"Totter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 even ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... papa, now I'll tell you how it was. I was sometime taken with a sudden giddiness, and Humphrey seeing me beginning to totter, ran to my assistance, quite frightened, poor fellow, and took me ...
— St. Patrick's Day • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... often 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 ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the point where the schooners happened to be just at 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, though of less height and force; when, gradually, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Drolly, contemptuously so 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 up hill and down hill, 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 and the weaver seemed both palsy-stricken, and Cree, gasping ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... Dynasties may totter and half the world bleed to death, but one or the other corner patisserie goes ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... buttresses, flying-buttresses, that keep the monument up, one thing there is that makes it totter. There is no loud battering from without, but a certain softness in the very foundations, which attacks the crystal with an imperceptible thaw. What thing do I mean? The humble stream of warm tears shed ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... to 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
... 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 ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... came quietly along the path with a hoe in his hand, fell in 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
... vision changed once more, and I saw a great crowd of men, each in the uniform of an officer of the United States army, clustered around one who seemed to be their chief. But while I looked, I saw one by one totter and fall, and directly I perceived that the epaulette or shoulder-strap on the shoulder of each was a great hideous yellow worm, that gnawed away the shoulder and palsied the arm and ate into the vitals. Every second, one fell and died, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... sitting up. "When I have 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 scarcely drag his legs along. The necessity of ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... to seize her friend and draw her out of the path of the stampede. As she lifted her a cry arose, like the wail of a lost world facing the judgment. The floor swayed, the machines about seemed to totter, and the floor above seemed bending down with some great weight. There was a cracking, wrenching, twisting, as of the whole great building in mortal pain, and just as Katie drew her unconscious friend away to the window the floor above ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... without any hesitation 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 ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... seriously; that pale ignorances, presiding over microscopes by which they cannot distinguish flesh from nostoc or fishes' spawn or frogs' spawn, have visited upon us their wan solemnities. We've been damned by corpses and skeletons and mummies, which twitch and totter with pseudo-life ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... the little farm garden behind the barn. But, indeed, it was no time to care much for flowers; everywhere men's hearts were restless and excited, and much that had stood firm for years now seemed to totter. A political hurricane was blowing over wide districts; every day the newspapers related something unexpected and alarming; a time of commotion and universal insecurity seemed impending. Anton thought of the baron's circumstances, and what a misfortune it would be to him ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... chamber the free thought on the lightning's pinion flies to Vienna, St. Petersburg, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, over mountain and plain—over sea and land—through the forest wilderness and the thronged city; taken up by the press, it makes thrones totter and tyrants tremble—tremble at an influence which emanates they know not whence and contemplates a purpose they know not what—an influence whose mystery they are impotent to penetrate, and whose shadowy but awful right ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... bruised and numb? Did something of the man's suffering, of his love and of his despair appear—despite his efforts—upon his face and in the depth of his glance?—and thus made visible did they—even through their compelling intensity—cause that invisible barrier of social prejudices to totter and to break? It were difficult to say. Certain it is that Crystal's whole heart warmed to the stranger as it had never warmed before. She felt that here was a man standing before her now, whose promises would ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... 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
... 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 ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... to be stood against, but by determined veterans. The obvious effects, silenced his musketry; but not the great guns: though we could distinctly hear the shot crash through and through her, and the mainmast began to totter. Fortunately, I kept way on the Foudroyant: and was, though with infinite difficulty, able to wear, and give him as compleat a dose from the larboard as we had done from the starboard side; and, down came his mainmast. The action then continued, with great obstinacy. A man, in the heat of the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... late, and it would have 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither, And monie a cantie day, John, We've had wi' ane anither; Now we maun totter down, John, And hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... still higher, and compare it with what we 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 ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... life 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
... 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 ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... and the cabin seemed to totter on the brink of the chasm. Then the door fell, and the ruffians ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact that he had erased for ever from Billie's mind that undignified picture of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another which showed him brave, resourceful, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... so young to perpetual prisonage, was indeed hard, too hard—enough to make reason totter on its throne and paralyze the powers of even ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... totter, empires crumble, All their glories cease to be; While she, Christ-like, crowns the humble, And ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... cheered. At the word given, the broadside was poured in, and, dark as it was, the effects from it were evident. Two of the midship ports of the antagonist were blown into one, and her mainmast was seen to totter, and then to fall over the side. The Aurora then set her courses, which had been hauled up, and shooting ahead, took up a raking position, while the Russian was still hampered with her wreck, and poured in grape and cannister ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... silver, Kirstie, and fetch me my bonnet!" At first Mrs. Johnstone began to totter about the room without aim, but presently fell to choosing this and that of her small possessions and tossing them into the seat of the armchair in a nervous hurry which seemed to gather with her strength. "Quick, lass! ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but no foothold for the horse, and then, after one of its daring leaps, which were more those of a mountain sheep or goat than of a horse, Ali Baba alighted at the very edge of the perpendicular portion of the valley side, and those above saw him totter for a moment, and then ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... Pacific Bank held out for eighteen months. Then it began to totter. The financial world stood bewildered. It had always been reckoned one of the safest banks in the country. People asked what could be the cause. I knew well enough, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... between the 11th and 12th of August of that year, the mountain appeared to be wholly enveloped in a remarkable luminous cloud. The inhabitants fled in consternation; but before they could all escape, the mountain began to totter, and the greater part of it tumbled down and disappeared. The crash with which it fell was dreadful, the noise resembling the discharge of volleys of artillery. Besides that part of the mountain which thus fell in, a large extent ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... 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
... the last word was in my ears, the whole group vanished, and there was nothing between me and the Chinese printed folding-screen that stood before the door. I was cold and trembling; I could only totter forward and throw myself on the sofa. This strange new power had manifested itself again . . . But was it a power? Might it not rather be a disease—a sort of intermittent delirium, concentrating my energy of brain into moments of ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... 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 set aside a ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and pull. "One, two, three—pull! Once more—pull! Now the third time—pull! And out she comes!" The bolt suddenly gives and the drawer drops violently to the floor, scattering its contents in every direction, while the two men totter backward and cling to each other to keep their balance. At the same moment the voices of Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Campbell make themselves heard without in vague cries of astonishment, question, and apprehension, mounting into a wild shriek as the ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... 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 lowered themselves to ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... credit to the Church of Rome. Two men 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] Salisbury was foolish to a proverb. His ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Dreadnought. But there would be a more decisive way of doing good than any of these. You might refuse the million pounds. That would be a shock to the systems of the comfortable —a blow struck at the great Money God which would make it totter; a thrust in defence of pride and freedom such as had not been seen before. That would be a moral tonic more needed than all the draughts of your newly endowed hospitals. Will it ever be administered? Well, perhaps when the D.W.T. club has grown a ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... Divided as we are, thanks to our jealousies and our susceptibilities, the friars unite us in a common lot, in a firm bond, so firm that many are unable to move their elbows. Take away the friar, gentlemen, and you will see how the Philippine edifice will totter; lacking robust shoulders and hairy limbs to sustain it, Philippine life will again become monotonous, without the merry note of the playful and gracious friar, without the booklets and sermons that ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... direction indicated. A young Italian had just climbed up the tower of a church opposite the Vidiserti palace, and there unfurled the national standard. The tricolor fluttered gayly in the wind. Suddenly, however, the young man was seen to totter; he sought to hold himself, turned a somersault and fell crushed to the pavement. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and thither, holding up his eyelids with his hands, and scarcely able to totter along, while his snowy beard now fell to his knees, but found nothing except a dilapidated old chest, which he opened. It seemed empty, but as he raised the lid a voice from the bottom said: "Welcome, if you had kept me waiting ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... contemptuously so 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 and the weaver seemed both palsy-stricken, and Cree, gasping for breath, would ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... summer-day I chanced to see This old man doing all he could About the root of an old tree, A stump of rotten wood. The mattock totter'd in his hand; So vain was his endeavour That at the root of the old tree He might have worked ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... 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 speaks with ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... calm that was well-nigh as terrible, when she entered sobbing into the cave to tell him the pitiable little lie that all her visible distress was for a pony to whom she had said farewell. He saw her presently totter forward to put more fuel on the fire and begin to prepare their evening meal. With eyes from which the smoke of passion had now lifted, he saw what he had only vaguely seen before: that she was thin and haggard; ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... this disturbing experience, or because, as Crowley declared, he had "imprudently attracted to himself forces of evil too great and terrible for him to withstand, presumably Abramelin demons," Mathers' reason began to totter. This then was the situation at the time of his rupture with the Order, and the dramatic incident referred to was the sudden appearance of Crowley in London, who, whether acting as Mathers' envoy or on his own initiative, broke into the premises of the Order, with a ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Anderson, 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... 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 ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... 