"Precarious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the rein-deer for subsistence,—a dependence which the erratic habits of these animals render extremely precarious. Should they happen to miss the deer on their passage through the country in autumn, they experience the most grievous inconvenience, and often privations, the succeeding winter; as they must then draw their living from the lakes, with unremitting ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... characteristic of the Makimmons that they should each have left their family in precarious circumstances. They were not, they would contemptuously assert, farmers or merchants. When the timber was cut from the valley, the underbrush burned, and the superb cloth of grass started that had formed the foundation of a number of comfortable ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... parents in Martinique letters which had for their object to persuade her with the tenderness of love, with all the reasons of wisdom, to return to her home, to the house of her parents, to withdraw with bold resolution from all the inconveniences and humiliations of her precarious and dangerous situation, and, instead of living in humble solitude as a divorced, despised woman, sooner to come to Martinique, and there in her parents' home be again the beloved and ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... king of them all, was the first to fall; typhoid and typhus, small-pox and measles, fits of convulsions or of sneezing, coughs and catarrhs, had all been deprived of Bacilli and slain. The Wart Bacillus had fought hard and maintained himself for a long time on a precarious footing of fingers and thumbs; but he too had been extirpated. The Thirst Bacillus had given up the ghost yesterday, after keeping up for years a guerilla warfare disguised either as a green rat or a striped snake. And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... falls of rock, almost sheer on the one side and little better on the other. On a clear day the unaccustomed eye swam with the welter of the surf below on both sides at once; the unaccustomed brain reeled at thought of so precarious a passage; and the unaccustomed body, unless tenanted by a fool, or possessed of nerves beyond the ordinary or of no nerves at all, turned as a rule at the sight and thanked God for the feel of solid rock behind, or else went humbly down on hands and knees ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the other hand, the isolation and neglect of large groups of people who are uninformed of sanitation and have only precarious access to medical attendance, and whose needs call insistently for help, as well as constitute a menace to the health of these communities; such are found among ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... appreciate Pope's reception of these attacks, we must recall to ourselves the position in which he lived. He was a Catholic, and I have already (Introduction, p. x) called attention to the precarious, tenure by which the Catholics of his time held their goods, their persons, their very lives, in security. He was the intimate of Bolingbroke, of all men living the most detested by the court, and his noble friends were almost without exception the avowed enemies of ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... and Peshitta Syriac versions of the New Testament. The earnest and affectionate tone of the Epistle is thoroughly Pauline, and the argument that it is not genuine because it does not contain the same pronounced anti-Jewish teaching as we find in Romans is precarious, though it has seemed to some sceptics to be convenient. The argument might be turned in the opposite direction. For it would be just as reasonable to say that the absence of anti-Jewish doctrine proves that the Epistle was written before the ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... bloodthirsty ones got killed out; the rumthirsty ones died out; the wild corroboree was reduced to a poverty-stricken imitation of its former glory. King Billy's authority grew less with the increase of his clothes. The brass plate with his name on it was about the last relic of his precarious power, and was chiefly valued as a means of notifying the public generally that they might stand drinks to a monarch if they saw fit and were not too humble. He was not haughty, and never presumed on his plate, as parvenus will. He came of an ancient stock, and could afford to condescend, even if ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... country wilder and more desolate, the quebradas more appalling in their fathomless depth. The precipices became more lofty and difficult to scale, the mountain torrents more impetuous and dangerous to cross, the primitive suspension bridges more dilapidated and precarious, the patches of timber and vegetation more tenuous, the flocks of huanaco and vicuna larger and more frequent, the way more savage and forbidding, the storms more frequent and terrible, until at length it began to appear to Escombe as though the party had become entangled in a wilderness from ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... hair until it glittered. He drew himself up with the instinctive pride and self respect that comes of fresh clean clothes against the skin. Then he placed his absurd round hat on his head at what he considered a fetching angle, though precarious, and sallied forth on the streets of Chicago in ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... so plain to the practised eye!—and there is the poor wife, the doting mother, who has never suspected anything, or at least has clung always to the hope which you are just going to wrench away from her!—I must tell Iris that I think her poor friend is in a precarious state. She seems nearer to him ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... work contenting himself to remain there on his precarious perch; indeed, only that he did not wish to seem to be interfering with Jack's plans Joel certainly would have ventured across the window sill. Unable to beep silent any longer, he finally gave ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... been precarious before; but now its difficulties were infinitely increased. The clay sub-soil to the rubble turned slippery and adhesive. On the sides of the mountains it was almost impossible to keep a footing. We speedily became wet, our hands puffed and purple, our boots sodden with the water ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... other gentlemen were to be present only at the more interesting ceremony of reading the will. Sir Lionel had written to say that he was rather unwell; that he certainly would come up from Littlebath so as to be present at the latter performance; but that the very precarious state of his health, and the very inconvenient hours of the trains, unhappily prevented him from paying the other last sad duty to his brother's remains. Sir Henry Harcourt had plainly demanded at what hour the will would be read; and Mr. Stickatit, junior—Mr. George Stickatit—of the firm ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... view of the Castle ditch, half choked with the rubbish of the breach, and of the breach itself, which was made at the angle of a large square flanking-tower, one-half of which had been battered into ruins, while the other fragment remained in a state strangely shattered and precarious, and seemed to be tottering above the huge aperture in the wall. A stern still smile was exchanged among the Puritans, as the sight reminded them of the victories of former days. Holdfast Clegg, a millwright of Derby, who ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a distinct advantage for a man to become possessed of a spell which rendered him immune from death, pain or restraint, enabled him to pass through walls and floors and generally freed him from all those little restrictions which make life the tiresome and precarious thing it is. A man so constituted would conduct himself after the manner of his fellows from day to day and would resort to the use of his peculiar powers only when the necessity arose. But the hero of fiction has his ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... Dresser owed him money,—more than he could spare conveniently,—but that troubled him less than the thought of Dresser's folly. It was likely that he had thrown up his position—he had chafed against it from the first—and had taken to the precarious career of professional agitator. Dresser had been speaking at meetings in Pullman, with apparent success, and his mind had been full of "the industrial war," as he called it. Sommers recalled that the man had been allowed ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... admirers and have been carefully selected as such. There's supposed to be a copy of his last book in the house, and in the hall I come upon ladies, in attitudes, bending gracefully over the first volume. I discreetly avert my eyes, and when I next look round the precarious joy has been superseded by the book of life. There's a sociable circle or a confidential couple, and the relinquished volume lies open on its face and as dropped under extreme coercion. Somebody else presently finds it and transfers it, with its ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... refine our Morals, instruct our Understandings, inform our Lives, and enlighten our Souls with the celestial Spirit of the Christian Faith; and thereby happily lead us, through this transient and precarious State, to eternal Tranquilly and Bliss. I am not a Preacher; but thus far shall venture: As the Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom, our generally following the heavenly Example of this venerable Society, must be a great ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... the other hand, the remains of this early race are, Professor Sollas says, "obviously more brutal than existing men in all the other ascertainable characters by which they differ from them." Nor are we confined to precarious measurements of skulls. We have the remains of the culture of this early race, and in them we have a surer trace of its ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... a sum of four dollars and a half, which he said he had put into the hands of the porter of the hospital, and which he wanted to get back. Several times he expressed his wish to return to America (of which he was not a native), and, on the whole, I do not think he had any real sense of his precarious condition, notwithstanding that he assented to the doctor's hint to that effect. He sank away so much at one time, that they brought him wine in a tin cup, with a spout to drink out of, and he ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the free foot as a handhold for the others to mount by. The next trouble was a crevice wide enough for us to pass through to the top, but holding exactly midway a large rock lodged in such a manner that we could not crawl under and yet seeming in danger of rolling down if we went over it. It was precarious not only for the man ahead who tried to pass but for those below waiting for results, but it was more firmly wedged than it appeared to be and each one in turn climbed over it. Emerging from this crack we were on the summit 2190 feet above the river and ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... dangerously narrow and rocky, overhanging unfathomable abysses of dark water. But Christina was in mortal terror, both for herself and Andrew. She did not dare to call his name, lest, in the sudden awakening he might miss his precarious foothold, and fall to unavoidable death. She found it almost impossible to follow him nor indeed in her ordinary frame of mind could she have done so. But the experience, so strange and thrilling, had lifted her in a measure above the control of the physical and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... should