"Topple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ramparts, a high red town above the fortresses, a thin red tower above the town. The whole thing looked dangerous and unsteady, as if any minute it would topple over. She knew John was there. Something awful was happening to ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Mrs. Corey, as if forced to the point, said bunglingly that the young ladies had wished to come with her, but had been detained. She based her statement upon Nanny's sarcastic demand; and, perhaps seeing it topple a little, she rose hastily, to get away from its fall. "But we shall hope for some—some other occasion," she said vaguely, and she put on a parting smile, and shook hands with Mrs. Lapham and Penelope, and then, after some lingering commonplaces, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and, nearer in, the pavilions of the new Louvre and the Tuileries, were crowned by a blaze, which lent them the aspect of sacrificial pyres. The dome of the Invalides was flaring with such brilliancy that you instinctively feared lest it should suddenly topple down and scatter burning flakes over the neighborhood. Beyond the irregular towers of Saint-Sulpice, the Pantheon stood out against the sky in dull splendor, like some royal palace of conflagration reduced to embers. Then, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... behind him by long cords, and at these the archers shot. Tempting indeed was the snare that they set in Woth, the emeralds loose-set in the city's gate; but Thangobrind discerned the golden cord that climbed the wall from each and the weights that would topple upon him if he touched one, and so he left them, though he left them weeping, and at last came to Theth. There all men worship Hlo-hlo; though they are willing to believe in other gods, as missionaries attest, but only as creatures of the chase for the hunting of Hlo-hlo, who wears Their halos, ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... openmouthed, maddened and still, as if in the midst of a catastrophe. The door-handle rattled lightly. It seemed to him that the walls were coming apart, that the furniture swayed at him; the ceiling slanted queerly for a moment, a tall wardrobe tried to topple over. He caught hold of something and it was the back of a chair. So he had reeled against a chair! Oh! ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... has discovered that he is in love with a woman, she is usually so fagged out waiting for the phenomenon, that she is ready to topple right over into his arms from ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... quite firm on my legs yet," he laughed, "and I must n't topple over, as Miss Batterson has left ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... who operated the auto according to the magazine pictures of racing chauffeurs, leaning far forward, should topple into the road? Suppose a stray breeze should tilt the machine ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... unkennelled, a spectacle as gratifying to a serious Protestant in those days, as running down a fox to a thorough sportsman;—a plot had been discovered which might have made Lancaster Castle "to topple on its warders" and "slope its head to its foundations," and Master Cowell, who had held so many inquests, to vanish without leaving anything in his own person whereon an inquest could be holden;—a pestilent nest of incorrigible witches ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... word of life. But we know that the time has not yet come; that this liberty which is a blessing to us, would be a curse to them. Besides, to us and to you, such a violent disruption would be most disastrous, it would topple to its foundations the whole social and political edifice. Moreover, we have had warning on this subject. God, in his providence, has permitted the emancipation of the African race in a few of the islands contiguous to our shores, and far from being elevated thereby ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... light died, and in the instant before the sound of the thunder came shatteringly, we turned about ... in time to see Cragmire Tower, a blacker silhouette against the night, topple and fall! A red glow began to be perceptible above the building. The thunder came booming through the caverns of space. Nayland Smith lowered his wet face close to mine ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... formation ignored. Presently steps sounded near them. A swift light swept the hole where they crouched, a volley of rifle-shots crashed into it. The Americans answered with their pistols, and saw three or four of the dark forms on the edge of the hole topple over. The rest disappeared. But Rosenlaube had a rifle-ball through his right hip and another through his shoulder. Mitchell and ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... before he had realized his power over these men; now he perceived that these men, some of them, realized it even better than he.... Realized it and resented it; resented it and fought with all the strength of their souls to undermine it and make it topple ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... such occasions, but it is a perilous practice when you are adorned with hunting spurs; they have protuberances which have a way of catching. There is no getting over it—to find, when conversing with an Emperor, that your feet have become locked together and that if you stir you will topple forward into his arms, does place you at a disadvantage. An even worse experience once befell me when on the staff at Devonport a good many years ago. Our general liked a certain amount of ceremonial to take place before the troops marched back to barracks of a Sunday after the parade ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... mountain bubbles out in irruption, and the lava destroys many villages, and even towns. In other countries there are earthquakes, but the people forget all about them until the shock comes, and the houses begin to topple over their heads." ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... my beloved Venice, where many years ago I camped out by the side of a canal—the Rio Giuseppe—all of it, from the red wall, where the sailors land, to the lagoon, where the tower of Castello is ready to topple into the sea. ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... flirt, the loop running out perpendicularly, like a rolling hoop, and not more than a foot from the ground, writhing, undulating, the circle constricting quickly, sinuously. The girl saw the loop topple as it neared the steer—it was much like the motion of a hoop falling. It met one of the steer's hoofs as it was flung outward; it grew taut; the rope straightened and Patches swung off to the right at an acute angle. He did not brace his legs, this time. This was a different game. He merely ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... desire you to choose some other whelp. Being in your best lust, I would topple with ye, And pluck a good crow, ere ye brake your fast with me. What? are you mankin[261] now? I reckon it best, I, To bind your hands behind ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... made and won he felt that silent approbation behind him; insensibly it steadied Ford and sharpened his instinct for reading the faces of the other players, so that the miniature towers of red chips and blue grew higher until they threatened to topple—whereupon other little towers began to grow up around them. And the men in the saloon began to feel the fascination of his success, so that they grouped themselves about his chair and peered down over his ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... square, while many were certainly not more than seven feet by six. Such primitive, ramshackle, shaky-looking dwellings I never before have seen. As compared with them, an Aino hut, even of the poorest kind, is a model of solidity and architectural beauty. They looked as if a single gust would topple them and their human contents into the water. Yet, if it were better carried out, it is not a bad idea to avoid paying any Anamese form of rent, to secure perfect drainage, a never-failing water supply, good fishing, immunity ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Desire KABILA; KABILA immediately assumed governing authority and pledged to hold elections by April 1999, but, in December 1998, announced that elections would be postponed until all foreign military forces attempting to topple the government had withdrawn from the country; KABILA was assassinated in January 2001 and was succeeded by his son Joseph KABILA election results: results of the last election were: MOBUTU Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga reelected president ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... two reports were simultaneous. Under the rising powder smoke the buck was seen to spring in air and then topple over in a quivering mass, dead beyond a doubt. The crashing echoes rolled away into the depths of the forest. We were on our feet instantly, ready to run forward with drawn knives; but before we could do so an unexpected thing checked us. Up the valley ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... and his autocrat promptly dragged one foot from under him, causing him to topple on the parapet. He hissed at her. Le Rossignol looked up at the threatening flat head and ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... satisfaction at securing such a helper. He told the young man that his particular care would be the dynamite—to handle the boxes, store them in the little shed, unpack the sticks, and follow the drills, planting the rendrock ready for the blast that was to topple the hillock into the pit. Mr. Wagg explained to the warden, after a time, that the dynamite could be planted more safely and to better advantage when the drillers were off the job. Therefore, Vaniman was detailed to help during the noon hour while ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... on no firmer foundation than these are sure to sink and topple over into ruin. Discipleship which is the result of mere emotion must be evanescent, for all emotion is so. Effervescence cannot last, and when the cause ceases the effect ceases too. Discipleship which enlists in Christ's army, in ignorance of the hard marching and fighting which have to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... I knows on," drawled the old fellow, laughing until his old head seemed ready to topple from his shoulders. "No blood relation, any how, sir. You see, my wife's cousin's aunt's husband's brother Jerry was a cousin to Nicodemus Dunce, who, if I don't disremember, was related in some way to Isacker Pete's wife's sister, ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... general enlightenment in its train, there will be a common ground of interest, even amongst those who differ in race, religion, and language. It was a saying of the patriotic Count Szechenyi, and the saying has passed into a proverb, "Make money, and enrich the country; an empty sack will topple over, but if you fill it, it will stand ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... wooden dolls, bringing them close to the shimmering wall to peer at them, then setting them carefully down again on their feet under the disk. Blake wondered idly why their stiff bodies did not topple over when they were left unsupported, then decided that the paralyzing force of the disk probably left the automatic muscular balancing movements unimpaired, affecting only the powers ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... not running. Only occasionally, on the sidewalks, were there stray pedestrians, and these pedestrians did not loiter. They went their ways with great haste and definiteness, withal there was a curious indecision in their movements, as though they expected the buildings to topple over on them or the sidewalks to sink under their feet or fly up in the air. A few gamins, however, were around, in their eyes a suppressed eagerness in anticipation of wonderful ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... the vulture swoops, when they ride in state To break the strength of armies and topple down the great: Each of these my courteous servant, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... which, when traced inland, are almost invariably found to terminate against glaciers. Thick ice frequently appears, too, crowning the exposed sea-cliffs, from the edges of which it droops in thick, tongue-like, and stalactitic projections, until its own weight forces it to break away and topple down ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... priestly absurdities— called the Bible, forsooth! as if there were no other book worthy to be mentioned beside it. Think for a moment how soon, were it not for their churches and prayers and music and their tomfoolery of preaching, the whole precious edifice would topple about their ears, and the livelihood, the means of contentment and influence, would be gone from so many restless paltering spirits! So what is left them but to play upon the hopes and fears and diseased consciences of men as they best can! The idiot! To tell a man when ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... The drowsy opiate of surrender began to spread its peace through his soul. His torment was the remorse of proving a traitor to his dead uncle's glory. The feather-dustery that had been a monument was about to topple into the weeds. Eddie writhed at that and at his feeling of disloyalty to the employees, who would be turned out wageless in a small town that was staggering under the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... one out of three of the top positions in the League," said Orne. "Maybe more. Think, admiral ... think what would happen if you exposed this thing. There'd be secessions, riots, sub-governments would topple, the central government would be torn by suspicions and battles. What breeds in that atmosphere?" He shook his head. "The Rim War would seem ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... obedience, added gestures to cries. The scared child, further agitated by these demonstrations, entirely lost self-control. His posture caused the unstable trough to topple over and the lad was plunged into the flood. The frothing mouth of a wave swallowed him. No; his doom was not sealed; taught by instinct or by pluck, the little fellow had the presence of mind to save himself by clinging to the capsized canoe. He ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... have done it," said Jim, huskily, determined to break in somewhere on a long chance that the letter would blow out to sea or the Produce Exchange tower topple over. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... a sitting position with both hands tied, the mode of attack being to topple over one's opponent and then bunt him out of the circle. There is considerable skill in the game and a fearful lot of hard work. By the time the victor has won, the seat of the trousers of each of the two contending heroes has cleaned the ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... this corner of the wall. It is vexatious, because I meant that nook for your garden. It is the only place that is sheltered from the wind and at the same time has sunshine and a good outlook. But the wall has thrice been all but finished, and each time the stones have begun to sink and topple. This time Howel the mason was nearly killed. Of course, a feeble bent old woman who can hardly hobble ten rods cannot have undermined a wall at this distance. That is absurd. But the panic the men have got into is not. That wall will have ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... played football for three seasons for nothing. He quietly ducked, allowing his unscientific assailant to overbalance himself, and topple head first on the lobby outside, at the particular moment when the real owner of the racehorse and the real wine-merchant, who had just arrived, reached the top ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... with the currents, they melt very rapidly. The heat of the sun and the action of the waves gradually round off the sharp angles and topple down the spires that characterised them in the land of their birth. The process of dissolution, too, is carried on internally; for rain and melted water on the surface percolates through the mass, rendering ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... passed by a minute donkey with two sole-leather trunks slung on one side of him, and on the other a mountainous heap of hand-bags and valises. This is the only creature with four legs, bigger than a dog, that ever gets down the Clovelly street; and why he does not lose his balance, topple backward, and go rolling continuously down till he falls into the sea below, nobody can imagine. But the valiant little animal kept steadily on, assisted by his owner, who followed and assiduously whacked him with a stout ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... was time for me to go away. I was not sorry to leave Dubechnia, my sorrow was for my love, for which it seemed that autumn had already begun. What a tremendous happiness it is to love and to be loved, and what a horror it is to feel that you are beginning to topple down from that ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... laid hastily and only freshly ballasted, was as rough as corduroy, and the lurching of the big diamond stack made the cab topple at every rail joint. But Sollers was not the runner to lose nerve under difficulties and did not lessen the pressure on the pistons. If Stanley, determined and silent, his lips set and hanging on for dear life ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... a filter-maker's shop, close by old Temple Bar. In this window were displayed a number of glass domes, under each of which a little jet of water tossed about a cork ball. The ball would soar sometimes to the roof of the dome and would then topple over, sometimes to be caught midway upon the jet and sometimes to fall to the bottom, but always to be kept drenched and dancing in a melancholy futile way. I was comparing it with myself when a hand was clapped upon my shoulder and a jolly voice accosted me. The ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... indeed; and the women stiffly encased in the most uncomfortable garments that ever the wit of mortal devised, holding their heads erect, lest the marvellous pyramids, built up with such expenditure of time and money, should topple over, and, in spite of all disadvantages, looking pretty and piquant. It was a crowd not so far removed from us by time, so that we can attribute to the men and women who composed it the same feelings and sensibilities as our own. And yet they were very far removed from us in their surroundings, ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... time Modestine's load would topple off. The villagers were delighted with this exhibition and laughed appreciatively. 'Judge if I was hot!' says Stevenson. 'I remembered having laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a jack-ass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... giant, such as these were, could crowd through that hole. And the hopper was heavy. Applying all his strength to it, he felt it give ever so slightly. It was not bolted down; it was merely balanced there. He would be able to topple it over. And, once over, it would be a difficult affair to handle, especially ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... thing, that retreat. The best I could do was to remain till the very last, having to deal with a number of persistent louts who all but suffocated me, at that. But I managed to empty my slinger into some of them and to topple the rest. I was mainly angry that ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... grow under the eyes of the two women into a delightful resort of youth, learning, and happiness; but Mr Lennox became more opposed to the scheme each moment. His one hope was that Mrs Macintyre might turn out to be impossible, in which case these castles in the air would topple to ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... Jefferson ejaculated, moving restlessly in his effort to find the easiest corner of his chair. "I hope nothing is going to excite me. I have heart-disease, little girl, and I'm liable to topple off at any moment. I tell you, ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... stretched the grey barricade that seemed to mark the spot where the voyage was to end. There was no going beyond that clear-cut line. When the ship came up to it, there would be no more water beyond; naught but a vast space into which the vessel must topple and go on falling to the end of time. The great sirens were silent, for the fog of the night before had lifted, laying bare a desolate plain. The ship was sliding into oblivion, magnificently indifferent to the catastrophe that awaited its arrival at the edge of the universe. And she was ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... its steepled head toward the sky, but its roof had fallen in, and Turner Hall was a mass of blackened ruins. Parts of the walls were still standing, swaying as if ready to topple over any moment. Off in one corner the blackened timbers and jumbled bits of ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... anew. Our greatest danger to-day is our apparent safety. We wrap ourselves into a false security, while a dry rot is permitted to stealthily corrode the pillars of intellectual conviction that must uphold all. Unless this is fought, and fought effectively, the structure of our Catholic life will topple like a house ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... over purity and tenderness in those outrageous orchestral arabesques that descend on the themes of the "Faust" and "Marguerite" movements, and whip them into grinning distortions. We hear it deny and stamp and curse, topple the whole world over in ribald scorn. The concluding chorus may seek to call in another emotion. You may turn with all apparent fervor and pray "das Ewig-Weibliche" to save you. The other expression remains the telling one. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... or tired: Insatiate wanderer, marvellously fired, Most grandly piling and piling into the air Stones that will topple or arch ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... to the principal, and the Ladies' Committee approved, after having proposed seven amendments, all of which Flora caused to topple over by their ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... fall. No one else fell. We kept pulling it away by the string, you know, a few inches at a time, so that you did not notice, but you had really farther and farther to stretch, and it was that that made you topple over." ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... and foam, his heart failed him, and because his heart failed him he began to sink. If we turn away from Jesus Christ, and interrupt the continuity of our faith by calculating the height of the breakers and the weight of the water that is in them, and what will become of us when they topple over with their white crests upon our heads, then gravity will begin to work, and we shall begin to sink. And well for us if, when we have sunk as far as our knees, we look back again to the Master and say, 'Lord, save ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... machines. I see Germany in the likeness of a boxer with a mailed fist as big as and rather heavier than its body, and I am convinced that when the moment comes for that mailed fist to be lifted, the whole disproportionate system will topple over. The military ascendancy of the future lies with the country that dares to experiment most, that experiments best, and meanwhile keeps its actual fighting force fit and admirable and small and flexible. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... "our friend George bets that when the tower of the Singer Building falls, it will topple over toward the North River, and I bet ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... dash o'er them and topple around, They see they are pretty near sure to be drowned. A terrible wave o'er the quarter-deck breaks, And the vessel it sinks ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... see what issue is ordained to come from this dreadful deed which so shaketh all the land, making the abbey towers topple and tremble to their oldest and deepest foundations. Truth is awakened and gone forth conquering and to conquer. It cannot be that ancient iniquities will be much longer endured, the arm of Wrath is raised against ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... for the numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge pile of old magazines which stood in one corner, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threatening to topple over each instant, like the Leaning Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades at the windows, some faded chintz valances about the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered with chintz. On a black-walnut shelf between ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or burn up if Pauli just ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... looked at the huge mountain of which the cemetery hill formed one of the lowermost buttresses. "If the Piz della Margna were to topple over and crush me where I stand, it would be less unforeseen than was my sweet Etta's fate. But I frighten you, lady,—a poor return for your kindness. That is your way,—through the village, and by ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the second, or if they still lingered, were retrieved and mouthed by a well-trained butcher dog, of no recognisable breed. Sometimes, after receiving its wound, a bird would walk about for a second or two, apparently unhurt; then suddenly stagger and topple over. Sometimes, as the trap opened, a bird would stand dazed. Then a ball was trundled at it to compel it to rise. Grey breast feathers strewed the whole inclosure, in places quite thickly, like a carpet. As for the crowd at the tables inside the Casino, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... points of the village. But the nearer aspect of the blasted region had something frightful in it. The cliffs were water-worn, as if they had been gnawed for thousands of years by hungry waves. In some places they overhung their base so as to look like leaning towers which might topple over at any minute. In other parts they were scooped into niches or caverns. Here and there they were cracked in deep fissures, some of them of such width that one might enter them, if he cared to run the risk of meeting the regular tenants, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... men, a people against a people! I can understand the deadly rage of the victors, the sanguinary reaction of the vanquished, the political volcanoes which rumble in the bowels of the globe, shake the earth, topple over thrones, upset monarchies, and roll heads and crowns on the scaffold. But what I cannot understand is this mutilation of the granite, this placing of monuments beyond the pale of the law, the destruction of inanimate things, which belong neither to those who destroy them ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... those snows and the frost at night will glaze them into ice. The more conformable ice-blocks will gradually be cemented together, while the fierce winds that beat upon the ridge will wear away the supports of the more egregious and unstable blocks, and one by one they will topple into the abyss on this side or on that. It will probably never again be the smooth, homogeneous slope it has been; "the gable" will probably always present a wide cleft, but the slopes beyond it, stripped now of their accumulated ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... anything to tell," said Peaches, folding her arms and tilting her chin so high Mickey feared she might topple backward. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... sleeves of his jacket were so short, that four inches of bone above his wrist were bared to view—hat he had none—his ears were very large, and the rims of them red with cold, and his neck was so immeasurably long and thin, that his head appeared to topple for want of support. When he had come on deck, he stood with one hand raised to his forehead, touching his hair instead of his hat, and the other occupied with a half-roasted red-herring. "Yes, sir," said Smallbones, standing before ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... leaning against the back of a chair, feeling she was surely going to topple over in a swoon. Summoning all her reserve of nerve power, she strove to ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... when we tried our first slide guided by the hand of a stronger and more expert companion. How soon we learned to do the trick, and what fun there was in "keep the pot a-boiling," while strings of youngsters took the slide. What if some did topple over? No bones were broken, and the incident always caused a lot of ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... "in the next street to ours there is a miserable building, that looks as if it were just going to topple over; and away up in the third story, in a little room just under the eaves, live two poor, lonely old women. They are both nearly on to ninety. I was in there day before yesterday. One of them is constantly confined to her bed with rheumatism; ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Constantinople. From the train, you cannot see much; mostly old, dirty houses, that look as if they were ready to topple over at the first ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... (Howe'er you came to know it) answer me,— Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches; though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up; Though bladed corn be lodged, and trees blown down; Though castles topple on their warders' heads; Though palaces and pyramids do slope Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure Of nature's germins tumble all together, Even till destruction sicken,—answer me To ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... mischievous as anything. In one hand he held a white fluff-feather. Now these feathers are as light as anything, and will blow in the wind; and whatever they are placed under, whether light or heavy, they are bound to topple over as soon as ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... began to go soon, and when one was fairly caught its high spire was seen to quiver for a moment as if it were in pain, and then topple right over with a crash. The dangers were increased by the falling of such great masses of stone. The whole of that night the flames roared on, and devoured everything in their course. Even those whose houses were at the west end ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... she entered the study, and its chill atmosphere was tomb-like in its effect upon her. Again Sally shuddered. Groping, she found Gaga's cheque book, and turned again to the door. The walls of the tiny room seemed to rise forbiddingly around her, to come closer, to begin to topple over as if in ruin. Sally gasped for breath. She cowered. Everything became dark.... A long time passed before she was again conscious. Clasping the cheque book, Sally felt her way unsteadily, with her ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... house at Nohant, I shall have a month of dreaming about my trip. Real pictures will replace in my brain the fictitious pictures which I compose with great difficulty. All my house of cards will topple over. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... and—what is to be regretted—it has been mostly at the expense of the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push and topple it over. The fear which all Americans have before their eyes, and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked individuality of ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... was just one of those figures that sit in a chair and are pelted with baseballs, three shots for a dime. "Every time you hit the nigger!" That's what the man used to call. When some one hit him a good hard crack he'd topple off the seat and then the man would give you a kewpie doll or maybe an ash-tray. The poor old wooden "nigger" had been packed away and all we had seen was his black face sticking ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we grow contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the spirit has ceased from its labours, that the high-built beauty of the spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple in the desert sinks into the sand, watched only by a few barbarians too feeble to renew its ancient pomp and the ritual of its once shining congregations. Before we, who were the bright children of the dawn, may return as the twilight race into ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... 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 multitude ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... towards her, upset the spider-legged table that was always ready to topple over on the least provocation, made a hopeless labyrinth of her embroidery silks, gave her a kiss of greeting, and hurried on with numberless questions, just as if he were in the greatest possible haste, and it was a necessity of life and death that he should throw off everything that ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... think his advice is good at breakfast time, and during the forenoon, egad, I think it excellent and most reasonable, and I determine to stick by it and if Conshy and I dine alone, I do adhere to his maxims most rigidly; but if any of my old allies should topple in to dinner, Conshy, who is a solitary mechanic, bolts instanter. Still I remember him for a time—we sit down—the dinner is good. "I say, Jack, a glass of wine, Peter what shall we have?" and until the pint a—piece is discussed, all ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Tom, reeling about. He saw Mr. Damon and Mr. Fenwick topple to the beach. The roaring increased, and the rumbling was like thunder, close at hand. The island seemed to ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... not what feeling 'more than joy' can be, unless haply it topple over t' other side and become woe, and I would be loth ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... drooping features, the languid inanition of the arms. The veins throb in his hands and feet: the spine has ceased to be rigid, and were it not for the support of Judith's hands buried in his hair, he would topple over inanimate. The treatment of the bronze is successful and its patina is admirable. Judith's drapery, it is true, has a restless crackling appearance. It is furrowed into small and rather fussy ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... night when I break from the fight, My Kingdom's awaiting for me; There's comfort and rest, and the warmth of your breast, And little ones climbing my knee. There's fire-light and song — Oh, the world may be wrong! Its empires may topple and fall: My home is my care — if gladness be there, It's a ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... II, is startling evidence of this accusation. Moreover, it is fast becoming the condition to-day, a fact indicated by the almost universal demand for a revolution in social ethics, the foundation to which, for some reason, has become awry, threatening to topple down the structure erected upon it. Society can see nothing to originate, an incalculable number of attempts to better human conditions always proving failures, and worsening the human status. It is dawning upon the minds of the true lovers of humanity, that there is nothing else to be done, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... lightless passage to the front rooms, a curious sensation touched Halder—a terrifying conviction that some undefinable thing had just gone wrong. And with that, his whole body was suddenly rigid, every muscle locking in mid-motion. He felt momentum topple him slowly forwards; then he was no longer falling but stopped, tilted off-balance at a grotesque angle, suspended in a web of forces he could not feel. Not the slightest sound had come from Kilby, invisible in ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... powerless: there must be first a proper choice of materials, and next a proper use of them. The painter's pigments are the bricks wherewith the mortar of his mind must be mixed, either to erect an edifice that shall endure for ages, or one which will quickly topple over like a house of cards. Now in nothing more than in painting is prevention better than cure—indeed cure may be said to be here out of the question: for good or for evil a picture once painted is painted for ever. Without a strong ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... scalping the mountains, grinding all the sharp edges into powder or leaving a polished surface behind it. It gathers rock dust and the wreck of every living thing, and mixes them up with snow and ice. These congeal again, or are compressed into soft, filthy monumental masses, waiting their turn to topple into the waves at last. The wash of the sea undermines the glacier; the sharp sunbeams blast it. It is forever sinking, settling, crushing in upon itself and splitting from end to end, with fearful and prolonged intestinal reverberations, that remind one of battle thunders and murder ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... for me, Mun Bun?" asked Rose, as she caught her little brother just as he was about to topple over in the aisle, from the swaying of the train. "I told you to wait for me. You might be hurt ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... that Japan is a home of earthquakes, and when an earthquake starts to rock the land and topple the houses about the peoples' ears, then a tall, strong house of stone or brick would be both dangerous in its fall and very expensive to put up again. The second is that Japan is a land of fires. The people are very careless. They use cheap lamps and still cheaper petroleum. A ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... chase, not at all that we wished harm to a soul in the world. If, on occasion, a slight hint of maliciousness did find its place with us, it was only because in this insecure world it is delightful to reaffirm our own security as we watch our neighbours topple over. We do not wish them to "topple," but if somebody has got to fall we would rather it were ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... distant by road, but only 1 by rail. The steep flanks of the mountains between Beaulieu and Cape Roux are so exposed to the sun, and so protected from the cold, that this region has been called the Petite Afrique. Cape Roux itself, the abrupt termination of a lofty ridge, looks as if it would topple over into the sea, to which it is so close that both the rail and the road have to pass through it by tunnels. On the eastern side of this cape is the equally picturesque and sheltered bay, the Mer d'Eze, backed by a phalanx of lofty stalwart cliffs and mountains. On the peak (1300 ft. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... To topple over from the sublime to the ridiculous is not difficult. But the presence of humour might save the sublimities from a fall, and Browning had hitherto in his art made but slight and occasional use of a considerable gift of humour which he possessed. It was humour not of the highest ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... that wear a purple skin, Men and maidens carry in, Brimming baskets on their shoulders, Which they topple one by one Down the winepress. Men are holders Of the place there, and alone Tread the grapes out, crush them down, Letting loose the soul of wine— Praising Bacchus as divine, With the loud songs called ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... wills before they took a journey of a hundred miles; and no wonder, when the roads were so bad that men had frequently to be hired to walk beside a gentleman's carriage, and give it a push to either side, when it showed an inclination to topple over; or oxen sometimes were fetched, to pull the coach out of a deep quagmire of mud, from which only one half of it was visible. So Farmer Lavender shook his head, and said "he didn't know, no, he didn't, whether he'd let his little maid go." But Mrs Jane was determined—and so ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... sealer, however, is not surprised at their indifference, guessing its cause. He knows that in the weird forests of Tierra del Fuego there is many a tree standing, to all appearance sound in trunk, branches, everything, yet rotten from bark to heartwood, and ready to topple over at the slightest touch, even if but a gun be rested against it. The fall of such trees being a thing of common occurrence, and the natives accustomed to it, they never give it a second thought. The fishers in the canoes have not heeded it, while the sneezing of Caesar has been unheard ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... mean!" blustered Fred, and coming closer, he hit Nat on the shoulder. At once our hero hit back, and Fred received a thump in the mouth that caused him to topple backwards. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... most natural, one wonders, that there are times when one small nook of earth shuts out, as it were, the whole universe from our eyes, when one personal interest occupies us to the exclusion of the whole world of action, and progress, and speculation, and thought? Thrones may topple over, nationalities be effaced, revolutions in politics, in religion, in science be effected, and all pass unheeded while we sit counting our own private loss and gain in love or friendship, in grief or joy. Whilst Madelon ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... scene behind the carriage window-panes Goes flitting past in furious flight; whole plains With streams and harvest-fields and trees and blue Are swallowed by the whirlpool, whereinto The telegraph's slim pillars topple o'er, Whose wires look strangely like ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... come to think of it, maybe the Candy Rabbit did topple over by himself, to strike against the bowl and so cause Dorothy and Madeline to turn around in time to stop the bad cat from getting the goldfish. Mind you, I am not saying for sure that this happened. The cat's ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish'd to her cock; her cock a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes Cannot be heard so high.—I'll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... coastguard's body was outside the cliff in full sunlight, giving a final thrust from the cliff wall. And then I saw Marah leap into the stern sheets as they passed out of the cave; he gave a little thrust to the coastguard, just a gentle thrust—enough to make him lose his balance and topple over. ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... stakes should be forced well down into the soil. Often, in dry weather when the ground is hard, they are not driven down far enough and the first hard rain softens the soil around them, and, if a strong wind exists, the plant may topple over and carry the stake with it. In tying them don't hug them as you would a long-lost brother; give them some natural freedom. In large groups, place the stakes around them, three or four feet apart, and string from stake to stake, running cross strings through the ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... far and wide, despoiled Of all their giant trunks: for as the mound On earth and brushwood stood, a timber frame Held firm the soil, lest pressed beneath its towers The mass might topple down. There stood a grove Which from the earliest time no hand of man Had dared to violate; hidden from the sun (27) Its chill recesses; matted boughs entwined Prisoned the air within. No sylvan nymphs Here found a home, nor Pan, but savage rites And barbarous worship, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... the left of the road, which had now become absolutely impassable again on account of innumerable transports. It was a dangerous ride, for any moment the bicycle might smash into some unseen obstacle and topple over into the abyss on the right, into which stones and loose earth were continually falling as the cycle pushed them to ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... since his time has been to build on an addition now and then, as need arose, and to change the ornamentation to suit the taste of the day. At one time, it seemed that the whole structure might be rent asunder and topple into ruins; but again there came a master-builder named Abraham Lincoln, and with the aid of a million devoted workmen who rallied to ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... to lead her up the steep bank beyond and through the rocks and rotten timbers to the great beam that protruded from the shattered foundations of the mill. The rickety old wheel, weather-beaten and sad, rose above them and threatened to topple over if they so much ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... breath was not felt within it, and the rain was heard descending in deluging showers without, though no drop came through the open roof. The thunder shook the walls and pillars of the old fabric, and threatened to topple them down from their foundations, but they resisted the shocks. The lightning played around the tall spire springing from this part of the fane, and ran down from its shattered summit to its base, without doing any damage. The red bolts struck the ground ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hour's walk Harry was inclined to think that his brother was right. The houses were generally constructed of canes, plastered with mud, and painted yellow. As the result of earthquakes, scarce a house stood upright—some leaned sideways, and looked as if they were going to topple over into the road; while others leaned back, as if, were you to push against them, they would collapse and crush ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... build a cooking fire when there is no time to do better. The objection is that the supporting logs must be close enough together to hold up the pots and pans, and, being round, this leaves too little space between them for the fire to heat the balance evenly; besides, a pot is liable to slip and topple over. A better way, if one has time, is to hew both the inside surfaces and the tops of the logs flat. Space these supports close enough together at one end for the narrowest pot and wide enough apart at the other for the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... game in which they pile blocks up to see how high they can go before they topple over. In medieval times, petty rulers in their Italian states vied with one another to see who could build the tallest tower. Some beautiful results of this game still remain in Florence, Siena, and other ...
— A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis • Glen W. Watson
... and is this the cause of your lofty gait? Do you straighten yourself to think that you have committed a murder, when a chance-falling stone has often done the same? Is it a proud thing to topple down six feet perpendicular of immortal manhood, though that lofty living tower needed perhaps thirty good growing summers to bring it to maturity? Poor savage! And you account it so glorious, do you, to mutilate and destroy what God himself was more than a quarter ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... from the green gleam of the starboard light shining feebly upon the flight of rain and sprays. He was actually looking at it when its ray fell upon the uprearing sea which put it out. He saw the head of the wave topple over, adding the mite of its crash to the tremendous uproar raging around him, and almost at the same instant the stanchion was wrenched away from his embracing arms. After a crushing thump on his back he found himself suddenly afloat and ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... affairs go well with him; and he will grow each day richer and greater and more powerful. But if ever he let one kindly thought for living thing come into his heart, in that moment all his plans and schemes will topple down about his ears; and from that hour his name will be despised by men, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... topple over when I stand up," replied the American. "The rock is narrow and my head is already swimming. I fear I cannot reach you. It is ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... having finished her sweeping, had come out on the porch also, and in garments that indicated no padding whatever dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made a dab at her loosely piled hair to see it did not topple down, and proceeded to read the morning newspaper. It was positively shocking, thought Mrs. Barnett, how women could so far forget themselves. ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... had combined, shoulder to shoulder, to make one magnificent and desperate onslaught on to the obdurate door, they quietly "raised the siege," and quitting their hold, left the phalanx of small heroes to topple head over heels and one over another on to the stone floor of the passage, while they sauntered off arm-in-arm to the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... of lofty houses in those cities of southern Europe in which the dwellings fronting the streets are perforated beneath by lines of squat piazzas, and present above a dingy and windowless breadth of wall. In course of time the piers attenuate and give way; the undermined precipices topple down, parting from the solid mass behind in those vertical lines by which they are traversed at nearly right angles with their line of stratification; the perpendicular front which they had covered comes to be presented, in consequence, to the sea; its faults ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... from an arctic temperature to double the boiling water point, from 250 deg. below zero to 500 deg. above it, or the point at which tin melts. Subjected to these extremes, the glassy rocks crack, shiver and crumble away; enormous land slides occur; peaks topple over; and tons of debris, crashing down the mountains, are swallowed up forever in the yawing ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... regained. Then he continued his weary ascent till he reached the summit of the cliffs, where he saw the boat made fast to the wreck, and the mate and passenger clinging to the forestay. In the next glare of the lightning, with a thrill of horror, he saw the hulk topple over and disappear ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... microscopic germs, of every infinitesimal increase of cold or heat, or damp or dryness, of alternations of work and play, oscillation of want and excess incalculably small, any of which may disturb the beautiful needle-point balance and topple us over into disease. Such Job's comforting is one of the many sledge-hammer ironies with which the Cosmos diverts itself at our expense; and of course the Cosmos may permit itself what it likes, and none of us can complain. But is it possible for one of ourselves, a poor, sick, hustled human being, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... gallant fellow! reined about in wide, sweeping circle, and turned back to meet his running comrade. They saw him bend to lend a helping hand, saw him bend still lower as three of the Indians leaped from their ponies and, kneeling, loosed their rifles all at once; saw him topple out of saddle, and his stricken horse, with flapping rein, trot aimlessly about a moment before he, too, went floundering in his tracks; saw the other soldier turn to face his fate by his dying comrade's side, fighting to the last, overwhelmed ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... into cliffs and caves and towers and minarets. These two aspects of mountain scenery have been seized by painters, and in their art two classes of mountains are represented: mountains with towering forms that seem ready to topple in the first storm, and mountains in masses that seem to frown defiance at the tempests. Both classes have told the truth. The two aspects are sometimes caught by our painters severally; sometimes they are combined. Church paints ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... and soil—an ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... tall spire was seen to slip from its position, topple over, and go crashing down into a dark blue gulf ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... in some moment of boredom, the Hand were to brush the little pieces aside, were to close the board and put it away, then, with what ignominy and feeble helplessness would these little black figures topple clumsily ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... woefully likely to degenerate into following the lower nature, which ought not to be followed, but covered and kept under hatches—such a life is sure to be a topsy-turvy life, which, being based upon the narrowest point, must, by the laws of equilibrium, topple over sooner or later. If you would have your lives established, they must be ordered. You must bring your brains to bear upon them, and you must bring more than brain, you must bring to bear on every part of them the spiritual instincts that are quickened by contact with the thought of the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the ax and gave a chop at the beanstalk which cut it half in two. The ogre felt the beanstalk shake and quiver, so he stopped to see what was the matter. Then Jack gave another chop with the ax, and the beanstalk was cut in two and began to topple over. Then the ogre fell down and broke his crown, and the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the great emporium at Covent Garden, groaning beneath the wealth and weight of the vegetable produce they carried, and laden so high with cunningly- arranged nests of baskets on baskets, that one believed each moment that they would topple over, and held the breath for fear of hastening their fall; many a time sought to trace each curving lane to its probable goal, or tried to hunt out the hidden histories which lay concealed within the crumbling walls of the old dwellings ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... joined Siward in the Scotch war. He may have looked, wondering, for the first time in his life, upon the bones of the old world, where they rise at Dunkeld out of the lowlands of the Tay; and have trembled lest the black crags of Birnam should topple on his head with all their pines. He may have marched down from that famous leaguer with the Gospatricks and Dolfins, and the rest of the kindred of Crinan (abthane or abbot,—let antiquaries decide),—of Dunkeld, and of Duncan, and of Siward, and of the outraged ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... The Pahang Prince, with whom I was travelling, unlike most of the men of that breed, was a very nervous person, and it was not without much persuasion that I had succeeded in inducing him to join me in my camp under the shadow of the great rock. He feared that it would topple over and crush us, nor was he completely reassured until Saiyid Jasin—the chief of his followers—a shrunken, wizened little man of many wiles, had propped the stone up with a slender sapling, over which he had duly recited ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... glowing like a furnace, the star-touching conflagration of the End of Things rippling up the east in increasing waves of fire, in place of the usual dawn ... I heard the crying of mankind ... of sinners ... for mountains to topple over on them and cover them from the wrath ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... meat, would ride out after them on the best of the extra horses which were always kept saddled and tied together behind the last wagon for services of this kind. Kit, who was already an excellent horseman and a splendid shot with the rifle, would soon overtake them, and topple one after another of their huge fat carcasses over on the prairie until half a dozen or more were lying dead. The tender humps, tongues, and other choice portions were then cut out and put in a wagon which ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the skeleton of a noble building which had once been the pride of Flemish craftsmen. Even as we turned toward it parts of it were falling upon the ruins already on the ground. I saw a great pillar lean forward and then topple down. A mass of masonry crashed from the portico. Some stiff, dark forms lay among the fallen stones; they were dead soldiers. I hardly glanced at them, for we were in ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various |
