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More "Stagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to a close, when all become so intoxicated they can neither tell story nor sing song. Then some stagger to their tents, others dropping over where they sit, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the trip. I recognized the 'Sea Monster' a long way off, but I must say I was surprised when I saw Jerry's shirt signaling so distressfully. Of course I knew who you were at once, when you called the place the 'Sea Monster,' but Christine did stagger me for a minute." ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... begin. There are jets of flame, long lines of light, white clouds, unfolding and expanding, rolling over and over, and rising above the tree-tops. Wilder the uproar. Men fall, tossing their arms; some leap into the air, some plunge headlong, falling like logs of wood or lumps of lead. Some reel, stagger, and tumble; others lie down gently as to a night's repose, unheeding the din, commotion, and uproar. They are bleeding, torn, and mangled. Legs, arms, bodies, are crushed. They see nothing. They cannot tell what has happened. The air is full of fearful noises. An unseen storm ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... theory: that the bullet found in Mr. Hammond's breast came from the window and the one he shot went out of it. But this would necessitate his having shot his pistol from a point far removed from where he was found; and his wound was such as made it difficult to believe that he would stagger far, if at ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Pocket Diary, with one week in each opening, lie on the table before me; all filled up, and in a decent state of preservation. I think I shall undertake the annotation of a week's record. A man might, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger in this attempt; but I shut my eyes, and take up one of the little volumes. It proves to be the edition of 1883. Again I shut my eyes while I open the book at random. It is the week beginning with Sunday, the 9th ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... cannot leave it, they must go With its unconquerable flow. But ah! how few, of all that try This mighty march, do aught but die! For ill-endow'd for such a way, Ill-stored in strength, in wits, are they. They faint, they stagger to and fro, And wandering from the stream they go; In pain, in terror, in distress, They see, all round, a wilderness. Sometimes a momentary gleam They catch of the mysterious stream; Sometimes, a ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... fish lay, I travelled on, and entered the tall woods to the east of Fochabers. The rain ceased for a time; and I met in the woods an old pensioner, who had been evidently weather-bound in some public-house, and had now taken the opportunity of the fair interval to stagger to his dwelling. He was eminently, exuberantly happy,—there could not be two opinions on that head,—full of all manner of bright sunshiny thoughts and imaginations, rendered just a little tremulous and uncertain ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... with her huge strength, made her way without difficulty; but the cub, in a few moments, began to find himself terribly hampered. His fur collected the mud. His little paws sank easily, but at each step it grew harder to withdraw them. At last, chancing to stagger aside from his mother's spacious tracks, he sank to his belly in the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ordinary doing better than common men's best, his parentheses of thought richer than other men's paragraphs and volumes. And he left on record for us promises of greater works than these, at which we stagger through unbelief. We should not; for men who have lived by the evidence of things not seen, and sought a city that received Jesus out of sight, have found that "God is not ashamed to be called their God." They have wrought marvels that men tell over like a rosary of what is possible to men. ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... then, that he should start and stagger backward when he came so suddenly upon the doctor, or that the first impulse of weak human nature was to leave the fallen man, but the second, the Christian impulse, bade him stay, and forgetting his ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... his strength he managed to stagger along behind till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the sleds to his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered a moment to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he returned and started his dogs. They ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... in that year, 604-3, he delivered to the people of Jerusalem a summary of his previous oracles. He told them that the cup of the Lord's wrath was given into his hand; Judah and other nations, especially Egypt, must drink it and so stagger ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... so anxious to fight, take that!" cried Dave, and before the other could recover he landed a second blow on Merwell's chin. This caused the bully to stagger against Hank Snogger, who kept him ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... second I heard the rumbling of carriage wheels at a distance, and not another sound, but that of the faint music far away. Then came a foot-step at racing pace nearer and nearer, then a trip and a long stagger, as though the runner had nearly fallen, and then the headlong pace again. And then, with the soft broad moon-light full upon his face, a man came darting round the corner of the lane. I strove to move aside, but before ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... against his shirt, seizing part of it in her teeth to aid her to keep her hold of him. He struck at her head, at her arms, at her body, anywhere, so long as he hit her, in his efforts to throw her off. But she held him, and at last, mad with fear, he tried to stagger out of the hut, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... and thence up a court leading to a low public-house, which had a second and worse reputation. Into this Alec's companion went. Alec followed. But he was suddenly seized in the dark, and ejected with violence. Recovering himself from his backward stagger into the court, he raised his arm to strike. Before him stood a little man, who had apparently followed him out of the public-house. His hands were in the pockets of his trowsers, and the wind was blowing about the tails of his ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... his habit, in these cases of Bacchanalian emergency, to stagger obstinately into his room on the ground-floor, to take the model-ship out of the cupboard, and to try if he could proceed with the never-to-be-completed employment of setting up the rigging. When he had ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... thought it worth while to write those pages, Franklin had been taught to think very well of himself and his career. For this reason he was, upon the one hand, somewhat indifferent as to setting down what smaller men would conceal, confident that his fame would not stagger beneath the burden of youthful wrong-doing; on the other hand, he deals rather gently, a little ideally, with himself, as old men are wont to acknowledge with condemnation tempered with mild forgiveness the foibles of their early days. It is evident that, as a young man, Franklin intermingled sense ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... risen to such terrific proportions that often he was compelled to crawl upon his hands and knees. With each momentary lull he would rise and stagger forward. His legs worked at these times without conscious effort. It was strange his legs should be like that. They had never felt like ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... handsome brig which had failed to leave the harbor soon enough stagger in upon the rocks where it seemed her masts might fall into our own grounds, and grandmamma told me that thus my father, though born in the island, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... to be very evenly matched, save that Merriwell was the more catlike on his feet. Browning was solid, and it took a terrific blow to stagger him. Merriwell was plainly the more scientific. He could get in and away from his foe in a most successful manner, but he saw that in the confined limits of a ring Browning's rush ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... harm than two or three quarts of so much nitroglycerin, y'understand," Morris said. "Also on Saturday nights you will see the poor women nebich hanging around the swinging doors of paint and color stores right up to closing-time to see is their husbands inside, while the single men will stagger from house-furnishing store to house-furnishing store—or the Poor Men's Clubs, as they call them places where stove and ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... as if to seize the weapon. There was a sharp explosion, and both men disappeared for an instant in the spurt of smoke. Then I saw Sackett stagger sidelong across the deck with the roll of the ship, and go down heavily upon the wheel gratings. He uttered no word. I ran to his side, and saw the ashy hue coming upon his ruddy face, and knew his time was short. ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... the women did worse. It is impossible to give a hint of the language they used, especially the elder of the three whose hollow face was blackened by time and exposure. The two golden-brown girls were so heavily intoxicated they could but stagger to and fro and mouth and gesticulate, and one held a quart from which, as she moved, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble; they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... not the secret of properly regulating our own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying to appear happy and contented. We stagger in the attempt to keep our moral equilibrium, and see forerunners of the tempest in every cloud that floats on the horizon. Yet there is joy and beauty in the roll of billows as they sweep outward toward eternity. ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... in London Town this night. Please don't remember it as you go to bed; if you are as soft as you ought to be you may not rest so well as usual. But for old men of sixty, seventy, and eighty, ill-fed, with neither meat nor blood, to greet the dawn unrefreshed, and to stagger through the day in mad search for crusts, with relentless night rushing down upon them again, and to do this five nights and days—O dear, soft people, full of meat and blood, how can you ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Polly could hardly move. The measles! what should she do! A faint hope of driving them off made her tumble out of bed, and stagger across the room to look in the old cracked looking-glass. All hope was gone as the red reflection met her gaze. Polly was on ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... Oaks!" cried Baker. "Son, White Oaks raises raisins and peaches and apricots and figs and such things in quantities to stagger you. It is a nice, well-built city, and well conducted, and full of real estate boards and chambers of commerce. But it is not framed up for tourists, and it knows it. Not at 100 degrees Fahrenheit 'most all summer, and a chill and solemn land fog ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... shaken off the numbness caused by the blow that he had received, and he managed to stagger to where Dick was lying, and knelt beside him and begged the Malays to bring water. They had evidently received orders to do all they could to revive the two young officers, and one at once brought half a gourd full. Harry had already assured himself that his friend's heart still beat. He began ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... is a brute who will drink as long as he can stand, and some time after it. Brooks is rather shy of it, but he will drink enough to stagger him, for he is pretty weak-headed. We have only to manage these fellows, and there's the end of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... sure that four out of five would like it a great deal better than wine or brandy. And nobody could possibly receive any harm. Didn't you hear what father said about Mr. Lewis? That he had been rather wild? I am sure I shall never forget seeing him stagger in the street once. I suppose he has reformed. But just think, if the taste should be revived again and at our house, and he should become intoxicated at this wedding party! O, mother! It makes me feel dreadfully ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... proposed that they resume their journey as best they could until death should claim a victim. All acquiesced. Slowly rising to their feet, they managed to stagger and to crawl forward about three miles to a tree which furnished fuel for their Christmas fire. It was kindled with great difficulty, for in cutting the boughs, the hatchet blade flew off the handle and for a time was lost in ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... increase. The air was oppressive. I seemed to be saying to myself, will it never, never stop? I wrenched the lock; the door of the room swung back against my shoulder. Just then the building seemed to breathe, stagger and right itself. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... rolling heavily with an uneven drunken stagger that told how fast she was filling, and the starboard rail was close to the water's edge. The captain ran his eye over the boats and counted the men to see that all ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... eager suggestions for her comfort, but the girl was firm in her assertion, that she was now quite well, so that, having no sisters and being ignorant that a healthy young woman does not, any more than a healthy young man, go white and stagger without reason, he yielded, and they ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... your temper when it is on the high speed, with the throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you with it. And you learn all this at the time of life when your head is swelling up until you mistake it for a planet, and regard whatever you say ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... corner where the big house stood, and the white marble steps were heaped with snow. A great mass of the snow was dislodged by the movement of the door and fell in clouds over Towsley's big hat and fine costume; also the tight shoes upon his feet seemed to make him stumble and stagger sadly; but he was not to be deterred by such trifles as these. The cold breath of the wind was delightful to him, the rush of outer ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... were powerless—they knew that the mysterious professor who had disappeared from Moscow fifteen years before and had never since been seen was only waiting his opportunity to strike a blow that would stagger and crush the Empire from end to end—yet of his whereabouts ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... you in a spot so vital that you die in a few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing, you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward, you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa, which you fall upon, and, finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... the Comte stiffly, "I really must ask you to think sometimes before you speak. Of a truth you make suggestions and comments at times which literally stagger one." ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... hall, where he fitted me with greatcoat and hat. Then, having trundled me to the front gate, he picked me up—luckily I have always been a small spare man—and deposited me in the car. I am always nervous of anyone but Marigold trying to carry me. They seem to stagger and fumble and bungle. Marigold's arms close round me like an iron clamp and they lift me with the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... finger upon as wrong. And yet, passing that schooner at two miles, one knew, somehow, that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine a vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea, carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their foreheads with just the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... aggrandizement. The seed planted by John Smith still grows. The voice of John Smith still lives. That voice has been swelled into the mighty chorus of 60,000,000 Americans singing the song of United States. We look forward to a future whose possibilities stagger all conjecture, to a common ruler of John Smith's ancient dominions; to a common destiny, such as he mapped out for us. And with devout and heartfelt gratitude to him, a reunited land proclaims, "Whom God hath joined together, let no man ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... he felt the dagger, He reel'd his wonted bottle swagger, But yet he drew the mortal trigger Wi' weel-aim'd heed; "L—d, five!" he cry'd, an' owre did stagger; Tam Samson's dead! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... eating-shop, and enquiries from the neighbours elicited the fact that the cook of the establishment had caught the beast and cut its throat; that the miserable creature, in its dying struggles, had escaped from his grasp and run in the direction of home, only to stagger by the roadside and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... she had leaned on him and fallen fast asleep. Her head was on her son's shoulder when they reached home, and Orion's anxiety for the mother he truly loved was enhanced when he found it difficult to rouse her. He felt her stagger like a drunken creature, and he led her not into the fountain-room but to her bed-chamber, where she only begged to lie down; and hardly had she done so when she was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... confer with her husband. His resolution had begun to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that day, whose duty, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the subterranean forces attacked again. Again came that awful rocking, and shaking, which left them struggling for a foothold. Twice they were driven to their knees, only to stagger on as the convulsions lessened. It was a nightmare of nervous tension. Every step of the journey was fraught with danger, and every moment it seemed as though the hill must fall beneath ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... exhausted, and approached but slowly, they soon had the satisfaction of seeing him pass through the surf, which, even at this time, was not heavy in the cove, and, with the water pouring from his shaggy coat, stagger towards them, bearing in his mouth his burden, which he laid down at Forster's feet, and then shook off the accumulation of moisture from his skin. Forster took up the object of the animal's solicitude—it was the body of an infant, apparently a few ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... that summer when you were abroad, you'll understand, too. Everybody knows everybody else's business. It is the main occupation of a certain set, and the per-capita output of gossip is a record that would stagger the census bureau. Still, you can't get away from the note, Craig. There it is, in Dixon's own handwriting, even if he does deny it: 'This will cure your headache. Dr. Dixon.' That's a damning ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... inquired and heard the offense, bellowed with laughter, and condemned the ex-peddler to a fine of half a crown in grog. This softened brutus, and a harmonious debauch succeeded. Like the old Egyptians they debated first sober and then drunk, and to stagger my general notion that the ancients were unwise, candor compels me to own, it was while stammering, maudling, stinking and in every sense drunk that mephistopheles driveled out a scheme so cunning and so new as threw everybody and everything into ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Blakes, I longed to relieve Daniel of his heavy basket; for even he seemed to stagger beneath ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... side the outside line of the shell and cut to shape roughly. See that the spreaders and sides fit true all over, then put white lead on the joint and nail with 1-3/4 -in. finishing nails as close as possible without weakening the wood. Slightly stagger the nails in the sides, the 1-in. side boards will allow for this, trim off the sides, turn the box over and paint the joints and ends of the spreaders, giving them two or three ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... a wounded prisoner of war.... I myself got my shoulder rather badly smashed up by a machine gun which knocked me out, and I lay in a shell hole for about ten hours while our guns strafed like hell and I expected every moment to be blown to bits. However, I at last managed to crawl up and stagger along, and as I was in German lines, ran into a lot of Germans. They were awfully kind to me, gave me food and drink and bound up my wound, and then sent me along to the dressing station. I am at present in hospital in Belgium and expect to go to Germany almost directly. ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... one week every three months, and he was the least offensive tippler I ever knew. He came up to the city during one of his lapses, and called at my office. He was dressed with unusual care (he was always a good deal of a dandy), and he did not stagger nor slush his syllables; indeed, the only way I could have told what was the matter with him, at first, was by the solemn preoccupation of his expression. A little black pickaninny followed him, grinning and carrying a big bundle, covered with a new ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... experiences. It, alone, assures his continual progress upon all lines of growth connected not only with his earthly but also his immortal career. Great inventions, unexpected discoveries, and astounding revelations may stagger him for a moment; but the facility with which he finally absorbs all the hitherto unknown outworkings of science and natural law, and assimilates them to his inner sense of the fitness of things, changing all his relationship to his material life, and forcing himself ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... breathing's gone wrong. The other day he asked to have his boots on to be led round the room. He tried to walk, but he couldn't stand. 'Ah, I told you before, father,' he said, 'that those boots were no good. I could never walk properly in them.' He fancied it was his boots that made him stagger, but it was simply weakness, really. He won't live another week. Herzenstube is looking after him. Now they are rich again—they've got heaps ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... quickly saw the effect of even this reinforcement. At the very point of time when the cruiser was about to lay her on board, she came sharply round by the head, and discharged her broadside within pistol-shot. I could see the remaining mast of the cruiser stagger; it made two or three heaves, like a drunkard trying to recover his steps, then came a crash, and it went over the side. The vessel recoiled, and being now evidently unable to steer, the storm had her at its mercy; and the last we saw of her was a hull, rolling and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... according to regulation. This being so, I doubt not that the gentlemen of the Academy will find themselves much hampered in delivering a judgment on your case, and that, on the one hand, your arguments will stagger them, whilst, on the other, the public approbation will keep them in check. You have the best of it in the closet; he has the advantage on the stage. If the Cid be guilty, it is of a crime which has met with reward; if ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in silence to a boat entangled amongst the reeds, through which an attempt had evidently been made to force it. The stranger had now arrived within a few paces of the shore, when he began to stagger, and Canondah, who hurried to his assistance, was but just in time to prevent his falling back into the water. Supporting him in her arms she assisted him to the bank, and the cause of his weakness became apparent, in a stream of blood that flowed from his leg, severely wounded by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... which astonished her, for coming from the preacher's room a well-known form stood plainly revealed. It was Gethin! and the girl shrank a little into the shadow of a doorway. But her precaution was needless, for he walked as if dazed or asleep, and with unsteady footstep seemed to stagger as he ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... waggle; nod, bob, courtesy, curtsy; tick; play; wamble[obs3], wabble[obs3]; dangle, swag. fluctuate, dance, curvet, reel, quake; quiver, quaver; shake, flicker; wriggle; roll, toss, pitch; flounder, stagger, totter; move up and down, bob up and down &c. Adv.; pass and repass, ebb and flow, come and go; vacillate &c. 605; teeter [U.S.]. brandish, shake, flourish. Adj. oscillating &c. v.; oscillatory, undulatory, pulsatory[obs3], libratory, rectilinear; vibratory, vibratile[obs3]; pendulous. Adv. to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... on which the captain displayed his infirmity was rather a laughable one. He came up from the cabin about three o'clock in the afternoon so full that he was forced to stagger as he walked. Directly in front of him the young dude, Montgomery Clinton, was pacing the deck, carrying in his hand a rattan cane such as he used on shore. As he overhauled him, Captain Hill, with the instinct of a drunken man, locked arms ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... cursing fiercely he struggled to regain his feet, the frightened girl, without pausing to see his condition, or listening to his calls and threats, fled down the street. When her companion had at last managed to stagger to the sidewalk and could look around by clinging to the fence, she was out of sight. He called two or three times, and then swearing vilely, started in pursuit, reeling from side to side. The frightened girl ran on and on, paying no ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... be—what, on other occasions, he clearly avows it to be—is plain enough. It is essentially that of a man confronted by one Incomprehensible, not confronted by two. But, looked at in certain ways, or rather looked from in certain ways, this position seems to stagger him. The problem of existence reels and grows dim before him, and he fancies that he detects the presence of two Incomprehensibles, when he has really, in his state of mental insobriety, only seen one Incomprehensible double. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... am not if Sam can think up some important work for me to do. At six o'clock in the morning I laid down the papers with Peter's triumph in them and rolled into bed, dead with sleep; and before seven Sam had sent me a note that forced me to open my eyes and stagger up and on. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... I am a seasoned drinker. I have no constitutional predisposition for alcohol. I am not stupid. I am not a swine. I know the drinking game from A to Z, and I have used my judgment in drinking. I never have to be put to bed. Nor do I stagger. In short, I am a normal, average man; and I drink in the normal, average way, as drinking goes. And this is the very point: I am writing of the effects of alcohol on the normal, average man. I have no word to say for or about the microscopically unimportant ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... weary itself as our helpless English chicken is; it lived to get fat without acquiring any useless knowledge or desire of life; it became a capon in tender years, and then a pipe was introduced into its mouth and it was fed by machinery until it could hardly walk, until it could only stagger to its bed, and there it lay in happy digestion until the hour came for it to be crammed again. So did it grow up without knowledge or sensation or feeling of life, moving gradually, peacefully towards its predestined end—a delicious repast! ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... wind became stronger, and they presently had as much as the boat could stagger under, with only her mizzen and foresail set. The sea, however, was not as heavy as might have been expected. Tom kept the boat's head close to it, and she rode easily over the fast-rising billows. The hatch, which had hitherto been of no use, was shipped, and kept out the seas which occasionally ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... hitherto held out well, but suddenly Mike's began to stagger, and, almost before he could throw himself from its back, down the poor animal fell. What had been the cause of the horse's death we had not knowledge sufficient to ascertain; only one thing was certain,— that it was dead, and that we must ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... Then, laughing, pell-mell leapt on other two. The fourth rogue's thrust, Duke Joc'lyn blithely parried Right featly with the quarter-staff he carried. Then 'neath the fellow's guard did nimbly slip And caught him in a cunning wrestler's grip. Now did they reel and stagger to and fro, And on the ling each ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... one of the most famous persons in the world, so that, wherever civilized man was to be found, there his name was known as "Monk, who invented that marvellous machine, the aerophone." Lastly, there was no more need for him, as for most of us, to stagger down his road beneath a never lessening burden of daily labour. His work was done; a great conception completed after half a score of years of toil and experiment had crowned it with unquestionable success. Now he could sit ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... fifteen years. During all these fifty—perhaps sixty—years, I shall have to do without Barbara. I have not yet arrived at the pain of this thought: that will come, quick enough, I suppose, by-and-by!—it is the astonishment of it that is making my mind reel and stagger! ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... dragging the cloth askew in her trailing, hysterical stagger. She lurched to the French window that, thrown back against the wall, opened onto the little garden. And she stood there, leaning against the long window and pressing her handkerchief to her mouth till the storm of her ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the years when he is old enough to be cautious about accepting new ideas and young enough to be enthusiastic concerning them after careful consideration, when he is so mature as not to desire to stagger the orthodox by the impudence of his opinions, and sufficiently youthful to be willing to shock the conservative by the audacity of his views. He may then seem jaded because he is not easily moved, but will be ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... not only has inductance, but also a certain small capacitance. Coils wound with their turns parallel and having a number of layers have a bunched capacitance which produces untoward effects in oscillation circuits. In honeycomb and other stagger wound coils the capacitance is ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... stagger under thy kerosene tin were ever a joy!" responded Wally, seizing the can of feed as he spoke—the kerosene tin of the bush, that serves so many purposes, from bucket to cooking stove, and may end its ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... come their way, for that matter. Casey Town boomed with some bona-fide strikes that sent Keith's stocks soaring high. The porphyry dyke at the Molly Mine began to yield rich results almost from the first and dividends were paid in such quantities as to stagger the Three Star outfit who saw themselves in a fair way to become rich. All over the barren hills, where the first futile shafts had been driven and abandoned, buildings sprang up like mushrooms, housing machinery, sending up plumes ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... than you and me, darlings," she would say, with a slight stagger in grammar, but none in orthodoxy, "have ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... his emigrating flock, is the main source of leakage in the American Church. They are not able to answer the most ordinary objections, and they have not moral strength to withstand the shafts of ridicule. In the fierce cross-currents of unbelief, he is poorly able to keep his foothold. Many stagger; some ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... at random without delay, and he was amazed to see the Prussian opposite him stagger, lift up his arms and fall forward, dead. He ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and vulgar and all-surfeiting it is, loading the air around it with its sickening imitation of sweetness, so that even the bees stagger as they pass through it and disdain to stop and shovel, for the mere asking, its ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... from my neighbour on the left hand was accompanied by a wild rustling of silk. Glancing at Mrs. Hornby, I saw her stagger from the bench, shaking like a jelly, mopping her eyes with her handkerchief and grasping her open purse. She entered the witness-box, and, having gazed wildly round the court, began to search the multitudinous ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... girls can come in. The officers can bring the good ship into port, and the sailors can make a handsome showing along the side as she comes up to the pier, and the longshoremen can stagger ashore laden with big bundles. On the shore there can be groups of girls who will undo the large bundles and take out the small ones that they contain. Other groups of girls can go about giving out ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... intervals a shiver ran through his frame. His head sank into his hands, and he looked and felt like one utterly crushed by a fate from which there was no escape. His ever-recurring thought was, "I have but one life, and it's lost, worse than lost. Why should I stagger on beneath the burden of an intolerable existence, which will only grow heavier as the ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... as he saw it, Right Royal went strange As one whom Death's finger has touched to a change; He went with a stagger that sickened the soul, As a force stricken feeble and out ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... got a chance,—these were the features by which the Rockland-born children remembered the farm-house, when they had grown to be men. Such are the recollections that come over poor sailor-boys crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as their vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner flush of the red wave out of which Memory arises, as ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... is the proper term) cut somewhat low, but making up in train what is lacking elsewhere. Others bear bonnet boxes from which peep stylish toques and bewitching hoods. Some, representing evidently wholesale houses, stagger under silks and satins in the piece. Cupids are there from the shoemakers with the daintiest of bottines. Stockings, garters, and even less mentionable articles, are not forgotten. Caskets, mirrors, twelve-buttoned gloves, scent-bottles and handkerchiefs, ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to assassinate the king. Sir Thomas Gascoigne, a very aged gentleman in the north, being accused by two servants, whom he had dismissed for dishonesty, received a like verdict. These trials were great blows to the plot, which now began to stagger, in the judgment of most men, except those who were entirely devoted to the country party. But in order still to keep alive the zeal against Popery, the earl of Shaftesbury appeared in Westminster Hall, attended by the earl of Huntingdon, the lords Russel, Cavendish, Grey, Brandon, Sir ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... depends on my orders. If we can stagger through the first few weeks, till I can get some cash—I say, Marcella, why shouldn't you ask your ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... face. To clear the anemometer vane he had to go to the other end of the hut and climb a ladder; and twice while engaged in this task he had literally to lean against the wind with head bent and face averted, and so stagger crab-like on his course. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... deign to recall your fathers and devote yourselves more faithfully to the study of holy books, without which all religion will stagger, without which the virtue of devotion will dry up like a sherd, and without which ye can afford ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... his place, though he had released his hold enough to allow me breathing space, and seeing me revive he prodded me adroitly first with one foot and then with the other, until I was forced to get up and stagger about with him under the trees while he gathered and ate the choicest fruits. This went on all day, and even at night, when I threw myself down half dead with weariness, the terrible old man held on tight to my neck, nor did he fail to greet ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... breath, his hands falling helplessly at his sides. In a way he appeared suddenly bowed; the great frame of bone and sinew seemed in some strange, indefinable manner to shrink, to stagger under the sudden assumption of an intolerable burden—a burden that ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... inclination, he pulled out the ferret, and pitched it right upon Fred's shoulders as he stood with his back half turned. Fred gave a cry of fear and anger, and darting at Harry, struck him full in the face a blow that made him stagger backwards. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... life are few. Once it was otherwise: you can recall a different picture of the Marmion on whom you smiled, and of whom you were the first love. O Annabel! grey, feeble, exhausted, penitent, let me stagger over your threshold, and die! I ask no more; I will not hope for your affection; I will not even count upon your pity; but endure my presence; let your ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... into the fort. The townsfolk had no thought but to slay and slay; five or six would be at the throat of one Burgundian man-at-arms; hammers and axes were breaking up armour, knives were scratching and searching for a crevice; women, lifting great stone balls, would stagger up to dash them on the heads of the fallen. Of the whole garrison, one-half, a hundred and sixty men-at-arms, were put to the sword. Only Pothon de Xaintrailles, and the gentlemen with him, as knowing the manner of war, saved and held to ransom certain ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... coast for hundreds of miles north and south. A cap-full of wind will be a bag-full here, and before night our royals were furled, and the ship was laboring hard under her top-gallant-sails. At eight bells our watch went below, leaving her with as much sail as she could stagger under, the water flying over the forecastle at every plunge. It was evidently blowing harder, but then there was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun had gone ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... glorious madness of living, with the splendor of the night, with the cold, sharp air and the exhilaration of the exercise. The next moment, as she mustered all her strength to pass Archie, she saw him stagger and fall. He had skated on a half-buried stick, and the sudden check to his progress had thrown him ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... against his shoulder, and went straggling forward, as uncertain in steps as a blind man, all about him stretching the dull, dead desolation of the plain. Again and again he sank down, pillowing his eyes from the pitiless sun glare; only to stagger upright once more, ever bending lower and lower beneath his ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... father; I had nothing, therefore, to detain me; and by sunset we were again at sea, clear of the shoals, and standing away to the southward with every stitch of canvas spread that the schooner could stagger under. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; toddle, waddle, wabble^, slug, traipse, slouch, shuffle, halt, hobble, limp, caludicate^, shamble; flag, falter, trotter, stagger; mince, step short; march in slow time, march in funeral procession; take one's time; hang fire &c (be late) 133. retard, relax; slacken, check, moderate, rein in, curb; reef; strike sail, shorten sail, take in sail; put on the drag, apply the brake; clip ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and inclined to stagger when they freed him. And for several minutes he seemed unable to grasp either his surroundings or the train of events which had ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... self-denying, self-sacrificing, benevolent women in the world. Nobody else believed it. She had to endure more trials, bear more crosses, undergo more hardships, than any other housekeeper in town. She had to work harder, to think of more things, stagger under more burdens, than all her female neighbors put together. If she ever confessed that she was sometimes just a little cross, she wanted to know who could wonder at it, when she had so much to ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... with a flag. Here you have the reason why a Russian woman appeals to us. She is rarely beautiful—some of them would themselves admit the deficiency—but she is never an embarrassment. Tell her that you are tired of her and you will discover that she was about to stagger your vanity by a similar confidence. In these days of revolution, she is seen at her best. Fear neither of God nor man will restrain her. We have more of the show of religion and less of the spirit in Russia than in any other country in ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... "Not at first anyway. The woman there says she was out here in her garden, feeding her fowls, when she saw him stagger round the corner of the wood there, and make for her. He fell across the bank where he's lying in a dead faint, and she ran for water. Just then we came along in the trap, saw what was happening and jumped out. Fortunately, when we set off, Mr. Cazalette insisted ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... a pause, but Bannon, within a half-hour, was out of bed and on the ground, and there was no question of changing shifts until, after twenty-four hours, the storm had passed, and elevator, annex and marine tower were cleared of snow. Men worked until they could not stagger, then snatched a few hours' sleep where they could. Word was passed that those who wished might observe the regular hours, but not a dozen men took the opportunity. For now they were in the public eye, and they felt as soldiers feel, when, after long months of ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... yell of rage and pain answered the reports. They saw the gorilla stagger, then drop to all fours, and lunge ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the power and undeveloped wealth of these United States. It's a big rebellion, I know; but we're going to put it down. It'll leave us a big debt, very sure; but we handle it now easy as that child lifts that stool. It makes him grunt and stagger a little, not because he isn't strong enough for it, but because he don't understand his own strength, or how to use it: he'll have twice the strength, and know just how to apply it, in a little while. Just so with this country. It makes me laugh ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the boys found very prevalent all through their journey. The Belgians seemed to believe the English were getting a wonderful surprise ready with which to stagger the enemy. If they could have only known how an army had to be built up step by step in the great island country, they might have felt less confidence, and perhaps shown more discretion ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... with Him, standing like a cold statue upon the pedestal of will. The rain from heaven no longer refreshes you, it undermines and weakens you. The passing wind no longer gives you the kiss of life, the benediction on all that lives and breathes; it buffets you and makes you stagger. Every woman who kisses you, takes from you a spark of life and gives you none in return; you exhaust yourself on fantoms; wherever falls a drop of our sweat, there springs up one of those sinister weeds that grow in graveyards. Die! You are the enemy of all, who love; blot yourself ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... I led thee, dearest, Though the veil hid thy face divine, They who beheld thy graceful motion Would stagger as ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Smothe, vapor. Snaw, snow. Snell, bitter. Snooded, bound up with a fillet. Snool, cringe. Solan, gannet. Soote, sweet. Souter, cobbler. Spak, spoke. Spean, wean. Speel, climb. Spier, ask, inquire. Spraing, stripe. Sprattle, scramble. Spreckled, speckled. Spryte, spirit. Squattle, squat. Stacher, stagger, totter. Stane, stone. Steer, stir. Steyned, stained. Stibble, stubble. Still, ever. Stirk, young steer. Stole, robe. Stonen, stony. Stote, stout. Stoure, dust, struggle. Stown, stolen. Strang, strong. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... gazed, they were flung open on silent hinges, and a host, clothed in spotless white, entered their portals, welcomed with swelling anthems and seraphic songs. Then the toppling precipice began to reel and stagger beneath his feet—a fierce bright flame burst from amidst the night below, more brilliant than the sun's intensest ray. It drank up the darkness, and filled the gulf with liquid fire. It flashed through his eye-balls like a glance of lightning. He felt his foothold totter on the eve of its awful ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... not long on the terrace. It was not a night on which you could stroll and talk; there was a wind against which you had to stagger, holding your hat on tightly, and shouting such remarks as might occur to you. Against that wind acquaintance could make no headway. Yet I see now that despite that wind, or, rather, because of it, I ought already to have known Pethel a little better than I did when we presently sat down ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... drew back with his clinched fist and gave the tramp a stinging blow between the eyes, which caused the much surprised individual to let go his hold and stagger ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... onusual fact to see prospectors in these parts. What made me think twice about this one was how big he seemed, how he filled up that door. He looked round the saloon, an' when he spotted Rojas he sorta jerked up. Then he pulled his slouch hat lopsided an' began to stagger down, down the steps. First off I made shore he was drunk. But I remembered he didn't seem drunk before. It was some queer. So I watched ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... did he stagger with his burden out into the night. As the wind drove in through the open door the flames seemed to burst in a sudden explosion and the cabin was a seething snarl of flame. It burst through the window and out of the chimney and Philip's path to the ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... to the library table; he heard the rustle of the sheet of paper as it was drawn out of the envelope. Then silence again, and the clamor of the clock. He turned round, in time to see David stagger slightly and drop into a chair; perspiration had burst out on his forehead. He was so white around his lips that Robert Ferguson knew that for a moment his body shared the awful astonishment of his soul. "There's some whiskey over there," he said, nodding toward ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... stage. She did not think it a nice place for herself; but for a brat like Lily, Lord, it was quite different! And she ought to have tried to please her Pa and Ma. Mrs. Clifton, though she never voiced the wish, had visions of a trip to London, to stagger some relations, a sister-in-law she had there, and sneer at the old country, in the usual colonial fashion, and show them what the new countries can do, countries where you make a fortune in less than no time! And, little ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... they were caught in a heavy, easterly gale. In a few hours there was a tremendous sea, and the wind rapidly rose to a hurricane. The "Little Sophy" steamed after the helpless craft and got as near to her as possible; but as she lowered her lifeboat, she saw the yacht stagger, stop, and then founder. The tops of her masts seemed to meet, she had broken her back, and the ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... for there was several barrels of pork and biscuits among the lot we had landed, and we were free to take as much as we wanted. The other bales and boxes were all broken open and the contents made up into packets, and Tom and I and about sixty niggers, each with as much as he could stagger under, started away from the shore. It wasn't a long march, for their village lay only about six miles away. We knew it could not be far, because the women and children had come down to the beach two or three hours after the fight was over. We stopped here about a month, ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... him by the arm and led him down to the forecastle, where the tars were singing and swearing. "There," said he, "when you hear them swearing, you may know there is no danger." He went back feeling better, but the storm increased his alarm. Disconsolate and unassisted, he managed to stagger to the forecastle again. The ancient mariners were swearing as ever. "Mary," he said to his sympathetic wife, as he crawled into his berth after tacking across a wet deck, "Mary, thank God they're ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... age, and to so great an extent, is this custom of provoking thirst, then quenching it with a stunting drink, observed, that brine pap has already superseded the use of tops-and-bottoms; and wet-nurses, previously free from any kind of reproach, have been seen to stagger in the streets: owing, sir, to the quantity of gin introduced into their systems, with a view to its gradual and natural conversion into the fluid I have ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... Rhynas declared he would make a master of the foil. Hugh Bascomb, with a pugilist's thick neck and round head, was spending all his spare time boxing, and it was said that he could strike a blow that would stagger an ox. His admirers declared it was a beautiful sight to see him hammer the punching-bag, and they assured him over and over that he was certain to make another Sullivan. Naturally, this gave Bascomb the "swelled head," and he got an idea into his brain ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... hath a thousand floors; And some toil slowly upward, stair by stair, And stagger and halt and faint upon the way; Others, more fortunate, achieve the top At one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... the Harman Beck's errand; From the bailiffs cramp speech, That makes man a thrall, I charm thee from each, And I charm thee from all. Thy freedom's complete As a Blade of the Huff, To be cheated and cheat, To be cuff'd and to cuff; To stride, swear, and swagger, To drink till you stagger, To stare and to stab, And to brandish your dagger In the cause of your drab; To walk wool-ward in winter, Drink brandy, and smoke, And go fresco in summer For want of a cloak; To eke out your living By the wag of your elbow, By fulham and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Tess watched him stagger along the shore through the rain, the shadows of the weeping-willow trees at last ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... himself rolled up in a blanket. You could'nt, he said, get a ship to look the wind in the eye when all the elements were tipsy. He was a lucky mariner who could get round Cape Horn without being tossed off his feet for a month—everything seemed to stagger so. ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... Paul points out, how much more so in the expressing of the Eternal Life through endless ages and limitless space! Once we grasp this idea of the unity and progressiveness of Life going on ad infinitum, what boundless vistas of possibility open before us. It would be enough to stagger the imagination were it not for our old friends, the Law and the Word. But these will always accompany us, and we may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. This Law of Unity is what in natural science is known as the ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... faint groans of the wounded unto death. Wolfe was hit, but he did not heed it; Montcalm has received a musket ball, but he cannot yet die. The English battle does not yield; it advances, the light of victory is upon it. Backward stagger the French; Montcalm strives to check the fatal movement, but the flying death has torn its way through his body, and he can no more. Wolfe, even as the day was won, got his death wound in the breast, but "Support me—don't ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... enclosure from which they had come and the hill where Gahan of Gathol lay watching, and then suddenly the smaller figure struck its companion full in the face. Gahan, horrified, saw the latter's head topple from its body, saw the body stagger and fall to the ground. The man half rose from his concealment the better to view the happening in the valley below. The creature that had felled its companion was dashing madly in the direction of the hill upon which he was ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... got fairly round—his head and forepart were over dry land—the three guns were pointed—the eyes of the three hunters were about to glance through the sights of their pieces, when all at once he was seen to rock and stagger,—and then roll over! With a loud plash, his vast body subsided into the water, sending great waves to ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... enough, without going about to authorise it by events: for the people being accustomed to such plausible arguments as these and so proper to their taste, it is to be feared, lest when they fail of success they should also stagger in their faith: as in the war wherein we are now engaged upon the account of religion, those who had the better in the business of Rochelabeille,—[May 1569.]—making great brags of that success as an infallible approbation ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the 5th October last, the immense sum of L.5,052,000. As far, therefore, as concerns the direct financial effects of the new tariff and its counterbalancing income-tax, the results of Sir Robert Peel's policy are such as may stagger and confound the boldest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... me that it would be wise to break ground while you are still away. Of course I need not say that I will see anybody or do anything—even to the calling together of the actors—if you should ever deem it desirable. My opinion is that our respected and valued friend Mr. —— will stagger through another season, if he don't rot first. I understand he is in a partial state of decomposition at this minute. He was very ill, but got better. How is it that —— always do get better, and strong hearts ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... to do something not altogether to the farmer's mind. It was a matter of no consequence—only cleaning that side of one of the cow-houses first which was usually cleaned last. He gave him a box on the ear that made him stagger, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... way without difficulty; but the cub, in a few moments, began to find himself terribly hampered. His fur collected the mud. His little paws sank easily, but at each step it grew harder to withdraw them. At last, chancing to stagger aside from his mother's spacious tracks, he sank to his belly in the rim of ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... felt certain that the story was a true one. As soon as a letter could arrive from Ireland, one came with the most profuse thanks, and enclosing, as he said, a 20 pound Bank of England note, but no note was enclosed. I asked my father whether this did not stagger him, but he answered 'not in the least.' On the next day another letter came with many apologies for having forgotten (like a true Irishman) to put the note into his letter of the day before...(A gentleman) brought his nephew, who was insane but quite gentle, to my father; and the young ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... But I must say I laugh with some uncertainty. I don't know whether you intended that for a joke or for a staggerer. You should provide your conversation with a series of printed instructions for the listener. Get a lot of cards, and have printed on one, "Please laugh"; on another, "Please stagger"; on another, "Kindly appear confused." Then when you mean to be jocose hand over the laughter card, and so ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... roar sent a couple of shot after the chase. It was getting dark, but I felt sure that one had struck her counter. Still she held on, and we continued in chase, she carrying as much sail as she could stagger under. ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... deck a surprising sensation. It is as if your feet had been caught in an imponderable snare; you feel the balance of your body threatened, and the steady poise of your mind is destroyed at once. This sensation lasts only a second, for even while you stagger something seems to turn over in your head, bringing uppermost the mental exclamation, full of astonishment and dismay, "By Jove! ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... in a knickerbocker suit with arrows on it (such as can always be borrowed from a friend), and, to judge from the noises which he emits, is not in the best of training. The lights go on suddenly; and, he should seize this moment to stagger to the door and turn on the switch. This done, he sinks into the nearest chair and ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... know that I was stone broke, 'cause it didn't seem the thing in a business man; but I did tell him that I hardly ever et quite so much as I had that night. Still, he wouldn't take any chances, so I took my blankets an' went on. I was purty sleepy after my meal, an' it was just all I could do to stagger up an' down the hills, before I found a place to flop in. It was under a little tree in a big yard, an' I got out at sun-up 'cause I didn't want any one to see a business man occupyin' such quarters as that. I didn't miss breakfast much that day, an' I went about my work singin' an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... any true measure according to their real content and significance, the most extreme intellectual and moral outrage that could be inflicted upon us. Properly understood, or even superficially understood, they would wound and shock and stagger and perplex every one of our most sacred prejudices. They would conflict with the whole method and aim of the education which we have received, an education of which the professed object is to fit us for an active, successful and energetic life in the sphere of industrial or commercial or ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... gets through most work in the day if he carries 4/9 of the greatest load he could just stagger under; in which case he will be able to travel 1/3 of the distance he could walk if he carried no load at all. (Machinery requires no repose; and therefore d, the distance per day, is convertible into v, the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... slowly up the sand ridge, the Ranger a little ahead, oblivious of the livid blue of the old man's lips and the drag on the bridle rope till a quick jerk ripped the line from his loose hold; and he glanced back to see the other's horse stagger, flounder up again, waver and sink with a sucking groan. Wayland sprang just in time to catch the old frontiersman. He tore the saddle from the fallen broncho and cinched it on his own horse. Then ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... thanksgiving weeping women rushed upon the saint and began to kiss whatever part of the image was within reach—the handles of the litter, the decorations of the pedestal, the bronze body itself. The tottering structure of wood and metal began to stagger and reel like a frail bark tossing over a sea of shrieking heads and extended arms ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... different. Such, for instance, might be a square, smoothly wrapped box of cigars, candy, or books. Also, a gentleman might carry flowers, or a basket of fruit, or, in fact, any package that looks tempting. He might even stagger under bags and suitcases, or a small trunk—but carry a "bundle"? Not twice! And yet, many an unknowing woman, sometimes a very young and pretty one, too, has asked a relative, a neighbor, or an admirer, to carry something ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... entered the tall woods to the east of Fochabers. The rain ceased for a time; and I met in the woods an old pensioner, who had been evidently weather-bound in some public-house, and had now taken the opportunity of the fair interval to stagger to his dwelling. He was eminently, exuberantly happy,—there could not be two opinions on that head,—full of all manner of bright sunshiny thoughts and imaginations, rendered just a little tremulous and uncertain by the summer-heat ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... blows, for boxing had been his favourite amusement at Sandhurst where he was a middleweight champion. The first caught Sir John upon his thick lips which were badly cut against the teeth, causing him to stagger; while the second, that with the right, landed on the bridge of his nose and blacked both his eyes. This, so strong and heavy was it, notwithstanding Sir John's great weight, knocked him clean off his feet. Back he went, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... others. Yet, if taken aback by an outrage, or an act of gross stupidity, which even the perpetrator himself had to suffer for, he would momentarily lose his patience, and rap out an objurgation that would stagger the straiter-laced gentlemen of his own cloth, or an outsider who knew less of him than - ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their wit's end, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... hail-storm and darkness, and never once until late in the autumn could they again come within striking distance. By that time the jaunty riders of the early spring-tide were worn to skeletons; the mettlesome horses—those that were left—barely able to stagger through weakness, exhaustion, and starvation. Then like prairie wolves the warriors closed once more about the jaded flanks, waiting, watching every chance of picking off the stragglers. Just one day did Differs's ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... midnight the wine-shop closed, and Michel having nowhere to go for the four hours that still remained until daybreak, Pierre offered him a bed of straw in the stable. Michel accepted. The two friends went back arm-in-arm; Pierre staggering, Michel pretending to stagger. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... are such as almost stagger belief, even in the most credulous. They not only go to prove the existence of a league of villany, but also laid open the machinery by which their wickedness was concealed; still, from many incidents ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... flat-topped dresser a few feet from the bed and pulled open a drawer. From it he took a bottle of whisky. Pretending that the cork was stuck he worked with it fumblingly to get time in which to think. He would take a drink, feign that it choked him, stagger to the head of the bed, stumble on to the pillow and then come up with the revolver in his hand. Then ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... meanwhile, however. certain, certain, assured. cesser, to cease. chacun, each. chagrin, m., grief, gloom. Chalde, f., Chaldaea. Chalden, m., Chaldee. chaleur, f., heat, warmth. chambre, f., chamber, room. champ, m., field. chanceler, to stagger, waver. chant, m., song. chanter, to sing. chaque, each, every, charmant, delightful. charmer, to charm, soothe. chasser, to chase, drive away. chtier, to chastise, punish. chtiment, m., punishment. chef, m., ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... was endeavouring to stagger back with her in his arms; but the waves were too strong for him, and they both fell, and were lost to sight in an enormous breaker, while everyone held their breath. As the wave dispersed three forms could be seen struggling forwards; and, amid the wildest ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... the door has decayed, and the long nose of a greyhound is thrust out sniffing through a hole. Dickon, the said son, is delighted to undo the padlock for a visitor who is 'square.' In an instant the long hounds leap up, half a dozen at a time, and I stagger backwards, forced by the sheer vigour of their caresses against the doorpost. Dickon cannot quell the uproarious pack: he kicks the door open, and away they scamper round and round the paddock ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... had rung and the lights glowed dim as in a hospital ward at night. I hurried silently along, shut in by enclosing walls and the lowering ceiling of the street. From everywhere I seemed to feel upon me the beseeching, haunting grey eyes of Frau Matilda. My soul was troubled, for it seemed to stagger beneath the burden of its realization of a lost humanity. And with me walked grey shadows of other men, felt-footed through the gloom, and they walked hurriedly as men fleeing from a ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... We are hustled into maturity reeling with our passions and imaginations, and we have drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, without our knowing where we are going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... tucked her great thighs under her, and swept on over heath and rabbit burrow, over rush and fen, sound ground and rotten all alike to that enormous stride, to that keen bright eye which foresaw every footfall, to that raking shoulder which picked her up again at every stagger? ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... on her cheek, Her bodice rose and fell, Her pretty speech, like drunken men, Did stagger pitiful. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... attract the attention of the antique ferryman, who is invariably at the other side of the river and generally asleep at the bottom of his boat. If you are strong-lunged and can prance and shout for a long time, he may eventually stagger to his feet, come across for you and row you over. Otherwise you will stand but little chance of arousing him from his slumbers, and you will stop where you are, unless you choose to walk round by the bridge at Coton, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... like a torrent. I was conscious of but one strong desire, to bear myself decently in my terrors, and whatever should happen to my life, preserve my character: as the captain said, we are a queer kind of beasts. Breakfast time came, and I made shift to swallow some hot tea. Then I must stagger below to take the time, reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and marvelling the while what value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours then was) like a missile among flying seas. The forenoon dragged on ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Howard, who had discreetly gone on, turned to go back to him. But as he came up with a word of wonder and repeated congratulations, he saw Stafford put his hand to his forehead, and, as it seemed to Howard, almost stagger. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... returned to the vessel. 'Lo! we are here,' says Opheltes, my chief mate; and having found, as he thought, a prize in the lonely fields, he was leading along the shore, a boy with {all} the beauty of a girl. He, heavy with wine and sleep, seemed to stagger, and to follow with difficulty. I examined his dress, his looks, and his gait, {and} I saw nothing there which could be taken to be mortal. I both was sensible of it, and I said to my companions, 'I am in doubt what Deity is in that body; but in that body a Deity there is. Whoever thou ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... persons in the world, so that, wherever civilized man was to be found, there his name was known as "Monk, who invented that marvellous machine, the aerophone." Lastly, there was no more need for him, as for most of us, to stagger down his road beneath a never lessening burden of daily labour. His work was done; a great conception completed after half a score of years of toil and experiment had crowned it with unquestionable success. Now he could sit at ease and watch the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... was as Jem saw a fine-looking young Maori, who was defending a rather open portion of the stockade, deliver a thrust, and then draw back, drop his spear, throw up his arms, and then reel and stagger forward, to fall upon ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... leveled his wonderful electric rifle at the big stretch of canvas. He pressed the lever, a streak of blue flame shot out through an opened port, and, an instant later, the small craft of the smugglers was seen to stagger about, dipping to ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... to watch the birds sailing in the high winds of Adelie Land. In winds of fifty to seventy miles per hour, when with good crampons one had to stagger warily along the ice-foot, the snow petrels and Antarctic petrels were in their element. Wheeling, swinging, sinking, planing and soaring, they were radiant with life—the wild spirits of the tempest. Even in moderate drift, when through swirling ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... is thus our shepherds sometimes feed them. Poultry are killed by very small quantities of the preparation being mixed with their grain; the fowls sometimes take up two or three grains not impregnated with the material, but as soon as the smallest particle is swallowed they stagger and fall. It is interesting to see this, the effect is so instantaneous. The ingredient used does not in any way injure the meat and is indeed considered beneficial, even to the human system, when administered in small quantities, since the torpor it causes ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be their own. Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage, and the Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that the seamen were glad at last to stagger off—the one to his watch, and the other to his bunk. But when, after his four hours' spell, the mate came down again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies wig, his glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the lonely table with ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the cabin, slowly, with shaking legs and a heart that fluttered and stopped, fluttered and jumped and stopped, and made her stagger as she walked. She reached the doorstep and stood there with her palms pressing hard against her cheeks again. "You've got to do it. You've got to!" ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... came up to the mark less promptly than his big antagonist, but whether it was from weakness or lack of sight, he seemed uncertain in his movements, and the hearts of his backers sank as they saw him stagger rather than ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... ground; Arizona's snarling, panting face bent over her. In the very midst of that fury she felt Arizona stiffen and freeze; the snarling stopped; his nerveless arm fell away, and she was allowed to stagger to her feet. She found him staring at ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... the sea in ships, Who do business in great waters, They see the works of the Lord, And his wonders in the great deep. When he speaks, the tempest rises, And tosses the waves on high. Up to heaven, then down they go, Their courage melts at the danger, They stagger and reel like drunkards, And their skill is all exhausted. Then they cry to the Lord in their trouble, And he saves them from their distresses. He makes the tempest a calm, And the waves of the sea are still. They are glad when the ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust To suffer death or shame for ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... generations by the females alone in some of these tribes, tends to the probability of the greater continuity of existence; and the subdivisions of life by cuttings (even in animal life), at any rate, must stagger the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... wasn't so gloomy inside as he appeared on the surface. He was polite enough; and he exuded a number of sounds that made a fair stagger at arranging themselves into language. It was English he aimed at, and when his system of syntax reached your mind it wasn't past you to understand it. If you took a college professor's magazine essay and a Chinese laundryman's ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... were terms of weight, "Such as we may perceive, amaz'd them all, "And stagger'd many who receives them right, "Had need from head to foot well understand, "Not understood, this gift they have besides, "To shew us when ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... of our War Office, the silly vapourings of the Spaniards, and the insane quarrels of their provincial juntas about precedence and the sharing of English subsidies, the summer of 1808 saw Napoleon's power stagger under terrible blows. Not only did he lose Spain and Portugal and the subsidies which they had meekly paid, but most of the 15,000 Spanish troops which had served him on the shores of the Baltic found means to slip away on British ships and put a backbone into the patriotic ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... over-careful of his personal appearance, he was a man of so marked a character that he would have attracted attention in almost any assemblage. Cautious, careful of consequences, and watchful of danger, he was at the same time bold, fearless, and ever ready to undertake enterprises which would stagger men of fewer mental resources. So exactly was he fitted to the time and the circumstances in which he was placed, that the conclusion is irresistible that he was a providential man, especially appointed to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... Daily Record missed being the first to give out certain information that was to stagger the world. The dispatch, which had evidently outrun an earlier one, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... dressed, and Settimia carried out his instructions with taste and wisdom. Regina had arrived in Paris with one box of modest dimensions; she left with four more, of a size that made the railway porters stagger. ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... the parentheses above. The exigencies of English grammar as also of perspicuity have obliged me to use, even in the portions unenclosed, more words than what occur in the original Sanskrit. All these verses are cruces intended to stagger Ganesa. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... he—and the plutocracy generally—were compelled to come to the political bosses almost hat in hand. That time was past, never to return. But still a competent political agent was even harder to find than a competent business manager—and was far more necessary; for, while a big business might stagger along under poor financial or organizing management within, it could not live at all without political favors, immunities, and licenses. A band of pickpockets might as well try to work a town without having first "squared" the police. Not that Mr. Hastings and his friends THEMSELVES ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... enable us and our charges to get well clear of the Channel and to the southward of Ushant before it changed, and then it gradually veered round until it came out strong from the north-west, when away we all went for Madeira, the slowest ships carrying every rag of canvas that they could stagger under, while the faster craft were unwillingly compelled to shorten down in order that all might keep together, while as for ourselves and the Astarte, the utmost that we could show, without running ahead of ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... troubled by a demon, who set it on fire at various times, and was continually throwing things about. The clergy of the neighborhood held a day of fasting and prayer in consequence. A maid-servant was afterwards detected as the cause of the missiles. But this did not in the least stagger Mr. Bennet, minister of the parish, who merely says: "There was a seeming blur cast, though not on the whole, yet upon some part of it, for their servant-girl was at last found throwing some things," and goes off into a eulogium on the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... What his position logically must be—what, on other occasions, he clearly avows it to be—is plain enough. It is essentially that of a man confronted by one Incomprehensible, not confronted by two. But, looked at in certain ways, or rather looked from in certain ways, this position seems to stagger him. The problem of existence reels and grows dim before him, and he fancies that he detects the presence of two Incomprehensibles, when he has really, in his state of mental insobriety, only seen one Incomprehensible double. If this be not the case, it must be one that, intellectually, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... men were so beat that if they tripped and fell, they lay like dead things. The enemy were almost in worse plight and so we took prisoners, but as soon as we came up against nerveless, tireless machine guns we had to stagger back to our trenches. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the pike, had sustained the attack of the whole of Kershaw's rebel division, which came up in compact order to within very close range. The gallant brigade received the onset with full volleys, which caused the right of the rebel line to stagger back, and the whole line was, almost at the same moment, repulsed by the corps. The cavalry on our flank—and never braver men than the cavalry of our little army mounted saddles—were doing their best to protect the pike leading to Winchester, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... fearing none, I reached Stevenage, where, being night, I got over a gate, and crossed the corner of a green paddock. Seeing a pond or hollow in the corner, I was forced to stay off a respectable distance to keep from falling into it. My legs were nearly knocked up and began to stagger. I scaled over some old rotten palings into the yard, and then had higher palings to clamber over, to get into the shed or hovel; which I did with difficulty, being rather weak. To my good luck, I found some trusses of clover piled up, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... have all important Parliamentary debates filmed. It will be essential, of course, to provide some comic relief, and we are relying confidently on certain Members to practise the wearing of mobile moustaches and to take lessons in the stagger, the butter slide, the business with the cane and the quick reversal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... Who says that I am ill? I am not ill! I am not weak! The trance, the swoon, the dream, is o'er! I feel the chill of death no more! At length, I stand renewed in all my strength Beneath me I can feel The great earth stagger and reel, As if the feet of a descending God Upon its surface trod, And like a pebble it rolled beneath his heel! This, O brave physician! this Is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the corner of the inn, and up the lane. The colonel, with Silas and Sheppard, followed in more leisurely fashion. At a shout from some one they turned to see a dusty, bloody figure, with ragged clothes, stagger up ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... of another life! The fact made me grave and thoughtful. And yet, if my fear and not my hope were realized, what a burden was imposed upon me with the life that disease had spared! Had I even Mrs. Yocomb's faith, I knew it would be a weight under which I would often stagger ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... in the sense of the words. She gasped twice, as if her breath had gone, and then, with a stagger and a shiver, fell heavily ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... if that could be?" he was muttering, so that even Fred began to see that Bristles had struck some sort of clue calculated to stagger him more or less. ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... variety as could be desired; figures sitting at ease, mariners, and those who, riding upon donkeys or in waggons, look after their farms; fishermen, snarers of birds, hunters and vine-dressers; also swampy passages before beautiful villas, and women borne by men who stagger under their burdens, and other witty things of this nature; finally, views of sea-ports, everything charming and suitable":—a fairly long and comprehensive list of subjects, truly, from which a patron might pick and choose, or an artist ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... proudly launched a few years before was careening into anarchy. "The facts of our peace and independence," wrote a friend of Washington, "do not at present wear so promising an appearance as I had fondly painted in my mind. The prejudices, jealousies, and turbulence of the people at times almost stagger my confidence in our political establishments; and almost occasion me to think that they will show themselves unworthy of the noble prize ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... from behind, and we saw the two tall pillars that supported it stagger, snap like two sticks, and bend forwards, looking suddenly queer and corpulent in their fore-shortening; then they parted and fell, bringing down the whole front ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... each taken a pint or two of beer at the "Blue Lion" on their way home, uttering many curses on "that there Gobbleall." Captain Carbonel did not hear those same curses, but as he rode home he saw the two men stagger out of the "Blue Lion," refreshed not only by their own pints, but by those of sympathisers. And the sight did not make him sorry for what he had done, knowing well that George Hewlett, Cox the cobbler, and Mrs Holly, the widow with a small shop, were almost borne down with the rates, and ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the railway stations the luggage and freight is carried the same way. The necks and backs of the natives are developed at a very early age. If a porter can get assistance to hoist it to the top of his head he will stagger along under any burden all right. I have seen eight men under a grand piano and two men under a big American roller top desk, and in Calcutta, where one of the street railway companies was extending its tracks, I saw the workmen carry the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... prospectuses or advertisements come their way, for that matter. Casey Town boomed with some bona-fide strikes that sent Keith's stocks soaring high. The porphyry dyke at the Molly Mine began to yield rich results almost from the first and dividends were paid in such quantities as to stagger the Three Star outfit who saw themselves in a fair way to become rich. All over the barren hills, where the first futile shafts had been driven and abandoned, buildings sprang up like mushrooms, housing machinery, sending up plumes of white smoke that ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Waterloo. Ideals were here at stake—the dreams of one man as opposed perhaps to the ultimate dreams of a city or state or nation—the grovelings and wallowings of a democracy slowly, blindly trying to stagger to its feet. In this conflict—taking place in an inland cottage-dotted state where men were clowns and churls, dancing fiddlers at country fairs—were opposed, as the governor saw it, the ideals of one man and the ideals ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... ruin, would avoid him; and Rivers and Porter, and the other tavern-keepers, would turn him out on the street, as they did many others, in order to demonstrate that the Dunkin Act was a failure. At such times he would stagger home if he was able, which was not always the case; and once or twice he nearly perished from cold and exposure. Eddie frequently had to search through the groggeries to find him and ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... tried to speak coherently, tried to pick up the iron-shod staff he had let fall; failing to touch it, tried to stagger on without its aid. All in vain, all in vain! He stumbled, and fell heavily forward on the brink of ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... places called Phiditia were wont to bring forth two or three Helots drunken and full of wine, that the young men, seeing what drunkenness was, might learn to keep sobriety. But in human life there are many such examples of vice. For there is not any one sober to virtue; but we all stagger up and down, acting shamefully and living miserably. Thus does reason inebriate us, and with so much trouble and madness does it fill us, that we fall in nothing short of those dogs of whom Aesop says, that seeing certain skins swimming in the water, they endeavored to gulp ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... is scarce, very scarce, yet harpies grow rich by lending the inhabitants small sums from a shilling up to a pound at a rate of interest that would stagger and paralyse the commercial world. Doctors must needs to content with a miserable remuneration for their skilled and devoted services, when paid at all! but burial societies accumulate millions from a weekly collection of ill-spared coppers. Strangest of all, undertakers thrive exceedingly, but ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... out onto the brackets, turns a sharp curve, an' she begins to wabble an' stagger like a drunken man, floppin' back an' forth, an' the strings an' things inside ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... to them, does Kant state, by contradistinction, the value and the nature of his own procedure. He first, according to his own representation, thought of applying his investigation to the mind itself. Here was a passage which for years (I may say) continued to stagger and confound me. What! he, Kant, in the latter end of the 18th century, about the year 1787—he the first who had investigated the mind! This was not arrogance so much as it was insanity. Had he ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... torrents about our ears. As the vividness of the lightning, so was the weight of the rain. Ringan cried to us to stand to our places, for now was the likely occasion for attack; but no human being could have fought in such weather. Indeed, we could not hear him, and he had to stagger round and shout his command into each several ear. The might of the deluge almost pressed me to the earth, I carried Elspeth into her bower, but the roof of branches was speedily beaten down, and it was no better than ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... may be acquired either by sexual selection or by other unknown causes. There are, however, difficulties in the very wide application you give to sexual selection which at present stagger me, though no one was or is more ready than myself to admit the perfect truth of the principle or the immense importance and great variety of its applications. Your chapters on Man are of intense interest, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the point of the jaw that sent him tumbling over on his back. By this time I think Jubal had gone mad with hate, for no sane man would have come back for more as many times as he did. Time after time I bowled him over as fast as he could stagger up, until toward the last he lay longer on the ground between blows, and each time came ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Pet, I would give my right arm to make you happy." He would be out until late every night. I never closed my eyes. His sign in front of the door on the street would creak in the wind, and I would sit by the window waiting to hear his footsteps. I never saw him stagger. He would lock himself up in the "Masonic Lodge" and allow no one to see him. People would call for him in case of sickness, but he ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... could scarcely be blamed for availing themselves of such hospitality, though to drink intoxicants on the march is suicidal. Men "fell out," first by ones and twos, then by whole half-dozens and dozens. The Subaltern himself was scarcely strong enough to stagger up the long hills at the back of the town, let alone worrying about his men. The Colonel was aghast, and very furious. He couldn't understand it. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... am I to do? I do not believe. It is living truth to you: to me, upon my conscience, only folk-lore. I do not believe there is any form of words under heaven by which I can lift the burthen from my shoulders. I must stagger on to the end with the pack of my responsibility; I cannot shift it; do you suppose I would not if I thought I could? I cannot—cannot—cannot—and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about her own sex, kept her eye on the two girls with more anxiety than she cared to confess. If any new disaster should happen, the prospect would be desperate, and it was useless to deny that she had taken risks heavy enough to stagger a professional gambler. The breakfast table looked gay and happy enough, and so did the rapids which sparkled ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... Bill,' said Bob. 'Bill, I'm hongry,' and he began to stagger and cry like a baby. I got hold of his rifle and Ed caught ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... railroad tracks again, the good air and my unwonted freedom made me stagger, so that several negroes laughed at me heartily, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... from under his arm where my lance had scraped him. I rode straight at him, meaning to ride him down, but the horse swerved a little and got a long wiping stroke from the Potawatami's knife, from which, in a minute more, he began to stagger. By this time the other men had got their guns and begun shooting. Suh-tai's bow had been shot in two, and Red Morning had a graze that laid his cheek open. So we got on our own ponies ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... hand above her heart. "Such a relief!" she declared intensely—"you'll never know!" Then she jumped up and wheeled about to the door with petticoats professionally a-swirl. "Well, if I'm goin' to do a stagger in society to-night, it's me to go doll myself up to the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... literal meaning of some Scripture text. They were therefore easily justified either to reason or to the eye of faith, but the results of their application were often startling, and it was facts, not theories, that chiefly caused Susannah to stagger. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger into the wrong house. Some fall early in the day, and are put to bed by their friends; others sink down helpless at the feet ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... man's mount was seen to stagger slightly. It was sufficient to pitch Ashby, who was not ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... breeze freshening, and the top-gallant-sail was furled. The Josephine then had all she could carry, for Mr. Fluxion was not a fair-weather sailor, and always crowded on all the vessel would stagger under. The wind was more to the eastward than when the schooner left Brest, which still kept it fair. At eight bells in the evening, the first part of the starboard watch took the deck; and the night wore away without any exciting incident ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... hindrance in the way of one whose mind is all at sea because of its existence. What, O man with a soul, is all the world else to thee? Christianity, whatever be its broad way of pretences, is but in reality a narrow path: be satisfied with the day of small things, stagger not at the inconsistencies, conflicting words, and hateful strifes of those who say they are Christians, but "are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan." Judge truth, neither by her foes nor by her friends but by herself. There was one who said (and I never heard that any writer, from Julian ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... had actually happened, a very great shout went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement. Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath and kava. Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in his stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... weight of lead. The atmosphere was warm, but not unbearably so—not hotter than it had been at noon in the ship. Steam crawled up from every pore, like the drainings of smoke from damp straw, but it did not add to the distress of my breathing. I made shift to stagger onward till I had gone about fifty feet from the wash of the sea. Nature then broke down; my knees gave way, I stumbled and fell—whether in a swoon or whether in a death-like slumber, I cannot say; all I can tell is that when I awoke, or recovered my senses, the sun stood fifteen degrees ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... came on with a rush, their leader first. A long arm and a long sword are, however, great advantages in affairs of this kind, and I took him on the riposte. A cry and a gasp, a sword clattered on to the pavement, and the stricken man spun round and, holding his hand to his side, tried to stagger off, but after stumbling a few steps he fell in a ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... fumble with the door on her side, open it, and stagger out of his sight. Then she reappeared round the car. Bareheaded, disheveled, white as chalk, with burning eyes and bleeding lips, she gazed at Kurt as if to make ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... labor or domestic work, without seeming in the least to realize their double task. The elder children carry the younger ones in the same manner, going about their play with a load on their backs that would stagger a Yankee child. This we found to be a universal custom both in town and country, while the great multiplicity of young children was a constant subject of surprise. The married women shave off their eyebrows ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... ready to break and defy the law. And so it is clear enough that they were. In a single year, the year 1285, in the hundred of North Erpingham, containing thirty- two parishes, the catalogue of crime is so ghastly as positively to stagger one. Without taking any account of what in those days must have been looked upon as quite minor offences—such as simple theft, sheep-stealing, fraud, extortion, or harbouring felons—there were ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Regardless of the Play (a Mark of Wit) Bow to some Lewd Companion in the Pit. Take Snuff, fling round, in the Side-Box be seen, Whisper a Mask, and then Retire again, To some Lov'd Tavern, where's their chief Delight, } There in Debaucheries they spend the Night, } Then Stagger homeward by ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... mind whether he has or not; I won't do it and I told him so. He got red hot in a jiffy. I was ungrateful and stubborn and all sorts of things. And I, bein' a Hammond, with some of the Hammond balkiness in me, I set my foot down as hard as his. And we had it until—until—well, until I saw him stagger and tremble so that I actually got scared and feared he was goin' to keel over ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ridges and mountains, and the tundra that lay between, in search of the lost copper mines of the Indians; the mines that lured Hearne into the North in 1771, and which Hearne forgot in the discovery of a fur empire so vast as to stagger belief. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the breathing of Satan, the stagger was gone from his walk; with each instant he grew perceptibly larger as they approached the border of the wood. It fell off to a scattering thicket with the Grizzly Peaks stepping swiftly up to the sky. This was their magic instant in all the day, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... furrow, we confronted the gentleman, tree and all, standing before us in a weak and fainting condition. He had struggled until he had uprooted the whole business, and was so used up in consequence, that he could hardly stagger, much less go into his usual hysterics over Nell. She looked as amazed as we did, and I've no doubt gave him a sound curtain lecture on his folly ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... could locate under the law, but this claim's located a'ready." He waved a hand toward the monument, a few rods up the canyon. "And Casey Ryan ain't spreadin' no rich gold vein wide open for every prowlin' desert rat to pack off all he kin stagger under. I'm callin' it the Devil's Lantern. You c'n call a mine any name yuh darn want to. And if it wasn't fer the Devil's Lantern, I wouldn't be here. That name won't mean nothin' to 'em. Let 'em come." His eyes turned ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... these appeals, the danger increased every minute, and we may well imagine the agony of the little crew. The intrepid Columbus, who had accomplished a marvelous thing, a feat which would stagger all Europe, seemed destined to go down in mid-ocean with his great discovery! Here was the Pinta sunk and the Nina likely to follow her any minute! Europe would never know that land lay west of her across the Atlantic! And all those timid, doubting men in Spain, who had opposed ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... and as he climbed out of his machine, helped by orderlies and others who rushed up, he was seen to stagger. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... foot-sore, with their noses stuck full of cactus joints, their tongues swollen from the envenomed thorns, their stomachs afire from thirst and the burden of bitter stalks, the wild cattle from the ridges would stagger down to the river and drink until their flanks bulged out and their bellies hung heavy with water. Then, overcome with fatigue and heat, they would sink down in the shade and lie dreaming; their limbs would stiffen and cramp beneath ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the war with Russia came about by his will, and the horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the whole responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who perished there were fewer ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... produce its effect. A scuffling noise followed upon the gravel, a chair was overset, and then Francis saw the father and daughter stagger across the walk and disappear under the verandah, bearing the inanimate body of Mr. Rolles embraced about the knees and shoulders. The young clergyman was limp and pallid, and his head rolled upon his shoulders ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arms around Jason's neck; and, lifting her from the ground, he stepped boldly into the raging and foamy current, and began to stagger away from the shore. As for the peacock, it alighted on the old dame's shoulder. Jason's two spears, one in each hand, kept him from stumbling and enabled him to feel his way among the hidden rocks; although every instant he expected that ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... side of the ship opposite Poppy, and, clutching the shrouds, beamed on her amiably. The girl gave one rapid glance at him and then, as he tottered to the wheel and hung on by the spokes, turned her head away. What it cost the well-bred Mr. Green to stagger as he came by her again and then roll helplessly at her feet, will never be known, and he groaned in spirit as the girl, with one scornful glance in his direction, rose ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... also called aural or auditory vertigo. The salient symptom is vertigo, and this varies somewhat in degree according to the portions of the ear affected. If the disease is in the labyrinth, the patient is supposed to stagger to one side, and the vertigo is paroxysmal, varying to such a degree as to cause simple reeling, or falling as if shot. Gray reports the history of a patient with this sensational record: He had been a peasant in Ireland, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... are fellows by the dozens Who are always in the skies, And forever capture fortunes Of the most gigantic size; But we stagger from their presence And their glories that repel, For the quiet-spoken persons Who are "doing ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been led to contemplate it in the light of a simple offer on the one side, and a simple acceptance on the other. It is just saying to one and all of us, There is forgiveness through the blood of My Son: Take it, and whoever believes the reality of the offer takes it.... We are apt to stagger at the greatness of the unmerited offer and cannot attach faith to it till we have made up some title of our own. This leads to two mischievous consequences: It keeps alive the presumption of one class who will still be thinking that it is something in themselves and of themselves which confers ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... than they do in another. From the real Incomprehensibility of God, just Arguments must be drawn for believing of Mysteries that surpass our Capacities. But when a Man has good Reason to suspect, that he who instructed him in these Mysteries, does not believe them himself, it must stagger and obstruct his Faith, tho' he had no Scruples before, and the Things he had been made to believe, are no Ways clashing with his Reason. It is not difficult for a Protestant Divine to make a Man of Sense see the many Absurdities that are taught by the ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... mile when I noticed that my thoat was commencing to stumble and stagger in a most pitiful manner, although we had not attempted to force them out of a walk since about noon of the preceding day. Suddenly he lurched wildly to one side and pitched violently to the ground. Dejah Thoris and I were thrown clear of him and fell upon the soft moss ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... some mistake, as "the Colossus in question had been destroyed long since;" to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus much, that "the figure was indeed a little damaged." This was the only opposition he met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with his fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow with still more complacency than ever,—confirmed, as it were, by the extreme candour of that concession. With these ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... to go for the four hours that still remained until daybreak, Pierre offered him a bed of straw in the stable. Michel accepted. The two friends went back arm-in-arm; Pierre staggering, Michel pretending to stagger. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... what 'blind drunk' means," he replied musingly. "In Manitou when men get drunk, the people get astigmatism and can't see the tangledfooted stagger." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a sight to stagger any man, and would have made me swoon perhaps, but that there was no time, for we were at the end of the under-cliff, and Elzevir set me down for a minute, before he buckled to his task. And 'twas a task that might cow the bravest, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Beau" counted, "One—two—three"—Edgar gently inflated his lungs, expanding his chest to its fullest extent, and then, at the moment of receiving the blow, exhaled the air. He did not stagger or flinch, though his antagonist struck straight from the shoulder, with a ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... lord Chamberlain, the very man who had set the crown on Henry's head in Bosworth field, and own brother to earl of Derby, the then actual husband of Henry's mother, of being in the conspiracy? This was indeed essential to Henry to know; but what did it proclaim to the nation? What could stagger the allegiance of such trust and such connexions, but the firm persuation that Perkin was the true duke of York? A spirit of faction and disgust has even in later times hurried men into treasonable combinations; but however Sir William Stanley might be dissatisfied, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... sing. Among them you see what appear to be women; they are in fact what once were women, with human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names. They float and stagger under the flaming torches in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... eggs, discovering the spring of water, building the hut—housekeeping, Melisande. . . . Or take Robinson Crusoe. When Man Friday came along and left his footprint in the sand, why did Robinson Crusoe stagger back in amazement? Because he said to himself, like a good housekeeper, "By Jove, I'm on the track of a servant at last." There's ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... platform people walk up and down, up and down; certain among them taking a marked interest in the old-fashioned, wheezing locomotives which seem fairly to stagger beneath the long train of antiquated ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... as a vise; resistance would have been vain; but Desmond knew better than to resist. He bent to the cruel blows without a wince or a murmur. Only, his face was very pale when, the bully's arm being tired and his breath spent, he was flung away and permitted to stagger to the house. He crawled painfully up the wainscoted staircase and into the dark corridor leading to his bedroom. Halfway down this he paused, felt with his hand along the wall, and, discovering by this means that a door was ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... charge they had prepared, fired by Crane at a great stump a full hundred yards away from the bare, flat-topped knoll that had afforded them a landing-place, tore it bodily from the ground and reduced it to splinters, while the force of the explosion made the two men stagger. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... there in that look that went so home to the heart of the stern father—in those loving, broken words of the poor abused boy? If they did not stagger the conviction of his guilt, they made him feel most unhappy. Had he acted well, or wisely, or like a Christian? Was the punishment that he had inflicted—so harsh and degrading to a sensitive mind—likely to produce the desired effect? He could not answer the question in a manner at all satisfactory ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... wall.... They crept nearer and nearer, and then our officers gave the word. A sheet of flame flickered along the line of trenches and a stream of bullets tore through the advancing mass of Germans. They seemed to stagger like a drunken man hit between the eyes, after which they made a run for us.... Halfway across the open another volley tore through their ranks, and by this time our artillery began dropping shells around them. Then an officer gave an order and they broke into open formation, rushing ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... moment a strong wind suddenly blows the flame away from Godfrey's tower and back upon the infidels, who stagger and retreat from the fiery blast. Now is the Christians' opportunity. One mighty effort, and the tower is within reach of the wall. The bridge of the tower falls with a crash, and the Christian knights spring upon it. A brief, fierce struggle,—and ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... Solemn was the face with which the little boy lifted the mug by the handle, putting his other hand to steady the expected weight of coppers; but there was at once a frown, a little cry of horror. Toby came up so light in his hand, that all his great effort was thrown away, and only made him stagger back in dismay, falling backward from the chair, and poor Toby crashing to pieces on the floor as he fell, while out ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Place de L'Etoile was broken by a terrible cry: "To arms! To arms! The Prussians!" And the four Uhlans[275-1] at the head of the column could see up there on the balcony a tall old man stagger and fall. This time ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... only fifteen," replied Edward, "but I am strong enough, and so are you. I think if I had a fair cut at a man's head I would make him stagger under it, were he as big as a buffalo. As young as I have been to the wars, that I know well; and I recollect my father promising me that I should go with him as soon ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... foremost of the crew, Then, laughing, pell-mell leapt on other two. The fourth rogue's thrust, Duke Joc'lyn blithely parried Right featly with the quarter-staff he carried. Then 'neath the fellow's guard did nimbly slip And caught him in a cunning wrestler's grip. Now did they reel and stagger to and fro, And on the ling each other strove ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... undeniable situation, and excessive splendour." That he loved it well is shown by the passage in a letter which he addressed to Forster, "in full view of Genoa's perfect bay," when about to commence The Chimes (1844); he says:—"Never did I stagger so upon a threshold before. I seem as if I had plucked myself out of my proper soil when I left Devonshire Terrace, and could take root no more until I return to it. . . . Did I tell you how many fountains we have here? No matter. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... evidence; and every time he was compelled to press hard upon the proofs against her she shrunk, and seemed to stagger with the deadly blow; writhed under the weight of his minute justice, more than from the ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... wise men live at ease Fades from our unregretful eyes, And blind, across uncharted seas, We stagger on our enterprise.' ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... sober man and hardly a sober woman was within miles of her. When the villagers came home from a drunken bout the chief men would rouse her up and demand why she had not risen to receive them. At all hours of the day and night they would stagger into the hut, and lie down and fall asleep. Her power, then, was not strong enough to prevent them—but the ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... the Miami got into the full reach of the storm, halted, gave a convulsive stagger, than plunged into the smother. For a minute or two no one on deck could have told what had happened. The shriek of the hurricane through her cordage, the harsh roaring of the tempest-whipped sea, and the vengeful boom of the waves as they threw their tons ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... one against whom the deceased was supposed to have had a grudge, to pretend that the coffin will not pass by, and in the present case, when they came opposite to where we stood, they began to wheel round and round, and to stagger under their load, while the choristers shouted at ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... commenced to back in an uncertain way, bellowing with pain. I forgot all my fever in the excitement, and rushing upon the beast with my tomahawk, I dealt him a blow on the side of the head that made him stagger. I brought him to the earth with two or three more blows, and a few minutes later had administered the coup-de-grace. No sooner was the big bull dead than I determined to test the efficacy of a very popular native remedy for fever—for shivering fits still continued to come upon me at most ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... this before you get clear of the court." With these words he threw a footstool at him, and hit him on the right shoulder blade near the top of his back. Ulysses stood firm as a rock and the blow did not even stagger him, but he shook his head in silence as he brooded on his revenge. Then he went back to the threshold and sat down there, laying his well filled ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... easterly gale. In a few hours there was a tremendous sea, and the wind rapidly rose to a hurricane. The "Little Sophy" steamed after the helpless craft and got as near to her as possible; but as she lowered her lifeboat, she saw the yacht stagger, stop, and then founder. The tops of her masts seemed to meet, she had broken her back, and the seas flew sheer ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... quarters in my brother, Knox Van de Lear's house, on Queen Street nearly opposite your place of lodging. If Mars crosses the orbit of Venus to-night, as I expect—there being signs of it in the milky way,—you will assist me in an observation that will stagger you on account of its results. Do not come out until dark, and ask at ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... your question would stagger me, if I did not know that Nature often skips a generation, and produces some older ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... can stande All'erta for the best Italian, heereof sometimes may rise some use: since, have he the memorie of Themistocles, of Seneca, of Scaliger yet is it not infinite, in so finite a bodie. And I have seene the best, yea naturall Italians, not onely stagger, but even sticke fast in the myre, and at last give it over, or give their verdict with An ignoramus, Boccace is prettie hard, yet understood: Petrarche harder, but explaned: Dante hardest, but commented. Some doubt if all aright. Alunno for his foster-children ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... intoxication, I wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not account for the ten thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious manuscript of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... remember it as you go to bed; if you are as soft as you ought to be you may not rest so well as usual. But for old men of sixty, seventy, and eighty, ill-fed, with neither meat nor blood, to greet the dawn unrefreshed, and to stagger through the day in mad search for crusts, with relentless night rushing down upon them again, and to do this five nights and days—O dear, soft people, full of meat and blood, how can ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the showman thought he would make one more stagger at it, anyway, though his confidence was beginning to get mighty shaky. The supes started the panorama grinding along again, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Simon was attacked at back and front, as he stumbled back over the bodies; a great knife was thrust into his back, even as he faced a rogue before his face, and I saw the old faithful soul fall forward, and making a kind of stagger with his arms up, ere he fell, drop into the pool below. So, according to his prayer, he died in the sea, and nobly, as any knight of great fame, ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... combined to disturb his fancy and raise strange spectres in his imagination. The shrill hooting of an owl, as it rustled overhead, caused him an unprecedented shock, and the great rush of blood to his head made him stagger and clutch hold of the nearest object for support. He had barely recovered from this alarm when his eyes almost started out of their sockets with fright as he caught sight of a queer shape gliding silently from tree to tree; and shortly ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... of vast Niagara, Those gulfs of foam a-shine, Whose mighty roar would stagger a More prosy bean than mine; And as the hours I idly spend Against a greasy wall, I know that green the waters bend And ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... aft if he waits long," said Jack, draining the rest of his rum. And picking me up as easily as did Weld he rushed out of the door, and after him as many of his mates as could walk or stagger thither. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... notice that he took of me when I was a little puppy, just able to stagger about, was to give me a kick that sent me into a corner of the stable. He used to beat and starve my mother. I have seen him use his heavy whip to punish her till her body was covered with blood. When I got older I asked her why she did not run away. ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... an animal gets through most work in the day if he carries 4/9 of the greatest load he could just stagger under; in which case he will be able to travel 1/3 of the distance he could walk if he carried no load at all. (Machinery requires no repose; and therefore d, the distance per day, is convertible into v, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the pleading on Archer's lips: it seemed to come from depths of experience beyond his reach. The slow advance of the ferry-boat had ceased, and her bows bumped against the piles of the slip with a violence that made the brougham stagger, and flung Archer and Madame Olenska against each other. The young man, trembling, felt the pressure of her shoulder, and passed ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... doctrine, even in the faith of this doctrine which I have held forth unto thee, thou wilt not be taken with any other doctrine whatsoever. What is the reason I pray you, that there are so many giddy-headed professors in these days, that do stagger to and fro like a company of drunkards, but this, They were never sealed in the doctrine of the Father, and the Son? They were never enabled to believe that that child that was born of the virgin Mary, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the whole bunch rehearsing the children's part in the dedication services of our chapel. Do you know that small Sue can really sing? The rest stagger well but Susan sings. It is delicious. It is going to be hard on you women folks to hear her chant her responses to me on that great day." And as he spoke he looked beyond me over to his beautiful shimmering gray ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... William Henry, left their canoes, and, with their prisoners, began their march for the nearest Mohawk town. Each bore his share of the plunder. Even Jogues, though his lacerated hands were in a frightful condition and his body covered with bruises, was forced to stagger on with the rest under a heavy load. He with his fellow-prisoners, and indeed the whole party, were half starved, subsisting chiefly on wild berries. They crossed the upper Hudson, and, in thirteen ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Collecting my thoughts, I blew out my lamp. I saw a man running rapidly along the street, followed by a great crowd shouting, 'Down with the Englishman.' The man ran so quickly that he distanced all his pursuers, and I already thought that he was saved, when I saw him stagger and fall. In a moment his pursuers were upon him, a loud cry was heard, and the next moment the unfortunate man was thrown into the river. Not long after all was still again. I lighted my lamp again and was about to continue my work, when I heard a slight ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... all now in the piping mood. The wooden-legged sailor, Jack, our old friend, would have given them "Rude Boreas," but only stiff Mr. Grog would not let him; and, after one or two ineffectual attempts to clear his throat was persuaded to stagger off to his berth above stairs, respectably propped on one side by his mate, a gemman rather top heavy, and his noble timber supporter on ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... there, it was pleasant to see the supple vigor and radiant health that were manifested in the poise of their bodies, the lightness of their eyes, the freshness of their lips and the bloom upon their cheeks. But Oh! it was so sad to see how soon the manly gait would change to the drunkard's stagger. To see eyes once bright with intelligence growing vacant and confused and giving place to the drunkard's leer. In many cases lassitude supplanted vigor, and sickness overmastered health. But the saddest thing was the fearful power that appetite had gained over ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... evidently was much exhausted, and approached but slowly, they soon had the satisfaction of seeing him pass through the surf, which, even at this time, was not heavy in the cove, and, with the water pouring from his shaggy coat, stagger towards them, bearing in his mouth his burden, which he laid down at Forster's feet, and then shook off the accumulation of moisture from his skin. Forster took up the object of the animal's solicitude—it was the body of an infant, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... learned to read after a fashion, and as for arithmetic, I seemed to understand that naturally. I was a poor writer, though; and until I was grown I never could actually write much more than my name. I could always make a stagger at a letter when I had to by printing with a pen or pencil, and when I did not see my mother all day on account of her work and mine, I used to print out a letter sometimes and leave it in a hollow apple-tree which stood before the house. We called this our post-office. I am not ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... and forwards, borne by the confraternit of the parish, with blue capes over their white dresses, and all holding torches. Then follows a huge wooden cross, garlanded with golden ivy-leaves, and also upheld by the confraternit, who stagger under its weight. Next come two crucifixes, covered, as the body of Christ always is during Lent and until Resurrection-Day, with cloth of purple, (the color of passion,) and followed by the frati of the church ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... like tremendous ruins, and came rolling, fringed with devouring fire; and each wave as it charged them, curled up to an incredible height and dashed down on the doomed ship—solid to crush, liquid to drown —with a ponderous stroke that made the poor souls stagger, and sent a sheet of water so clean over her that part fell to leeward, and only part came down on deck, foretaste of a watery death; and each of these fearful blows drove the groaning, trembling vessel farther on the sand, bumping her along as ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... his rifle. This was the signal for us to commence the battle, but it did not last long; the Americans answered the shout, returning our fire, and at the first discharge of their guns, I saw Tecumseh stagger forwards over a fallen tree, near which he was standing, letting his rifle drop at his feet. As soon as the Indians discovered that he was killed, a sudden fear came over them, and thinking the Great Spirit was angry, they fought no longer, and were quickly put to flight. That night ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... so marked a character that he would have attracted attention in almost any assemblage. Cautious, careful of consequences, and watchful of danger, he was at the same time bold, fearless, and ever ready to undertake enterprises which would stagger men of fewer mental resources. So exactly was he fitted to the time and the circumstances in which he was placed, that the conclusion is irresistible that he was a providential man, especially appointed to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... her resolution, profited nothing when the poor frail flesh was so weak. Yet, in spite of all this, her soul was strong; and that soul, by its indomitable purpose, roused up once more the shattered forces of the body. A week passed away, but at the end of that week she arose to stagger forward. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no blood on it ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the front, who had talked so big the day before, began to stagger; and the soldiers frequently looked behind them, a certain sign in a soldier that he is just ready to run away. My old pilot was of my mind; and being near me, called out, "Seignior Inglese, these fellows must be encouraged, or they will ruin us all; for if the Tartars come on they will never stand ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... to see the result of it, and saw the man with the silver face drop his rifle, stagger to the side of the canon, ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... like this the boys found very prevalent all through their journey. The Belgians seemed to believe the English were getting a wonderful surprise ready with which to stagger the enemy. If they could have only known how an army had to be built up step by step in the great island country, they might have felt less confidence, and perhaps shown more ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... of wine, which he presents to Frauenlob as a drink of reconciliation. The Emperor handing the goblet to Hildegund, bids her drink to her lover. Testing it, she at once feels its deadly effect. Frauenlob, seeing his love stagger, snatches the cup from her emptying it at one draught. He dies, still praising the Emperor and women, breathing the name of his bride with his last breath. Servazio is captured, and while Hildegund's body is strewn with roses, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... those who yield to sin? "They meet with darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night" (Job V, 14). And further on: "They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man" (Job XII, 25). I read these beautiful passages over and over ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... of common sense or with the severely literal meaning of some Scripture text. They were therefore easily justified either to reason or to the eye of faith, but the results of their application were often startling, and it was facts, not theories, that chiefly caused Susannah to stagger. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... slime and biting fog; so drawing their breath once more, to go out again, without lament, from between the two skeletons of pier-heads, vocal with wash of under wave, into the grey troughs of tumbling brine; there, as they can, with slacked rope, and patched sail, and leaky hull, again to roll and stagger far away amidst the wind and salt sleet, from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, winning day by day their daily bread; and for last reward, when their old hands, on some winter night, lose feeling along the frozen ropes, and their old eyes miss mark of the lighthouse quenched in foam, the so-long impossible ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... sort cannot by any means be arranged on the instant, and certainly they cannot be arranged so as to suit the case of the Hopeless Poor. Shall I tell you, dear sentimentalist, that the Hopeless brigade would not accept your kindness if they could? I shall stagger many people when I say that the Hopeless division like the free abominable life of the rookery, and that any kind of restraint would only send them swarming off to some other centre from which they would have to be dislodged ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... our dismay. We both screamed, for we thought our time had come, for sure. My legs were so weak that Beth had to drag me away and her face was white as a sheet and full of terror. Somehow we managed to stagger into the street, where a dozen men caught us and hurried us away. I hardly thought we were in a safe place when the big workman cried: 'There, young ladies; that will do. Your expression was simply immense ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... distinctions, preceded him by a few seconds, and then he entered himself—so large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action, when the door had closed behind him, was to stagger against the table, whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that majestic figure prostrate and insensible ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... struck one of the front wheels of Conniston's wagon. Almost at the same second Conniston fired. Fired and missed, and fired again. With the second report came a shrill cry from the man with the revolver, and Conniston saw him stagger, drop his gun, wheel half around, and fall. And where he fell he lay, writhing and calling out to ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... I stagger to my feet. Faint light through the hatch; B's head. I hold out the Andite stick and she turns and shouts; and a panel slides open in the wall so that the ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... further remark but led the way back to the point where the main river rolled by in full sight. Both banks of the creek were rank with lush jungle; great, warped trees seemed to stagger, so gnarled were their trunks; while immense beards of moss depended from their hideous branches almost to the water. A sullen, ominous splash under the bank was ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... source of leakage in the American Church. They are not able to answer the most ordinary objections, and they have not moral strength to withstand the shafts of ridicule. In the fierce cross-currents of unbelief, he is poorly able to keep his foothold. Many stagger; ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... masts bend, the ship begins to stagger along, groaning and creaking in every joint, under the severe pressure. The topsails are close-reefed to meet the increased wind; but still, as before, she is under quite as much canvas as she can ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... will tell me next, that the invention of wine is very much to his credit; though you see for yourself how drunken men stagger about and misbehave themselves; one would think the liquor had made them mad. Look at Icarius, the first to whom he gave the vine: beaten to death with mattocks by his ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... slept in the warm sand. It was an hour later that some other living thing stirred at the far end of Au Fer reef. A scorched and weakened steer came on through salt pools to stagger and fall. Presently another, and then a slow line of them. They crossed the higher ridge to huddle about a sink that might have made them remember the dry drinking holes of their arid home plains. Tired, gaunt cattle mooing lonesomely, when the man came about them to dig with his bloody ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... into steam and made to work for us—multiplied a million times. If, instead of that energy just oozing away and the uranium disintegrating infinitesimally each year, it could be exploded at a given moment you could drive an ocean liner with a handful of it. You could make the old globe stagger round and turn upside down! Mankind could just lay off and take a holiday. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... gentlemen; tickets, gentlemen." like he was conductor on a train of cars. This little episode would be over, and then would commence the same tramp, tramp, tramp, all night long. Step by step, step by step, we continued to plod and nod and stagger and march, tramp, tramp, tramp. After a while we would see the morning star rise in the east, and then after a while the dim gray twilight, and finally we could discover the outlines of our file leader, and after a while could ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... it and saw Maggie stagger toward the door, with her hand pressed upon her heart, as the policeman went away down the street. On the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... otherwise. His mode of progression was rather that of an intoxicated snake, or an over-fed turtle on dry land; but he managed to stagger along as far as the foster's muzzle, and swayed there on his little haunches within reach of her warm breath. Instinct guided the pup so far, and left him ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... trembling effort to stagger across the passage, and to pluck at Marie's gown. When he spoke, his voice quavered ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... undertone, as though he did not wish the others to hear him; to tell the truth, he felt as though he could not stagger on much further over that rough trail, and carry the heavy pack in the bargain, as well as the new bag containing his ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... family owns a dog. Some of those we saw while passing through Chinese villages were nauseating in their unsightliness, for at least thirty per cent of them were more or less diseased. Barely able to walk, they would stagger across the street or lie in the gutter in indescribable filth. One longed to put them out of their misery with a bullet but, although they seemed to belong to nobody, if one was killed an owner appeared like magic to quarrel over ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... gasping sigh she pitched forward and lay still, huddled on the stairs. Then Paul heard a second shot rap out from behind his back, and saw Michael stagger on the landing. The man reeled for a couple of paces and ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... pedantry of expressing that in another language which we have sufficient terms for in our own. So in plain English I very much wish you to give your vote to-morrow at Clerkenwell, instead of Saturday. It would clear up the brows of my favourite candidate, and stagger the hands of the opposite party. It commences at nine. How easy, as you come from Kensington (a propos, how is your excellent family?) to turn down Bloomsbury, through Leather Lane (avoiding Lay Stall St. for the disagreeableness of the name). Why, it brings you in four minutes and a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... eyes. "He'll be so lame it would stagger a cowboy to back him ten feet—and never be hurt a mite, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... be a task to frighten and stagger many a person, but it only kindled Mrs. Carey's love and courage to ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... for the highest; And the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow-crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... direction) know that a corrobboree is to begin before sundown, the setting sun being represented by the broad arrow, which seems to dip over the end of the stick. The guests are expected to bring rum to produce a bewildering, unsteady effect upon the whole camp—none, big or little, but will stagger about in all directions and finally lie down. On the other hand the guests are not to bring "one fella" policeman with handcuffs (the cross), otherwise all will decamp—the two last are seen vanishing into space. By a rare coincidence this very free interpretation ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... who had discreetly gone on, turned to go back to him. But as he came up with a word of wonder and repeated congratulations, he saw Stafford put his hand to his forehead, and, as it seemed to Howard, almost stagger. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... bag till the heir of the Deerings closed his masterful fist upon it. "There—my Chelsea'ssafe!" Lizzie smiled, setting her boy on the floor, and watchinghim stagger away with ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... world, but which have taxed the utmost powers of their authors. You can read in a few minutes or a few hours a poem or a book with only pleasure and delight, but the days and months of weary plodding over details and dreary drudgery often required to produce it would stagger belief. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... hundreds of parties of savages to proceed to other portions of the English settlements, shoot down the settlers when at work at their crops, seize their wives and children, load them with packs of plunder from their own homes, and drive them before them into the wilderness. When no longer able to stagger under their burdens, they were murdered, and their scalps torn off, and exhibited to their masters, and for such trophies bounties were paid. The French government in Paris paid bounties for the scalps of women and children, as Connecticut did for those of wolves, and it not only fitted ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... sanctuary of great size, and of great value to the whole Mississippi Valley. Now that all duck-shooting therein has been stopped, it is safe to predict that they shortly will be inhabited by a wild-fowl population that will really stagger the imagination. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... hath made this great king stagger, Reel, and shriek—"unclean, unclean!" Thunderbolt, or flash of dagger? Nay, 'twas but ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... intoxication. We are hustled into maturity reeling with our passions and imaginations, and we have drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, without our knowing where we are going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out of their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... after day and year after year, when a simple mechanical contrivance, moved by water, or weights and pulleys, would save us from all these heavy burdens. Think of the bruised knuckles, the trembling limbs that stagger along with the upper end of a Saratoga 'cottage,' the broken plastering at the sides, the paper patched with bright new pieces that look 'almost worse' than the uncovered rents, and the ugly marks of ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... rags, a battered old hat crushed down on his dirty face, his great round paunch stuffed with straw, represented the disreputable old rake who, after a long course of dissipation, was now about to suffer for his sins. Hoisted on the shoulders of a sturdy fellow, who pretended to stagger under the burden, this popular personification of the Carnival promenaded the streets for the last time in a manner the reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a drummer and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... better form than I, and I knew that he would catch me in time. And what then? He was a large fellow, but since the struggle must come, I would better let it come ere I should be utterly exhausted. So I pretended to stagger and lurch forward, and presently came to my knees and then prone upon the ground. With a grunt of triumph, the man rushed up to me, caught me by the collar of my doublet, and raised me from the ground. ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Albert staggered, too, from excitement and nervousness, but he remembered to take aim and fire again and again with his heavy repeater. In his heat and haste he did not hear a shout behind him, but he did see the great bull stagger, then reel and fall on his side, after which ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... He started to stagger, trailing an empty cuff behind him, flailing his arms wildly. Ahead of him he could see a big cop with an upraised billy. Malone tried to alter his course, but it was too late. He skidded helplessly into the cop, who jerked round and swung the billy automatically. Malone said: ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of his narrative, its apparent truthfulness and its circumstantiality went nigh to stagger Mr. Hooker; but a glance at Bascombe's face, with its half-amused smile, instantly set him right again, and he thought with dismay how near he had been to letting himself be fooled ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... a letter could arrive from Ireland, one came with the most profuse thanks, and enclosing, as he said, a 20 pound Bank of England note, but no note was enclosed. I asked my father whether this did not stagger him, but he answered 'not in the least.' On the next day another letter came with many apologies for having forgotten (like a true Irishman) to put the note into his letter of the day before...(A gentleman) brought his nephew, who was insane ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the English kneeling on the ground, Extend their hands vp to the glorious skyes; Then from the earth as though they did rebound, Actiue as fire immediatly they rise: And such a shrill showt from their throats they sent, As made the French to stagger as ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... of some who "are drunken, but not with wine; who stagger, but not with strong drink." I fancy I hear someone in the congregation say: "I guess they must have taken laurel." Precisely so, friend! They took the very laurel that has been the ruin of thousands of the Lord's sheep and lambs. Let me tell ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... by a flame streak that started from where Lawler stood, and the air of the cabin rocked with a deafening roar. She saw Link go down in a heap, and before she could draw a breath another lancelike flame darted from the point where Lawler stood. She saw Givens stagger; heard the heavy piece of cordwood thud to the floor; saw Givens plunge backward through the door to land in the ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was that the river of joy which flows from the Throne flowed through my heart as never before. It was a new experience—a quintessence of joy. The shouts of burning martyrs were no longer a mystery. I stagger no more at the account of the saints who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. My soul is bathed in an ocean of balm and ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... hands, and the gesture was lifeless. She fixed her eyes on no one; she merely gazed about. She had a habit of shaking her bracelet in a way that aroused sympathy. And after making a lewd remark she would turn her head to one side, and thereby stagger even the most hardened frequenter of this sort of places. Her complexion had been ruined by rouge, but underneath the skin there was something that glimmered like water ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... shirt, seizing part of it in her teeth to aid her to keep her hold of him. He struck at her head, at her arms, at her body, anywhere, so long as he hit her, in his efforts to throw her off. But she held him, and at last, mad with fear, he tried to stagger out of the ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... run through her fingers, Olga uttered la cry of baffled rage of despair, and struck the girl a heavy blow in the face that made her stagger; but almost frantic with terror Regina improved the opportunity afforded by the withdrawal of one of the large hands, to tighten her own grasp, and in the renewed struggle succeeded in wrenching away the vial. The next instant, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... arm was battered so fearfully that it required an effort to hold it in front of his body. Blood streamed into his eyes and down his breast, his arms grew weak, his blows were feeble, his knees trembled, and he was ready to drop. Twice he went to his knees only to stagger to his feet again. Three times Pootoo's mighty club beat down warriors who were about to ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even .. more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark. Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great, unflattering ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... want to be untidy!" Mrs. Ladybug cried. "And if you aren't going to brush that dust off, I shall do it myself!" And grasping a small Indian paint-brush, the weight of which she could scarcely stagger under, Mrs. Ladybug advanced upon Betsy Butterfly with a determined ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... potent, for Dick, thanks to the warning glances of the professor, had drank but little, yet he could scarcely keep awake; whilst Junes and Grosman were snoring like pigs, and could scarcely be awakened sufficiently to enable them to stagger to their tent. Dick barely managed to get to his own before sleep overcame him too, and his last hazy thought was: "That wine was drugged, the professor ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... the fury of these hellish bands, some of which appeared to me wholly composed of blind men, Jesus was as much wounded and bruised as if their blows had been real. I saw him stagger from side to side, sometimes raising himself up, and sometimes falling again, while the serpent, in the midst of the crowds whom it was unceasingly leading forward against Jesus, struck the ground with its tail, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... one or more of the occupants of the house. But a repetition of the cry, coming as I am ready to swear from the farthest room on the parlor floor, together with a sharp remembrance of the wandering eye and drawn countenance of the young man whom I had seen stagger hence a moment before, with an almost fainting woman in his arms, drew me on in spite of my feminine instincts; and before I knew it, I was in the circular study and before the prostrate form of a seemingly dying man. He was lying as you probably found ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... not have shouted, for the wind was swift to carry all sounds from his lips to O'Shea; but the latter's voice, as it came back to him, seemed to stagger against the force of the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... February the remainder of the expedition reached Prospect Hill more dead than alive. Wilson alone had kept heart, and managed to sustain the flagging spirits of his companions sufficiently to enable them to stagger in to ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... will happen when, in heaven, one of these selfless mothers is led in triumph to a solid gold throne, all lined with eider-down cushions, where she can take the rest she never had on earth. Won't she stagger back against the glittering walls of the New Jerusalem and say, "Not for me. Not for me. Surely it must be for my husband?" But there, where places are appointed, she will not be allowed to give it up—which may make her ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... few moments this seemed to stagger the group that had gathered about him. Fifteen dollars was a lot of money, and it seemed doubtful if any other individual in the crowd, with the possible exception of Eliot, could raise as much—and Eliot ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... a warning cry behind, a joyous shout before: "The current's strong,—the way is long,—they'll never reach the shore! See, see! they stagger in the midst, they waver in their line! Fire on the madmen! break their ranks, and whelm them ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... I got from a pistol butt (Lucky my head's not a hazel nut); The horse they raced, and scudded and swore; There were Leicestershire gantlemen, seventy score; Up came the "Lobsters," covered with steel— Down we went with a stagger and reel; Smash at the flag, I tore it to rag. And carried it ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... Eat lots of it. Yes, eat too much of it. Eat till you can just stagger across the room with it and prop it up against a sofa cushion. Eat everything that you like until you can't eat any more. The only test is, can you pay for it? If you can't pay for it, don't eat it. And listen—don't worry as to whether your food contains starch, or albumen, or gluten, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... tremble upon your lips; but then, oh! the delight of giving up to it; going the whole, the entire, the unclipt, the blind-folded, the universal; 'ha! ha! come to my heart, my beauties!' and with open arms you stagger to their embraces. But in that long, long, kiss, with the hot breath of passion, and the bounding blood and brain reeling to madness, there is the bitterness of death. Dust and ashes!—take them away. . . . THE drop too much in all this is, that you get no sympathy from others; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... with reference to an isolated transaction. There are many, very many others of a similar character that I might mention, but I will not. The unwritten and secret history of our border would amaze the civilized world, and would stagger the faith of the most credulous. In the case just mentioned, we find an old man who had passed his threescore and ten, and a youth who had not yet reached his score, falling victims to this thirsty ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... it was to gain relief from such damaging contraction of area that he left the highway for the wider wintry fields. Going onward in these latter at an irregular pace; sometimes momentarily stunned into a rangy stagger by a sounding blow on the cerebrum or the cerebellum; and, again, irritated almost to a run by contusion of shoulder-blade or funny-bone; he finally became aware that two men were following him through ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... judging for himself was Adlerstein Wildschloss that all this did not stagger him; for, even if he had believed more than he did of the old lady's story, there would have been no sense of intrusion or impropriety in such a visit to the mother. Indeed, had Christina been living ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'Poison Bushes.' Large numbers of cattle are lost annually in Western Australia through eating them. The finest and strongest animals are the first victims; a difficulty of breathing is perceptible for a few minutes, when they stagger, drop down, and all is over with them. . . . It appears to be that the poison enters the circulation, and altogether stops the action of the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... rapidly driven towards the shore. Once a great sea broke Paul's hold and he found himself unaided swimming in the mad surf. He was fortunate enough to catch a hatch that was floating near which supported him to the shore where he was thrown with considerable violence and half stunned. He managed to stagger up the beach and in a few minutes discovered Betsy dragging the insensible form of the captain out of the reach of the sea. The captain was not dead, but very near it. One of the crew had an arm broken while the other landed without injury. The three ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... seemed for a moment to stagger the younger man, whose olive complexion had turned a ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more so in the expressing of the Eternal Life through endless ages and limitless space! Once we grasp this idea of the unity and progressiveness of Life going on ad infinitum, what boundless vistas of possibility open before us. It would be enough to stagger the imagination were it not for our old friends, the Law and the Word. But these will always accompany us, and we may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. This Law of Unity is what in natural science is known as the Law of Continuity, and the ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... take her hand, but his touch roused her from her lethargy; and springing at him, like a wild-cat, she gave him a blow in the face that made him stagger,—so powerful was it, in the vehemence of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Messing, that's what it is. It wouldn't matter if it did you no harm. But when you stagger and stumble down a road, out of sheer sloppy relaxation of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... turban and feather. Upon that one would have thought that his purpose was to carry the position by storm; for, whether moved by the influence of spring, or whether moved by a push from behind, he pressed forward with such desperate resolution that his elbow caused the Commissioner of Taxes to stagger on his feet, and would have caused him to lose his balance altogether but for the supporting row of guests in the rear. Likewise the Postmaster was made to give ground; whereupon he turned and eyed Chichikov with ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... totter, he advanced toward the threshold of the pavilion. Diana, on her side, perceiving Francois stagger, sat herself down beside him on ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... more than a half are simply definitions of the type of this: "Foolish are they who trust women or good luck, as both like a young serpent creep hither and thither," or this: "Men who are rich are like those who are drunk; in walking they are helped by others, they stagger on smooth roads and talk confusedly." It cannot be said that any psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mind are recorded here. If I sift those maxims more carefully, I cannot ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... emphasizing each with a not over-clean forefinger. "When I open this door you will go out into the corridor. Punshon or one of the others will be on guard at the farther end. Pay no attention to him. There is only one light—on the left. Keep to the right, in the shadow. Stagger as you go; if you can manage a hiccough, the imitation will be all the more lifelike. Punshon will expect something of the sort, and he will not trouble you, for he knows that when I am fuddled I am quarrelsome. 'Tis a diverting world, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... were unhurt. Then, advancing boldly again, they released their hands from something which they had been holding, and lo! four jets of water struck at the very roots of the flames, tripped at them, and made them stagger, drove them twice into the roof, and caught them with deadly accuracy as they came out again; and, in less than five minutes, changed all their brave splendor to dull, black smoke, and set the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... his lungs as well. Then Frobisher completed his work of restoration by administering a sip or two of brandy from the cup belonging to his emergency flask, and a few more moments later Ling was able to stagger to his feet. ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... in Forest or Park, With its sylvan honors and feudal bark, Is an aristocratic article: But split and sawn, and hack'd about town, Serving all needs of pauper or clown, Trod on! stagger'd on! Wood cut down Is vulgar—fibre ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... uncovered; in a little while the button next below became visible, and now he was sure that the tide was ebbing, and that he was safe if only he could hold out long enough. At last the rock itself became visible, and after many hours he was able, almost spent with fatigue, to stagger to the land. Now, what saved that man? was it his gun? Surely not; it was the rock: that was his standing-ground. But was his gun, therefore, useless? Assuredly not, for it helped to steady him on the rock, though it could not take the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... nevertheless; and "The Conquest" had been out three months, when one afternoon, as Daniel was superintending a difficult manoeuvre, he was suddenly seen to stagger, raise his arms on high, and fall backwards on ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... publication more timely than this volume by M. Cochin. To be sure, all illustration of the results of this legalized injustice, derived from a past experience, must be tame to those who stand face to face with the gigantic conspiracy in which it has concentrated its venom, and from which it must stagger to its doom. The familiar proverb which declares that the gods make mad those whom they would destroy has a significance not always considered. For when a man loses his intellectual equilibrium, a baseness of character which never broke through the crust of conventionality may be suddenly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... to-day were a couple of Germans, who looked like artists and went about in enthusiastic talk; one kept dealing the other severe blows on the chest, which occasionally made the recipient stagger—all in pure joy and friendship. They measured some of the columns, and in one place, for a special piece of observation, the smaller man mounted on his companion's shoulders. Miriam happened to see them whilst they were thus posed, and the spectacle struck her with such ludicrous effect that she ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... desert Juarez and they could not get far with him. It was enough to stagger them and it seemed that they had reached the end ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... its existence. What, O man with a soul, is all the world else to thee? Christianity, whatever be its broad way of pretences, is but in reality a narrow path: be satisfied with the day of small things, stagger not at the inconsistencies, conflicting words, and hateful strifes of those who say they are Christians, but "are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan." Judge truth, neither by her foes nor by her friends ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... end that he recognized the judgment-place as holy, and died in full accord with the will of God, Catherine achieved a great marvel which only Christianity can compass: she lifted one of those seemingly purposeless and cruel accidents of destiny which stagger faith, into unity with the organic work of the ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... In the first shock, there was a slight advantage on his part, having succeeded in striking his lance so forcibly, and directly on the breast-plate of his adversary, that the incognito knight was observed somewhat to stagger; while Don Manuel remained immoveable as a rock—however, as no decided advantage could be claimed, the two champions prepared to renew the engagement. Again the swift-footed steeds fly over the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... astronomy has not yet appeared. The atom itself is an invention of science. To get the mystery of vitality reduced to the atom is getting it in very close quarters, but it is a very big mystery still. Just how the dead becomes alive, even in the atom, is mystery enough to stagger any scientific mind. It is not the volume of the change; it is the quality or kind. Chemistry and mechanics we have always known, and they always remain chemistry and mechanics. They go into our laboratories and through our devices chemistry ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... Lemuel to go with him that afternoon to his cousin's and make, as he phrased it, a stagger at the job. ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... that sort cannot by any means be arranged on the instant, and certainly they cannot be arranged so as to suit the case of the Hopeless Poor. Shall I tell you, dear sentimentalist, that the Hopeless brigade would not accept your kindness if they could? I shall stagger many people when I say that the Hopeless division like the free abominable life of the rookery, and that any kind of restraint would only send them swarming off to some other centre from which they would ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... seeing them again, at least alive, were given up; but about twelve o'clock, to the great joy of those at the fire, a shouting was heard at some distance. Mr Banks, with four more, immediately went out, and found the seaman with just strength enough left to stagger along, and call out for assistance: Mr Banks sent him immediately to the fire, and, by his direction, proceeded in search of the other two, whom he soon after found. Richmond was upon his legs, but not able to put one before the other; his companion was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... they had forced themselves to stagger along under this horrible burden of unnecessary production, it became impossible for them to look upon labour and its results from any other point of view than one—to wit, the ceaseless endeavour to expend the least possible amount of labour on any article made, and yet at the same time to make ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... she added, going on with her soliloquy, "that Will Heath and Margie were married just at this time!—she swallowed that story whole. Well, I must confess it was calculated to stagger any one, though I was almost afraid she had heard something before about the facts; but it seems she ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... about. He had a muffler loose about his neck and chin. I thought he seemed shy and irresolute, and the tall man gave him a great jolt with his elbow, which made him stagger, and I fancied a little angry, for he said, as it seemed, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... gone all through the dance—advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, thread the needle, and back to your place—Fezziwig 15 "cut" so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in the black face the rock landed. Harry heard the sound and felt ill within himself. Yet the black man did not stagger. With a contemptuous snort he kicked the fragment of rock into the water as ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... fingers, but Owen remained standing within about thirty yards of the pole. Suddenly there came a glare of light, and the pole was split into fragments; but although the shock was perceptible, they remained unhurt. Almost immediately a second flash leaped from the cloud, and Owen saw Hokosa stagger and fall to his knees. "The man is struck," he thought to himself, but it was not so, for recovering his balance, the wizard walked back to ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... his fancy and raise strange spectres in his imagination. The shrill hooting of an owl, as it rustled overhead, caused him an unprecedented shock, and the great rush of blood to his head made him stagger and clutch hold of the nearest object for support. He had barely recovered from this alarm when his eyes almost started out of their sockets with fright as he caught sight of a queer shape gliding silently from tree to tree; and shortly afterwards ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... him lest the phenomenon might vanish altogether before he had had time to discover its character; he gave a sudden leap forward, and to his dismay beheld the figure stagger forward, and collapse in a heap on the lowest stair. In an instant his arms were round her, and two warm living hands came together with a shock of surprise. Masculine ghost lifted, and feminine ghost struggled and pinched in a manner unmistakably human. But ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... how crooked some of my lines are? Don't you see how some of the letters stagger more than others?—That is when this interview is more in my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... open, and the eye could scan Through length of porch and lake and boundless hall, Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom The snowy skirting of a garment hung, And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes That minister'd around it—if I saw These things distinctly, for my human brain Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night Came down upon my eyelids, and ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... upon the most fiery and high mettled of them. The horses were ready to fall foul on one another, when the Duke of Nemours, for fear of hurting the King, retreated abruptly, and ran back his horse against a pillar with so much violence that the shock of it made him stagger. The company ran up to him, and he was thought considerably hurt; but the Princess of Cleves thought the hurt much greater than anyone else. The interest she had in it gave her an apprehension and concern which ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... counting as confidently on the ignorance and vanity of his clients, as ever Morrison upon the brute expansion of the national wealth. But Vogelstein looked and was as completely the professional as Morrison the amateur. There remained this essential difference that if nothing could be too big to stagger Vogelstein, nothing likewise could be too small to deter him. I knew his shop, or rather his palace, and had observed the relish with which he could shame a timorous art student into giving three prices for a print. It ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Colonel as he released my belt, so that I stood, hardly able to keep my feet as, with swimming eyes, I saw him stagger forward and mount the fresh charger, though ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... you're beyond urging, we may as well turn to the dishes—that is, if anybody can stagger up and help." ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... (who was affectionately known to her intimates as 'Clem'), as she watched Jane stagger back from the blow, and hide her face in silent endurance of pain. 'That's just a morsel to stay your appetite, my lady! You didn't expect me back 'ome at this time, did you? You thought as you was goin' to have the kitchen to yourself when mother went. Ha ha! ho ho!—These sausages ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... officers in countless numbers. Hundreds of thousands of school teachers, professors, and college presidents, and Doctors of Divinity, thousands of lecturers and public declaimers on all subjects, railroads, telegraphs and telephones in such vast numbers as stagger imagination itself, churches and pulpits that are filled by at least a hundred and twenty-five thousand ministers of the gospel, and Bibles enough to build a pyramid that would almost reach to heaven; a land of books upon every subject scattered among the people by the billions, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Cast him down from these visions suddenly and in their place set up black woods and the utter darkness of nature impenetrable. Let the exaltation leave him, the sights fade utterly, the dismal abyss of the nether world close him in. Awake him from these again and let him reel up and stagger on and believe that he is sinking down to the eternal sleep. Such sensations Ken's Island will give him until at last he shall fall; and lying trance-bound for the rain to beat upon his face, or the sun to scorch him, or the moon to ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... powerful arm caught her and whirled her up, only to hurl her to the ground; Arizona's snarling, panting face bent over her. In the very midst of that fury she felt Arizona stiffen and freeze; the snarling stopped; his nerveless arm fell away, and she was allowed to stagger to her feet. She found him staring at ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... sailormen returned the fire. Two Mexicans dropped to the street, one shot through the head; the other wounded in the chest. Other Mexicans had been seen to stagger, and were probably hit. Thereafter a dozen seamen constantly watched the roofs close at hand, occasionally "getting" ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... prophet whose coming Is yet undivined May set the world humming And stagger mankind; It may be a Darwin Some publisher's got Up his sleeve, or it may be Some one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... at the stones anigh With a bestial droop of the lip and a swinish rheum in the eye. As about the dome of the bees in the time for the drones to fall, The dead and the maimed are scattered, and lie, and stagger, and crawl; So on the grades of the terrace, in the ardent eye of the day, The half-awake and the sleepers clustered and crawled and lay; And loud as the dome of the bees, in the time of a swarming horde, A horror of many insects hung in the ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to stagger in along under those biscuits. You made 'em. That kind takes two strong men—I know, I've eaten your ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... his arm was strong, his grip firm as a vise; resistance would have been vain; but Desmond knew better than to resist. He bent to the cruel blows without a wince or a murmur. Only, his face was very pale when, the bully's arm being tired and his breath spent, he was flung away and permitted to stagger to the house. He crawled painfully up the wainscoted staircase and into the dark corridor leading to his bedroom. Halfway down this he paused, felt with his hand along the wall, and, discovering by this means that a door was ajar, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... said Scout Amos, afterward, "but I declare he seemed to weigh a ton. Finally I lay down and got his chest across my back, and his arms around my neck, and then got up with him. It was as much as I could do to stagger under him, for he couldn't help himself a bit. By the time I'd made twenty or thirty yards, about fifteen Indians came for me at full speed on their ponies. They all knew me [he had been on their reservation], and yelled, 'Amos! Amos! We got you now, Amos!' I pulled my pistol, ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... cabinet and poured into it more than a tea-spoonful of tincture of aconite— enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had drawn $6,000 that I had in bank, and with that and a few things in a satchel I left the house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library I heard him stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train for New Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast anchor in La Paz. And now what have you to say? Can you ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... won't be happy till he gets it, but he's anything but happy when he's got it! He sees (of course I refer here to public lectures) some "prehistoric gurls," as an Irish boy once termed them to me, taking copious notes, but the long words and learned phrases stagger the budding scientist and befog his as yet undeveloped brain. I am speaking from my experience when I attended the first of a series of lectures by leading ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Yes, it's a dud bus—only does seventy-five on the ceiling. Too much stagger, and prop stops on a spin. Besides, I never did care for rotaries. Full ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... to have all important Parliamentary debates filmed. It will be essential, of course, to provide some comic relief, and we are relying confidently on certain Members to practise the wearing of mobile moustaches and to take lessons in the stagger, the butter slide, the business with the cane and the quick reversal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... there are a billion people in these two-thirds. But that figure is so big as only to stagger the mind in an attempt to take it in. The important thing is to see that it doesn't by its sheer bigness, stagger our faith or our courage or our praying habit. We want to be like the old Hebrew who "staggered not" at God's ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... prepared the catastrophe, and brought it about with such determination, its results seemed suddenly to stagger him. He hunted for the girl with terrified eyes. He stooped down and crawled round the chaos shrouded in clouds of dust. He looked through ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... they might find that liberty for which their souls thirsted as the hart for the water-brook. Far from their native country, without the blessings of the Church, or the warmth of substantial friendship, they fell into a listless condition, a somnolence that led them to stagger against some of the regulations of the Province. Their wandering was not inspired by any subjective, inherent, generic evil: it was but the tossing of a weary, distressed mind under the dreadful influences ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... out, working like men possessed, for the boats could not be pulled up till they had been emptied. The blubber-stove was quickly alight and the cook began to prepare a hot drink. We were labouring at the boats when I noticed Rickenson turn white and stagger in the surf. I pulled him out of reach of the water and sent him up to the stove, which had been placed in the shelter of some rocks. McIlroy went to him and found that his heart had been temporarily unequal to the strain ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... gently inflated his lungs, expanding his chest to its fullest extent, and then, at the moment of receiving the blow, exhaled the air. He did not stagger or flinch, though his antagonist struck straight from the shoulder, with ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... cavalry should do, the main purport of which was that it ought to be kept concentrated to fight the enemy's cavalry. Heretofore, the commander of the Cavalry Corps had been, virtually, but an adjunct at army headquarters—a sort of chief of cavalry—and my proposition seemed to stagger General Meade not a little. I knew that it would be difficult to overcome the recognized custom of using the cavalry for the protection of trains and the establishment of cordons around the infantry corps, and so far subordinating its operations to the movements of the main army ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Scots were advancing on the plain, they were galled with the artillery from the English ships: the eldest son of Lord Graham was killed: the Irish archers were thrown into disorder; and even the other troops began to stagger; when Lord Grey, perceiving their situation, neglected his orders, left his ground, and at the head of his heavy-armed horse made an attack on the Scottish infantry,'in hopes of gaining all the honor of the victory. On advancing, he found ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... already alluded to the perverting tendencies of alcoholic stimulants. Their peculiar influence upon the cerebellum causes the subject to reel and stagger, as though a portion of that organ were removed; the group of energetic faculties is stupefied, and mental as well as corporeal lethargy is the result. The reaction, which inevitably follows, is almost unbearable, and relief is sought by repeating and increasing the poisonous draughts, the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... staggered, too, from excitement and nervousness, but he remembered to take aim and fire again and again with his heavy repeater. In his heat and haste he did not hear a shout behind him, but he did see the great bull stagger, then reel and fall on his side, after which ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... to worry about. All you got to do is go ahead and enjoy yourself, free and frolicsome. So when this imposin' head waitress with the forty-eight bust and the grand duchess air bears down on us majestic, and inquires dignified, "Two, sir?" I don't let it stagger me. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... arranging them round the head of my bed. The worst of it is those tiresome bees, as soon as the rain is over, come in hundreds after the rum, and frighten me continually. The worthless wretches get intoxicated on what they can suck from round the cork, and then they stagger about on the ground buzzing malevolently. When the boys have had the chop and a good smoke, we turn to and make up the loads for to-morrow's start up the mountain, and then, after more hot tea, I turn in on my camp bed—listening to the soft ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... of what she hoped from it—facing indifference and ridicule with the calm smile of one who has climbed her mountain and looked into the promised land,—between that and the lovely, sensitive, sensuous creature he was staring at, was enough to stagger anybody. He got himself together in a moment, said very simply and gravely how much he admired her and how high a value, he believed, the future would put on her work; then he picked up his sentence where Rose ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and over, tightening their hug. Suddenly the water let them down with a brutal bang; and, stranded against the side of the wheelhouse, out of breath and bruised, they were left to stagger up in the wind and ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... loveliness hath never Fettered even for a second's space my eyes, Much less my heart: I mean the loveliness Of living women. And now a daub or so, Cast on a canvas by some colour-grinder, Will stagger me, you ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... of thirst. We were choking with thirst ourselves, but we agreed to sacrifice a small billyful of our remaining stock of water for this unfortunate last victim to our enterprise. We gave him about two quarts, and bitterly we regretted it later, hoping he might still be able to stagger on to where water might be found; but vain was the hope and vain the gift, for the creature that had held up so long and so well, swallowed up the last little draught we gave, fell down and rolled ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... sins. Elijah himself was fed by ravens in a miraculous manner, and later by a poor widow who had only just enough in her larder to furnish one meal for herself and her son. Here are a series of complications enough to stagger the faith of the strongest believer in the supernatural. But the poor widow meets him at the gates of the city as directed by the Lord, improvises bread and water, takes him to her home and for two years treats him with all the kindness and the attention ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... it wor well nigh a splitten, And I stagger'd and stagger'd, as weak as a kitten; But the wust of it all wor the dressin' I got From Polly—oh, worn't it main spicy ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... twice in rapid succession—a ball in the groin which did not stop him, and a second through the lungs, against which his high courage fought in vain. He was seen to stagger by Lieutenant Browne of the Grenadiers and Second regiment, who rushed forward to his assistance. "Support me," exclaimed Wolfe, "lest my gallant fellows should see me fall." But the lieutenant was just too late, and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... and every time he was compelled to press hard upon the proofs against her she shrunk, and seemed to stagger with the deadly blow; writhed under the weight of his minute justice, more than from the prospect of ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... girl fumble with the door on her side, open it, and stagger out of his sight. Then she reappeared round the car. Bareheaded, disheveled, white as chalk, with burning eyes and bleeding lips, she gazed at Kurt as if to make sure of ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... mountains, and the tundra that lay between, in search of the lost copper mines of the Indians; the mines that lured Hearne into the North in 1771, and which Hearne forgot in the discovery of a fur empire so vast as to stagger belief. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... irons!" ejaculated Purchas; "I should think not. No, Mr Leslie, you had no intention of killin' the skipper; I'll swear to that. It was an accident; neither more nor less. How was you to know that a great strong man, like he was, was goin' to stagger back and hit his head again' the rail, same as he did? And he provoked you; all hands 'll bear witness to that; he shot at ye, and you was quite justified in takin' his revolver away from him. Oh no, there'll be ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... itself as our helpless English chicken is; it lived to get fat without acquiring any useless knowledge or desire of life; it became a capon in tender years, and then a pipe was introduced into its mouth and it was fed by machinery until it could hardly walk, until it could only stagger to its bed, and there it lay in happy digestion until the hour came for it to be crammed again. So did it grow up without knowledge or sensation or feeling of life, moving gradually, peacefully towards its predestined end—a ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... up for that now. You're going to have so much home life from now on, that you can hardly stagger under it. And I'm ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... the stairs, and Connie opened the front door with hands that fumbled nervously at the lock. As the door swung open the wind sprang at them like a living thing, taking their breath, making them stagger back ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain—stood a doubtful freedom, half frozen, beckoning us to her icy domain. This was the good to be sought. The inequality was as great as that between certainty and uncertainty. This, in itself, was enough to stagger us; but when we came to survey the untrodden road, and conjecture the many possible difficulties, we were appalled, and at times, as I have said, were upon the point of giving ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the earlier chapters there is some undue proportion of thin and rather tepid preparation for episodes quite clearly on the way, so that in the end even the masterly vigour of the much advertised Pimpernel, in full panoply of inane laughter and unguessed disguise, failed to astound and stagger me as much as I could have wished. Lord Tony was a healthy young Englishman with no particular qualities calling for comment, and his wife an equally charming young French heroine. After having escaped to England from the writer's beloved Reign ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... the old bear, with her huge strength, made her way without difficulty; but the cub, in a few moments, began to find himself terribly hampered. His fur collected the mud. His little paws sank easily, but at each step it grew harder to withdraw them. At last, chancing to stagger aside from his mother's spacious tracks, he sank to his belly in the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Side of Cricket. You get up in the small hours, dragged from a comfortable bed by some sportsman who, you feel, carries enthusiasm to a point where it ceases to be a virtue and becomes a nuisance. You get into flannels, and, still half asleep, stagger off to the field, where a hired ruffian hits you up catches which bite like serpents and sting like adders. From time to time he adds insult to injury by shouting 'get to 'em!', 'get to 'em!'—a remark which finds but one parallel in the language, the 'keep moving' of ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... brain-discipline when a slighter effort in a different direction would produce consequences more felicitous. A man whom fate had pitched into a canal might accomplish miracles in the way of rendering himself amphibian; he might stagger the world by the spectacle of his philosophy under amazing difficulties; people might pay sixpence a head to come and see him; but he would be less of a nincompoop if he climbed out and arranged to live ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... body of his love. His great arms shot out and up, every muscle on his colossal frame stood out like ropes, his back cracked with the tremendous strain. He stiffened his knees, bit into his lip until the blood gushed; and a groan burst from his breast as he felt his stout knees stagger. ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... about the landscape a spectral look, and the sepulchral sound of the moving thunder seemed the half-muffled clang of some great iron-tongued funeral bell. Then came the rain, introduced swiftly by the deafening clatter of another thunder crash that made one stagger like a ship in a wild sea, and we strained our eyes to gaze into a visionary chasm cleaved in twain by the furious lightning. Playing upon the face of the unruffled river, with a brilliancy at once awful and enchanting, this singular flitting and wavering of the heavenly ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... room." "All right, Tom; we'll get in here," they would shout. And they would run along, carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get in first. And one would open the door and mount the steps, and stagger back into the arms of the man behind him; and they would all come and have a sniff, and then droop off and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the difference and ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... horse wheel to avoid the animal's horns. The buffalo at once resumed its course behind the herd; but Frank was soon alongside again, and as he fired the last shot of his revolver had the satisfaction of seeing the great beast stagger and then fall prostrate. He at once reined in his horse and looked round. His companions were all some distance in the rear, having brought down their game with less expenditure of lead, knowing exactly the right spot where ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... he never forgot his duty and when the hour for starting the night's baking arrived he would stagger off to the bakery; the moment he took up his position before the mouth of the furnace his intoxication evaporated and he set to work as soberly as ever, himself laughing ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the regular floor. One caution concerning fancy floors; don't make them too fanciful. We don't like to feel that we're treading under foot a rare work of art, and I've seen certain zigzag patterns which merely to look at fairly makes one stagger. Thresholds are on the floor, but not of them, nor of anything else, for that matter, and though somewhat useful in poetry, are often provoking stumbling-blocks in practice. Necessary at times, doubtless, but we have far too many and too much of them. Even where rooms are carpeted differently ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... held the bottle to his nose. "Smell it, Andrew," she said, in a voice of ineffable tenderness and pity. Ellen returned with a glass of water, and Andrew swallowed a little obediently. Finally he made out to stagger into the bedroom with Fanny's and Ellen's assistance. He sat down weakly on the bed, and Fanny lifted his legs up. Then he sank and closed his eyes as if he were spent. In fact, he was. At that moment of Ellen's announcement some vital ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sound, but at brief intervals a shiver ran through his frame. His head sank into his hands, and he looked and felt like one utterly crushed by a fate from which there was no escape. His ever-recurring thought was, "I have but one life, and it's lost, worse than lost. Why should I stagger on beneath the burden of an intolerable existence, which will only grow heavier as ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... questioning of such a known man as Bill Dozier. The six went rattling up the valley at a smart pace. Yet Andy's change of horses at Sullivan's place changed the entire problem. He had ridden his first mount to a stagger at full speed, and it was to be expected that, having built up a comfortable lead, he would settle his second horse to a steady pace ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... They were either too hot or too cold, and the mosquitoes gave way only when the frost made slumber difficult. In the morning they awoke to the necessity of putting on their wet shoes, and taking the muddy trail, to travel as long as they could stagger forward. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... dame you never saw, Where reigned by custom old a Salic law; Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak, And every tongue paused midway if he spoke. Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe; No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger here; 390 "Measure was happiness; who wanted more, Must buy his ruin at the Deacon's store;" None but his lodgers after ten could stay, Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day. He had his favorites and his pensioners, The same ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... morning Clare happened to do something not altogether to the farmer's mind. It was a matter of no consequence—only cleaning that side of one of the cow-houses first which was usually cleaned last. He gave him a box on the ear that made him stagger, and then ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... to find a creature having blood rapidly circulated and rapidly aerated, but yet showing a low temperature, the proof so afforded that active change of matter is not, as he had inferred from chemical data, the cause of animal heat, would stagger him more than would the exception to a constantly-observed relation. Clearly, then, the a priori method already plays a part in physiological reasoning. If not ostensibly employed as a means of reaching new truths, it is at least privately appealed to for confirmation ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... bore the homage of repentant Jerusalem, their joy was tumultuous to the point of tears. Sabbatai threw twenty silver crowns on a salver for the messenger, and invited others to do the same, so that the happy envoy could scarce stagger ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... business at hand. Some two years before there had been a fake corporation organized strictly for the benefit of its promoters. It had built a rocket-ship ostensibly for the establishment of a colony on Mars. The ship had managed to stagger up to Luna, but no farther. Its promoters had sold stock on the promise that a ship that could barely reach Luna could take off from that small globe with six times as much fuel as it could lift off of Earth. Which was true. Investors put in ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... confess no more than that there ought to have been. "I don't see how he could stagger through with that load on his conscience. I'm not sure I like his being able ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this told upon its character and appearance was shown in the remnants of whitewash on the high wall, scaling off in discolored patches; in the stagger of the tall fence opposite, drooping like a drunkard between two policemen of posts; and in the unkempt, bulging rear of the third wall,—the front house,—stuffed with rags and tied ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... my faith in orthodox doctrine, to my spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and to my right conception of the Christian Church, than any or all of the men with whom I have entertained friendship and conversation, it will perhaps still more astonish the mind, and stagger the belief, of those who have adopted, as once I did myself, the misrepresentations which are purchased for a hire and vended for a price, concerning your character and works. You have only to shut your ear to what they ignorantly say of you, and earnestly to meditate the deep ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that if he once passed me and got to the open air he would save himself yet. My heart softened to him, but again the thought of his treasure turned me hard and bitter. I cast my firelock between his legs as he raced past, and he rolled twice over like a shot rabbit. Ere he could stagger to his feet the Sikh was upon him, and buried his knife twice in his side. The man never uttered moan nor moved muscle, but lay were he had fallen. I think myself that he may have broken his neck with the fall. You see, gentlemen, that I am keeping my promise. I am telling ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Why contend for doctrines of no moment? But some of them are important. They are revolting and mischievous errors, and when they are regarded as parts of Christianity, they tend to make men infidels. And in many cases they stagger the faith, and lessen the comfort, and injure the souls of Christians. And even the less important ones do harm when taken to be parts of the religion of Christ. You cannot make thoughtful, sharp-visioned men believe that Jesus ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... and of the external world; he regards himself as very capable in body and mind while he is becoming more and more powerless; and everything appears rose-colored at the time when he is in a most critical state. He believes himself possessed of great muscular strength when paralysis makes him stagger, and so on. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... huddle together in the dismantled synagogue. No one knows what has happened. The armies have passed. Flame and blood brightened the sky for a time. Now the little village lies cut off from the world and its people clutch desperately to the hem of life. No news has come. Wanderers stagger down the torn roads with crazy tidings and the old men of the synagogue sit shivering over their prayer books. A world has been blown into fragments and this scene is one ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... ten thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious manuscript of Spiridion. That ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have been paid? It is hard to see the truth clearly, looking back through the mists of nearly a hundred years. In the strange story of that famous battle, only one fact stands out clear beyond all dispute, and that is so incredible as to stagger belief. It appears at first utterly past belief that the white army, marching against the red army with the open purpose of attacking it on the next day, should have lain down almost at the feet of ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... keep the thong tensely stretched between his neck and the peak of the saddle to which it was fastened. Struggling was of no use with a halter round his windpipe, and he very soon began to tremble and stagger,—blind, no doubt, and with a roaring in his ears as of a thousand battle-trumpets,—at any rate, subdued and helpless. That was enough. Dick loosened his lasso, wound it up again, laid it like a pet snake in a coil at his saddle-bow, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... would have made a beautiful blaze. He utilized them as fuel for heating the baths of the city; and we are told that they sufficed to heat the water for four thousand such baths for six months. With an average share of persuasibility, when it is not against our will to be convinced, we stagger at the statement that seven hundred and thirty thousand furnaces could have been supplied with fuel from the contents of even that magnificent palace, and therefore venture to suggest that the papyri and palm-leaf manuscripts were used ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... my breath. I expected to see him stagger to his death below. But he stood motionless in the middle of the little platform and stretched out his arms toward the raging torrent, as though in invocation. Then he leaped across with the agility of a wild sheep and rushed on into ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... don't want anyone to try to make me out a 'poet'—because I'm not. I don't think much of these esthetic creatures who condescend to stoop to our level that we may have the blessings of culture. We'll manage to make our own—do it in our own way, and stagger through somehow. . . . These are tremendous times, and sooner or later someone will come along big enough to sound the right note, and it will be a rebel note." It is that note which Chaplin has sought to strike, and that he has succeeded will be the verdict ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... general melee, when the bull and several picadors were in a tangled mass at one side of the ring, I saw one of these horses, terribly wounded, with its life pouring from it, emerge from the conflict and stagger unnoticed to ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... a strong wind suddenly blows the flame away from Godfrey's tower and back upon the infidels, who stagger and retreat from the fiery blast. Now is the Christians' opportunity. One mighty effort, and the tower is within reach of the wall. The bridge of the tower falls with a crash, and the Christian knights spring upon it. A brief, fierce struggle,—and then, with a glad shout, ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... matchlocks, creeses, and the swords and daggers of an army of dead-and-gone gallants gleam dully in the ghostly light. Here and there from a corner saloon (lit with Jack-o'-lanterns or phosphorus), stagger forth shuddering, home-bound citizens, nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown that eldrich avenue lined with the bloodstained weapons of the fighting dead. What street could live inclosed by these ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and His wonders in the deep. For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... him, and he was seen to advance a few paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody yelled together, and the guns were reloaded in frantic haste. The overthrown Martian set up a prolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant, answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... heart beat so hard against his little jacket that he could only stagger back to the basket, where Rags and Lady Gay were snuggled together, fast asleep. He anxiously scanned Gay's face; moistened his rag of a handkerchief at the only available source of supply; scrubbed an atrocious ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were standing. Calling to the poor beast to cheer him, for he evidently was much exhausted and approached but slowly, they soon had the satisfaction of seeing him pass through the surf, which, even at this time, was not heavy in the cove, and, with the water pouring from his shaggy coat, stagger towards them, bearing in his mouth his burden, which he laid down at Forster's feet, and then shook off the accumulation of moisture from his skin. Forster took up the object of the animal's solicitude—it was the body of an infant, apparently a few ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... go by the six o'clock train. Mr. Grey consented, and a messenger was sent in search of them. Mr. Beauchamp looked disturbed. "What say you to this, Colin?" he asked, uneasily. "That man's audacity is enough to stagger one, and I only saw him three times at ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the next instant. For he too had fired, and with better aim, the Boer drawing himself together, springing up, and turning to run, but only to stagger the next minute and fall heavily among the bushes, which hid ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... renders me inactive, though my wound is fast healing. Dead he cannot be; for, had he been mortally wounded, we should have heard of him somewhere or other—he could not have vanished from the earth like a bubble of the elements. Well and sound he cannot be; for, besides that I am sure I saw him stagger and drop, firing his pistol as he fell, I know him well enough to swear, that, had he not been severely wounded, he would have first pestered me with his accursed presence and assistance, and then walked forward with his usual composure to settle ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and retire; both hands to your partner, bow and courtesy, corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig "cut"—cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again with a stagger. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... time to ascertain, for the door suddenly opened, and Vantrasson appeared on the threshold. He was scarcely sober when he left the shop, but now he was fairly drunk; his heavy shamble had become a stagger. "Oh, you wretch, you brigand!" howled his wife; "you've ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... the weight of his academic distinctions, preceded him by a few seconds, and then he entered himself—so large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action when the door had closed behind him was to stagger against the table, whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that majestic figure prostrate and insensible ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... began to think of withdrawal into the neighbourhood of the Hishtanyi Chayan, but it was not easy to extricate himself. Warding off a blow aimed at his skull, with his shield he pushed it into the face of the new assailant with sufficient force to cause the man to stagger. Then he shouted a few words to his own men, turned around, and rushed back to his tree, where he fell down at full length, exhausted and bleeding. The other Queres, two in number, followed his example, and the Tehuas did not pursue. The result was so far favourable to the Queres that they lost ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... black, wiping her mouth under her veil with a dirty pocket-handkerchief. She had a swollen red face, betokening the presence of much drink, walked erect, and went perfectly straight, but looked as if, were she to relax the least of her state, she would stagger. As she passed Richard, he recognized her. It was Mrs. Manson. Without a thought he stopped to speak to her. The same moment he saw that, although not dead drunk, she could by no tropical contortion ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Prynne, who was defending an encampment of the Northern forces from a skirmishing party led by the rebel officers. Captain Prynne recognised what he had done as the young lieutenant caught his father in his arms and turned to stagger back, and rushing forward had endeavoured to drag them to safety, receiving a shot himself that shattered his arm, wounding him severely. His ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... people whose mirth is wonderful to see and hear. And the bare contents are not such as to enchant me. However, for the purpose of this essay, I did go to a bookstall and buy as many of these papers as I could see—a terrific number, a terrific burden to stagger ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... a small jar, and the old man exclaimed: "Why, it must be heavy." His wife knew that he was charicaturing her and she stood contemptuous, with arms folded, as he sprang forward to assist the two "youngsters." "Let me help you," and pretending to stagger under a great weight, he took the jar and with great apparent difficulty put it ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... expected this I had run up during the morning to see and say good-bye to my father; I had nothing, therefore, to detain me; and by sunset we were again at sea, clear of the shoals, and standing away to the southward with every stitch of canvas spread that the schooner could stagger under. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... assured. cesser, to cease. chacun, each. chagrin, m., grief, gloom. Chalde, f., Chaldaea. Chalden, m., Chaldee. chaleur, f., heat, warmth. chambre, f., chamber, room. champ, m., field. chanceler, to stagger, waver. chant, m., song. chanter, to sing. chaque, each, every, charmant, delightful. charmer, to charm, soothe. chasser, to chase, drive away. chtier, to chastise, punish. chtiment, m., punishment. chef, m., chief. chemin, m., road, path, way. ch-er, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... disturb his fancy and raise strange spectres in his imagination. The shrill hooting of an owl, as it rustled overhead, caused him an unprecedented shock, and the great rush of blood to his head made him stagger and clutch hold of the nearest object for support. He had barely recovered from this alarm when his eyes almost started out of their sockets with fright as he caught sight of a queer shape gliding silently from tree to tree; and shortly afterwards he was again terrified—this time by ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... passing that schooner at two miles, one knew, somehow, that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine a vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea, carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their foreheads with just the shadow ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... which philosophy attempts to deal are so vital and so vast that even the greatest intellects may well stagger occasionally under the burden of their own conceptions of them. To rise to the height of such an argument demands a more than Miltonic imagination; and criticisms directed only at this or that fragment of the whole are as irrelevant, if not as inept, as ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... Hill was ready enough to do as she wished, and he gave his word too that he wouldn't look into the sack; but when he had gone a bit of the way he began to think the sack got awfully heavy, and when he had gone a bit further, he could scarce stagger along under it, so he set it down, and was just about to untie the string and look into it, when the girl ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... Mr Paton, starting up in uncontrollable emotion, which changed into a burst of anger as he gave Walter a box on the ear which sounded all over the room, and made the boy stagger back to his place. But the flash of rage was gone in an instant; and the next moment Mr Paton, afraid of trusting himself any longer, left his desk and hurried out, anxious to recover in solitude the calmness of mind and action which had been ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... noisome deck, the men could scarcely be blamed for availing themselves of such hospitality, though to drink intoxicants on the march is suicidal. Men "fell out," first by ones and twos, then by whole half-dozens and dozens. The Subaltern himself was scarcely strong enough to stagger up the long hills at the back of the town, let alone worrying about his men. The Colonel was aghast, and very furious. He couldn't understand it. (He ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... his agonized cry, as he saw at the same moment the little figure stagger and fall. Then, forgetting his weakness and lack of physical strength, he dashed out of the house, and in another instant was ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... half as long as a Pullman parlor-car, with a top and brass housin's and extra tires strapped on, and a place for a trunk—an outfit that made me look like a street-railway magnate. It set me back a whole lot, but I wanted to stagger dad—and I did. As we rolled up to the door he came out with eyes you could ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... were numbed to the weight of lead. The atmosphere was warm, but not unbearably so—not hotter than it had been at noon in the ship. Steam crawled up from every pore, like the drainings of smoke from damp straw, but it did not add to the distress of my breathing. I made shift to stagger onward till I had gone about fifty feet from the wash of the sea. Nature then broke down; my knees gave way, I stumbled and fell—whether in a swoon or whether in a death-like slumber, I cannot say; all I can tell is that when I awoke, or recovered my senses, ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... our passions and imaginations, and we have drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, without our knowing where we are going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... were empty; she stretched out her hands, and the gesture was lifeless. She fixed her eyes on no one; she merely gazed about. She had a habit of shaking her bracelet in a way that aroused sympathy. And after making a lewd remark she would turn her head to one side, and thereby stagger even the most hardened frequenter of this sort of places. Her complexion had been ruined by rouge, but underneath the skin there was something that glimmered like water ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... comfort distressed babies by thrusting into their open mouths whatever was most convenient. At first this was her own small thumb, which she had once found good herself; but she soon discovered that infants can bite, and after that she offered rattle-handles. Later, she used to stagger from one hammock to another and swing them. And often, before she understood the perfect art of balance, she would find herself, to her surprise, on the floor, as the hammock in its rebound knocked her over. She felt this ungrateful of the baby inside; but ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... another bull's-eye!" he gleefully exclaimed, as he saw his man stagger and fall almost at the feet of Dr. Marlowe. "I don't know the gentleman's name, but a first-class obituary notice is in order. That makes six, and now for the seventh. I really hope the doctor is keeping ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... he dropped into the rigging, and ran along one of the lower yards; all eyes were following him. At a certain moment fear assailed them; whether it was that he was fatigued, or that his head turned, they thought they saw him hesitate and stagger. All at once the crowd uttered a loud shout: the convict had fallen ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... stare at him with blind rage; he watched him stagger and reach out groping hands for a chair, and he saw the huge defiance evaporate, leaving Joicey a ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... had knocked over the siphon. He rose, steadied himself, then walked out of the dining room. Except for the dull eyes and the extreme pallor of his face, there was nothing else to indicate that he was deep in liquor. He did not stagger in the least. And in this fact lay his danger. The man who staggers, whose face is flushed, whose attitude is either noisily friendly or truculent, has some chance; liquor bends him eventually. But men of the Spurlock ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... of the mountains of Bouru, which we have now approached considerably. Our crew seem rather a clumsy lot. They do not walk the deck with the easy swing of English sailors, but hesitate and stagger like landsmen. In the night the lower boom of our mainsail broke, and they were all the morning repairing it. It consisted of two bamboos lashed together, thick end to thin, and was about seventy feet ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... came up; a great volley of flying mist went out before it and whelmed the scene; the wind stormed with a sudden fierceness that carried away the minister's voice and twitched his tails and made him stagger, and turned the congregation for a moment into a mere pother of blowing plaid-ends and prancing horses; and the rain followed and was dashed straight into their faces. Men and women panted aloud in the shock of that violent shower-bath; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... foot, and hurt his toe, On the rough road near Buffalo. It quite distresses him to stagger a- Long the sharp rocks of famed Niagara. So thus he's doomed to drink the measure Of pain, in lieu of that of pleasure. On Hope's delusive pinions borne He came for wool, and goes back shorn. N.B.—Here he alludes to nothing but Th' adventure ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... see the Works of the Lord, and his Wonders in the Deep. For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy Wind, which lifteth up the Waters thereof. They mount up to the Heaven, they go down again to the Depths, their Soul is melted because of Trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken Man, and are at their Wits End. Then they cry unto the Lord in their Trouble, and he bringeth them out of their Distresses. He maketh the Storm a Calm, so that the Waves thereof are still. Then they are glad because they be quiet, so he bringeth them unto their ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... standing. Calling to the poor beast to cheer him, for he evidently was much exhausted and approached but slowly, they soon had the satisfaction of seeing him pass through the surf, which, even at this time, was not heavy in the cove, and, with the water pouring from his shaggy coat, stagger towards them, bearing in his mouth his burden, which he laid down at Forster's feet, and then shook off the accumulation of moisture from his skin. Forster took up the object of the animal's solicitude—it was the body of an infant, apparently a ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... restored strength we were able to go back, and recover the paraphernalia we had left upon the plain, along with two of the mules that, after resting, had regained their feet, and could stagger on a ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... control of domestic markets and domestic credits; and yet had enacted anti-trust laws which hampered the very things they meant to foster, which were stiff and inelastic, and in part unintelligible. It had permitted the country throughout the long period of its control to stagger from one financial crisis to another under the operation of a national banking law of its own framing which made stringency and panic certain and the control of the larger business operations of the country by the bankers of a few reserve centers inevitable; had ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... provokingly willing to comply with my demand, and, following me down stairs, entered the carriage. As we drove along, I inquired as to the fate of my valise, my clothes, and my horse; which latter, especially, I described in a way that appeared to stagger him. They were all, he said, in the magistrate's custody, and I should hear more of them, and doubtless recover them, if they were mine, when my claim was decided on. We found the important functionary at supper. I requested a private ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... had got as far as the bend of the stairs; then Howard, who had discreetly gone on, turned to go back to him. But as he came up with a word of wonder and repeated congratulations, he saw Stafford put his hand to his forehead, and, as it seemed to Howard, almost stagger. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... before the dance began, and before an hour had passed many more couples gave evidence of imbibing more freely than wisely. Occasionally a hysterical laugh burst shrilly above the pounding of the drums and the moaning of the saxophones. A couple would stagger awkwardly against another couple and then continue unevenly on an ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... young man a violent shock; feeling himself stagger, he leaned against a tree, like a man deprived for a moment of reason. Modest, who had left him, turned her ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... And particularly, I have, in a few words, handled this last, to show you that our sufferings are ordered and disposed by him, that you might always, when you come into trouble for his name, not stagger nor be at a loss, but be stayed, composed, and settled in your minds, and say, "The will of the Lord be done" (Acts 21:14). I will also say unto you this by the way, that the will of God doth greatly work, even to order and dispose of the spirits of Christians, in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his desk, he must stagger back with dismay at the piles on piles of letters heaped thereon. To read them all is out of the question; so he sits down and draws one forth, just as you would draw a card from the hand of someone ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... half-hour, was out of bed and on the ground, and there was no question of changing shifts until, after twenty-four hours, the storm had passed, and elevator, annex and marine tower were cleared of snow. Men worked until they could not stagger, then snatched a few hours' sleep where they could. Word was passed that those who wished might observe the regular hours, but not a dozen men took the opportunity. For now they were in the public eye, and they felt as soldiers feel, when, after long ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... lighting up painted faces; some laugh, some sing. Among them you see what appear to be women; they are in fact what once were women, with human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names. They float and stagger under the flaming torches in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is said, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... is—a wine-cellar. Going into the door are depraved men and lost women. Some stagger. All blaspheme. Men with rings in their ears instead of their nose; and blotches of breast-pin. Pictures on the wall cut out of the Police Gazette. A slush of beer on floor and counter. A pistol falls out of a ruffian's pocket. By the gas-light a ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... men live at ease Fades from our unregretful eyes, And blind, across uncharted seas, We stagger on ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... equivalent to them, does Kant state, by contradistinction, the value and the nature of his own procedure. He first, according to his own representation, thought of applying his investigation to the mind itself. Here was a passage which for years (I may say) continued to stagger and confound me. What! he, Kant, in the latter end of the 18th century, about the year 1787—he the first who had investigated the mind! This was not arrogance so much as it was insanity. Had he said—I, first, upon just principles, or with a fortunate result, investigated the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... however, did not last long—the latent consciousness of responsibility effectually prevented that; and he was soon able to rise and stagger to the pilot-house. Once there, he forthwith made his way below and availed himself of the stimulus afforded by a glass of neat brandy, after which he felt equal to the task which yet lay before him. Having swallowed ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... what heavy loads their spines will support. At the railway stations the luggage and freight is carried the same way. The necks and backs of the natives are developed at a very early age. If a porter can get assistance to hoist it to the top of his head he will stagger along under any burden all right. I have seen eight men under a grand piano and two men under a big American roller top desk, and in Calcutta, where one of the street railway companies was extending its tracks, I saw the workmen carry the rails upon ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... gate, laughing in triumph as he did so. It was then that my gallant Lizette made a supreme effort. It seemed as if in two strides she had caught up the grey and passed him; only to falter as she did so; then there was a long stagger, and down she came. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... murderers. Their attitude towards the hunters, together with scraps of conversation they had uttered, had bred in Charley's active mind a theory for their actions and object, a theory involving a crime so vile and atrocious as to stagger belief. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... bright wing, uplifted silently, Sweeps thro' the steadfast depths of the mind's heaven, Like the fixed splendor of the morning star— Nearer and nearer to the wasteless flame That in the centres of the universe Burns through the o'erlapping centuries of time. And shall it stagger midway on its path, And sink its radiance low as the dull dust, For the death-flutter of a fledgling hope? Or, with the headlong phrensy of a fiend, Front the keen arrows of Love's sunken sun, For that, with nearer vision it discerns ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... husband. "Personally, I've got something better to do than to burst down to South London, and stagger round floor after floor, staring ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... yards to cover, but such a fifty yards! His legs seemed of lead, too, while his head was swimming. No sooner had he commenced to stagger back, than the Germans opened fire on him; a hundred bullets whistled by him, while he heard yells of rage coming from ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... sprang a last searing blast of astonished anguish. It was as if he realized for the first time all that had befallen him since the morning. He was racked by a horrified desolation that made his sturdy old body stagger as if under an unexpected blow. As he reeled he flung his arm about the pine-tree and so stood for a time, shaking in a paroxysm which left him breathless when it passed. For it passed as suddenly as it came. He lifted his head and looked again at the great ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... pile of plates three feet high was sent spinning, a row of salad-bowls was over, and then with a heavy stagger Mr. Lennox went down into a dinner-service, sending the soup-tureen rolling gravely into ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... around the corner where the big house stood, and the white marble steps were heaped with snow. A great mass of the snow was dislodged by the movement of the door and fell in clouds over Towsley's big hat and fine costume; also the tight shoes upon his feet seemed to make him stumble and stagger sadly; but he was not to be deterred by such trifles as these. The cold breath of the wind was delightful to him, the rush of outer air ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... burning with eager desire to take some active part in the rescue, had restrained himself and held back, believing, with characteristic modesty, that the fishermen knew far better than he did how to face the sea and use their appliances; but when he saw his friend stagger backward, he sprang to the front, caught hold of the line, and, seizing the burly fisherman by the arm, exclaimed, "You'll let this land-lubber try it, anyhow," and sent him spinning away ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... two. The fourth rogue's thrust, Duke Joc'lyn blithely parried Right featly with the quarter-staff he carried. Then 'neath the fellow's guard did nimbly slip And caught him in a cunning wrestler's grip. Now did they reel and stagger to and fro, And on the ling each ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... flame forth from the ruins burst. No water! God! what shall we do to slake their quenchless thirst? The shocks have broken all the mains! "Use wine!" the people cry. The red flames laugh like drunken fiends; they stagger as to die, Then up again in fury spring, on high their crimson draperies fling; From block to block they leap and swing, and smoke clouds hide ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... could bring themselves to understand the meaning of Sam's words both the sufferers were revived by the excitement sufficiently to stagger to an upright position, but as only at intervals was the cheering sound heard, fatigue soon overpowered them again, and once ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... and taking the lanthorn went aft very quietly, but with a certain stagger in his walk, which I should have put down to the wine if it was not that his behaviour was free from all symptoms of ebriation. The change in him surprised me, but not so greatly as you might suppose; indeed, it excited my suspicions rather than my wonder. Fear worked in him unquestionably, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... flaming foxes, let them loose amidst the corn (Or the honest commonplaces) of the Philistines whose graces you regard with lofty scorn. And every one will say, As you squirm your wormy way, "If this young man expresses himself in terms that stagger me, What a very singularly smart young man this smart ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... the objects propelled, was a sign of his willingness to let the shadow of any man adopting his course obscure him, and of the simplicity of his attachment. If a bitter experience showed that frequently, indeed generally, they travelled scarce a tottering stagger farther than they were precipitated, the wretched consolation afforded by a side glance at a more enlightened passion, solitary in its depth, was Rockney's. Others perchance might equal his love, none the wisdom of it; actually none the vigilant ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the woods green and glad, and all the world gay, I have see what happened all over again. I have see his strong hands; his bad face laugh at my words; I have see him raise his riding-whip and cut me across the head. I have see him stagger and fall from the blows I give him with the knife—the knife which never was found—why, I not know, for I throw it on the ground beside him! There, as I sit in the open day, a thousand times I have see him shiver ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... when Netley walked up to the head of the table and laid down a cheque for a hundred dollars conditional on the fund reaching one hundred thousand the room was in an uproar. A hundred thousand dollars! Just think of it! The figures fairly stagger one. To think of a hundred thousand dollars raised in five minutes in a ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... that he never recognised the symptoms; he was so panic-stricken, so paralysed by the nameless fear that lay behind him, that he could only think of pressing forward. In the night hours he would suddenly rise from his precarious bed under the shadow of a fallen tree and stagger on, haunted by a picture of his ruthless foes pressing through the jungle in pursuit. Thus he accomplished his wonderful journey alone through trackless forests; thus he fended off the sickness which gripped him the moment that he laid ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... else. Marcello told her to see that Regina was perfectly dressed, and Settimia carried out his instructions with taste and wisdom. Regina had arrived in Paris with one box of modest dimensions; she left with four more, of a size that made the railway porters stagger. ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... the few hours that she ever spent in her own drawing room. For the rest she had the kitchen and the farmyard, and the world out of doors, the oaks and the grass, the great stretches of dim forest, the muddy trails, the blowing airs on the crest of the ridge that made her shout and stagger in their wild onslaught. Peter reminded himself that never in their years together had he heard her complain about anything, or seem to feel bored or ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... commander seemed to stagger back all of ten paces, the British sailors scurrying back to keep out of his way. Then the man fell, his head striking the deck with ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... by now so utterly spent I could barely stagger rapidly enough to escape those pitiless thrusts, I mechanically noted enough of our surroundings to understand that we traversed ground which had been cultivated; that low fences, here and there encountered, divided the land into small sections, even as in more civilized regions farmers protect ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... willingness, to go down with him to disaster and poverty and labor with her hands. Among all the men of that time I do not know of one who was more uncompromising, more obstinate, more determined as President Kruger put it, to make Great Britain "pay a price that would stagger humanity," or according to your own theory, more immoral, than your own ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... as if, in the boy's excited fancy, it too were searching for the lost estrays. And as one long beam seemed to linger over his hiding-place, he even thought that it might serve as a guide to Silsbee and the other seekers, and was constrained to stagger to his feet, erect in its light. But it soon sank, and with it Clarence dropped back again to his crouching watch. Yet he knew that the daylight was still good for an hour, and with the withdrawal of that mystic sunset glory objects became even more distinct and sharply ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... earth, with uncommon dignity and self-esteem. Nor will this appear so slight a circumstance as to be unworthy of mention, when it is remembered that the caravan was in uneasy motion all the time, and that none but a person of great natural stateliness and acquired grace could have forborne to stagger. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... almost terrifying, the storm broke over the ocean about three o'clock that morning. There was a terrific clap of thunder, a flash of lighting, and a deluge of rain that fairly made the staunch Falcon stagger, high in the ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... sheen of them she saw the lad leap from his rock and rush towards her. A flash fell and split a boulder not thirty paces from him, causing him to stagger, but he recovered himself and ran on. Now he was quite close, but the water was closer still. It was coming in tiers or ledges, a thin sheet of foam in front, then other layers laid upon it, each of them a few yards ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... because a man has been shut up in a dark prison for a long time, you had better keep him there, because it would be such a shock to him suddenly to face the light. Undoubtedly, it would be a shock. Undoubtedly, it would trouble and stagger people for a little while to be told the simple truth; but how is the world ever to get ahead, if you keep on, as a matter of policy, lying to it for ages? How is it ever going to find the truth? Shall I lie for the glory of God, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... because my birth and education had seasoned me in business of State; and because opinions (so young as I was) would sometimes stagger me; and because I thought that a man's own country has some special claims upon him more than the rest of the world; and because I hoped that, if I rose to any place of honour in the State, I should have ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... elephant stopped short in his charge and began to stagger in his death throes the Flying Man slipped to the ground and picked up his comrade, who had ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... that's rather unfair," I said. "I stagger home tired to the teeth after a particularly thin day in the City, followed by a sardine-tin journey, and my own wife turns on me in favour of the first outcast cat that comes along. It's enough to drive a man to dope." Or, as the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... vapor. Snaw, snow. Snell, bitter. Snooded, bound up with a fillet. Snool, cringe. Solan, gannet. Soote, sweet. Souter, cobbler. Spak, spoke. Spean, wean. Speel, climb. Spier, ask, inquire. Spraing, stripe. Sprattle, scramble. Spreckled, speckled. Spryte, spirit. Squattle, squat. Stacher, stagger, totter. Stane, stone. Steer, stir. Steyned, stained. Stibble, stubble. Still, ever. Stirk, young steer. Stole, robe. Stonen, stony. Stote, stout. Stoure, dust, struggle. Stown, stolen. Strang, strong. Strath, river-valley. Strathspeys, dances for two persons. Straughte, stretched. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... only to some who stand out from their fellows as great and good, but these to me,—from God to me to-day as surely as if there never had been a human being on the earth but myself, and the errand of Christ had been only and all for me! These glimpses stagger the man at first; he thinks they are too good to be true. It is as if some one should tell a skilful pearl merchant that under yon covering lay a pearl a thousand times more precious than any he had ever seen before: of course ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us; yet we heap up these old shells, out of which human life has long emerged, casting them off forever. I do not see how future ages are to stagger onward under all this dead weight, with the additions that will be continually made ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... great round paunch stuffed with straw, represented the disreputable old rake who, after a long course of dissipation, was now about to suffer for his sins. Hoisted on the shoulders of a sturdy fellow, who pretended to stagger under the burden, this popular personification of the Carnival promenaded the streets for the last time in a manner the reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a drummer and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... fired, not seeming to aim. The bullet struck one of the front wheels of Conniston's wagon. Almost at the same second Conniston fired. Fired and missed, and fired again. With the second report came a shrill cry from the man with the revolver, and Conniston saw him stagger, drop his gun, wheel half around, and fall. And where he fell he lay, writhing and calling ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... door bell is never silent. Crowds of young men in various stages of intoxication rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger into the wrong house. Some fall early in the day, and are put ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... that he would have attracted attention in almost any assemblage. Cautious, careful of consequences, and watchful of danger, he was at the same time bold, fearless, and ever ready to undertake enterprises which would stagger men of fewer mental resources. So exactly was he fitted to the time and the circumstances in which he was placed, that the conclusion is irresistible that he was a providential man, especially appointed to his work by a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... be kept concentrated to fight the enemy's cavalry. Heretofore, the commander of the Cavalry Corps had been, virtually, but an adjunct at army headquarters—a sort of chief of cavalry—and my proposition seemed to stagger General Meade not a little. I knew that it would be difficult to overcome the recognized custom of using the cavalry for the protection of trains and the establishment of cordons around the infantry corps, and so far subordinating ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... it out when necessary. In a few moments, although the time seemed hours to the watchers, the feet of Teach touched the shore, and although the terrific undertow of the wave that had dropped him there almost bore him back again, yet by a superhuman exertion he managed to stagger forward, and the next moment they saw him fall ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... enough to enable us and our charges to get well clear of the Channel and to the southward of Ushant before it changed, and then it gradually veered round until it came out strong from the north-west, when away we all went for Madeira, the slowest ships carrying every rag of canvas that they could stagger under, while the faster craft were unwillingly compelled to shorten down in order that all might keep together, while as for ourselves and the Astarte, the utmost that we could show, without running ahead of our station, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... does not understand. When she moves she draws the band that binds them, and hurts him, and he moves farther from her. The day will come when he will understand, and will know what she is doing. Let her once stagger on to her knees. In that day he will stand close to her, and look into ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... other; and, as he spoke, he seemed actually to stagger back a step or two, whilst the paleness of his complexion increased to a hue that was ghastly—"to Birney!—to my blackest and bitterest enemy—to the man who, I suspect, has important family documents of mine in his possession. Thanks, even for this, Crackenfudge—you are looking to become ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... however, it happened, sadly for the success of the enterprise, that a ball struck Captain Drake, and inflicted a serious wound. Ned was standing near him, and observed him stagger. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... of their castes and creeds, I let men worship as they will, I reap No revenue from the field of unbelief. I cull from every faith and race the best And bravest soul for counsellor and friend. I loathe the very name of infidel. I stagger at the Koran and the sword. I shudder at the ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... always found a bed at his sister's, no matter at what hour of day or night he chose to stagger in; but the large family combined efforts to prevent the contretemps of a meeting between him and Ruth. Their promise to her mother was too sacred for trifling, and they loved the girl too well to risk being deprived of her society. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... add something to what I had conceived of human powers. Perhaps you have chosen the part which, all things considered, may serve your purpose best; though I think more moderation would be more conciliating. The exterior of innocence will, I grant, stagger the persons who may have the direction of your fate, but it will never be able to prevail against plain and incontrovertible facts. But I have done with you. I see in you a new instance of that abuse which is so generally made of talents, the admiration of an ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... do any good at this rate," he gasped, "never—never;" and he pulled at the collar of his shirt till he tore it away. "We must have something to drink. We 'll die else, and I mean to have a fight for life. There's the old horse, he can't stagger a step further; what's the good of keeping him? Let's shoot him—and—and—There's ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... all at sea as to what is called Poetry, Art, &c., in these times; laboring under a dreadful incubus of Tradition, and mere "Cant heaped balefully on us up to the very Zenith," as men, in nearly all other provinces of their Life, except perhaps the railway province, do now labor and stagger;—in a word, that Goethe-and- Schiller's "Kunst" has far more brotherhood with Pusey-and- Newman's Shovelhattery, and other the like deplorable phenomena, than it is in the least aware of! I beg you take warning: I am more serious in this than you suppose. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... eye-piece of the great telescope and made him look. What the man saw made him stagger back, overcome with an emotion which for the moment did not allow him speech. What he saw upon the surface of the planet Mars was a duplication of the glittering figures on the pampas of the South American Republic. They were in lines of glorious ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... stand the severe exertion of going fast or far, no matter how healthy he may be in other respects. If such a horse be given a hard ride or drive, he may start off in high spirits, but soon becomes exhausted, and if he is pushed he will slacken his pace, show a desire to stop, and may stagger or even fall. Examination will show the nostrils dilated, the flanks heaving, the countenance haggard, and the appearance of suffocation. The heart and muscles were not accustomed to the sudden and severe ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... her arms around Jason's neck; and, lifting her from the ground, he stepped boldly into the raging and foamy current, and began to stagger away from the shore. As for the peacock, it alighted on the old dame's shoulder. Jason's two spears, one in each hand, kept him from stumbling and enabled him to feel his way among the hidden rocks; although every instant he expected that his companion and himself would ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... began to manifest some slight symptoms of distress. There was a strain in the carriage of her throat, a dulness in her eye, a laxity in her ear, and a slight stagger in her gait, which Turpin noticed with apprehension. Still she went on, though not at the same gallant pace as heretofore. But, as the tired bird still battles with the blast upon the ocean, as the swimmer still stems the stream, though spent, on went she: nor did Turpin dare to check her, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... these: about four o'clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the man's hat, on which he raised his stick ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... people. Collecting my thoughts, I blew out my lamp. I saw a man running rapidly along the street, followed by a great crowd shouting, 'Down with the Englishman.' The man ran so quickly that he distanced all his pursuers, and I already thought that he was saved, when I saw him stagger and fall. In a moment his pursuers were upon him, a loud cry was heard, and the next moment the unfortunate man was thrown into the river. Not long after all was still again. I lighted my lamp again ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Jonathan covered the foremost Indian, and with the crack of his rifle saw the redskin drop his gun, stop in his mad run, stagger sideways, and fall. Then the borderman looked to see what had become of his ally. The cracking of the Indian's rifle told him that Wetzel had been seen by ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... their appearance was certain to cause Percival. His illness and long residence on the island had weakened his physical force. In almost the first time in his life he felt a sensation of faintness, which made him turn pale and stagger, as he recognised the faces of the two persons whom he loved better than any other in the world—his friend and his betrothed. A thought of Brian, too, embittered this his first meeting with Elizabeth. Only one person noticed ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... spoke again as I went bounding up the stair. Black against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall. As he fell, for the third time, I heard ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... the afternoon when the latter met with an accident. Johnny, who had taken a spell at the rear, heard him cry out, saw him stagger, struggle to hold his footing, then sink into the snow. The dogs paused instantly, lay down, and began to strip the ice ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... seemed to stagger the group that had gathered about him. Fifteen dollars was a lot of money, and it seemed doubtful if any other individual in the crowd, with the possible exception of Eliot, could raise as much—and Eliot would ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... my son, thou art too hard, Not stagger'd by this ominous earth and heaven: But heaven and earth are threads of the same loom, Play into one another, and weave the web That may ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... without disturbing the moose. Another half-hour is then employed in creeping like snakes through the wet bushes. At length, as we reach the edge of the swamp, the great animal rises directly facing us, gazing steadily towards us. We fire. A headlong stagger follows the report; and the creature, turning round, is hidden from sight behind a clump of bushes. The Indian at the same time fires at a large cow moose who has, unknown to us, been lying close to the bull. We dash forward a few paces. On the other ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... glad with a "stagger" of the heart, to see your writing again. Many a moment have I had all my France and England curiosity suspended and lost, looking in the advertisement front column of the "Morning Post Gazetteer", for "Mr. Davy's Galvanic ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... jumble of shock and terror she saw Dudley Stackpole emerge into full sight, and standing clear a pace from his doorway return the fire; saw the thudding frantic hoofs of the nigh horse spurn Harve Tatum's body aside—the kick broke his right leg, it turned out—saw Jess Tatum suddenly halt and stagger back as though jerked by an unseen hand; saw him drop his weapon and straighten again, and with both hands clutched to his throat run forward, head thrown back and feet drumming; heard him give one strange bubbling, strangled scream—it was the blood in his throat ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dominate and transform them freely, so it would always continue to insulate them, so as not to lose its cross-vistas and its mobility. There is no reason, then, why individuals should not live for ever. But a condition seems to be involved which may well make belief stagger. It would be impossible for the universe to divide its images into particular minds unless it preserved the images of their particular bodies also. Particular minds arise, according to this philosophy, in the interests of practice: which means, biologically, to secure a better adjustment of the body ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... or not; I won't do it and I told him so. He got red hot in a jiffy. I was ungrateful and stubborn and all sorts of things. And I, bein' a Hammond, with some of the Hammond balkiness in me, I set my foot down as hard as his. And we had it until—until—well, until I saw him stagger and tremble so that I actually got scared and feared he was goin' to keel ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... one could in any wise make out which was to have the better of it. Erec exerts himself and strives; he brought his sword down upon his enemy's helmet, cleaving it to the inner lining of mail and making him stagger; but he stood firmly and did not fall. Then he attacked Erec in turn, and dealt him such a blow upon the covering of his shield that his strong and precious sword broke when he tried to pull it out. When he saw that his sword was broken, in a spite he threw ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... to confer with her husband. His resolution had begun to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that day, whose duty, by the laws of hospitality, it was to shut ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... political bosses almost hat in hand. That time was past, never to return. But still a competent political agent was even harder to find than a competent business manager—and was far more necessary; for, while a big business might stagger along under poor financial or organizing management within, it could not live at all without political favors, immunities, and licenses. A band of pickpockets might as well try to work a town without having first "squared" the police. Not that Mr. Hastings and his friends ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... down, and taking a small quantity between his fingers, threw it into the Wallachian's pipe, which immediately exploded, causing him to stagger backwards, and the next instant he stood with a blackened visage, sans beard and moustache, amidst the jeers and ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Record missed being the first to give out certain information that was to stagger the world. The dispatch, which had evidently outrun an earlier one, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the blame from the one she loved to the half-brother. But now that the Elder had gone her will to explain seemed gone, too. Again he rose before her imagination, a white trembling figure. She heard Harold speak the name of Adoniah Phillips, and saw her father stagger from the table. Had these two things been a mere coincidence? Doubts began to rise. Why must the mortgage be foreclosed on Uncle Josiah's place? Why had her father acted so on the evening when Harold had spoken his client's name? Had her father told her all? Why should all this involve the minister, ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... that the evidence which the pretender had hitherto produced, was only calculated to gain over persons of limited experience and strong legitimist prejudices. A circumstance, however, which afterwards took place, was of a nature to stagger more obstinate sceptics: it had indeed that effect. We translate it from the words of an individual who was present when it happened. The Duc de Normandie was at dinner, surrounded by several friends. ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... it not seldom happened, as candour was my principle, and a determination to receive what could be strewn to be truth, let it come from what quarter it would, that suggestions were presented to me, materially calculated to stagger the confidence with which I had set out. If I had been divinely inspired, if I had been secured by an omniscient spirit against the danger of error, my case would have been different. But I was not inspired. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... death. Wolfe was hit, but he did not heed it; Montcalm has received a musket ball, but he cannot yet die. The English battle does not yield; it advances, the light of victory is upon it. Backward stagger the French; Montcalm strives to check the fatal movement, but the flying death has torn its way through his body, and he can no more. Wolfe, even as the day was won, got his death wound in the breast, but "Support me—don't let my brave fellows see me drop," he gasped out. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... there, striking him again and again in the face. Twice the man tried to stab him with the steel compasses, but Marche dragged them out of his fist and hammered him until he choked and spluttered and collapsed on the ground, only to stagger to his feet again and lurch into the thicket of second growth. There he tripped and fell as Marche had fallen on the ivy, but, unlike Marche, he wriggled under the bushes and ran on, stooping low, never ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... My inward torments by my outward show: To let her see my weakness were too base; Dissembled quiet sit upon my face: My sorrow to my eyes no passage find, But let it inward sink, and drown my mind. Falsehood shall want its triumph: I begin To stagger, but I'll prop myself within. The specious tower no ruin shall disclose, Till down at once the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... did the dark-soul'd ATHEIST stand, And watch the breakers boiling on the strand, And, while Creation stagger'd at his nod, Mock the dread presence of the mighty God! We hear Him in the wind-heaved ocean's roar, Hurling her billowy crags upon the shore We hear Him in the riot of the blast, And shake, while rush the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have shaken him off. In fancy he could see himself swaying, writhing, reeling, battered about by those heavy fists, but always with his hands on the thick neck, squeezing out its life. He could feel, absolutely feel, the last reel and stagger of that great bulk crashing down, dragging him with it, till it lay upturned, still. He covered his eyes with his hands. . . . Thank God! The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Sir," on the slightest provocation. Opposite to him was his wife, a Roman-nosed lady, with an imperious manner, and a Colonel-subduing way of curling her lip. On my left was the funny man. As usual he was of a sea-green colour, and might be expected at any moment to stagger to a porthole and call faintly for the steward. Further down the table sat two young nincompoops, brought on board specially in order that they might fulfil their destiny, and fill out my story, by falling in love with the fluffy-haired ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... was made of tough fiber and the extreme shock that would leave some men stunned and prostrate only made him stagger a little. His revolver was spitting an intermittent stream of fire and it continued this after a second slug through his lungs had forced him to his knees. He sank down fighting and got his third fatal wound ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Reikjavik. Numerous groups of men and horses fill the streets; goods are loaded and unloaded; friends who have not met for a year or more welcome each other, others take leave. On one spot curious tents {44} are erected, before which children play; on another drunken men stagger along, or gallop on horseback, so that one is terrified, and fears every moment to ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had drawn $6,000 that I had in bank, and with that and a few things in a satchel I left the house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library I heard him stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train for New Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast anchor in La Paz. And now what have you to say? Can ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... first went to the jackal's house, but the hen could not touch his beer, it smelt so bad and the jackal drank it all; then they went to the hen's house and her beer was very nice and they both drank till the hen got very drunk and began to stagger about; and the jackal made up his mind that the hen must be very nice to eat, as her beer was so good to drink and when he saw her drunk he ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... unoccupied, for there, about fifty yards from him, he caught sight of his unfortunate young comrade, who, bugle in hand, was just struggling to his feet; and then, as he stood upright, he made a couple of steps forward, but only to stagger and reel for a moment; when, as his comrade uttered a cry, the boy tottered over the edge of the path, fell a few yards, and then rolled down the steep slope out ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... Franklin had been taught to think very well of himself and his career. For this reason he was, upon the one hand, somewhat indifferent as to setting down what smaller men would conceal, confident that his fame would not stagger beneath the burden of youthful wrong-doing; on the other hand, he deals rather gently, a little ideally, with himself, as old men are wont to acknowledge with condemnation tempered with mild forgiveness the foibles of their early days. It is evident that, as a young man, Franklin intermingled ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Me hard by the arm for a moment, but how on earth could it be? See how my feet are moving—awfully funny they look— Moving as if they belonged to a someone that wasn't me. The wind down the night's long alley bowls me down like a pin; I stagger and fall and stagger, crawl arm-deep in the snow. Beaten back to my corner, how can I hope to win? And there is the blizzard waiting to give ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... the blow went home. Falling upon the point of Wulf's steel helm, the heavy, razoredged scimitar glanced from it and shore away the links from the flap which hung upon his shoulder, causing the Frank to stagger. Again he struck, this time upon the shield, and so heavily that Wulf came to ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... down the stairway, also. Then Frank saw him lift himself and try to stagger to his feet. Without taking further note of this, Merriwell promptly closed with the other burglar on ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... mare jumped wide and clear, and her rider never even faltered in his saddle, Somerfield lost all his lead and only just kept his seat. They were on the homeward way now, with only one more jump, a double set of hurdles. Suddenly, in the flat, the Prince seemed to stagger in his ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the service to begin, it was generally agreed that the "Old King" with his usual shrewdness had "put his money on the winning horse." Even Alec Murray, though he kept a bold face, confided to his bosom friend, Rory Ross, that he "guessed his cake was dough, though they would make a pretty big stagger at it." ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... and then rolled over on his side, vomiting up the water he had swallowed and coughing it out of his lungs as well. Then Frobisher completed his work of restoration by administering a sip or two of brandy from the cup belonging to his emergency flask, and a few more moments later Ling was able to stagger to ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... look to thyself, and keep thee well from me," cried out Sir Accolon. But King Arthur answered not, and gave him such a buffet on the helm as made him stagger and nigh fall upon the ground. Then Sir Accolon withdrew a little, and came on with Excalibur on high, and smote King Arthur in return with such a mighty stroke as almost felled him; and both being now in hottest wrath, they gave each other grievous and savage ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... followed the transient outer Appearances thereof; and so was arrived here. Properly it is the secret of all unhappy men and unhappy nations. Had they known Nature's right truth, Nature's right truth would have made them free. They have become enchanted; stagger spell-bound, reeling on the brink of huge peril, because they were not wise enough. They have forgotten the right Inner True, and taken up with the Outer Sham-true. They answer the Sphinx's question wrong. Foolish men cannot answer it aright! Foolish men ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... confident of success. In the first shock, there was a slight advantage on his part, having succeeded in striking his lance so forcibly, and directly on the breast-plate of his adversary, that the incognito knight was observed somewhat to stagger; while Don Manuel remained immoveable as a rock—however, as no decided advantage could be claimed, the two champions prepared to renew the engagement. Again the swift-footed steeds fly over the lists, and again the combatants ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... sword. Then, leaguing himself with the mixed-breed natives or cameroons, he waylaid a guarded mule-train bearing treasure across the Isthmus, securing 15 tons of silver which he buried, and as much gold as his men could stagger away under. It was on this foray that he first saw the Pacific from a height of the Cordilleras, and resolved to steer an English squadron into this hitherto unmolested ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... these embryo professionals are not confined to any one kind of theft. They are adepts in all the ways of petty thieving. Sometimes, a drunken sailor or 'longshoreman will stagger out of a saloon and, unsteadily navigating along, will fall, or seat himself on a door-step and, either falling asleep or into a semi-conscious condition, will be surrounded by a gang of these playful boys, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
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