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More "Foothold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed to conceal no opening. I crept cautiously along the cliff-top, as near to the edge as I dared, till I was some twenty feet from the spot where I had heard the voice. Then I looked down again carefully, searching every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get down, there seemed to be nothing but the sea for him at the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... worth many inglorious years. Jones of the Marines fell wounded, but rose again and rushed on with his men. It was on these gallant marines, the men who are ready to fight anywhere and anyhow, moist or dry, that the heaviest loss fell. When at last they made good their foothold upon the crest of that murderous hill they had left behind them three officers and eighty-eight men out of a total of 206—a loss within a few minutes of nearly 50 per cent. The bluejackets, helped by ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trifle; it is only a thin veneering just to give a secure and comfortable foothold," remarked the professor. He paused at what looked like a trap-door in the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... night no longer whispered to him. He was utterly alone. He had entered his kingdom. Viewed from afar it had seemed a vast pleasure-dome of infinite enchantment. He found Success, as it ever shall be, a veritable desert, grudging man foothold, yet luring him from one aspiration to another, only to ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... blocking the advance. Food brought him to his normal self again, and in the crisp air of night he set his face to the task of climbing. Severe as this was upon his unaccustomed muscles, the firm rocks were still a welcome relief after the racking looseness of sand that interminably sank away from foothold. At midnight the wearied pursuers dropped down from a high plateau to a narrow arroyo. Here again was sand. Fortunately, this time, for in it footprints stood out clear, illuminated by the white moonlight. They led direct to a side barranca. There the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had evacuated it in 1908 in favour of its rightful owner, Turkey. At the same time a Serbian expeditionary corps marched right through Albania, braving great hardships on the way, and on November 30 occupied Durazzo, thus securing at last a foothold on the Adriatic. Besides all this, Serbia, in fulfilment of its treaty obligations, dispatched 50,000 splendidly equipped men, together with a quantity of heavy siege artillery, to help the Bulgarians at the siege of Adrianople. On December 3 an ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... documents had injured their health. The moustaches and beards on the lips of each, gave them also a manly appearance. They were all joyously ready to sacrifice themselves and their property for a great spiritual prize, yet looked as if they had a firm foothold in the midst of life; their hale, sensible faces showed no traces of enthusiasm; only the young Seigneur of Warmond's eyes sparkled with a touch of this feeling, while Janus Dousa's glance often seemed turned ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Jarvo gave a sharp command, and all four of the men broke into a rhythmic chant. Jarvo, leading the way, sprang immediately upon the first foothold, where none seemed to be, and without pause to the next. So perfectly were the men trained that it was as if but one set of muscles were inspiring the movements made to the beat of that monotonous measure. In their strong hands the flexible ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... than in any other city, have sweated and labored and fiercely struggled, as have the people of other cities, only to deliver up a great share of their earnings to the lords of the soil, merely for a foothold. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... of Le Mesnil: It was to the north of Le Mesnil that the French encountered the greatest German resistance. In the course of the engagements of the preceding winter the French had succeeded in securing a foothold on top of the hill numbered 196. The Germans remained a little to the east, in the "Ravin des Cuisines" (Ravine of the Kitchens). This the French now took by assault, but could get no farther. The German trenches, constructed on the northern slopes of Hill 196, were so concealed from field ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... moment Timoteo stood still and looked at Herbert. Then the Spanish boy turned and flew over the rocks. Leaping from one slippery foothold to another, he rushed toward the cliffs, up the cliff road, on to the clusters of Chinese huts that made a little fishing-village by itself on the edge of the bay. Whatever Spanish or English vocabulary Timoteo used, he aroused ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... adolescence. The professional man seldom advertises the fact that he has gone hunting or fishing for a day or a week, as it is thought to be not quite the thing for a lawyer to be away from his office for such a purpose. Golf has gained no foothold except in the larger towns, and even there the existence of the country club is often precarious. Few males except college youths will be seen on the tennis court, if indeed there be one even in a town of five thousand ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... the earth's surface, the eye of the American shall behold it, may he have reason to bless it! On whatsoever spot it is planted, there may freedom have a foothold, humanity a brave champion, and religion an altar. Though stained with blood in a righteous cause, may it never, in any cause, be ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... failure as a mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything? The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while I was a waif, a ne'er-do-well, nearly two years in America with nothing ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... shingles, bleached lighter through sun and wind, and covered with low, white-capped chimneys, it looked even more stark and chilly than the drifts which had climbed its low roadside fence, and yet seemed hopeless of gaining a foothold on the glancing walls, or slippery, wind-swept roof. The storm, which had already heaped the hollows of the road with snow, hurled its finely-granulated flakes against the building, but they were whirled along the gutters and ridges, and disappeared ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... drove him away, but he found footing at another, next adjoining the building on the north. To reach him from below, with the whole building ablaze, was impossible. Other escape there was none, save a cornice ledge extending halfway to his window; but it was too narrow to afford foothold. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... also succeeded in throwing back upon the Meuse the enemy, who was endeavoring to gain a foothold on the left bank. Our successes continued on the 28th in the woods of Marfee and of Jaulnay. Thanks to them we were able, in accordance with the orders of the General in Chief, to fall back on the Buzancy-Le ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... difficulty the natives of the country passed over, trusting themselves without apparent concern to walk at that tremendous height along the rough surface of the primitive bridge, which afforded so uncertain and precarious a foothold. The captain, having the nerves and nimbleness of a sailor, followed them fearlessly and safely. But for the Caliph the adventure was extremely perilous. However, seeing the others cross, with his wonted intrepidity and hardihood he ventured to follow ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... his muscular fingers, and using those lower down for a foothold, as best he could, Nick hurriedly began ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... that ledge just to the left? I dropped a big rock from the Point square on a rattler who was sunning himself there last spring. I can see a foothold all the way up the cliff. It can be done," he concluded, in a tone that made ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... the old sailor, "I managed fine at first, although that thar gas sausage was stretched as smooth and tight as a drum. The network around it gave me a foothold though, and once I was half-way round the lower bulge of the bag—where I was clinging on upside ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of light came on. It was another lantern, borne in the hand of another fur-clad figure. It passed through the gateway. A string of panting dogs followed close behind, clawing at the ground for foothold, bellies low to the ground as they hauled at the rawhide tugs which harnessed them to their burden behind. One by one they passed the waiting figure. One by one they were swallowed up by the blackness within the Fort. Five in all were counted. Then came a long dark ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... Germans, so that the latter only saved themselves by a circuitous gallop behind Woodcote farm, not drawing rein until they arrived in rear of the left of the main position. Gore then gained a secure foothold near the colliery 1,700 yards from the enemy's right rear. Here he concealed his squadrons, and awaiting the development of the infantry attack, watched the rear face of the enemy's kopjes for signs ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... first historian of the new found land of Virginia; and to trace the gradual geographical development of that country out of the unlimited 'Terra Florida' of Juan Ponce de Leon, through the French planting and the Spanish rooting out of the Huguenot colony down to the successful foothold of the English in Wingandacoa under Raleigh's patent, I little suspected either the extent of the research I was drifting into, or the success that ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... have only such a foothold as theirs in this dear green world of ours?" she would ask herself, shiveringly. And the Sunday-evening's sermon could soothe her not ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... effect was certain, as not the slightest doubt existed in my mind that the moment it became a question of great sums of money all distinctions would vanish and pickpocket and Home Secretary would scramble on to the same foothold. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... other side of Headquarters dome, new squares of living domes were sprouting up daily. At this morning's count they housed fifty-two thousand people. The Hub's major industries and assorted branches of Federation government had established a solid foothold on Manon. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... dank wet smell, as if there were running water a mile away below. He could feel that a little air flowed downward into it. Twenty yards away on the far side the path resumed, but there was neither hand nor foothold on the smooth damp walls between. He went back to his men with a shiver between his shoulder-blades, and the mullah, standing in the gap of the mosque wall, blinked at ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... attempt. The seamen endeavored to dissuade her, but the imminence of her danger on shore, and the magnanimity of her spirit urged her on. She had to be borne to the shallop in the arms of a mariner. Such was the violence of the wind and waves, that he faltered, lost his foothold, and let his precious burden fall ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... all-pervading, can perish from its prime, and flutter away into dust like the dead leaves of a rose. Yet is it not the less true. Time, cold reason, bitter experience, all poison its life-springs; respect, esteem, admiration, all turn away from a point that offers no foothold for their clinging; and she who weeps to-day tears hot as life-blood ten years hereafter may look with cool distaste at the past passion she has calmly weighed and measured, and thank God that her wish failed and her hope was cut down. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and down the front of the strange black wall, hunting eagerly for a place that offered the slightest foothold by which we could climb to the terraces that we could see far above, but the search was a futile one. The tremendous mountain of ebony rock appeared to have been driven up out of the earth during some volcanic disturbance, ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... For them the promise of spring is a grim and a sinister thing; to them the springy green turf carpet on the fields means ground fit to bear the weight of teams and guns, dry enough to give firm foothold to the ranks of infantry charging across the death-trap of the neutral ground, where clogging, wet, slippery mud adds to the minutes under the hail of fire and every minute there in the open means hundreds of lives lost. The hard, dry road underfoot means merely that roads are passable ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... with political questions, the former was always a matter of interest to the government, and in all the ups and downs of the relations of England with the Continental countries during the sixteenth century the foothold gained by English merchants was always preserved or regained after a ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... 1861) Government, striking at the Rebellion wildly, as a blind man learning to fence, was throwing bodies of raw, undisciplined troops into the Border States, wherever there was foothold, to their certain destruction, though with an ulterior good effect, as it proved. Camps of these men were stationed along the road as Ellen passed,—broad-backed and brawny-limbed Iowans and Indianians, clothed in every variety of militia military gear, riding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... saurian dived, and Jack saw the huge dark form dart at him under water. He felt his legs swept from under him at the next instant, and down he went. He had not been seized, he had simply been knocked from his foothold by the rush of the great brute, and he landed full on the alligator's back. He felt plainly with his hand its rough scaly covering like knobs of horn. He had kept his eyes open, and saw clearly the horrid brute below him, and the dark forms of his ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... which, a little lower, lay a snow-bed over a long steep slope of loose broken stones and sand. This slope, a sort of talus or "screen" as they say in the Lake country, was excessively fatiguing from the want of firm foothold; and when I reached the other side, I was already so tired and breathless, having been on foot since midnight, that it seemed almost useless to persevere farther. However, on the other side I got upon solid rock, where the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... her poor power of charming him, as at first she had been able to do, with the sparkle of her wit and the half- unconscious display of her natural grace, was not on the wane, and if she was not near to losing her precarious foothold in his esteem and affection. The thought that he might be tiring of her struck her like a freezing wind, and for a moment turned ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... stream—she stood almost opposite to it—but how to get across? Gazing despairingly in every direction she suddenly perceived the fallen trunk of a tree lying half in and half out of the brawling torrent—it was green with slippery moss and offered but a dangerous foothold,—nevertheless ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... could gain a foothold on the gallery, the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder, without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... descended feet in advance. The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care. The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and roared thunderously below him, lesser stone loosened by the men above him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and, turning halfway about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Harry!" Tom hissed in my ear. "Crook your hands. No! Clasp 'em together, to give me a foothold." ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Bretons they are brave, and fight savagely until the last, neither giving nor asking for quarter. They believe that their country, which is so wild and hilly as to be a great natural fortress, is unconquerable, and certainly neither Saxon nor Dane has ever succeeded in getting any foothold there. But when the spring comes I hope to teach them that even their wild hills are no defence, and that their habits of savage plundering must be abandoned or we will exterminate them altogether. But ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... hearth-fire of the city, not the intermediaries between it and its gods. But the Vestals have no parallel in Greek life. Asiatic rites and devotions, it is true, from an early period obtained a foothold among the populace; but they were either discountenanced, or by being made part of the civic ritual were disarmed of their mystic or monastic elements. An epitaph in the Anthology commemorates two aged priestesses ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... army of the unemployed in agriculture and industry—of those who have lost their foothold in the lower middle class,—and of those who have been expropriated (robbed) of their little possessions by ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... to win a foothold upon that inimical planet easily, nor were they to hold it without effort. Through the weird vegetation of the circle's bare edge there scuttled and poured along a horde of the metal-studded men—if "men" they might be called—who, ferocity incarnate, rushed the robot line. ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... wicked in her sight. She would allow all home indulgences to her daughter, each under some separate plea,—constrained to do so by excessive love; but she did so always in fear and trembling, lest she was giving some foothold to Satan. All of which Robert Bolton understood better even than did his father when he gave the above advice in reference to ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... ascendency in North America, while the English considered that their claim to its rule was pre-eminent. The French had established a line of military fortified posts from Canada to the southern part of the Mississippi, and they were fast securing a foothold in the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... as proper as polygamy, yet it never in the history of man obtained a foothold. The system is more logical than polygamy, because the wife's dependence would be distributed between two or more husbands, in which case she would be better insured against poverty and her support would ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... covered with fragrant jessamine and myrtle. If she could only get over that wall, thought Sylvia, she would be safe. She ran swiftly forward and began to scramble up, grasping the sturdy vines, and finding a foothold on some bit of rough brick. She reached the top just as she heard Miss Rosalie's servant calling ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... charmantes of Regnard should now be neglected in France. We do not recollect to have met with him even in the "Causeries" of Ste. Beuve, who has ransacked the French Temple of Fame from garret to cellar for feuilleton materials; yet the "Legataire" kept a foothold on the stage for a hundred and twenty years. But the Temple of Fame is overcrowded. Every day some worthy fellow is turned out to make room for a new-comer. Our libraries are not large enough to hold the mob of authors who press in. What ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... an agony, and peered over the edge, calling and screaming wildly in his despair, for there was no hope of saving poor Liesl. But yes, there was! Down there she had got her fore-foot on a ledge below the brink, and was fighting and scrambling to regain her foothold. The loose stones were slipping away under the pretty tufts of "student roses" that grew amongst the shale, and poor Liesl was slipping ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... news come in, confused to sure, but still one finds something like a foothold. I am thunderstruck, annihilated. I listened to Hooker's best friends but can hardly help crying. Hooker is a failure as a commander of a large army. Hooker is good for a corps or two, but not for the whole command ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... become part and parcel of our mental vision forever. She gives the reader the impression that she never declined a fancy, just as some gentlemen of the eighteenth century never declined a duel. When she fell it was always because she missed the foothold, never because she ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... condition of passive acquiescence in their small present attainments, and of careless indifference to the great stretch of the unattained, the characteristic of the mass of professing Christians? They have got a foothold on a new continent, and their possession of it is like the world's drawing of the map of Africa when we were children, which had a settlement dotted here and there along the coast, and all the broad regions of the interior were ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... shocking sound of the impact Stent wheeled from the abyss, then staggered back under the powerful shove from Von Glahn's nervous arm. Swaying, fighting frantically for foothold, there on the chasm's awful edge, he balanced for an instant; fought for equilibrium. Von Glahn, rigid, watched him. Then, deathly white, his young eyes looking straight into the eyes of his old classmate—Stent lost the fight, fell outward, wider, dropping back ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... with its tens of millions of animalcula, each one a miniature light-house, changed in color from inky blackness to silver sheen. Will the ocean take to itself this frail foothold? — we queried. Will it ingulf us in its insatiable maw, as the whale did Jonah? There was no subsidence, no pause in the storm. It howled, bellowed, and screeched like a legion of demons, so that the crashing of falling ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... ford was about a foot deep, and even then the rapid incline of the ground sent the shallow water swirling along at such a pace that it made a horse's foothold on the sliding pebbles precarious. Now it was four feet deep at least, and to cross at present was as impossible as it had been half an hour before. But as I watched it became more and more evident that ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... formed was the Huntingdon Union, but it was not until the winter of 1882-83 that the W.C.T.U. work may be said to have gained a foothold in this Province. During this winter, Mrs. Youmans visited many places in the Province by invitation of the late Rev. Thomas Gales and prominent Christian ladies, giving public addresses and urging the ladies to more active work in this particular branch of Christian endeavor. The result of her ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... this, he began to climb diagonally, clambering like a monkey, availing himself of every inch that offered foothold. A slip would have meant instant disaster, but this fact did not apparently occur to him, or if it did he was not dismayed thereby. He even presently, as he cautiously worked his way upwards, began to hum again in gay snatches ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... identified with that of the people among whom he lived. Among men of simple habits, and where there are small diversities of condition, the feelings and passions are displayed with less restraint, and the young poet grew acquainted with that primal human basis of character where the Muse finds firm foothold, and to which he ever afterward cleared his way through all the overlying drift of conventionalism. The dalesmen were a primitive and hardy race who kept alive the traditions and often the habits of a more picturesque ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... surely did not have to share a third part of her sisters' room, did she? For nothing is so much prized by most girls as a room of their very own, and a middle daughter, particularly such a middle daughter as Grace Wainwright, has a claim to a foothold—a wee bit place, as the Scotch say—where she can shut herself in, and read her Bible, and say her prayers, and write her letters, and dream her dreams, with nobody by to see. Mrs. Wainwright had been a good deal disturbed about there being no room for Grace ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... one of the stone benches and fell into a deep study. There was the bell but where was the mysterious ringer? The bell rope had long ago rotted away. The walls had once been plastered and were still too smooth to offer a foothold to the most expert climber. How then to account for the regular nightly tolling? The mystery had in reality ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... for the entire Sirenian System, and settle for half. We'll establish a foothold on all the choicer worlds. And, with shrewd handling, in a century we'll be in a position ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... the very bottom he saw his wife and his horses. His heart gave a great bound, and all his fears left him, but he was forced to be patient, for the sides of the rock were smooth, and not even a goat could find foothold. So he got up again, and made his way round through the wood, pushing by trees, scrambling over rocks, wading through streams, till at last he was on flat ground again, close to the mouth of ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... ammunition by placing the cartridge-boxes on their shoulders, the column pushed cheerfully into the rushing current. The men as they entered the water joined each other in sets of four in a close embrace, which enabled them to retain a foothold and successfully resist the force of the flood. When they were across I turned the column down the left bank of Elk River, and driving the enemy from some slight works near Estelle Springs, regained ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... answer to this observation, and we trudged along for a time in silence, keeping well down to the water's edge, where the sands afforded a good foothold. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... conflict of opinions and tendencies in which we are involved at the present day? But it is no part of our plan to follow these out. Momentary resemblances often mislead the politician who seeks a sure foothold in the past, as well as the historian who seeks it in the present. The Muse of history has the widest intellectual horizon and the full courage of her convictions; but in forming them she is thoroughly conscientious, and we might say jealously bent on her duty. To introduce the interests ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... perpetuities, and class legislation are contrary to the genius of free government, and ought not to be allowed. Here there is no room for favored classes or monopolies; the principle of our Government is that of equal laws and freedom of industry. Wherever monopoly attains a foothold, it is sure to be a source of danger, discord, and trouble. We shall but fulfill our duties as legislators by according "equal and exact justice to all men," special privileges to none. The Government is subordinate to the people; but, as the agent and representative ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... can climb that," thought the sturdy lad, after scrutinizing the herculean task, and watching one of the eagles soaring far above the summit. "I think there is enough foothold, and I can use the vines to help pull me up; but, if the eagles should catch me at it, they ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... Mr. Waring recovered. If there was any change in his manner to Jo, it was too slight to be seen, though it was felt, and was, after all, the carelessness of a person certain of his foothold in her good graces, rather than the evident withdrawal of attention,—which I could have pardoned even then, had it been the result of honest regret for past carelessness, and stern resolution to repair that past. Whatever it was, Jo perceived that her ideal man was become ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... mountaineering, while the two dogs, Fritz and Bruno, trotted on before us. At the outset there was some rough ground to traverse, and considerable work to be done with ropes and tools, for the slippery edges of the highland path afforded scarce any foothold, and in some parts the difficulties appeared well-nigh insurmountable. But every fresh obstacle overcome added a new zest to our resolution, and, cheered by the reiterated cry of the two seers, "Courage, messieurs! Avanfons! The worst will soon be passed!" We pushed forward with right good ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... clouds which in bursting flooded the plain with rains unusually heavy for this period of the year. The surface is a very light cotton soil several feet deep. When baked by summer sun it has a cracked hard crust giving a firm foothold for man and horse, and yielding only slightly to the wheels of light cars; even laden lorries made easy tracks over the country. The lorries generally kept off the ill-made unrolled Turkish road which had been constructed for winter use and, except for slight deviations ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence and east of the Mississippi. The Spanish possessions on the Gulf of Mexico were ceded to England, the territory west of the Mississippi going to Spain. France was left no foothold in North America. While the powers of England, France, and Spain were in the French capital arranging this result, as Parkman remarks, "countless Indian warriors in the American forests were singing the war-song and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Bolton sat in the stern with the steering-paddle. The banks were sometimes precipitous, sometimes stony, sometimes grown to the water's edge with thick vegetation. Dick had often to wade, often to climb and scramble, sometimes even to leap from one foothold to another. Only rarely did he enjoy level footing and the opportunity for a straight pull. Suddenly in a shallow pool, near the river's edge, and bordered with waist-high grass, he came upon a flock of black ducks. They ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... wall was eight feet high, and so built that on all the expanse of its smoothed surface there was no foothold, no projection for fingers to cling to. But Brent was in that frame of mind which makes light of obstacles: he drew back into the lane, ran, gathered himself for an upward spring at the coping of the wall, leapt, grasped it, ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... renewed with hope, he took both women with a protecting gesture into his embrace. The three rejoiced together in that honest demonstration which seems permissible in the West, where social forms and fears have not much foothold. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... delicate mucous membrane. In self-protection it begins to secrete an excess of mucus and if the irritation is great enough, pus. The various bacteria are incidental. The tubercular bacillus is never able to gain a foothold in healthy lungs, but after degeneration of lung-tissue has taken place the lungs furnish a splendid home for this bacillus. The tubercular bacillus is a scavenger and therefore does not thrive in healthy bodies. It is the result of ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... sunburned and brittle, ran to the sandy edge of the river, which flowed silently in a broad, shallow, yellow flood beneath the star gleam. Under the protection of that bank, but somewhat to the left, where a handful of stunted cottonwood trees had found precarious foothold in the sand, gleamed the solitary Indian fire. About its embers, no doubt, squatted the chiefs and older warriors, feasting and taking council, while the younger bucks lay, rifles in hand, along the night-enshrouded slope, their cruel, vengeful eyes seeking ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... two outermost men on the mizzen-top yard of the Hermione that night, determined to escape the threatened flogging. They made a desperate spring to get over their comrades crowding into the ratlines, missed their foothold, fell on the quarter-deck beside their furious captain, and were instantly killed. The captain's epitaph on the unfortunate sailors was, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... around the world," said Jack, as he and his brother rode out of the yard. "Especially did I think of home when the brig was dismasted by a tornado in the South Atlantic. We came as near going to the bottom that time as we could without going, and I promised myself that if I ever again got a foothold on solid ground, I would keep it; but here I am thinking of going to sea once more, as soon as I have had a visit with ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... his slippers and gripping the curb for support, lowered himself into the pit. A rush of cold air like a breath from an open grave enveloped him. Finding foothold in the crevices of the green damp stones, digging his fingers into slimy crannies, panting, slipping, bruising his flesh without feeling the hurt, this frail hypochondriac went to the aid of the child who somehow had ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... is the principle of contract, by which alone any tenant is to be permitted to occupy land. There is to be no foothold in the island, from the centre all round to the sea, from the top of the highest mountain to the shore at low-water-mark, for any Irishman in his native land, unless he obtains it by contract from a ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... "that's my case, too; and I seemed to feel it in my bones that we was to be a pair; only, you know, I had to get a foothold first. I couldn't come to you with empty hands—though, faith! there's not much ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... or smoke, no rumble of wheels, or shriek of whistles. You are gliding along steadily through an ever-green world; skirting the silent hills; passing from one side of the river to the other when the horses have to swim the current to find a good foothold on the bank. You are on the water, but not at its mercy, for your craft is not disturbed by the heaving of rude waves, and the serene inhabitants do not say "I am sick." There is room enough to move about ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... have the least enviable time of it. Their foothold in the hive is very precarious. They look like the giants, the lords of the swarm, but they are really the tools. Their loud, threatening hum has no sting to back it up, and their size and noise make them only the more conspicuous ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... of the creek, now a mere muddy trickle, stood the implements of the diggers' craft, cradle and tub, and even here and there a puddling machine. The diggers' dwellings, tents and slab-huts, and mere mia-mias of bark and branches, were dotted up the hill-sides wherever they could get a foothold, and of course as close to their claims as possible. There was no method, no order; each man built how he pleased and where he pleased; even the main road wound in and out between the shafts, and its claims to be considered permanent were only just ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... It was immediately after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. Very soon afterwards the nascent spirit of fanaticism began to obtain a foothold in England; and although large numbers of negro slaves were owned in Great Britain, and, as I said before, were daily sold on the public exchange in Lon-don, questions arose as to the right of the owners to retain property in their slaves; and the merchants ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... cut short her cries. A second later, the lamentations recommenced; in higher if more liquid volume. For, the shore, at the point sloped very gradually out to deeper water. And immediately, she and the two men had regained their foothold. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... befall him first to lose his hat, next to split his coat up the back, and to break his braces; he would lose considerably in power and balance from the restraining and unnatural shape of all his clothes, he would have no firmness of foothold—his toes being useless to ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... If he could manage to wait, even six months, some hospital place might turn up. His old associates at Philadelphia would have him in mind. He did not dare to write them of his necessity; even his friends would be suspicious of his failure to gain a foothold in this ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... this sharp dodge, Mr. Smithers is for a moment unable to check his headlong plunges, and shoots past the opening a yard or two before the wet sidewalk affords him a foothold. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... upon which I now stood, sloped steeply down upon two sides, so that I had no little difficulty in maintaining my foothold; on the other hand, it was no great distance from the ground, and I thought that it would be easy ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Ten pieces of artillery, three battle-flags, and General Heth's headquarters flag were trophies of my command. The Third Division gained an entrance first, owing to the shortness of the distance it had to pass over. Getty's division (Second), however, promptly obtained a foothold within the fortifications to the right of the angle, followed on its right closely by Wheaton's division. The fort at the salient angle was quickly evacuated, and the corps charged forward, taking possession of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... confusion. Their mastership, you know, like that between nations, is constantly changing. But there are always Napoleons who hold their own through many vicissitudes; but the ordinary cow is continually liable to lose her foothold. Some cow she has always despised, and has often sent tossing across the yard at her horns' ends, some pleasant morning will return the compliment and pay off ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... however, scarcely gone fifty rods, when, in passing over a narrow part of the path and overlooking a deep chasm, one of the hind feet of the donkey slipped, and with an involuntary shudder, I shut my eyes to meet my expected doom; but fortunately the little fellow gained his foothold, and in all probability saved us both from a premature death. After we had passed over this dangerous place, I dismounted, and as soon as my feet had once more gained terra firma, I resolved that I would never again ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... he was opulently content with the present moment. But he thought very tolerantly of the future, and he confirmed himself in the decision he had already made, to stick to Chicago when he came back to America. New York was very well, and he had no sentiment about Chicago; but he had got a foothold there; he had done better with an Eastern publisher, he believed, by hailing from the West, and he did not believe it would hurt him with the Eastern public to keep on hailing from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Sardinia, and on the coast of Spain Carthage also proved too obstinate a rival for the Greeks to gain much of a foothold. The city of Massilia (Marseilles), at the mouth of the Rhone, was their chief settlement in ancient Gaul. Two colonies on the southern shore of the Mediterranean were Cyrene, west of Egypt, and Naucratis, in the Delta of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... wriggling his way out of this predicament, he scrambled on, handing himself from branch to branch, and once losing his foothold ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... height of seven hundred feet above the level of the sea. As it was nearly perpendicular at its summit, it was considered inaccessible, but British sailors had to show the Frenchmen that where goats could find a foothold they could climb. ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... out as the most practicable. Petaille went first, and I followed on my favorite Jerry. It was such a scramble as is not often taken,—almost perpendicularly, through what seemed the dry bed of a torrent, now filled with loose stones, and scarcely affording one secure foothold from the bottom to the summit! I clang fast to the mane, literally at times clasping Jerry around his neck, and, amid the encouraging shouts and cheers of those below, we at length arrived safely, though nearly breathless, on the pinnacle, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... several steep down grades. Before descending one of the first of these a line was attached to the rear end of the komatik and Will asked Easton to hang on to it and hold back, to keep the komatik straight. There was no foothold for him, however, on the smooth surface of the ice, and Easton found that he could not hold back as directed. The momentum was considerable, and he was afraid to let go for fear of losing his balance on ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... Thistle, to say nothing of the smaller plants that are harder to fight than those I have made mention of. We cannot be too careful in guarding against these trespassers which can be kept out much easier than they can be put to rout after they have secured a foothold. Therefore I would urge the substitution of a commercial fertilizer for barnyard manure in every instance. Scatter it liberally over the soil as soon as spaded, or ploughed, and work it in with the harrow or the hoe or rake, when you are ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... utmost endeavors his foothold soon became more insecure and suddenly as the ground beneath him gave way George was thrown forward on ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... his way. At last he reached the jutting beam, and there again he stopped for a moment clutching tightly to it. The next he was upon the beam, dragging himself toward the window of the bartizan just above. Slowly raising himself upon his narrow foothold he peeped cautiously within. Those watching him from be low saw him slip his hand softly to his side, and then place something between his teeth. It was his dagger. Reaching up, he clutched the window sill above him and, with a silent spring, ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... is my second time on earth. Our second time. I tell you it's fighting for a foothold that makes men and women the wretches they are. Nowadays, I couldn't hurt a fly—could you? But then you never were cruel. That's why you ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... steers had gone into the quicksand at the very edge of the Hole; they formed a foothold for many others that, forced on by the impetus of the entire mass, crushed them down, trampled them further into the sand, and plunged ahead to their ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... purely infectious, and is never found in regions where it has not gained a foothold by importation. Palliative measures have in every instance failed to eradicate the disease, and are only justifiable, as in Australia, after the plague has reached dimensions utterly beyond the reach of any ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... was extremely delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time. "Let me help you!" I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He kicked about, trying to get foothold somewhere. It was very like holding a flag ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of it, when he raised himself out of the water, and began to climb upwards by supporting his feet against the cliff. More than once they slipped away from the wet chalk, and he swung in mid-air; but his teeth still firmly grasped the sword; he soon obtained a drier foothold, and thus climbed to the summit: which he had no sooner reached in safety than Guinessa, overcome by the revulsion of her feelings, sank panting and fainting into her father's arms. Eagerly snatching the redeemed weapon, its owner ran his eye ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... rebuke indifference and neglect, or expose the artifice of a bold, shrewd, or sly pretender. He was sure of what he knew, and never gave way without a reason. I have sometimes thought him too sure before he scanned a question. Yet he would never persist when he saw no foothold. He was set but not dogmatic, or no more so than a sincere man must be when he believes what he teaches and is in earnest. He would never defend before his class a theory because it was new, or because ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... struggled forward. Soon the rocks were frowning above her head, while the breakers were coming closer, rising in solid walls which thundered as they fell. Showers of spray were flung shoreward; and looking up at the wet glistening cliffs Marjorie wondered whether foothold would be possible upon them, and what her feelings would be were she to find herself caged between the ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... bewildering; with a profound essential melancholy of disposition and (what often accompanies it) the most humorous geniality in company; shrewd and childish; passionately attached, passionately prejudiced; a man of many extremes, many faults of temper, and no very stable foothold for himself among life's troubles. Yet he was a wise adviser; many men, and these not inconsiderable, took counsel with him habitually. "I sat at his feet," writes one of these, "when I asked his advice, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brings new countries to light, who builds cities that may continue after him. The route to India has not yet been located. The fields of gold and silver have not been discovered. The lilies of France have not been planted over there," nodding his head. "We must go before the Spaniard gets a foothold. Yet there are delights I must confess that even Horace ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... gate that led to the bridge, he sped across. Then, stepping on one side and turning his face to the wall, he descended the steps that gave foothold down to the ledge running six or eight inches above the water. He also was now in the triangle of deep darkness, yet he knew that a man was there, who stood straight and tall, rising above his own height. And he felt his hand caught in a sudden grip. ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... 1861, that legations were established in Peking. But while this gave foreign nations a solid foothold at the capital, it did not by any means give them the recognition that they demanded, for their intercourse with the court was still hedged about with innumerable exactions and indignities. The Hon. Thomas Francis Wade, British Minister at Peking, in a long ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... grudged width; the main roads are lifted high on the flanks of the canals, unless the permanent-way of some light railroad can be pressed to do duty for them. The wheat, the pale ripened tufted sugar-cane, the millet, the barley, the onions, the fringed castor-oil bushes jostle each other for foothold, since the Desert will not give them room; and men chase the falling Nile inch by inch, each dawn, with new furrowed melon-beds on the still ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... they would be clear of the gear and rigging when they took to the water—a small and comparatively innocuous sea broke over the hull, which, harmless as it was compared with most of its predecessors, had still enough of weight and spite in it to sweep one of the poor fellows from his precarious foothold into the seething, hissing swirl to leeward. The man tossed his arms over his head, with a wild shriek for help, as the smother carried him along in its suffocating embrace, and Joe promptly made a spring for a spare life-buoy that we had provided ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... was first visited by Mr. Worcester in 1906. The Spanish Government never having succeeded in gaining a foothold in it. "During the insurrection Lieutenant Gilmore, of the United States Navy, and his fellow-captives were taken into the southern part of it and there abandoned." "So far as is known, no white man had ever penetrated ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... character of the Moslem's religion forbade all thought of repelling the refugees. Still more, when the armed galleots of the Levant came crowding to Barbary, fired with the hope of rich gain, the ports were open, and the creeks afforded them shelter. A foothold once ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... all the earth a deed, an action of his own soul, who has thrown his soul at last upon the waste of heaven and made words out of it. One cannot but believe that a man like this is a free man. Let what will happen to the sun that warms him or the star that seems just now his foothold in space. All shall be as his soul says when his soul determines what it shall say. Fire and wind and cold—when his soul speaks—and Invisibility itself and Nothing are ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... projecting rock thirty feet below, where it lay apparently dead. A moment later it again arose, seemingly as able as ever, and ran along the face of the beetling rock where my eyes, aided by powerful field glasses, could perceive no foothold; then it gave a magnificent leap to a ledge on the opposite side of the narrow canyon and fell ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... deep crevice, worn by many rains, offered a foothold, even as it does to-day, and in a moment the four Pilgrim chiefs stood upon the summit ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... being foretold for them by themselves, death had reared itself behind Old Harpeth, coiled itself into a huge black spiral of thunder and lightning and was driving down the valley upon Goodloets with a velocity that defied the eyes to follow. For a long second every man and woman stood rooted to his foothold on the earth and watched the tornado strike the edge of the Settlement, smash down the saddlery as if it were a house of cards, and churn the little tannery into the river. Then as it grasped the roof of the Last Chance ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... first two or three days. The snow lay deep, and was slightly frozen on the surface, but not sufficiently to bear their weight. Their feet became sore by breaking through the crust, and their limbs weary by floundering on without a firm foothold. So exhausted and dispirited were they, that they began to think it would be better to remain and run the risk of being killed by the Indians, than to drag on thus painfully, with the probability of perishing ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... brought into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who desired to obtain half the state of Lombardy by his intervention. I will not blame the course taken by the king, because, wishing to get a foothold in Italy, and having no friends there—seeing rather that every door was shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles—he was forced to accept those friendships which he could get, and he would have succeeded very quickly in ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... side, the untrained instinct of President Lincoln was always turning in the same direction. In perusing the field of operations his finger would always stray to the eastern coast of North Carolina as the vital point, and no persuasions could induce him to give up the apparently useless foothold which we kept there for more than three years without material advantage. It was a matter of constant surprise to the Confederate military authorities that this course was not adopted, and the final result showed the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... on their shoulders, the column pushed cheerfully into the rushing current. The men as they entered the water joined each other in sets of four in a close embrace, which enabled them to retain a foothold and successfully resist the force of the flood. When they were across I turned the column down the left bank of Elk River, and driving the enemy from some slight works near Estelle Springs, regained ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... itself. From that height you could see across the tops of the trees down to the plain below; but what Mowgli looked at was the sides of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran nearly straight up and down, while the vines and creepers that hung over them would give no foothold to a tiger who wanted to ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... of Islam had carried the crescent throughout Asia west of the Hindu Kush, and through Africa and Southern Europe, to distant Spain and France, before they obtained a foothold in the Punjab. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... sometimes with a hand outstretched to help his foothold, standing for a space to think ere he jumped to a further rock, balancing himself for a moment ere he leaped again. So he would come to stand and stare gloomily upon ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Cotswolds to the sea. But the men had been but the shapes of men, creatures of darkness and ignorance, victims of beasts and floods, storms and pestilence and incessant hunger. They had held a precarious foothold amidst bears and lions and all the monstrous violence of the past. Already some at least of these ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... went by after Spain had lost her foothold on the American continent, and she still held her West Indian empire. She misgoverned the islands as she had misgoverned the continent; and in the islands, as once upon the continent, her own children became her deadliest foes. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Smoot in the Senate is one expression, was not made yesterday. It had its birth in the year of the Edmunds law and its drastic enforcement. In that day, black for Mormons, it was resolved to secure such foothold, such representation in the Congress at Washington, that, holding a balance of power in the Senate or House, or both, the Congressional Democrats or Republicans would grant the Mormons safety for ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... All six, getting foothold on the stump of the mast, threw their weight on the spar projecting over the side, straight as a lance towards a projection of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... too, have achieved an important success to-day," went on Mr. Farrington; "we have secured a foothold in this somewhat uncertain city, and we shall soon have a roof over our heads that we can call our own, for ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... encountering them; he dreaded far more falling into the hands of the Arabs. He expected every moment to reach the shore, when one of his feet stuck fast in the mud. He endeavoured to obtain a firmer foothold by pressing down the reeds so that he might stand upon them, but this caused considerable delay, and in his efforts he was nearly falling on his face into the water. At length he succeeded in drawing ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... system, gave tangible expression to the growth of the new movement in 1874; and four years later, with the opening of his laboratory of physiological psychology at the University of Leipzig, the new psychology may be said to have gained a permanent foothold and to have forced itself into official recognition. From then on its conquest of the world was but a matter ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... they would all be eliminated by selection, and that no mammals would be able to live there at all. But in most cases a certain percentage of animals resists these strong influences, and thus selection secures a foothold on which to work, eliminating the unfavourable variation, and establishing a useful colouring, consistent with what is required for the maintenance ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... fire. This momentarily paralyzed the defence. The insurgents, led by the provincial federes, were not yet beaten, but flowed back once more to the attack. Some field pieces which they had, breached the palace doors, a sharp struggle followed, and soon the insurgents had got a foothold. What followed was a massacre. Many of the Swiss were cut down in the corridors and rooms of the palace. Others were mown down by musketry trying to escape across the Tuileries gardens. A few got away and sought refuge in a ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... had gone down stairs, "I really feel as if I had a foothold on British soil. It doesn't seem as if it was quite right, but ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... Thaddeus was grumpy. One premise only was necessary for the conclusion—in fact, it was the only premise upon which a conclusion involving Thaddeus's grumpiness could find a foothold. If Thaddeus felt rested, everything in the world could go wrong and he would smile as sweetly as ever; but with the slightest trace of weariness in his system the smile would fade, wrinkles would gather on his forehead, and grumpiness set in whether things were right or wrong. On this special ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... the help of Egypt that we gained terms which were remarkably favourable, and especially that we caused the English to consent to give up the Cape of Good Hope. We did not wish your people, monsieur, to have any foothold in South Africa, for history has taught us that the British foothold of one half-century is the British Empire of the next. It is not your army or your navy against which we have to guard, but it is your terrible ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of howling archers and men-at-arms, like a flood which has broken its dam. Down they slipped into the ditch, rushed across it, and clambered on each other's backs up the opposite side. Nigel, Raoul and two archers gained a foothold in front of the burning gate at the same moment. With blows and kicks they burst it to pieces, and dashed with a yell of triumph through the dark archway beyond. For a moment they thought with mad rapture that the castle was carried. A dark tunnel lay before them, down which they rushed. But alas! ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... permitted to come in and search for minerals, for the policy of the authorities has been to keep the country for the natives; and nothing alarms the chiefs so much as the occasional appearance of these speculative gentry, who, if allowed a foothold, would soon dispossess them. Thus it remains doubtful whether either gold or silver or diamonds exist ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... none of the vital quality of illusion which would make them wonder or speculate, else a religion might have grown up around these mysterious visitations. But the men of Fish were beyond all religion—the barest and most savage tenets of even Christianity could gain no foothold on that barren rock—so there was no altar, no priest, no sacrifice; only each night at seven the silent concourse by the shanty depot, a congregation who lifted up a prayer ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... now I wake in such decrepitude As I had slidden down and fallen afar, Past even the presence of my former self, Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap, Till I am found away from my own world, Feeling for foothold through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... stood by President Cleveland, though sincerely friendly to Great Britain; the truth being that they did not believe that war with England was seriously to be apprehended, while another Power was at the moment seeking to obtain a foothold in South America, for whose benefit a "vigorous assertion of the Monroe Doctrine" was much to be desired. The thunders of the famous message indeed were, in the minds of many excellent Americans in the East, directed not against ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... detail, especially that, according to the apparently well-grounded assertions of Mueller-Beeck, the going of the Chinese to the Philippines was developed about the end of the fourteenth century, and chiefly after the Spaniards had gotten a foothold and were using the Mexican silver in trade. At any rate, the apprehension of Semper, which rests on somewhat superficial physiognomic ground, is not confirmed by searching investigations. So the head-hunting of the mountain tribes, so far as it hints at relations with Borneo, gives ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... is fit for Europeans. Germany last year proposed joint intervention in Mexico to England. If successful Germany will try to get a foothold in the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is like a red rag to a bull to ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... settlers in Virginia and the Carolinas were mostly English of the better class, who had been landed proprietors with considerable retinues of servants. As soon as these original colonists secured a firm foothold, large estates were developed on which the manners and customs of old England were followed as closely as possible. Each plantation became a self-supporting community, since nearly all the actual necessities were produced or manufactured thereon. The loom worked ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... remonstrated with him warmly, but without shaking his resolution. He had the sagacity to perceive that the steamboats were about to revolutionize the whole system of water transportation, and he meant to secure a foothold in the new order of affairs without delay. The result vindicated ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of the district; for his childish life had been singularly solitary, giving to books the part which half a century ago would have been taken by tradition; and, moreover, the witch-belief in general had now little foothold among the younger generation of the Scout, and was only spoken of with reserve and discretion ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... might distract his attention and so add illimitably to his danger, she forced herself by an almost superhuman effort to remain where she was. Motionless, with straining eyes, she watched while he slowly edged himself up. That his foothold was precarious was evident from the careful precision of his movements, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... toward Italy. If we are to believe Crispi, the Chancellor was ready then to draw up a treaty with her, and went so far as to hint that he approved of Italy's aspirations. Among these were the possession of Tunis and a foothold on the east coast of the Adriatic. The next year, at the Berlin Congress, however, Italy's interests were ignored, and, instead, Austria was encouraged to extend her dominion south of the Balkans, and the French were at least not discouraged from coveting ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... leaped. Hippy lost his foothold on the edge of the doorsill, and the pony, unable to bear the additional weight on its neck, stumbled and went down on the gangway. The animal's hips struck the railing, burst through it, and man and horse rolled off to the ground, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... an air of confidence about those letters of Clapp's," said Harry, "as if he felt himself on a firm foothold. It is very extraordinary!" ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... servant, who almost immediately became his mistress. A child was born of this connection, and the father, in his cynical indifference, was shameless enough to have it brought up under his daughter's eyes. As the years rolled on the woman acquired a firm foothold in the house. She ended by ruling the household, father and daughter alike. The day came when Monsieur de Varandeuil chose to have her sit at his table and be served by Sempronie. That was too much. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil rebelled under the insult, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... have fallen from the cliff, and well-nigh block the way, and just ahead a landslip has carried off part of our course. The road is indescribably difficult because it is so slippery and one can get no foothold. My pony, carrying nothing but the little flesh which bad food has enabled him to keep, has been down on his knees four times, and once he rolled so much that I thought that he must surely go over the ravine.... Rocks overhang ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... thus be seen that all the mental processes which came before the reversion to the animal standard in men, are unknown to animals, and are the outcome of the purely human faculty of reason. However, if reason can by any means retain its foothold and its entirety, there will neither be fear nor the consequent breakdown of reason and the domination of panic. Now this is the position in the other case, the case in which reason finds the danger unavoidable. In the case of a danger which is unavoidable there will be no panic. ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... beneath the blow, and when I rallied my business was swept away, and the firm of Critchet was known only by its debts. I struggled for a time against the stream, but I could not gain a foothold, and at last yielded and gave up all thoughts of resuming business. My family was supported by a small settlement of one hundred pounds which had been left to my wife by an aunt, and by music lessons ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... itself, and its orbit evidently would intersect our foothold. It came nearer out of the night, till I could see plainly that it appeared to be a long section of a well-lighted street, say, like a length of Piccadilly. It approached end-on to where I stood, and at last impinged. It actually was a length of street, and I could continue my walk. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... allay any combative or excited mood concerning that or any other subject; "but even their moral support has been a wonderful help, my dear sir, and the securing of an important addition to our navy from them just now means a very great deal I assure you; once let us gain a foothold in the North—get into Washington—and she will be the first to acknowledge us as a power—a sovereign ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... was no other means of reaching Quill's Window save from the top of the rock. These niches or "hand-holds" were about two feet apart. He examined the lower ones. They were deeply chiselled, affording a substantial foothold as well as a grip for a strong, resolute climber. Most of them were packed with dirty, wind blown leaves from the trees nearby,—so tightly packed by the furious rains that beat against the rock that he had difficulty in removing the substance. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... clouds, now solid, dark, and still, An aspect wear of calm eternity. Each seems the other, as our fancies will— The cloud a mount, the mount a cloud, and we Gaze doubtfully. So everywhere on earth, This foothold where we stand with slipping feet, The unsubstantial and substantial meet, And we are fooled until made wise by Time. Is not the obvious lesson something worth, Lady? or have I wov'n ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... religious rule of Queen Mary we might suppose that ecclesiastical embroidery would have somewhat regained a foothold. But the landmarks had been entirely swept away, and we have little to record of the reign, except that Mary herself was a clever needlewoman and worked much of her heartache, at the neglect of her Spanish husband, ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... stride—you know, my legs are long—and I somehow overbalanced myself. But I didn't exactly fall—if I had fallen, I must have been killed; I rolled and slid down, clutching at the weeds in the crannies as I slipped, and stumbling over the projections, without quite losing my foothold on the ledges, till I found myself brought up short with a bump at the end ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... and that they would cause from there so great anxiety and danger to India, that they would oblige its citizens to spend on its defense a greater sum than is now spent on the conservation of the Filipinas. And now, when the Dutch have been unable to gain a foothold in any of the islands because the arms of your Majesty sustain that country with the same reputation as in Flandes, the enemy maintain themselves by aggressive measures against the Spaniards—usually ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... reality at all, and no materials out of which to construct so gratuitous an idea. In the same way present demands are the only materials and occasions for any ideal: without demands the ideal would have no locus standi or foothold in the world, no power, no charm, and no prerogative. If the ideal can confront particular desires and put them to shame, that happens only because the ideal is the object of a more profound and voluminous desire and embodies the good which they blindly and perhaps deviously pursue. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of cord, the which made fast About a stanchion, about him next she cast, About and about until the whole was round His body, and the end to his arm she bound: Then showed him in the wall where best foothold Might be, and watcht him down as fold by fold He paid the cable out; and as he paid So did she twist it, till the coil was made As it had been at first. Then watcht she him Stride o'er the plain until he twinkled dim And sank into the mist. That day came not King Menelaus to ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... schools, while he takes of their money to help educate his own sons. They have no ambition,—then closes upon them every door of honorable advancement, and cries through the key-hole, Serve, or starve. They cannot stand alone, they have no faculty for rising,—then, if one of them finds foothold, the ground is undermined beneath him. If a head is seen above the crowd, the ladder is jerked away, and he is trampled into the dust where he is fallen. If he stays in the position to which Anglo-Saxon assigns him, he is a worthless nigger; ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Once his foothold gave way, and he dropped to his full length, retaining only his hand-grip of the thin cords, which nearly cut his fingers in two under the strain of his whole weight. I thought he was gone; I thought ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... them, the time has been when the natives were rather proud than otherwise of their pebbly paths, for, according to Bisset, when one returned from visiting the metropolis, he said he liked everything in London very much "except the pavement, for the stones were all so smooth, there was no foothold!" ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... open question whether she would ever come up or not. It was at this time that Tip O'Neill, a daring young buck of Freekirk Head, performed the highly dangerous feat of walking from her main to her forerigging along the weather run, which fact shows there was foothold on her uppermost side for a man ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... a foothold among the Saxons its progress was rapid. In no country were monastic institutions more firmly planted. Monasteries and churches were erected in the principal settlements and liberally endowed by the Saxon kings. In Kent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... man and woman were concerned, the game was played. They had lost handhold and foothold, and were falling into the pit. But what of the daughters? Living like swine, enfeebled by chronic innutrition, being sapped mentally, morally, and physically, what chance have they to crawl up and out of the Abyss into which ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... did not look as if the dust of documents had injured their health. The moustaches and beards on the lips of each, gave them also a manly appearance. They were all joyously ready to sacrifice themselves and their property for a great spiritual prize, yet looked as if they had a firm foothold in the midst of life; their hale, sensible faces showed no traces of enthusiasm; only the young Seigneur of Warmond's eyes sparkled with a touch of this feeling, while Janus Dousa's glance often seemed turned within, to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... almost in contact with him, what the real Satanas, the soul-devouring, world-devouring devils are." I have tried, however imperfectly, yet faithfully, to talk to you about three of these "soul-devouring, world-devouring devils." Give them no inch of foothold in your life, and do a brother's part for others who, perhaps weaker than you, are waging the same conflict in the interest of the things that are sacred, and kingly, and divine. And when your brief mortal life is over you shall have the noble satisfaction ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... was also present. The discussion of the steps to be taken within the next two or three days lasted an hour and a half. Every one who spoke had studied the data and the ground and there was no divergence of view, which was a comfort. Our attack will have as its objective the seizure of a foothold on the high ground. Anzacs will co-operate. As I explained to the Generals, we hardly dare hope to make a clean break through till drafts and fresh munitions arrive as the Turks now have had too long to dig in. But if we can seize and keep a point upon the watershed (however small) ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... is very curious, a series of natural canals run in all directions through vast swamps which only afford foothold in the height of summer. The thrifty peasants utilise the dry season to plant fields of maize, for the scorching sun dries these swamps in a very short space of time. In the winter or early spring, they are nearly or quite under water. As the lake is reached, small islands ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... conceal the danger or to reconcile the fickle people to a change that promised fine rewards for the sale of their liberty. Then he began to trim off one by one the outlying colonies and dependencies of the Greek States. His next step was to be the obtaining of a foothold in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... he might till he had laid his hands on the edge of the orifice. As he hung there, Masin had held up the handle of a pickaxe as high as he could reach against the smooth wall, as a crossbar on which Malipieri had succeeded in getting a slight foothold, enough for a man who was not heavy and was extraordinarily active. A moment later he had drawn himself up and inward. At the imminent risk of his life, as he afterwards found, he had crawled on in total darkness till the way widened enough for him to turn round ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... around the ship. After beating off the launch, Captain Hamilton, at the head of fifty chosen men, armed chiefly with cutlasses, boarded the Hermione on the bows. As soon as he and his bold companions obtained foothold, the boat's crews cut the cables and commenced towing the Hermione into the offing. Thus, while the battle was raging on the ship's decks, she was rapidly towed further from the batteries which ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... think, be that of keeping Americans and Europeans as much as possible at arm's length. In presence of the more powerful races your position is one of chronic danger, and you should take every precaution to give as little foothold as possible ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... alternations of the type fot: fet and mus: mis might not have become established as a productive type of number distinction in the noun. As a matter of fact, it did not so become established. The fot: fet type of plural secured but a momentary foothold. It was swept into being by one of the surface drifts of the language, to be swept aside in the Middle English period by the more powerful drift toward the use of simple distinctive forms. It was too late in the day for our language to be seriously interested in such pretty ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... for them only in general. But if you know anything at all about them it will be worth while to individualize your prayer, however briefly. Special, detailed prayer is a power with God. And it is a power with man too. To be dealing with one for whom you know you have prayed is already to have a foothold there. Perhaps you may have an opportunity to say, quite naturally, that you have been praying for him; and this may very possibly be a ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... marching—marching—down the colossal bridge. It moved swiftly, in some unthinkable way intelligently. It swathed the Akka, and closer, ever closer it swept toward the approach upon which Yolara's men had now gained foothold. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... This guinea pig's name was Jeff, and he and I became good friends. A long-haired French rabbit was hopping about, and a tame white rat was perched on the shoulder of one of the boys, and kept his foothold there, no matter how suddenly the boy moved. There were so many boys, and the stable was so small, that I suppose he was afraid he would get stepped on if he went on the floor. He stared hard at me with his little, red ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... belief gains a foothold, it's hard to wipe it out, even among humans. Among Nipes, it would be well-nigh impossible. Once a code of ritual and social behavior was set up, it ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... against the jealousy of that austere "other" one. That he had loved her, at any rate that evening under the trees, she obstinately maintained in her own mind; to that conviction she must cling desperately, or lose her last foothold. Her whole being was a prey to a frightful turmoil of feeling. Her hands shook; her mouth was parched as by the midday heat; she knew that there were withered leaves between her feet and the sandals she wore, that twigs had got caught in her hair; but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... my own heart and the mournful sound of the pines whose loftier branches were stirring in the still air. Grasping the heavy bars I tried to climb the gate, but, as there were no projections on which it was possible to get a foothold, I found this an exhausting and difficult task. I climbed repeatedly several feet above the earth, only to lose my foothold and slide down again. Finally, by exerting all my strength, I succeeded in supporting myself with the edge of my boot upon a crossbar about half way up; ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... that divine fire. Instinct did now and then warn her that some time it would wrap her like a flame. But in the meantime—Life had her in midstream of its remorseless, drab current, sweeping her along. A foothold offered. Half a loaf, a single slice of bread even, is ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... related in a preceding chapter. He had, however, postponed the execution of his plans, in order first to conquer the Scythian countries north of Greece, thinking, probably, that this would make the subsequent conquest of Greece itself more easy. By getting a firm foothold in Scythia, he would, as it were, turn the flank of the Grecian territories, which would tend to make his final descent upon them more effectual ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and wildly happy. She could have sung for joy, a song of triumph, and losing her head a little she lost her scant foothold as well, slipped, tried to hold on, failed, and slid down the ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... that such an idea of marriage should be gaining foothold in America. It has its root in an ignoble view of life,—an utter and pagan darkness as to all that man and woman are called to do in that highest relation where they act as one. It is a mean and low contrivance on both sides, by which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... evil become part and parcel of our mental vision forever. She gives the reader the impression that she never declined a fancy, just as some gentlemen of the eighteenth century never declined a duel. When she fell it was always because she missed the foothold, never because she ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... chimneys; the rain dashed on the window-panes with a rattle as of musketry; far below she could hear the awful booming of the Atlantic breakers. The gusts that drove against the high house seemed ready to tear it from its foothold of rock and whirl it inland; or was it the sea itself that was rising in its thunderous power to sweep away this bauble from the face of the mighty cliffs? And then the wild and desolate morning that followed! Through the bewilderment ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of The Hollies was not visible from the upper story of the Hare and Hounds owing to a clump of pines which had found foothold on the cliff, but, through the gap formed by the end of the post office garden, the entrance to the house from the Knoleworth road ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... were pushing on toward Jerusalem and it seemed that it was only the question of time until the Holy City would fall. Once Turkish rule there had been broken, it was a foregone conclusion that the Ottomans would never regain a foothold. ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... water—a small and comparatively innocuous sea broke over the hull, which, harmless as it was compared with most of its predecessors, had still enough of weight and spite in it to sweep one of the poor fellows from his precarious foothold into the seething, hissing swirl to leeward. The man tossed his arms over his head, with a wild shriek for help, as the smother carried him along in its suffocating embrace, and Joe promptly made a spring for a spare life-buoy that we had provided for such an emergency; but before ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... the anus and rectum do not cease with the period of infancy. The child is left pretty much to shift for itself as to regularity of eating and the evacuation of the contents of its bowels, wherein disease has already obtained a foothold. All kinds of foodstuffs, at all hours, with seeds, stones, etc., are poked into its stomach, followed by constipating remedies to quiet inevitable troubles, or brisk purgatives given with the hope of expelling the arrested contents of the bowels. Is it any wonder that ninety-eight persons of adult ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... destroy the enemy's transports in that stream and some gunboats which I knew he was building. The navigation, however, proved so much better than had been expected that I thought for a time of the possibility of making this the route for obtaining a foothold on high land above Haines Bluff, Mississippi, and small class steamers were accordingly ordered for transporting an army that way. Major-General J. B. McPherson, commanding seventeenth army corps, was directed ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... often accompanies it) the most humorous geniality in company; shrewd and childish; passionately attached, passionately prejudiced; a man of many extremes, many faults of temper, and no very stable foothold for himself among life's troubles. Yet he was a wise adviser; many men, and these not inconsiderable, took counsel with him habitually. "I sat at his feet," writes one of these, "when I asked his advice, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good thought," said Pauline. She looked back again at the rocks. They were smooth as marble; there did not seem to be a possible foothold. She felt a sense of regret that they had not gone to the farther end of the bay, where the rocks were lower and more indented, and where it might be possible for a brave boy and girl to get temporary foothold; but the sea had already reached ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... us that once this earth was entirely submerged in water, and during this period for many days a busy little muskrat swam about vainly looking for a foothold of earth wherein to build his house. In his search he encountered a turtle also leisurely swimming, so they had speech together, and the muskrat complained of weariness; he could find no foothold; ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... the bridge. One said that it was another priest that was come in disguise; another, that once a Popish priest got a foothold in a place he was never content till he got the whole for himself; a third, that the fellow had simply lied, and that he was turned out because he had been caught by Sir Amyas making love to one of the maids. Each was positive of his own thesis, ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... shadows, a roof of white-pine shingles, bleached lighter through sun and wind, and covered with low, white-capped chimneys, it looked even more stark and chilly than the drifts which had climbed its low roadside fence, and yet seemed hopeless of gaining a foothold on the glancing walls, or slippery, wind-swept roof. The storm, which had already heaped the hollows of the road with snow, hurled its finely-granulated flakes against the building, but they were whirled along the gutters and ridges, and disappeared ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... which found little favour with the populace. Accordingly, the procedure at the trial, as also the final verdict, turned largely on the desperate efforts of the Jacobins to discredit their rivals, who sought by all means to keep their foothold in the revolutionary torrent. One of the most obvious devices was to represent the Executive Council as the champion of ultra-democratic ideas as against envious and reactionary England. If this notion gained currency, Lebrun and his colleagues might ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... and surrounded by high walls. I could see that, even if I were able to squeeze my way out between the bars, I should be powerless to scale the walls. At a rough guess these were at least twelve feet high, and without a foothold of any sort or description. This being so I was completely at the mercy of the men in the house. Indeed, a rat caught in a trap, was never more firmly laid by the heels than I. At about half-past seven o'clock a small trap-door, which ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... struggled since 1822 against the Touchards, usually found a strong foothold in the good-will and sympathy of the inhabitants of the districts which they served. The person undertaking the business as proprietor and conductor was nearly always an inn-keeper along the route, to whom the beings, things, and interests with which he had to do were all familiar. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... out around the little valley, calling them to come closer. They came flying toward us and crowded upon the nearer crags just beyond the pool, clutching the precipitous sides, and scrambling for a foothold wherever they could. A hundred or more found place on the ledge with us, or above or below it wherever a slight footing could be found on the wall ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... all things of this earth. One factor has ever been potent in its success and that is honesty. The honesty of the game has always been its motto, and though often assailed has still remained intact. This, alone, has gained for baseball a foothold in the hearts of the American people that nothing can dislodge. Americans are known the world over as lovers of fair and honest sport, and to base ball they have given their unswerving allegiance." Here is a merited compliment to the National League ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... properly to repel them. With such experience on our part, after two years of constant efforts to invade our territories successfully met and more than merely repelled, it would be evidence of gross inefficiency and weakness in us, to permit the enemy to gain even a temporary foothold in any one of the loyal States, or even to attempt it, without the complete overthrow and destruction of the invading force. Our manifest policy is to attack them in their own country, and to hold them there, until we can annihilate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... distance of the combatants, however, made the action unimportant; and the patriots retired down the river, after achieving a complete victory. The Grand Commander was farther than ever from obtaining that foothold on the sea, which as he had informed his sovereign, was the only means by which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Years' War, when the French neglected to secure their foothold in Germany, by placing in a state of defence the fortifications that fell into their power, the first defeat rendered their ground untenable, and threw them from the Elbe back upon the Rhine and the Mayne. They afterwards took the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... world, thought I. Then the foot descended as a steam-hammer does, but also as a steam-hammer sometimes does when used to crack nuts, stopped as it touched my back, and presently came to earth again alongside of me, perhaps because Jana thought the foothold dangerous. At any rate, he took another and better way. Depositing the remains of Marut with the most tender care beside me, as though the nurse were putting the child to bed, he unwound his yards ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Professor Maxon had said. "It will be but a matter of a day or so when I can introduce him to Virginia, but we must be careful that she has no inkling of his origin until mutual affection has gained a sure foothold between them." ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the attack. Their dense masses charged down the streets leading toward the river. They sang as they advanced. The orders, as revealed in documents captured later, came straight from the high command and demanded the acquisition of a foothold on the south bank at all costs. They paid the costs, but never reached the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... has obtained a foothold in the body its course, like one of Napoleon's campaigns, is short, sharp, and decisive. Beginning typically with a vigorous chill, sometimes so suddenly as to wake the patient out of a sound sleep, followed by a stabbing pain in the side, cough, high fever, rapid respiration, the sputum ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... found very soon that his gangway of oars was by no means satisfactory, because while his men were crossing they became so fully exposed to King Olaf's marksmen that of every three who started only one succeeded in gaining a foothold on the Serpent's deck. Many hundreds of men—vikings, Swedes, and Danes — lost their lives on this bridge. So when Erik saw that King Olaf was gaining the upper hand of him he got his berserks to take down the oars and ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... numbers at once became a source of serious anxiety. While planning the expedition, it had seemed so important to get the men a foothold in Florida that I was willing to risk everything for it. But this important post once in our possession, it began to show some analogies to the proverbial elephant in the lottery. To hold it permanently with nine hundred men was not, perhaps, impossible, with the aid of a gunboat ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Europe we have few occasions of collision, and these, with a little prudence and forbearance, may be generally accommodated. Of the brethren of our own hemisphere, none are yet, or for an age to come will be, in a shape, condition, or disposition to war against us. And the foothold, which the nations of Europe had in either America, is slipping from under them, so that we shall soon be rid of their neighborhood. Cuba alone seems at present to hold up a speck of war to us. Its possession by Great Britain would indeed be a great calamity to us. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Prince Buelow, and as the month closes we hear of the landing of the Allies in Gallipoli, just two months after the unsupported naval attempt to force the Dardanelles. British and Australian and New Zealand troops have achieved the impossible by incredible valour in face of murderous fire, and a foothold has been won at tremendous cost of heroic lives. Letters from the Western front continue cheerful, but it does not need much reading between the lines to realise the odds with which our officers and men have to contend, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... like a wounded bull, while a bedraggled Nobby scrambled and blew and slipped and scratched, caring not at all what was his understanding, so long as it provided a foothold and kept his ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... death. Four foot out, broadwise, along the side of the Spit, there's a shelf of rock, about half fathom down under the sand. My question is—why didn't she strike that? If she slipped, by accident, from off the Spit, she fell in where there's foothold at the bottom, at a depth that would barely cover her to the waist. She must have waded out, or jumped out, into the Deeps beyond—or she wouldn't be missing now. No accident, sir! The Deeps of the Quicksand have got her. And they have ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... potatoes decided me. It was a matter of history that famine, neither wide-spread nor local, ever gained a foothold where "Satsuma Emo" flourished. This year they were fatter and cheaper than ever before. I knew dozens of ways to fix them, natural and disguised; so I bought an extra supply and made up my mind to keep ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... the neighboring Vice-Royalty,—when, quicker than thought, Paez was once more over the mountains, and recovered by a sudden swoop the Llanos of Barinas. Thenceforward, this region remained the surest foothold of the revolution in Venezuela. Encircled with Spanish troops, it remained, nevertheless, a practical republic in itself, and the vast basin of the Orinoco was the cradle of Venezuelan freedom. The Provisional Government consisted of a mere council of generals, who, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... to do with those who pretend to have dealings with the supernatural. If you allow supernaturalism to get a foothold in your country the result ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... has no place in the future state excepting as she enters under the protection of her husband, so this last marriage or sealing for eternity was instituted to enable all unmarried women, or those who were only married for this world, to gain a foothold in the life to come. The motto of the Mormon church is, the greater the family, the greater the reward. Brigham Young with his nineteen families excelled in this respect, and he will be awarded the highest seat in Heaven. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... foresee the future, Sufder. Now, doubtless, they are sorry; but if in the future the British become masters of India, the Mahrattas will have no reason to regret having given them a foothold. Wherever their powers extend, the natives are far better off than they were under the rule of their own princes. Were the British masters, there would be no more wars, no more jealousies, and no more intrigues; ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... Bakounine has no longer that immutable faith in the genius of the "master" Proudhon, which Tolain seems to have preserved intact. According to Bakounine "Proudhon, in spite of all his efforts to get a foothold upon the firm ground of reality, remained an idealist and metaphysician. His starting point is the abstract side of law; it is from this that he starts in order to arrive at economic facts, while Marx, on the contrary, has enunciated and proved the truth, demonstrated by the whole of the ancient ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... which they had in part ascended, and attacked the army in the defile. An awful scene of struggle and confusion ensued. Some were killed by weapons or by rocks rolled down upon them. Others, contending together, and struggling desperately in places of very narrow foothold, tumbled headlong down the rugged rocks into the torrent below; and horses, laden with baggage and stores, became frightened and unmanageable, and crowded each other over the most frightful precipices. ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as it teaches what is necessary for obedience and salvation, cannot have been corrupted. (14) From these considerations everyone will be able to judge that I have neither said anything against the Word of God nor given any foothold ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... affected by what he had drank. As he and his companion stood beneath an old tree that grew in front of the liquor store, Chester came forth, reeling in his walk, and after a vain effort to maintain his foothold, fell upon the pavement wholly intoxicated. Several other persons saw him in this position, but the witness and his friend led him home, and consigned him to the care ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... unlaced and kicked off his boots she had already grasped the iron bar and swung herself out over the abyss, feeling with her toes for a rung and a good foothold. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... long time see. These men were not Arians, for they recoiled in genuine horror from the polytheistic tendencies of Arianism; but they had no logical defence against Arianism, and were willing to see if some modification of it would not give them a foothold of some kind. To men who dreaded the return of Sabellian confusion, Arianism was at least an error in the right direction. It upheld the same truth as they—the separate personality of the Son of God—and if it went further than they could follow, it might still do service against ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Another window faced on the same space, not five feet away. If it were but opened I might swing myself over and through it; but it was closed, and a curtain hid the unknown possibilities and dangers of the interior. A dozen feet above was the roof, with no projection or foothold by which it might be reached. Below, the light-well ended in a tinned floor, about four feet from the ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the sale of Tolstoy's works is on the increase in America, but certainly the principles of Tolstoy are gaining no foothold here. We are not a nation of non-resistants. We believe in defending our homes. Nothing can exceed the insanity of non- resistance. This doctrine leaves virtue naked and clothes vice in armor; it gives every weapon to the wrong and takes every ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 1450 and 1500, half the western termini of the trade-routes with the East. It crushed out all semblance of independence in the settlements of the European merchants in Asia Minor and on the Black Sea, and left to them a bare foothold for purposes of trade under the most burdensome restrictions. These conquests were very destructive to life and property. Mercantile firms failed, old families died out, the mother-states were exhausted, and the flow of merchandise ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... does possess some "secret virtue," for if the plant be immersed in glycerine the preservative takes the hue of the flower. Nature having ordained that the plants should be elusive, they appear in remote spots and unlikely situations with foothold among loose and gritty fragments of rock, and with cessation of the sustaining rains disappear, each having borne but a single leaf and produced but a solitary flower. The leaf does not seem to be attractive to insects, nor is the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... smaller traders aren't encouraged to flourish unduly; and the German firm itself is too well fed to bother about extending. The Samoans, therefore, aren't exploited, spiritually or commercially, as much as they might be. By such slight chances beauty keeps a foothold in the world. The missionary's peace of mind may require that the Samoan should wear trousers, or the trader's pocket that he should drink gin and live under corrugated iron. But the Government has discovered that these things are not good for the health of the Polynesian, so the Samoan ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... seem necessary and requisite for the [preservation of the] Japanese trade to transport some or the greater part of those people [of Macao] to the province of Nueva Segovia, or to the island of Hermosa, getting a foothold there whence we might better continue and carry on the navigation from China to that place and from there to Xapon, and not from here; for silks are already as high in this city as in Nangasaqui, on account of the danger from enemies which the Chinese risk in coming ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... dropped over her burning eyes. She tried to force herself not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for. They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. There had been hours too many in which she would have been glad—even with ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... many people that Number Five's affections were a kind of Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein, say rather a high table-land in the region of perpetual, unmelting snow. It was hard for these people to believe that any man of mortal mould could find a foothold in that impregnable fortress,—could climb to that height and find the flower of love among its glaciers. The Tutor and Number Five were both quiet, thoughtful: he, evidently captivated; she, what was the meaning of her manner to him? Say that she seemed ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... surface upon which a constant steady balance demanded no little skill. Marching encumbered with a full pack, clumsy Army-shod feet, one arm only free for a much hampered swing, increased the difficulties of maintaining a secure foothold. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... our Alsatian driver helped me to the platform, I looked around with dread at the throng, being too weak to battle for a foothold; but the brave Alsatian elbowed a path for me, and the Countess warded off the plunging human cattle, and at length I found myself beside the cars where line-soldiers stood guard at every ten paces and gendarmes stalked about, shoving the ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... man came down and had to wait a few minutes for his men. This caused him to become abusive, which the oldest apprentice, James Leigh, resented by using some longshore adjectives. The master seized the foothold of the stroke oar and threw it at the lad, and when they got aboard the captain again attempted to strike him, but the lad let fly, and did considerable damage in a rough and tumble way to the bully, who was now like a wild beast. James was ultimately overpowered and got a bad beating. ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Tapolo, opened the gate of the town to the warriors of Walpi and Mishoninovi, who slaughtered the liberals, thus effectually rooting out the new faith from Tusayan, for after that time it never again obtained a foothold. ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... only when he landed in the snow, that he was conscious of any of the supposed natural excitement of a man meeting a violent end. It was then, before he even got his breath back, that he began to struggle frantically to get a foothold; but he only broke down more of the thin ice-wall that kept him from the sheer drop to the river, sixty or seventy feet below. He lay quite still. Would the Colonel come after him? If he did come, would he ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... decisive cast. From the farther side of the hill, he heard a sudden terrified snort from one of the Boer ponies, then the thud of feet, as they charged up the approaches of the long slope. From behind him, there arose a groan, as one of the men, missing his foothold in the deepening dusk, crashed back against the loose rocks at the bottom of the hill. Then a shot and a whinnying moan told him that Carew and his three comrades had edged around the base of the hill into range of the enemy above them. The man might ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... on wooden posts driven firmly into the ground, and ranging from thirty to forty feet high, according to the size of the dwelling. They are entered by a wooden pole, placed in a slanting position, at one end of the building, having notches cut into it to afford firmer foothold. This pole can be drawn into the house on occasion, thus cutting off all communication with the outside. The interior of the house (which in this case was over seventy yards long, by about thirty yards broad) was divided by a thin ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... his fighting blood rose, and forgetting the spectators, and even forgetting Bobby, he doggedly grappled with those yielding ropes until he got a foothold, swung himself over the top, cleared the entanglement below, and made a flying dash for the yawning mouth of canvas at the far end of the deck. It was incredibly hot and suffocating inside, but he wriggled frantically forward, clawing ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... jolting us hard against the hill, and well-nigh jolting himself down the craggy descent into the abyss below. One leg hung a moment over the precipice, but the poor beast suddenly threw his whole weight forward, and by a desperate leap, obtained sure foothold in the path, and again trudged along with ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... The lumber workers contend that they are entitled by law to do these things and the employers assert that, law or no law, they shall not do so. In other words, it is a question of whether labor organization shall retain its foothold in the lumber industry or be "driven from ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... in these reaching fingers, Urges a sunward way! Hold here and climb, and halt not, that there lingers So far outstripped, my halting, wistful clay. Make here thy foothold of my rapturous heart,— Yea, though the tendrils start To hold and twine! I am the heart that nursed Thy sunward thirst.— A little while, a little while, O Vine, My own and never mine, Feed thy sweet roots with me Abundantly. O wonder-wildness of the pushing ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... while he in his turn accepted their resignations from the army. The fiasco was a costly one in quite another direction, for the Niagara sector had been overlooked in the elaborate attempt to capture Montreal. The few American troops who had gained a foothold on the Canadian side, at Fort George and the village of Niagara, were left unsupported while all the available regulars were sent to the armies of Wilkinson and Hampton. As soon as the British comprehended that the grand invasion ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... they were alongside the oars were cast aside, and the men, drawing their cutlasses, leapt to their feet and endeavoured to climb up. They were thrust back with boarding-pikes, axes, and weapons of all kinds, but at last managed to get a foothold aft. ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... in these dark, damp, northern slopes. Now we struggled and hopped, horse and man, down and round a corner, at the head of a glen, where a few flagstones fallen across a gully gave an uncertain foothold, and paused, under damp rocks covered with white and pink Begonias and ferns of innumerable forms, to drink the clear mountain water out of cups extemporised from a Calathea leaf; and then struggled up again over roots and ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... in the country, What can a man's amusements be? Walk? And but more of empty highway And of deserted village see? Or let him through the far Steppes gallop, His horse can scarcely stand at all— His stamping hoofs in vain seek foothold, The rider dreading lest he fall! So then remain within thy paling, Read thou in Pradt or Walter Scott, Compare thy varying editions, Drink, and thy scoffing mood spare not! As the long evenings drag away So doth the Winter ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... its bottom. And I was still almost that far from the top. With the stature I had then attained, I could have climbed the remaining distance easily, but for the fact that the wall above had grown too smooth to afford a foothold. The effects of the drug had again worn off, and I sat down and prepared to take another dose. I did so—the smallest amount I could—and held ready in my hand a pill of the other kind in case of emergency. Steadily the ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... sea to break the vessel to pieces, and she was too substantial to go to pieces of her own account. The nearest island was little more than a barren rock. A few birds wheeled about over it, or sat perched upon its rugged points, but with that exception I doubt if it furnished a foothold for ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... up, above the quagmire. It was less than a foot wide at first, but widened toward the left, and seedling trees had formed a growth which appeared to merge into the densely wooded hill beyond. He pushed his way along this insecure foothold until the trees began to thin as if there were an open space beyond. Then directly in front of him sounded the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... more time for covering the distance than an experienced person would require and must count upon the expenditure of more strength, because your feet are not trained to the wilderness paths with their pitfalls and traps for the unwary, and every nerve and muscle will be strained to secure a safe foothold amid the tangled roots, on the slippery, moss-covered logs, over precipitous rocks that lie in your path. It will take time to pick your way over boggy places where the water oozes up through the thin, loamy soil as through a sponge; and experience alone will teach you ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... Teddy's feet, and, with the heavy burden bearing down upon him, he was unable to get sufficient foothold to save himself. ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... him with open arms, into which he could fall, with his childlike confidence, and be carried up the ladder. Here, apparently, one did not talk about the heroic deeds which elsewhere gave a man foothold; here such things merely aroused scornful laughter. He tried it again and again, always with something new, but the answer was always the same—"Farmer!" His whole little person was overflowing with good-will, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... he is asking for men enough to deal with the new order of things so as to prevent trouble in the future. "Once," says he, "get the new-comers within our gates imbued with the proper respect for British law and British justice, and prevent the criminal element getting a foothold, and a work will be accomplished of ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... interior of this vast cave, finding everywhere the walls rising sheer from the silent, dark waters, not a ledge or a crevice where one might gain foothold. Indeed, in some places there was a considerable overhang from above, as if a great dome whose top was invisible sprang from some level below the water. We pushed ahead until the tiny semi-circle of light through which we had entered was only faintly visible; and then, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... again started and, after travelling several miles, entered a narrow valley with very steep sides, with trees and brushwood growing wherever they could get a foothold. He now adopted a careless and indifferent carriage and, although he kept a sharp lookout, no one who saw him would have supposed that he had any ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... says Mr. Robert. "It would mean letting that crowd get a foothold in Corrugated, and a loss of thousands to her. See if the ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... too)—well, then, even the vagaries of the West African market are a simple matter compared with the vagaries of the Exchange. The mystery of the mark, for instance, is so utterly beyond that, in trying to understand it, I do not even know where to begin. I see no mental foothold anywhere. ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... undoubted yet doubtful honour of having had regular yellow fever. In 1862 and 1866 this disease was imported by a ship that had come from Havana. Since then it has not appeared in the definite South American form, and therefore does not seem to have obtained the foothold it has in Senegal, where a few years ago all the money voted for the keeping of the Fete Nationale was in one district devoted by public consent to the purchase of coffins, required by an overwhelming ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... singularly painful position for so fervent a daughter of Rome; while the English refugees checkmated their own party at home by their readiness to pay any price-even to the betrayal of Calais-for French support. But for timely reinforcements, the English foothold in France would probably have been captured by a coup de main before the close of 1556. Meantime in England the severity of the persecutions ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... broom and get all the dishes and things together," she answered, "and then leave the rest to me. In a week from now you won't know this place. Once we clear out a little foothold here we can go back to the tower and fetch up a few loads of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... without a rope, or, which comes to the same thing, alone, and he was not less severe on those who are so foolhardy, or so ignorant, as to cross steep slopes of ice on new-fallen snow. Nothing is easier, the new snow affording such good foothold, as you told us the other day when describing your adventures under the cliffs of Monte Rosa, and yet nothing is more dangerous, says Antoine, for if the snow were to slip, as it is very apt to do, you would be smothered in it, or swept into a crevasse by it. Lives are lost in the Alps every year, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... early history of America, the settlers in the new country were too busily employed in fighting for a foothold, in getting food and clothing, in keeping body and soul together, to have any time for the fine arts. Most of the New England divines tried their hands at limping and hob-nail verse, but prior to the Revolution, American literature is remarkable only for its aridity, its lack of inspiration ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
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