not yet given way, but I was afraid of those swinging blows, and both Barraclough ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... after a sufficient number of trials—and over and over again if the trials are repeated often enough. For example, if a million grains of corn, of which a single one was red, were all placed in a pile, and a blindfolded person were required to grope in the pile, select a grain, and then put it back again, the chances would be a million to one against his drawing out the red grain. If drawing it meant he should die, a sensible person would give himself no concern at having to draw the grain. The probability of his death would not be ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Marrapit told her: "I cannot accept the blame. You wrap your meanings. I plunge and grope after them. Eluding me, I am compelled to believe them wilfully thrown. Strive to let your yea be yea and your nay nay. With ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... some of the dry moss he had put there were lying on the ground at its roots. He could not remember whether they were there when he had last visited the spot. He began to grope in the cavity with both hands. His fingers struck against the sharp angles of a flat paper packet: a thrill of joy ran through them and stopped his beating heart; he drew out the hidden object, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... reason. The divinity of Christ, he said, was apprehended by Christian experience, not by speculation. Reason was fallacious; left to itself the human spirit "could do nothing but lose itself in infinite error, embroil itself in difficulties and grope in opaque darkness." But God has given us his Word, infallible and inerrant, something that "has flowed from his very mouth." "We can only seek God in his Word," he said, "nor think of him otherwise ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... seas are not dangerous, whilst it is not wise to grope one's way between two coasts. One is sure to be detained for some time in the strait, but this delay is not time wholly lost. One meets with water in abundance, wood and shell-fish, and occasionally very good fish. And I am decidedly of opinion that a crew reaching ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... road, they entered the house and began to grope their way up the narrow, winding staircase. They could make only slow progress, not only because of the absence of light, but owing to the rotten condition of the stairs. Indescribably filthy and littered with all sorts of rubbish and broken glass, in some places the boards had broken through ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... has quite spoilt me," observed the blind lady. "Instead of letting me learn to grope my way about, she always insists on my taking her arm, so that I can step out without fear of falling over anything ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... endued with keen vision and resplendence One that gives lights should not be an object of jealousy with others. Lights, again, should not be stolen, nor extinguished when given by others. One that steals a light becomes blind. Such a man has to grope through darkness (in the next world) and becomes destitute of resplendence. One that gives lights shines in beauty in the celestial regions like a row of lights. Among lights, the best are those in which ghee is burnt. Next in order are those in which the juice of (the fruits ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in those earliest days when men ran wild And gashed each other with their knives of stone, When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows And their flat hands were callous in the palm With walking in the fashion of their sires, Grope as they might to find a cruel god To work their will on such as human wrath Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, Could hate have shaped a demon more malign Than him the dead men mummied in their creed And taught their trembling children to adore! ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... attic room, the air was stifling, and the sloping roof, from which dim cobwebs were draped, seemed to press toward the dark shapes of discarded furniture as though to guard some fearful secret. It took all our courage to grope our way to the low casement, and it was a struggle to dislodge the rusty bolt, and press the window out on its unused hinges. It creaked so loudly that we held our breath for a moment, but we drew it again with a sharp sensation of ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... vague, indeterminate terms, that he had scarcely the chance of acting right. At different times the same oracles delivered different opinions: thus he had nothing, steady; nothing permanent, whereby to guide his steps; like a blind man left to himself in the streets, he was obliged to grope his way at the peril of his existence. This will serve to shew the urgent necessity there is for truth to throw its radiant lustre on systems big with so much importance; that are so calculated to corroborate the animosities, to confirm ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... cause, and four second causes of all things; some are without efficient, as God; others without matter, as angels; some without form, as the first matter: but every essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive end both of its essence and operation; this is the cause I grope after in the works of nature; on this hangs the providence of God. To raise so beauteous a structure, as the world and the creatures thereof, was but His art; but their sundry and divided operations, with their predestinated ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... into the house alone so late at night. I bolt the inside door. I mount the hall-chair, left waiting by papa, and, trembling with a nameless fear, turn out the gas and leave myself in darkness. I make two vain dashes for the stair; a third, and I have found it. I grope for the heavy rail and go rapidly up, two steps at a time, and finally, out of breath, badly frightened, reach my room. What a relief! I turn on the light—two, three, yes, four burners, and wish for more. I stir up the fire into a blaze; look over my left shoulder, but see ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... was, she was sure; but the where was an unfindable thing. And she dared not strike forward without the track; she might get further and further from it, and never get home to breakfast at all! — There was nothing for it but to grope about seeking for indications; and Miss Haye's eyes were untrained to wood-work. The woodland was a mazy wilderness now indeed. Points of stone, beds of moss, cat-briar vines and huckleberry bushes, in ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... and as the shame, affliction, and indignation of the family would, he knew, be terrible, he resolved to conform himself to his circumstances, trusting to absence for that diminution of affection which it often produces. Having settled these points in his mind, he began to grope that part of his head which had come in contact with Owen Connor's cudgel. He had strong surmises that a bump existed, and on examining, he found that a powerful organ of self-esteem ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... began to make amends to Agnes for certain disagreeable moments of the ride. At the stage door a particularly bewildered-looking man with a rolling eye and a weak jaw, rendered limp and helpless by the polyglot aliens who had flocked upon him, strickenly let them in, to grope their way, amid what seemed an inextricable confusion, but was in reality the perfection of orderliness, upon the dim stage, beyond which stretched, in vast emptiness, the big, black auditorium. Upon the stage, chattering in shrill voices, were the forty members of ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... was, not Captain Jules, who dropped down on her hands and knees to grope for the ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... toddle now, Judah, and grope about on the orders you have got.' Dismissed with those pleasing words, the old man took his broad hat and staff, and left the great presence: more as if he were some superior creature benignantly blessing Mr Fledgeby, than the poor dependent on whom he set his foot. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... we need no longer grope. It was a race along the passage and up the winding stair, through the second door, and into the stone-flagged corridor of the Castle of Grosbois, with the oil-lamp still burning at the end of it. A frightful cry—a long-drawn scream of terror ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the elephant Is ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... cabin to occupy the extreme after-end of the vessel, with possibly a small sail-room, or something of that kind, abaft it, and that it took up the whole width of that part of the hull; that is to say, there were no staterooms between it and the ship's side, as is sometimes the case. Continuing to grope my way round the cabin, I presently arrived once more at the bulkhead, wherein, on the starboard side, I found another door, giving access to a stateroom, as I soon discovered by finding the bunk, with the ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... uncertain hope, it is a matter of perfect certainty, and if thou wilt abide by my words thou wilt find it so, and it shall give thee, after a season, a peace past all understanding. If thou wilt but submit thyself to God's teaching thou shalt no longer grope as the blind at noonday, but a light above the brightness of the heavens shall shine into ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... devils through the power of "Beelzebub, the chief of the devils," was revived. The utter foolishness of such a conception was demonstrated, as it had been on an earlier occasion to which we have given attention.[921] The spiritual darkness, in which evil men grope for signs, the disappointment and condemnation that await them, and other precious precepts, Jesus ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... know that those who are most sincere find it more difficult than the others to say what they think. Words, in their souls, are like climbing plants which, sown by chance in the middle of a roadway, waver and grope, send out tendrils here and there in despair and end by entangling themselves with one another. Whereas most people, just as we provide supports for flowers, bestow certainties and truths upon their words to which they cling, the sincere refuse to yield to any such illusions. They ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... each of them; down town by arrangement in a cafe, or once or twice for dinner; and once for a day in the country, though not alone; and he was always the same. Sometimes, on night duty, she would grope for an adjective to fit him, and could only think of "tender." He was that. And she hated it, or all but hated it. She did not want tenderness from him, for it seemed to her that tenderness meant that he was, as it were, standing aloof from her, considering, helping when ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... poverty, that grim stepmother of the elect, often intervenes. And to common women—such lovers are absurd, beyond comprehension. That helps.... Illumination comes between the age of thirty and forty. After that, the way is clear. They do not grope, they see; they do not believe, they ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... society, and the light of experience illumines the pathway before us. It is when we come to the methods of organization and management, the spirit of the economic organization of the future state, that the light fails and we must grope our way into the great unknown with imagination and our sense ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... and the zigzag turns of the stairs, Wolf was so familiar with every corner of the old house that he did not even need to grope ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... object in life? These questions are more or less frequently asked in our day, and asked in reference to that general spirit of reform and progress of society which seems to characterize our age, and in relation to which, just in proportion as men forget to listen to the Word of God, they grope about in the darkness of their own ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... ther is, put in thin hand and grope, Thow fynde shalt ther silver, as I hope. What, devel of helle! Sholde it ellis be? Shavyng of silver silver is, parde! He putte his hand in, and took up a teyne Of silver fyn, and glad in every veyne Was this preest, when he saugh that it ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the tests whereby it may be recognized. In the new science of psycho-analysis he has already begun the work of bringing an infinity of subconsciousness into the light of day; it may be that in the evidence of telepathy which the psychic researchers are accumulating, he is beginning to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which may come to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars, and of the dark stars which the spectroscope and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... unusual and touching. She had been very sure that he had understood what she meant when she spoke to him with an air of badinage about his picture. And certainly it was plain enough. It was clear enough; only he would not see what was before his eyes, nor hear what was in his ears, and so had to grope a little further until Lawrence Newt suddenly struck a light and showed ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... were infallible or above temptation; not different in that they never made mistakes; but different in that they each of them possessed an inward vision of the true and the eternal, while most of us grope blindly amid the false and trivial. What that vision was, and with what high faith and complete devotion they followed it, we shall see in the story ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... utterly wanton in trampling on a child's toys. They may be of no value, but I have a small opinion of a man who does not treat them with respect. They are the symbols of an innocence that once was ours, the tokens of a contact with the unseen world for which we in our blindness grope longingly ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... appeared to mankind, and, though the world be moved to virtue only slowly and with reluctance, mark how mighty has been his influence! What think you, then, would be the power of a Christ of evil, showing to men the path they already grope for? I tell you, the human race would be his only; Hell, full to bursting with their hurrying souls, would outweigh Heaven in the balance; the teller of the secret would ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his slippers; and he was ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... exist, he need not use them, for an express lift, warranted not to stop before the fifteenth floor, will carry him in a few seconds to the top of the highest building. If he open a cupboard door, the mere opening of it lights an electric lamp, and he need not grope after a coat by the dim light of a guttering candle. At his bed-head stands a telephone, and, if he will, he may speak to a friend a thousand miles away without moving from his pillow. But time is saved—of that there is no doubt. The only doubt is, whether it be worth saving. When New ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... indelicacy because I lack the strength to smother my admiration. I adore you; my being dissolves, my veins are afire with longing for you; I am mad with the knowledge that you are mine. Mad? Caramba! I am insane; my mind totters; I grope my way like a man blinded by a dazzling light; I suffer agonies. But see! I refuse to touch you. I am a giant in my restraint. The strength of heroes is mine, and I strangle my impulses as they ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... else he may be, he is no teacher. How may this art be acquired? In the first place, many persons pick it up, just as they pick up a great many other arts and trades,—in a hap-hazard sort of way. They have some natural aptitude for it, and they grope their way along, by guess and by instinct, and through many failures, until they become good teachers, they hardly know how. To rescue the art from this condition of uncertainty and chance, is the object of the Normal School. In such a school, the main object of the pupil is to learn how to ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... obscure reason after which he did not grope the half sneer of the words stung Kendric into ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... from his videttes that a force of the enemy were in front, and that several men had been observed going into the woods on the right. A search was made of the bush, but as the shades of night had fallen fast it was impossible to grope through the woods, and fearing an ambuscade Col. Peacocke resolved to halt his column for the night. In the meantime he had sent two companies of the 16th Regiment to scour the woods, but owing to the darkness they were unable to do so. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... swoop in upon its defeat. The woman examined it, found that it was all but done, and glanced nervously over her shoulder. Then she made anxious haste to empty and replace the last of the birchen cups before she should be left in darkness to grope her way back to ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... surging seas came by, That were running mountains high, The vessels started dragging, drifting slowly to the lee; And the darkness of the night Hid the coral reefs from sight, And the Captains dared not risk the chance to grope their ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... art, how much more so in our country, separated as it is by the broad Atlantic from the artistic world, which few comparatively can ever visit: many of our young artists, for the want of such an institution, are obliged to grope their way in the dark, and to spend months and years to find out a few simple principles ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Faith!"—How can a mortal weak, Pin faith on what he cannot comprehend? We grope for light,—but all in vain we seek, Oblivion seems poor mortal's truest friend. Like bats at noonday, blindly on we ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... had been called out for Petrel's error harbored many birds of evil omen, and these, guided by Petrel, swept through the fog and attacked the Men of the Light. The fog covered all things and caused every one to grope about, seeking to find one another and escape from the mist that ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... grope by night in a blind dream, The cold clear morning star Should like a trophy in her helmet gleam When England sweeps ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... one thing that burthens me a good deal in my patriotic garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I grope about everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a full and, I fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch education to a very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and perspired under it, however, with much composure. I am generally glad enough to fall back again, after these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... small tributaries flowing through deep valleys and from all points of the compass; and secondly, because the general horizon was so level that no point commanding any extensive view over the country could be found. Thus while our main object was to pursue the river, we were obliged to grope our way round the heads of ravines often very remote from it, but which were very perplexing from their similarity to the ravine in which the main stream flowed. A more bountiful distribution of the waters for the supply of a numerous population could not be imagined, nor a soil ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... in amongst a number of low bushes, which gave them cover, while it made the surrounding country less black than when they were in the jungle-path. There they could only grope their way with outstretched hands; here they could have gone on at a respectable foot pace without danger of running against some ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... first cost of everything on which we set a price." The prizes of life are not laid upon easily accessible shelves but are placed out of reach to be labored for, like the views one gets of the valley here only after paying the price in an exceedingly toilsome journey. He was content to grope in a dead past for glories ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... veil my heart with cloud; Since faith is dim and blind, I can but grope perplex'd and ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... nothing more 1 See the concluding note by Chu Hsi. 2 See the Introductory note below. strange or extravagant than what we have. It begins sufficiently well, but the author has hardly enunciated his preliminary apophthegms, when he conducts into an obscurity where we can hardly grope our way, and when we emerge from that, it is to be bewildered by his gorgeous but unsubstantial pictures of sagely perfection. He has eminently contributed to nourish the pride of his countrymen. He has exalted their sages above ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... recognition received a round of applause. The orator smiled expansively on his listeners and seized the opportunity to add a few words of political wisdom on his own account. People looked at the clock or began to grope for umbrellas and discarded neckwraps. Then, in the midst of a string of meaningless platitudes, the Sheep delivered himself of one of those blundering remarks which travel from one end of a constituency to the other ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... next morning to open his eyes, to grope his way through the tent opening and stand for a moment alone, watching the alabaster skies. Away eastwards, the faint curve of the blood-red sun seemed to be rising out of the limitless sea of sand. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and never-relaxing strain inherent in the daily and hourly use of an instrument, in the design, maintenance and improvement of which we could only grope our way, was very great. In peace before the war, as later in the war, the only variation to strain lay ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... long it was after my senses had gone when I began to grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms below. Any attempt to speculate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... maiden dear, and make The most I can Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache, While still we scan Round our frail faltering progress for ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... carefully before him, lest he should unguardedly go beyond his depth; at length he reached the blind man, took him very carefully by the hand, and led him out. The blind man then gave him a thousand blessings, and told him he could grope out his way home; and the little boy ran on as hard as he ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... already reached Alexandria with the last of his troops, but by the acts of the ubiquitous Jackson his lines of communication were cut and the Federal commander had to grope his way in the dark for fear of running foul of ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the King's chamber, and revived by the sharp air in the street I managed to grope my way to my father's house. To him I told nothing, for he was proud of me, and should I have killed him? Yet he was much perplexed at my determination, for I never showed ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... considerable amount of time and labour, and when Lumley stood up at last to strike a light with flint, steel, and tinder, we felt pretty well exhausted. The night had by that time become profoundly dark, insomuch that we had to grope for ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... things." This description of an early Christian service is applicable still. Wherever the Church meets there is religious teaching. (b) And it is the only such teaching that multitudes receive. Without it they would be left to grope their way alone. (c) Whenever, therefore, there has been a revival of life in the Church, great stress has been laid upon the preaching of the Word of God, and God has specially blessed it to the conversion of sinners and the edification of ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... building we entered faced a narrow street. The hallway was as dark as the air was foul or the walls filthy. Not a ray or shimmer of light fell through transoms or skylight. The stairs were narrow and worn. By the aid of matches we were able to grope our way along, and also to observe more than was pleasant to behold. It was apparent that the hallways or stairs were seldom surprised by water, while pure, fresh air was evidently as much a stranger as fresh paint. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... the meaning of the beautiful, the latter is at once ready with a superficial answer, but is afterwards compelled by the ironical objections of Socrates to give up his former definition, and to grope about him for other ideas, till, ashamed at last and irritated at the superiority of the sage who has convicted him of his ignorance, he is forced to quit the field: this dialogue is not merely philosophically instructive, but arrests the attention like a drama in miniature. And justly, therefore, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... when "deep calleth unto deep," have no such "strong consolation" to enable them to ride out the storm; who, when sorrow and bereavement overtake them—the lowering shadows of the dark and cloudy day—have still to grope after an unknown Christ; and, amid the hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for the first ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... conviction and glowing with a fervent faith, thoroughly knows what he is about. Strong in his faith, and by his faith, he clearly sees his way, and steadily walks in it, while others grope hither and thither amidst shadows and darkness and bewildering doubts! Such a man boldly takes the initiative, marches onward, and is as a beacon-light to a nation, to a people; often, sometimes, even for all humanity. A man who has a profound ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... switch was situated. His theory was a sound one; he argued that the natural and proper place for such a switch in such a room would be immediately inside the door, so that one entering could ignite the lamp without having to grope in the darkness. He was encouraged, furthermore, by the fact that at a point some four feet to the left of this switch there was a gap in the bookcases, running from floor to ceiling; a gap no ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... carrying them, but I am convinced that the Ashantis will not venture to return, tonight, whatever they may do tomorrow. With three torches—one at the head, one in the middle of the line, and one in the rear—we should be able to travel through the paths better than if we had to grope our way in ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... on the river bank. The approaches were protected by guns and by a bodyguard, while inside there flitted to and fro a cloud of familiars, who have been compared by the enemies of the great Committee to the mutes of the court of the Grand Turk. Any one who had business with this awful body had to grope his way along gloomy corridors, that were dimly lighted by a single lamp at either end. The room in which the Committee sat round a table of green cloth was incongruously gay with the clocks, the bronzes, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... by turns I am hot and cold. In a little, I give up the attempt, and stretch out my hand, for the matches. I will light my candle, and read, awhile; perhaps, I shall be able to sleep, after a time. For a few moments, I grope; then my hand touches the box; but, as I open it, I am startled, to see a phosphorescent speck of fire, shining amid the darkness. I put out my other hand, and touch it. It is on my wrist. With a feeling of vague alarm, I strike a light, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the year is getting late, And autumn has no pity for the slain. Twining like serpents, the lean arms of fate Grope toward you through the blackness and the rain, Then Death, and the obliterating snow.... A vase, red-wrought in ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... and a patriot," Furley continued, "just as much as you are, although you are a son of the Earl of Maltenby, and you fought in the war. You must listen to me without prejudice. There are thoughtful men in England, patriots to the backbone, trying to grope their way to the truth about this bloody sacrifice. There are thoughtful men in Germany on the same tack. If, for the betterment of the world, we should seek to come into touch with one another, I do not consider that treason, or communicating with an enemy country in the ordinary sense ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... human evolution begins a World Teacher comes into voluntary incarnation and founds a religion that is suited to the requirements of the new era. Humanity is never left to grope along alone. All that it can comprehend and utilize is taught it in the various religions. World Teachers, the Christs and saviours of the race, have been appearing at propitious times ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... Rolling had long ceased to be a pleasant figure of speech with me. How frail are all things here below, how false, and yet how fair! My mind is naturally picturesque. In the midst of my sadness the force of nature compelled me to grope after an illustration. I could only think that my own foothold was frail, that the Jane Moseley was false, that the Pretty Girl was fair. A dizziness of brain resulted from this rhetorical effort. I silently confided my sorrows ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... which general direction the least dangerous route lay, while the few dim, momentary glimpses I caught of mountains through rifts in the flying clouds were far from encouraging either as weather signs or as guides. I had simply to grope my way from crevasse to crevasse, holding a general direction by the ice-structure, which was not to be seen everywhere, and partly by the wind. Again and again I was put to my mettle, but Stickeen followed easily, ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... angels fell, and myriads grope In doubt, for this dark cause alone,— That God hath given them room for hope, And made their ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... good impersonation in the Reading)—"Yes; first-floor. It's the door straight afore you when you get's to the top of the stairs"—with which the dirty slipshod in black cotton stockings disappeared with the candle down the kitchen stair-case, leaving the unfortunate arrivals to grope their way up as they best could. Welcomed rather dejectedly by Bob on the first-floor landing, where Mr. Pickwick put, not, as in the original work, his hat, but, in the Reading, "his foot" in the tray of glasses, they were very soon followed, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... although my brother walked bravely on in front, I knew he was afraid of the water, and no doubt in fear that he might stumble into it in the dark. We were walking in Indian file, for there was no room to walk abreast in safety, while in places we had absolutely to grope ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... they refresh the dry world by being thoroughly alive. It seems, indeed, as if life were only made tolerable through the ferment of the desire to reform. Even the most stagnant pools of the human soul are sometimes stirred by the breeze of change. We all hope, we all look forward, we all grope for a future which will be better than the present. In some the hope is firmly rooted to earth and man-made conventions, in others it soars ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... and kiss my feet for acquaintance! and how courteous and mannerly were the clods[382] to make me stumble only of purpose to entreat me lie down and rest me! But now, and I could find my fellow Dick, I would play the knave with him honestly, i'faith. Well, I will grope in the dark for him, or I'll poke with my staff, like a blind man, to prevent a ditch. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... threshold stand: Forged is thy sword, O Mother, and its hilts are come to hand, And look that thou whet it duly; for the Norns are departed now; From the blood of our foster-brother no branch of bale shall grow; Hoodwinked are the Gods of heaven, their sleep-dazed eyes are blind; They shall peer and grope through the darkness, and nought therein shall find, Save the red right hand of Guttorm, and his lips that never swore; At the young man's deed shall they wonder, and all shall be covered o'er: Ho, Guttorm, enter, and hearken to the counsel of ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... the stage door of the New Theatre, afterwards called the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, which it may be said in passing was not quite on the site of the present Haymarket Theatre. The entrance was small, the passage beyond was dark and they had to grope their way to the stage, which lighted as it was by half a dozen candles or so was gloomy enough. The daylight struggled into the audience part through a few small windows above the gallery. A rehearsal was going on, and a red faced man with a hoarse voice was stamping about ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... in freeing himself from his bonds. He then essayed to examine and explore the dismal pit into which he had been thrown—which, in the intense darkness that prevailed, was a task of no little danger. However, he cautiously began to grope about, and soon became satisfied that the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... and dropped from his upthrust fingers. He decided to grope to the rail, and feel along the metal until he reached some point of greater safety. He extended his fingers before him, as a blind man might, and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled alway, and there shall be none to save thee. Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... no coward, but I think there is much more to be feared, Peter. The arm of the Pope is long, and the arm of the crafty Ferdinand is longer, and both of them grope for the throats and ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... gallant effort to recover it, but King was too strong for him. He seized the knife himself, slipped it in his own bosom and resumed his hold before the native guessed what he was after. Then he kept a tight grip while Hyde knelt to grope for his missing property. The major found both the thief's bags, and ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... woman rejoined. He encountered her eyes, saw them widen into a stare, saw them grope over his mangled face, and then quickly turn in another direction, as if she could not bear the sight. He wanted to stop, but he noticed her lips quiver and heard a murmured "Jesus, son of Mary," as if he were the devil incarnate. And he ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... assured preamble, I introduced the high-sounding words of Schweigaard, 'One might thus certainly assume,' etc., and hurried down the left page, with unabated vigour down the right, reached the monkey, dashed past him, began to grope and fumble, and then I found I could not ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... grasped what had happened, only there was Norton who seemed to grope strangely among the graves. Black spots danced before his eyes, the little group by the church merged into the distance—always receding, always more remote, as he, stumbled helplessly over the moss and the thick dank myrtle and ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... about the blaze. Claude could not but feel how soon such a life must make them even as the red men. Their eyes grew weak and bloodshot; poor old Bastienne became almost blind, and soon could only grope her ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... spoiled or thrown away would have sustained four hundred more. This fish is an excellent and nutritious article of food, and would be highly prized by the epicure. It is caught by the women who wade into the water in a long close line, stooping down and walking backwards, whilst they grope with their hands and feet, presenting a singular, and to the uninitiated, an incomprehensible spectacle, as they thus move slowly backwards, but keep the line regular and well preserved, as all generally occupy the same position at one time. When a cray-fish is ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Agricola; "my verses! in which I only praise the love of labor and of goodness! To arrest me for that! If so, justice would be but a blind noodle. That she might grope her way, it would be necessary to furnish her with a dog and a pilgrim's staff ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... something in art which is dependent on genius and on nothing else. It is that something which touches, that something which creates, that something which itself is life; that something which belongs, in all ages, to those who grope to the light through darkness; that something of which we almost lose sight in the great completeness of the greatest artists, but which hovers like a halo of glory upon the brows of Italy's ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Dunlap began to grope with the toe of her right pump for the slight bulge under the rug which indicated the position of the bell used for summoning the maid from ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... to pray. Prayer is therefore as strictly and earnestly commanded as all other commandments: to have no other God, not to kill, not to steal, etc. Let no one think that it is all the same whether he pray or not, as vulgar people do, who grope in such delusion and ask Why should I pray? Who knows whether God heeds or will hear my prayer? If I do not pray, some one else will. And thus they fall into the habit of never praying, and frame a pretext, as though we taught that there is no duty or need of ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... on commercial honesty. I am inspired by it, and I reverence your scruples, but—I grope for the moral ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... to meet the shifting strains, while the passenger climbed out on the wing and then upon the running gear. To trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The bombs fell—nobody cared where—and the two imperilled aviators ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... a narrow dark alley, along which they had fairly to grope their way. It debouched, however, into the forgotten centre of the square. All the edges had been built close with brick stores, warehouses, and office buildings. But in the very middle had been left a waste piece of ground, occupied only by a garden ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... fall, but, finding that thereby the chest was come open, he judged that, happen what might, he would be better out of it than in it; and not knowing where he was, and being otherwise at his wits' end, he began to grope about the house, if haply he might find a stair or door whereby he might take himself off. Hearing him thus groping his way, the alarmed women gave tongue with:—"Who is there?" Ruggieri, not knowing the voice, made no answer: wherefore the women fell to calling the two young ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... were slightly jolly, too. They (George's father and George's father's friend) were to sleep in the same room, but in different beds. They took the candle, and went up. The candle lurched up against the wall when they got into the room, and went out, and they had to undress and grope into bed in the dark. This they did; but, instead of getting into separate beds, as they thought they were doing, they both climbed into the same one without knowing it - one getting in with his head at the top, and the other ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... and pressed his clenched fingers against his lips. She had always believed in him. Through all the hell in which the Fates had cast his destiny, she had been one star towards which he could grope. But now—a drunkard—a renegade soldier of a renegade battalion—to be shot. He had killed her trust! The horrors of the night closed on him like hounds on a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... case is not hopeless. I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it. We will now leave the dead American and proceed with my narrative. You can imagine that I could hardly come away from the Amazon without probing deeper into the matter. There were indications ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the morning succeeding my conference with the jailor, it so happened, whether I overslept myself, or the turnkey went his round earlier than usual, that I was roused from my sleep by the noise he made in opening the cell next to my own; and though I exerted the utmost diligence, yet having to grope for my materials in the dark, I was unable to fasten the chain to the staple, before he entered, as usual, with his lantern. He was extremely surprised to find me disengaged, and immediately summoned the principal keeper. I was questioned respecting my method of proceeding; ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... entrance upon a lane leading to the church. The storm had passed. Aloft, in a clear space of the sky, the moon rode and a few stars shone down whitely, as if with freshly washed faces. Hester carried a dark lantern under her cloak; but, within, the church was light enough for Rosewarne to grope his way to his accustomed pew. Hester saw him take his seat there, and choosing a pew at some distance, in the shadow of the south aisle, dropped ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rather faint when she finished her ironing. However, she took heart to believe that the clothes looked better, in spite of one or two scorched places; and she carried them upstairs to her husband's room before increasing blindness forced her to grope for the nearest chair. Then, trying to rise and walk, without having sufficiently recovered, she had to sit down again; but after a little while she was able to get upon her feet; and, keeping her hand ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Their children have gathered, their city have built; Where Hunger and Vice, like twin beasts of prey, Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt, Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt. Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, Half starved and half naked, lie crouched from the cold; See those skeleton limbs, those frost-bitten feet, All ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... a half—in fact, from the very date of Caroline's visit to the Moonlight Quill—he had never seen her. For a week after that visit her lights had failed to go on—darkness brooded out into the areaway, seemed to grope blindly in at his expectant, uncurtained window. Then the lights had appeared at last, and instead of Caroline and her callers they stowed a stodgy family—a little man with a bristly mustache and a full-bosomed woman who ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... as this do we grope after a God whom we can comprehend at a glance; and, lo! his presence fills the universe. "Say not, Who shall ascend into heaven to bring him down, or who shall descend into hell to bring him up? for he is nigh thee, before thy eyes and in ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... are many dark recesses among the overlying stones. Strip back your sleeve, thrust in your hand, and grope carefully about. In this way I once grasped a prickly thing that startled me. Drawing it to light, it proved to be an Echinus, Sea-Urchin, or Sea-Egg. That one was not larger than a walnut, was shaped like a brioche, and resembled a chestnut-burr. Its color was a delicate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... vague way the skill of the taxi-driver, who seemed to be able to grope his way through and around any obstruction of traffic; and it was not until she found the cab traversing a country road that she had any suspicion that all was not well. Even then her doubts were allayed by her recognition ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... tells how vainly I have striven To free them from the pit where they must dwell In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel. Love drives me back to grope with them through hell; And in their tortured eyes I ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... I'm strong in body and brain; this robs me of my usefulness. All my life I have prayed that I might some time love a woman; that time has come, but this means I must give her up and be lonely all my days. I must grope my way through the dark with never a ray of light to guide me. Do you know how awful the darkness is?" He clasped his hands tightly. "I must go hungering through the night, with a voiceless love to torture me. Just at the ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... coward, but I think there is much more to be feared, Peter. The arm of the Pope is long, and the arm of the crafty Ferdinand is longer, and both of them grope for the throats and moneybags ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... tired of head. We're all for love," the violins said. "Of what avail the rigorous tale Of coin for coin and box for bale? Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope, Level red gold with blue sky-slope, And base it deep as devils grope, When all's done what hast thou won Of the only sweet that's under the sun? Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh Of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... 1500 infantry and 500 horsemen. The night was dark—the darkest, said Stuart, that he had ever known. Without a guide concerted action seemed impossible. The rain still fell in torrents, and the raiders, soaked to the skin, could only grope aimlessly in the gloom. But just at this moment a negro was captured who recognised Stuart, and who knew where Pope's baggage and horses were to be found. He was told to lead the way, and Colonel W. H. F. Lee, a son of the Commander-in-Chief, was ordered to follow with his regiment. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of all the hope to climb? Only in the self we grope To the misty end of time, Truth has put an ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... mine of long ago. How could we know?—) For who should guess The shock and smiting of that perfectness?— The lily-thrust of those ecstatic feet Unpityingly sweet?— Sweet beyond all the blurred blind dreams that grope The upward paths of hope? And who could guess The dulcet holiness, The lilt and gladness of those jocund feet, Unpityingly sweet? Ah, for your coolness that shall change and stir With every glee of her!— Under the fresh amaze That drips and glistens ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... a clap of thunder sent her plunging in headlong. "Why, where—" for grope as she might, clear up to the end, among the clothes and the shoe-bag, no Miss Rhys was ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... somewhere beyond the dying embers of the day's funeral pyre?" No answer came from thee, only thine eyes smiled like the edge of a sunset cloud. It is night. Thy figure grows dim in the dark. Thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my sadness with its scent. My hands grope to touch the hem of thy robe, and I ask thee—"Is there thy garden of death beyond the stars, Lady of my Voyage, where thy silence blossoms into songs?" Thy smile shines in the heart of the hush like the star-mist ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... dropped his knife when we stumbled, and we were forced to grope round in that unspeakable mess for many minutes ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... in the dark, you see, and being only a flesh and blood human being, instead of a creation of one of you authors, I can only grope in the dark and look in every direction for the light. One person, two persons, three, even four may be engaged in this affair for all I know. Don't you be in a hurry, Mr. Beecot. I believe in that foreign chap's saying, 'Without haste ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... keen for a daring policy, had undertaken to attack the Danish defences with a squadron of twelve seventy-fours, and the frigates and bomb-vessels of the fleet. He determined to shun the open way of King's Channel, grope through the uncertain passage called the Dutch Deep, at the back of the Middle Ground, and forcing his way up the narrow channel in front of the shallows, repeat on the anchored batteries and battleships of the Danes the exploit of the Nile. He spent the nights of March 30 and 31 sounding ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... its pure rays through misery and strife; Soothes the lone bosom, as it pines in woe, And turns to heaven this barren world below? O, what were man, did not her hallowed ray Disperse, the clouds that thicken on his way! A weary pilgrim, left in cheerless gloom, To grope his midnight journey to the tomb; His life a tempest, death, a wreck forlorn, In sorrow dying, as ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... it out rustling and shaking in his hand. Ezra, breathing hard and short, accepted it, and began to grope in his pockets for his spectacle-case. After a while he found it, and tremblingly setting his glasses astride his nose, began to unfold the paper, which crackled noisily ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... this, and adds, "one kept in captivity preferred fruit, plantains, &c., as food, and refused all kinds of meat. Another would eat meat, fish, and used to burrow and grope under the walls of the bungalow for worms and shells." My idea is Balu-suar, or Sand-pig is the correct name, although Bhalu-suar or Bear-pig may hit off the appearance of the animal better, but its locality has always been pointed out to me by the Gonds in the sandy beds of rivers ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the result? Watchman! what of the night? The night is stormy and dark; men's hearts are failing them for fear; those who see clearly in the day time, now grope helplessly in the dark; the blind are leading the blind; society is at a stand still, waiting and watching for the coming day. Yet afar off in the east the patriot's eye may even now see the first faint streaks of that light which shall usher in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... history of Buddhism is that which follows the reign of Asoka, but the enquirer cannot grope for long in these dark ages without stumbling upon the word Mahayana. This is the name given to a movement which in its various phases may be regarded as a philosophical school, a sect and a church, and though ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... mental confusion,—blurring out thought.... Is the whole world taking fire?... The flaming azure of the sea dazzles and pains like a crucible-glow;—the green of the mornes flickers and blazes in some amazing way.... Then dizziness inexpressible: you grope with eyes shut fast—afraid to open them again in that stupefying torrefaction,—moving automatically,—vaguely knowing you must get out of the flaring and flashing,—somewhere, anywhere away from the white wrath of the sun, and the green fire of the hills, and the monstrous color ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... modernity, that it is very short-sighted to be indifferent to all that is historic. But it is as disastrously long-sighted to be interested only in what is prehistoric. And this disaster has befallen a large proportion of the learned who grope in the darkness of unrecorded epochs for the roots of their favourite race or races. The wars, the enslavements, the primitive marriage customs, the colossal migrations and massacres upon which their theories repose, are ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... between. Rolling had long ceased to be a pleasant figure of speech with me. How frail are all things here below, how false, and yet how fair! My mind is naturally picturesque. In the midst of my sadness the force of nature compelled me to grope after an illustration. I could only think that my own foothold was frail, that the Jane Moseley was false, that the Pretty Girl was fair. A dizziness of brain resulted from this rhetorical effort. I silently confided my sorrows to the sympathizing ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon the strand, Carolina! Shout! let it reach the startled Huns! And roar ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... new science of psycho-analysis he has already begun the work of bringing an infinity of subconsciousness into the light of day; it may be that in the evidence of telepathy which the psychic researchers are accumulating, he is beginning to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which may come to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars, and of the dark stars which the spectroscope and the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... will train myself to come here at night and sit in the presence of this woman without raising my eyes. I will not be defeated in this thing. The Lord has devised this temptation as a test of my soul and I will grope my way out of darkness into ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... not miss us even by grope. That big hollow that goes from Burg, and even from Potschappel,—it would have poured like a water-spout [or fire-spout] over us. You see, I am not so brave ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to be a saint or a madonna; she had fallen from her pedestal so low that he could not find the way to descend and grope after ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... one stranger salute another as he passes; and if not speedily rubbed with snow, the nose of the poor passenger is lost! Men's very eyes are sometimes frozen up, and they have no resource but to beg admission at the first door to which they can grope, to unthaw their glued ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... Resaca because his safety demanded it. The movement by us through Snake-Creek Gap was a total surprise to him. My army about doubled his in size, but he had all the advantages of natural positions, of artificial forts and roads, and of concentrated action. We were compelled to grope our way through forests, across mountains, with a large army, necessarily more or less dispersed. Of course, I was disappointed not to have crippled his, army more at that particular stage of the game; but, as it resulted, these rapid ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Indian path westward. She journeyed on, confused and irresolute, and tortured between terror and hunger. At length she approached Onondaga, a few miles from the present city of Syracuse, and hid herself in a dense thicket of spruce or cedar, whence she crept forth at night, to grope in the half-melted snow for a few ears of corn, left from the last year's harvest. She saw many Indians from her lurking-place, and once a tall savage, with an axe on his shoulder, advanced directly towards the spot where she lay: but, in the extremity of her fright, she ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... change of words, partly because the frolics were seldom heard by the stranger, and the music less often caught. Of nearly all the songs, however, the music is distinctly sorrowful. The ten master songs I have mentioned tell in word and music of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding; they grope toward some unseen power and sigh ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... light grows dim, the vision fades, Myself seems to myself a distant goal, I grope among the bodies' drowsy shades, Once more the Old ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... despond, Though I grope in the dark for the dawn: Birth and laughter, and bubbles of breath, And tears, and the blank void of death, Round each its penumbra is drawn,— I touch ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... feast is well lighted, and the guest has not to third his way through knotty sentences, past perilous punctuation-points, to reach the table, nor to grope in the dark for the dainties when he has found it. We imagine that it is this charm of perfect clearness and accessibility which attracts popular liking to Mr. Aldrich's poetry; afterwards, its other qualities easily hold the favor won. He is endowed with a singular richness of fancy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... food for an evening meal. I have shown, however, that that was a matter of small account to him. There was more than enough for Whirlwind, who, leaving his master to himself, began edging up the pass, cropping the choicest grass on the way. The Shawanoe had to grope in many places before he collected enough fuel. He heaped a part against the cold bare face of the rock, several paces from the winding brook, whose waters were not only clear, but of ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... stunned nor bruised, and he began to grope about for the pistol which in the sudden descent had been knocked from his hand. The only light came from the open trap in the floor above. Something fell softly at his feet; he picked it up. It was a cloth, saturated with chloroform. He flung it from him, and ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... old battered briar rarely left his mouth; and whilst the odoriferous Boer equivalent for the "divine weed" held out, food and drink were but minor considerations. But something must be done now, so, knocking out the ashes from his last whiff, and with one more futile grope in his capacious pocket, he stuck his empty pipe in his mouth, rose, stretched himself, and, glancing once more at the pageant of the western sky, turned back towards the contemptible collection of tin ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... there and know what the place is, but no one but myself can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still clinging to a wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that mouth of hell for the spring she had chattered about in her sleep, to find it, press it, and then to hear, down in the dark of the fearsome recess, the sound of something deadly strike against what I took to be the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... wonder, when I grope my way through drawing-rooms crowded and jammed with chairs and sofas, why more women do not realize the advantages of stools and benches. A well-made stool is doubly useful: it may be used to sit upon or ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... went down, slow sailing from my sight, And left the stars to watch away the night. O stars, sweet stars, so changeless and serene! What depths of woe your pitying eyes have seen! The proud sun sets, and leaves us with our sorrow, To grope alone in darkness till the morrow. The languid moon, e'en if she deigns to rise, Soon seeks her couch, grown weary of our sighs; But from the early gloaming till the day Sends golden-liveried heralds forth to say ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... one to get in with ease. Madame de Venelle was so used to her trade of watching us, that she rose even in her sleep to see what we were doing. One night, as my sister lay asleep with her mouth open, Madame de Venelle, after her accustomed manner, coming, asleep as she was, to grope in the dark, happened to thrust her finger into her mouth so far that my sister, starting out of her sleep, made her teeth almost meet in her finger. Judge you the amazement they both were in to find themselves in this posture ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... conclusions of our old and modern oracles, priest and prophet, Israelite, German, and Swede, he says: "It must be conceded that these are half views of half men. The world still wants its poet-priest, who shall not trifle with Shakespeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... wrinkled visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward, compelling our eyes to grope for one another's features by the dim glow of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam, had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the province-house when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight. And now, again, the clock of the Old ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... must grope who cannot see, The blade before the ear must be; As ye are feeling I have felt, And where ye ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... vanities, All things for which men grasp and grope! The precious things in heavenly eyes Are love, and truth, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... string. The water for the most part was only two or three fathoms deep, but sometimes it would be as much as eight fathoms,—which was the greatest depth to which the men cared to go. When he reached the bottom, the diver would grope about for shells, and generally return to the surface with a couple, held in his left hand and hugged against his breast; the right hand was kept free and directed his movements in swimming. Each diver seldom remained under water more than one minute, and on coming to the surface he would ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the Lee. We experienced much difficulty, and narrowly escaped detection, in entering this village, which is surrounded by beautiful country seats, through the grounds of some of which we were obliged to grope our way. We obtained lodgings, after one or two fruitless trials, in a very comfortable house kept by a farmer. The young family seemed to be rather tastefully educated, and we soon became fast friends. We passed as whimsical tourists, and delighted ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... blow. ... Mr. Wright pulled himself to his feet, and with one shaking hand on the table felt his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on the table for his hat ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... no doubt, be a good thing for those who now grope, but I have groped so long that I have formed the habit and prefer it. Let me go right on groping. Those who desire to win the affections of the opposite sex at one sitting, will do well to send two bits for your great work, but I am in no hurry. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... outlet other than that by which Fred had entered? Was the flow even or irregular? Were there pitfalls and abysses about him, making it too perilous to attempt to grope about in ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... generally speaking, at the very first sight decides the question for us without argument; but if we do not listen promptly to this secret monitor, its light goes out at once, and we are left to the mercy of mere conjecture, and grope about with but second-best guides. Then seeming arguments in favour of deceit and evil compliance with the world's wishes, or of disgraceful indolence, urge us, and either prevail, or at least so confuse us, that we do not know how to act. Alas! in ancient days it happened in this way, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... cadet I had a soldier-servant, what we call a "Bursche"; but there were periods when I was out of funds, and barely able to grope my way to the next quarter-day, and at these times I had but one meal a day, and obliged to draw my waist-belt pretty tight to make me feel I had eaten enough. A Bursche costs very little, but I could ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... loft where the tools were kept he remained much longer than he had intended. At first there was scarcely any light at all up here, and, having stupidly forgotten to bring a box of matches, he had to grope about fumblingly; but gradually the light improved. He found a saw, and, attaching it to a light cord, slung it round his neck in the approved woodman fashion. The saw would be carried merely for the sake of appearances. Then he hunted for the particular rope that he required for his purposes, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... has made almost no effort to test the claims of the spiritual. In fact, the highest of these claims, that of the existence of a deity, must lie forever beyond its reach. God may exist, and science grope for Him through eternity in vain. Finite facts can never gauge the infinite. Proofs and disproofs alike have been offered of the existence of an infinite deity, but the problem remains unsolved. None of these proofs or disproofs ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... attitude? At bottom, it is absolutely sceptical. Deep yawns below Deep; and if we cannot read "the writing upon the wall," the reason may be that there is no writing there. Having lifted a corner of the Veil of Isis, having glanced once into that Death-Kingdom where grope the roots of the Ash-Tree whose name is Fear, we return to the surface, from Nadir to Zenith, and ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... empty and the lights were out when they emerged from the dressing-room. They had to grope their way in darkness. It was still raining when they reached the street, and the only signs of life were a moist policeman and the distant glare of public-house lights down ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... morning?" replied Kaiber; "you are stone-headed. We shall be dead directly; wherefore ate you the mussels?" This was beyond what my patience in my present starved state could endure, so I got up and began to grope about for a stick or something to throw in the direction of the chattering blockhead; but he begged me to remain quiet, promising faithfully to make no more mention of the mussels. I therefore squatted down, in a state ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... not the luminous publicity in which he moved rendered the smallest of his mental processes so brilliantly overt. It was immediately plain to Adams that the jerky sentences were shot out at random in order that Perry's slow mind might gain a larger space in which to grope for the word he really wanted. There was something evidently behind it all, and until the situation should disclose itself they walked on in an embarrassed and waiting silence. In his top hat and his mink-lined overcoat Perry presented an ample dignity which his companion found almost ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... by Sow Nance; but, by a desperate effort, the old man succeeded in freeing himself from his bonds. He then essayed to examine and explore the dismal pit into which he had been thrown—which, in the intense darkness that prevailed, was a task of no little danger. However, he cautiously began to grope about, and soon became satisfied that the place was of ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... here in this. His heart is aching for grief, and mine because I don't know how to comfort him—and all because the glimmer of light that leads me on isn't strong enough. It's better than nothing; I don't deny that. I can grope my way by it when I might expect to be utterly bewildered—but, oh, mother ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... in bed and began to grope for the matchbox. But this passed away. The face of Death grew mild, and then seemed to smile. He lay down on his side, his face turned from the open window, composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and fell softly into the ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... burthens me a good deal in my patriotic garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I grope about everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a full and, I fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch education to a very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and perspired under it, however with much composure. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Latinity for the lower region of matter? And in place of cultivating the literae humaniores, which is the true cultivation of the mind, and sets a man, mark you, on a level with princes, to stoop to handle virgin milk and dragon's blood, as they style their vile mixtures; or else grope in dead men's bodies for the thing which killed them. Which is a pure handicraft and cheirergon, unworthy a scholar, who stoops of right to naught ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... offers no wider breach. If the Philanthus were guided in her operation solely by the question of vulnerability, it is here certainly that she ought to strike, instead of persistently seeking the narrow slit in the neck. The weapon would not need to hesitate and grope; it would obtain admission into the tissues off-hand. No, the stroke of the lancet is not forced upon it mechanically: the assassin scorns the large defect in the corselet and prefers the place under the chin, for eminently ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... holding the light to ascertain if there was anybody near, and, satisfied with her scrutiny, she then opened the door, and calling down the saints to protect me, shook hands with me, and I quitted the house. It was a dark, cloudy night, and when I first went out, I was obliged to grope, for I could distinguish nothing. I walked along with a pistol loaded in each hand, and gained, as I thought, the high road to E——, but I made a sad mistake; and puzzled by the utter darkness and turnings, I took, on the contrary, the road to Mount Castle. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... almost dark when he entered, and he had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the sunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... stage door of the New Theatre, afterwards called the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, which it may be said in passing was not quite on the site of the present Haymarket Theatre. The entrance was small, the passage beyond was dark and they had to grope their way to the stage, which lighted as it was by half a dozen candles or so was gloomy enough. The daylight struggled into the audience part through a few small windows above the gallery. A rehearsal was going on, and a red faced man with a hoarse voice was stamping about and shouting ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... pitiable. His friends feared for his sanity, and had he not been closely watched it is quite possible that one grave would have held the lovers. He reproached himself for neglecting her. He cursed art and literature for having seduced him away from her, and thus allowed her to grope her way alone. He prophesied what she might have been had he only devoted himself to her as a teacher, and by encouragement allowed her soul to bloom and blossom. "I should have worked through her ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... cabinet, through which we passed, I embraced him with an extreme pleasure. We had entered by the backstairs; we descended by the same, so as not to be observed. It was dark, so that on both occasions we were obliged to grope our way. Upon arriving at the bottom I could not refrain from again embracing Millain, so great was my pleasure, and we separated ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... learn more about Jeroboam II., the last great ruler of Israel; while the conflict with the Assyrians and the fall of Samaria are despatched in a couple of verses which tell us scarcely anything at all. Sometimes a brilliant breaks in on the surrounding night (2Kings ix. x.), but after it we grope in the dark again. Only so much of the old tradition has been preserved as those of a later age held to be of religious value: it has lost its original centre of gravity, and assumed an attitude which it certainly had not at first. It may have been the case in Judah that the temple was of more ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... does not grow in us. It is a thing apart, we simply gather it. All truths, all discoveries, all inventions, they have not come to us from any one man. The time grows ripe for them, and from this corner of the earth and from that, hands, guided by some instinct, grope for and grasp them. Buddha and Christ seize hold of the morality needful to civilisation, and promulgate it, unknown to one another, the one on the shores of the Ganges, the other by the Jordan. A dozen forgotten explorers, feeling America, prepared the way for Columbus to discover it. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... from a star Voices come o'er the line; Voices of ghosts afar, Not in this world of mine; Lives in whose loom I grope; Words in whose weft I hear Eager the thrill of hope, Awful the chill ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Mr. Stacey, a hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found the commodore himself taking skilful turns around the mizzen with the severed stays and shrouds ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... outside and starting to throw a leg over," Tubby exclaimed in evident rapture. "And if there is a child inside that room, our chum will find it. If it was me now, I'd be so blind with the smoke I'd have to just grope my way around, and p'raps get ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... to the ground, but the man heaved him away with a mighty kick. Chester fell sprawling on the ground, and his opponent turned to grope for his revolver. ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... so fragile! just twenty— How mocking the bells sound to-night! She starved in this great land of plenty, When she tried to grope back to the light. Christ. are Thy disciples inhuman, Or only for men hast Thou died? No mercy is shown to a woman Who ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the angles of the rocks, in flurries so violent as, at moments, to confound all the senses of the young man. He was resolute, however, and bent on an object of humanity, as well as of good fellowship. Living or dead, Daggett must be somewhere on his present level; and he began to grope his way among the fragments of rock, eager and solicitous. The roaring of the wind almost prevented his hearing other sounds; though once or twice he heard; or fancied that he heard, the shouts of Stimson from above. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... camp ground of the night before. It had been trampled by hundreds of feet. Our camp was small, and finding the spade by day might be easy enough. To grope in the dark and danger was another matter. Twenty-four hours before, I would not have dared to try. Nothing counted with me now. I had just risen from the stiffening body of a comrade whom I had been trying ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... should like to know, things about that dark future where some of our hearts live so constantly, things about the depths of His nature and the divine character, things about the relation between God's love and God's righteousness, things about the meaning of all this dreadful mystery in which we grope our way. These and a hundred other questionings suggest to us that it would have been so easy for Him to have lifted a little corner of the veil, and let a little more of the light shine out. He holds all in His hand. Why does He thus open one finger instead of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank in front of the Austrian camp. This shore was bordered ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... some incomprehensible mischance. The priest beheld the purple gleam as it flashed from between the girl's fingers. Her high cap of coarse undyed French linen fell away from her black locks as she stooped to grope passionately in the ooze which had swallowed up her treasure. In a moment the comely picture of her dark blue sleeves, gray petticoat, and trim red stockings was sadly disfigured by the mud. The girl's ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... you mean one of those families that have worked down so far you can't find where they went in?"—that was the phrase in which he recognised the truth of the girl's grope. Delia's fixed eyes assented, and after a moment of cogitation George Flack broke out: "That's the kind of family we ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... are assailed at once. Each new day brings its conflicting interests and obligations. Now, whether we are aware of it or not, our constant effort is, out of the great variety of experience pressing in upon us, to select such details as make to a definite purpose and end. Instinctively we grope toward and attract to us that which is special and proper to our individual development. Our progress is toward harmony. By the adjustment of new material to the shaping principle of our experience, the circle of our individual ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... treasure. And she's my own! I can watch her little body grow and help to make it strong and beautiful! I can help mould her little mind—see it opening up, one chamber of wonder after another! I can teach her all the things I have had to grope so to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... a word that may signify the meadow of Eois, or high meadow. It has a history that goes back to grope about Ararat for the potsherds thrown out of the ark. It has a very old and famous round tower, used at some time as a place of sepulchre, for a great quantity of human bones have been found in it. In one stone of this tower is the mark of two toes printed into the stone, or ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... memory, melodiously mute as it may be, While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod; Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby, As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God. Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer: Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things: ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... allied to our modified consciousness. There is for the moment no hope of solving it; but we are free to grope in its darkness, which is not perhaps equally dense at ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... She stabs you in a spot so vital that you die in a few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing; you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward; you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa which you fall upon, and finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice; your clinched hand ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the elephant Is very ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... with zeal increased, Blending, the while we strive and grope, Our paler festival of Hope ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... there he was, only scratched and torn a bit, and like a toad in a hole, he sat for a bit on his coat and panted and breathed foul air. 'Twas dark as a wolf's mouth, of course, and he didn't know from Adam what dangers lay around him; but he couldn't bide still long and so rose up and began to grope with feet and hands. He kicked a few of the big stones that Ernest Gregory had thrown down, as he thought atop of him; and then he found the bottom of the hole was bigger than he guessed. And then he kicked a soft object and a great wonder happened. Kneeling to see what it might be, he put ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... birds, In law, whose service only sets them free." Therefore it often leaps to the truth we seek, Clasping it, as a lover clasps his bride In darkness, ere the sage can light his lamp. And so, in music, men might find the road To truth, at many a point, where sages grope. One day, a greater Plato would arise To write a new philosophy, he said, Showing how music is the golden clue To all the windings of the world's dark maze. Himself had used it, partly proved it, too, In his own book,—the Harmonies of the World. 'All that the ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... High Street of Clovelly, at night, turned out to be a matter of more difficulty than we had anticipated. There was no such thing as a lamp in the whole village; and we had to grope our way in the darkness down steps of irregular sizes and heights, paved with slippery pebbles, and ornamented with nothing in the shape of a bannister, even at the most dangerous places. Half-way down, my friend and I had an argument in the dark—standing ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... obtained of the vault was from the sense of touch. I now determined to take a further survey, if so I could call it, of my prison, to start from a certain point to feel my way round, and reach as high as I could, to extend my arms, and to grope along the floor from one side to the other. One point I considered was to my advantage. My captors would suppose that I was shut up in the chest, and would therefore not have taken much trouble to secure the outlet to the vault. Probably, indeed, ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... is a hunger in my soul for which I can find no satisfying bread. I have tried many breads; I have tried nature, and art, and music, and literature, and I have tried human fellowship and social service. But my soul is hungry still! And the Lord Jesus comes to me, as I reverently grope in the vast temple, and He "satisfies the hungry soul" with good things. His "bread of life" is very wonderful; it lifts the soul into the restfulness of strength, and gives me a strange buoyancy, and "the glorious liberty of ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... Mexico. It was found that the work was not only very lucrative, but not at all difficult. Where Clive forded a deep water upon an unknown bottom, he left a bridge for his successors, over which the lame could hobble and the blind might grope their way. There was not at that time a knot of clerks in a counting-house, there was not a captain of a band of ragged topasses, that looked for anything less than the deposition of subahs and the sale of kingdoms. Accordingly, this revolution, which ought to have precluded other ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... below the slope, Where the women wash their webs at noon, A form like a shadow seems to grope, Doubtful under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... very accurate rehearsals as the only condition on which they shall be listened to; and to refer them to their books for the information which they need, and in general for the solution of all their doubts. But then the teacher must see that he does not set them to grope their way through a wilderness of absurdities. He must know that they have a book, which not only contains the requisite information, but arranges it so that every item of it may be readily found. That knowledge may reasonably be required ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Rowley's mansion, in Hill's Lane, built of brick in 1618 by William Rowley, is now a warehouse. Butcher Row has some old houses with projecting storeys, including a fine specimen of a medieval shop. Some of the houses in Grope Lane lean together from opposite sides of the road, so that people in the highest storey can almost shake hands with their neighbours across the way. You can see the "Olde House" in which Mary Tudor is said ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... pearl-diver grope for the treasures of the deep with more eager intensity than did John Jarwin search for that lost tobacco. He remained under water until he became purple in the face, and, coming to the surface after each dive, ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... fearing that his treasure had been swallowed up beyond recovery. Still, he felt convinced that he was in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where the cave had been, and, bidding Flora to sit down and rest while he further investigated, he began to grope about here and there among the confused mass of rocks, studying them intently as he did so. For upwards of two hours Leslie searched and toiled in vain; but at length he came upon a piece of rock face that seemed familiar to him, and upon removing a number of blocks of splintered ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... six, and all the boat's lights revealed was a yellow circle of fog that traveled with us. Wet and chilled, we two stood at the wheel together, in such hard conditions that no navigator and no pilot could have done much more than grope. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... mankind, and, though the world be moved to virtue only slowly and with reluctance, mark how mighty has been his influence! What think you, then, would be the power of a Christ of evil, showing to men the path they already grope for? I tell you, the human race would be his only; Hell, full to bursting with their hurrying souls, would outweigh Heaven in the balance; the teller of the secret ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... reader by comments on this monstrous inequality with which the penal codes of slave states treat slaves and their masters. When we consider that guilt is in proportion to intelligence, and that these masters have by law doomed their slaves to ignorance, and then, as they darkle and grope along their blind way, inflict penalties upon them for a variety of acts regarded as praise worthy in whites; killing them for crimes, when whites are only fined or imprisoned—to call such a 'public opinion' inhuman, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... midnight of darkness and terror, When I would grope nearer to God, With my back to a record of error And the highway of sin I have trod, There come to me shapes I would banish— The shapes of the deeds I have done; And I pray and I plead till they vanish— All vanish and ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... jovial lot has birth; Nor needs he to strive or toil. The peasant may grope in the bowels of earth, And for treasure may greedily moil He digs and he delves through life for the pelf, And digs till he grubs out ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 1:29). 3. Because that thereby thou wilt be able through grace, to step over and turn aside from the several stumbling-blocks that Satan, together with his instruments, hath laid in our way, which otherwise thou wilt not be able to shun, but will certainly fall when others stand, and grope and stumble when others go upright, to the great prejudice of thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... born at Knaresborough in 1717, the son of poor working people. When only six years old he was seized with virulent small-pox, which totally destroyed his sight. The blind boy, when sufficiently recovered to go abroad, first learnt to grope from door to door along the walls on either side of his parents' dwelling. In about six months he was able to feel his way to the end of the street and back without a guide, and in three years he could go on a message to any part of the town. He grew strong and healthy, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... work in terms of hope And speak of it with words of praise, And tell the joy it is to grope Along the new, untrodden ways! Let's break this habit of despair And cheerfully our task regard; The road to happiness lies there: Why think or speak of ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Have evolved his best self, that pure atom of God, Which lies deep in each heart like a seed in the sod. 'Tis the world's over-virtuous women, ofttimes, Who drive men of weak will into sexual crimes. I pity him. (God knows I pity, each, all Of the poor striving souls who grope blindly and fall By the wayside of life.) But the love which unbidden Crept into my heart, and was guarded and hidden For years, that has vanished. It passed like a breath, In the gray Autumn morning when Roger faced death, As he thought, and uncovered ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... It was the first time I had heard the roar of the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and knees, and pick up ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... may lie in the forgotten folds of hoarded letters, that have been preserved only to blast the memory of the dead! What precious words, again, have been destroyed, that might have lightened for a whole heavy lifetime the doubt and anguish of the living! In this, as in all we do, we grope about in darkness, and the one and the other course must often enough have been bitterly lamented by those who "did for the best" in keeping or destroying these chronicles ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... inn it was so pitch dark that he had almost to grope his way, for it was impossible to see a hand's breadth in front of him. Some night-birds flying across the road from one hedge to the other brushed Pinocchio's nose with their wings as they passed, which caused him so much terror that, springing back, he shouted: "Who ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... "Better that than grope among subterranean caverns, black and icy, as you are forever doing. You are even getting a weird, unearthly look. Sometimes, when I come in and find you, book in hand, with that far-off expression in your eyes, I really ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... I have to grope my way; and it is a hard people, as you say, to deal with. But I have no fear, sir; I shall overcome all Flamborough, unless—unless, what I fear to think of, there should happen ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... section, was to belittle as far as possible the general influence of European civilisation upon England; to exalt, for example, the Celtic missionaries and their work at the expense of St Augustine, to grope for shadowy political origins among the pirates of the North Sea, to trace every possible etymology to a barbaric root, and to make of Roman England and of early Medieval England—that is, of the two Englands which were most fully in touch with the general life of Europe—as small ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... his thoughts of existence with the spiritual and works only as God works, 263:9 he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven. Carnal beliefs defraud us. They make man an involun- 263:12 tary hypocrite, - producing evil when he would create good, forming deformity ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... difference in the credit attached to them. There is no newspaper published in Aix, and the prefect, who is a person much suspected, has taken no steps to give the public correct information, but allows them to grope, in the dark; they have invented accordingly the most ridiculous stories, converting hundreds into thousands, and a few fishing boats and other small craft, into first a squadron of Neapolitans, and then a fleet of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... fear, young woman!" I answered; "but I confess that it is so ingeniously concealed that I doubt whether anyone ignorant of its existence would find it, except by the most extraordinary accident." And therewith I proceeded to grope and feel about in the various fissures and cavities with which the rocky walls of the small cavern were honeycombed, but without success. At length, to my great chagrin, I was obliged to abandon the search and confess ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... train up the steep grade, go past. These three puffing, smoke-emitting monsters fill every nook and corner of the tunnel with dense smoke, which creates a darkness by the side of which the natural darkness of the tunnel is daylight in comparison. Here is a darkness that can be felt; I have to grope my way forward, inch by inch; afraid to set my foot down until I have felt the place, for fear of blundering into a culvert; at the same time never knowing whether there is room, just where I am, to get out of the way of a train. A cyclometer ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the reader by comments on this monstrous inequality with which the penal codes of slave states treat slaves and their masters. When we consider that guilt is in proportion to intelligence, and that these masters have by law doomed their slaves to ignorance, and then, as they darkle and grope along their blind way, inflict penalties upon them for a variety of acts regarded as praise worthy in whites; killing them for crimes, when whites are only fined or imprisoned—to call such a 'public ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage, tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed, the hunters had much ado to saddle their horses and grope their way along the bridle-path that led ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... secretions hiding a foreign body should be removed with the aspirating tube (Fig. 9) rather than by swabbing or sponge-pumping, when the bronchoscopic tube-mouth is close to the foreign body. It is inadvisable, however, to insert a forceps into a mass of granulations to grope blindly for a foreign body, with no knowledge of the presentation, the forceps spaces, or the location of branch-bronchial orifices into which one blade of the forceps may go. Dilatation of a stricture may be necessary, and may be accomplished by the ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... tenderly pitied children who had griefs; then they need our care more than the grown children, who feel God's love and wisdom. But these little ones grope in a kind of darkness. Suffering is a mystery to them; they can perceive no cause or end for it; they only know ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... hand commenced to grope. It stole into his own and lay there quietly. "Because I couldn't bear to see you hurt. You're so good. In some ways you're so strong; in others you're just as tiny as my Eric. I felt you needed me ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... utterly, desolately alone. Perhaps some day she will reach me in spite of my little faith. People who resort to mediums and the automatic writing craze are beyond me: though the temptation I understand. You may remember a sentence of Maeterlinck——' We have to grope timidly and make sure of every footstep, as we cross the threshold. And even when the threshold is crossed, where shall certainty be found——? One cannot speak of these things—the solitude is too great.' That is my own ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... ruined fosse, which was always liable to be shelled unexpectedly? In cellars beneath the unwholesome and dilapidated town our men found billets. They were really quite comfortable, but at night when the place was as black as pitch, and one had to grope one's way in the darkness along debris-covered streets, shaken every now and then by the German missiles from the sky, one longed for Canada and the well-lighted pavements ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... very young man) were slightly jolly, too. They (George's father and George's father's friend) were to sleep in the same room, but in different beds. They took the candle, and went up. The candle lurched up against the wall when they got into the room, and went out, and they had to undress and grope into bed in the dark. This they did; but, instead of getting into separate beds, as they thought they were doing, they both climbed into the same one without knowing it - one getting in with his head at the top, and the other crawling in from the opposite side ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... that they are bad; irredeemably bad. In this state of mind, he will fancy that the Chimes are calling, to him; and saying to himself 'God help me. Let me go up to 'em. I feel as if I were going to die in despair—of a broken heart; let me die among the bells that have been a comfort to me!'—will grope his way up into the tower; and fall down in a kind of swoon among them. Then the third quarter, or in other words the beginning of the second half of the book, will open with the Goblin part of the thing: the bells ringing, and innumerable spirits (the sound or vibration of them) flitting and tearing ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... towards evening, and Falkenberg was still tuning, I took a bit of something to eat in my pocket and went off for a walk, to be out of the way so they should not ask me in to supper. There was a moon, and the stars were out, but I liked best to grope my way into the dense part of the wood and sit down in the dark. It was more sheltered there, too. How quiet the earth and air seemed now! The cold is beginning, there is rime on the ground; now and again ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... before I waxed old, The blynd boy, Venus baby, For want of cunning, made me bold In bitter hyve to grope for honny: But when he saw me stung and cry, He tooke his wings and ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... of blindness—poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the hypocrisy of this Society in bold relief. It pretends to be anxious to evangelize benighted Africa, and stop the slave trade; but only assure it that the blacks may be safely colonized nearer home, and Africa might still continue to grope in darkness, and the slave trade to increase in enormity, and its bowels of compassion would speedily cease to yearn!—Hence it is that the rapid enlargement of the Wilberforce Settlement in Upper Canada so disturbs the repose of the advocates of African colonization; and many ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... that he is still quite a good walker, but that a blind man finds it very troublesome to go anywhere; for at every step he is obliged to grope about, so that he may feel sure of his ground before he firmly plants his foot ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... LORD shall smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled alway, and there shall be none to save thee. Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... has enough to do to live, whence it cannot move to obtain what it wants or likes, but must stretch its unfortunate arms here and there for bare breath and light, and split its way among rocks, and grope for sustenance in unkindly soil; it would be hard upon the plant, I say, if under all these disadvantages, it were made answerable for its appearance, and found fault with because it was not a fine plant of the kind. And so we find it ordained that in order that no ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... a timely flash of lightning showed me was a column, standing in exactly the opposite direction from my own house. I could now locate myself correctly, and the lightning becoming every moment more vivid, I was enabled to grope my way by slow degrees to the mess, where I expected to find someone to show me my way home, but the servants, who knew from experience the probable effects of a cyclone, had already closed the outside Venetian ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... most of the cafe chantants are situated, is bright with electric light, the back streets of the city are lit by flickering oil-lamps, and here the stranger must almost grope his way about after dark. If wise he will stay at home, for robbery and even murder are of frequent occurrence. A large proportion of the population here consists of time-expired convicts, many of whom haunt the night-houses in quest ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... has hitherto dealt strictly with the physical; it has made almost no effort to test the claims of the spiritual. In fact, the highest of these claims, that of the existence of a deity, must lie forever beyond its reach. God may exist, and science grope for Him through eternity in vain. Finite facts can never gauge the infinite. Proofs and disproofs alike have been offered of the existence of an infinite deity, but the problem remains unsolved. None of these proofs or disproofs are ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... advancement of Learning" and as such "are but preparatives towards that perfection which wee may exspect by the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ, wherein the Communion of Saints, by the graces of the Spirit, will swallow up all these poor Rudiments of knowledg, which wee now grope after by so manie helps" ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury
... our day, and asked in reference to that general spirit of reform and progress of society which seems to characterize our age, and in relation to which, just in proportion as men forget to listen to the Word of God, they grope about in the darkness of their ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... right. Twenty feet away a thin bar of light shone from a room that I knew was Captain Rudstone's, and beyond that lay some empty apartments. My own room was one of the first. I slipped into it, put my boots on the floor and began to grope for a light. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... would lift her eyes toward Mr. Bernard, and let them rest upon him, without a thought, seemingly, that she herself was the subject of observation or remark. Then they seemed to lose their cold glitter, and soften into a strange, dreamy tenderness. The deep instincts of womanhood were striving to grope their way to the surface of her being through all the alien influences which overlaid them. She could be secret and cunning in working out any of her dangerous impulses, but she did not know how to mask the unwonted feeling ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... courtyard, huge, and surrounded with stone arcades, indistinct amidst the gloom. However, they came to a narrow passage without a door, and he let go her hand. She could hear him trying to strike some matches, and swearing. They were all damp. It was necessary for them to grope their way upstairs. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... thus will one stranger salute another as he passes; and if not speedily rubbed with snow, the nose of the poor passenger is lost! Men's very eyes are sometimes frozen up, and they have no resource but to beg admission at the first door to which they can grope, to unthaw their glued lashes ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... reply and passed on. He made his way out into the gardens. The darkness now was a little more sombre, and he had to grope his way to the palings. Soon he stood before the dark outline of the adjoining house. In the window towards which he was making his way a single candle in a silver candlestick was burning. He paused underneath and listened. Then he took a pine cone which he had picked up on his way and ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... beheld one that sat by the wayside—a man who crouched 'neath a dusty cloak and kept his white head down-bent and who now reached out a hand to grope and grope for the staff that lay near; wherefore Beltane took hold upon this hand and raised the white-haired traveller, and thereafter put the cudgel ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... I was suppliant for these two brothers, And I said: Your land has need: Half-awakened and blindly we grope in the great world.... What strength may we take from our Past, What promise hold for ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... gone almost straight to that cleft, steering my course by the sea rocks I had noted from the window. But in the dark it was different. I could only grope along in hope, with many a stop to wonder where I had got to, and many a stumble and many a bruise. Stark darkness is akin to blindness, and blindness in a strange land, and that a land of rocks and chasms, is ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... and adds, "one kept in captivity preferred fruit, plantains, &c., as food, and refused all kinds of meat. Another would eat meat, fish, and used to burrow and grope under the walls of the bungalow for worms and shells." My idea is Balu-suar, or Sand-pig is the correct name, although Bhalu-suar or Bear-pig may hit off the appearance of the animal better, but its locality has always been pointed out to me by the Gonds ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... and in blindness And in sorrow still we grope, Yet in man's increasing kindness Lies the world's stupendous hope; For our darkest hour of errors Is as radiant as the dawn, Set beside the awful terrors Of the ages ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... like to know, things about that dark future where some of our hearts live so constantly, things about the depths of His nature and the divine character, things about the relation between God's love and God's righteousness, things about the meaning of all this dreadful mystery in which we grope our way. These and a hundred other questionings suggest to us that it would have been so easy for Him to have lifted a little corner of the veil, and let a little more of the light shine out. He holds all in His hand. Why does He thus open one finger instead of the whole palm? Because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... love to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, vocal with nightingales and seeming to impregnate the very air with the pleasures of desire, justify the decision of ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... slammed the door in the faces of her visitors, and left them to grope their way in the dark down the steep stairway. It was highly characteristic, both of the senior and the junior Hahn, that without a word of explanation they drove home amicably in the ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... hu-olo-olo, for example, which is translated in several different ways in the poem, is of such generic and comprehensive meaning that one word fails to express its meaning. It is, by the way, not a word to be found in any dictionary. The author had to grope his way to its meaning by following the trail of some Hawaiian pathfinder who, after beating about the bush, finally had to acknowledge that the path had become so much overgrown since he last went that way that ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... darkly furtive had not the luminous publicity in which he moved rendered the smallest of his mental processes so brilliantly overt. It was immediately plain to Adams that the jerky sentences were shot out at random in order that Perry's slow mind might gain a larger space in which to grope for the word he really wanted. There was something evidently behind it all, and until the situation should disclose itself they walked on in an embarrassed and waiting silence. In his top hat and his mink-lined overcoat Perry presented an ample dignity which his companion found ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... moment a child is born, the face is alive. And the face communicates direct with both planes of primary consciousness. The moment a child is born, it begins to grope for the breast. And suddenly a new great circuit is established, the four poles all working at once, as the child sucks. There is the profound desirousness of the lower center of sympathy, and the superior avidity of the center of ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... day they make more history in Secessia than here. Jeff. Davis overshadows Lincoln. Jeff. Davis and his gang of malefactors are pushed into the whirlpool of action by the nature of their crime; here, our leaders dread action, and grope. The rebels have a clear, decisive, almost palpable aim; ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... he would be surrounded by friends. With an answering shout of "One and all!" he sprang to meet his assailants, and, realizing their danger, they fled before him. At the same instant the lamp on their car disappeared, and in the utter darkness that followed Trefethen could only grope his way back ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... never knew.— (O never, more than mine of long ago. How could we know?—) For who should guess The shock and smiting of that perfectness?— The lily-thrust of those ecstatic feet Unpityingly sweet?— Sweet beyond all the blurred blind dreams that grope The upward paths of hope? And who could guess The dulcet holiness, The lilt and gladness of those jocund feet, Unpityingly sweet? Ah, for your coolness that shall change and stir With every glee of her!— Under the fresh amaze That drips and glistens from her wiles and ways; When the endearing ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... stumbled uncertainly down the trail into the canon, the bottom of which was still black as night from a heavy growth of young aspens that shut out the light. There was a fairly well-worn path leading up the gulch, so that he could grope his way forward slowly. His feet moved reluctantly. It seemed to him that his nerves, his brain, and even his muscles were in revolt against the moral compulsion that drove him on. He could feel his heart beating against his ribs. Every ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and knees, and pick up whatever we ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... there with bound hands in the thick gloom, he seemed to catch a slow and sighing sound, as of troubled breathing. Again he called. No answer. Then he understood the truth. And, unable to grope with his hands, he swung one foot slowly, gently, in the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... reply in the affirmative, and the three boys proceeded to grope their way along in silence, until the broad archway of the tunnel's mouth appeared through a fog of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... like a blow. ... Mr. Wright pulled himself to his feet, and with one shaking hand on the table felt his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on the table ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... my fallen brother, as I cannot speak to the foolish people who grope in this miasma of delusion. Silly women, yielding to the natural vanity of their sex, may mistake hysterics for inspiration. Vacillating and vacant men may seek a new sensation by encouraging a revival of the demoniacal epidemics of heathendom. But you, who have been a preacher of the gospel, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... horrifying to the "savage" as his can be to us. Nevertheless, it is true to say that as civilization advances, and especially where the position of women improves, the movement has been towards a more stable and exclusive form of marriage. We grope uncertainly towards it: we fail atrociously. Yet we do not abandon an ideal which asks so much of human nature that human nature is continually invoked ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... tub, and a pitcher of cold water that stood near, but it was not so easy for him to grope his way upstairs. The staircase was narrow and dark, and seemed specially contrived that the uninitiated might bump and bruise themselves. Coomber, in his boat-home, having no such convenience or inconvenience in general ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found the commodore himself taking skilful turns around the mizzen with the severed stays and shrouds dangling from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... into sympathy with his position and, in the technical phrase, create his character. A historian confronted with some ambiguous politician, or an actor charged with a part, have but one pre- occupation; they must search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human nature appears, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from inside his greatcoat, with much care, three or four matches. By lighting, first one and then the others, he was able to grope around until he found the hearth of the cabin. Cold ashes marked the remains of a fire long since extinguished. His foot struck against something which proved to be a small piece of dry pine-wood. With the flame from his last ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... reached me in the melee that they also were at work. By this time Barraclough and Jackson and the Prince had arrived on the scene, the last with a lantern which he swung over his head. Barraclough joined me, and Jackson was despatched to grope his way into the saloon to assist Ellison. The Prince himself took his station with Lane, and I heard the noise of his weapon several times. My door had not yet given way, but I was afraid of those swinging blows, and ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... purpose, take us nowhither. We loiter in musty waiting-rooms, are frustrated by mobs, and foiled by an eternal clamour. We have forgotten the feast and occupy ourselves in all manner of foolish and irrelevant ways. Only now and again, struck by the absurdity of our occupations, we grope after our lost consciousness and feel somehow that somewhere out beyond is our real destination, that somewhere out there a feast is proceeding, that a cover is laid for us and dishes served, that though we are absent the master calls a toast to us and ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... mind. It is the Sun of Suns, around which wind The Heavens and all the worlds. Such is its blaze, That had it not, at intervals, a haze, Grading both Angel and the Human-kind, The bright Arch-angel would be stricken blind, To grope in Heaven, a ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... ayucari, or red cedar; and the cuamara, laden with tonka beans. So thick was their foliage overhead that one by one Van Hielen watched the stars disappear; and the path ahead of him darkened till it was as much as he could do to grope along. Still he was not afraid. The thought of that elfish little maiden with the luminous eyes crawling along in front of him inspired him with extraordinary confidence and he plunged on, anxious only to catch ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... humanity-freighted vessel in its voyage over an uncertain sea, yet, as we trust, toward lands of perpetual security and peace. All are voyagers on the sea of life. Some, with the knowledge of ancient days only, grope their way by headlands, or trust themselves occasionally to the guidance of the sun or the stars; while others, with the chart and compass of the Christian era, move confidently on their course, attracted by the Source and Centre of all good. And it is a blessing of this state of existence, though ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... turn aside from laws and statutes and consider the ordinary life and social intercourse of the Negro, we shall find more than one contradiction, for in the colonial era codes affecting slaves and free Negroes had to grope their way to uniformity. Especially is it necessary to distinguish between the earlier and the later years of the period, for as early as 1760 the liberalism of the Revolutionary era began to be felt. If we consider what was strictly the colonial epoch, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Boats Act, in accordance with the plan I have laid down, and embodying the suggestions herein contained, the Government will complete the educational system and bring under the educational and sanitary laws the lowest dregs of society, which have hitherto been left out in the cold, to grope about in the dark as their inclinations ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Springbok steamed down the Channel on an errand inspired by love, not reason; to cross one mighty ocean, and grope for a lost daughter ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... others were at work he knew by the sound, and by the fact that he sometimes collided with them; otherwise they might as well not have been there, for in the blinding dust storm a man could not see six feet in front of his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope around him until another came, and if there was none on hand he continued to grope till one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Misfortune and Guilt Their children have gathered, their city have built; Where Hunger and Vice, like twin beasts of prey, Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt, Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt. Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, Half starved and half naked, lie crouched from the cold; See those skeleton limbs, those frost-bitten feet, All bleeding and bruised by the stones of ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... from a word that may signify the meadow of Eois, or high meadow. It has a history that goes back to grope about Ararat for the potsherds thrown out of the ark. It has a very old and famous round tower, used at some time as a place of sepulchre, for a great quantity of human bones have been found in it. In one stone of this tower is the mark of two toes printed into the stone, or the mark of ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... and, jerking off his left glove, commenced to grope among the boulders. Somewhere near at his feet the flashlight must be lying. Hoping against hope that its fall had not shattered the bulb, he ran his fingers over the cold, damp stones, every instant expecting to feel the clutch of the unseen monster. How tiny, how puny he was! All ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... Such instances (and some a loss to know, Which steadfast reticence will shield from those, Debased or garrulous, whose hearts corrupt, But learn the gloomy secrets of their kind To poison-tip their wit, or grope and grin With pharisaic laughter at disgrace)— Such instances as these demand no guide To thrid the dismal issues from their source! But others are there, lying fast concealed, Dark, hopeless, and unutterably sad, Which have not been, and ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... by a piece of string. The water for the most part was only two or three fathoms deep, but sometimes it would be as much as eight fathoms,—which was the greatest depth to which the men cared to go. When he reached the bottom, the diver would grope about for shells, and generally return to the surface with a couple, held in his left hand and hugged against his breast; the right hand was kept free and directed his movements in swimming. Each diver seldom remained under water more than one minute, and on coming to the surface he ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... foreshadowed with varying degrees of distinctness in present society, and the light of experience illumines the pathway before us. It is when we come to the methods of organization and management, the spirit of the economic organization of the future state, that the light fails and we must grope our way into the great unknown with imagination and our sense of ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... no one grasped what had happened, only there was Norton who seemed to grope strangely among the graves. Black spots danced before his eyes, the little group by the church merged into the distance—always receding, always more remote, as he, stumbled helplessly over the moss and the thick dank ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... dressing bag, his own present. There must, then, be some mistake. What bag had she taken? He went to the bell to summon Bilson, but remembered in time that he must assume knowledge of where Irene had gone, take it all as a matter of course, and grope out the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... may acquire much skill in interpreting the shadows. Turn these men suddenly to the true light, and they will be dazzled and blinded. They will feel as though they had lost the realities, and been plunged into dreams. And in pain and sorrow they will be tempted to grope back again ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... how long it was after my senses had gone when I began to grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms below. Any attempt to speculate pitched me back into ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... has arisen and gloriously flowered like an architectural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulcher, into which the visitors descend with torches; pilgrims keep close to the dripping walls and grope along in order to reach ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... impersonation in the Reading)—"Yes; first-floor. It's the door straight afore you when you get's to the top of the stairs"—with which the dirty slipshod in black cotton stockings disappeared with the candle down the kitchen stair-case, leaving the unfortunate arrivals to grope their way up as they best could. Welcomed rather dejectedly by Bob on the first-floor landing, where Mr. Pickwick put, not, as in the original work, his hat, but, in the Reading, "his foot" in the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... man schemed it is my hope - Yea, that it fell by will and scope Of That Which some enthrone, And for whose meaning myriads grope. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... talk as freely and fluently as anybody. I do not hesitate in the least. For years, I have not even known what it is to grope mentally for a word. I speak in public as well as in private conversation. I have no difficulty in talking over the telephone and in fact do not know the difference. In my work, I lecture to students and am invited to address scientific bodies, societies and educational gatherings, all of which ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... to distinguish such a process from the state of war? In such international—or, I should say, interparochial—differences, the nearest we can come towards understanding is to appreciate the cloud of ambiguity in which all parties grope— ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that what men have hitherto attributed to the gods are nothing but the ideals they value and grope for in themselves. The ideal of the freethinker, the conception that places the supreme worth of human life in the expanding horizon of man's usefulness to man, is forever menaced by the supernaturalism of the theist which manifests itself in the multifarious religious sects that are the most active ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... you to say, my boy," retorted the yeoman. "Pray God he never has, and never may. Slow work this, however! I should really be glad to find something! Pshaw! What a notion that is, when the only good luck would be to paddle, and drift, and poke, and grope, hereabouts, till morning, and have our labor for our pains! For my part, I shouldn't wonder if the creature had only lost her shoe in the mud, and saved her soul alive, after all. My stars! how she will ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we all missed her: it seemed to me now that I had undervalued her. True, she had not been a congenial companion to me in my dark days; but even then I had wronged her. Why should I have expected her to grope among the shadows with me, instead of following her into the sunshine? Sara could not act contrary to her nature. Sad things depressed her. She wanted to cause every one ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... can a mortal weak, Pin faith on what he cannot comprehend? We grope for light,—but all in vain we seek, Oblivion seems poor mortal's truest friend. Like bats at noonday, blindly on we ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... invasion. The tide of seeming knowledge which is poured over one generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave mortals again to grope their way. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... proceeded a short distance, however, when they got on to a sandbank, where they were obliged to remain for two hours, feeling the gravest anxiety all the time. At last the tide floated them off again, and they endeavoured to grope their way through the fog, passing several vessels, which were only visible when quite close upon them. Mr Montefiore was standing near the bow of the ship, when suddenly a steamer was seen to be ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... if they remember through the long Estrangement of their exile, twice accursed If they forget and join the accursed throng. How doth my heart that is so wrung not burst When I remember that my way was plain, And that God's candle lit me at the first, Whilst now I grope in darkness, grope in vain, Desiring but to find Him Who is lost, To find him once again, but once again! His wrath came on us to the uttermost, His covenanted and most righteous wrath. Yet this is He of Whom we made ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... at the same time. Some book might give us help—a fine play, or some form of athletics will start us to thinking. Self-analysis teaches us to see ourselves in a true light without embellishments or undue optimism. We can gauge our chances in no better way. If we grope in the darkness we haven't much of a chance. "Taking stock" throws a searchlight on the dark spots and points the way out of the ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... gospel according to Jonesy. You can't dam up the tributaries of the heart. Some day you must come to me. That much is immutably written. For God's sake come now while the road is still clear. Otherwise we shall grope our ways to each other, even if it be through ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... On the remains of an amusement park Between jagged buildings— Burning flower... shining sea... Toes and hands Reach out into emptiness. Longing tears the weeping body to pieces. The little moon glides above me. Eyes grope Gently into the deep world, Sunken ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... it may yet be time! You must not, you shall not be deaf to my supplications longer!" My struggling Conscience showed sudden signs of weariness! "Oh, promise me you will throw off this hateful slavery of tobacco!" My Conscience began to reel drowsily, and grope with his hands—enchanting spectacle! "I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you! Your reason is deserting you! There is madness in your eye! It flames with frenzy! Oh, hear me, hear me, and be saved! See, I plead with you on my very knees!" As she sank before me my Conscience reeled again, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was so pitch dark that he had almost to grope his way, for it was impossible to see a hand's breadth in front of him. Some night-birds flying across the road from one hedge to the other brushed Pinocchio's nose with their wings as they passed, which caused him so much terror that, springing back, he shouted: "Who goes ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... companions keeping a steady strain upon the rope. With his chisel he had but little difficulty in prising open the casement. His companions were not long in joining him. Once inside the house they made their way with great caution. They had no means of striking a light, and were forced to grope about with their swords in front of them to prevent their touching any piece of furniture, till at last they discovered the door. It was not fastened, and passing through, and, as before, feeling the floor carefully as they went, they presently ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... lumps against the moon: they were the houses of a little town. A sort of gulf, winding like a river gorge, and narrower than a column of men, was the street that brought us in. But just as we feared that we should have to grope our way to find companionship we saw that great surprise of modern mountain villages (but not of our own England)—a little row of electric lamps hanging from walls of an ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... tears? The babe weeps in its cot, The mother singing; at her marriage bell The bride weeps; and before the oracle Of high-faned hills, the poet has forgot Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place, And touch but tombs,—look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the Father strutted and bow'd, And smiled to himself, and laugh'd aloud, To think of his heiress and daughter— And then in his pockets he made a grope, And then, in the fulness of joy and hope, Seem'd washing his hands with ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... But it does not grope and it succeeds very well. Its gallery is still contained within one plane, the first condition of the minimum of labour. Moreover, of the different vertical planes that can pass through the eccentric starting-point, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... I was anxious to push on and grope our way beneath the clouds as best we could, in case worse weather should come; but Charley was ill at ease, and wanted one of the seal-hunters to go with us, for the place was much changed. I promised to pay well for a guide, and in order to lighten the canoe proposed to leave most of our heavy ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... his eyes, and, depending on the sense of feeling alone, which in truth was his reliance from the first, he toiled steadily upward. Sometimes he had to grope with his hands for a minute or two before daring to leave the support on which his feet rested, but one of his causes for astonishment and thankfulness was that such aids seemed never ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... Boy caught it, and went into the water, feeling very carefully before him, lest he should unguardedly go beyond his depth; at length he reached the blind man, took him very carefully by the hand, and led him out. The blind man then gave him a thousand blessings, and told him he could grope out his way home; and the little Boy ran on as hard as he could, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... More glorious than that Creation saw, When, from abeyance to primeval law, There burst the dawn from out the womb of night; Yet are all things unchanged around them,—these, The ancient hills, the town, the quiet trees, The household presences through which they grope Blind to all else but to each other's eyes, Wherein, transforming heaven and earth, there lies Sublime effulgence ...
— The Angel of Thought and Other Poems - Impressions from Old Masters • Ethel Allen Murphy
... from accumulations of sewerage, refuse scattered in all directions, and often flowing beneath your feet; courts, many of them, which the sun never penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of fresh air. You have to ascend rotten stair-cases, grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance into the dens in which these thousands of beings herd together. Eight feet square! ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... didn't make myself what I am. Prison did it. Go and try ten years yourself, and you'll find you will have to grope about for your fine emotions. Are you coming ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... situated in a romantic spot on a branch of the Lee. We experienced much difficulty, and narrowly escaped detection, in entering this village, which is surrounded by beautiful country seats, through the grounds of some of which we were obliged to grope our way. We obtained lodgings, after one or two fruitless trials, in a very comfortable house kept by a farmer. The young family seemed to be rather tastefully educated, and we soon became fast friends. We passed as whimsical tourists, and delighted our entertainers ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... every form of manifestation. As unalloyed Life and Intelligence it can be no other than good, it can entertain no intention of evil, and thus all intentional evil must put us in opposition to it, and so deprive us of the consciousness of its guidance and strengthening and thus leave us to grope our own way and fight our own battle single-handed against the universe, odds which at last will surely prove too great for us. But remember that the opposition can never be on the part of the Universal Mind, for in itself it is sub-conscious ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... when the spirit went out of it to continue its existence elsewhere, but that those who hated the thought of such change could, by taking thought, prolong life and live for a thousand years, like the adder and tortoise or for ever. But no, he would not leave the poor boy to grope alone and blindly after that hidden knowledge he was burning to possess. He pitied him too much. The means were simple and near to hand, the earth teemed with the virtue that would save him from the dissolution which so appalled him. He would be startled to hear in how ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... said a brief while ago that mine was work without glory, ye said truly. But consider that in this confused and dark world, in which we grope our way like shepherds in a mist, we have to do what lies to our hand, and ask no questions—and the weariness of it is that in the darkness we strike ane another. We know not which be right, and shall not know till the day breaks: we maun just do our duty, and mine, by every ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... naked and scalped, with bullet and hatchet wounds all over their bodies, lay his comrades of the morning, dead among the rushes. Radisson was too far out to get back to the woods. Stooping, he tried to grope to the hiding of the rushes. As he bent, half a hundred heads rose from the grasses, peering which way he might go. They were behind, before, on all sides—his only hope was a dash for the cane-grown river, where he might hide by diving and wading, till darkness gave a chance for ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... disturb him," she replied. "Nature may know best; it may be Nature that cries to be alone; and we grope in the dark. O yes, I would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will remember that during all this time I knew nothing of the experience of James Martin with this afflicted trio, but had been compelled to grope my way blindly. As the doctor and son-in-law went out my son came in. He had overheard something about the writing, and said, excitedly: "Don't write, mother; there is no sick man here. That tall man is Elsie's master, and they ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... development of the nations of Europe is so tragic as this. That two peoples should, within the space of nine months, abjure their friendly relations and furiously grapple in a life and death struggle over questions of secondary importance leads the dazed beholder at first to grope after the old Greek idea of ate or Nemesis. In reality the case does not call for supernatural agency. The story is pitiably human, if the student will but master its complex details. It may be well to close our study with a few general observations, though they almost ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... shattering of window panes. A violent storm had suddenly blown up and the wind was working havoc with unfastened blinds and shutters. There was no use thinking of holding a candle or a lamp. Besides, the lightning flashed so brightly that I was able to grope my way through the long line of empty rooms, tighten the fastenings, and shut the windows. I had reached the second story without mishap and without hearing the slightest footstep within doors. All my little ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... the glimmering window, feeling very humble. She felt that she had let him down, somehow, in not being more wise. And yet she knew very certainly that she was going to grope and grope now, hurting herself and him ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... win, Than wold he speken no word but Latin. A fewe termes coude he, two or three, That he had lerned out of some decree; No wonder is, he herd it all the day. And eke ye knowen wel, how that a jay Can clepen watte, as well as can the pope. But who so wolde in other thing him grope, Than hadde he spent all his philosophie, Ay, Questio quid juris ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... any sharp enough—stones I mean," Betty went on, "we might use them as a sort of shovel and try to dig our way out. Of course," she added, as the girls began to grope eagerly among the dirt and debris at their feet for stones sharp enough to answer the purpose, "the mouth of the cave may be choked up too solidly with dirt and underbrush and things for us to get through. But in that case we'd just have to think up ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... at dusk, when all was mud, mist, and darkness, out of doors, and a good deal of fog had even got into the family parlor. To say the truth, the parlor was on no occasion fog-proof, and had, at divers notable times, been so misty as to cause the whole Bull family to grope about, in a most confused manner, and make the strangest mistakes. But, there was an excellent ventilator over the family fire-place (not one of Dr. Arnott's, though it was of the same class, being an excellent invention, called Common Sense), and hence, though the fog was apt to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... and rested, striving vainly to garner some clue to his bearings. Inexorably the blackness forbade that. He might have failed ere dawn to grope a way out of that trap had not the disappearance of the submarine ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... ordeal, which borrows its more striking features from the department of natural history, is that in which the prisoner or witness is required to grope about for a trinket or small coin in a basket or jar already occupied by a lively cobra. Should the groper not be bitten, our courtly friend, Asirvadam, is satisfied there has been some mistake here, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... recognized. In the new science of psycho-analysis he has already begun the work of bringing an infinity of subconsciousness into the light of day; it may be that in the evidence of telepathy which the psychic researchers are accumulating, he is beginning to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which may come to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars, and of the dark stars which the spectroscope and the telescope ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... saw an immense black mass looming over the water. Then a sharp scratching was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank in front ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... several times with an air of discretion, then assured Miss Haldin that she did not mind in the least. The trying part of it was to have the secret of the composition laid bare before her; to see the great author of the revolutionary gospels grope for words as if he were in the dark as to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
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