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 a ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... of doors, triumphant in the result of my labors, while I was admiring the princely air with which little Armand helped baby to totter along the path you know, I saw a carriage coming, and tried to get them out of the way. The children tumbled into a dirty puddle, and lo! my works of art are ruined! We had to take them back and change their things. I took the little one in my arms, never thinking ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... weakness. Lord ROBERTS'S was cats. Achilles' was tendons. Mine is toothache (Biographers, please note). When my jaw annoys me I try to propitiate it with libations of whisky, brandy, iodine, horse-blister and patent panaceas I buy from sombreroed magicians in the Strand. If these fail I totter round to the dentist, ring the bell and run away. If the maid catches me before I can escape and turns me into the waiting-room I examine the stuffed birds and photographs of Brighton Pier until she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... for nothing. "He does look very 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. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... lives a thousand feet up the valley," said he. "We might take him half a litre of rum. He is a Breton of Brest who has been here many years. He eats nothing but bananas, for he lives in a banana grove, and he is able only to totter to the river for water. He never moves from his little hut except to pick a few bananas. He lives alone. Hardly any one sees him from year to year. I think he would be glad to ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... fixt My wistful eyes on two fair images, Both crown'd with stars and high among the stars, - The Virgin Mother standing with her child High up on one of those dark minster-fronts - Till she began to totter, and the child Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry Which mixt with little Margaret's, and I woke, And my dream awed me: —well—but what ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... 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 forsaken ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... 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 friend. The circumstances ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... shiver, totter, brandish, joggle, quaver, shudder, tremble, flap, jolt, quiver, sway, vibrate, fluctuate, jounce, reel, swing, wave, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... for two 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 no ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... you cause the whole fabric to totter, for on this doctrine, as a foundation, rests the arch, of which ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... terminated, adding to the Union still larger territories—now free soil indeed, but furnishing a field for renewed battles between slavery and liberty. New revolutions were about to break forth in Europe, to convulse the Eastern Hemisphere, and cause old thrones to totter and fall! ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... a drop of molten pitch. She seemed to be summoned before the dreadful judgment-seat of Christ, to hear her father's curse, and her own eternal doom. She could restrain herself no longer, and sobbed bitterly; the light grew dim in her eyes; her feet began to totter. Obrazetz heard her sobs, and interrupted his exhortation. 'Nastia, Nastia! what aileth thee?' he enquired, with lively sympathy, of his daughter, whom he tenderly loved. She had not strength to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Glaucon—half 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 multitude ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... 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 flight ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... reason that, as the season progressed, better pitching would have to be faced by the Cincinnati club, while it was doubtful whether the Cincinnati pitchers could do any better than they were doing. The manager seemed to have known this, for when the break did come and the Reds began to totter, he said in reference to their downfall that no team could be expected to win with only ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... little cry when she saw her. "Oh, Mrs. Duncan," she said; and she and the baby together seemed to totter and collapse in the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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
... or any sinister bias whatsoever, the most honest and impartial consideration of which I am capable. The public has a full right to it; and this great city, a main pillar in the commercial interest of Great Britain, must totter on its base by the slightest mistake with regard ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... step wavered across the room. Her soul was in her ear. She could hear and feel the step totter, and it shook her as it went. All sounds were trebled to her. Then it struck on the stone step of the staircase, not like a step, but a knell; another step, another and another; down to the very bottom. Each slow step made her head ring and ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... between us. You can 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 ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... 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
... began to fail. The long weary journey helped to make things worse, and when at last they arrived at the journey's end, and went with Miss Love and Minnie to the lodging, poor Laronde had scarcely strength left to totter to his wife's bedside. This was fortunate, however, for he was the better able to ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... his arms wildly, as though trying to fly. The ladies begged me not to approach him lest he totter from his precarious perch. Summoning all the authority I could command, I ordered him to come down off the rock. My commandment unheeded, next I humored him and tried to coax him back upon the pretext of showing him something of special ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... boys return daubed with mud, and in a half-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the good news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys themselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they go into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate. They sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the simplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of twenty to thirty days, during which their ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... "Vamonos," (Let us go) hiccoughed the fiscal. "Manana," (to-morrow) hiccoughed the presidente. The fiscal stormed; the presidente threatened him with jail, ordered him home, and with a body-guard for our protection led us to our room. Scarcely able to totter, the presidente assured us that drunken men were dangerous and ought not to be trusted; at the same time he produced his bottle and offered us a drop to warm us. It required tact and time to get rid of him and his corps of ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... adjure thee to come forth on the earth. Horus uttereth a spell over thee, Horus hacketh thee in pieces, he spitteth upon thee; thou shalt not rise up towards heaven, but shalt totter downwards, O feeble one, without strength, cowardly, unable to fight, blind, without eyes, and with thine head turned upside down. Lift not up thy face. Get thee back quickly, and find not the way. Lie down in despair, rejoice not, retreat speedily, and show not thy ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... good; seek God's glory, not your own. He that does that is of the truth, and remains unharmed. The Lord says further of the faithful: They shall lay their hands on the sick and shall heal them. The hands are the works, and the good lay such hands on the weak that they may support them when they totter. Do I not teach you according to the Gospel? Why do you hesitate and go not into the service of the Lord? Do you ask me still what you ought to do? I ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... the most objectionable was the unexpected change in his father- in-law, who had lapsed quite abruptly into troublesome dotage. From a shrewd business man old Mitchell had become a querulous child, subject to fits of suspicion and violent outbursts of anger. At the most embarrassing moments he would totter into the bank, approach his son- in-law, and insist on talking over matters which he was quite incapable of seeing in a rational light. Mostyn had tried to deal with him firmly, only to bring down a torrent of half-wild threats as to what the old man would ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... thou must traverse with a sea-bird's flight, Whose rest is on the bosom of the storm. Ay! 'tis a fearful plunge! Now think of Death— There is an angel merciful and strong, Hovering ever o'er the weary world, That foldeth in his arms the weak, whose feet Totter upon the brink of the Inane, And, like a mother, wafts them from Earth's strife Into the bosom of eternal rest; Is he not merciful who spares so long The guilty for repentance, and the pure Transplants in all their purity to heaven? Death harms not aught that's lovely, that poor frame Is ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... But I do not laugh As in harlequinade You totter down the path. Now you are old, Pierrot, And drool to your guitar, I do not cast you off. Though your love songs are as feeble as a winter fly's I do not scoff. Exultant I cast back on you What you gave me, And bind you with the unasked love That has kept ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... this great basilica always I think as to a ruin, to find without surprise the doors closed and only to be opened after long knocking. The round campanile that towers and seems to totter in its strange dilapidation beside the church is so beautiful that it surprises one at once by its melancholy nobility in the midst of so much meanness and desolation. It is a building of the ninth century, and may well have been used as much ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... was so friendly, and he held out his hand in such a kindly way, that the little fellow caught at it eagerly, and with the darkness thickening fast, began to trot beside his new friend as he strode off, but only to totter breathlessly at the end of a few minutes and then stumble, ready to fall but for the strong arm which dragged ...
— The Powder Monkey • George Manville Fenn
... descriptions, in order to sustain life; and happy were they who could procure a few handfuls of young nettles, chicken-weed, sorrel, preshagh, buglass, or seaweed, to bring home as food, either for themselves or their unfortunate children. Others, again, were glad to creep or totter to stock-farms, at great distances across the country, in hope of being able to procure a portion of blood, which, on such melancholy occasions, is taken from the heifers and bullocks that graze ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... it necessary first of all to give laborers what belongs to them. A hungry ox will lie down; a hungry horse will totter on his feet and pant. How, then, can we ask a hungry man to work and not declare that he ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... had filled her! He now saw all his long cherished hopes in danger of final destruction, and suddenly cast upon the brink of a precipice, where, while he struggled to protect them from falling, his eyes were dazzled by beholding them totter. ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... and the wagons to see to, and the horses to feed 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 ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... soon 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 defense—namely, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became accursed, and were still. And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven—and the thunder died away—and the lightning did not flash—and the clouds hung motionless—and the waters sunk to their level and remained—and the trees ceased to rock—and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... been yok'd, And they of Nilus' mouth, if there live any. 20 Rome, if thou take delight in impious war, First conquer all the earth, then turn thy force Against thyself: as yet thou wants not foes. That now the walls of houses half-reared totter, That, rampires fallen down, huge heaps of stone Lie in our towns, that houses are abandon'd, And few live that behold their ancient seats; Italy many years hath lien untill'd And chok'd with thorns; that greedy earth wants hinds;— Fierce Pyrrhus, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... 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 by representing him as a man; indicate with sufficient ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the great effect toward which she had so long been working up. She had half expected to see this wicked woman who, in some deadly and mysterious way, had plotted to destroy Maxime Dalahaide, turn livid under the brown stain which she (Virginia) suspected, gasp, totter, and perhaps fall fainting when she heard those fatal names—"New Caledonia, Noumea." But Manuela gave none of these evidences of distress. If she paled, the dusky stain in whose existence Virginia so tenaciously ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... True substance alone is reliable. God is our rod and our staff. Firmly relying on the Rock of substance which is God, we can not be shaken, can not be destroyed. Though all seeming powers totter and fall around us, the One is ever the same, indivisible, unchangeable I Am. When we are one with the eternal Substance, weakness, danger, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... of terrible silence followed for the poor little children. Then they saw the crosses totter, the mounds open, the ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc |
