"Laggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Laggard!" one exclaimed, "what excuse have you to make for coming so late? I noted not that De Jouvaux's wine had mounted into your head last night, and surely the duke cannot have had need of your valuable services ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... mind HIM." In reality Filgee pere, a widower of two years' standing, had tacitly allowed the discipline of his family to devolve upon Rupert. Remembering this, the master could only say, "Very well," and good-naturedly dismiss the pupil to his seat and the subject from his mind. The last laggard had just slipped in, the master had glanced over the occupied benches with his hand upon his warning bell, when there was a quick step on the gravel, a flutter of skirts like the sound of alighting birds, and a young woman ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... for a moment gazing at him in mute appeal, and then, moving with laggard steps to the door, closed it gently behind him. A sudden outbreak of four or five voices, all speaking at once, that filtered through the wall, satisfied Mr. Vyner that ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... and beautiful thing to see that king of horses—sweep back around the slowest of his mustangs, shake his head at the barking guns, and then circle forward again as though he would show the laggard what running should be. The cowpunchers could have shot him as he veered back; they could have salted him with lead as he flashed broadside, but the orders of their chief restrained them. Lew Hervey's lightest word ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... taste, the ingenuity, and the solidity of their workmanship. Where so many regions have but recently been peopled, there is, it need hardly be said, much to be done, and it is most satisfactory to see how each city and town is bending itself to the task to prove that there is no laggard in the patriotic competition. I have gladly attended several of these shows, and it is a feature peculiar to this country that the industrial exhibition so generally accompanies the agricultural show. Whether this shall always be the case as in the gathering ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... towns were beyond the reach of anything like early information of what was going on, not, let us say, in the world at large, but in their own country. The people in these towns had to patiently await the laggard arrival of news from the greater centres of activity; and when it did arrive it probably came to hand in a very imperfect form, or so late as to be useless for any purpose of combined ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... Slowly the laggard hours slipped away in silence. The rain fell in monotonous showers. The darkness hung like ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... it was evident, heard of the murders at the earliest possible moment; Julius too was singularly well informed, though his interest in Kosnovian affairs had long seemed dormant; even the fiery Stampoff was no laggard once the news was bruited. Alec went so far as to fix the exact time at which Julius appeared in the Rue Boissiere. He knew something of the ways of newspapers, and was well aware that no private person could hope to obtain such important intelligence before the press. He himself ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... was far distant he disregards the wishes of his parents and marries one of the daughters of the land. No ambition stirred him and no devotion to Jehovah or to the ideals of his race gave content and direction to his life. Thus he remained a laggard, and the half-nomadic, robber people that he represented became but a stagnant pool, compared with the onrushing stream ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... demanded if the wind and the waterfalls and the birds learned music from beardless boys and draggle-coated dominies with armfuls of books. However, it may have been with his Pegasus, his mount for the hunt was no laggard. He rode a knob-jointed, muscular brute, that carried him like poetic inspiration wherever it pleased. Though Pierre's right hand was busied upholding the hunters' flag, and he had but one arm to bow-string the broncho's arching neck, the half-breed ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... not for brake, and he stopp'd not for stone, He swam the Eske River where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... as he bowed to the Fool-Killer. "I have often heard your name mentioned, but 'tis said in the world that you are a laggard in your duty." ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... to demand a letter, and daily he carried one, and a sorely heavy heart, back to his sovereign. In exactly the same sweetly insistent way had he been sent many a time and oft to seek tidings of the laggard milkman. His colleagues, when he laid these facts before them, were of the opinion that things looked very dark ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... devices! Was there ever, shall there ever be, philosopher or adept competent to inspire, counsel and teach in such sort as thou by thine unpremeditated art dost tutor those that follow thy lead? Verily laggard teachers are they all in comparison of thee, as by the matters heretofore set forth may very well be understood. To which store I will add, loving ladies, a stratagem used by a woman of quite ordinary understanding, and of such a sort that I know not by whom she could ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... knows but what old Noll's police-patrol is lurking in this cutthroat alley? ... Endicott, take the bank again.... I'll swear I'll ruin ye ere the moon—which I do not see—disappears down the horizon. Sir Michael, try my system.... Overbury, art a laggard? ... Let us laugh and be merry—to-morrow is the Jewish Sabbath—and after that Puritanic Sunday ... after which mayhap, we'll all go to hell, driven thither by my Lord Protector. Wench, another bumper ... canary, sack or muscadel ... no thin Rhenish wine shall ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... was not to be, I might dive thence into the moat, and take my chance of escape by the stairs on the further side. But the window was heavily barred. Yet again, if I went forth by the door, and lurked on the postern stair, there was Robin Lindsay's dirk to reckon with, when he came, a laggard, to ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... men, kneeling in humble supplication to the stern God of Islam and his most holy Mahdi. It is finished. They rise and hurry to the parade. The Emirs plant their flags, and all form in the ranks. Woe to the laggard; and let the speedy see that he wear his newest jibba, and carry a sharp sword and at least three spears. Presently the array ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... objects, but a man would doubtless be handy to do the needful in such a case. It would be well for a lady to know how to crack her whip, if her help were required in turning hounds, or in hurrying up a laggard hound; but this art should first be learnt on foot, under the tuition of a competent man, in much the same way as Mr. Frank Ward teaches his pupils to catch the thong with precision for four-in-hand driving; and the lady's hunter ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... they'd see. Dirt under their feet, huh? All right. How he hated them all, with their horses and carriages and dances and dinners and clubs! Bah! He took a flask from his pocket and drank. Then he cursed the laggard Italians, and mourned that a year and a half must pass before he could sell their votes again. Bolles contracted for Italian labor and controlled something more than eight hundred votes. McQuade sublet various small contracts to him, and in return ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... dumbshow. But when the trial of the King came on, he took a bold and dangerous share in the proceedings, which destroyed what little popularity the ruin of his federal schemes had left him, and came near costing him his head. He was already so great a laggard behind the revolutionary march, that he did not suspect the determination of the Mountain to put the King to death. Louis was guilty, no doubt, Paine thought,—but not of any great crime. Banishment for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... The laggard winter ebbed so slow With freezing rain and melting snow, It seemed as if the earth would stay Forever where the tide was low, In sodden green ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... of Europe. Not urged to the front like slaves by the whips of innumerable penalties, their needs not considered to the provision of a button, or a ration of salt, shabby even to squalor in their appointments, they gathered in response to a call which it was easy for the laggard to disobey, and almost uncared for by the forethought of anyone ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... incident, have failed to recognize, nay to cower before the fact, that all along the highways and byways of the earthly pilgrimage they have been hounded by a dismal cortege of retarded messages,—lost opportunities,—miscarried warnings,—procrastinated prayers,—dilatory deeds,—and laggard faces,—that howl for ever in their shuddering ears—"Too late." Had Dr. Hargrove received this letter only twenty-four hours earlier, the result of the interview on the previous night would probably have been very ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... twist and turn! O frantic gain and laggard loss! I'll standardize and stint at last ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... the sword-edge; There was red on the weapon I wielded In the war with the glorious and gallant: Yet not where the broadsword,—the blood wand,— Was borne by the lords of the falchion, But low in the straw like a laggard, O my ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... might have been lost in producing the different changes we have just related But, so soon as the topmen were sure that no unfortunate laggard of their party was within reach of the resentment of the different groupes beneath, they commenced complying literally with the summons of the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... And now what thinkst thou of Master Cushman's errand, and the chidings of those London traders that we sent them not a cargo by the Mayflower? We who had much ado to dig the graves of half our company and to find food for the rest, to be rated like laggard servants because we laded not that old hulk with merchandise for ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to come now and claim her, when perils were past, when there was naught left to do but lead her to the altar? Could he be worthy of such a pearl of womanhood, this laggard who, because a fever touched him, sat him down in an inn within a few hours' ride of her to rest him, as though the world held no ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Never disclose your poverty until the last gleam of hope has sunk beneath the horizon of your best effort, remembering that invincible determination holds the key to success, while advice and assistance hitherto laggard, now with hasty steps greets you ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... State has been uttered in a firmer tone than ever before in English educational history. Taxes have been increased; the scope of the school system extended; all elements of the system better integrated; laggard local educational authorities subjected to firmer control; the training of teachers looked after more carefully than ever before; and the foundations for unlimited improvement and progress in education laid down. Still, in doing all this, the deep English devotion to local liberties ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Approaching Number 9 with laggard feet, he manufactured a desire to light a cigarette, as a cover for his design, were he spied upon by unsuspected eyes. Cane under arm, hands cupped to shield a vesta's flame, he stopped directly ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... understanding, in spite of their bright wits, what the burdens, fortunes, adventures might mean. The two sisters' enthusiasm was just kept within bounds by two drags on its quicksilver quality. These laggard spirits, Dora and May, weighed upon their more enterprising companions. Neither could Annie and Rose quite shut their eyes to the increase of wrinkles on their father's face, and to their mother's red eyes when she ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... prophets of the Restoration (of Jerusalem and the Temple) after the Captivity, and who, it would seem, had returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel and Joshua. Signs of the divine displeasure having appeared on account of the laggard spirit in which the Restoration was prosecuted by the people, this prophet was inspired to lift up his protest and rouse their patriotism, with the result that his appeal took instant effect, for in four years the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his wits to aid a laggard memory, haunted by a feeling that he ought to know this man instantly, even in so poor a light. Something in his habit, something in that insouciance which so narrowly escaped insolence, was at once ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... mother is compared to the drooping fronds of the tree-fern. The maiden keeping tryst bids the light fleecy cloudlets, which in New Zealand so often scud across the sky before the sea-wind, to be messengers to her laggard gallant. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... for us too short, too dear! The laggard body lame behind the soul; Pain, that ne'er marr'd the mind's serene control; Breathing on earth heaven's aether atmosphere, God with thee, and the love that casts out fear! A soul in life's salt ocean guarding sure The freshness of youth's fountain sweet and pure, And to all natural impulse crystal-clear: ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... we e'er forget? - How, in the coiled perplexities of youth, In our wild climate, in our scowling town, We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed, and feared? The belching winter wind, the missile rain, The rare and welcome silence of the snows, The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night, The grimy spell of the nocturnal town, Do you remember? - Ah, could one forget! As when the fevered sick that all night long Listed the wind intone, and hear at last The ever-welcome voice of the chanticleer Sing in the bitter hour before ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men to follow. All day they waded, and toward evening reached a small patch of dry ground, where they spent a miserable night. At sunrise Clark started on again, through icy water waist-deep, this time with the stern command to shoot the first laggard. Some of the men failed and sank beneath the waves, to be rescued by the stronger ones, and by the middle of the afternoon they had all got safe to land. By good fortune, they captured some Indian squaws with a canoe-load of food, and had their first meal in two days. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... seemed a laggard, left far behind in the race of the journey by his swift desire, which kept pace with the telegram announcing his departure from Solaris and the probable time of his arrival in Washington. At length his heart was made glad by a distant glimpse of the dome of the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... behind a mask, And held him to his manly course; One hour in love she bade him bask, And then she drove, with playful force, The laggard ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... evermore if he can lead his bride away; but before he can hold her in safety a great disaster, I ween, may befall him. For when he will return home, the duke, to whom she was first given, will be no laggard. The duke has gathered a great force, and has occupied all the marches, and his spies are at the court, and inform him each day of all he wants to know, and tell him all the measures he must take, and how long they ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Assembly found leisure to attend to that engagement of their agents which stipulated for an investigation to see whether the proprietaries had not been unduly and excessively assessed. But at length, after having had the spur of reminder constantly applied to their laggard memories, they appointed a committee to inquire and report concerning the valuations made by ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Long. Laggard! too many precious moments have been wasted in their execution: the moon has risen high, and casts a brightness round scarce feebler than the day: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... on deck showed that Green was right, and the Tornado stood away after the stranger. The latter was no laggard, and it was soon evident that the Tornado must do her best if she was to come up with her. The chase, though a vessel of some size, showed no inclination to come to close ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... seasoned with sugar and spice. Apple-butter-making was an all-day job in the boiling alone but the rich and tasty product is considered well worth the effort and any mountain woman who cannot display shelves laden with jars of apple-butter would be considered a laggard indeed. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... is this ye laggard spirits? What negligence, what standing still is this? Run to the mountain to strip off the slough That lets not God be manifest to ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... Seventeen dollars and a half, by the operation. Ere he alighted at the Netherby mansion He stopped to borrow a dry suit of clothes, And this delayed him considerably, so when He arrived the bride had consented—the gallant Came late—for a laggard in love and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen, and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... only fallen in with a wise mentor but a cordially kind friend, to say nothing of a charming writer. The way is marked out for him by one who has trodden it, and who, as we can gather, from the evident culture and literary grace of his pages and his renown as a preacher of missions, has been no laggard in those studies which he so earnestly recommends to young priests and ecclesiastical students. . . . If Father Phelan's lessons were taken to heart by the coming race of priests we, or at least our children, would behold the Catholic ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... the mind's inaction Has robbed the soul of power, When moments of deep reflection Arrive at so late an hour That they lose the force of their mission In the laggard way they come, And like withered buds of ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... countless generations has taught domestic animals not only the fact of their safety when giving voice, but also that very often there is great virtue in a vigorous outcry. With an insistent staccato neigh, the hungry horse jars the dull brain of its laggard master, and prompts him to "feed and water the stock." But how different is the cry of a lost horse, which calls for rescue. It cannot be imitated in printed words; but every plainsman knows the shrill and prolonged trumpet-call of distress that can be heard ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... The stories were strongly contrasted, and there was no attempt at literary or artistic finish. I used a great many gestures and moved about on the platform frequently; it is the quickest way of focusing laggard attention. To be absolutely honest, I had to come very close to the level of the moving picture show, and the ten-cent ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... of national interest and patriotism is the effort to extend our foreign commerce. To this end our merchant marine should be improved and enlarged. We should do our full share of the carrying trade of the world. We do not do it now. We should be the laggard no longer. The inferiority of our merchant marine is justly humiliating to the national pride. The Government by every proper constitutional means, should aid in making our ships familiar visitors at every commercial port of the world, thus opening ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... day passed without any news of Maganga. Accordingly, Shaw and Bombay were sent to hurry him up by all means. On the fourth morning Shaw and Bombay returned, followed by the procrastinating Maganga and his laggard people. Questions only elicited an excuse that his men had been too sick, and he had feared to tax their strength before they were quite equal to stand the fatigue. Moreover he suggested that as they would be compelled to stay one day more at the ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Nor did those laggard hours pass less bitterly for M. de Camors. He tried to take no rest, but walked up and down his apartment until daylight in a sort of frenzy. The distress of this poor child wounded him to the heart. The ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... the hottest in branding the action of Virginia as laggard, looked to her for the steadiest and most efficient aid, now that the crisis faced them; while all felt she would meet the calls of the hour with never a pause for the result. The sanguine counted on Maryland, bound by every community of interest, every tie of sympathy—as already ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... false statement of the condition of his party held out no encouragement that they might be able to overtake him; but there was a chance that a new party might even then be coming up, or that the laggard Wright would be on the advance at last, as proved to be the fact. A Melbourne paper, commenting on these points, had the following remarks, which were as just as they were doubly painful, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... to me. Even when a young lad, coming back from the low country or the scaling of school, the cool fresh breezes of the morning and the riper airs of the late afternoon went to my head like a mild white wine; very heartsome too, rousing the laggard spirit that perhaps made me, before, over-apt to sit and dream of the doing of grand things instead of putting out a hand to do them. In Glascow the one thing that I had to grumble most about next to the dreary hours of schooling was the clammy air ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... up they came together at the forks of the road, just out of Centerville. Frank was first on hand, as usual, but even laggard Will showed up on time, camera ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... lay along the old trade route, but their progress was very slow, and more than once the two Emirs rode back together and shook their heads as they looked at the weary baggage-camels on which the prisoners were perched. The greatest laggard of all was one which was ridden by a wounded Soudanese soldier. It was limping badly with a strained tendon, and it was only by constant prodding that it could be kept with the others. The Emir Wad Ibraham raised his Remington, as the creature hobbled past, and sent a bullet ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... tired came the hunters; Stopped in darkness in the court. 'Ho, this way, ye laggard hunters! To the hall! What sport, ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... inasmuch as her skin was brown, her eyes dark, and her complexion brilliant. As Mrs. Middleton was at this time but little known at court, Grammont found some difficulty in obtaining an introduction to her as promptly as he desired; but feeling anxious to make her acquaintance, and being no laggard in love, he without hesitation applied to her porter for admittance, and took one of her lovers into his confidence. This latter gallant rejoiced in the name of Jones, and subsequently became Earl of Ranelagh. In the fulness of his heart towards one who experienced a fellow ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... awe-stricken amid this manifestation of the insignificance of man, the sun blazed forth from behind a laggard cloud. The effect was theatrical. It was like throwing the limelight on the scene which marks the climax of some tense situation. Instinctively we lifted our arms and cheered ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... calm night later grew He heard the stealthy, rustling sound Of one who trailed on laggard knees A shattered shape along the ground; And soon with sharp surprise he knew That in the encircling gloom profound A fierce Turk crawled by slow degrees To where in helpless pain he lay. Then, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in single file; he had a glimpse of them against the ghostly radiance ahead. Indeed, so near had he approached that he could hear the heavy, laboured breathing of the last man in the file—some laggard who dragged his feet, plodding on doggedly, panting, muttering. Probably the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... bosom of the fort, and presently the valley was filled with the strains of martial music, rising long, thrilling and lively above the rattling accompaniment. The horns of the victors sounded merry and cheerful flourishes, until the last laggard of the camp was at his post; but the instant the British fifes had blown their shrill signal, they became mute. In the meantime the day had dawned, and when the line of the French army was ready to receive its general, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... human and rural, and discourses pleasant reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable city, ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and the straight highways, tell visibly of man's active and comfortable ways; and you may be never so laggard and never so unimpressionable, but there is something in the view that spirits up your blood and puts you in the vein ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stayed not for [v]brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Esk river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... fourth part of the day was gone, Then Enid was aware of three tall knights On horseback, wholly armed, behind a rock In shadow, waiting for them, caitiffs all; And heard one crying to his fellow, 'Look, Here comes a laggard hanging down his head, Who seems no bolder than a beaten hound; Come, we will slay him and will have his horse And armour, and ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... blue sailor hat, crowned with a fluffy red button, like a blue flower with a red bloom at its heart. I rarely saw an aging marin. There are no seasoned troops so boyish. They wear open dickies, which expose the neck, full, hard, well-rounded. The older troops, who go laggard to the spading, have beards that extend down the collar; but a boy has a smooth, clean neck, and these sailors have the throat of youth. We must once have had such a race in our cow-boys and Texas ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... death or degradation, the young American will know how to choose. Patriotism with me is not an empty word. It is one of the passions of my life. I believe in this Republic. For the moment the people are asleep. But time is slowly shaping the issue that will move the last laggard. We are beginning dimly to see that there is something more precious in our life than the mere tonnage of national wealth—the spirit of freedom and initiative in our people! Shall they become merely the hired men of a few monied kings? Or shall the avenues of industry and individual ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... Lady Dundee, something wrong with me, and maybe worse with you. I have come quicker than I intended, and have had a somewhat cold reception at Dundee, but I grant you that was not your blame, you had doubtless prepared a warmer. Livingstone was the laggard." ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... was no laggard in her hammock on the day after Royson's departure from the camp, but, early riser though she was, Irene was up and dressed when the older woman came to her tent and asked if she might have a word with ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... he said in a low tone, and speaking with some effort.. "forgive me and have patience with my laggard comprehension, . . I am perplexed at heart and slow of thought; wilt thou assure me faithfully, that this God-Man thou speakest of is not yet born ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... no hint of the laggard now in Tom, Dick and Harry—no suspicion of "staleness" in their keen pride in their work; Irish and Rover, ever fleet and responsive, needed no urging; Jack McMillan gave his stupendous energy, his superb intelligence with loyal abandon; and Baldy, ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... content to appear a cipher among them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with my school-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood or inclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company I was lower than the least of them; in my solitude, at their head I captured the universe. Daily, to and fro, for two or three years I journeyed between my home and this school, with a couple of two-mile walks and a couple of train journeys to be got through in all weathers ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... impressed, Belgium must have impressed it; a looting army is a disorderly army. The soldier has burden enough to carry in heavy marching order without souvenirs. That collector of the stoppers of carafes who had thirty on his person when taken prisoner was bound to be a laggard in ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... harsh, unjustly portioning the captured prey— These, and cold or laggard leaders make a ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... sword, or Truth's supernal pen, To shape the worn-out mould of nobleness again. And she has need of Poets who can string Their harps with steel to catch the lightning's fire, And pour her thunders from the clanging wire, To cheer the hero, mingling with his cheer, Arouse the laggard in the battle's rear, Daunt the stern wicked, and from discord wring Prevailing harmony, while the humblest soul Who keeps the tune the warder angels sing In golden choirs above, And only wears, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the blossoms vied with but poorly. It was a smile like this, perhaps, which Mistress Wimpole feared and trembled before, for 'twas not a tender smile nor a melting one. If she was waiting, she did not wait long, nor, to be sure, would she have long waited if she had been kept by any daring laggard. This was ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Error's gilded crest, where in the van Of earth's great army, mingling with the best And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud The battle-cries that yesterday have led The host of Truth to victory, but to-day Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave, He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has made This world a strife of atoms and of spheres; With every breath I sigh myself away And take my tribute from the wandering wind To fan the flame of life's consuming fire; So, while my thought has life, it ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be a laggard in love answered confusedly that he and Miss Dutton had been singing that famous hymn, "We shall meet in the sweet By-and-by." The congregation were standing, but resumed their seats at the end of the hymn. Under cover of much scraping of feet and rustling of starched petticoats, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... shaded doors of Bachelors' Row. There was no one up to watch and tell: why should she not look thither, and even stand one moment peering under the veranda at a darkened window half-way down the row, as though impatient at the non-appearance of some familiar signal? How came the laggard late? How slept the knight while here his lady stood impatient? She twined the leaves and roses in a fragrant knot, ran lightly within and laid them on the snowy cloth beside the colonel's seat at table, came forth and plucked some more and fastened ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... moon!" said a voice that, once heard, remained unforgettably on the ear. "A night for lovers, Mr. Withers, if ever there was one. Get a shawl, my dear Arthur, and take Alice for a little promenade. I dare say we old cronies will manage to keep awake. Hasten, hasten, Romeo! My poor, poor Alice, how laggard a lover!" ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... laggard. The bell on the church near by was still singing from the last stroke when he knocked, flung open the door, and stood for a moment staring at her. Not that she had been shabby when he had wished to marry her at noon: no self-respecting woman is ever shabby; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... world worth far more than money, one of which is that sense of having done our neighbour's share as well as our own. It will be enough for us to watch when, bewildered by the lusty life and growth and the maze of new-made streets of the future city, the laggard stands debating with that other self, that genius that has kept him what he is. Fancy his striking attitude, thumbs in arm-pits and eyes rolling up to some tall spire, crying out to his other self, 'Thou canst not say I helped do this! Shake not thy towseled locks ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... pardons, it was a poetical reminiscence. The lancers, having rushed through the boulevard like an avalanche, a laggard rider, a hundred steps behind the others, galloped proudly by, erect in his stirrups and flourishing his sword. Suddenly the report of a gun resounded, the lancer reeled backward, then forward, and finally fell upon his horse's neck; a moment later he turned in his saddle ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... depicts, to the common calibre, sensual, exterior life. To such, or the luckiest of them, as we see, the audiences are limitless and profitable; but they cease presently. While this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interior or spiritual life, the audiences were limited, and often laggard—but they last forever. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was wide enough for that. As we penetrated, the bellowing and barking became more deafening. It was impossible to see anything, although we felt an indistinguishable tumbling mass receding before our footsteps. Thrackles swore violently as he stumbled over a laggard. With uncanny abruptness the black wall of darkness in front of us was alive with fiery eyeballs. The seals had reached the end of the cave and had turned toward us. We, too, stopped, a little uncertain ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... this method is, that the individual laggard cannot screen his deficiencies, as he can when reciting in concert. He cannot make believe to know the lesson by lazily joining in with the general current of voice when the answers are given. His own individual knowledge, or ignorance, stands out. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... is called Progress, the collective stride of the human race is called Progress. Progress advances; it makes the great human and terrestrial journey towards the celestial and the divine; it has its halting places where it rallies the laggard troop, it has its stations where it meditates, in the presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiled on its horizon, it has its nights when it sleeps; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a challenge of drums; loud music struck upon the air. Starting instantly to go to Julia, Noble's left leg first received the electric impulse and crossed his laggard right; but he was no pacer, and thus stumbled upon himself and plunged. Still convulsive, he came headlong before her, and was the only person near who remained unaware that his dispersal of an intervening group had the appearance of ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... who bless our native soil, Far from these acres keep ill luck away! No withered ears the reaper's task to spoil! Nor swift wolf on our laggard lambs to prey!" ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... all the stir the ark was still. Over all the march it watched. So long as one Israelite was in the channel it remained, a silent presence, to ensure his safety. It let their rate of speed determine the length of its standing there. It waited for the slowest foot and the weariest laggard. God makes His 'very present help' of the same length as our necessities, and lets us beat the time to which He conforms. Not till the last loiterer has struggled to the farther shore does He cease by His presence to keep His people safe ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... soon to the Holloman Gate, which swung across the trail near the west end of the mountain. Tall poplars and spruce made an ample shade, but a glance toward the sun showed it at the zenith. She was prompt to the rendezvous; it was the lover who was laggard. She wondered a little at that, but with no lightening of her mood. She was sure that he would come all too speedily. She stood waiting in misery, leaning listlessly against the fence, her gaze downcast. The geranium blossoms touched the sward richly with color; ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... and with him Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, the Pages, and George Mason. But between the two groups, after all, was surprising harmony, which is thus explained by one who in all that business had a great part and who never was a laggard:— ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... days came and the settlement had increased by one or two families, and laggard capital had been hurried up to relieve the still beleaguered and locked-up wealth of Burnt Ridge, the needs of the community and the claims of the widow of John Baker were so well told in political quarters that the post-office of Laurel Run was created expressly for ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lookout for it during the latter half of May, or at the season of apple bloom, and the early part of September. It passes northward with an almost scornful rapidity. Audubon mentions having seen it in Maine at the end of October, but this specimen surely must have been an exceptional laggard. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... is heaped in mountain piles, And gluts the laggard forges; But gold-flakes gleam in ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... Webster each gave a son, never to be returned. From the State of my own residence, besides other worthy but less known Whig names, we sent Marshall, Morrison, Baker, and Hardin; they all fought and one fell, and in the fall of that one we lost our best Whig man. Nor were the Whigs few in number or laggard in the day of danger. In that fearful, bloody, breathless struggle at Buena Vista, where each man's hard task was to beat back five foes or die himself, of the five high officers who perished, four were Whigs. In speaking of this, I mean no odious comparison between the lion-hearted Whigs ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... example of banking in his manager, Dunn, but his eyes were not yet opened. He could see the $75 a month very plainly, but he could not comprehend the eight long years of service that had made Dunn's salary what it was—and that had made him the laggard he was. Dunn had not entirely lost ambition, any more than a hundred Dunns in every bank to-day have lost it; but eight years' specialty service makes a young man useless for anything else but his specialty, and when he does muster enough strength to sit ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... gossiped too long. I am a laggard this morning; but before starting work, I have a ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... filled For joyous hours they soon will build, And it is vain for me to say, That have grown old and wise and gray, That time is swift, and joy is brief; They'll put no faith in such belief. To youthful hearts that long for play Time is a laggard on the way. 'Twas, Oh, so slow to me back then Ere I had ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... sharp-set, and be willing, There will be a dreadful revel, And liquor red be spilling. O, that each chief[142] whose warriors rife, Are burning for the slaughter, Would let their volley, like fire to holly, Blaze on the usurping traitor. Full many a soldier arming, Is laggard in his spirit, E'er his blood the flag is warming Of the King that should inherit. He may be loon or coward, That spur scarce touch would nearly— The colours shew, he 's in a glow, Like the stubble of the barley. Onward, gallants! onward ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and determined to accompany me himself. Meantime, we must drink some kirsch. The maire was a young man, spare and vehement. He talked with a headlong impetuosity which caused him to be always hot, and his hair limp and errant; and at the end of each sentence there were so many laggard halves of words to come out together, with so little breath to bring them out, that he eventuated in a stuttering scream. His clothes were of such a description, that the most speculative Israelite would not have gone beyond copper for his wardrobe, all ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... not know that she would be here! Bobby would have met her at his best, and his best is more to my liking than the count's. He has a way about him that the women like. He's no laggard. But money ought not to count with Betty. She is worth at least a quarter of a million. Her mother left all her property to her, and her father acts only as trustee. Senator Blank's house rents for eight thousand the season. It's ready furnished, you know, and one ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... cottage was astir early and Ruth was no laggard. She came down to breakfast while the sun was just peeping above the house-tops and as she entered the sitting room she found an occupant at last in the little wheel-chair. It was the sharp, pale little face that confronted her above the warm ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... at bottom dared not murder the king, he only toyed with the thought. He must be instigated from without, if the deed is not to be put off until the Greek calends. Lady Macbeth from the very beginning feels it her task to strengthen her laggard and doubting husband in his ambition. This Shakespeare had already found in Holinshed. As the chronicle has pictured it: "Still more did his wife urge him on to attack the king, for she was exorbitantly ambitious and burned with an inextinguishable desire to bear the name of queen."[34] ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... morning pelt the eyelids of the laggard sleepers they awake to find the thief has come and gone and in his going has taken the ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... astral organism. There is nothing lost, no radiation of energy dispersed upon the unformed, lifeless ether. From the radiating solar focus of Divinity it comes, and to him, undiminished it returns, and so on forever and ever; until the last Deific atom has won its laggard way back to ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... with what laggard steps, with what oppressive tardiness, came the dawn, in long streaks of lurid light above the edge of the ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... answered the Young Doctor. Yet his feet were laggard, for he was not so sure that there would be another home for Jean Jacques with his grandchild as its star. He was thinking of Norah, to whom a waif of the prairie had made home what home should be for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... repeated calls been made upon the South to rally to the rescue? When, where, or how, has she been laggard or deserter? ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Flower of Life, and lay thy beauty's rose Upon the breast that storm and thee divide; And like true knights whose queen no laggard knows, Forth gently shall my love-bid fancies ride To serve thy heart, and bring thy wishes in; And shuttling rhyme a web shall make thee then Whilst thou dost gaze, nor thy poor ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... a poetic word—mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Gerard lustily. "I shall win to Rome yet. Holy St. Bavon, what a sunbeam of innocence hath shot across our bloodthirsty road! Forget thee, little Jeanneton? not likely, amidst all this slobbering, and gibbeting, and decanting. Come on, thou laggard! forward!" ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "of Kentucky" of yore, Where now are the rifles that kept from your door The wolf and the robber as well? Of a truth, you have never been laggard before To deal with ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my none too smoothly articulated bones—and my alleged mind! As in my schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly and ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... laggard Spring! Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers! The climbing sun with new recovered powers Does warm thee into being, through the ring Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers Of ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell |
