"Infirm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... met, Attalus first rose to speak, and he began his discourse with a recital of the kindnesses conferred by his ancestors and himself on the Greeks in general, and on the Boeotians in particular. But, being now too old and infirm to bear the exertion of speaking in public, he lost his voice and fell; and for some time, while they were carrying him to his apartments, (for he was deprived of the use of one half of his limbs,) the proceedings of the assembly were for a short time suspended. Then Aristaenus spoke ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... load too heavy for her to raise to her head without the assistance of another. Like all the poor, they are always obliging to each other, and I recently witnessed a pathetic sight at one of these village watering-places, when an old woman, too infirm to carry her "balass" herself, was with difficulty struggling down the bank and leading a blind man, who bore her burden ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... from the Citadel Square. Even the personal attendants upon Dom Gillian were affected by the panic, and leaped over the guard-rails of the platform into the mass of humanity below. In half a score of minutes the enormous square was deserted save for a few infirm and crippled stragglers, and Constans himself thought it prudent to withdraw to the shelter of one of the guard-huts from whose doorway he could still ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... loaded with irons, into a ship, stripped and very ill treated, without being allowed any appeal to justice. . . . I was twenty-eight years old when I came into your highnesses' service, and now I have not a hair upon me that is not gray; my body is infirm, and all that was left to me, as well as to my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor. . . . I implore your highnesses to forgive my complaints. I am, indeed, in as ruined a condition as I have related; ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... his years, then? He's not infirm? no rheumatism or anything of that sort—strong on ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... reflect on those troubles with which I have been so severely exercised by fortune, I begin to distrust this opinion; and sometimes even to dread the weakness and frailty of human nature, for I am afraid lest, when nature had given us infirm bodies, and had joined to them incurable diseases and intolerable pains, she perhaps also gave us minds participating in these bodily pains, and harassed also with troubles and uneasinesses, peculiarly their own. But here I correct myself for ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Lord's day! All these people are returning from the house of prayer. It is this thought that makes the laughing girl restrain her gayety, and teach her steps to keep time with her infirm old friend. ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... except the infirm, stayed indoors to shiver by a fire. Eagle and the girls in their warm capotes breasted with me the coldest winter days. She was as happy as they were; her cheeks tingled as pink as theirs. Sometimes I thought her eyes must answer me with her old self-command; ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... beneath the arcades, and on it at intervals, pieces of bread and cups and vases containing wine of the country that had been purchased at a great price from the guards. Round this table the elders or the infirm among the company were seated on a bench, while the rest of the number, for whom there was not room, stood behind them. At its head was an old man, a bishop among the Christians, one of the five hundred who had seen the risen Lord and received baptism from the hands of the Beloved Disciple. ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... basins for holy water, cut in the solid wall, were worn, like the steps of an ancient building, with countless fingers, long since turned to dust. There, also, were two old confessionals, one of which was so hopelessly infirm that it had been set aside at last, to listen to no more whispered tales of sin and sorrow. The doors of the church at first looked ancient, but wore a really modern air, when compared with the original portals, which, no longer able to stand upright, had been laid against the wall, ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... so strict an observance of its fasts, as proved extremely injurious to her health. Upon which Dr. Denton Nicholas, a very ingenious learned physician of her acquaintance, advised her to abate of those rigours of abstinence, as insupportable to a constitution naturally infirm. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... it specially attracted me, as it happened to be one which was much in my mind during my week's stay at Norton. That remote little village without a squire or any person of means or education in or near it capable of feeling the slightest interest in the people, except the parson, an old infirm man who was never seen but once a week—how wanting in some essential thing it appeared! It seemed to me that the one thing which might be done in these small centres of rural life to brighten and beautify existence is precisely ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... street. If the honest tyrant could have seen him as he walked briskly away, the moment he was safely out of sight, he would have been astonished at the way the broad, stooping shoulders straightened themselves up, and at the rapid, vigorous step that succeeded to the slow, rather infirm gait of his venerable visitor—but these things our worthy Herode ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... letter he writes,' Mrs. Dallas said. She and her husband were sitting as usual in their respective easy chairs on either side of the fire. Not for that they were infirm, for there was nothing of that; they were only comfortable. Mrs. Dallas was knitting some bright wools, just now mechanically, and with a knitted brow; her husband's brow showed ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... reserves. The right of the Spanish army was composed of the German horse led by de Malo, the Walloons on the left were under the Duke of Albuquerque, while in the centre were the veteran Spanish infantry under the command of General Fuentes, who had often led them to victory. He was too old and infirm to mount a horse, but lay in a litter in the midst of ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... only that bride and bridegroom founded each a church. And Mauger was summoned before the synod, and accused of unclerical crimes; and they deposed him from his state, and took from him abbacies and sees. And England every day waxed more and more Norman; and Edward grew more feeble and infirm, and there seemed not a barrier between the Norman Duke and the English throne, when suddenly the wind blew in the halls of heaven, and filled the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rule voluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when they wish to be the final end, and not a means along with other means. Among men, as among all other animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; the successful cases, among men also, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that man is THE ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, the rare exception. But worse still. The higher the type a man represents, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to contain bills to an immense amount; and on the banker showing reluctance to accept the challenge, the stranger sternly demanded compliance with the laws of the game. The card soon turned up which decided the ruin of the banker. 'Heaven!' exclaimed an old infirm Austrian officer, who had sat next to the stranger—'the twentieth part of your gains would make me the happiest man in the universe!' The stranger briskly answered—'You shall have it, then;' and quitted the room. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... our great modern capitals can show, During this period, moreover, many remarkable improvements took place in social life and manners. There was an increasing kindliness and charity. The weak and the infirm were better treated. The education of the poor was encouraged by the founding of free schools. Wealthy citizens of the various towns lavished their fortunes on such public works as baths, aqueducts, and temples, for the benefit of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... undoubtedly believed would be tendered him by the Southern Whigs, seconded by many Southern Democrats. He lost flesh, the color faded from his cheeks, the lids of his dark eyes were livid, and he was evidently debilitated and infirm. At times he would be apparently unconscious of those around him, then he would rally, and would display his wonderful conversational qualities. Yet it was evident to those who knew him best that he was "stumbling down," as Carlyle said of Mirabeau, "like a mighty heathen and Titan ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... it was when addressing itself to the feeble and infirm. "The sick shall be served as though they were Christ in person," says Saint Benedict; and his anxiety for his sons, his urgent recommendations to the Superiors to love and visit the younger brethren, to neglect nothing that may assuage their ills, reveals a maternal care that is truly ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... make my point of when and how the seeds were sown that afterwards so thickly sprouted and flowered. I was greatly to love the drama, at its best, as a "form"; whatever variations of faith or curiosity I was to know in respect to the infirm and inadequate theatre. There was of course anciently no question for us of the drama at its best; and indeed while I lately by chance looked over a copious collection of theatrical portraits, beginning ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... said, "but I'm no' so infirm that I canna cross the room wi'out the help o' your strong young arms, and being particularly comfortable in the chair I now occupy, I shall bide here, ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... on the steps, and presently in came an old arm chair that had belonged to my grandmother. It had lain in the garret covered with spider webs for years, and indeed it was quite infirm in the joints, and must have had a hard time getting down ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... bought into the service, and now fitted out as a man-of-war, but also deeply laden with stores and merchandise of all sorts. Her crew consisted of men pressed from long voyages, while her land forces were a wretched detachment of infirm and decrepit invalids from Chelsea Hospital, desponding under the prospect of a long voyage. Her commander, Captain Kidd, before his death, predicted that misfortunes would overtake her. The Centurion, however, under the judicious management ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... boys are not less attended to: they are employed in coarser work, blanketing and all kinds of common woollens: if they become infirm they spend the remainder of their days here comfortably and under a watchful inspector who attends them in the same manner as the governess does the girls. They are all visited every day by the governor, and a clergyman attends them every evening. By this humane institution a number ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... also of his voice. Both were equally mobile and variable. The latter was alternately sweet and harmonious, and then at times painful, incorrect, and rugged. As for his ordinary strength, he was incapable of supporting the fatigue of any games whatever. He seemed obviously feeble and almost infirm; but once, during his first year at school, one of our bullies having jeered at this extreme delicacy that rendered him unfit for the rough games practised in the playground, Lambert with his two hands ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... man—that is to be seen," Thorstan said then. "And he has no great knowledge of the sea, and is moreover infirm. It would come to this, that he would hurt himself, and you would have the care of him as you did upon the rock out beyond ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... one sister who had married and gone West to live. Her two sons, middle-aged merchants from Ohio, gave the only personal note to the occasion by their somewhat tongue-tied and embarrassed presence, for Gridley's aunt was too aged and infirm to walk with the procession from the Gymnasium, where it formed, to the Library building, where the portrait ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... balancing themselves with different movements, one canting to the right, while the other canted to the left. And three worthy women showed themselves, limping, dragging their legs behind them, crippled by illness and deformed through old age, three infirm old women, past service, the only three pensioners in the establishment which Sister Saint-Benedict managed, who ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... finely tempered steel of his inflexible will, therefore on the one occasion when his decisive plans were unexpectedly frustrated an impression was photographed with extraordinary bas-relief upon his mind of the omnipotence of his quite infirm Grandfather Soddle—and of power as a concrete argument. The incident being the removal of a half-sucked tin soldier from his hand by the subtle device of striking his knuckles sharply with the fire tongs. Then and always the boy insisted that this ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... ambassador at several of the German courts, and afterwards had the offer of being made envoy at the court of the emperor, or of any other that he chose; but he declined the proposal, on account of the infirm state of his health. He was a commissioner of trade and plantations, in which station he very honorably distinguished himself. Notwithstanding his public employments, he found leisure to write much for the benefit of mankind. His "Essay on Human Understanding," his "Discourses on Government," ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... who had gone for Andrew were much too infirm to get close to "The Falcon." For with the daylight her work had begun, and she was surrounded on all sides by a melee of fishing-boats. Some were discharging their boxes of fish; others were struggling to get some point of vantage; others again fighting ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... enjoy will then come back to you again, undiminished, and under such circumstances as will render it permanently secure to you. To accomplish this will be very easy; for the emperor, superannuated, infirm, and stupid as he is, can not protect himself against any well-planned and vigorous attempt which we may make to remove him; though, if we remain as we are, and any accidental cause should arouse him from his lethargy, we may ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... be cynical, more than other men. And the bride, in whose eyes this elderly gentleman with the tight boots appeared a rosy winged Cupid, waved her handkerchief until the vehicle had sidled round the hill, resembling in its progress a very infirm crab in a hurry. ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Enriquez, with a sudden lapse into languishment that seemed to make him absolutely infirm, "it is everything that shall restrain me. I am not strong. I shall become weak of the knee and tremble under the eye of Mees Boston. I shall precipitate myself to the geologian by the throat. Ask me another conundrum ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... oaths and prayers and shoutings; women bowed beneath mattresses and heavy furniture; wheels interlocking in an inextricable mass; horses rearing and plunging in the midst of women separated from their husbands and little children from their mothers; men bearing away their sick and infirm and their clinging little ones; the shower of falling brands, and the roar of the oncoming ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... bitter hostility of the then dominant majority in both Houses of Congress, led by a man of unbridled passions and of extraordinary energy, Thaddeus Stevens, a representative from Pennsylvania, a sort of American Couthon, infirm of body but all compact of will. It was the purpose of this majority to humiliate and chastise, not to conciliate, the defeated South. Already, under President Lincoln, this purpose had brought the leaders of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... he and his wife, a quiet, kind-hearted woman, were almost all the acquaintances that she cultivated. She had found out her husband's parents, but they were not of a description that at all pleased her. They were old and infirm, but they were of the true pauper breed, a sort of person whom Mrs. Deg had been taught to avoid and to despise. They looked on her as a sort of second parish, and insisted that she should come and live with them, and help to maintain them out of her earnings. But Mrs. Deg would rather her ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... love; at other times it was labored, rough, rugged, if I may use such words in a new sense. As to his strength, he was habitually incapable of enduring the fatigue of any game, and seemed weakly, almost infirm. But during the early days of his school-life, one of our little bullies having made game of this sickliness, which rendered him unfit for the violent exercise in vogue among his fellows, Lambert took hold with both hands of one ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a special low call back to the roadside, knowing very well that, the danger once past, they could finish their browsing in the next field. Old mother Tonsard, who was getting more and more infirm, succeeded Mouche in his duties, after Fourchon, under pretence of caring for his natural grandson's education, kept him to himself; while Marie and Catherine made hay in the woods. These girls knew the exact spots where the fine forest-grass abounded, and there they ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... hopes of victory to the navy. The advice was adopted, though not without a hard struggle; and those of the inhabitants who were able to bear arms retired to the Island of Salamis, while the old and infirm, the women and children, found shelter ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... truths of Christianity, the Incarnation and Redemption; that he turned from unaided speculation to the inspired record and the visible Church; that he sought aid in the sacraments ordained for the strengthening of infirm humanity, and looked for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... of men,[132] thou proceedest by counsel; for all thy external works are the works of the whole Trinity, and their hand is to every action. How much more must I apprehend that all you blessed and glorious persons of the Trinity are in consultation now, what you will do with this infirm body, with this leprous soul, that attends guiltily, but yet comfortably, your determination upon it. I offer not to counsel them who meet in consultation for my body now, but I open my infirmities, I anatomize my body to them. So I do my soul to thee, O my God, in an ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... of Umlandela, an old and infirm Zulu, who was made chief over a large proportion of the Umtetwa tribe on the coast of Zululand. His appointment was a fatal mistake, and has already led to much bloodshed under the following curious circumstances, which are ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... Confirmation, in the presence of a large congregation, was his brother-in-law, James Fenimore Cooper. The novelist's family pew was one which stood sidelong at the right of the chancel. He had by this time become quite infirm, and the bishop, after receiving the other candidates at the sanctuary rail, left the chancel, and administered Confirmation to Fenimore Cooper ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... superiors were obliged to shut him up in the convent of Osimo, in close confinement, in order that his aerial voyages "should not be disturbed by the concourse of the vulgar." And here he expired, in his sixty-first year, on the 18th September, 1663. He had been suffering and infirm for some little time previous to that event, but managed to take a short flight on the very day preceding ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... pointing out, in courteous terms, several inaccuracies in the article which appeared with the above title in No. 413 of this Journal. Meat, it seems, is only 'strictly prohibited' to the healthy: it is allowed to the sick and infirm when prescribed by the doctor. Every night before compline the brethren meet to hear some pious lecture read, not to confess their thoughts to the superior. Instead of one meal a day, as stated by our correspondent, the lay-brethren, who are employed chiefly in manual labour, have at ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... dismay. That very week shares had been sold on the Stock Exchange at a high premium; and now, by the culpable weakness of a few unquestionably honest and well-intentioned gentlemen, the hard-earned life's savings of aged and infirm men, the sole dependence of scores of widows and hundreds of orphans, was utterly gone. No wonder that pious, God-fearing men ground their teeth and muttered curses, or that women, pale and trembling, tore ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... the weekly list of the sick people about here, sir, who stand in need of a little wine. My lady always had a regular distribution of good sound port and sherry among the infirm poor; and Miss Rachel wishes the custom to be kept up. Times have changed! times have changed! I remember when Mr. Candy himself brought the list to my mistress. Now it's Mr. Candy's assistant who brings the list ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... There! You had better go away to a young lady I see alone over yonder, though I don't know what you will do with one alone." She laughed and shook her head in a way that had once been arch and lively, but that was now puckery and infirm—it is affecting to see these things in women—and welcomed the old gentleman who came up ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... neighbours. Pointing to the ferryman and his wife, she said they were accustomed to give her a day of their labour in digging peats, in common with others, and in that manner she was provided with fuel, and, by like voluntary contributions, with other necessaries. While this infirm old woman was relating her story in a tremulous voice, I could not but think of the changes of things, and the days of her youth, when the shrill fife, sounding from the walls of the Garrison, made a merry noise through the echoing hills. I asked myself, if she were to ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... would tell them what good care the old man had taken of Heidi. She also told them that he had mended her little house. These reports reached the village, of course, but people only half believed them, for the grandmother was infirm and old. She began her days with sighing again. "All happiness has left us with the child. The days are so long and dreary, and I have no joy left. If only I could hear Heidi's voice before I die," the poor old woman ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... by the Nestor of the commonwealth, an infirm old man, with one foot in the grave. In order, however, to make the course pursued by this gentleman and the next speaker intelligible to the English reader, we may explain that, by the annexation of Texas, the Southern States have a majority of votes in Congress; the Northern States ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... of the Garde Doloureuse, which name the castle that day too well deserved. With difficulty the confessor mastered his own emotions to control those of the females on whom he attended, and who were now joined in their lamentation by many others—women, children, and infirm old men, the relatives of those whom they saw engaged in this unavailing contest. These helpless beings had been admitted to the castle for security's sake, and they had now thronged to the battlements, from which Father Aldrovand found difficulty in making them descend, aware ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... was not unpopular with the villagers, many of whom, long after his death, remembered little acts of kindness on his part by which they had benefited. To the sick and infirm he was always a good friend, though his almost invariable remedy for all the ills that flesh is heir to were wine and ale. He was exceedingly fond of animals, and nothing aroused his wrath more than to see them badly treated. On one occasion, ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... Edward VI., written with his own hand, conveys a notion of that precocity of intellect, in that early educated prince, which would not suffer his infirm health to relax in his royal duties. This prince was solemnly struck with the feeling that he was not seated on a throne to be a trifler or a sensualist: and this simplicity of mind is very remarkable in the entries of his diary; where, on one occasion, to remind ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... but, limited as it was, she would not transcend it in either direction. When, however, she could find revival work within reach among her own people she ever gave such calls the preference; and from their arrival in the new country down to the retirement of infirm old age, more than a quarter of a century, "Sister Arnold" was known for many miles around as ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... and Wealth the vine, Stanch and strong the tendrils twine; Through the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm. Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... you what it is, Duplessis," said the Vicomte de Breze, whose habitual light good temper seemed exchanged for insolent swagger—"I tell you what it is, your friend the Emperor has no more courage than a chicken. He is grown old, and infirm, and lazy; he knows that he can't even mount on horseback. But if, before this day week, he has not declared war on the Prussians, he will be lucky if he can get off as quietly as poor Louis Philippe did under shelter of his ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "he is easily circumvented and not adroit in his business." He complains of the heat during an illness one summer, and the seigneurie give him the White Chamber in the town-hall, and when winter comes on, and he is old and infirm, they assign him the lodging lately occupied by Mathurin Cordier (famous schoolmaster Corderius, whose Dialogues were the first book in Latin of our grandfathers), because it contained a stove—a rare luxury. He thanks them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... composed of farmers, presided over by the legal agent of the lord of the manor. The tenants of the manor attend to pay their quit rent for the preceding years, and it often happens that if the cottager has been ill, or is weak and infirm, the farmers composing the court subscribe and pay the quit rent ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... to the people to leave their homes. Delinquents and laggards were sabred mercilessly or killed with lance-thrusts. This mode of massacre was preferred, as it was a saving of valuable powder and shot. Women and children were slaughtered in this way, as well as infirm old men. No provision had been made to feed the famishing multitude that sought the cordillera, and thousands of the homeless wretches died of starvation and exposure in the mountains, where all that the women and children ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... your good father and mother have died, and how you were going to journey to Paris under the charge of a neighbour, who was bringing a waggon load of wine from Burgundy, and how you were going to look after me and help me in the house since I am getting old and infirm, and the young ones were to stop with me till they were old enough to go out to service. Ah, ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... whose worthless husband had died of excess some months before; the second incident was the marriage of Elizabeth Brudenell to the old pastor of her parish, who repented of his celibacy because he had become infirm, and took a wife because he required a nurse; and the third was the visit of the Countess of Hurstmonceux and Mr. Brudenell, who came and spent a few months among their friends in America, and then returned to their ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... preserve by their prayers those who live, like ourselves, in sin; they appease, in fact, the wrath of the Most High that He may not place the earth under an interdict. Ah! while the sisters who devote themselves to nursing the sick and infirm are indeed admirable, their task is easy in comparison with that undertaken by the cloistered Orders, the Orders where penance never ceases, and the very nights spent in bed ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Scoville approached, the worshippers were just concluding the hymn heard on the piazza. From the humble cabins stools, benches, rickety chairs, and nondescript seats made from barrels, had been brought and placed in a circle close about the fire. These were occupied by the elderly and infirm. Uncle Lusthah, whose name had been evolved from Methuselah, was the evident leader of the meeting, and Miss Lou whispered to her attendant, "He's the recognized preacher among them, and I believe he tries to live up ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... cookdom, as the cardinals look to the popedom; and really there is some analogy between them, for neither is preferred from any especial fitness for the office. A cardinal is made pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile—our friend Caboose was made cook because he had been Lord Nelson's coxswain, was a drunken rascal, and had a wooden leg; for, as to his gastronomical qualifications, he knew no more of the science than just sufficient to watch the copper where the salt junk ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... danger, have profited me nothing; and at this day I do not possess a roof in Spain that I can call my own. If I wish to eat or sleep, I have no where to go but to the inn or the tavern, and I seldom have wherewith to pay the bill. I have not a hair upon my head that is not grey; my body is infirm, and all that was left me, as well as to my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor. I implore your highness to forgive my complaints. I am indeed ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... kept pace with his grandfather's snorings and mutterings and had seemed indeed, the only understanding companion that the old man had ever had. The woman was, he saw, the arms-akimbo ferocious cook of the old days, but now how wrinkled and infirm!—separated by so many more years than the lapse of time allowed her from the woman of his past appearance there. There was more in her than the mere crumbling of her body, there was also the crumbling of her spirit, and he saw in her old bleared eyes the sign of some ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... this is not a bright and gay world?" said Ida. "No poor, no aged, no infirm, no cold or hungry ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... letters, and in encouraging such youth as he thought discovered the seeds of genius. The use he made of riches might prevail on envy itself to pardon him their acquirement. His pen and his purse were ever at the service of the oppressed. Calas, an infirm old man, living at Toulouse, was accused of having hung his son, to prevent his becoming a Catholic. The Catholic population became inflamed, and the young man was declared to be a martyr. The father was condemned to the torture and the wheel, and died protesting his ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... day of the month at the head of the page, she seemed to hear echoes of Harold's resonant voice vibrating with love for her. She sighed and put down her pen. If only she were less infirm of purpose. Her hesitations were interrupted by Mrs Budd bringing in a letter for Mavis that the postman had just left. It was from Mrs Trivett. It described with a wealth of detail a visit that the writer ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the result has been that they have so far lost the use of their limbs that they are utterly incapable of rising." The rooms over the cells were appropriated to the sick. Mr. Rice found twenty-four persons lying in one room, some old, some infirm, and in the centre of the room a corpse; one or two were dying. In the adjoining room he found a woman in a state of distraction, the corpse of her child left upon her knees for two days; it was almost putrid. "There was not to be found ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a different character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, very infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with a smile: and, if he caught now and then some snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident, and they seemed not to concern him. The waves to him ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... might liken the wedding-ring to an ancient circus, in which wild animals clawed one another for the sport of lookers-on. Perish the hyperbole! We would rather compare it to an elfin ring, in which dancing fairies made the sweetest music for infirm humanity. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... are for Boys and Girls, And darling Pets at home, And souvenir for Grandmamma, If too infirm to come. ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... ceased to be young, and had concluded that it was safest to follow the beaten track of the professions—all these generally said that it was not possible to do so much good in my position. Ay! there was the rub. The old and infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them life seemed full of danger—what danger is there if you don't think of any?—and they thought that a prudent man would carefully select the safest position, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... in which the trial was held, was crowded with spectators. Neighbor jostled neighbor, and terrible, awe-inspiring whispers ran over the throng. Prayer was offered, and the court opened, and Rebecca Nurse, weak and sick, old and infirm as she was, was made to stand up before that tribunal to plead to the charge of witchcraft. When her son would have supported his aged mother, ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... and cotton which they wove and manufactured into cloth with which to clothe the family. The old people not over active and strong, like your grandmother," she would add with a smile, "together with the infirm and invalids, braided the straw with which we manufactured our hats; so that you see, petiots, we had no drones, no useless loungers in our villages, and every one lived the ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... so," replied Brother Yves Milbeau, "my Lord the Duke of Brittany, our liege lord, is disposed to proffer his service to the King. He cannot come in person for he is sorely infirm. But he is to send his ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... nothing but compel and drive. They exhibit no mercy, but perpetual reproach, censure, condemnation, blame and bluster. They can endure no imperfection. But among Christians many are sinners, many infirm. In fact, Christians associate only with these; not with saints. Christians reject none, but bear with all. Indeed, they are as sincerely interested for sinners as they would be for themselves were ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... the master of the house a very kind and civil person. Before being an innkeeper he had been in some other line of business, but, on the death of the former proprietor of the inn had married his widow, who was still alive, but being somewhat infirm, lived in a retired part of the house. I have said that he was kind and civil; he was, however, not one of those people who suffer themselves to be made fools of by anybody; he knew his customers, and had a calm clear eye, which would look through a man without seeming to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... malefactors, and death by the natural law for those whom the law written could not touch. When they broke out, there was the blazing homestead, and death by the sword for all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged and infirm, the nursing mother and the baby at her breast. These, with ruined churches, and Irish rogues for ministers,—these, and so far only these were the symbols of the advance of English rule; yet even Sidney could ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... married imposes. This is so notoriously true that it ought to create a public panic. But there is hope in the new light. If we understand it, persons are born in a certain electrical condition, and substantially continue in it, however much they may apparently wobble about under the influence of infirm minds and acquired wickedness. There are, of course, variations of the compass to be reckoned with, and the magnet may occasionally be bewitched by near and powerful attracting objects. But, on the whole, the magnet remains the same, and it is probable that a person's normal electric condition is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... curious in the dissection of human vanity, written the real life of Doddington? There could be no richer subject for a pen contemptuous of the follies of high life and capable of dissecting that compound of worldly passion and infirm principle which, in nine instances out of ten, figures in the front ranks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the fault of the woman, she at once had an action in law for complete recovery of her dowry; on her own responsibility if she was sui iuris, otherwise with the help of her father.[103] But even the woman still under guardianship could act by herself if her father was too sick or infirm or if she had no other agent to act for her.[104] For the offence of adultery a husband had to pay back the dowry at once; for lesser guilt he might return it in instalments at intervals of six months.[105] If, now, ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... C. As long as D lives A covenants to allow her so much. When she dies A will herself perform the duties.(395) Here A evidently expected her parents would not live long, but also D must have been aged, or infirm, as A contemplates the chance of her parents outliving D. This is not a case of adoption, but is so similar in purpose to those above as ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... Had been enroll'd in such a list of heroes! If I was too infirm to serve my country, I might have prov'd my ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... our blunted vision—those mysterious stars!—in the eternity of their existence, in the perfection of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves: and men, dwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, with infirm and mortal members, with variable fortunes; labouring in vain; taken altogether and in their whole species perhaps, eternal; but, severally, quitting the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... to saunter. Danders, cinders. Daurna, dare not. Deave, to deafen. Denty, dainty. Dirdum, vigour. Disjaskit, worn out, disreputable-looking. Doer, law agent. Dour, hard. Drumlie, dark. Dunting, knocking. Dwaibly, infirm, rickety. Dule-tree, the tree of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she advanced to the footlights, to make the (then standing) pit recoil several feet, by the mere magic of her eyes, the pit, who enjoyed the terror as a luxury, flung crowns to her, and wept at the thought of losing her; but Clairon infirm was Clairon forgotten, and to a decaying actor or actress a French audience is the most merciless in the world. The brightest and best of them, as with us, died in the service of the public. Monfleury, Mondory, and Bricourt died of apoplexy, brought on by excess of zeal. Moliere, who fell ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow of independent, if limited, means, in her convalescent bathchair with slow revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular road opposite Mr Gavin Low's place of business where she had remained for a certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular fieldglasses ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to myself, and to my surviving family, that my son's death was a thing to be desired, for God does all justly, wisely, and lovingly? He lets me stand as an example to show others that a good and upright man cannot be altogether wretched. I am poor, infirm, and old; bereaved by a cruel wrong of my best-loved son, a youth of the fairest promise, and left only with the faintest hope of any ray of future good fortune, or of seeing my race perpetuated after my death, for my daughter, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... this pity which, in a state of nature, stands for laws, for manners, for virtue, with this advantage, that no one is tempted to disobey her sweet and gentle voice: it is this pity which will always hinder a robust savage from plundering a feeble child, or infirm old man, of the subsistence they have acquired with pain and difficulty, if he has but the least prospect of providing for himself by any other means: it is this pity which, instead of that sublime maxim of argumentative ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... could not be afforded? What do you think of a family of women and girls getting their own firing out of the woods, cutting it and backing it home, and that by the year together? What do you think of an old minister supported by the handiwork of an infirm and herself not young daughter? And I could tell you of living without books, without paper for writing, in want of calico for dresses, and muslin for underclothing, without pocket-handkerchiefs, without yarn to knit ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... and attachments which would adorn the most polished circles. In demonstration of this, we have only to make ourselves acquainted with the fervour and tenderness of their conjugal, parental, and filial sensibilities,—and the great care they take of all who are aged, infirm, and blind, among them. Were these highly interesting qualities sanctified by pure religion, they would exhibit much of the beauty and loveliness of the christian character. I am aware that an opinion is general, that they are cruel to their children; but it may ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... absurd, Kitty," he said. "I simply won't allow that poor, infirm, old man to be got out of his bed for such a ridiculous reason. Who cares whether the gates are locked, or ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... in the distance. Hundreds of tents or "lodges" of buffalo-skins covered the ground, and thousands of Indians—men, women, and children—moved about the busy scene. Some were sitting in their lodges, lazily smoking their pipes. But these were chiefly old and infirm veterans, for all the young men had gone to the hunt which we have just described. The women were stooping over their fires, busily preparing maize and meat for their husbands and brothers; while myriads of little brown and naked children romped about everywhere, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... starry Uranus with finger bright Sav'd from the shores of darkness, when the waves Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom;— And the which book ye know I ever kept For my firm-based footstool:—Ah, infirm! Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent Of element, earth, water, air, and fire,— 140 At war, at peace, or inter-quarreling One against one, or two, or three, or all Each several one against the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... show no pluck in action, indulged in excessive heroics and lip-courage. Nobody knew, everybody talked. At last, for lack of the truth, Galba yielded to the consensus of error. When he had put on his breastplate he was lifted into a chair, for he was too old and infirm to stand against the crowds that kept flocking in. In the palace he was met by Julius Atticus, of the Body Guard, who displayed a dripping sword and shouted out that he had killed Otho. 'Comrade,' said Galba, 'who bade you?' Galba had a remarkable power of curbing soldiers' ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... applause. The victor when returning from the field Is crowned with laurel, and his shining way Is full of shouts and roses. If he fall, His nation builds his monument of glory. But mark the alchemist who walks the streets, His look is down, his step infirm, his hair And cheeks are burned to ashes by his thought; The volumes he consumes, consume in turn; They are but fuel to his fiery brain, Which being fed requires the more to feed on. The people gaze on him with curious ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fighting, had now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he may be called in history, he was known in camps and on the battle-field under the nickname of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to his native valley, hoping to find repose where he remembered ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... rose upon him, as he bivouacked on the shores of the Bay of Laig; and in a fray, in which his party had the worse, his back was broken, and he was forced off half dead to sea. Several months after, on his partial recovery, he returned, crook-backed and infirm, to wreak his vengeance on the inhabitants, all of whom, warned of his coming by the array of his galleys in the offing, hid themselves in the cave, in which, however, they were ultimately betrayed—as narrated ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... about twenty orphan boys, for whom Bishop Tozer undertook to provide; but there were also ten or twelve women and girls, the former old and infirm, the latter orphans, and these Mr. Waller could not bear to abandon, so he carried them with him to Morumbala, and supported them at his own expense, until at the end of five months it was decided to give up Morumbala, and fix the head-quarters ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... true, I admit, that the place reeked with stale cigar smoke, and that the infirm table propped for security against the wall, groaned under a collection of juvenile "properties," the heterogeneity of which, defies my pen and memory. But, bestow a wild boy in such lodgings as he might find in a low tavern, and he will treat them accordingly. He is more observant than his ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... her Majesty's return to Balmoral, on the 23rd September, she had the grief to receive a telegram announcing the death of her sister, Princess Hohenlohe. Though not more than sixty-five years of age the Princess had been for some time very infirm. She had received a great shock in the previous spring from the unexpected death by fever, at the age of thirty-three, of her younger surviving daughter, Princess Feodore, the second wife of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... visit to Corinth. The miserable crew of antagonists, who yelped at his heels all his life, seized this change of purpose as the occasion for a double-barrelled charge. They said he was either fickle and infirm of purpose, or insincere, and saying 'Yea' with one side of his mouth and 'Nay' with the other. He rebuts this accusation with apparently quite disproportionate vehemence and great solemnity. He points ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... than any of the other tribes, and have been punished for their sinful industry with this jargon of unintelligible sounds, which no man could possibly hope to understand before he became so old and infirm that he could never work on another tower. However they came by it, it is certainly a thorn in the flesh to all travellers in the Russian Empire. Some weeks before we reached Kamchatka I determined to learn, if possible, a few common expressions, which would be most ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... districts, the Bolshak, which means literally "the Big One." Generally speaking, this important position was occupied by the grandfather, or, if he was dead, by the eldest brother, but the rule was not very strictly observed. If, for instance, the grandfather became infirm, or if the eldest brother was incapacitated by disorderly habits or other cause, the place of authority was taken by some other member—it might be by a woman—who was a good manager, and possessed ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Luc, must be one of the 'deux fils.' He is in England—infirm, but still in faculty. It is odd that he should have lived so long, and not wanting in oddness that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterwards, at such an interval, read a poem by an Englishman (who had made precisely ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of St. Bartholomew, on the south side of Smithfield, is contiguous to the church of Little St. Bartholomew. It was at first governed by a master, eight brethren, and four sisters, who had the care of the sick and infirm that were brought thither. King Henry VIII. endowed it with a yearly revenue of five hundred more yearly for the relief of one hundred infirm people. And since that time the hospital is so increased and enlarged, by the benefactions given to it, that it receives infirm people at ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... the sea—where, owing to the inconceivable distance of the ship from shore, he was presently drowned. Which untoward fate had a great effect upon my fortunes, since, burthening myself with his goods and effects, I found in his chest a printed proclamation from an aged and infirm clergyman in the West of England covenanting that, for the sum of two crowns, he would send to whoso offered, the chart of an island of great treasure in the Spanish Main, whereof he had had confession from the lips of a dying parishioner, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... "never was a monastery, but only an hospital for the support of ancient and infirm men, living together in a regular and devout manner." The original founder was Henry de Blois, bishop of Winchester, who instituted it, between the years 1132 and 1136; and required that "thirteen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... frail, fragile, shattery[obs3]; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy[obs3]; drooping, tottering &c. v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c. 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish[obs3]; sickly &c. (disease) 655; dull, slack, evanid|, spent, short-winded, effete; weather-beaten; decayed, rotten, worn, seedy, languishing, wasted, washy, laid low, pulled down, the worse for wear. unstrengthened &c. 159[obs3], unsupported, unaided, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... conversation he is more reserved, less brilliant, and more minute than Count Cortina, always expressing his opinion with caution, but very ready and able to give information on anything in this country, unconnected with politics. General Moran, now infirm, and long since retired from public service, is universally respected, both as a military man and a gentleman. He is married to a daughter of the late Marquis de Vivanco, general of division, who long held out against the independence, and when the colonial system was dissolved, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... he came and demanded of him what he wanted. The poor old creature, who little thought Death had been so near, and frightened almost out of his senses with his terrible aspect, answered him, trembling, That, having by chance let his bundle of sticks fall, and being too infirm to get it up himself, he had made bold to call upon him to help him; that, indeed, this was all he wanted at present, and that he hoped his worship was not offended with him for the liberty he ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... a little order was restored by the Provost, who was a sensible old man, and an old soldier to boot, but too infirm to take as active a part in such an emergency as he would have done had he been a dozen years younger. He, with several of the principal men of the town, went down to the beach to receive the bearers of the flag ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... for the next day lay, and perhaps he would ask them to go with him; but on their refusing, he would add, 'Ah, my lads, yo' want your hearts changing by th' grace of God, and then yo' would be glad to run onywhere in His Name.' As years grew on him and he became infirm, I have seen him come into the mill on a Monday morning looking very tired, and I have said I thought he was working too hard on Sundays. 'Canna do that,' he would reply; 'I would do a thausand toimes maar for Jesus if I could;" ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... and farms were changed into forests. The fiscal agents measured the land by the clod; trees, vinestalks, were all counted. The cattle were marked; the people registered. Old age or sickness was no excuse; the sick and the infirm were brought up; every one's age was put down; a few years were added on to the children's, and taken off from the old men's. Meanwhile the cattle decreased, the people died, and there was no deduction made for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... tribes of Southern Africa there exists a very cruel custom,—that of abandoning their aged or infirm, and often their sick or wounded, to die in the desert. Children leave their parents behind them, and the wounded are often forsaken by their comrades with no other provision made for them beyond a day's food ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... though old and infirm, preserved an understanding, which, whenever unbiassed by her affections, was sure to direct her unerringly; but the extreme softness of her temper frequently misled her judgment, by making it, at the pleasure either ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Bay and Hudson Strait, and made other journeys by water, though aquatting was then in its infancy. Afterwards his sailors became mutinous, and set Hendrik and his son, with seven infirm sailors, afloat. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... infirm of purpose, and he had not the courage to demand his right, for fear he might lose even the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... pay of the dicast and the ecclesiast was, as we have just seen, first one, then three obols; and the money paid to the infirm was never less than one, nor more than two obols a day. The common sailors, in time of peace, received four obols a day. Neither an ecclesiast nor a dicast was, therefore, paid so much as a ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... placed his chair near to the open door, where he could keep his eye upon the shop—a needless precaution, as at this hour no customers ever turned into it. He was an old man, and seemed very old and infirm by the dim light. He was thin and spare, with that peculiar spareness which results from the habit of always eating less than one can. His teeth, which had never had too much to do, had gone some years ago, and his cheeks fell in rather deeply. ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... over eighty years of age and too infirm to attend the funeral, but the Marquis of Titchfield and Lord Henry Bentinck ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... journey—a purpose which determined him at length to dismiss his domestics. Emily seldom opposed her father's wishes by questions or remonstrances, or she would now have asked why he did not take a servant, and have represented that his infirm health made one almost necessary. But when, on the eve of their departure, she found that he had dismissed Jacques, Francis, and Mary, and detained only Theresa the old housekeeper, she was extremely surprised, and ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... occasion, when there was a great play at the principal theater in Athens, the seats set apart for strangers were filled with Spartan boys; and other seats, not far distant, were filled with Athenian youth. The theater was crowded, when an old man, infirm, and leaning on a staff, entered. There was no seat for him. The Athenian youth called to the old man to come to them, and with great difficulty he picked his way to their benches; but not a boy ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... not boast of any exceptional voices. It was, however, very well trained. Throughout the anthem Blake sat tense, almost quivering, so keen was his delight. At the close he sank back into the corner of the pew, his gaze shifting uneasily from the infirm and aged bishop in the episcopal chair to the thin, eager-faced young vicar who had hastened around to ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... device, when he came in, his white hair and his saintly look and his feeble, tottering steps softened every heart. Even the very legate of Antichrist, the Archbishop himself, my grandfather said, was evidently moved, and for a season looked at the poor infirm old man as he would have spared him, and a murmur of universal commiseration ran ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... on September 14, was felt as a national loss in England. The Iron Duke died in his eighty-fourth year, having grown more and more infirm in his last few years. Arthur Wellesley, or Wesley, as the name was originally written, singularly enough received his first military education in France, under the direction of Pignorel, the celebrated engineer. He saw his first active service with the Duke of York's disastrous ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... 14th, issued his instructions to Colonel Elias Dayton, who was to proceed to Johnstown, "and give notice to the Highlanders, who live in the vicinity of the town, to repair to it; and when any number are collected there, you will send off their baggage, infirm women and children, in wagons." Sir John was to be taken prisoner, carefully guarded and brought to Albany, but "he is by no means to experience the least ill-treatment in his own person, or those of his family."[118] General Schuyler had previously written (May 10th) to Sir ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Walter between his teeth, and glancing again at the bed, though the epithet was meant to apply to Jackson and not to Arthur. "What can I do to circumvent him? Write to Horace, of course, and warn him of Elsie's danger." And though usually vacillating and infirm of purpose, on this occasion Walter showed himself both prompt and decided. The next mail carried the news of his discovery to Elsie's natural protector,—her father, who with Rose, the Allison family, and little Horace, was still at ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... seats, visiting or in business conference, their fingers occupied with watermelon seeds or with packages of cooked snails. Along the pathway leading to the pagoda beggars had distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of two or three hundred feet, asking alms, most of them infirm with age or in some other way physically disabled. We saw but one who appeared capable ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... scientific, working together, and depends on preserving, at infinite cost, which is infinite loss, the crippled child and the victim of accident, the idiot and the madman, the pauper and the culprit, the old and infirm, curable and incurable. This growing dominion of disinterested motive, this liberality towards the weak, in social life, corresponds to that respect for the minority, in political life, which is the essence of freedom. It is ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... their success to the misfortune which weights them. They seldom know beforehand how far they are going to reach, and this helps them; for if they knew the greatness of the task before them they would not attempt it. He who knows he is infirm, and would yet climb, does not think of the summit which he believes to be beyond his reach but climbs slowly onwards, taking very short steps, looking below as often as he likes but not above him, never trying his powers but seldom stopping, and then, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... dust elsewhere. Went over to the ancient grave-digger, who was shovelling out in a weakly manner decayed coffin, skull, ribs, bones, fat earth—so fat and greasy-looking, so alive with horrible worms. He was so very old and infirm that, after a shovelful or two, he leaned against the grave side and peched like ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... character of Judge Atkins—"He has been accustomed to inebriety—he has been the ridicule of the community, sentence of death has been pronounced in moments of intoxication, his determination is weak, his opinions floating and infirm, his knowledge of the law insignificant and subject to private inclination; and confidential cases of the crown, where due secresy is required, he is not to be trusted with." (Letter to Secretary of State.) Yet Atkins ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... with us, we hundreds of millions, who cannot keep pace with you?" If the New Republic emerges at all it will emerge by grappling with this riddle; it must come into existence by the passes this Sphinx will guard. Moreover, the necessary results of the reaction of irresponsible wealth upon that infirm and dangerous thing the human will, the spreading moral rot of gambling which is associated with irresponsible wealth, will have been working out, and will continue to work out, so long as there is such a thing as irresponsible ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... contagious distemper, his two favourite ministers, Acede Khan and Calabate Khan, kept him concealed in the palace, so that no person was allowed to see him. The prince and the people had recourse to arms, in order to force these tyrants to admit them into the kings presence; on which they persuaded the infirm king that the prince wished to depose him, so that the king went to war against the prince, and defeated him with great slaughter, upon which the Moguls were called in to their assistance, and used the opportunity to plunder the country ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... equal to his learning. In conjunction with Andrea and Selnecker he induced the Lutherans of Saxony and Swabia to adopt the Formula Concordiae and so become one body. Against lax views of Socinian tendency he directed his able treatise De duabus naluris in Christo (1570). Resigning office in infirm health (1584) he survived till the 8th of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... inhuman that he will demand of the stripling, the infirm, the feminine members of his family to procure the means of support, before he has exhausted every other effort that can be made by himself and his stalwart sons? Even the insatiate Trust Magnates, were they ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... a Frenchman summon an Englishman for perjury or murder, theft, homicide, or 'ran'—as the English call evident rape, which cannot be denied—the Englishman shall defend himself as he prefers, either through the ordeal of iron or through wager of battle. But if the Englishman be infirm, he shall find another who will do it for him. If one of them shall be vanquished he shall pay a fine of forty shillings to the King. If an Englishman summon a Frenchman, and be unwilling to prove his charge by judgment or by wager of battle, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... campaign were now happily concluded, and crowned with the fullest success; and that, therefore, he could have no particular need of me any longer. I stated to him that repeated sickness during the campaign had rendered my health very infirm, and that a residence of four months at Sennaar, during the rainy season, would probably destroy me; and as my presence for that time at least could be no ways necessary, I requested him to grant the permission demanded, telling him that if, after ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... hold an opinion on this much-vexed question. The most salient feature in the Indian nature is its boundless charity. There are no poor laws, and the struggle for life is very severe; yet the aged and infirm, the widow and the orphan have their allotted share in the earnings of every household. It is a symptom of approaching famine that beggars are perforce refused their daily dole. Cruelty to children is quite unknown. Parents will deny themselves ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... from the contents of "Mr. Zacharie's" MS. sermons still preserved in the library of the College of Glasgow, each, at the rate of ordinary speaking, must have occupied at least an hour and a half in delivery. When he had become infirm and near his end, and had found it necessary to shorten his sermons, his "kirk session" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... is coming to us, who I know is a favourite of yours. Or is it the other way, and are you a favourite of hers? I did ask Lady Hartletop, but she cannot get away from the poor marquis, who is, you know, so very infirm. The duke isn't at Gatherum at present, but, of course, I don't mean that that has anything to do with dear Lady Hartletop coming to us. I believe we shall have the house full, and shall not want ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... been robbed of my rightful heritage, he was proud that he had a Pennington for a grandson. Thus I am sure that it was his will that I should have the Barton for my own. But during the last few years he had been very feeble and infirm, and thus in the hands of a clever lawyer he could easily be deceived as to what ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... feared Manucci, and should not have thought my life safe had he heard that I related my dream to any one. In after years, when I was better able to form a judgment on these matters, I thought it useless to renew the grief of my poor mother, then becoming old and infirm, by a communication of what I had witnessed on that memorable night, or by inspiring her with doubts as to the real cause ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... about the journey to New York, and the few days they had to give there to Mr. Oldway's life-long friend and Desire's adviser, Mr. Marmaduke Wharne ("Sir Marmaduke he would be, everybody knew, if he had chosen to claim the English title that belonged to him"),—who was too infirm to come on to the wedding; and the necessity there was for them to go as fast as possible to their estate in the country,—Hill-hope,—where Mr. Kirkbright was building "mills and a village and a perfect castle of a house, and a private railroad and ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Mr. Schermerhorn had gladly taken Jerry to his own house, and promised him that should be his home as long as he lived. So now, like a gallant old war horse, who has a fresh green paddock, and lives in clover in his infirm age, Jerry not only stood at ease, but lived at ease; and worked or not as ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... projector of "the little mill at Fontley." Their wealth has enriched many families of the older aristocracy, and has been the foundation of several modern peerages. Yet Henry Cort, the rock from which they were hewn, is already all but forgotten; and his surviving children, now aged and infirm, are dependent for their support upon the slender pittance wrung by repeated entreaty and expostulation ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... two sexes, forming one-half of the French population. Fourteen thousand sisters of charity, distributed among four hundred and twenty convents, look after the hospitals, attend upon the sick, serve the infirm, bring up foundlings, provide for orphans, lying-in women, and repentant prostitutes. The "Visitation" is an asylum for "those who are not favored by nature,"—and, in those days, there were many more of the disfigured than at present, since out of every eight deaths one was caused by the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... seen wandering over the grass-grown hills, or sauntering through the streets of the new city, not with the absent brow and incurious air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that seem to dive into the hearts of the passers-by. An old man, but not infirm,—erect and stately, as if in his prime. None know whether he be rich or poor. He asks no charity, and he gives none,—he does no evil, and seems to confer no good. He is a man who appears to have no world beyond himself; but appearances are ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... indicated as follows: (Just) as it is sad for an old man to see his son ride young on the gallows when he himself is uttering mournful measures, a sorrowful song, while his son hangs for a comfort to the raven, and he, old and infirm, cannot render him any kelp—(he is constantly reminded, etc., 2451-2463)—so the defence of the ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... and to crown all other errors he was, while intoxicated, inveigled into a so-called marriage with a young but notorious girl, whose only claim was her pretty face, while her situation was hopelessly degraded. This creature, Minnie Merle, had an infirm grandmother, who, in order to save the reputation of the unfortunate girl, appealed so adroitly to Cuthbert's high sense of honour, that her arguments, emphasized by the girl's beauty and helplessness, prevailed over reason, and—I may add—decency ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... letter to the editor of the Enquirer John Aubrey Jones said: "What an inspiration it was to see and hear Mrs. Blake-Alverson sing. Physically infirm, but vocally strong and pregnant, her pure, limpid birdlike notes thrilled and stirred the soul and tears to the eyes did unbidden come. It was eloquence sublime set to the all-subdivining rhythmical harmony of divine music, rendered by a master whose spirit ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... who kept a college for instructing little gentlemen and ladies in the science of A, B, C, was at this time very old and infirm, and wanted to decline this important trust. This being told to Sir William Dove, who lived in the parish, he sent for Mrs. Williams, and desired she would examine Little Two-Shoes, and see whether ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... women, whose men-folk were for the most part at the war, were, by means of signs, telling their obedient conquerors what work they were to do: chop wood, prepare soup, grind coffee; one of them even was doing the washing for his hostess, an infirm old grandmother. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the busiest hours of the day. In the villages immediately adjoining the place of resort, the excitement was wholly confined to youngsters and idlers, who are ever ready to seize upon novelty and enter upon bustle; but further off, it extended to old and young, hale and infirm, asthmatic and long-winded, grave and gay, taught and untaught, respectable and disreputable, industrious and idle, till it reached a compass of twenty miles at least, extending not only to the Forth and Tay, but stretching inland from their opposite shores. In short, men who had never ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... f action, battle. acelerar to accelerate. acemila beast of burden. acento accent. aceptar to accept. acercar to bring near; vr. to approach. acero steel. acertado fit, proper. acertar to hit the mark, succeed, happen. acetre m. small bucket. achacoso infirm, sickly. achicar to diminish. aciago unlucky. acometer to attack. acomodar to accommodate, suit, fit. acompanar to accompany. aconsejar to counsel, advise. acordar vr. to remember. acostar to put ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... And struck his victim, shrieking ere it went Down his strain'd throat, that open sepulchre. Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon; The hippopotamus, amidst the flood, Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer; But on the bank, ill balanced and infirm, He grazed the herbage, with huge, head declined, Or lean'd to rest against some ancient tree. The crocodile, the dragon of the waters, In iron panoply, fell as the plague, And merciless as famine, cranch'd his prey, While, from his jaws, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... entendre "and the infirm letters (viz. a, w and y) not subject to accidence, left him." The three make up the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... on the head, or deliberately leave them to starve, act on these principles, sanctioned by Australian religion, but (according to Mr. Dawson) NOT carried out in Australian practice. "When old people become infirm... it is lawful and ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Compelled by a storm to take refuge in a miserable hamlet, he inquired its name, and on hearing it appeared surprised and thoughtful, as if trying to recall lost memories. Suddenly he asked if a woman named Nouza dwelt in the village, and was told there was an old infirm woman of that name in great poverty. He ordered her to be brought before him. She came and prostrated herself in terror. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE |
