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More "Totter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his trouble in being received so affectionately by his lovely niece, which was indeed more than he deserved. He simpered and pursed up his lips so that his moustache was all of a totter, and groaned and whined, not with pain, but simply and solely with ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Anderson my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither; And mony a canty day, John, [jolly] We've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, [must] And hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, [together] John Anderson, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... called, and they answered to these names. I remember Cree best as a battered old weaver, who bent forward as he walked, with his arms hanging limp as if ready to grasp the shafts of the barrow behind which it was his life to totter uphill and downhill, a rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck, and fastened to the shafts, assisting him to bear the yoke and slowly strangling him. By and by there came a time when the barrow ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... appears on the Stage [entering by the Right Side-door, as from the immediate neighborhood]: it is headed by the father and mother of Admetus, both of whom have reached the furthest verge of old age, and who with difficulty totter along, while attendants follow them bearing sumptuous drapery and other funeral gifts. The scene settles down into the 'Forensic Contest,' a fixed feature of every Greek Tragedy, in which the 'case' of the hero and the opposition to it are brought out with ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... probable that his sudden weight jolted the plank out of its position. For hardly was he safe on the turf again when he heard a sharp cry. Throwing a look behind, he saw his pursuer totter, clutch at the slipping timber, and, still clutching at it, turn a somersault ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Paris, all of which we do not clearly trace in history. We well know how the Mountain became powerful from that day; that from that day Marat ceased to shun the light, and Danton to curb the licence of his tongue that then, patriotism in France began to totter, and that, from that time, Paris ceased to be a fitting abode for aught that was virtuous, innocent, or high-minded; but the steady march of history cannot stop to let us see the various lights in which the inhabitants of ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... danger, there would be brave hearts come from both places to die for the truth. No! let us have done with this wish to have all the same. It will become monotony. Go down into the Jordan and fetch your stone! Aye, aye, and one will pick the heaviest, one that will make his knees totter; and another will choose the squarest, and yet another the smoothest, but each man lays his in the heap, ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... of ours is a tortuous and shifting impulse. It brings Age back from years of wandering to totter in the hamlet of its birth; and it scatters armies of ripe manhood to bleach ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... and confusion at seeing herself vanquished. But as there were to be two heats to the race, she fell to planning how to be revenged for this affront; and going home, she put a charm into a ring of such power that if any one had it upon his finger his legs would totter so that he would not be able to walk, much less run; then she sent it as a present to Lightning, begging him to wear it on his finger for love ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... see what kind of weather it was for the market, and with a sudden pang, she remembered her old father, and how, on such a day, he would totter to the open door, and there sit in the sunshine, grateful for the same warmth for which his old dog was grateful. When she came home from the market, she would make a wreath of white holly to put on the grave ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... day to day, till one morning Jan must note that it was again the grandmother and no longer the girl who was following his cart. She must be very weak from a long sickness—I was not sure whether to have it the grippe or not, but I decided upon that provisionally and she must totter after Janssen, so that he must get down after a while to speak to her under pretence of arranging the tail-board of his cart, or something of that kind; I did not care for the detail. They should get into talk in the broken English which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither, And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... whatsoever else the sack contains. As the bear approaches take these articles, one by one, and say to him, 'This is my dead brother's paint,' and so on with all the articles, throwing each of them as far from you as you can. The virtue contained in the things will cause him to totter. Then, to complete his destruction, you must take my head and cast it as far off as you can, crying aloud, 'See, this is my dead brother's head!' He will then fall senseless. While this is taking place the young men will have eaten, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... controversies about religion, and to give it a basis of its own: "As, then, the grave subject of the existence of Deity is a matter of dispute, it is evidently of deep importance to society that morality should not be dragged into this battlefield, to stand or totter with the various theories of the Divine nature which human thought creates and destroys. If we can found morality on a basis apart from theology, we shall do humanity a service which can scarcely be overestimated." A study of the facts of nature, of the consequences ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... His eyes had gone beyond Morrison to the man sitting beside him and at the sight of that loved figure the old man began to tremble. His voice lowered to a whisper and he began to totter forward. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... thy miry court But pens the lazy steer and sheep, 210 Thy turrets rude, and totter'd Keep, Have been the minstrel's loved resort. Oft have I traced, within thy fort, Of mouldering shields the mystic sense, Scutcheons of honour, or pretence, 215 Quarter'd in old armorial sort, Remains of rude magnificence. Nor ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... have air!" Mr. Marrapit staggered to the window. "I reel before this sudden assault. For nine years at ruinous cost I have supported you. Must I sell my house? Am I never to be free? Must I totter always through life with you upon my bowed ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... a day was that of the ruin: It is not very ancient, perhaps of the sixth century, and the year of the terrible earthquake told of by Gregory of Tours. If a man could without perishing have seen the summits split, totter and fall, the two seas of rock come bounding into the gorge, meet one another and grind each other amidst a shower of sparks, he would have looked upon the grandest spectacle ever seen ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... exercise, for, excepting on Sunday, she was scarcely ever known to leave her own premises. There also her little great-grandson Peter first learned to walk, and as she slowly passed from one alcove to the other, resting in each when she reached it, he would take hold of her high staff and totter beside her, always bestowing on her as much as he could of his company, and early showing a preference for her over his aunt and ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... lent thee her unfathomable coil."—Tupper's Thoughts, p. 170. "Whether nature or art contribute most to form an orator, is a trifling inquiry."—Blair's Rhet., p. 338. "Year after year steals something from us; till the decaying fabric totter of itself, and crumble at length into dust."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 225. "If spiritual pride have not entirely vanquished humility."—West's Letters, p. 184. "Whether he have gored a son, or have gored ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... language of thought; but one could play with the toys of childhood, including Ming porcelain, salons of painting, operas and theatres, beaux-arts and Gothic architecture, theology and anarchy, in any jumble of time; or totter about with Joe Stickney, talking Greek philosophy or recent poetry, or studying "Louise" at the Opera Comique, or discussing the charm of youth and the Seine with Bay Lodge and his exquisite young wife. Paris remained Parisian in spite of change, mistress of herself though China fell. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... crowed feebly in the village. Then at a rippling splash of the drums and the sudden screaming of the wizards, they began to push the idol. The base had already been loosened in the earth by the slaves. The idol began to totter. Louder screeched the magicians; faster fled the drums. Slowly the idol leaned and subsided on to the shoulders of Kawa Kendi. Grasping the mass firmly upon his bent back, he bore the burden out of the enclosure ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... half-way to him. As soon as the bear got out to that part where the limb of the tree was weaker, "Ha!" says he to us, "now you see me teachee the bear dance:" so he began jumping and shaking the bough, at which the bear began to totter, but stood still, and began to look behind him, to see how he should get back; then, indeed, we did laugh heartily. But Friday had not done with him by a great deal; when seeing him stand still, he called out to him again, as if he had supposed the bear could speak English, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... shuddered and seemed to totter in space, as if something, some mighty force, had struck the ship a terrific blow. The needle swung swiftly backward, reached one mile a second, dipped to half ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... the silvery reaches of the Thames, where George III. and Queen Charlotte, with their large family and household, were wont to promenade on Sunday afternoons for the benefit of their Majesties' loyal subjects, where the blind old King used to totter along supported by two of his faithful Princesses; the green alleys and glades of the ancient forest, with the great boles of the venerable oaks—Queen Elizabeth's among them; Virginia Water sparkling in the sunshine or glimmering in the moonlight, all make up such a kingly ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the Calabrian Bacchus has a wild-eyed beaute du diable which appeals to one's expansive moods, he already begins to totter, at seven years of age, in sour, decrepit eld. To pounce upon him at the psychological moment, to discover in whose cool and cobwebby cellar he is dreaming out his golden summer of manhood—that is what a foreigner can never, never hope to achieve, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... nor unsettledly, but with a staid, modest, pleasant Air in your Countenance, and a bashful Look fix'd upon the Person who speaks to you; your Feet set close one by t'other; your Hands without Action: Don't stand titter, totter, first standing upon one Foot, and then upon another, nor playing with your Fingers, biting your Lip, scratching your Head, or picking your Ears: Let your Cloaths be put on tight and neat, that ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... would derive a certain enjoyment from watching a posse of citizens in wrathful pursuit of one of those theatrical managers who are big brothers to the trembling crones that totter up to you on the Boulevard des Italiens and try to sell you a few obscene postal-cards. But most American playwrights would feel a genuine apprehension lest such a posse, confused in its values and its ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... has nurtured in her own bosom are rising up to sting her! Her canons are brought into contempt, her tests trampled on, and her dignitaries daily insulted! The hierarchy is in danger! The bishops totter on their bench! We are ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... watching him. The drums grew noisier and noisier and the chant louder and wilder. The man himself had become maudlin, his tongue hung from his mouth, and now and then he ejaculated a sound like the inarticulate cry of an animal. He could only totter to the fire, out of which he snatched the balled instrument already described, which he thereupon thrust with a vicious stab into the pit of his stomach, where it was left to hang. A moment after he pulled it out again, and, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... it," said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that Betsy Jennings desarves it—was she ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... clasped her other arm, a big form leaned over behind her, far across the back of her horse. She heard the hiss of something cutting the air, the crash as of splitting wood, a scream, of agony and the Indian's ruthless grasp was loosened. Her horse stumbled and seemed to totter beneath her, but again that arm from aloft exerted itself and it seemed as if she were being lifted to the tree tops. Almost before she could realise it she was upon another horse, clasped in the arm of its rider, and they ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... murmur, but in the dry with no voice but a rattle prophetic of winter. I hope Dr. Holmes lived to repent his grin. At any rate he lived to refute the notion that youthful fire and white hairs exclude each other. If we must totter, what ground we have to totter over, with two generations and more behind us! The ground is ours. We only have looked into the faces of the great actors, and have taken part in the epoch-making events. As I unroll my panorama I may totter, but I hope ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... of execution. There is now only wanting, to accomplish the whole declaration before mentioned, a sedition-bill, which we shall certainly soon see proposed. The object of that, is the suppression of the whig presses. Bache's has been particularly named. That paper and also Carey's totter for want of subscriptions. We should really exert ourselves to procure them, for if these papers fall, republicanism will be entirely brow-beaten. Carey's paper comes out three times a week, at five dollars. The meeting of the people which was called at New York, did nothing. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is the same, if wee suppose the earth to moue, as if wee beleeue it to stand still. The riseing of the Sunne and Starres, the motions of all the Planets, will keepe Correspondence that now. Nor neede wee feare logging, or that steples and towers would totter downe, for the motion is regular, and steady without rubbes, and knocks. As if you turne a globe about, it will goe steadyly, and a fly will set fast vpon it, though you moue it apace. Besides the whole body the ayre is carryed about with the whirlinge ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... of Amiens was a poor wind-shield. It blew down, and the chessmen began to totter. One George of England, noted for his frugal table and his quarrelsome disposition, who had previously fought with France, began to call the Man names. The Man called George names, and sat down to think quickly. George could not be said to be on the best of terms with his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... return to Arbor Croche, he became quite an orator, and consequently he was appointed as the head speaker in the council of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. He continued to hold this office until his frame was beginning to totter with age, his memory became disconnected and inactive, and he therefore gave up his office to his own messenger, whose name was Joseph As-saw-gon, who died during the late rebellion in the United States while ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... of high rank had joined her communion; Henry Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, and James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. But Peterborough, who had been an active soldier, courtier, and negotiator, was now broken down by years and infirmities; and those who saw him totter about the galleries of Whitehall, leaning on a stick and swathed up in flannels and plasters, comforted themselves for his defection by remarking that he had not changed his religion till he had outlived his faculties. [226] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Feeling myself insulted at their refusal to be frightened, I swung my hat, shouted, and made a show of running toward them; at this they crowded together and galloped off, leaving their dead and wounded upon the field. As I moved toward the camp I saw the last survivor totter and fall dead. My speed in returning was wonderfully quickened by the reflection that the Pawnees were abroad, and that I was defenseless in case of meeting with an enemy. I saw no living thing, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... place has been an eventful one to the nation. South Carolina, driven on by a few infatuated men, has made a bold effort to shake off the bonds of Union and Federal Law, and, to the minds of some in whom you and I repose the utmost confidence, a happy government seems to totter on the brink of dissolution. It is a long story, and the papers will tell you all. God grant that the impending evil may be averted, and that the moral and religious improvement of this government may not be retarded by civil war." ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... ambition of those who would drag us into foreign broils; when patriotic men, North and South, ceased to come forward for the safety of a confederation, then will sectionalism wage its angry wars against a noble edifice, whose foundation history tells us must totter ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... same thing. They did not know that should the great Cardinal withdraw his hand for a single moment there would not be any more throne. When the human hornets around him became annoying he was accustomed to pretend to withdraw his sustaining hand, then the throne would tremble and totter, but he always came to the rescue; indeed, there was no other man who could rescue it. Cabals, plots, and conspiracies became so thick around Ninon at one period that she was frightened. Scarron's house became a rendezvous ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... as he had need at all hours of his best intelligence. Let it not be understood that he was tipsy. He was a man whom wine did not often affect after that fashion. But it made him, who was arrogant before, tower in his arrogance till he was almost sure to totter. It was probably at some moment after dinner that Lord Alfred decided upon buying the cutting whip of which he had spoken. Melmotte went with his wife and daughter to the India Office, and soon left them far in the background with a request,—we may say ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... been brought along, and Dale used one while Peleg Snuggers wielded the other. Soon the cedar commenced to totter. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... entertainment who drifts about saying, 'Yes, madam,' and all that sort of thing? Well, then that's just the thing. Topping! I knew I could rely on you, old bird. I'll get Lucille to ship her round to your address when she arrives. I fancy she's due to totter in somewhere in the next few days. Well, I ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... of using the mind of Christ is that the Moral Nature—the Law of Laws—is not explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society. "Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead."—"The soul is not preached. The church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct.—The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past; that the Bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stinging horror of some ordinary object in a new and awful guise possessed her. She was almost paralyzed at the sudden glimpse of something on the divan across the room. It was a long time before she could possibly totter to investigate, and ascertain it was one of her own gloves. But it did not strike her as at all funny. There was still something frightful to her about the glove. She went back to the window, and soon she distinctly heard a noise up-stairs, and then a shadow crossed the ceiling. A new horror seized ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the long revel reel and totter along the galleries of the castle; the bridegroom hastens to his bride with the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... neighbors of their thought. Forthwith, it is as if an earthquake rumbled through the town, making its vibrations felt at every hearthstone, and especially causing the spire of the meeting-house to totter. The Quakers have come. We are in peril! See! they trample upon our wise and well- established laws in the person of our chief magistrate; for Governor Endicott is passing, now an aged man, and dignified with long habits ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... noticing that her audience had fled, and as Wiley went on about his business she raised her voice to a scream. The rest of the Kenoites, and some of the workmen, were out staking the nearby hills; but whenever she stopped she thought of some fresh duplicity which made reason totter on its throne. He had refused half the mine from Blount as a gift and then turned around and bought it all. He had refused to buy her shares, time and again, when he knew they were worth a million; and then, to cap the climax, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... sitting-room opened upon a balcony. He lifted the sash, and stepped out into the chill night air. He saw the figure of a woman moving a way from the pavement before the hotel very slowly, with a languid, uncertain step. Presently he saw her totter and pause, as if scarcely able to proceed. Then she moved unsteadily onwards for a few paces, and at last sank down upon a door-step, with the helpless motion of ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... King's voice drowned Norfolk's morning greeting. He veered upon the Duke with such violence that his enormous red bulk seemed about to totter over upon the tall and bent figure. A searing pain had shot up his side, and, as he gripped it, he appeared to be furiously plucking at his dagger. He had imagined Chapuys and Marillac, the Ambassadors, coming upon guards with broken heads and sending to Paris letters ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... couldn't see that he was right. I had had a disappointment, you know," she went on, her kind, mild eyes watering. Genevieve, who had been gazing in some astonishment at the once hot-headed, rebellious girl, sighed sympathetically. Every one knew about the Reverend Mr. Totter's death. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... could be strong enough to heave up solid rocks, and to make the firm ground upon which we tread, and upon which the houses are built, waver to and fro like the restless sea, so that the strongest buildings begin to totter and fall, and the bravest ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... lips quivered, striving again to refuse. But the words would not come. Her powers of resistance had begun to totter. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... witness. Tell my father that his cruelty is more sure to rob him of his daughter than her seeming transgression. Already I know not what I should believe, the past escapes my memory, my confidence begins to totter. If it is too much to ask for justice, then I beg for mercy. My destiny seeks to try me, but my heart ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Lands," will see that the work of the Syria Mission from 1820 to 1872 has been one of conflict with principalities and powers, and with spiritual wickedness in high and low places, but that at length the hoary fortresses are beginning to totter and fall, and there is a call for a general advance in every department of the work, and in every part ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... resounded on the outer gates, and made me realise with a start that this was no place for abstract morality. Strayed so far from safety, we had taken our lives into our own hands; at any moment we might have to fight once more desperately against superior numbers. Perhaps in the end we would totter over in the same way as the unfortunate who had strayed across our path.... Indeed, it was ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Winter die? Who, peering through the window-pane At nightfall, under sleet and rain Saw the old graybeard totter by? Who listened to his parting sigh, The sobbing of his feeble breath, His whispered colloquy with Death, And when his all of life was done Stood near to bid a last good-bye? Of all his former friends not one Saw ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... of the weather, I shall for once make a forecast for Darwinism, namely: Increasing cloudiness with heavy precipitations, indications of a violent storm, which threatens to cause the props of the structure to totter, and to ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... eloquently for those nations, who, groaning in their self-forged chains, bow to the great Moloch of superstition and idolatry, as to "draw tears of blood," as it were, from the eyes of her rapt and devoted listeners, hast ever marked a pale, trembling child of want totter to the door, and ask for the "crumbs that fall" from this humane society's tea-table, and heard the answer, "Begone! this is a benevolent association for the purpose of evangelizing the heathen, not to feed lazy beggars ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... wise statesmanship might have averted the evils from which the world now suffers. One hundred years ago a gigantic effort, of all the good men of the world, might have saved society. Now the fire pours through every door, and window and crevice; the roof crackles; the walls totter; the heat of hell rages within the edifice; it is doomed; there is no power on earth that can save it; it must go down into ashes. What can you or I do? What will it avail the world if we rush into the flames and perish? No; we ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Charlie, still very weak and feeble, was able to totter from his room to that in which Hossein was lying. He himself knew nothing of what had passed after he fell. The conflict had, to him, been little more than a dream. Awakened from sleep by the sound of his assailants, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... he felt his seat totter, and fell backward; Jacques, thus freed from him, sprang toward the door, when it opened, and his head struck against the cold, pale face ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... this young man, with death at the bottom of his bright and sunken eyes. He was of the type which is all muscle and no constitution; athletes one year, dead men the next; but until this moment the athlete had been to me a mere and incredible tradition. In the afternoon I had seen his lean knees totter under the captain's fire. Now, at midnight—the exact time by my watch—it was as if his shrunken limbs had expanded in his clothes; he seemed hardly to know his own flushed face, as he caught sight of ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... leaped, but too hurriedly. If he had gone quietly to work it would have been different; as it was, he cleared the gulf and landed on the other side, but without throwing himself forward sufficiently to recover himself, and Ned uttered a cry of horror as he saw the lad apparently about to totter backward into ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... those ladies ask me again? No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score and ten years has it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry and obscure? Peace and good-will to thee, let us say at this Christmas season. Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old pilgrim! And of the bread which God's bounty gives us, I pray, brother reader, we may not forget to ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Professor,—a man who has lived long enough to have plucked the flowers of life and come to the berries,—which are not always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as the crocus of April, or rosy-cheeked as the damask of June; a man who staggered against books as a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to decrepitude; with a brain as full of tingling thoughts, such as they are, as a limb which we call "asleep," because it is so particularly awake, is of pricking points; presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps, not as yet tanned or ossified, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... had been borne from the place where it rested. The mourners, in regular gradation, according to their rank or their relationship to the deceased, had filed from the cottage, while the younger male children were led along to totter after the bier of their brother, and to view with wonder a ceremonial which they could hardly comprehend. The female gossips next rose to depart, and, with consideration for the situation of the parents, carried along with them the girls of the family, to give the unhappy pair ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... shivering seized his limbs, his coat stood on end, his lofty frame began to totter, and at the seventeenth discharge from the deadly grooved bore, like a falling minaret bowing his graceful head from the skies, his proud form was prostrate in the dust. Never shall I forget the intoxicating excitement ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... not that an awful dream For one who single is and snug— With Pussy in the elbow chair, And Tray reposing on the rug?— If I must totter down the hill, 'Tis safest done without a clog— What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Akers sailed away in high hope from Port Colborne, they probably built the fairy air castles which were doomed to totter and fall before night. It did not seem to occur to them that Col. Peacocke's sanction to, and co-operation in, their change of plan would be necessary to ensure success. Therefore their disappointment must have been great ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... began to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... resting place, where virtuous old age may throw down his pains and aches, wipe off his old scores, and begin anew on an innocent and happy state that shall last for ever. What weakness to wish to live to such ghastly dotage, as to frighten the children, and make even the dogs to bark at us as we totter along the streets. Most certainly then, there is a time when, to a good man, death is a great mercy even to his body; and as to his soul, why should he tremble about that? Who can doubt that God created ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... flourished; and a general prosperity appeared to testify to the blessings of the peace which had so lately been bestowed upon it. An external repose deceived the eye, for within raged all the elements of discord. If the foundations of religion totter in a country they totter not alone; the audacity which begins with things sacred ends with things profane. The successful attack upon the hierarchy had awakened a spirit of boldness, and a desire to assail authority in general, and to test laws as well as dogmas—duties as well as opinions. The ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... supplied by parents, otherwise it would perish. Immediately after birth a colt or calf can walk or run almost as fast as its mother; the chick just out of its shell can run about and peck at its food. The child at one year of age can barely totter around and all of its needs must be looked after by others. Moreover, the infant at birth is practically blind and deaf and the senses of taste and smell and touch just sufficiently developed to enable it ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... go down Swirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayers Go up in noisome bubbles—such to them;— Or when they tramp about the central fires, Bending the strata with aeonian tread Till steeples totter, and all ways are lost,— Deem they of wife or child, or home or friend, Doing these things as the long years lead on Only to other years that mean no more, That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof— Destroying ever, though to ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... and Benjamin by name, who defended him from Charity, and expended much time upon his education. They were both of them retired servants of former generations of the Browns. Noah Crooke was a keen, dry old man of almost ninety, but still able to totter about. He talked to Tom quite as if he were one of his own family, and indeed had long completely identified the Browns with himself. In some remote age he had been the attendant of a Miss Brown, and had conveyed her about the country on a pillion. He had a little ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... if I live, there may visit me from the blue as I totter among the flower-beds an aeroplane of so scandalous a crudity and immaturity that all the countryside, long since weary of the sight and sound of flying machines, then so common that every cottager will have one, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... well as energy of character. He lent a willing ear to the application of the Spanish government, and made no hesitation in granting what cost him nothing, while it recognized the assumption of powers, which had already begun to totter ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these old spectres totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death—as unconcerned as if they were immortal. They were used as burying-places for three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit full of skulls ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... may totter, empires crumble, All their glories cease to be; While she, Christ-like, crowns the humble, And from bondage ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... "I can just totter around and that's about all." She arose quickly, shook out her plumage, took his arm, and in less than a minute was waltzing again. "Lucky it is a waltz," she thought; "I don't want to ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... with the infinitely modulated rhythms of natural prose produce a resultant which is complicated to the last degree and which almost precludes orderly exposition. No system has been devised to express it. The simpler ones fail through omission of important difficulties, the more elaborate totter under their own weight. And thus the Gentle Reader is either beguiled by false prophets—looks up and is not fed—or loses heart and saves himself by flight. There is, to be sure, an arcanum of prosodic theory which is the province of specialists. It has ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Son? thou lyest; I never got a Parasite, a Coward. I seeke the Prince or bend in base submission! Ile seeke my grave first. Yf I needes must fall And that the fatall howre is cast of Barnavelt, Just like a strong demolishd Tower ile totter And fright the neighbour Cuntries with my murmour. My ruyns shall reach all: the valiant Soldier, Whose eies are unacquainted but with anger, Shall weep for me because I fedd and noursd him; Princes shall mourne my losse, and this unthanckfull, Forgetful Cuntry, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... ear of the unfortunate Agnes, as she was stooping to recover the dropped knife, came Mistress Winter's hand, with sufficient heaviness to make her grow white and totter ere she ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... sprang to his feet. "The last allusion," said he, "is unworthy of a gentleman. Totter, sir, I totter! Though some twenty years older than the gentleman, I can yet stand firm, and am yet able to correct his errors. I could take a view of the gentleman's course, which would show how consistent ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... events." For the benefit of Sir Edwin and many other wealthy and cultured palace-car passengers who amuse themselves with theories; who infer that because human slavery is abolished in the Occident and the thrones of the Orient are beginning to totter before the might of democracy; because science is marching on to triumph after triumph, and no Spanish Inquisition or English Court of High Commission longer casts its upas-shadow athwart the hearts of men, the great world is "growing nobler and better," I hereby tender my services to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I should live to say it," said Berry, "but, after what I've gone through this morning, if Planchet were to totter in this afternoon, laden with at once cheap and pretentious goods, I should fall upon ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... time. Then, when that clever surgeon, Time, has effaced all scars—and when not only tranquillity is yours but, perhaps, a deeper happiness is in sight, write and tell me so. And the great god Kelly, nodding before his easel, will rouse up from his Olympian revery and totter away to find a sheaf of blessings to bestow upon the finest, truest, and loveliest ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... thread of sympathy that tied My heart to man is sundered, and I go To hold communion with the shades that glide, Wherever forests wave, or waters flow. And when my fluttering heart shall faint and fail, These limbs shall totter to some hollow cave, Where the poor Dreamer's dream shall cease. The gale Shall gather music from the wood and wave, And pour it in my dying ear; the wing Of busy zephyrs to the flowers shall go, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... chopped sausages, or a slice of agnello, and enjoy the delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of scholars from the Propaganda ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... bend, Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,— No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road:— Then ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... few more days for to tote the weary load, No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road— Then, my old ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Company of the Republic were now blocks in length; and every hour one heard of runs upon new institutions. There were women wringing their hands and crying in nervous excitement; there were old people, scarcely able to totter; there were people who had risen from sick-beds, and who stood all through the day and night, shivering in the ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... watched she heard a sound behind her. She turned in time to see the door pushed open, and Herman Brudenell—pale, wild, haggard, with matted hair, and blood-shot eyes, and shuddering frame—totter ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of women is the most formidable power ever loosed upon earth," he declared one evening. "Thrones totter before it. Captains of industry forget their millions in its presence. Cherchez la femme! This terrible power is possessed by every dark-eyed siren in a Second Avenue boarding house, by every languishing, red-lipped blonde earning eighteen dollars a week in a department store. And she knows ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... here. The faithful instrument, whose responsive sympathy had failed him, jarringly snapped a string! A sting of anguish pricked through Manetho's every nerve. His fictitious buoyancy evaporated like steam,—he barely made shift to totter to a chair. Laying the violin with tremling hands on the table, his head dropped on his arms beside it; and there was a long, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Bath, Fine as the Burmese jewell'd Rath,{2} Pray totter o'er your Bond-street path, A respite ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the boat upset. Fritz did his best to save the unfortunate one, but 'e could not swim. You can imagine my sensations? I was in a summer-'ouse, trembling with fright. Thunder, lightning, rain, storm, all round! Suddenly I see Fritz, pale as death, wet through, totter up the path from the lake. 'Where is Sasha?' I shriek out to 'im. And 'e shake 'is 'ead despairingly—Sasha ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... direction of her gaze; what he saw made his brain reel, made him almost totter backward into ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... unconquerable! Dost thou content thee with a space so narrow, And the wide domains of France once could not Stay the striving of thy giant spirit?— Now for the first time, Sire, I call you King: The crown but totter'd on your head, so long As in ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread the path of Hel, and heaven is cloven. The sun darkens, earth in ocean sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the all-nourishing tree, towering ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... closely. The hill that loses itself among the rocks on the sea-shore is capped and patched with just such refuse as this, but how happily the rust-colour of dying things is broken by the grey of the loose stone walls—"hedges," they call them in Cornwall—that seem to totter up the hill like old men! The mist of rain that leaves each individual plant bedraggled seems to make the red and green and grey pattern of the patched hill only more beautiful and mysterious. The truth is, winter ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... moment? The Black Bear, to which her lover had directed her, was so spoken of that she did not dare to ask to be directed thither. When a compassionate railway porter pressed her to say whither she would go, she could only totter to a seat against the wall, and there lay herself down and sob. She had no friends, she said; no home; no protector except him who had just been carried away to prison. The porter asked her whether the man were her husband, and then again she was nearly choked ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... moat, but which was now in some parts dry, and in others contained a little muddy and stagnated water. Within the enclosure of this moat, I could only discover a pile of ruins, and several walls, the upper part of which seemed to overhang their foundations, and to totter to their ruin. After having entered however with my conductor through an archway, and passed along a winding passage that was perfectly dark, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... been touched by an old man and his wife who for four days have met every train to tell their only son good-bye. They are so feeble that they have to be helped up and down the steps and as each train comes and goes and their boy is not on board, they totter hand in hand back to the street corner to wait more ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... get a supply of those eggs we found the other day." He tried, as he spoke, to rise. With some exertion he got on his feet, but felt scarcely able to walk. Taking his stick, however, he managed to totter out of the cave. The fresh air of the early morning somewhat revived him, and, followed by Neptune, he made his way towards the curious mound in which he had found the eggs. He felt very giddy, and could scarcely drag his legs along. The necessity of obtaining food, however, compelled ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... plunged his spurs into his horse, which sprang forward, just clearing the boar's snout, as the rider leant well out and speared the pig through the heart. Then with a wild, exultant whoop the subaltern swung round in the saddle and saw the animal totter forward and collapse on the sand. Only a sportsman could realise his feeling of triumph at the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the blood left Rustum's cheeks; And his knees totter'd, and he smote his hand, Against his breast, his heavy mailed hand, 660 That the hard iron corslet clank'd aloud; And to his heart he press'd the other hand, And in a hollow voice he ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... developed. Going into the minute details, she simply told the whole story, while Mrs. Gray attentively listened without an interruption. There were indications that the hitherto impregnable fortress of this untutored woman's heart was beginning to totter. But is there after all in this great world a heart so loveless, so blackened by sin, or so narrowed by its own selfish domain, as to be entirely invincible? Cannot the love emanating from Christ Himself, flowing through the channel ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... Mexico bordering on that stream. This soon led to a request from France that we should withdraw our troops from the Rio Grande and to negotiations for the withdrawal of theirs. Finally Bazaine was withdrawn from Mexico by order of the French Government. From that day the empire began to totter. Mexico was then able to maintain her independence without ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... both picturesque and imposing, for from every vessel flags were flying, and ever and anon the great battleship of the Admiral made signals which were repeated by all the other vessels, each in turn. Lying still on those calm blue waters was a force which one day might cause nations to totter, the overwhelming force which upheld Britain's ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... genius the idol of the implicit multitude: works that lean upon such fickle props, that stand upon such a false foundation, will not be long able to support themselves against the injuries of time. Such buildings begin to totter almost as soon as their ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... emperor; he would investigate, and investigation meant the downfall of the structure of falsehood that had been erected with such skill and painstaking by the subtile architect. The maker had pride in his work, and, to see it totter and tumble, was a misfortune he would avert with his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... enough to admit of my rising from my bed and donning my clothes for an hour or two. I was now practically myself again, save that I was so weak as to need support whenever I attempted to stand; but, with Lotta on one side, and Mammy on the other, I was soon able, not only to totter from one room to another, but even to get into the garden for a few minutes, and sit there in a comfortable basket chair, drinking in renewed health and strength with every breath of the soft, warm, deliciously ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... and gave them promissory notes payable by the claim at an indefinite period. When a man ceases work and begins to live on his "rainy day" money, or on the storekeeper, it does not take very long before he accumulates a burden greater than he can carry. When he begins to totter he tries to pass some of the load over to others, and it is usually the storekeepers who are willing to assist him to the limit if his assets are in good retrospect. And what could be a greater security than a whole mountain full of gold? So the storekeepers assumed a large ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... thousand witnesses in this house untortured, unsuborned. I tell you, the guilt of innocent blood will lie on you, great Duke—on you counsellors of evil things, if you condemn this maid. Your throne, Duke Otho, shall totter and fall, and your life's sun shall set in a ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... this mode of debate. William of Champeaux was then the head of the cathedral school of Notre Dame and the leading teacher of logic in France. "Within a few months Abelard made his authority totter, and set his reputation on the wane. In six or seven years he drove him in shame and humiliation from his chair, after a contest which filled Christendom with its echoes." By overcoming William in debate he established his own reputation as a teacher. At various times between 1108 and ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... "this boy has made three phrases. If you don't lock him up he will certainly become a poet. He will set your precious world of sanity ablaze with the fire of his mother, the moon. Your palaces will totter, Taylor, and your kingdoms become as dust. I ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... peer. Nor at the first Divine Alcides put forth all his strength, By lengthy struggle wearing out his foe, Till chilly drops stood on Antaeas' limbs, And toppled to its fall the stately throat, And smitten by the hero's blows, the legs Began to totter. Breast to breast they strive To gain the vantage, till the victor's arms Gird in the giant's yielding back and sides, And squeeze his middle part: next 'twixt the thighs He puts his feet, and forcing ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... purposes which in due time the long-headed townsmen carried into effect. An asylum was built upon the moor; it is called 'Betty Lamb's Home for the Young and the Aged.' The old Abbey also was walled in; lawns and flower beds were spread about the broken stones, and where the walls might totter they were supported. The honour of this change too is ascribed to the famous son of Betty Lamb, who had ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... with Lieutenant Barclay," the colonel of the staff said. "Ride slowly, and keep close beside him; so as to catch him, if you see him totter. You will find the surgeons ready at the ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... he has to totter along on two sticks," Jerry said. "Besides, he has a stately, professorish sort of style. Do you suppose he really does want us to ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... just strength left to push open the gate, totter across the lawn and knock at the door; then he sank in ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... way, dear. By constant striving against our failing, and by constant prayer. We cannot succeed by ourselves, we should only meet with certain failure. But if we place our hand in God's hand we know that though we may stumble and totter many times, ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... was only twenty yards away. There, all the people were in a turmoil. While endeavoring to regain their feet, some were violently thrown upon the wooden platform. Others, holding to the side of the building, felt with stupefaction the boards totter beneath their touch. Was judgment at hand? Had the end of the world come? The terror of a nameless danger unmanned the stoutest heart. Women shrieked and prayed. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... hero came in for another sitting, looking extremely worn, his skin drawn tight over his face, his eyes watery and aged, his head slightly nodding. 'How altered from the fresh old man after Saturday's hunting,' says Haydon. 'It affected me. He looked like an aged eagle beginning to totter from its perch.' A second sitting in the afternoon concluded the business, and early next morning Haydon left for town. 'It is curious,' he comments, 'to have known thus the two great heads of the two great parties, the Duke and Lord Grey. I prefer ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... O Wolfings, from the garth your fathers built, And the House where sorrow dieth, and all unloosed is guilt? Turn back, turn back, and behold it! lest your feet be over slow When your shields are heavy-burdened with the arrows of the foe; How ye totter, how ye stumble on the rough and corpse-strewn way! And lo, how the eve is eating the afternoon of day! O why are ye abiding till the sun is sunk in night And the forest trees are ruddy with the battle-kindled ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... I go?" said Maria Vittoria, rebelliously. "Say what you have said to me to her! Speak to her of the ignominy which will befall the King! Tell her how his cause will totter! Why talk of this to me? If she loves the King, your words will persuade her. For on my life ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... invested the eternal city. Hitherto, the Romans, encouraged by the Pope, had made an heroic resistance, and the besiegers had suffered incredibly from their desperate sallies, as well as from the diseases that decimated them. But the fidelity of the citizens was beginning to totter beneath the protracted warfare, and many sighed for a period to their calamities. Henry failed not to profit by these dispositions, and poured in thirty thousand golden florins to ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... my trade to meet objections. But it may create tiresome delays, of which there have been too many, from various causes, already. Lady Coxon got very bad, then she got much better. Then Mr. Anvoy suddenly began to totter, and now he seems quite on his back. I'm afraid he's really in for some big reverse. Lady Coxon's worse again, awfully upset by the news from America, and she sends me word that she MUST have Ruth. How can I supply her with Ruth? I haven't got ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... stadium. Even as he cried it, all saw his form draw upward as might Prometheus's unchained. They saw the fingers of the Spartan unclasp. They saw his bloody face upturned and torn with helpless agony. They saw his great form totter, topple, fall. The last dust cloud, and into it the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... that, should the torch of the political incendiary ever be applied to the sublime fabric of our system, and those institutions which were laid in our father's struggles and cemented with their blood, should totter and crumble, I, for one, will be found going down with the ship, and waving the glorious flag of our country above the smouldering ruins of that ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... shall totter to the waiting dust, The might of love no more attending, And by the blessing of a common tongue, The visioned peace that countless bards have sung Shall live in truth; the flashing sword shall rust, No lust of ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 4 • Various
... mind to being comes Along with body, with body grows and ages. For just as children totter round about With frames infirm and tender, so there follows A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then, Where years have ripened into robust powers, Counsel is also greater, more increased The power of mind; ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... caught sight of the council-fire, the stern faces surrounding it, and the grave air of his captors, his guilty heart sank within him, and, trembling in every joint, he was hardly able to totter to the place assigned him. The Indians noted his condition with scornful eyes, and Eagle Claw, advancing from the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... be our aristocracy," he went on, looking at Eve as he spoke. "If you totter, you shall have my arm to steady you. If you have reason to complain of the treachery of others, you will find a refuge in our hearts, the love there will never change. And influence and favor and the goodwill of others might fail us if we were two; we should stand in each ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... horse! Get away with the paper!" this fellow choked; and as Hiram sprang upon him he saw the other rise and totter toward a horse. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,— No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road,— Then ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... approval of this action. For nearly three years they prevented the opening of the Austrian Parliament which would have been to their prejudice. Only after the Russian Revolution, when Austria began to totter and her rulers were apprehensive lest events in Russia should have a repercussion in the Dual Monarchy, did the Czechs decide to speak out and exerted pressure to bring about the opening of the Reichsrat, where they boldly declared their programme, revealed Austria's ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... have been discharged, to find out the doctor's private address and call, it generally means they have come to beg. Lincott, remembering how Helling's simple courtesies had impressed him, experienced an actual disappointment. He felt his theories about the seafaring man begin to totter. However, Helling was shown into the consulting-room, and at the sight of him Lincott's disappointment vanished. He did not start up, since manifestations of surprise are amongst those things with which doctors find it advisable ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... without a word. I passed; and as I turned, I saw him slyly laugh, shaking his keys. When he perceived that I was looking at him, he smiled at me, making signs of friendship. He must have some secret project, and we are in the hands of a master whose reason begins to totter.... To-morrow we shall be far away.... Yonder there are wonderful countries that resemble thine.... Astolaine has already provided for our ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... shivers chasing one another up and down her back. The boy was coming toward them, coolly puffing a cigar. He did not seem to totter quite so much as before, but he was glad to sink into an ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... his father, at one time, to possess several. His search availed him nothing—the chests were empty—there was not an atom of money left. As if this were not misery enough, he perceived, with inexpressible grief, that the rafters of the house, the wainscoting of the rooms, were beginning to totter and crack so fearful, that it would be impossible to reside much longer beneath them. And oh, sorrow upon sorrow! those unpleasant gentlemen, the lawyers, were daily asking payment, and threatening an execution. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... into a pretty puddle with another as soon as he got here. By George, it's in the bone and it is obliged to come out in the blood. A Gay will go on ogling the sex, I suppose, as long as he is able to totter back from the edge ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... busts in glass cases of the children, Louise and Alexandre Brogniart, and 1034, 1035, the original busts in plaster of Mme. Houdon and Sabine Houdon, will also be noted. Like Caffieri, Houdon was an habitue of the Francais, and in his old age would totter to the theatre supported by his servant, to calmly sleep the performance out. A favourite exponent of the suave and languishing style that appealed to the decadent tastes of the age was Antoine Pajou ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... I fear He would not find much of His teaching in any of the creeds founded on His name! If He came again, then indeed might the churches tremble, totter ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... crashing, groaning, and even screaming of the trees in the glen whose boughs were tormented by the gale. Within the house, windows clattered, and doors clapped, and the walls, though sufficiently substantial for a building of the kind, seemed to me to totter in the tempest. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... credit of muscular Christianity, one must say that it was not her weight, but the tumult in his own inner man, which made her bearer totter. Nevertheless, if one is wholly unused to the exercise, the carrying of a healthy young English girl weighing a good eight stone, is as much as ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... shall do to-morrow. There needs but a passing event, a thought that uses, a duty to ourselves that takes definite form, an unexpected responsibility that is suddenly made clear, for the whole organisation of our inward justice to totter and be transformed. Slow as our advance may have been, we still should find it impossible to begin life over again in the midst of many a sorrow whereof we were the involuntary cause, many a discouragement to which we ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... placed in position, while a strong body of archers prevented the defenders showing themselves above the parapet. The wall was of far less strength than that which the Romans had before encountered, and soon began to totter before the blows of the battering ram. The Jews, indeed, were indifferent as to its fall; for they knew that the possession of the inner town was of slight importance to them, and that its fall would not greatly facilitate the attack upon what was the natural line of ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... of beauty; that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection. Women are very sensible of this; for which reason they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness. In all this they are guided by nature. Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and modesty in general, which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the monument of a thousand ages crumbles to dust; at whose embrace empires totter to ruin, and at whose breath cities rise and sink like bursting bubbles in a pool, rolled on his car ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... long, unkempt gray hair comes through. But all the air is full of warmth and of peace; and, beyond his village church, there is, at last, light indeed. His horses lag in the furrow, and his own limbs totter and fail: but one comes to help him. 'It is a long field,' says Death; 'but we'll get to the end ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... loose on them, and no signs up to warn people at the crossings. It's pathetic to see the foot-passengers saving themselves, especially the poor, pretty, high-heeled women, looking this way and that in their fright, and then tottering over as fast as they can totter." ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... hundred and fifty women, and several children, were made prisoners, and sent on board different vessels. They were unable to escape with the men, owing to that abominable practice of cramping their feet: several of them were not able to move without assistance, in fact, they might all be said to totter, rather than walk. Twenty of these poor women were sent on board the vessel I was in; they were hauled on board by the hair, and treated in ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... moment, and all black the next. A torrent springing at its head, and dashing with inaudible fury along the bottom, seemed to gleam placidly amongst the rounded forms of inky bushes and pale boulders below our path. Enormous eddies of wind from above made us stop short and totter ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... endeavours to conceal the situation of his thoughts were so violent, that his constitution could not endure the shock; the sweat ran down his forehead in a stream, the colour vanished from his cheeks, his knees began to totter, and his eyesight to fail; so that he must have fallen at his full length upon the floor, had not he retired very abruptly into another room, where he threw himself upon a ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... at the manual of arms for about 20 minutes. Large beads of perspiration rolled down his face—he began to totter on his feet—and I gave the command "rest". He had not taken his ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad hearts! without reproach or blot, Who do thy work, and know it not; Long may the kindly impulse last! But thou, if they should totter, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... circle, completely upsetting the formation and seriously imperilling many of her sister ships. A few seconds later another shell fell aboard her, hitting the foot of her foremast and causing it to totter, though it did not actually fall. This same shell, we afterward learned, literally blew Admiral Vitgeft to atoms, also seriously wounding several of his staff, and throwing the ship into a ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... no place for abstract morality. Strayed so far from safety, we had taken our lives into our own hands; at any moment we might have to fight once more desperately against superior numbers. Perhaps in the end we would totter over in the same way as the unfortunate who had strayed across our path.... Indeed, it was ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... he scorned to show it, was too agitated even to suggest an event to fit the disconsolate date, and poor Coote had to totter up the stairs, hopelessly convinced that he had nothing at his fingers' ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... an old man, doubled as if with rheumatism, and close behind him was the frightened face of the woman. An involuntary shudder passed through Nathaniel as he looked at them. They were old—so old that the man's shrivelled hands were like those of a skeleton; his giant frame seemed about to totter into ruin, his eyes were sunken until his face gave the horror of a death mask. Was it possible that these people were the father and mother of Marion—and of Neil? As he stepped to the threshold they timidly drew back from him. In a single glance Nathaniel swept the room and what he saw thrilled ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... to the violent fatigue which both her mind and body had undergone, almost overcame the excellent constitution of Sophia, and she had scarce strength sufficient to totter into the inn, leaning on the arm of her maid. Here she was no sooner seated than she called for a glass of water; but Mrs Honour, very judiciously, in my opinion, changed it into ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these old spectres totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death—as unconcerned as if they were immortal. They were used as burying-places for three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit full of ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... the sleep of death. So he did what at first seemed a cruel thing. He sprang from the wagon, dragged her out into the snow and took the child from her clinging arms. With the child he sprang into the wagon and started his team down the road at a trot. The woman roused herself and began to totter feebly forward. A little later she quickened her pace. At last she broke into a run. And as she caught up with the wagon a little later and the farmer put the baby back into her arms, life had come back ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... envied him something of his juvenile elasticity. But I think that none of them had given him credit for such strength as he now displayed. The Marquis, in spite of what feeble efforts he made, was dragged up out of his chair and made to stand, or rather to totter, on his legs. He made a clutch at the bell-rope, which to aid his luxurious ease had been brought close to his hand as he sat, but failed, as the Dean shook him hither and thither. Then he was dragged on to the middle ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... not a single beam had ever been seen there. The Venn mist, which rises so suddenly, was there covering everything. There was a wall now where there had been a wide outlook before. A wall not of stone and not of bricks, but much stronger. It did not crack, it did not burst, it did not totter, it did not give way before the hammer wielded by the strongest hand. It shaped itself out of the morasses, powerful and impenetrable, and stretched from the moor up to the clouds—or was it the clouds that had ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... straining eyes! Oh, the meek acceptance of still further suspense! the almost piteous thankfulness that all is not yet lost, that hope is not yet abandoned! Strong men break down and add years to those they have lived. Gentle women sway and totter at last until relief comes to them ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... never thought I should live to say it," said Berry, "but, after what I've gone through this morning, if Planchet were to totter in this afternoon, laden with at once cheap and pretentious goods, I should ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... gully with," and the Sudra's sons "ordained" to be servants, no matter what their qualities of mind and soul. But the caste system is rotting down in other places and some time or other this "ordained" theory will also give way and the whole vast fabric will totter to the ruin it ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... to-day were born was gently compelled by a terror-stricken young woman with a wounded neck to lay his trembling old head on her shoulder as they sat on a little straw in the bottom of a native cart. He had reached that venerable period of life when men can barely totter to their doors to enjoy the sunshine, and when beholders regard them with irresistible feelings of tenderness and reverence. War had taught the old man how to stand erect once more—though it was ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... wet," said little Gluck; "I'll just let him in for a quarter of an hour." Round he went to the door, and opened it; and as the little gentleman walked in, there came a gust of wind through the house that made the old chimneys totter. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble[obs3], turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow with the wind (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c. 314; vibrate ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... still as if turned to stone. By the icy coldness of my face I felt that I was growing pale; and if the world seemed to totter under that poor child's feet, it was my life, too, which was at stake. Knowing with whom I had to deal, I did not give her time to repulse me. I began to ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... With all thy train, athwart the moony sky— *Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night, And wing to other worlds another light! Divulge the secrets of thy embassy To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban Lest the stars totter in the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... squires of Bath, Fine as the Burmese jewell'd Rath,{2} Pray totter o'er your Bond-street path, A respite ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... soul-struggle goes on in every man and woman before the hand is put out for the first time. Self-respect is a tremendous asset, and people hold on to it as to their very souls; but when a hand is held out once and the community puts alms therein, the fabric of self-respect begins to totter, and the whole process of ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... absurd. One would require to be considerably carried away by illusion to be moved by Mr. Wendell's story. The hero is a New-Englander, born of mad parents (they met while both were patients in an insane asylum); and this inherited curse would seem to be enough for any hero to totter under. It becomes unimportant, however, when we discover that he has furthermore been taken possession of at birth by the spirit of a wicked and fascinating Italian duchess, who wishes to expiate her crimes before leaving this mundane sphere. One might readily expect some startling effects ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... whimsical circumstances; may conspire to make a very moderate genius the idol of the implicit multitude: works that lean upon such fickle props, that stand upon such a false foundation, will not be long able to support themselves against the injuries of time. Such buildings begin to totter almost as soon as ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... followed by three months of exhaustion. The moment the sick man could "totter" out of his room, he found his way to her whom he had abjured, and who was in Paris calmly awaiting his return to her. She came back with him. He introduced her to his kinsmen. "It was all right," he said; "Clara would henceforth be—his brother; he would still fulfil his bond." ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... rise. It did not totter; it simply rose in its entirety, leaving the gaping hole into which, decades ago, it had been built. It rose straight into the sky, apparently of its own volition. No rays of light, no supernatural agencies could be seen or fancied. The utterly ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... Elliott could quite clearly imagine what Aunt Margaret, Stannard's mother, would say to that question. She had never especially cared for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at Bruce Fearing, one of the pillars of her familiar world began to totter. Actually, she could think of no particularly good reason why, when she had heard his story, she should proceed to shun him. His history simply didn't seem to matter, except to make her sorry for him; and yet she couldn't be ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... prayer, half battle-shout—pealed above the bellowing stadium. Even as he cried it, all saw his form draw upward as might Prometheus's unchained. They saw the fingers of the Spartan unclasp. They saw his bloody face upturned and torn with helpless agony. They saw his great form totter, topple, fall. The last dust cloud, and into it the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... meadows the glow of twilight had been left behind. We seemed to be pressing our way against a great curtain, the curtain made by the rich dusk that filled the narrow thoroughfare. Through the darkness the sinuous street and rickety houses wavered in outline, as the bent shapes of the aged totter across dimly-lit interiors. A fisherman's bare legs, lit by some dimly illumined interior; a line of nets in the little yards; here and there a white kerchief or cotton cap, dazzling in whiteness, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... other those excrescences of multitudinous city aggregation, those stormy excesses of productive energy that flare up out of that life, establish for a time great unstable strangenesses of human living, palaces, cities, roads, empires, literatures, and then totter and fall back again into ruin. In India even more than about the Mediterranean all this is spectacular. There the peasant goes about his work according to the usage of fifty thousand years. He has a primitive version of religion, a moral tradition, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... and moon I mean— Suffused in blood upon each other fell In such a raging duel of eclipse As hath not terrified the universe Since that which wept in blood the death of Christ: When the dead walk'd, the waters turn'd to blood, Earth and her cities totter'd, and the world Seem'd shaken to its last paralysis. In such a paroxysm of dissolution That son of mine was born; by that first act Heading the monstrous catalogue of crime, I found fore-written in ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... at night: and all, old and young, and sickly, labor to the last extent of their powers. The peasants toil so, that on every occasion, the mowers, before the end of the third stint, whether weak, young, or old, can hardly walk as they totter past the last rows, and only with difficulty are they able to rise after the breathing-spell; and the women, often pregnant, or nursing infants, work in the same way. The toil is intense and incessant. All work to the extreme bounds of their strength, ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... proved useless that little attention was paid to it this time. "I cannot describe the mad rush," he said. "At first it looked like dust. That must have been the spray. I could see houses going down before it like a child's play blocks set on edge in a row. As it came nearer I could see houses totter for a moment, then rise and the next moment be crushed like egg shells against ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... self-restraint. He who so oft had trained others could not so much as conquer his own cravings. For he laid his hand upon the mantle, and his rash example tempted the rest to join in his enterprise of plunder. Thereupon the recess shook from its lowest foundations, and began suddenly to reel and totter. Straightway the women raised a shriek that the wicked robbers were being endured too long. Then they, who were before supposed to be half-dead or lifeless phantoms, seemed to obey the cries of the women, and, leaping ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... world's eye, and to live the life of an obscure country gentleman, Scott found himself launched once more on the tide of brave fortunes. The Ballantyne publishing and printing houses ceased to totter, and settled themselves on what seemed the firmest of foundations. At Abbotsford, buying, planting, and building began on a greater scale than had ever been planned in its ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... send my excuses to my Lord Keeper; but however I got up at eleven, and walked there after two, and stayed till eight. There was Sir Thomas Mansel, Prior, George Granville, and Mr. Caesar,(3) and we were very merry. My head is still wrong, but I have had no formal fit, only I totter a little. I have left off snuff altogether. I have a noble roll of tobacco for grating, very good. Shall I send it to MD, if she likes that sort? My Lord Keeper and our this day's company are to dine on Saturday with George ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... complacently of the "trend of human events." For the benefit of Sir Edwin and many other wealthy and cultured palace-car passengers who amuse themselves with theories; who infer that because human slavery is abolished in the Occident and the thrones of the Orient are beginning to totter before the might of democracy; because science is marching on to triumph after triumph, and no Spanish Inquisition or English Court of High Commission longer casts its upas-shadow athwart the hearts of men, the great world is "growing nobler and better," I hereby tender my services to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... him at last, and, as if overcome by fate, began to totter silently back toward her stuffy little inferno of a cottage. It had no lofty portal, no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes—she did not understand wherein ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... was the last lap of the contest. Twelve hours now, I kept telling myself, and the French will be here and we'll have done our task. Alas! how many of us would go back to rest? ... Hardly able to totter, our counter-attacking companies went in again. They had gone far beyond the limits of mortal endurance, but the human spirit can defy all natural laws. The balance trembled, hung, and then dropped the right way. The ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... times when a higher truth, revealed at first to a few persons, gradually gains ground till it has taken hold of such a number of persons that the old public opinion, founded on a lower order of truths, begins to totter and the new is ready to take its place, but has not yet been firmly established. It is like the spring, this time of transition, when the old order of ideas has not quite broken up and the new has not quite gained a footing. Men begin to criticise their actions in the light of the new truth, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... We clamb the hill thegither; And monie a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... his horizon, and mathematics had become the only necessary language of thought; but one could play with the toys of childhood, including Ming porcelain, salons of painting, operas and theatres, beaux-arts and Gothic architecture, theology and anarchy, in any jumble of time; or totter about with Joe Stickney, talking Greek philosophy or recent poetry, or studying "Louise" at the Opera Comique, or discussing the charm of youth and the Seine with Bay Lodge and his exquisite young wife. Paris remained ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... matters not how much they feel their magnitude; often, the more they do, the least inclined are they to correct them. Others fear the constitutional structure so much, that they stand trembling lest the slightest correction totter it to the ground. Great governments, too, are most likely to stand on small points when these errors are pointed out. Mr. Scranton declares, with great emphasis, that all these things are most legally true, perfectly natural: they follow in man ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... difficulty or danger. He was strong enough not to totter with her, or give her any cause for anxiety; but in her agitation she had thrown her arms about his neck. He held her fast, and pressed her to himself—and at last laid her down upon a grassy bank, not without emotion and confusion ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... This despotism should not prevail against me. When the free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and totter. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... I turned a wistful gaze on the alabaster shell dimly glimmering among the low palms, to my astonishment it seemed to totter. I thought that it must be a mere illusion of weary eyes, or that the effect was created by a cloud obscuring the starlight. But again the white shell moved against the dark green background, this time swaying ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dusted his waistcoat. 'A commercial crisis,' he said, 'has passed. The job of work which Comrade Rossiter indicated for me has been completed with masterly skill. The period of anxiety is over. The bank ceases to totter. Are you busy, Comrade Jackson, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... it all seems. Does Miss Dorothy still act for the pictures? Does Chris, the amiable Scots terrier, still enjoy his bones? Does old Dactyl still totter about his daily tasks? Queer to think that it happened only yesterday. Well, time runs swift in ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... that moment, the ice-islands were not so large, but quite as high, and consequently were more easily agitated. While the whole panorama was bowing and rocking, pinnacles, arches, walls and all, seeming about to totter from their bases, there came a wave sweeping down the passage that lifted them high in the air, some fifty feet at least, and bore them along like pieces of cork, fully a hundred yards. Other waves succeeded, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... was tied to a stake in a small swale and I nerved myself to look on. I saw the first cuts, the poor beast look up from his grass in astonishment, totter, reel, and fall as blows rained on him from all sides. The crowd, closing in, mercifully hid the rest from view; the victim dying game without a sound. In this respect, as well as in many others, the carabao is a very different animal ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... ceremony from which Henry would not be debarred. He would make the public offering on the Epiphany in Westminster Abbey. He had done so ever since he was old enough to totter up to the altar and hold the offerings; and his heart was set on doing so once more. So a large and quiet cream-coloured Flemish horse was brought for him, he was robed in purple and ermine, with a coronal around the cap that covered his hair, fast becoming white. His train in full array followed ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... support as the direct testimony of the Mother conceived without sin? At this thought, Pierre, who was convinced of Bernadette's absolute good faith, who refused to believe that she had been the instrument of a fraud, began to waver, deeply agitated, feeling his belief in truth totter within him. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... last leaves ourselves, capable in the green possibly of a pleasant murmur, but in the dry with no voice but a rattle prophetic of winter. I hope Dr. Holmes lived to repent his grin. At any rate he lived to refute the notion that youthful fire and white hairs exclude each other. If we must totter, what ground we have to totter over, with two generations and more behind us! The ground is ours. We only have looked into the faces of the great actors, and have taken part in the epoch-making events. As I unroll my panorama I may totter, but I ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the moments of relief, when the night brought in the illusion of coolness and the starlight twinkled through the heavy, dew-laden air. Moreover, most of them were so weakened that hardly anything could be done without everybody that could totter mustering on the braces. No, it was no use remonstrating with them. But I fully believed that quinine was of ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... plead so eloquently for those nations, who, groaning in their self-forged chains, bow to the great Moloch of superstition and idolatry, as to "draw tears of blood," as it were, from the eyes of her rapt and devoted listeners, hast ever marked a pale, trembling child of want totter to the door, and ask for the "crumbs that fall" from this humane society's tea-table, and heard the answer, "Begone! this is a benevolent association for the purpose of evangelizing the heathen, not to feed lazy beggars at ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... ago you wished to make their acquaintance. Do falsehoods make your faith totter? What ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... lairs, To helpless murder, while the ships go down Swirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayers Go up in noisome bubbles—such to them;— Or when they tramp about the central fires, Bending the strata with aeonian tread Till steeples totter, and all ways are lost,— Deem they of wife or child, or home or friend, Doing these things as the long years lead on Only to other years that mean no more, That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof— Destroying ever, though to ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the life of him see how to manage it. The beanstalk began to totter; he felt himself falling, and leapt for the tower. . . . And awoke in his bed shuddering, and, for the first time in his life, afraid of the dark. He would have called for his mother, but just then down by the turret clock in Fore Street the buglers ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trudge ovver moor, heath, or mire, Till yor legs seem to totter, an th' stummack feels faint; But yor thowts still will dwell o' that breet cottage fire, Till yo feel quite refreshed bi th' fancies yo paint. An when yo draw nearer, an ovver th' old palins Yo see smilin faces 'at welcome yo back, Ther's ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... Products of both the Indies. I was placed at a quadrangular Table, diametrically opposite to the Mace-bearer. The Visage of that venerable Herald was, according to Custom, most gloriously illuminated on this joyful occasion. The Mayor and Aldermen, those Pillars of our Constitution, began to totter; and if any one at the Board could have so far articulated, as to have demanded intelligibly a Reinforcement of Liquor, the whole Assembly had been by this time extended under ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to the parish and fears for the welfare of her soul. She kept the Canon's charities going royally, but, in return, she claimed the Canon's ghostly ministrations at odd times to an extent that sometimes caused the good man's saintly equanimity to totter. Hating doctors and loving clergymen, Miss Bigelow was forever summoning her distracted father confessor to speed that parting guest—her soul, which however, never departed. She remarked in confidence to those about ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... at seeing herself vanquished. But as there were to be two heats to the race, she fell to planning how to be revenged for this affront; and going home, she put a charm into a ring of such power that if any one had it upon his finger his legs would totter so that he would not be able to walk, much less run; then she sent it as a present to Lightning, begging him to wear it on his finger for ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... their city, which was by incorporating foreign cities and nations into their commonwealth; but this way is not without its mischiefs. For the strangers in Rome by degrees had grown so numerous, and to have so great a vote in the councils, that the whole Government began to totter, and decline from its old to its new inhabitants, which Fabius the censor observing, he applied a remedy in time by reducing all the new citizens into four tribes, that being contracted into so narrow a space, they might not have ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... Earl Marshal,' the King's voice drowned Norfolk's morning greeting. He veered upon the Duke with such violence that his enormous red bulk seemed about to totter over upon the tall and bent figure. A searing pain had shot up his side, and, as he gripped it, he appeared to be furiously plucking at his dagger. He had imagined Chapuys and Marillac, the Ambassadors, coming upon guards with broken heads and sending ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... new boots. Footsore, he limped about the streets of a spectral city, where at every corner some one seemed to lie in ambush for him, and each time the lurking enemy proved to be no other than Mrs. Weare, who gazed at him with scornful eyes and let him totter by. The creaking of the boots was an articulate voice, which ever and anon screamed at him a terrible name. He shrank and shivered and groaned; but on he went, for in his hand he held a crossed cheque, which he was bidden to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... who, after the lapse of fifty years, quoted a passage on Hell that he had heard almost as a child: 'If we allowed our imagination, my dear brethren, to dwell persistently on this terrific truth, Reason itself would totter on its throne.' But the people of to-day cannot quote, because they cannot get the opportunity. The race of preachers ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... telegraph wire to one side of the ladder, passed it loosely around the tree, and fastened it to the other side. Then, as the ladder was gradually raised, the wire slipped along up the tree, and when the ladder was in position it could not fall, although it might shake and totter a little. However, strong arms at the bottom held it pretty steady, and Harry was enabled to nail on his insulators with comparative ease, and in ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... fortnight before Charlie, still very weak and feeble, was able to totter from his room to that in which Hossein was lying. He himself knew nothing of what had passed after he fell. The conflict had, to him, been little more than a dream. Awakened from sleep by the sound of his assailants, as ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... go with Lieutenant Barclay," the colonel of the staff said. "Ride slowly, and keep close beside him; so as to catch him, if you see him totter. You will find the surgeons ready ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... our highest hopes. This column stands on Union. I know not that it might not keep its position, if the American Union, in the mad conflict of human passions, and in the strife of parties and factions, should be broken up and destroyed. I know not that it would totter and fall to the earth, and mingle its fragments with the fragments of Liberty and the Constitution, when State should be separated from State, and faction and dismemberment obliterate for ever all the hopes of the founders of our republic, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... parts dry, and in others contained a little muddy and stagnated water. Within the enclosure of this moat, I could only discover a pile of ruins, and several walls, the upper part of which seemed to overhang their foundations, and to totter to their ruin. After having entered however with my conductor through an archway, and passed along a winding passage that was perfectly dark, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... flagstaff on the palace so lately occupied by the man crowned by the rebels Emperor of India, the seat and headquarters of the revolt which had deluged the land with blood, and caused the rule of England to totter, a royal salute was fired by the British guns, and tremendous cheers arose from the troops in ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... terra-cotta busts in glass cases of the children, Louise and Alexandre Brogniart, and 1034, 1035, the original busts in plaster of Mme. Houdon and Sabine Houdon, will also be noted. Like Caffieri, Houdon was an habitue of the Francais, and in his old age would totter to the theatre supported by his servant, to calmly sleep the performance out. A favourite exponent of the suave and languishing style that appealed to the decadent tastes of the age was Antoine Pajou (1730-1809) here represented by 775, a Bacchante, and 772, Maria Leczinska as Charity. Other ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread the path of Hel, and heaven is cloven. The sun darkens, earth in ocean sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the all-nourishing tree, towering fire plays ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... were going home for their Christmas vacations. Interest in study declined rapidly. Those girls who usually made brilliant recitations distinguished themselves by just scraping through, while those who were inclined to totter on the ragged edge unhesitatingly confessed themselves to be unprepared. One had, of course, to decide just what to pack, whether to take the morning or evening train and whether it would be worth while to take one's books home on the chance of studying a little during ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... kingdom of God, while the children of the kingdom are thrust out?" Last summer they heard Peter Jones, at Lake Simcoe, tell the story of the Saviour's love. They then determined to renounce ardent spirits, and pray to the Great Spirit. With this little preparation, they had been enabled to totter along in the path of morality from that time till now. The old man (Wm. Snake) seems under deep convictions, weeps much, and expresses much sorrow for his former bad doings. They have gone back, determined to get as many of their tribe as possible to return ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... availed him nothing—the chests were empty—there was not an atom of money left. As if this were not misery enough, he perceived, with inexpressible grief, that the rafters of the house, the wainscoting of the rooms, were beginning to totter and crack so fearful, that it would be impossible to reside much longer beneath them. And oh, sorrow upon sorrow! those unpleasant gentlemen, the lawyers, were daily asking payment, and threatening an execution. Klaus grew very wretched. Breathing time, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... the beating, wait at least ten seconds longer than you do—to rouse expectation—and when you do come on, make a little more of it. You ought to be very pale indeed—even to enter with a slight totter, done moderately, of course; and before you say a single word, you ought to stand shaking and with your brows knitting, looking almost terrible. Of course, I do not expect or desire to make a melodramatic actress of you, but still I think you capable of any effect, provided it is not ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Tunnel, a room six hundred feet in length. In its sides were frequent openings, leading into hitherto unexplored parts of the cave; but we did not venture to enter many of these. Never have I seen such rocks as we here encountered; at one time piled up on one another, ready to totter and fall at a touch; at another, jutting out in immense boulders, sixty feet above our heads, while, in the openings they left, we gazed upward into darkness ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... single glance of stern deprecation, Andrew Fraser saw the girl totter and her head fall upon the bosom of the woman who had "sorrowed of her sorrows" in all the years of the lonely colorless infancy, childhood, and budding womanhood! The old bookworm clung to the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... pore Pistol jest able to totter, stays with us, an' Prince Hal fusses an' bosses' 'round, sort o' directin' their entertainment. The next afternoon Falstaff gives a deep bellow or two, like he's extendin' 'adios' to the entire Caliente canyon, an' then goes pirootin' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... trot. The northern border mesas of the Basin were now only a short distance ahead. But already his swollen tongue was beginning to blacken in his mouth. When at last he came to the foot of the lower mesa he could barely totter. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... finished the bow we shall have plenty. In the mean time, we must get a supply of those eggs we found the other day." He tried, as he spoke, to rise. With some exertion he got on his feet, but felt scarcely able to walk. Taking his stick, however, he managed to totter out of the cave. The fresh air of the early morning somewhat revived him, and, followed by Neptune, he made his way towards the curious mound in which he had found the eggs. He felt very giddy, and could ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... really good, substantial meal, of savoury sausage or succulent fish and mashed potato, and a bun. If you are a lady the bun is indispensable; for if there is one faith implanted firmly in the feminine breast, it is that which accepts the penny bun as a form of nutrition not to be equalled. Thrones totter and fall, dynasties stagger and pass away, but the devotion of Woman to the Penny Bun stands firm amidst the cataclysms of nature and nations. This substantial lunch costs sixpence. On Sundays, you dine sumptuously at home on a chop, or eggs and bacon, cooked over your ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... my horse was starved and spent, My gallant destrier, old and spare; The vile road's mire in mane and hair, I felt him totter as he went:— Such hungry woods were never meant For pasture: hate had reaped them bare. Aye, my poor beast was old ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... Fritz did his best to save the unfortunate one, but 'e could not swim. You can imagine my sensations? I was in a summer-'ouse, trembling with fright. Thunder, lightning, rain, storm, all round! Suddenly I see Fritz, pale as death, wet through, totter up the path from the lake. 'Where is Sasha?' I shriek out to 'im. And 'e shake 'is 'ead despairingly—Sasha was ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... before he could fire, Ashton-Kirk was seen to leap into the hall like a panther. There was a short, sharp blow, with all the power of the lithe body behind it; Fenton's grasp relaxed and he fell to the floor. The watchers saw Mary totter, and noted Ashton-Kirk catch her in his arms, at the same time gesturing to the nurse to bring a restorative. The nurse had vanished, and Ashton-Kirk was placing the sick girl upon a hall lounge when Nora and Scanlon hurried from the window ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... may begin to suspect that I was fast going mad; and I believe I was. If he has followed my story with a human heart, he may excuse me of any extreme weakness, if I did at moments totter on the verge ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... were the effects of the drug plainly evident on her face, but it was apparent that the snuffing the powdered tablets was destroying the bones in her nose, through shrinkage of the blood vessels, as well as undermining the nervous system and causing the brain to totter. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... old time, by aid of some Immortal, Raised up the stately fabric, our wealth of long-ago: But I tremble lest it totter down, and ruin porch and portal, And the whirling dust of downfall rise ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... down out of the town; overriding all that came in their way, and lashing their poor beasts with their sabers till the horses' flanks ran blood. Just as they neared Cecil they had knocked aside and trampled over a worn out old colon, of age too feeble for him to totter in time from their path. Cecil had reined up and shouted to them to pause; they, inflamed with the perilous drink, and senseless with the fury which seems to possess every Arab once started in a race neck-to-neck, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... had gone beyond Morrison to the man sitting beside him and at the sight of that loved figure the old man began to tremble. His voice lowered to a whisper and he began to totter forward. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... false sciences. The prayer to the fetish for rain is as contrary to true religion as it is contrary to true science. Many false religions are most easily overthrown by scientific instruction. Many false sciences begin to totter when the believers in them are taught true religion. The ordinary superstitions which have so strong a hold on weak characters and uninstructed minds, are as inconsistent with true faith in God as with reasonable knowledge of nature. Science grows, but the facts, whether laws or instances ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... women of high rank, enveloped in long white mantles, and with their faces hidden by a close veil of black, yellow, or blue gauze, form my third division. They walk, or rather totter, through the streets in numerous groups or bands, shod with yellow slippers or bottines, to enjoy a promenade outside the Jaffa Gate. You never hear them utter a word in the streets, nor do they pause for a moment. If that black or yellow object approach you, covered with her white veil, and turn ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... true to its vital principle, for in every shape it would reign without controul or inquiry. Its throne is built across a dark abyss, which no eye must dare to explore, lest the baseless fabric should totter under investigation. Obedience, unconditional obedience, is the catch-word of tyrants of every description, and to render "assurance doubly sure," one kind of despotism supports another. Tyrants would have cause to tremble if reason were to become the rule of duty in any of the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... what do you think of breaking this great association into fragments of States and of people? I know that some of you, and I believe that you all, would be almost as much shocked at the announcement of such a catastrophe, as if you were to be informed that the Blue Ridge itself would soon totter from its base. And ye men of Western Virginia, who occupy the great slope from the top of the Alleghanies to Ohio and Kentucky, what benefit do you propose to yourselves by disunion? If you "secede," what do you "secede" from, and what do you "accede" ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... always win a woman's heart by taking notice of her child. Then she got to letting me carry it about on my shoulder while she took her husband's dinner in to him, if he did not happen to be in the yard. And when the little thing was able to totter it would hold on to my finger, and was always content to stay with me while she was away. So it went on till the child was four ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... seeking in me and acting as midwife to my thought; but all illuminati and professors, all who talk down or cut our meat into morsels, will quickly be counted aunties by the vigorous boys at school. Chairs and pulpits totter to-day with a scholastic dry rot, which is inability to recognize the equality of unsophisticated man to man. There will soon be no more chair or desk; the only eminence will be that of one who can stand with feet on the common level, and still utter over our heads a regenerating word. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... scorn The wealth of Amalthea's horn; Nor should I ask to call the throne Of the Tartessian prince my own;[1] To totter through his train of years, The victim of declining fears. One little hour of joy to me Is worth a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... strength. Joan had taken the cook in hand, and for the first time, as Sheldon remarked, the chop at Berande was white man's chop. With her own hands Joan prepared the sick man's food, and between that and the cheer she brought him, he was able, after two days, to totter feebly out upon the veranda. The situation struck him as strange, and stranger still was the fact that it did not seem strange to the girl at all. She had settled down and taken charge of the household as a matter of ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... obtains goods on credit by false pretences, and sells them for ready money at any price, in order to make up a purse. This name is derived from the German word SCHWINDLIN, to totter, to be ready to fall; these arts being generally practised by persons on the totter, or just ready to break. The term SWINDLER has since been used to signify cheats of ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... we used to "teeter-totter," Printing little foot-palms in the mellow mold— Laughing at the lazy cattle wading in the water Where the ripples dimple round the buttercups ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... infidels and atheists, but the vipers which the church has nurtured in her own bosom are rising up to sting her! Her canons are brought into contempt, her tests trampled on, and her dignitaries daily insulted! The hierarchy is in danger! The bishops totter on their bench! We are none of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Earth patiently endures all this ill-treatment. Only now and then does she tremble with a fleeting horror, and then the palaces heaped upon her totter to their very foundations. Yet are there any among us who understand ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... to her feet, helped by his arm behind her; but, though she did not look down, she was seized immediately by an overwhelming giddiness that made her totter back against him. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... cut short a storm of thanks, "if you'll be good enough to give me just one more glass of champagne, I think I'll totter home." ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in the innocence of her friend began to totter. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... you are after all not so harmonious as I thought when I saw you entering here together!" exclaimed the emperor, laughing. "There are still differences of opinion, then, between the two pillars of my throne, and were I to lean on one, the other would totter and give way. Well, what do you want? What ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... to Arbor Croche, he became quite an orator, and consequently he was appointed as the head speaker in the council of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. He continued to hold this office until his frame was beginning to totter with age, his memory became disconnected and inactive, and he therefore gave up his office to his own messenger, whose name was Joseph As-saw-gon, who died during the late rebellion in the United States ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... how the poor friendless lad, far removed from either father or mother, was kicked, and cuffed, and beaten on the naked head, with a kind of stick between a horse-rod and a cudgel, until his poor face got pale, and he was forced to totter over to a seat in order to prevent himself from fainting or falling in consequence ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... unless—unless, indeed—the head of the House, unable to bring his mind to the reduction of its enterprises, and positively refusing to believe that it is, or can be, in any position but the position in which he has always represented it to himself, should urge it beyond its strength. Then it would totter.' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... morning and the singing of birds; we glory in seeing the intellect humbled as he humbles it. The concepts of science try our mettle. They do not appeal to our humanity, or to our myth-making tendencies; they appeal to the purely intellectual, impersonal force within us. Though all our gods totter and fall, science goes its way; though our hearts are chilled and our lives are orphaned, science cannot turn aside, or veil its light. It does not temper the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... it that you will soon be?" the old man asked suddenly, for his reason was beginning to totter, and his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... suggests splitting, a terrible splitting. Only the nerves of the young and healthy can stand it. It would not be so bad if one could see the thing whistling through the air, or even when it bursts; but one cannot. After the crash a man may scream or moan, totter and fall, but for all one can see he might have been struck down by the wrath ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... but went into the breakfast-room, where all the family in general met. She was rejoiced on hearing his voice as she opened the door, yet the sound made her tremble so much, that she could scarcely totter to the table. ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... be seen just beginning, perhaps, to sit up stiff on a woman's arm, or starting for a trial crawl over mother earth; and of them we remark that there is another little Ryan or Quigley; while the former stay sunning themselves so inertly, or totter about so shakily, that we notice at once how much old Sheridan, or the Widow Joyce, has failed since last year. These babies and grandparents often associate a good deal with one another at the stage when the old ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... Empire fell, was to authorise his abandoning his people in the hour of peril, careless who suffered in defenceless Rome, while he was secure in fortified Ravenna. Such was the man under whom the mightiest of the world's structures was doomed to totter to its fall! Such was the figure destined to close a scene which Time and Glory had united to hallow and adorn! Raised and supported by a superhuman daring, that invested the nauseous horrors of incessant bloodshed with a rude and appalling magnificence, the mistress of nations was now fated ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... soft, long moss, like fringe-trees struck with grayness. Below, the sandy soil, scantly covered with coarse grass, bristles with sharp palmettoes and aloes; all the vegetation is stiff, shining, semi-tropical, with nothing soft or delicate in its texture. Numerous plantation-buildings totter around, all slovenly and unattractive, while the interspaces are filled with all manner of wreck and refuse, pigs, fowls, dogs, and omnipresent Ethiopian infancy. All this is the universal Southern panorama; but five minutes' walk ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... south comes With flickering flame; Shines from his sword The Val-god's sun. The stony hills are dashed together, The giantesses totter; Men tread the path of Hel, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... of Franklin began to totter to its fall. In April [Footnote: State Dept. MSS. Franklin Papers, VIII., Benjamin Franklin to His Excellency Governor Sevier, Philadelphia, June 30, 1787.] Sevier, hungering for help or friendly advice, wrote to the gray statesman after whom his state was named. The answer did not come for ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... miracles? Is it not strange enough we breathe? Does every- thing not God reveal? Or must we ever weave and wreathe some creed that shall his face conceal? Some creed of which its prophets cry it holds the secret's all-in-all: Some creed which ever bye and bye doth crumble, totter, to its fall! Say any dream of all the dreams that drift and darkle, glint and glow, Holds most of truth within its gleams; but say —at last—you ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... you arise very early in the morning; totter down-stairs in a state of somnambulism; take the simulacrum of a meal by the glimmer of one lamp in the deserted coffee-room; and find yourself by seven o'clock outside in a belated moonlight and a freezing chill. The mail sleigh takes you up and carries ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seem to totter an' shake, like a crazy owd fence, 'At th' wind maks to tremel an' creak; but tha still fills thi place; An' it shows 'at tha'rt bless'd wi' a bit o' gradely gooid sense, 'At i' spite o' thi years an' thi cares, tha still wears a smile o' ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... have plucked the flowers of life and come to the berries,—which are not always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as the crocus of April, or rosy-cheeked as the damask of June; a man who staggered against books as a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to decrepitude; with a brain as full of tingling thoughts, such as they are, as a limb which we call "asleep," because it is so particularly awake, is of pricking points; presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps, not as yet tanned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... I don't seem to be dying on my feet, do I? Anything wan about me? I don't totter with feebleness, ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the magazine "Our Young Folks," and in that admirable weekly paper "The Youth's Companion," which is held in grateful remembrance by a generation now tottering off the stage, and welcomed, as I see, with equal interest by the grandchildren as they totter on. From time to time, therefore, as the different series have gone on, I have received pleasant notes from other young people, whose acquaintance I have thus made with real pleasure, who have asked more explanation ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... his mother, and what does it mean? His father remains alive! So, come to his aid—you cannot ask him to do everything alone. You must make an end of me! The old trunk still looks rugged, doesn't it? But it has begun to totter already—it will not cost you much trouble to fell it! You need not reach for the ax. You have a pretty face—I have never praised you, but today I will tell you, so that you may acquire courage and confidence. Your eyes, nose, mouth are surely admired! Become—You ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... answered the purpose better had I been allowed to continue in the narrow way of obscure poverty!" Now that the enervating influence of a more prosperous atmosphere had weakened his courage, and cooled the ardor of his piety, his faith began to totter like an old wall. His religious beliefs seemed to have been wrecked by the same storm which had destroyed his passionate hopes of love, and left him stranded and forlorn without either haven or pilot, blown hither and thither solely by the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... town rang clearly and sharply above the tumult. The thin films of dust, yellow in the evening sun, hovered like golden smoke under the station roof. At last with a reluctant jerk and shiver the train was slowly persuaded to totter into the evening air; the evening scents were again around us, the balalaika, now upon the train, hummed behind us, as we pushed out upon ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... I ever made a haystack that you didn't wonder whether it wasn't going to be a grand place for Dinkie to slide down. And when Dinkie draws a goggle-eyed man on his scribbler you see Michael Angelo totter and Titian turn in his grave. And when Dinkie writes a composition of thirty crooked lines on the landing of Hengist you feel that fate did Hume a mean trick in letting him pass away before inspecting that final word in historical record. And heaven's ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... were in time of Crimean War. Our Army costs more, and could do less than any in the world. Curious to find statement like this gravely made in presence of twenty-eight Members, all told, including the SPEAKER. Suppose it's true, Empire on verge of precipice, into which, on slightest impulse, it may totter and disappear. Hon. Members, in the main, care so little that they busy themselves writing letters, chatting in Lobby, gossipping in Smoke-room; the few present admirably succeed in disguising terror ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... the rose-hued dreams and aspirations of young people; and youth shrinks chilled and constrained from the austere companionship of those who, with snowy locks gilded by the fading rays of a setting sun, totter down the hill of life, journeying to the dark and silent valley ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... saw the prince totter, he advanced toward the threshold of the pavilion. Diana, on her side, perceiving Francois stagger, sat herself down beside him ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... that his sudden weight jolted the plank out of its position. For hardly was he safe on the turf again when he heard a sharp cry. Throwing a look behind, he saw his pursuer totter, clutch at the slipping timber, and, still clutching at it, turn a somersault ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that an awful dream For one who single is and snug— With Pussy in the elbow chair, And Tray reposing on the rug?— If I must totter down the hill, 'Tis safest done without a clog— What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... miry court But pens the lazy steer and sheep, 210 Thy turrets rude, and totter'd Keep, Have been the minstrel's loved resort. Oft have I traced, within thy fort, Of mouldering shields the mystic sense, Scutcheons of honour, or pretence, 215 Quarter'd in old armorial sort, Remains of rude magnificence. Nor wholly yet had time defaced Thy lordly ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... directly behind his master, and began a rhythmic blow-answering-blow contest with the fragrant earth and the demon within the man. For at least an hour the two old friends worked up and down the long bed, until I could see father begin to totter with weakness. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better - I daresay it is deplorably for the worse. I have no choice in the business, and can no more resist this tendency of my mind than I could prevent my body from beginning to totter and decay. If I am spared (as the phrase runs) I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the immunity just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on account of his age—angry as she was, Amaryllis feared several times lest the clumsy people should over-turn him, and tried her best to shield him. But he had a knack of keeping on his feet—the sort of knack you learn by skating—and did not totter much more than ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... brilliant panegyric of the dead statesman, and his speech was eloquent and displayed great taste. He was so ill, however, from weakness of heart that he was barely able to totter to his place and to ask the indulgence of the speaker while he rested, before offering his oration. He was too sick for the sad duty imposed upon him, but he preferred to pay this last tribute to his ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... still, down! See where the sun sets Ere he sets, ere old age Seizeth me in the morass, Ere my toothless jaws mumble, And my useless limbs totter; While drunk with his farewell beam Hurl me,—a fiery sea Foaming still in mine eye,— Hurl me, while dazzled and reeling, Down to the ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... seemed to totter in space, as if something, some mighty force, had struck the ship a terrific blow. The needle swung swiftly backward, reached one mile a second, dipped to ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... fascinated on this object, distinguished at last a dark face with two gleaming eyes surmounted by horns. All Peter Rorke's vaunted courage deserted him; conscience-stricken and smitten by sudden agonising fears, he uttered a shrill quavering scream and began to totter down the hill with all the speed ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... footsteps; and whole rows of houses, with their lately teeming shops, will be black and tenantless, and barred and locked in grim security. The students will shine among the quiet citizens; the pigeons will flap their wings in idleness, and coo in melancholy tones as they totter about the streets; and the last itinerant player (on the flageolet, of course) will have sounded his farewell note to ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... took advantage of this unexpected lull to push forward the construction of public works in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. The palace of Sennacherib, though it had been built scarcely fifty years before, was already beginning to totter on its foundations; Assur-bani-pal entirely remodeled and restored it—a proceeding which gave universal satisfaction. The common people had, as usual, to make the bricks with their own hands and convey them to the spot, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
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