there be Industry in a Country where all Property is precarious? What Subject will sow his Land that his Prince may reap the whole Harvest? Parsimony and Frugality must be Strangers to such a People; for will any Man save to-day what he has Reason to fear will be taken ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... has been in many senses unfortunate. The original German member, a gentleman of the name of Eggert, fell early into precarious health; his work was from the first interrupted, he was at last (to the regret of all that knew him) invalided home; and his successor had but just arrived. In like manner, the first American commissioner, Henry C. Ide, a man of character and intelligence, was recalled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a curiosity in itself sufficient to induce a stranger to make a long journey to visit it. Here the King of Etruria lived and was hourly expected to set out for Leghorn. But his health, as it was believed, was in so precarious a State that it was sometimes reported that he would not go at all. The Queen, indeed, was in a very critical state, and were it not that her children, she being an Infanta of Spain, are entitled to a certain sum of money by no means small, provided ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... player." I think it is a term very much misused and very little understood—being, I venture to say, appropriated in a wrong sense by players themselves. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I can only present the player to you exceptionally in this wise—that he follows a peculiar and precarious vocation, a vocation very rarely affording the means of accumulating money—that that vocation must, from the nature of things, have in it many undistinguished men and women to one distinguished one—that it is not a vocation the exerciser of which can profit by the labours of others, but in which ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... a great thing to have more regard for the lives of others than for one's own, and there are times," he added, "when it is certainly one's own life which is in the more precarious state." ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an excellent idea, Tom Hunter thought to himself, and it had worked perfectly, exactly as he had planned it ... so far. But now, as he clung to his precarious perch, he wondered if it had not worked out a little too well. The first flush of excitement that he had felt when he saw the Scavenger blow apart in space had begun to die down now; on its heels came the ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... animal state, but it is quite as much a product of his whole social nature. It becomes established as life grows more complex, as specific desires increase in number. Man is not, as thus seen in these genetic views of him, a self-tamed animal. He has not arrived at a precarious and unstable social condition out of a primitive individualism which is the essence of his warlike nature. On the other hand, he has not degenerated from some ideal pacific state. Ages ago he was already divinely human, and possessed those ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... Islands to Porto Rico. No attention was paid to Augustus, who was untied and suffered to go about anywhere forward of the cabin companion-way. Dirk Peters treated him with some degree of kindness, and on one occasion saved him from the brutality of the cook. His situation was still one of the most precarious, as the men were continually intoxicated, and there was no relying upon their continued good-humor or carelessness in regard to himself. His anxiety on my account be represented, however, as the most distressing result of his condition; and, indeed, I had never reason to doubt the sincerity ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the relief of needy respectability. Suppose yourself (if you can) to be Mr. Lobo, enjoying the position of first violinist in a string band which performs at Parsee weddings and on other festive occasions. Noblesse oblige; you cannot evade the necessity for clean shirt-fronts, ill able as your precarious income may be to meet it. In these circumstances a Dhobie with good connections is what you require. He finds you in shirts of the best quality at so much an evening, and you are saved all risk and outlay of capital; you need keep no clothes except a greenish ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... cause which I am to mention to you this day is of such mighty importance, that when I consider my own small abilities, I tremble with an apprehension lest your safety may be rendered precarious by the weakness of him who hath undertaken to represent to you your danger. Gentlemen, the liberty of Newgate is at stake; your privileges have been long undermined, and are now openly violated by one man; by one who hath ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... Maryland and Virginia. All looked up to Mrs. Griffin as their special Providence. She was satisfied that it was better for them, as far as possible, to find places and work in the Northern States, than to remain there, where employment was precarious, and where the excessive number of workers had reduced the wages of such as could find employment. She accordingly commenced an extensive correspondence, to obtain from persons at the North in want of servants, orders for such as could ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... consideration for each other." Sir Walter adds—"Of five brothers, all healthy and promising in a degree far beyond one whose infancy was visited by personal infirmity, and whose health after this period seemed long very precarious, I am, nevertheless, the only survivor. The best loved, and the best deserving to be loved, who had destined this incident to be the foundation of a literary composition, died 'before his day,' in a distant ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... with the united weight of all three, failed to start the closely-drawn bowline. Taking the axe and bearing the most of his weight on the cord, Regnar crossed the bending surface and shifting fragments, and finding a precarious footing on the berg, wound the rope around his left arm, and with the right cut steps ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... absorbed in trying out the idea, and even borrowed a circus rider whose act was to play the violin while standing on the back of a galloping horse and to throw somersaults on such precarious platform while still playing the violin. This man he got merely to play simple airs in slow time, so that the assistants could keep the time and the air and pull the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... conclusions might be ascertained; and an individual, entering upon the momentous question, would require either to trust to the conclusions of others, or to make the observations and experiments for himself. In the former case, he could not fail to perceive the precarious nature of the basis on which he was receiving principles of such weighty importance. He could not fail to remark, that, in other sciences, unsound and premature deductions had been brought forward, even on high ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... neighbours' "experiences" of Vichy. But soon finding the "quicquid agunt homines" of those who in fact did nothing, was beyond our powers of description, gave up, as abortive, the attempt to maintain our "suspended animation" on means so artificial and precarious. When little is to be told, few words will suffice. If the word fisherman be derived from fishing, and not from fish, we had a great many such fishermen at Vichy; who, though they could neither scour a worm, nor splice the rod that their clumsiness ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... that devouring diseased appetite for admiration, which preys upon the mind insatiably, to its torture—to its destruction; without that undefineable, untranslateable French love of succes de societe, which substitutes a precarious; factitious, intoxicated existence in public, for the safe self-approbation, the sober, the permanent happiness of domestic life. In England Count Altenberg hoped to find a woman raised by "divine philosophy" [Footnote: Milton.] ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... One rocker was broken and on top of the cushions in the low seat of the chair she was sitting on an old cheese box. Suddenly she arose to go in the house to "see if dem cabbages is a-burnin'," and when she returned she carefully adjusted the box before resuming her precarious perch in the old rocking chair. When she was sure that her feet were in a sunny spot, she ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Williams maintained his position on the wreck until the effect of the cold on him had made his presence useless, when he was carried off in one of the boats. Mr. Firth, after being many hours in the rigging was assisted from his precarious situation by the Rev. Mr. Ancient, a clergyman. A Spaniard remarked that the scene on board the sinking ship was one of awful confusion. A crowd of terror-stricken human beings were swaying hither and thither, in vain hopes of meeting with some way of escape, shrieking and ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... friends, huddled trembling in their precarious position on the limb, saw the great lion halt in his restless pacing as the blood-curdling cry smote his ears, and then slink quickly into the jungle, to ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I am very glad; it saves the Prince and the Opposition from the rashness of changing the Administration on so precarious and shackled a tenure, and it saves them too from the expense of re-elections. If the King recovers, they are but where they were, but with the advantage of having the Prince and Duke of York rooted in aversion to the Ministers, and most ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... New York are so different from those of London that a story of this kind calls for a little explanation. There are several million inhabitants of New York. Not all of them eke out a precarious livelihood by murdering one another, but there is a definite section of the population which murders—not casually, on the spur of the moment, but on definitely commercial lines at so many dollars per murder. The "gangs" of New York exist in fact. I have not invented them. Most ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the American vessels in the river above Fort Mifflin, the name given to the fort on Mud Island, rendered it difficult to forage in Jersey, Washington hoped to render his supplies on the side of Pennsylvania so precarious as to compel him to ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... he said to his men, "that to leave the ship is a supreme measure, to which we must have recourse only at the last extremity. All our efforts ought to be directed toward saving the 'Alaska.' Deprived of her, our situation will be a very precarious one on the ice. It is only in case of our vessel becoming uninhabitable that we must desert it. In any case such a movement should be made in an orderly manner to avoid disasters. I therefore expect that you will return quietly to your supper, and leave to your ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... imperil the interests of peace, order, and tolerable life in the lands immediately to the south of us. Even if the usurper had succeeded in his purposes, in despite of the constitution of the Republic and the rights of its people, he would have set up nothing but a precarious and hateful power, which could have lasted but a little while, and whose eventual downfall would have left the country in a more deplorable condition than ever. But he has not succeeded. He has forfeited the respect and the moral support even of ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... held their negroes by a precarious tenure. The most intelligent were constantly escaping. The inter-traffic in slaves bred in the more northern slave States was likely to become less profitable. And patrols by night, to insure order, had ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... affaires du coeur. His fortune was, however, perfectly unable to satisfy his expenses; he took to gambling, and lost the remains of his property. He went abroad, and used to be seen at the low gaming houses at Paris, earning a very degraded and precarious subsistence; till, about three months ago, two persons, who stood between him and the title and estates of the family, died, and most unexpectedly he succeeded to both. They say that he was found in the most utter penury and distress, in a small cellar at Paris; however that may ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brusque little man with a pair of keen black eyes, which he turned on the blind man curiously. "An artery cut by bullet. Small artery. Your daughter most cleverly stopped bleeding. Many thanks to her. Patient lost gallons of blood. Precarious position—very. No danger from wound now. Exhaustion only. Should he bleed again—death. But he won't; artery tied up securely. Miss Marbolt says you desire patient removed to usual quarters. I say no! Remove him—artery break afresh—death. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... in the hip and glanced off at a peculiar angle, rendering his recovery precarious and long delayed, and causing the old doctor to shake his head with the fear that he must pass the rest of his life a cripple. Still, normal youth is buoyant and vigorous and mocks at physicians' fears, and after a time, what with heart at rest, with loving and unceasing care on his mother's part, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... pitched violently forward off the seat, striking her head as she fell, and while the car yet rocked with the force of its collision with the motor-bus another vehicle drove blindly into it from the rear. It lurched sickeningly and jammed at a precarious angle, canted ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the village farthest from the gates, Werper discovered that two or three long poles, taken from a nearby pile which had been collected for the construction of huts, had been leaned against the top of the palisade, forming a precarious, though not impossible avenue ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... culprits who, it was confidently asserted, would be found amongst the small community of Chinamen whose huts were situated on the bank of the creek at a distance of about two miles from the township, and who made a precarious living by fossicking and growing vegetables. Waddy always settled matters of this kind out of hand, and the presence of those Chinamen saved it much mental trouble in accounting for thefts ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... precipice or the torrent, who made us sound it, and showed us beforehand what our fate would be if we let ourselves fall into it. It was he who put us on our guard against the time-bargains a man makes with poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting precarious situations whence he fights the battle, carried along by the devious tide of Paris—that great harlot who takes you up or leaves you stranded, smiles or turns her back on you with equal readiness, ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... period, too, that amid the terrible shrinkage of the defensive lines "refugeeing" became a feature of Southern life. From the districts over which the waves of war rolled back and forth helpless families—women, children, slaves—found precarious safety together with great hardship by withdrawing to remote places which invasion was little likely to reach. An Odyssey of hard travel, often by night and half secret, is part of the war tradition of thousands of Southern ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... with it: another insult cast upon unhappy France, whose destiny was, it seemed, to weep tears of blood to the end of time. There were rumours of an interpellation in the Chamber, the position of the Minister of the Interior was spoken of as precarious, indeed the Eclaireur reported one evening that he had resigned. Pockets were picked under the eyes of sergents de ville, who were absorbed in proclaiming to each other their conviction of the innocence of ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... 105,728, and the poor-law expenditure 30,820 l., or 5 s. 9 d. a head. In the counties in which the poor-law expenditure was large, the industry and skill of the labourers were passing away, the connection between the master and servant had become precarious, the unmarried were defrauded of their fair earnings, and riots and incendiarism prevailed. In the counties where the expenditure was comparatively small, there was scarcely any instance of disorder; mutual attachment existed between the workman and his employer; the intelligence, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... of Archangel. This port was naturally closed for nearly half the year, and how long it might be artificially kept partially open by ice-breakers it remained for the war to prove. But even if it were kept open the whole year in this precarious fashion, it lay on the farther side of hundreds of miles of waste and deserted land connected only with the active centre of Russia by one narrow-gauge line of railway with very little rolling stock. The great eastern port of Vladivostok was nearly as heavily handicapped, and its immense ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... painfully between the ridges which a long line of ice-wagons had made with their heavy wheels earlier in the day. When the spaces between the ridges were too narrow for her little feet, she ran along the crests, and that was precarious. She fell once and bruised one of her delicate knees, then she fell again, and struck the knee on the same place. It hurt her, and she caught her breath with a gasp of pain. She pulled up her little frock and touched her hand to her knee, and felt it wet, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... adults will hardly bear looking into. None of these people have any fixed occupation, and it is difficult to discover how they subsist. In fact, the life of every one of them is a problem. One might have supposed that they maintained a precarious existence by thieving or by begging, as they are far below the ordinary tramp; for with the exception of perhaps two or three of them, these cave-dwellers possess absolutely nothing, and know no trade whatever. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Fisbee!" Parker tilted far back in his chair with his feet anchored under the desk, preserving a precarious balance. "I ain't as grateful for my promotion to joint Editor-in-Chief as I might be. I'm a middling poor man for the hour, I guess," he remarked, painfully following the peregrinations of a fly on his ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Prussian sergeant, dismissed in disgrace from long service because of a small offence, without a penny, but with rheumatism in all his bones, and with his patriotism destroyed, thrust into the street to seek a new and precarious means of living, after spending his best strength, his health, and his youth in the service of ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... been 14,000. When it is considered that each of these powerlooms did as much work as three worked by hand, the increased producing power was equal to that of 123,000 hand-looms. During the whole of this period the wages and employment of hand-loom weavers have been very precarious. ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... last finished the score of the Symphony; so Kirchhoffer and I are only waiting for a favorable opportunity to send it off. I am still here, being very ill when I arrived, and my health still continues in a most precarious condition, and, good heavens! instead of amusing myself like others at these baths, my necessities compel me to write every day. I am also obliged to drink the mineral waters besides bathing. The copy will shortly be sent off; I am only ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... by these missionaries can be indicated in a sentence: When they went there the Indians cultivated almost no land and their only domestic animals were dogs. They maintained a precarious existence by hunting and fishing, and the gathering of wild rice, with starvation as no uncommon experience. In a few years these Indians raised their own supplies of corn and potatoes, with some to sell ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 3, March, 1895 • Various
... days from the distant years of another century. Your life's journey may extend far away over the unexplored future, and may in some cases be a very long one; but, although this is possible, we are not allowed to forget that it is always precarious—unexpected graves are constantly reminding us how short may be the time of any one of us—how ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... the professor drily. "The lives of these fighting men are rather precarious, and if we never see him again ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... subsistence for increasing numbers, has been the parent of useful arts and of social improvement. In every successive stage of their advancement, such countries have equally felt the evils occasioned by a scanty and precarious subsistence. In America, however, the people are in the full enjoyment of all the arts of civilization, while they are unrestricted in their means of subsistence, and consequently in their power of multiplication. From this singular state of things, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... and, before noon, he was dead also. It seemed as if the fates had conspired to ruin the old farmer and his family; day after day, horses, cattle, and other live stock, sickened and died; and, in a short time, he found himself without the means of prosecuting the labours of so precarious a season, with any prospect of success. To add to his distress, a summons was now served against him for fifty pounds, "which," as that document affirmed, "he still owed, and had refused to pay to the creditors of Mr. Rickledyke, for the building of his barn, &c." Mr. Rickledyke was the contractor ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... perceived, is very perilous to friendship. Conscious of thoughts she must not utter, Alma naturally attributed to her friend the same sort of reticence. She feared that Sibyl must often have in mind the loss she had suffered three years ago, and would contrast her own precarious circumstances with the comfort of Bennet Frothingham's daughter. Moreover, Mrs. Carnaby was not in all respects her own self; she had lost something on her travels; was it a shade of personal delicacy, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... shadowy power of a Regent. Greville, in his Memoirs, writing on 23rd of May, says: "The King prayed that he might live till the Princess Victoria was of age, and he was very nearly dying just as the event arrived. He is better, but supposed to be in a very precarious state. There has been a fresh squabble between Windsor and Kensington about a proposed allowance ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Paynted-chamber, I met and walked with Mr. George Montagu, who thinks it may go hard with my Lord Sandwich, but he says the House is offended with Sir W. Coventry much, and that he do endeavour to gain them again in the most precarious manner in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of princely favour at Italian courts, amid so many ambitious patrons and anxious suitors, was very precarious. It was uncommonly so at Ferrara. After a while a sudden change passed over the mind of the duke towards Tasso. Whether tired of the poet's incessant complaints, irritated at his incautious conduct—going the length on two occasions of drawing his sword, when provoked, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... upon even after Mme. Gobin's evidence. But as it happened it was the right one. Meanwhile, of course, I made my inquiries into Wethermill's circumstances. My good friends in England helped me. They were precarious. He owed money in Aix, money at his hotel. We knew from the motor-car that the man we were searching for had returned to Aix. Things began to look black for Wethermill. Then you gave me a little ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... In this precarious manner of life, he spent some time, until finding it impossible for him to subsist any longer by following his master's broken fortunes, he began to lay out for some new employment to get his bread. But after various projects ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... might never have had them. As it was, even the men who ventured to cast in their lot with the promoters had the caution to demand their pay in advance. They had no mind to be deluded into working for a precarious wage. At length enough toilers from the east and from the west were found who were willing to take a chance with their physical safety, and the enterprise ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... yesterday the Chapel of the Tombs: the last emanation of pure beauty of a mysterious, incomplete, forever retrogressive and yet forever forward-straining people. The Merinid tombs of Fez have fallen; but those of their destroyers linger on in precarious grace, like a flower on the edge ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... yet—there was a sense of coming tempest in the very air. And when the sisters, having recovered their self-control, went indoors to tell their tale to their father, they saw that he was much disturbed, and that he considered Anthony's position as very precarious. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... this swaggerer Mme. de Vaubadon received a certain Ollendon, a Chouan of doubtful reputation, who was said to have gone over to the police through need of money. Mme. de Vaubadon, since her divorce, had herself been in a precarious position. She had dissipated her own fortune, which had already been greatly lessened by the Revolution. She was now reduced to expedients, and seeing closed to her the doors of many of the houses in Bayeux to which her presence had ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... people would so affect the business of the country, that the sum of $79,864,100 of such surplus was applied to the payment of the principal and interest of the 3 per cent bonds still outstanding, and which were then payable at the option of the Government. The precarious condition of financial affairs among the people still needing relief, immediately after the 30th day of June, 1887, the remainder of the 3 per cent bonds then outstanding, amounting with principal and interest ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... materials. Many larvae adhere to the alimentation present in the egg, as do many adult insects also. But the struggle to fill the belly, which is actually the struggle for life, demands something better than the precarious chances of the chase. Man, at first an eager hunter of game, collected flocks and became a shepherd in order to profit by his possessions in time of dearth. Further progress inspired him to till the earth and sow; a method which assured him of a certain living. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... not wish to be abusive; but when I think of these poor little dullards, with their precarious hold of just that corner of evolution that a blackbeetle can understand—with their retinue of twopenny-halfpenny Torquemadas wallowing in the infamies of the vivisector's laboratory, and solemnly offering us as epoch-making discoveries their ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... comforts of life; her children were clothed, fed, and schooled, without thoughts of hers. But husband-less, friendless, and alone in the heart of a great, busy city, with feeble health, and only the precarious resource of her needle, she has gone down from comfort to extreme poverty. Look at her now, as she is to-night. She knows full well that the pale, bright-eyed girl, whose hollow cough constantly rings in her ears, is far from well. She knows that ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we found that the German attacks had been decisively repulsed at sunrise this morning and the French surgeons in charge of the field hospital had reconsidered their decision to move the wounded, nearly all of whom were in a precarious condition. The ambulance train therefore returned empty to its base at Doullens, travelling by protected roads, while Mr. Norton's car, with our own, followed along the battle-line, his purpose being to scout for possible wounded in order ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... letter was duly posted, and the next day brought the rich man almost in a state of distraction; but his chief and mastering terror was lest the mother of the already dead infant should hear, in her then precarious state, of what had happened. The tidings, he was sure, would kill her. Seeing this, the cunning husband of the nurse suggested that, for the present, his—the cunning one's—child might be taken to the lady as her own, and that the truth could be revealed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... reassuringly. It was a natural reaction after what her husband had undergone. But it was worry as much as anything else. Howard worried about his father, with whom he was only partially reconciled; he worried about his future, which was as precarious as ever, and most of all he worried about his wife. He was not ignorant of the circumstances which had brought about his release, and while liberty was sweet to him, it had been a terrible shock when he first heard ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... unfaithfully betrayed their trust, abandoned the Company's interest, and prostituted its influence to accomplish the purposes of individuals, whilst the interest of the Company is almost wholly neglected, and payment to us rendered extremely precarious." Here, then, is the rock of approbation of the Court of Directors, on which the right honorable gentleman says this debt was founded. Any member, Mr. Speaker, who should come into the House, on my reading this sentence of condemnation of the Court of Directors against their unfaithful servants, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a very precarious state, particularly in Italy and France; unrest prevails; wages are exorbitant; discontent is general; the phantom of Bolshevism leers at them; and they live in the hope that the defeated Central Powers will have to pay, and they will thus be saved. It was set ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... be very doubtfull or at all events much more difficult in it's accomplishment. we are now several hundred miles within the bosom of this wild and mountanous country, where game may rationally be expected shortly to become scarce and subsistence precarious without any information with rispect to the country not knowing how far these mountains continue, or wher to direct our course to pass them to advantage or intersept a navigable branch of the Columbia, or even were we on such an one the probability is that ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... stopped and went near. It was worth while to hear the poultry cries of the gallinules if nothing more; and often several of the birds would be seen swimming about among the big white lilies and the green tussocks. Once I discovered one of them sitting upright on a stake,—a precarious seat, off which he soon tumbled awkwardly into the water. At another time, on the same stake, sat some dark, strange-looking object. The opera-glass showed it at once to be a large bird sitting with its back toward me, and holding its wings uplifted in the familiar heraldic, e-pluribus-unum ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... A precarious and uncertain quiet had succeeded the agitation of the day before. Multnomah's energy had awed the malcontents into temporary submission, and the different bands were mingling freely with one another; though here and there a chief or warrior looked on contemptuously, standing moodily apart, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... the slope was one of the most critical moments in my life... The very steep hillside was slippery under our horses feet, and they stumbled at every pace over numerous outcrops of rock. In addition, the constant hail of grape-shot which was hurled from the enemy guns made our position highly precarious. I came out of this without any personal accident, thanks to the courage, determination, and skill of my excellent Turkish horse, which by walking along the edge of precipices like a cat on a roof, saved my life, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... There is, moreover, an air of seasoned authority abroad. Many who were second lieutenants or lance corporals three months ago are now commanding companies and platoons. Bobby Little is in command of "A" Company: if he can cling to this precarious eminence for thirty days—that is, if no one is sent out to supersede him—he becomes an "automatic" captain, aged twenty! Major Kemp commands the battalion; Wagstaffe is his senior major. Ayling has departed from our midst, and rumour says that he is leading ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... heard it observed by a profound adept in human physiology that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives for ever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... day at Ardenvohr," answered the Envoy, "that he may feast to-morrow at Inverary; in which last purpose if he chance to fail, my lease of human service will be something precarious." ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... farther from the stem of the tree and out upon the tapering branch, where his footing became ever more precarious. The cat, infuriated by the pain of spear wounds, was overstepping the bounds of caution. Already he had reached a point where he could do little more than maintain a secure footing, and it was ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ever the Americans recognized that conditions were precarious, and that the greatest need was for a better organization. Zeal was not wanting. Whenever the British cannonade recommenced, whenever there were rumors of an attack, the troops were ready for a fight. But means of communication, and prompt and efficient subordination, still were lacking. Nor ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... a seat by her; "it's useless to disguise the fact that Ellis is in a precarious situation—how long he may be sick it is impossible to say; as soon as it is practicable, should he get better, we will bring him here. You remember, Ellen, that years ago, when I was young and poor, Ellis often befriended me—now 'tis my turn. You must all make ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... midst of my castle-building, I suffered a sense of revulsion. I had been brought up to believe that the only adjective that could be coupled with the noun "journalism" was "precarious." Was I not, as Gresham would have said, solving an addition sum in infantile poultry before their mother, the feathered denizen of the farmyard, had lured them from their shell? Was I not mistaking a flash in the pan ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... their position was being made more precarious a couple more shots were fired, the bullets ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn |
