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More "Waver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a flush of colour through the girl's transparent skin, but her eyes did not waver as she looked ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... now began to waver. It occurred to him that should Colonel Clifford die and Walter inherit his estates, he could easily come to terms with the young man so passionately devoted to his daughter. He had only to say: "I can make no allowance at present, but I'll settle my whole fortune upon Mary and her children ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... knew she was herself the real cause of Mr Arnott's resistance, now felt her resolution waver, internally reproaching herself with the sufferings of his sister; alarmed, however, for her own constancy, she earnestly besought Mrs Harrel to go and compose herself for the night, and promised to deliberate what could be done for her ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to repeat the conversation that here ensued, suffice it to say, that Montraville used every argument that had formerly been successful, Charlotte's resolution began to waver, and he drew her almost imperceptibly ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... language, which somehow or other is charged with the whole personality of the author; but the personality itself is in the sharpest antithesis. The Virgilian phrases, with their grave pity, are steeped in a golden softness that is just touched with a far-off trouble, a pathetic waver in the voice as if tears were not far below it. Those of Tacitus are charged with indignation instead of pity; "like a jewel hung in ghastly night," to use Shakespeare's memorable simile, or like the red and angry autumnal star in the Iliad, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... evident joy of the other—the flush that tinged her cheek, the smile that dwelt, but for a moment, upon her pallid lip, gave such evidence of the state of the maiden's heart, that Dalton could not waver in his opinion—could not for an instant doubt that all his cherished plans were as autumn leaves, sent on some especial mission through the air, when a whirlwind ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... number of hours for rest and for work, to the kind of food to eat, the way to dress, to heat and light up the rooms. With all this Simonson was very shy and modest; and yet when he had once made up his mind nothing could make him waver. And this man had a decided influence on Maslova through his love for her. With a woman's instinct Maslova very soon found out that he loved her. And the fact that she could awaken love in a man of that kind raised her in her own estimation. It was Nekhludoff's magnanimity and what ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... they claimed the support of the king. Montlosier, who belonged to their order, pronounced that their case was good and their argument bad. Twice they gave the enemy an advantage. When they saw the clergy waver, they resolved, by their usual majority of 197 to 44, that each order possessed the right of nullification; so that they would no more yield to the separate vote of the three Estates than to their united vote. Evidently the country would support those who denied ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... me, persuading me to abandon the idea. The magnificence and liberality which he showed in the costly presents bestowed upon me, that I might return with honour and wealth to my own country, more than once made me waver in my resolution. The evening before my departure he made a last attempt, but in vain. My refusal was at least softened by the tears which I shed, for now that the time of departure was so near, I felt how truly, how devotedly ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... captain; or, if no ship's officer be near, such guidebooks or sailing directions as may be within reach are consulted for a solution of the splendid sight. But, before the pages can be turned the gigantic columns begin to waver and vibrate in the intensely heated air: now they come nearer, and the sun glances upon their crystalline sides, anon they retreat and fade, until the whole fabric is transformed into, or lost in, a luxuriant expanse partly covered with enormous trees. It is probably ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and power from one prince which were so rudely and gallingly torn from me by another. I perceive that I have acted imprudently; but what is done, is done: no private scruples, no private interest, shall make me waver in a cause that I have once pledged myself to serve; and if I can do aught to make a weak cause powerful, and a divided party successful, I will; but, Devereux, you are wrong,—this is not my element. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man was ever debating within himself what course he should pursue, and, according to his mood and to the state of his mind at any particular moment, he would waver between various widely-differing lines ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... embarrassment you have hitherto felt, nor at your cautious examination of my opinions, which are better understood the more thoroughly they are examined and compared with those they oppose. It is impossible to annihilate at once deep-rooted prejudices. The mind of man appears to waver in a void when those ideas are attacked on which it has long rested. It finds itself in a new world, wherein all is unknown. Every system of opinion is but the effect of habit. The mind has as great difficulty to ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... was no other than an impostor whom they had brought to defraud her sorrow. Trunnion was confounded at this unaccountable passion, which had no other foundation than caprice and whim; and Gamaliel himself was so disconcerted and unsettled in his own belief, which began to waver, that he knew not how to behave towards the boy, whom his godfather immediately carried back to the garrison, swearing all the way that Perry should never cross their threshold again with his good-will. Nay, so much ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... that of the Union forces on either flank, and the two corps under Howard were in danger of being surrounded by the greater numbers of their adversaries. The lines began to waver under the fearful storm of lead and iron, and the order was given to fall back. The lines retired in good order until they reached the town. There, in passing through the streets, the Germans became confused and alarmed, and the retreat of the corps became a rout. Twelve hundred were taken ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a helpless, pitiful way,—then lie down as if ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... principles and results involved in this most important affair, and not shrink from the duties imposed on you, to avoid a few present unpleasant consequences. It is not for me to prescribe rules of conduct to be observed by you, but I must say, that I am surprised that any circumstance should cause you to waver for a moment in reference to your visit to Europe. If you were to decline coming, would not the many on the other side, who are strictly watching your movements, at once say that the whole arrangements are deceptive, and merely designed to make an ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... formation of the procession. The discarded lover gazed steadfastly into Dorrance's countenance in passing to his place, in recognition that scouted assimilarity with salutation, but his eye did not waver or ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... rather as if aloft Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's Burthen of honey-coloured buds to kiss And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this. Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround, How it should waver on the pale gold ground Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts! I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb: But these are only massed there, I should think, Waiting ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... above a base-line of exuberant weed and foam. The long sea-frontage of this rock-rampart is fissured by only a few narrow clefts. On the left hand, facing oceanward, the coast is a labyrinth of mountain fiords, straits, and bays, where you may see great craggy shoulders and domed summits waver in their crystal calm at the flick of a gull's dipping wing, or add to the terror of the tempest as they start out black and unmoved behind rifts of swirling mists. On the right there is the same fretwork of land and water, but wrought in less ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... is Darmstadt," said my companion, leaning over the car. "Do you perceive the chateau? Not very distinctly, eh? What would you have? The heat of the storm makes the outline of objects waver, and you must have a skilled eye to ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... orders for her passage to be engaged in the first vessel that sailed, she could not now retract; and must prepare for the lonely voyage, as the Captain intended taking advantage of the first fair wind. She had too much strength of mind to waver in her determination but to determine wrung her very heart, opened all her old wounds, and made them bleed afresh. What was she to do? where go? Could she set a seal to a hasty vow, and tell a deliberate ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... saw desperate marches in the Valley, with the outnumbering Federals hot-foot on the trail of Jackson, who turned to bay one moment and at the next was off again. On the sixth the Federals got home against his rear guard. It began to waver, and Ashby ordered the infantry to charge. As he gave the order his horse fell dead. In a flash he was up, waving his sword and shouting: "Charge, for God's sake, charge!" The Confederate line swept forward gallantly. But, just as it left the wood, ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... reached the much-coveted point—the crown of the last ascent; and when he smelled fire and the savory odor of the jerked buffalo meat, it well-nigh caused him to waver! But he must not fail to follow the custom of untold ages, and give the game scout's wolf call ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... world, were slaves—"knocked and beat about—and made to work out in all weathers." It was this that made many falter and give up their purpose to gain their freedom by flight, but Randolph was not one of this class. His young heart loved freedom too well to waver. True to his love of liberty, he left all, followed the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... he returned gravely and gently; "I have been thinking of this country—and its people." He smiled at her, his eyes shining with a light that caused hers to waver and droop. "But how did you discover that?" he questioned. "I was not aware that I had been speaking ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... made aware of this public sentiment, he still did not waver in his loyalty to the old pieces. Day after day he unpacked and dusted and polished them with loving devotion. They spoke to him of other days, and when he was quite sure that the last freight bill had been paid, he seemed really to enjoy them. The ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... breath control, and a rather surprising quality of tone and accuracy of intonation. As a demonstration of flexibility, about the middle of the first movement, he takes the quarter note B-natural in falsetto and immediately drops into the waver a tenth below, at the same time assuming his natural voice. The falsetto tone is indicated in the transcription by a tiny circle above the note. All of the wavered tones, as well as the falsetto at the beginning and ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... waver. She began to sense his object in introducing this subject, and she was determined to make him feel that his conclusions were incorrect—as ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... but his gun did not waver. It pointed straight at the breast of Holman Sommers, who looked at him measuringly when he ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... removing from among them a body of men whose servility made them mere tools of the Crown, while it averted—if but for the moment—the growing pressure for the abolition of episcopacy. Things were fast coming to a standstill, when the discovery of the army plot changed the whole situation. Waver as the Peers might, they had no mind to be tricked by the king and overawed by his soldiery. The Commons were stirred to their old energy, London itself was driven to panic at the thought of passing into the hands of a mutinous and unpaid army. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... choice of three instruments to select from; but his heart did not waver for long, ere it became fixed upon the pianoforte as the fittest interpreter of his genius, and he was true to his first love to the end. His 'Three Sonatas for the Pianoforte,' written about this time, gives us the ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Mrs. Burton did not waver for more than an instant, however. In a way of speaking she gripped her conscience by the neck, strangled it, and threw it into the discard. Then she ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... heard this answer of King Triple-victory, he suddenly escaped from his shoulder and went back. And the king wished to do as the monk had asked him; so he decided to go back and get him. Great-minded people do not waver until they have kept their promises, even at the cost ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... a business career came to him, Allen was completely overpowered by his sense of its importance. He blessed books and book agents, since they had been the indirect means to this much-desired end. His chance had come to him just when his optimism had begun to waver, with the hydra's heads multiplying beyond belief; and he proposed to show Alice especially, and Mr. Gorham incidentally, that he was no mere callow youth idly waiting by the wayside. There could be no doubt whatever regarding his ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... and date are lost in obscurity. Even of "orthodox" theologians few, with any claims to scholarship, now hold that these Gospels, as they stand, were written by the persons whose names they bear. They wander and waver in a thick fog. See Milman's "History of Christianity," vol. i. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the Trial of the Twenty-two Girondins was the greatest that Fouquier had then done. But here is a still greater to do; a thing which tasks the whole faculty of Fouquier; which makes the very heart of him waver. For it is the voice of Danton that reverberates now from these domes; in passionate words, piercing with their wild sincerity, winged with wrath. Your best Witnesses he shivers into ruin at one stroke. He demands that the Committee-men themselves come as Witnesses, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to the conduct of an executive policy, and the management of a popular assembly. Macaulay never showed himself deficient in the qualities which enable a man to trust his own sense; to feel responsibility, but not to fear it; to venture where others shrink; to decide while others waver; with all else that belongs to the vocation of a ruler in a free country. But it was not his fate; it was not his work; and the rank which he might have claimed among the statesmen of Britain was not ill exchanged for the place which he occupies in ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... but rather as if aloft Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's Burthen of honey-colored buds, to kiss And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this. {10} Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround, How it should waver, on the pale gold ground, Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts! I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb: But these are only massed there, I should think, Waiting to see some wonder momently ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... table in our closed room served to quiet these qualms considerably. Nevertheless, I was not displeased to remember our bargain with Don Sanchez, feeling that I should breathe more freely when he had taken this store of gold out of my hands, etc. Thus did my mind waver this way and that, like a weather-cock to the blowing ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... appeared the slim figure of the other girl. Her great eyes were wistful, her face was pale. She came toward them through the red firelight. Mr. Magee saw what a fool he had been to waver in his allegiance even for a moment. For he loved her, wanted her, surely. The snow-capped heights are inspiring, but far more companionable is the brook that sparkles in ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... quick as thought, with thrilling cheers, the noble hearts rush into the leaden torrent which pours down the incline. With unabated fire the gallant fellows press through. Their fierce onset is not even checked. The foe do not wait for them,—they waver, break, and fly. The Guardsmen spur into the midst of the rout, and their fast-falling swords work a terrible revenge. Some of the boldest of the Southrons retreat into the woods, and continue a murderous fire from behind trees and thickets. Seven Guard horses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... hot and forgot all fear, except a spasm of terror lest his light should burn low and die out. The bleating had quite ceased now, and there was not even a sigh to guide him; but he knew that near him the lambs must be, and he did not waver nor despair. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... any more. She was trembling so that her very thoughts seemed to waver. They turned the corner of the old road, and drove up to her old house. Richard stepped off the sled, and held out his hands to Sylvia. "Come, get ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... study of complex emotion as she looked at her baby, but Pam's triumphant satisfaction did not waver for a moment. She nodded ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... heart turned to water in my breast. Kings have many ears. Could he have heard? And how dared I go before the Lion bearing his living child hidden on my back? Yet to waver was to be lost, to show fear was to be lost, to ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... humanity had vanished. As Nick gazed, the head seemed to waver in the midst of the strange fluid, and then, suddenly, Nick saw, in a direct line where it had been, ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... in that supreme moment when his precious life was at stake, did she waver in courage or presence of mind. From the moment that he jumped up and took the candlesticks in his hands, her sixth sense showed her as in a flash what he meant to do and how he would wish ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... course of my narrative I enumerate his writings, I shall take care that my readers shall not be left to waver in doubt, between certainty and conjecture, with regard to their authenticity; and, for that purpose, shall mark with an asterisk (*) those which he acknowledged to his friends, and with a dagger (dagger) those which are ascertained to be his by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... his stride, held fast by sheer amazement. The revolver pointed straight at him. It did not waver a hair's breadth. He knew how well she could shoot. Only the day before she had killed a circling hawk with a rifle. The bird had dropped like a plummet, dead before it struck the ground. Now, as his gaze took in the pantherish ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... man it is a misery to waver, as even the most resolute must do sometimes; for instance, the mighty Napoleon himself. That great man felt the misery so keenly, and grew so angry with himself for letting in the mental pain, that he walked about vehemently, as a horse is walked when cold water upon a hot stomach has ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... wicked ghouls—he converts evil to good, and he drives to their destruction the countries and men—who devote themselves to black magic." In addition to natural light, he sheds upon the earth truth and justice abundantly; he is the "high judge" before whom everything makes obeisance, his laws never waver, his decrees are never set at naught. "O Sun, when thou goest to rest in the middle of the heavens—may the bars of the bright heaven salute thee in peace, and may the gate of heaven bless thee!—May Misharu, thy well-beloved servant, guide aright thy progress, so that on Rbarra, the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... headquarters after the 14th of September. I know by many expressions uttered by Burnside during those days and afterward, that though he was deeply grieved at some things which had occurred, he did not waver in his loyal friendship to McClellan. He uttered no unkind word in regard to him personally, either then or ever in my hearing. He sometimes spoke of what he believed to be mischievous influences about McClellan and which he thought were too powerful with him, but was earnest ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... jar, quake, shiver, totter, brandish, joggle, quaver, shudder, tremble, flap, jolt, quiver, sway, vibrate, fluctuate, jounce, reel, swing, wave, flutter, oscillate, rock, thrill, waver. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... The audacity of the proceeding was sufficient to make the iron will of even Lennox Sanderson waver. And yet, to lose her! Such a contingency was not to be considered. His mind flew backward and forward like a shuttle, he turned the leaves of his book; he smoked, but no light came from within ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... my command on the field. I sent one of my staff-officers to find where they were, and General Ricketts, the only officer we could find, stated that he could not raise three hundred men of the corps." General Mansfield's corps also had been checked, and now "began to waver and break." ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... became deeply absorbed again. Then the watching man saw the decision in his eyes waver, and his lean hand move up to his head, and its fingers pass wearily ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... with his eyes wide-open, and the eyeballs turned slightly upward, apparently staring at the deck above him. But the gaze was without intelligence; and the fellow appeared to be quite unconscious of his surroundings, for he took no notice whatever of Leslie's entrance; nor did the eyes waver in the least when the latter spoke to him, Leslie laid his hand upon the forehead of his late antagonist, and found it cool to the touch, although clammy with perspiration. Then he laid his fingers upon the man's wrist, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... alert, so that when, rounding a corner, he perceived entering the main road from a side-street in front of him a small knot of pedestrians, he did not waver, but was seized with a keen spasm of presence of mind. Without pausing in his stride, he pointed excitedly before him, and at the same moment shouted the words, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... married and were to sail for America. They then discovered that Archie's desk had been opened and L46 in notes and gold taken. Neither of the men had any doubt as to the thief; and therefore Archie was angry and astonished to find his father doubt and waver and seem averse to pursue him. At last he acknowledged all, told Archie that if he made known his loss, he also must confess that he had knowingly harbored an acknowledged thief, and tacitly given him the opportunity of wronging his ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... it was simple lack of faith," says Cora. "I put myself in tune with the Infinite and make my claim upon the all-good—and then I waver. The loss of that dollar was a punishment ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Nussberg, and force the pass of Heiligenstadt. But the Turks disputed every inch of the ground, making breastworks of every hillock, trenches of every hollow. They defended the way with such desperation that the Austrian cavalry began to waver. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... previously convinced of Christ's truth. They seemed indeed to waver when he suffered, but his resurrection, the opportunities which they had with him after that event, and his ascension, which they had witnessed, must have removed every doubt. But this did not quality them for their work. It did not ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... attacked the French and seemed, it was said, to waver; but at last urged on or even threatened by the Prussian Marshal Blcher, he decided to cross the Partha above the village of Mockau, at the head of his troops and a Russian corps which had been placed under his ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... and musing a considerable time,—even till the old clock from the turret of the house told twelve, he turned away with a sigh, and went to bed. The wind moaned through the ancestral trees; the old house creaked as with ghostly footsteps; the curtains of his bed seemed to waver. He was now at home; yes, he had found his home, and was sheltered at last under the ancestral roof after all those long, long wanderings,—after the little log-built hut of the early settlement, after the straight roof of the American house, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... argument with me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking, the whole system rose up before me like a vague destiny looming from the Abyss. I never before so clearly felt the Spirit of God in me and around rue. The whole room seemed to me full of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro with the presence of Something I knew not what. I spoke with the calmness and clearness of a prophet. I cannot tell you what this revelation was. I have not yet studied it enough. But I shall perfect it one day, and then you shall ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... contested by the two armies; banners rose and fell, and the whole field was slippery with blood, and strewn with fragments of armor, shivers of lances and arrows, and rags of scarfs and pennons. The English troops began to waver. "They fail! they fail!" was the Scottish cry, and as they pressed on with double vehemence, there rose a shout that another host was coming to their aid. It was only the servants on the Gillies Hill, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... are braver— Her women's hearts ne'er waver; I'd freely die to save her, And think ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... may also be the expression of the highest truth and the purest sentiment. Plato himself seems to waver between two opposite views—when, as in the third Book, he insists that youth should be brought up amid wholesome imagery; and again in Book X, when he banishes the poets from his Republic. Admitting that the arts, which ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Virginia, sir. Others may doubt and waver and be confused. I think I know what you're going to do, ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... go. What else could I do? I saw you wished to be free. I saw that my feelings, yes—if you will have the truth—my love for you weighed as nothing in the scale against your newly-found fortune. I saw you waver, hesitate. I did not hesitate. And now I am rich, I am famous, you come to me. You offer me that worthless thing,—your love. When I was poor, struggling alone, friendless, did you even write to me? Did you by word or look recognize me? No! The farce ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... dear," said Mr. Trapp much as a man might announce the capture of a fish: and though he did not actually lift me for inspection his hand seemed to waver ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... put it aside lightly, as a man should, for if one followed every vagrant fancy and intuition, taking account of signs and omens, he would slue and waver in his course like a toy boat in a mill pond, which after great labor and adventure comes, in the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... men reason thus with themselves. If doubts about the future have already risen—if my affections already begin to waver at times—what is not to be expected after marriage? And is it not better to separate, even without a mutual concurrence, than to make others, perhaps many ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... of notions. Not that he looked at either of us. He smiled only to himself, and to his plateful of meat, and to the small bottle of Bass's pale ale that stood before him—ultimate allowance of one who had erst clashed cymbals in Naxos. This small bottle he eyed often and with enthusiasm, seeming to waver between the rapture of broaching it now and the grandeur of having it to look forward to. It made me unhappy to see what trouble he had in managing his knife and fork. Watts-Dunton told me on another occasion that this infirmity of ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Ursins, I described her as living in the midst of the Court, flattered and caressed by all, and on the highest terms of favour with the King and Madame de Maintenon. She found her position, indeed, so far above her hopes, that she began to waver in her intention of returning to Spain. The age and the health of Madame de Maintenon tempted her. She would have preferred to govern here rather than in Spain. Flattered by the attentions paid her, she thought those attentions, or, I may say, rather those servile adorations, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... desired effect. The bishops embarked zealously in the crusade, and the people entered willingly into the delusion. The dependent republic of Pskof and the principality of Twer, paralyzed in the convulsion, appeared to waver; but Ivan, resolved to deprive Novgorod of any help they might ultimately be tempted to offer, drew out their military strength, under the form of a contingency, and left them powerless. Yet, although strongly reenforced on all sides, he still avoided a contest. With a mingled exhibition ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... view of this, does by this article most solemnly declare and avow that all the foregoing are according to his most unbiased views—that such, and only such, he will ever support, nor shrink, nor waver from, nor expose the same, even in the agonies of death, on flood, or field, in prison, on the rack, scaffold, or feathered couch—that he understands this fully, and all the bearings of it, with all of the foregoing, his name, which he deliberately, without compulsion, sets to this ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... at his gun, caught instead one of the compradore's halberds, and without pause or warning, jumped out into the shallow water. He ran splashing toward the bank, turned, and seemed to waver, staring with wild eyes at the strange Tudor weapon in his ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... tongue and checked his foot in the very instant of assault. The student, watching his blade and awaiting the attack, was surprised to see his point waver and drop. Was it a trick, he wondered? A stratagem? No, for a silence fell on the room, while those who held the floor hastened to efface themselves against the wall, as if they at any rate had nothing to do with the fracas. And next moment ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... steel-pointed arrows, And bullets thick did fly; Then did our valiant soldiers Charge on most furiously; Which made the Spaniards waver, They thought it best to flee, They fear'd the stout behaviour Of ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... revolver directly at Billy, whose thumb on the switch did not waver, and they could see the gleaming bullet-tips in the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... going back, was in my hands, and before another man could have made himself master of the business much time would have been lost, and great inconveniences would have followed. Some, who opposed the Court soon after, began to waver then, and if I had not wanted the inclination I should have wanted no help to do mischief. I knew the way of quitting my employments and of retiring from Court when the service of my party required it; but I could not bring myself ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... not quite come up to my childish idea of a boy hero, but I admired his self-reliance and bravery. I did not want him to despise me or my lack of spirit. I began to waver in ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... to which Orsini would have paid no attention but which Vittoria was too prudent to disregard, and she retired to her brother's house, leaving the Duke in a state of frenzied rage that threatened insanity. Then the Pope seemed to waver again, and then again learning that the lovers saw each other constantly in spite of his commands, he suddenly had Vittoria seized and imprisoned in Sant' Angelo. It is impossible to follow the long struggle that ensued. It lasted four years, at the end ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and Sulla. But the wish to terminate the war outweighed every other consideration, and Sulla agreed to undertake the perilous task which Marius suggested to him. He boldly departed under the guidance of Volux the son of king Bocchus, nor did his resolution waver even when his guide led him through the midst of Jugurtha's camp. He rejected the pusillanimous proposals of flight that came from his attendants, and marched, with the king's son at his side, uninjured through the enemy. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how hard, not to show that she was watching, she searched his face, saw it waver and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his brows, the blood rush into his face. He answered: "Not Sunday, dear; some ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is wonderful, to last ten is marvelous, but to grow bigger and better for fourteen years is a little short of miraculous. McClure is recognized as the father of the movement and his faith didn't waver a hair's breadth. And sure enough there was the crowd—standing room only, to hear the governor and see the great cartoonist J. T. McCutcheon of the Chicago Tribune. For three evenings and two days the big hall is crowded with patrons, pupils and teachers from the towns and country ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... we have assisted at a deplorable example of our Latin impressionability. The first German victories have made Italians waver, and Germany is taking advantage of the popular nervousness, and is working on public opinion in countless ways. Italy is invaded by Germans, who assert that Germany will issue victorious, and that her commercial and industrial activity will not be arrested. We are inundated with ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... he was assaulted and escaped with difficulty into White's club. Members of Brooks's were believed to be concerned in the outrage, which increased Pitt's growing popularity. The opposition began to waver. On March 1 a fresh address to the king for the removal of the ministers was carried by only twelve votes. George again refused his assent. Fox shrank from attempting the extreme measure of refusing supplies; it would, indeed, have been useless, for his ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... whom were coming toward her, broke the charm. With a rapid movement, she withdrew from my embrace, and I offered her my arm, just as if we were in a drawing-room and I was about to lead her out for a dance; she took it, but I did not feel elated at this, for I could feel her knees waver at every step. The smallest crevasse, which she had crossed before with such agility, now inspired her with a horror which I could divine by the trembling of her arm within mine. I was obliged to make numerous detours in order to avoid them, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in "taking care" of ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the Potomac to a standstill. But he would not admit failure. Led by Pickett of Virginia, thirteen thousand men charged across the valley between the two armies directly at the Union center. Some of them even penetrated the Union lines. But there the line stopped. Slowly it began to waver. Then back the Confederates went—all who escaped. The battle of Gettysburg was won. Lee faced the Army of the Potomac for another day and then retreated. In this tremendous conflict the Confederates lost twenty-two thousand five hundred ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... an eve is Sigurd in the ancient Niblung hall, Where the cloudy hangings waver and the flickering shadows fall, And he sits by the Kings on the high-seat, and wise of men he seems, And of many a hidden marvel past thought of man he dreams: On the Head of Hindfell he thinketh, and how fair the woman was, And how that his love hath blossomed, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... Gramont now arrived at the palace with his report of the interview with Werther, in which the latter had persistently declared that the king had nothing whatever to do with Leopold's withdrawal. The emperor's unstable mind began to waver; he forgot or put aside his arrangement with M. Ollivier—that the ministers should meet him next morning for consultation over this new aspect of the affair—and he proceeded then and there ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... eyes; he seemed to waver, and she steadied her own face for fear of doing the one thing that would not move him. Now she did not pray: she had a dread of asking for herself, lest God, in punishment, should grant the prayer and let worse follow. Escape ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... a trifle more sternly than usual, his handsome head was held high with fine military bearing. He came forward without faltering for even so much as the fraction of a waver. There was not a flicker in his eyes set straight ahead. One would never have known from his looks that he recognized the oncoming man, or had so much as realized that an officer was approaching, yet his brain was doing some rapid calculation. He had said in his heart if not openly ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... inflexible devotion to duty, is not a surer proof of the natural fact of death than the mammoth that died in Alaska before man's appearance on the earth. The law of growth is the law of death. Life begins, it increases, it reaches its meridian, it begins to waver and then steadily to decline, till at length the bodily ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... to left almost simultaneously, following closely the retreating enemy, without further orders. They encountered a fearful volley of grape and canister from near thirty pieces of artillery, and musketry from still well filled rifle pits on the summit of the ridge. Not a waver, however, was seen in all that long line of brave men. Their progress was steadily onward until the summit was in ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... doing out on the pond in such a storm?" asked Jasper. His lips were white, but he didn't allow his eyes to waver, for it was better to have the whole story before getting back ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... background, giving every one rather plainly to understand that he did not care for conversation. Now, he came forward, his face, which had been set and grim and moody all evening, was white and his eyes were burning. Never for one moment, did those eyes waver from the Mariposa. He seemed Entirely oblivious to the rest of the group, and it was obvious that for him they simply ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... not matter to him at that moment. He saw her beauty clearly; he was able to note all the fluid fascination of her delicious youthfulness; the charm of it went to him; and yet he felt no inclination to waver in his allegiance to Lady Sellingworth. It was as if a personality enveloped him, held his senses as well as his mind in a soft and powerful grasp. Not that his senses were irritated to alertness, or played upon to exasperation. They were merely inhibited from any activity ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... the pseudo-king rode back and forth along his lines. Three of his staff were killed and two horses were shot from beneath him, but from the moment that he appeared the Luthanian line ceased to waver or fall back. The advanced trenches that they had abandoned to the Austrians they took again at the point of the bayonet. Charge after charge they repulsed, and all the time there hovered above the enemy Lutha's sole aeroplane, watching, watching, ever watching ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you order me for the service of our Master, if I had been at full liberty so to do; you must have no doubt about it, because my inclination and my duty agree perfectly well. All the advantages that I am offered did not for a moment cause me to waver, but, in short, sir, I could not go to Paris, and I shall be happy to go and meet you by the route you travel. I shall be well pleased to find landed the people you state will be there; in case they may have the commission you speak of in your two ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... as though the dusty surface had been peeled off everything, leaving only the reality and the instant. It had the look of a vision printed on the dark at night. White and grey and purple figures were scattered on the green, round wicker tables, in the middle the flame of the tea-urn made the air waver like a faulty sheet of glass, a massive green tree stood over them as if it were a moving force held at rest. As she approached, she could hear Evelyn's voice repeating monotonously, "Here then—here—good doggie, come here"; for a moment nothing seemed to happen; it all stood still, and ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... morning's paper. He was evidently very much engrossed in his task, as Speed had said. If he had looked about him, which he did not, he would have said that he was entirely alone. All at once his attention seemed to waver, and he passed his hand over his brow, while perplexity came into his face. Then he noticed that his pipe was out, and, knocking the ashes from it by rapping the bowl on the side of the table, he filled it with an absent-mindedness unusual with him. Again he turned to his writing, and again ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... well as the body? Did the veteran make himself disastrously felt in the leader? In a word, was this genius, as many historians of note have thought, suffering from an eclipse? Did he go into a frenzy in order to disguise his weakened powers from himself? Did he begin to waver under the delusion of a breath of adventure? Had he become—a grave matter in a general—unconscious of peril? Is there an age, in this class of material great men, who may be called the giants of action, when genius grows short-sighted? Old age has no hold on the geniuses of the ideal; for the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 1779 many of the Indians at Machias and Passamaquoddy began to waver in their adherence to the Americans and to imagine they would fare better by withdrawing from John Allan and returning to their old haunts on the River St. John. Allan wrote in the autumn of this year, "The unsteady conduct of the Indians has obliged me to use ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... to spend the day in seeking salvation; and the manner in which they made known this purpose to their teacher, and carried it out, has been already related. (See p. 116). From that day, she never seemed to waver. As soon as she found peace for herself, she sought to make others acquainted with her Saviour; not forgetting, however, that prayer of the Psalmist, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... such contributions would be. He repeated what he had said before; and I promised to consider whether I could reconcile it to myself to write such letters at all. The pros and cons need to be very carefully weighed. I will not tell you to which side I incline, but if we should disagree, or waver on the same points, we will call Bradbury and Evans to the council. I think it more than probable that we shall be of exactly the same mind, but I want you to be in possession of the facts and therefore send you this rigmarole." The rigmarole is not unimportant; because, though we did not differ ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... met, and the sombre fury in his look dropped before my gaze. I saw my advantage, and approaching closer to him urged him again, and to my joy he began to waver. Suddenly he turned from me, and walking to the battlements looked down himself, remaining there for a space amidst an absolute silence, broken but once by the ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... their way up. Many had climbed up by the ruins of the wall, and from its top were firing down on the defenders of the barricade. Inch by inch they won their way up the barricade, already thickly covered with dead; and then Charlie, seeing that his men were beginning to waver, gave the signal. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... of their own souls, and believe what their own hearts dictate-and these men call the Prince their Father William. Wait a little! As soon as trouble oppresses us, the poor and lowly will stand firm, if the rich and great waver and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... saw Mr. Tawnish's blade waver aimlessly; Raikes saw it too, and drove in a lightning thrust. There was a sharp clash of meeting steel, a flurry of blades, and Sir Harry Raikes staggered back, his eyes wide and staring, threw up his arms, and pitching forward, rolled over ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... say that, owing to my youth, I may often waver in my view, but now when I look at you and see that you incline to refer them to God, I defer ...
— Sophist • Plato
... moment. She had gone home to her father with only an announcement of the fact. He would wait some intimation of her further purpose; but, if they met again, she must come back to him. This was his first, spontaneous conclusion; and it was not questioned in his thought, nor did he waver from it an instant. She must come back of her own free will, if she ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... I saw your eyes waver, and I'm not interested in a makeshift alias. But it's the stock question, you know.... Do you care ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... in his private correspondence he stigmatized the clergy as "the estate by the coldness of which all the others are frozen,"[160] or even as "that which is the ruin of all the rest."[161] But, frightened by the incessant clamor and attacks of his enemies, he began gradually to waver, and presently lost all courage. In the end he yielded so far as to suffer to be published in his name official documents which were intended to overturn from the foundation the very fabric he had been striving to rear. In one of these, a "Synodal Decree" addressed to the faithful of his ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... great political event, the death of the Emperor, will have a softening influence on my personal fate, remains questionable. In a few weeks I shall have direct news. Whatever it may turn out to be, I cannot waver or hesitate. To you, dearest Richard, remains ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life. Thus the spirit of the time is seen to waver between perversion and savagism, between what is unnatural and mere nature, between superstition and moral unbelief, and it is often nothing but the equilibrium of evils ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... would waver. He had never wanted to come. Left to himself, he and Patch would have walked—elsewhither. Had he not known that Valerie was away, he would have excused himself at breakfast. Not for anything in the world would he have forfeited a chance of meeting her. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... forward, revolver in hand, circling to keep safely beyond reach of Dupont, who eyed him maliciously. The latter was so buttoned up in a buffalo coat as to make it impossible for him to reach a weapon, and Hamlin permitted his eyes to waver slightly, as he watched the Indians. What occurred the next instant came so suddenly as scarcely to leave an impression. It was swift, instinctive action, primitive impulse. An Indian hand fell beneath its blanket covering; there was a flash of flame across a pony's saddle; ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... a shallow; a long file of five or six hundred carriages embarrassed all its movements; seven thousand terrified stragglers, howling with terror and despair, rushed into the midst of its feeble lines. They broke through them, caused its platoons to waver, and were every moment involving in their disorder fresh soldiers who got disheartened. It became necessary to retreat, in order to rally, and take a better position, but in falling back, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... she thought of her joyous playmates, as a maiden will; and the sun grew sweeter than ever to behold, seeing that in truth her soul yearned for all. And she put the casket again from off her knees, all changed by the prompting of Hera, and no more did she waver in purpose; but longed for the rising dawn to appear quickly, that she might give him the charms to work the spell as she had promised, and meet him face to face. And often did she loosen the bolts of her door, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... Tommy. "I am courageously calm. Go on, Bobby—my calmness will waver if you don't get to the point. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the bottle and tins on a stool near the woman. Quinn's glance did not waver, and not a word passed his swollen lips; but his wife snatched up one ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... declaration of independence—a revolutionary manifesto signalizing the Drachmann's re-espousal of the radical opinions of his youth, in his allegiance to which he had, perhaps, out of regard for worldly advantages been inclined to waver. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... very weak man. I dare say you know enough of palmistry to see that for yourself. You notice the slightness of the thumbs and of he two 'little' fingers. They are the hands of a weak and over-sensitive man—a man without confidence, a man who would certainly waver in an emergency. Rather Hamletish hands," he mused. "And I'm like Hamlet in other respects, too: I'm no fool, and I've rather a noble disposition, and I'm unlucky. But Hamlet was luckier than I in one thing: he was a murderer by accident, whereas the murders that ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... He was but a man, subject to man's caprices, and when next morning he met Katy Lennox, looking in her light muslin as pure and fair as the white blossoms twined in her wavy hair, his resolution began to waver. Perhaps there was a decent hotel in Silverton; he would inquire of Dr. Grant; at all events he would not take the first train as he had intended doing; and so he stayed, eating fried apples and beefsteak, but forgetting to criticise, in ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... not recede, and they claimed the support of the king. Montlosier, who belonged to their order, pronounced that their case was good and their argument bad. Twice they gave the enemy an advantage. When they saw the clergy waver, they resolved, by their usual majority of 197 to 44, that each order possessed the right of nullification; so that they would no more yield to the separate vote of the three Estates than to their united vote. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... both national and individual difficulties it is indispensable, in order that courage may not waver, that hope may not falter—it is indispensable that there should be, as already urged, a clear intellectual comprehension of the full nature of the good thing for which battle is waged. The brilliant vision of attainable good must be preserved undimmed—ever present in sharp and radiant outline ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... soft In the pure profile; not as when she laughs, For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's Burthen of honey-colored buds, to kiss And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this. {10} Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround, How it should waver, on the pale gold ground, Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts! I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb: But these are only massed there, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... of extravagant candour,' when he thought that he could be more than just to an enemy without betraying a cause. He oscillates between these views as his humour changes. He is absurdly unjust to Burke the politician; but he does not waver in his just recognition of the marvellous power of the greatest—I should almost say the only great—political writer in the language. The first time he read a passage from Burke, he said, This is true eloquence. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... repel their approach to land. 'What your prayers have sought is given, the sweep of the sword-arm. The god of battles is in the hands of men. Now remember each his wife and home: now recall the high deeds of our fathers' honour. Let us challenge meeting at the water's edge, while they waver and their feet yet slip as they disembark. Fortune aids daring. . . .' So speaks he, and counsels inly whom he shall lead to meet them, whom leave in charge of ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... settlings of the air, which for centuries had been forming a solid coating. I remained in a kneeling position for several moments, catching my breath and regaining strength. I feared to move, lest the thin layer upon which I rested would once more give way beneath me. It appeared to waver, as did everything else around me. After a short rest, I carefully arose to a standing position, and then observed that I was located in a sort of a pit, surrounded by rocks of various shapes and sizes. As I cautiously climbed upward, each one of them appeared to tremble at my very touch, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... lib. iv. c. 26. "From that time the hopes and strength of the English crown began to waver and retrograde, for the Picts recovered their own lands," &c. The Annals of the Four Masters mention a mortality among cattle throughout the whole world, and a severe frost, which followed this invasion: "The sea between Ireland and Scotland was frozen, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... myself—Thus will I do, and thus—How firmly did I promise! Truth appeared so beautiful, so captivating, so omnipotent, that armed by her an infant could not but conquer. Perseverance alone was requisite, and I could persevere. The solid basis of the earth should almost shake ere I would waver!—Poor, vain creature!—Surely, Louisa, we are not ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of heart, and pride of condition, may again take place: And a man that could in so little a space, first love me, then hate, then banish me his house, and send me away disgracefully; and now send for me again, in such affectionate terms, may still waver, may still deceive thee. Therefore will I not acquit thee yet, O credulous, fluttering, throbbing mischief! that art so ready to believe what thou wishest! And I charge thee to keep better guard than thou hast lately done, and lead me not ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... mind was too intent upon escaping unobserved; and when sure the family had retired she moved cautiously down the stairs, noiselessly unlocked the door, and without once daring to look back, lest she should waver in her purpose, she went forth, heartbroken and alone, from what for eighteen happy years had been her home. Very rapidly she proceeded, coming at last to an open field through which the railroad ran, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... natives. "You do not know what you say," said Tarra. "The white people who are with us have fire guns, which kill when they speak," and he held up one of them, and the boys were amused to see how quickly they began to waver and look about ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... the evils that may and must result upon the step I am about to take; but I never waver in my resolution, because I never forget my son. It was only this morning, while I pursued my usual employment, he was sitting at my feet, quietly playing with the shreds of canvas I had thrown upon the carpet; but his mind was otherwise occupied, for, in a while, he looked ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... so easily carry me by storm, Duane; and in your arms I might be weak enough to waver and forget and promise to give you now what there is of me if you demanded it. Don't ask it; don't carry me out of my depth. There is more to me than I can give you yet. Let me wait to give it lest I remember your unfairness and my humiliation ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... her, the same force of passion descended on me and at once submerged my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me like a childish habit; and I but drew near to her as the giddy man draws near to the margin of a gulf. She drew back from me a little as I came; but her eyes did not waver from mine, and these lured me forward. At last, when I was already within reach of her, I stopped. Words were denied me; if I advanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that was sane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soldiers still within the walls could not restrain the people, or did not try. If there was any government, it lacked a head or could not command attention. The stubborn instinct of self-preservation was king. Distracted throngs surged out at one gate, to separate and waver and hesitate, and finally to fight for a speedy entrance at another. On one side soldiers were apparently ordering people down from the wall, while on another the excited populace was hauling sentinel soldiers from the same elevation, lest our attention should be attracted. Within, strong ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... which this is very expressly stated.[43] But since the statute does not exist in an authentic shape, and is not to be found in the Rolls of the Realm, we cannot safely base any conclusion on it. As to the date too at which it may have been passed, our statements waver between the twenty-eighth and the thirty-fourth year of Edward. On the other hand we find in the collection of charters an undoubted charter of confirmation given at Ghent and dated 5 November 1297, in which not merely are the Great Charter of Henry III and the Forest ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... captain fall and the men waver, Capt. Blakely with a cheer called up the boarders of the "Wasp;" and in an instant a stream of shouting sailors, cutlass in hand, was pouring over the hammock-nettings, and driving the foe backward on his own decks. The British still fought ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Macaulay never showed himself deficient in the qualities which enable a man to trust his own sense; to feel responsibility, but not to fear it; to venture where others shrink; to decide while others waver; with all else that belongs to the vocation of a ruler in a free country. But it was not his fate; it was not his work; and the rank which he might have claimed among the statesmen of Britain was ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... great start, shudder, waver to and fro, then sit down on the steps of the dais; and she knew they were punished, but knew not how. She rushed up to them, and catching a ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... single slab of granite—over twelve feet long lies across the Wallabrook near the meeting of the streams. Beside it grows a mountain-ash, and the quivering and wavering leaves, and their shadows that quiver and waver in the ripples beneath, make a profound contrast to that massive, immovable stone, that from its look may certainly be included among those Dartmoor antiquities which Sir Frederick Pollock says 'may very well have been as great a mystery to ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... where treachery never thrives—the first moment of suspicion will be the last of your life. My kinsman, William Douglas, understands no raillery, and if he once have cause to think you false, you will waver in the wind from the castle battlements ere the sun set upon his anger.—And is the lady to ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... of divinity is golden; to be wise and true rejoices every heart. But evil influences waver the scales of justice and mercy. No personal considerations should allow any root of bitterness to spring up between Christian Scientists, nor cause any misapprehension as to the motives of others. We must love our enemies, and continue to do so unto the end. By the love of God we can cancel ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... new life, prestige and power greater and grander than they ever possessed; and they would not be halting and belittling themselves with such idiotic stuff and nonsense as their advice to let the amendment go to the electors of the State "on its own merits." But however politicians may waver, our suffrage women must not have a doubt, but must persist in the demand for full recognition in both platforms. We must exact justice and if they do not give it, the curse be on their ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Mr. Curtis's methods was their perfect simplicity and directness. He believed absolutely in the final outcome of his proposition: where others saw mist and failure ahead, he saw clear weather and the port of success. Never did he waver: never did he deflect from his course. He knew no path save the direct one that led straight to success, and, through his eyes, he made Bok see it with equal clarity until Bok wondered why others could not see it. But they could not. Cyrus Curtis would never be able, they said, to come out ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... positive. In spite of his courage, Croustillac felt his determination waver; the punishment with which they threatened him was fearful. Monmouth was then undoubtedly in safety; the adventurer thought that he had already done much for the duke and for the duchess. He was about to yield to the fear of torture, when his courage returned to him at this reflection, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the reality and the instant. It had the look of a vision printed on the dark at night. White and grey and purple figures were scattered on the green, round wicker tables, in the middle the flame of the tea-urn made the air waver like a faulty sheet of glass, a massive green tree stood over them as if it were a moving force held at rest. As she approached, she could hear Evelyn's voice repeating monotonously, "Here then—here—good doggie, come here"; for a moment nothing seemed ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... at him, and seemed to waver, then suddenly making up his mind, he frowned and said sternly—"No; that is a lie. You are Portuguese scoundrels. You shall all die. You have robbed us of our liberty, our wives, our children, our homes; you have chained, and tortured, and flogged us!"—he gnashed ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Too oft the light that led our earlier hours Fades with the perfume of our cradle flowers; The clear, cold question chills to frozen doubt; Tired of beliefs, we dread to live without Oh then, if Reason waver at thy side, Let humbler Memory be thy gentle guide; Go to thy birthplace, and, if faith was there, Repeat thy ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... opinion commenced to waver. No one knew whose turn to be hanged would come next. Emboldened by their fatal success, accusers whispered of people in high places as leagued with the Evil One. An Andover minister narrowly escaped death. The Beverly minister, ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... everywhere, braving danger, wounded, but cheering by his example. The second in command, De Sennezergues, an associate in glory at Ticonderoga, was killed. The brave but untried Canadians, flinching from a hot fire in the open field, began to waver; and, so soon as Wolfe, placing himself at the head of the Twenty-eighth and the Louisburg grenadiers, charged with bayonets, they everywhere gave way. Of the English officers, Carleton was wounded; Barre, who fought near Wolfe, received in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... painted in many colors came forth into the light of the fires, and uttered a loud cry, which he repeated twice at short intervals. Meanwhile the torches among the women and children had ceased to waver, and the Shawnees and Miamis stood immovable, their hands resting on the muzzles of their rifles. The great fires blazed up, and cast a deep red light over the whole scene. A minute or so elapsed after the last cry, and Henry and Shif'less Sol ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... old Maisie, no longer seeing the model before her, began to waver about the reality of the whole occurrence. Might it not have been a dream, a delusion; at least, an exaggeration? There was a model, with horses, and a waggon—yes! But was she quite sure it was her old mill—her father's? How could she be sure of anything, when ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... shiver, totter, brandish, joggle, quaver, shudder, tremble, flap, jolt, quiver, sway, vibrate, fluctuate, jounce, reel, swing, wave, flutter, oscillate, rock, thrill, waver. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... that first, all but involuntary movement, he had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did not waver the breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes he was looking at that mute figure on the floor; looking at it immovably, indescribably, with an impassivity that was horrible. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... others that flanked the approach. When the Russian guns had thoroughly cleared the way for an assault, he ordered the bands to play and the two leading regiments to charge up the slope. Keeping his hand firmly on the pulse of the battle, he saw them begin to waver under the deadly fire of the Turks; at once he sent up a rival regiment; the new mass carried on the charge until it too threatened to die away. The fourth regiment struggled up into that wreath of death, and with the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the village. It smelt of burning, like a gipsy camp. The road seemed to waver in the flickering of the flames, the wind howled ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... with someone else, as all the men at home seem to be, and Lorna creeping into my bed at night, with her hair in a funny, tight little pigtail, and talking, talking, talking for hour after hour. Oh, I did want to go so badly! The tears came to my eyes for very longing. My resolution did not waver one bit, but I was dreadfully sorry for myself, ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... confirmed this impression and it was made a certainty when he saw the black patch waver upward, stagger forward and ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... opinions to a T, An' the wind settles wut the weather'll be." "I never thought a scion of our stock Could grow the wood to make a weathercock; When I wuz younger'n you, skurce more'n a shaver, No airthly wind," sez he, "could make me waver!" (Ez he said this, he clinched his jaw an' forehead, Hitchin' his belt to bring his sword-hilt forrard.) "Jes' so it wuz with me," sez I, "I swow, When I wuz younger'n wut you see me now,— Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's bonnet, Thet I warm't full-cocked with my jedgment on it; But ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... hitherto felt, nor at your cautious examination of my opinions, which are better understood the more thoroughly they are examined and compared with those they oppose. It is impossible to annihilate at once deep-rooted prejudices. The mind of man appears to waver in a void when those ideas are attacked on which it has long rested. It finds itself in a new world, wherein all is unknown. Every system of opinion is but the effect of habit. The mind has as great difficulty to disengage itself from its custom of thinking, and reflect on new ideas, as the ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... first she did not waver from her decision. Her view was clear and final. Her door had opened and let the world in. Her love for Merriam was not lessened; but it now appeared a hopeless and unrealizable thing. The visions of their future that ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... that she would waver. He had never wanted to come. Left to himself, he and Patch would have walked—elsewhither. Had he not known that Valerie was away, he would have excused himself at breakfast. Not for anything in the world would he have forfeited a chance of meeting her. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Faery! But now (by proof I know it well) There's still some peril in free wishing—— Politeness is a licensed spell, 15 And you, dear Sir! the Arch-magician. You much perplex'd me by the various set: They were indeed an elegant quartette! My mind went to and fro, and waver'd long; At length I've chosen (Samuel thinks me wrong) 20 That, around whose azure rim Silver figures seem to swim, Like fleece-white clouds, that on the skiey Blue, Waked by no breeze, the self-same shapes retain; Or ocean-Nymphs with limbs of snowy hue 25 Slow-floating o'er the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the Duchess scanning the crowd anxiously. As the machine stopped again at the street corner, Marishka rushed forward until she stood just at its front wheels, waving a hand and speaking the Duchess's name. She saw the gaze of Sophie Chotek meet hers, waver and then become fixed again in wonder, in sudden recognition, and incomprehension. Words formed on the girl's ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... sudden exodus from Bedford Place had been determined upon immediately after Chad's dismal failure to locate the coal-field: Fitz having carried the day against Yancey, Kerfoot, and even the agent himself, who was beginning to waver under the ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... one to fear the truth," she answered, quickly. "I come of a family of questioners. It's only now and then that I waver—for a moment. My husband said he would come back to me if he could, and I've been half hoping—not really expecting it, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... talked to Andy about it, and he liked the idea immense. Andy was a man of an involved nature. He was never content to plod along, as I was, selling to the peasantry some little tool like a combination steak beater, shoe horn, marcel waver, monkey wrench, nail file, potato masher and Multum in Parvo tuning fork. Andy had the artistic temper, which is not to be judged as a preacher's or a moral man's is by purely commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, and strikes out ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... doors were closed the officers appeared at the windows, and opened a rifle fire upon the convicts, as did the guards near the gate. As comparatively few of the convicts had muskets, they began to waver at once. But, headed by the two ringleaders, the armed party rushed at the guard, shot them down, and threw open ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... sensation. It was as though the vast silence of the night had poured into the room and, like a dark tepid sea, was lapping about his body and rising to his lips. His thoughts, dissolved into emotion, seemed to waver and float on the stillness like sea-weed on the lift of the tide. He stood spell-bound, lulled, yielding ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... separate shadow would fall at each particular hour of the day. Straight out of the west the river ran so far as eye could reach, until it came to Murder Point. At close of day it seemed a molten pathway which led, without a waver, from Granger's store directly to the heart of the sun. Having arrived at the Point, the Last Chance River swept round to the northeast, and then to the north, until in many curves it poured its waters into the distant Hudson Bay. Its banks, in the open ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... right all alone. I must have a less solitary Christianity. My religious needs are not satisfied any more than my social needs, or my needs of affection. Generally I am able to forget them and lull them to sleep. But at times they wake up with a sort of painful bitterness ... I waver between languor and ennui, between frittering myself away on the infinitely little, and longing after what is unknown and distant. It is like the situation which French novelists are so fond of, the story of a vie de province; only the province is all that is not the country ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... words, I saw Mr. Tawnish's blade waver aimlessly; Raikes saw it too, and drove in a lightning thrust. There was a sharp clash of meeting steel, a flurry of blades, and Sir Harry Raikes staggered back, his eyes wide and staring, threw up his arms, and pitching forward, rolled over ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... tirade had the effect of bringing the true facts of the case to Hsiang-yuen's notice, and she began to waver in a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... my dear marquis, of paying a visit to your court, to your lady, and to your friends this winter, but waver on account of an expedition into Canada, friendship induces me to tell you, that I do not conceive that the prospect of such an operation is so favourable at this time, as to cause you to change your views. Many circumstances and events must conspire to ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... in all their uncanny effect, are not rightly to be understood until you can compare them with the woods by day. The stillness of the medium, the floor of glittering sand, these trees that go streaming up like monstrous sea-weeds and waver in the moving winds like the weeds in submarine currents, all these set the mind working on the thought of what you may have seen off a foreland or over the side of a boat, and make you feel like a diver, down in the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Christ; but many of us have to run counter to a strong current flowing around us, and to be alone in the midst of unsympathising companions ready to laugh and gibe, and some of us are tempted to waver in our convictions of Christ's divinity and redeeming power, because He still seems to stand at the bar of the wise men and leaders of opinion, and to be treated by them as a pretender. It is a wretched thing to be persecuted out of one's Christianity ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... denying it," said Siward. "I have tried to find it through the accepted sources—accepted by me, too. God has not helped me in the conventional way or through traditional methods; but that has not inclined me to doubt Him as the tribunal of last resort," he added hastily. "I don't for a moment waver in faith because I am ignorant of the proper manner to approach Him. The Arbiter of all knows that I desire to be decent. He must be aware, too, that all anchors save one ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... fearful agitation of the one—the evident joy of the other—the flush that tinged her cheek, the smile that dwelt, but for a moment, upon her pallid lip, gave such evidence of the state of the maiden's heart, that Dalton could not waver in his opinion—could not for an instant doubt that all his cherished plans were as autumn leaves, sent on some especial mission through the air, when a whirlwind raves ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... drawing-room, he had kept in the background, giving every one rather plainly to understand that he did not care for conversation. Now, he came forward, his face, which had been set and grim and moody all evening, was white and his eyes were burning. Never for one moment, did those eyes waver from the Mariposa. He seemed Entirely oblivious to the rest of the group, and it was obvious that for him ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... had puzzled her; but the word "shame" coming from his own lips as a comment on himself never caused her the slightest pang of fear. She had quickly hidden the tiny packet in her kerchief. She would act point by point exactly as he had ordered her to do, and she knew that Ffoulkes would never waver either. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... ruins of science and common-sense. Knowledge was to be removed to make way for faith. This task is ambiguous, and the equivocation involved in it is perhaps the deepest of those confusions with which German metaphysics has since struggled, and which have made it waver between the deepest introspection and the dreariest mythology. To substitute faith for knowledge might mean to teach the intellect humility, to make it aware of its theoretic and transitive function as a faculty for hypothesis and rational fiction, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... seized, questions are poured into the ear of the captain; or, if no ship's officer be near, such guidebooks or sailing directions as may be within reach are consulted for a solution of the splendid sight. But, before the pages can be turned the gigantic columns begin to waver and vibrate in the intensely heated air: now they come nearer, and the sun glances upon their crystalline sides, anon they retreat and fade, until the whole fabric is transformed into, or lost in, a luxuriant expanse partly covered with enormous trees. It is probably ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Had not absolute faith in her lover been the rock on which she had declared to herself that she would build the house of her future hopes? Had not she protested again and again that no caution from others should induce her to waver in her belief? Was it not her great doctrine to trust,—to trust implicitly, even though all should be lost if her trust should be misplaced? And was it well that she should depart from all this, merely because it might be ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... that you, Miss Hollyhock? Why, lassie, you look pale. Your eyes waver. I don't like ye to look so white in the complexion. What may ye be wantin' wi' me, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... its splendours to the morning light, the walls of the old house, springing sheer from the grass like the native rock itself—for the first time he feels a gulf between himself and them. His ideals waver in the soul's darkened air; the breath of passion drives them to ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and breaking on her lips, and trying, how hard, not to show that she was watching, she searched his face, saw it waver and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his brows, the blood rush into his face. He answered: "Not Sunday, dear; some ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tribe of Karnak, dead, like our husbands and brothers, for the liberty of Gaul, are on our way to rejoin them above. Perhaps, O Hesus, all this spilled blood will appease you;" and with a hand which did not waver, she plunged the dagger into ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... hand forever stilled, the record shall endure to show that I, the disgraced and the deceased Fibble, would, from the confines of the silent tomb, beg forgiveness for my criminal indiscretion. I shall write all! My tears descending as I write bedew the sheet, and beneath my swimming eyes the lines waver, but in haste I write on, lest the slayer find me before ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... for Wilford. He was but a man, subject to man's caprices, and when next morning he met Katy Lennox, looking in her light muslin as pure and fair as the white blossoms twined in her wavy hair, his resolution began to waver. Perhaps there was a decent hotel in Silverton; he would inquire of Dr. Grant; at all events he would not take the first train as he had intended doing; and so he stayed, eating fried apples and beefsteak, but forgetting to criticise, in his appreciation of the rich ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... the theoretical requirement of reason, to assume that existence and to make it the foundation of our further employment of reason, it has itself sprung from the moral disposition of mind; it may therefore at times waver even in the well-disposed, but can never be ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... glance did not waver. The angry expression of his features did not relax; he neither drew back nor bent his head. Unorna seemed to be exerting all the strength of her will in the attempt to dominate him, but without result. In the effort she made to concentrate her determination her ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... practice of fighting from behind cover, and braved the enemy in open conflict. In spite of Tenskwatawa's prophecies, the American bullets wrought deadly havoc among the warriors, who, seeing that they had been deceived, began to waver. Finally, the Indians gave way before a terrific charge and fled to the woods, while the soldiers applied the ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... her head in reluctant assent. Her figure seemed to waver as with faintness, but when Stuart reached out his arms to catch her, she stepped back and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the part of him who has begotten us; but if, after shooting his bolt, insisting on his right, indulging his wrath, he discovers our merits and takes us back, then he should be held to his decision, and not allowed to oscillate, waver, do and undo any more. Originally, he had no means of knowing whether his offspring would turn out well or ill; that is why parents who have decided to bring up children before they knew their nature are permitted to reject such as are found ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... returned home to Dunore, having gained nothing by his London trip but a little of that bitter though salutary tonic called experience. His resolve did not waver—nay, it became his day-dream; but manifold obstacles occurred in the attempt to realize it. Family pride was one of the most stubborn; and not until all hope from home resources was at an end, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... take from her aunt, whose violent opposition would throw a fearful obstacle in the way. It was easier to avoid than to surmount such a barrier; but if it could not be avoided, it must be surmounted. In that decision she could not waver. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... turquoises. I prefer my pearls. Mr. Crease half agrees with me, but as he never agrees with any one, on principle, he hates to say so. Mr. Faulkes is wavering. You shall decide; you, I know, are one of those people who never waver." ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... well knew she was herself the real cause of Mr Arnott's resistance, now felt her resolution waver, internally reproaching herself with the sufferings of his sister; alarmed, however, for her own constancy, she earnestly besought Mrs Harrel to go and compose herself for the night, and promised to deliberate what could be done for her ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... held to be much more probable that this banner, bearing a white cross on a blood-red field, was sent by the Pope to Valdemar as a token of his favor and support, and that its sudden appearance, when the Danes were beginning to waver before the pagan assaults, gave them the spirit that led to victory. The result, in those days of superstition, naturally ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... think of him as the curly-headed, rollicking, clean minded little boy I played with as a child, but I like better still to think of him as he was in his last days, when all that fame and fortune had showered on him did not, even momentarily, make him waver in his loyalty to the friends of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... extortions of the Exchequer. The proportions of their grant generally exceeded that of the other estates. Their representatives too proved far more compliant with the royal will than the barons or knights of the shire; only on one occasion during Edward's reign did the burgesses waver from their general ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... speak much otherwise from what I do to-day, and far less to your gratification, little as you like it now! Ah, you look white!" cries he. "I have found the key of your impudent heart. You look pale, your eyes waver, Mr. David! You see the grave and the gallows nearer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... months ago, in this place, moved you that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for the defense of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... none who surpassed her in courage, in directness, and in fixity of purpose. No sense that she and her friends had to meet overwhelming odds would ever make her faint-hearted. No desertion by friends and old comrades ever caused her to waver. No despair ever touched that stalwart soul, however dark the outlook might appear; for it was her faith that no right or just cause was ever really lost, however for the time it were defeated ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... of about thirty-five years of age, tall and bony in make, with deep-set eyes, light grey of colour, that seemed now to flash fiercely and now to waver, as though in memory of some great dread. From beneath a coarse woollen cap a wisp of grizzled hair fell across the forehead, where it lay like the forelock of a horse. Indeed, the high cheekbones, scarred as though by burns, wide-spread nostrils and prominent white teeth, whence the lips had ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... and looked full at her. His eyes were, as Helen had once said, the most splendid she had ever seen. This time they looked at her with a calm sadness that compelled her own to waver and ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... half of the discourse nearly every audience will give the speaker a chance. At this point, therefore, the heavier and drier things which need to be said ought to occur. But about the middle of the discourse the attention begins to waver. Here, therefore, the more picturesque and interesting things should begin to come; and the very best should be reserved for the close, so that the impression maybe strongest at the last.[31] St. Augustine says that a discourse should instruct, delight and convince;[32] and perhaps ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Once more ye waver dreamily before me, Forms that so early cheered my troubled eyes! To hold you fast doth still my heart implore me? Still bid me clutch the charm that lures and flies? Ye crowd around! come, then, hold empire o'er ...
— Faust • Goethe
... for Daisy, but she never flinched from her post, and stood resolutely between the sick man and that other one in the corner until the latter seemed to waver a little; his shadow was not so black, his presence so all-pervading, and there was hope for Tom. His reason came back at last, and the fever left him, but weak as a child, with no power to move even his poor wasted hands which lay ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... mother and sister, but every one to whom he had spoken, had told him he was throwing himself away in seeking to be a sailor, and therefore the words of his cousin had considerable influence over him. He began to think that he had been guilty of acting foolishly, and to waver in ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... dare do it? The audacity of the proceeding was sufficient to make the iron will of even Lennox Sanderson waver. And yet, to lose her! Such a contingency was not to be considered. His mind flew backward and forward like a shuttle, he turned the leaves of his book; he smoked, but no light came from within ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... and the cords designed for rending the balloon very tense. At this critical period Wise owns to having experienced considerable nervous excitement, and observing far down a thunderstorm in progress he began to waver in his mind, and inclined towards relieving the balloon of its strain, and so abandoning his experiment, at least for the present. He remembers pulling out his watch to make a note of the hour, and, while thus occupied, the straining cords, growing tenser every moment, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... his race, their aspirations to godlike state. One wonders what will happen to him when death ushers him out from the great visible life to the loneliness amid the stars. To what hearth or home shall he flee who never raised the veil of nature while living, nor saw it waver tremulous with the hidden glory before his eyes? The Holy Breath from the past communes no more with him, and if he is oblivious of these things, though a thousand workman call him master, within he is bankrupt, his effects sequestered, a poor shadow, an outcast ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the retreating enemy, without further orders. They encountered a fearful volley of grape and canister from near thirty pieces of artillery, and musketry from still well filled rifle pits on the summit of the ridge. Not a waver, however, was seen in all that long line of brave men. Their progress was steadily onward until the ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... great mass of the Northern people can not be affected by such traitorous tricks. There is but one party in the country, and that is the Union and the War party. Here and there a coward may waver and be frightened at the prospect of a Democratic opposition raising its head successfully to withstand the great onward movement, but his quavering voice will be unheard in the great cry for battle. We have accepted this war ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to himself, and to his plateful of meat, and to the small bottle of Bass's pale ale that stood before him—ultimate allowance of one who had erst clashed cymbals in Naxos. This small bottle he eyed often and with enthusiasm, seeming to waver between the rapture of broaching it now and the grandeur of having it to look forward to. It made me unhappy to see what trouble he had in managing his knife and fork. Watts-Dunton told me on another occasion that this infirmity of the hands had been lifelong—had begun before Eton days. The Swinburne ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... corner, her hands folded in her apron, her eyes swollen with weeping, watched with growing anxiety the slight figure that seemed to waver as it moved ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... though he would say, ye have now heard the Gospel and have come to believe, therefore see to it that ye abide therein, and do not suffer yourselves to be drawn away with false doctrine, so that ye shall not waver and run hither ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... did not waver from his, but she wrenched her right hand from him, and before he could take it again, her even teeth had met in the flesh. The bright scarlet drops rose high and broke, and trickled in vivid stripes across her hand as she held it before his face. Her own was very white, but without a trace of pain. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... was strolling, a few golden apples still shone among the bronzed leaves. She saw Reuben coming swiftly through the garden; but his eager step faltered as he came near her. Even the serene look of girlhood has a power in it to make impassioned confidence waver, and enthusiasms suffer recoil. He meets her at last with an assumption of his every-day manner, which she cannot but see presently is underlaid with a tempest of struggling feeling to which he is a stranger. He has taken her hand and placed it in his arm,—a little coquettish device to which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... mountains began to waver and reel around me; the stars danced up and down in the sky, and a red mist seemed to swim before my eyes. Then, through the hoarse, dull murmur that was sounding in my ears, I heard the sweet, low ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... right. The soul must be saved, if all is lost. This is not a time for the friends of the Church and of Mexico to waver. The Church is insulted every day by these ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... were among our greatest enemies. They would lead us to question every point of duty, and induce us to waver at every step. They arose only from remaining imperfection, and were always evidence of sin. Our only way was to dismiss them immediately, repent, and confess them. They were deadly sins, and would condemn us to hell, if we should die without ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... seen them; that the good God had provided this means for the constant supply of food for the Indian, and however recklessly the white men might slaughter, they could never exterminate them. When last I saw him, the old man was beginning to waver in this belief, and feared that the "Bad God" had shut the entrances, and that his tribe ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Many had climbed up by the ruins of the wall, and from its top were firing down on the defenders of the barricade. Inch by inch they won their way up the barricade, already thickly covered with dead; and then Charlie, seeing that his men were beginning to waver, gave ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... eyes wide-open, and the eyeballs turned slightly upward, apparently staring at the deck above him. But the gaze was without intelligence; and the fellow appeared to be quite unconscious of his surroundings, for he took no notice whatever of Leslie's entrance; nor did the eyes waver in the least when the latter spoke to him, Leslie laid his hand upon the forehead of his late antagonist, and found it cool to the touch, although clammy with perspiration. Then he laid his fingers upon the man's wrist, and felt for his ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... great recall! Swift, O swift, for the squadrons break, The long lines waver, mazed in the gloom! Hither and thither the blind host blunders. Stand thou firm for a dead Man's sake, Firm where the ranks reel down to their doom, Stand thou firm in the midst of the thunders, Stand where the steeds and the riders fall, Set the bronze to thy lips and sound A rally to ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... people, and they knew what they wanted to do. But could it be right for anyone to drink? As in the case of suicide, Samuel found his moral convictions beginning to waver. Perhaps it was that drink did not affect these higher beings as it did ordinary people! Or perhaps what they drank was something that cheered without inebriating! Certain it was that the servants got drunk; and Samuel had seen that they took the stuff from the decanters ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... said the major, laying his hand upon his heart and trying desperately to focus her with an eye that would waver in spite of him, "Sally Ruth, somebody's got to do something for you, and it might as well be me. My God, Sally Ruth, you're settin' like clabber! It's a shame; it's a cryin' shame, for you're a fine ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... up between the granite pinnacles on which, when the sunset touched them, I had so often gazed. We had followed it up beyond the pines and over a pass leading out among a range of undulating foot-hills, which seemed to waver and lose heart a dozen times before making up their minds to unite and climb, and be a snowcapped mountain. But they mounted to the snows at length, and the snows had driven down the stag which, under Marc'antonio's guidance, I stalked ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... dead or wounded. The line of spears seemed impenetrable. The Swiss began to waver. The enemy, seeing this, advanced the flanks of his line so as to form a half-moon shape, with the purpose of enclosing the small body of Swiss within a circle of spears. It looked for the moment as if ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... half-mile beyond the Keeper's Lodge in Ancester Park, and the Lodge is a long half-mile from the Towers. Still, if it was reasonable to follow the dog at all, where would be the sense of holding back or flagging till he should waver in what seemed assurance of his purpose. No—no! What he was making for might be five miles off, for all that the party that followed him knew. But trust in the creature's instinct grew stronger each time he turned and waited for their approach, then scoured on as soon ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... knives set into the ends of long poles, and they thrust these knives into the horses of the troop. The horses, terrified and maddened with the pain, turned round and ran in among the Genoese archers, and trampled many of them under foot. This made the whole body of archers waver and begin to fall back. Then Philip, who was coming on behind at the head of other bodies of troops, fell into a great rage, and shouted out in a ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Photographs" coming by parcel-post from town, and they had arranged to read it aloud together. By now, thought Peter, it must be lying on his friend's table. The thought saddened him. And James, guessing what was in Peter's mind, was saddened too. But he did not waver. He was in no mood to read MacBean's masterpiece that night. In the twenty minutes of silence after leaving Miss Forrester he had realized that "Grace" rhymes with "face", and he wanted to sit alone in his study and write poetry. The two men parted ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... as anything of an actor, and he seemed to be in deadly earnest now. Was it just possible that the man had it in him to do a kindly thing? If so it seemed a pity to thwart him. Berrington looked fairly and squarely into the eyes of the speaker, but they did not waver in the least. The expression of Sartoris's face was one of hopelessness, not free altogether ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... hands over her bosom, and began to waver to and fro on the moss seat, struck with a pang of that exquisite pleasure which so closely approaches pain when we fully appreciate ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... he mused, "My plans That soar, to earth may fall, Let once my army-leader Lannes Waver at yonder wall,—" Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew A rider, bound on bound Full-galloping: nor bridle drew Until he reached ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... roaring in an infernal caldron of tar, poison, sulphur, tears and blood. Truly a worthy theme for another Dante and a Gustave Dore. For some time it looked as if the French would be crumpled up, but reserves were steadily streaming in, and eventually the attackers began to waver and fall back. The French 75-millimeter Creusots came into play again, and after a battle that lasted in all twenty-four hours, the Germans were driven ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... above it appeared to waver uncertainly, to become disjointed as though viewed through uneven glass. But the effect passed and Sutter approached the stand and nodded to the individual tilted back ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... stars! Ah, glimmering water, Fitful earth-murmur, Dreaming woods! Ah, golden-hair'd, strangely smiling Goddess, And thou, proved, much enduring, Wave-toss'd Wanderer! Who can stand still? Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me— ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Potomac to a standstill. But he would not admit failure. Led by Pickett of Virginia, thirteen thousand men charged across the valley between the two armies directly at the Union center. Some of them even penetrated the Union lines. But there the line stopped. Slowly it began to waver. Then back the Confederates went—all who escaped. The battle of Gettysburg was won. Lee faced the Army of the Potomac for another day and then retreated. In this tremendous conflict the Confederates lost twenty-two thousand five hundred men killed and wounded and five thousand taken prisoners ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... whole force of the enemy. Already their bayonets had cleared for themselves a passage to the more even ground, and the Americans, dismayed at the intrepidity of this handful of assailants, were evidently beginning to waver in their ranks. A shout of victory, which was answered by the main body of the English troops, just then gaining the summit of the hill, completed their disorder. They stood the charge but for a moment, then ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... girls were so fond." Juergen paid no heed to this speech, but said farewell to the old man, and went on towards the house where Martin dwelt. He heard loud talking within. Martin was not alone, and this made Juergen waver in his determination, for he did not wish to encounter Else; and on second consideration, he thought it better not to hear Martin thank him ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... long enough, and if I leave it still unused, I shall be doing wrong, and there are things I have to do with it which ought to be set about immediately. I am sorry to seem importunate, but if by twelve o'clock you have not gone with me to Mr. Torrie, I will go to Messrs. Hope & Waver, who will tell me what I ought to do next, in order to be put in possession. It makes me unhappy to write like this, but I am not a child any longer, and having a man's work to do, I cannot consent to be treated as a child. I will ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the colonel and herself that they practically occupied different parts of the house as far removed from each other as possible. She had denounced him first to his face for the boy's self-imposed exile, and again behind his back to her intimates. Nor did her resolve waver even when the colonel was thrown from his horse and so badly hurt that his eyesight was greatly impaired. "It is a judgment on you," she had said, drawing her frail body up to its full height. "You will now learn what other people suffer," and would have kept on upstairs to her own room had not her ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to execute all that you order me for the service of our Master, if I had been at full liberty so to do; you must have no doubt about it, because my inclination and my duty agree perfectly well. All the advantages that I am offered did not for a moment cause me to waver, but, in short, sir, I could not go to Paris, and I shall be happy to go and meet you by the route you travel. I shall be well pleased to find landed the people you state will be there; in case they may have the commission you speak of in your two letters, have it accompanied if you ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... fashion already linked, was strongly moved. Nevertheless she could hardly guess the extremity of the passion that shook him. It was the frenzy of the rider who feels his horse about to fail him within a span of the winning post; of the leader whose men waver at the actual point of victory. But the weakness of dismay was only momentary. Calm and clearness of mind returned with the sense of emergency. He raised his night-glass, with a steady hand this ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... did his courage waver, for another voice, louder than the other, cried "Onward!" It seemed like his brother's voice, as he had known it years ago, before troubles came, and when as merry boys the two lived with but one heart between them. And at the sound he put spurs to his horse ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... consist of as purely Emphatical Colours, as may be, yet even these may be Compounded with one another, as well as Real Colours in the Grossest Pigments. For I took at once two Triangular Glasses, and one of them being kept fixt in the same Posture, that the Iris it projected on the Floor might not Waver, I cast on the same Floor another Iris with the other Prism, and Moving it too and fro to bring what part of the second Iris I pleas'd, to fall upon what part of the first I thought fit, we did sometimes (for a small Errour suffices to hinder the Success) obtain by this means a ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... mother had given to him, and to satisfy his boyish idea of justice played "We shall Meet, but We shall Miss Him," because it was Miss Morgan's favorite. While he played the Jew's-harp his tree friends flung ribald remarks at him. But when Bud began to waver his hand for a tremulo upon the mouth-organ as he played "Marsa's in de Col', Col' Groun'," a peace fell upon the company, and they sat quietly and heard his repertoire,—"Ol' Shadey," "May, Dearest May," "Lilly Dale," "Dey Stole My Chile Away," "Ol' Nicodemus," "Sleeping, I Dream, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in "taking care" of his wife, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... reached the corner which brought her in sight of the window where Fanny was impatiently watching for her. The sight of that bright, joyous face, as it looked from the window, anxious for the expected sight of her letter, made Julia for a moment waver. She thought how gentle and loving Fanny had always been to her and involuntarily her hand sought the letter which lay like a crushing weight in her pocket. It was half drawn from its hiding place when the spirit of evil which ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... meeting of Nanea and Hadden; but, although she did not seek them, the necessities of his sickness and of the situation brought about many another. Never for a moment did the white man waver in his determination to get into his keeping the native girl who had captivated him, and to attain his end he brought to bear all his powers and charm to detach her from Nahoon, and win her affections for himself. He was no rough wooer, ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... but all in vain; Love's sweetest oaths, and tears, and sighs All potent spells her heart to gain The ardent lover vainly tries: Fruitless his arts to make her waver, She will not grant the smallest favour: A ruse our youth resolved to try The cruel air to mollify:— Holding his fingers ten outspread To Perrette's gaze, and with no dread "So often," said he, "can I prove, "My sweet Perrette, how warm my love." ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... tree,[30] but was in an open piece of ground, cheering on his men, when he was shot. He stayed with them until the line was formed, and then walked back to camp unassisted, giving his gun to a man who was near him. His men, who were drawn up on the high ground skirting Crooked Run,[31] began to waver, but were rallied by Fleming, whose division had been attacked almost simultaneously, until he too was struck down by a bullet. The line then gave way, except that some of Fleming's men still held their own on the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... it?—something soothing, reassuring, which has the effect of making the doubts which from time to time appear bring, as it were, their own solution with them. But life's experience, and even more, my aquaintance with you, Miss Garman, has caused me to waver on many points." ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... allow him to squander the money left to me for far different purposes, but offered him five hundred pounds, if he would sign a bond not to torment me any more. My maternal anxiety made me thus appear to waver from my first determination, and probably suggested to him, or his diabolical agent, the infernal plot, which has succeeded ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... trembled somewhat. She was alarmed lest her words might add to the grief of the dying man. But she must not waver now, and in measured tones she repeated almost word for word the same conversation which had so ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the ladies most admired by the ancient Romans was Arria, the wife of Caecina Paetus, a Roman who was condemned by the Emperor Claudius to become his own executioner. Seeing him waver, his wife, who was resolved to be with him in death as in life, took the dagger from his hand, plunged it into her own breast, and with her last strength held it out to him, gasping out, 'It is not painful, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "You've done what you thought was your duty. You've kept your word to th' law, an' I believe you'll keep your word with me. If I say the word that'll save us now will you go back to headquarters an' report me dead?" For a full half minute their eyes did not waver. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... look at her; at her severe aquiline features, at her heavy eyelids drooping over eyes of implacable wrath, at her firm mouth and jaw, cold as if cut in marble. She was not a woman to trifle or to waver; perhaps she was one who having received offence ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the poems, consider the justice or injustice of Mr. Aiken's criticism: "It is a sort of absolute poetry, a poetry of detached waver and brilliance, a beautiful flowering of language alone—a parthenogenesis, as if language were fertilized by itself rather than by thought or feeling. Remove the magic of phrase and sound and there is nothing left: no thread of continuity, ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... evil to good, and he drives to their destruction the countries and men—who devote themselves to black magic." In addition to natural light, he sheds upon the earth truth and justice abundantly; he is the "high judge" before whom everything makes obeisance, his laws never waver, his decrees are never set at naught. "O Sun, when thou goest to rest in the middle of the heavens—may the bars of the bright heaven salute thee in peace, and may the gate of heaven bless thee!—May Misharu, thy well-beloved servant, guide aright thy ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... like a strained wand, did not waver for a moment before the grave indignation of the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not tell thee when 't was shred, Nor from what guiltless victim's head,— My brain would turn!—but it shall wave Like plumage on thy helmet brave, Till sun and wind shall bleach the stain, And thou wilt bring it me again. I waver still.—O God! more bright Let reason beam her parting light!— O. by thy knighthood's honored sign, And for thy life preserved by mine, When thou shalt see a darksome man, Who boasts him Chief of Alpine's Clan, With tartars broad and shadowy plume, And hand of blood, and brow ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... shape. He interprets you. Many of the clients who come to him are the most impracticable men in the world. A farmer, for instance, with a little money, is in search of a farm. Find him twenty farms just the size for his capital, he will visit them all and discover a fault in each, and waver and waver till the proper season for entering on possession is past. The great problem with country people is how to bring them to the point. You may think you have got all your witnesses ready for the train for London, and, as the bell ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... mused "My plans That soar, to earth may fall, Let once my army-leader Lannes Waver at yonder wall,"— Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew A rider, bound on bound Full-galloping; nor bridle drew Until he reached ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Take me into the cool, please," she said to the boy who had been dancing with her, and who still hovered near, in case his divinity might allow him yet a few more minutes. But as she put out her hand to take his arm, Ashe saw her waver and look ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were falling and those who were left began to waver. "Steady, men! Don't flinch," came the shout again. "Ah-hah, ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... of sanctification. A positive faith brings a positive experience; and so long as our faith remains positive, the experience remains positive. It is only when faith begins to waver and doubts appear that the experience becomes uncertain. If you will maintain a positive faith, God will take care of your experience. Here lies the secret of continuous victory. There may be conflicts, but faith is the foundation ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... plateful of meat, and to the small bottle of Bass's pale ale that stood before him—ultimate allowance of one who had erst clashed cymbals in Naxos. This small bottle he eyed often and with enthusiasm, seeming to waver between the rapture of broaching it now and the grandeur of having it to look forward to. It made me unhappy to see what trouble he had in managing his knife and fork. Watts-Dunton told me on another occasion that this infirmity of the hands ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... brothers) are very interesting, very well written, clever, lively; he seems a little carried away by the vanity and the excitement of the part he plays, and I observe a want of steadiness in his opinions and a disposition to waver in his views from day to day; whereas it does not appear to me as if the state of Spain depended upon diurnal circumstances and events, but more upon the workings of great causes interwoven with, and deeply seated in, the positive ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... sailor. My unhappy translation cannot offer you that voice, at times trembling with generous emotion, and again inaudible from excessive modesty in the presence of this illustrious assembly—those limbs that waver and bend under the undulations of the chivalrous sentiment which carries him away as if he were still on that powerful element he daily battles ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... it averted—if but for the moment—the growing pressure for the abolition of episcopacy. Things were fast coming to a standstill, when the discovery of the army plot changed the whole situation. Waver as the Peers might, they had no mind to be tricked by the king and overawed by his soldiery. The Commons were stirred to their old energy, London itself was driven to panic at the thought of passing into ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... I lie; Outside, the waters foam; And echoes of old storms go by Within my sea-built dome. The waters, half the gloomy way, Beneath its arches come; Throbbing to unseen billows' play, The green gulfs waver dumb. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... any kind to guide me, and the distance seemed interminable. I heard opinions freely expressed that I was on the wrong road, and at last, when the Brigadier himself came up to me and said he thought I must have lost the way, I really began to waver in my conviction that I was right. At that moment my horse stumbled into a ditch, which proved to be the boundary of the main road. I was immensely relieved, the Brigadier was delighted, and from that moment I think he was satisfied that I ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... following at Mac's heels "like a rale Irish tarrier," found his allegiance waver in these stirring, blissful days, if ever Farva so belied character and custom as to swing an axe for any length of time. Plainly out of patience, Kaviak would throw off the musk-rat coat, and run about in wet mucklucks and a single garment—uphill, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... he reported a general rumour to the effect that Henry intended to relieve the Legate of his share in the administration.[570] The Cardinal had incurred the dislike of nearly every section of the community; the King was his sole support and the King was beginning to waver. In May there were high words between Wolsey and Norfolk in Henry's presence;[571] in July King and Cardinal were quarrelling over ecclesiastical patronage at Calais,[572] and, long before the failure of the divorce suit, there were other (p. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... them, the sledge ran easily up the slopes and down the hollows, and looking back when they nooned Harding noticed the straightness of their course. Picked out in delicate shades of blue against the unbroken white surface surrounding it, the sledge trail ran back with scarcely a waver to the crest of a rise two miles away. This was not how they had journeyed north, with the icy wind in their faces, laboriously struggling round broken ridges and through tangled woods. Harding was a sanguine man, but experience ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... strength enough to crawl to where his shipmates lay. It was some time before he was interested in much besides the fact that he could drink when he wished. Then he watched Jellico waver to his feet, his head turned eastward. Tau, too, sat up as if alerted by the ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... familiarity—till I had, at last, discovered they reminded me of those little tatters of cloud that sometimes float about the setting sun,—those irresolute wisps which cannot quite decide whether to be pink or white, and waver through their tiny lives ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... see that my bluff was having its effect. His stare began to waver, and when he next spoke it was in a ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... thought that he was asking for a tip, but made out that he had lost (or gambled) the ten kronen which his employer had given to him for expenses. We had intended to give him no tip, for on the yesterday he had refused to carry our bags, but this made us waver. We asked Mr. Rad, etc., what ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Hawkins wavering on the wall, I made up my own mind not to waver. A cloud of wrath was on my brain, like the cloud of copper fog on the houses and gardens round. My decision was violent and simple; yet the thoughts that led up to it were so complicated and contradictory that I could not retrace them now. I knew Hawkins was a kind, innocent ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... their pace so that Andrews would come abreast of them near the Widow Fry's. Several times Tom glanced back to see if Andrews was watching them, but the leader's eyes seemed never to waver from the pommel of his saddle. The village street narrowed down to a country road, and the "plock-plock-plock" of the horse's hoofs on the mud sounded ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... of tossing, Hopeful of rest, ripple on to the shore; Dimpling with light, as they waver and quiver, Echoing faintly the ocean's wild roar. Locked in the arms of the tremulous waters Nestles an island, with beauty abloom, Where the warm kiss of an amorous summer Fills all the air with a languid perfume. Windward, the roar of the turbulent breakers Warns of the dangers ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... wants me to wear turquoises. I prefer my pearls. Mr. Crease half agrees with me, but as he never agrees with any one, on principle, he hates to say so. Mr. Faulkes is wavering. You shall decide; you, I know, are one of those people who never waver." ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he reached the much-coveted point—the crown of the last ascent; and when he smelled fire and the savory odor of the jerked buffalo meat, it well-nigh caused him to waver! But he must not fail to follow the custom of untold ages, and give the game scout's wolf ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... heart-breaking," replied Blaize, taking out his handkerchief, and applying it to his eyes. "We sat up half the night together, and I felt so much overcome that I began to waver in my resolution of departing. I am glad I did not give way now," he added, in a more sprightly tone. "Fresh air and bright sunshine are very different things from the close rooms in that ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... two, then crouch in the snow, like a cat warming her feet, and stare at me unblinkingly for a few moments. Then another hitch or two, which brought them nearer, and another stare. I could not look at one steadily, to make him waver; for the moment my eyes were upon him the others hitched closer; and already two more lynxes were coming over the log. I had to draw the curtain hastily with a bullet between the yellow eyes of the biggest lynx, and a second ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... of Nanea and Hadden; but, although she did not seek them, the necessities of his sickness and of the situation brought about many another. Never for a moment did the white man waver in his determination to get into his keeping the native girl who had captivated him, and to attain his end he brought to bear all his powers and charm to detach her from Nahoon, and win her affections for himself. He was no rough wooer, however, but proceeded ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... berries. A clapper bridge—that is, a bridge formed out of a single slab of granite—over twelve feet long lies across the Wallabrook near the meeting of the streams. Beside it grows a mountain-ash, and the quivering and wavering leaves, and their shadows that quiver and waver in the ripples beneath, make a profound contrast to that massive, immovable stone, that from its look may certainly be included among those Dartmoor antiquities which Sir Frederick Pollock says 'may very well have been as great a mystery to the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... designed for rending the balloon very tense. At this critical period Wise owns to having experienced considerable nervous excitement, and observing far down a thunderstorm in progress he began to waver in his mind, and inclined towards relieving the balloon of its strain, and so abandoning his experiment, at least for the present. He remembers pulling out his watch to make a note of the hour, and, while thus occupied, the straining cords, growing ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... but he looked resolutely into the eyes of the men who held his life in their hands. His voice did not waver, for he was a manly and ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... other which it was alleged he had committed. But this person, in his anger against him, having told me that he had himself been several times the bearer of gold and silver to the goldsmiths of Nice, Aix, and Avignon, which had been transmuted by Delisle from lead and iron, I began to waver a little in my opinions respecting him. I afterwards met Delisle at the house of one of my friends. To please me, the family asked Delisle to operate before me, to which he immediately consented. I offered him some iron nails, which he ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Perhaps he had found out, by Sir William's help, that I was not an ill-natured man, or one who could not outlive what was mistaken in himself or resentful in others. As to my opinions about Governments, the bad conduct of the Allies, and of Napoleon, and the old Bourbons, certainly made them waver as to what might be ultimately best, monarchy or republicanism; but they ended in favour of their old predilections; and no man, for a long while, has been less a republican than myself, monarchies and courts appearing to me salutary for the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... potent is the law of the future that none of these uncertainties, these perils of death, will cause a single bee to waver. The enthusiasm displayed by the second and third swarms is not less than that of the first. No sooner has the mother-city pronounced its decision than a battalion of workers will flock around each dangerous young queen, eager to follow ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... with Miss Calthea's establishment. It had become rare for any one even to propose custom, but she did not in the least waver in regard to her plan of closing up the business left to her by her father. As has been said, she did not wish to continue this business, so she laid in no new stock, and as she had gradually sold off a great deal, she expected to be able in time to sell off everything. She did not ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... by a licensed victualler (inimically prejudiced against the teetotaller in Mr. Batchgrew) at a Council meeting reported in the Signal. And it was precisely this knowledge which had imparted to her glance the peculiar disturbed quality that had caused Mr. Batchgrew to waver and dodge. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Rance did not waver, but calmly puffing sway at his long, black cigar he looked blankly into space. Presently a voice outside calling, "Boys!" sounded throughout the room and brought him back to actuality. He sat straight up in his chair ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... fascinating problem, over which many critics have argued and disagreed. As to the exact year it is best frankly to confess our ignorance. The information is so flimsy and conflicting as to make the acutest critics waver. While a perfectly unwarranted importance has been given to a passage in Vicente's last comedia, the Floresta de Enganos (1536), in which a judge declares that he is 66 (therefore Gil Vicente was born in 1470), sufficient stress has perhaps not been laid ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... said sharply, and then after the briefest possible pause. "Quok-quok-quok-quok-quok!" in increasing rapidity. It was quite remarkable to observe how the flock, apparently with a fixed destination of its own, would hesitate, waver, finally swing down to investigate. At this, Mr. Kincaid's call became confidential and intimate. It uttered all sorts of clucks and half-notes, telling, probably, of the manifold advantages of feed and shelter offered by this particular pond. Then came the ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... and his shot was answered by a fresh outburst of yells of pain and rage. Suddenly the palisade began to waver, then it slowly fell over, as a stream of blue-clothed figures darted from its insufficient shelter. The dacoits did not make either for the door of the hut nor for the jungle they had left. The pagoda was the nearest cover to them, and they raced for ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... not droop, nor the steady eyes waver, and with a horrible foreboding Dr. Grey seized her hands. They were rigid and icy. He stooped, caught her to his bosom, and pressed his lips to hers, but they were colder than the marble column against which she leaned; for, one hour before, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a blank stare, which had in it not a fraction of the recognition he displayed. Not for an instant did her regard waver. It was full of a haughty displeasure at the nature of the greeting. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... enemy, and, discarding their bows, they continued the battle with sword, pike, battle-axe, and bill. Thus for nearly the whole of that Sabbath day the battle raged, the huge struggling mass of humanity fighting like demons, and many times during that fatal day did the fortune of war waver in the balance: sometimes the White Rose trembling and then the Red, while men fought each other as if they were contending for the Gate of Paradise! For ten hours, with uncertain result, the conflict raged, which Shakespeare compared to "the tide of a mighty sea contending ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... drew up his hoplites in files of ten deep, posting behind them his slingers and dartmen. He exhorted his men to stand patiently till the enemy came within reach of the missiles. At the first discharge the assailing column seemed to waver; and Thrasybulus, taking advantage of their confusion, charged down the hill, and completely routed them, killing seventy, among whom was Critias himself. The loss of their leader had thrown the majority into the hands of the party formerly led by Theramenes, who resolved to ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... Susy Branch, the winter before in New York: "But why on earth don't you and Nick go to my little place at Versailles for the honeymoon? I'm off to China, and you could have it to yourselves all summer," the offer had been tempting enough to make the lovers waver. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... once my justification, and place English diplomacy in such a light before the saner portion of my fellow countrymen that an honourable peace might be rendered possible. Study them carefully, Von Ragastein. Perhaps even your own allegiance to the Party you serve may waver for ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the natives. "You do not know what you say," said Tarra. "The white people who are with us have fire guns, which kill when they speak," and he held up one of them, and the boys were amused to see how quickly they began to waver and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... do for the best, in such cases it is always wise to advise the subject to act according to first impulse either in dealing with practical or imaginative things. By so doing they employ, as it were, the intuition of the brain, and by using it do not waver and vacillate by too much reasoning over the question or endeavouring to see both sides of it at once. When the sloping Line of Head has a gentle curve downwards towards the Mount of the Moon (1-1, Plate II.), distinct ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... sinful purpose, until she reached the corner which brought her in sight of the window where Fanny was impatiently watching for her. The sight of that bright, joyous face, as it looked from the window, anxious for the expected sight of her letter, made Julia for a moment waver. She thought how gentle and loving Fanny had always been to her and involuntarily her hand sought the letter which lay like a crushing weight in her pocket. It was half drawn from its hiding place when the spirit of evil which seemed ever to follow Julia's footsteps whispered, "Let it ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... be postponed, till at last it is too late, and the Hun has got through, and raided the trench. If you hesitate or ask advice you are lost. You have to make up your mind in an instant, and to stand by it. If you waver your men will never have ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... made he backed upon Mrs Pengelly's shop door, and the impact set a bell clanging. The sense of it shot up his spine of a sudden, and at each stroke of the clapper he felt he had sold his soul to the devil. But Miss Oliver stood in front of him, with a smile on her face that seemed to waver the more she fixed it: and at this moment the voice ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... lullaby, rain on the clover! Tears on the eyelids that waver and weep! Rockaby, lullaby—bending it over! Down on the mother-world, Down on the other world! Sleep, oh sleep! ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... mirror, did not meet mine, but were fixed, as on some distant and pleasing prospect, though there was, as always, a slight disdain at his mouth. But the eyes were clear, resolute, and strong, never wavering—and I never saw them waver—yet in them something distant and inscrutable. It was a candid eye, and he was candid in his evil; he made no pretense; and though the means to his ends were wicked, they were never low. Presently, glancing round the room, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thou damn'd, inexecrable dog! And for thy life let justice be accused. Thou almost makest me waver in my faith To hold opinion with Pythagoras, That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... all this to show what, perhaps, is hardly worth the showing—a wavering in a man's mind, and that man a young one. Are they not at it all day long, all of them? Do they do anything but waver? ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... when we say that a man assents to what is false and does not doubt it, we do not say that he is certain, but merely that he does not doubt, that is to say, that he assents to what is false, because there are no causes sufficient to make his imagination waver. Although, therefore, a man may be supposed to adhere to what is false, we shall never on that account say that he is certain. For by certitude we understand something positive, and not the privation of doubt; but by the privation of ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... this, he pitched the coin with a tremulous hand, and then leaned forward, breathlessly watching it fall, waver from side to side, and roll slowly under the bookcase. Too much excited to rise from his knees, he crept towards it, and, pressing his cheek against the dusty floor, he peered under the unwieldy piece of furniture, to catch a glimpse of his ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... time to waver, he continued: "The great Chief Oroto must not show his people that he is afraid. He must show them that he is greater and wiser than the medicine men, and that the wise men who have told him those tales ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... things sensual and has no care for mental prejudices one way or the other)—the inevitable disillusions of family life. It was scarcely possible that the devotion of Robert and Mrs. Parflete would not waver or seem less exquisite under this discipline. Their dream of love would become unparadised. It would gain a sadness, a melancholy, a note of despair hard to endure and most difficult to repress. Reckage had no transcendentalism ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... with their forks,—a thing which he said no lady or gentleman ever did,—was still far from decided as to the kind of cravat Colonel Lapham ought to wear: shaken on other points, Lapham had begun to waver also concerning the black cravat. As to the question of gloves for the Colonel, which suddenly flashed upon him one evening, it appeared never to have entered the thoughts of the etiquette man, as Lapham called him. Other authors on the same ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... disposition to waver, Colonel W. Jones, the Brigadier under Chamberlain, with great bravery placed himself in front on foot, and called on the soldiers, now a confused mass of Sikhs, Goorkhas, and Europeans, to charge and dislodge the enemy from the end of the lane. He was answered ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... appealed to, she had answered him, "Do right," and she now said the same to the weeping man, who sobbed aloud, "I will. I will tell her all to-morrow. I wish it were to- morrow now, but the long night must intervene, and a weak, vacillating fool like me may waver in that time. Nina," and he held her closer to him, "stay here with me till morning. I am stronger where you are. The sight of you does me good. Phillis will fix you a bed upon the sofa and make you comfortable; ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... clean textures. He rubbed his face in them like a young animal, and drew in deep breaths of the best smell in the world—the smell of damp, green growing things. He turned on to his back again. The mist had begun to waver, a breath was stirring fitfully but finely. It came cool upon him, and as it blew the world seemed very gently to come to life again. He could see what he had come to look at and overshot in the mist—the little harbour of Povah lying to his left. He rolled over and stared curiously ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... home to Dunore, having gained nothing by his London trip but a little of that bitter though salutary tonic called experience. His resolve did not waver—nay, it became his day-dream; but manifold obstacles occurred in the attempt to realize it. Family pride was one of the most stubborn; and not until all hope from home resources was at an end, did ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... when Mrs. Snawdor and Uncle Jed had gone to work, and Mr. Snawdor had betaken himself out of ear-shot of the wailing baby, Nance's courage began to waver. After she had finished her work and crawled into bed between Fidy and Lobelia, the juvenile court, with its unknown terrors, rose before her. All the excitement of the day died out; her pride in sharing the punishment with Dan ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... on, it became increasingly evident that the House had but little substance on which to base an impeachment, and that the force back of it was intense hatred of the President. It was made clear to senators who were inclined to waver towards the side of acquittal that their political careers were at an end if they failed to vote guilty. The general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church even appointed an hour of prayer that the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Undine's absence, and her visitor, with a smile, and echoes of divers et ondoyant in his brain, had repeated her daughter's name after her, saying: "It's a wonderful find—how could you tell it would be such a fit?"—it came to her quite easily to answer: "Why, we called her after a hair-waver father put on the market the week she was born—" and then to explain, as he remained struck and silent: "It's from UNdoolay, you know, the French for crimping; father always thought the name made it take. He was quite a scholar, and had the greatest knack for finding names. I remember ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the stars, which were perfectly reflected a hundred yards away on the smooth expanse, first waver, then tremble, and lastly break into a myriad delicate shafts of light, as the water quickened and gathered. He spat in the water, and thought of trout for breakfast. But the long roar of the rapids of the Dee came ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... no chains of fear should bind me; I'd brave the heights which older men must shun. I'd leave the well-worn lanes of life behind me, And seek to do what men have never done. Rich prizes wait for those who do not waver; The world needs men to battle for the truth. It calls each hour for stronger hearts and braver. This is the age for ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... to the long idle afternoon, to the new environment, to anything you like, but I began to think that perhaps I did. I was confoundedly lonely. For the first time in my life its even course began to waver: the needle registered warning marks on the matrimonial seismograph, lines vague ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... administered to his hunger at some cost, when a single asking would have made him welcome to the best that the owner of the Wish-Tori-Wish can command, are truths that may not be denied. Still is he mortal man, as a goodly appetite hath proven, even should our belief in Providence so far waver as to harbor doubts of its unwillingness to suffer beings of injustice to wander in our forms and substance. I tell thee, Ruth, that the nag will be needed for to-morrow's service, and that our father will give but ill thanks should ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... presently be in some abode—she did not know what— where she could have full personal liberty, and her present confinement being her own choice made it much less dignified, and this caused her to waver about throwing off life and captivity together. The moment never came when she ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... already linked, was strongly moved. Nevertheless she could hardly guess the extremity of the passion that shook him. It was the frenzy of the rider who feels his horse about to fail him within a span of the winning post; of the leader whose men waver at the actual point of victory. But the weakness of dismay was only momentary. Calm and clearness of mind returned with the sense of emergency. He raised his night-glass, with a steady hand this time, and scanned the depth of blackness in front of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... show that I, the disgraced and the deceased Fibble, would, from the confines of the silent tomb, beg forgiveness for my criminal indiscretion. I shall write all! My tears descending as I write bedew the sheet, and beneath my swimming eyes the lines waver, but in haste I write on, lest the slayer find me before ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... therefore it has become an ingrained psychological habit, who hold it, in what might be condemned as a narrow, unintellectual fashion, are just the very people who will fight and die for it, when its more cultivated and reflective professors waver, temporize, and fall away. Taking human nature as it is, who can doubt but that this is the way in which the majority are intended to hold their religious, moral, philosophical, and political convictions; that reflex ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong. This love affair moved on happily for many months, until one day the king happened to discover its existence. He did not hesitate nor waver in regard to his duty in the premises. The youth was immediately cast into prison, and a day was appointed for his trial in the king's arena. This, of course, was an especially important occasion, and his majesty, as well as all the people, was greatly interested in the ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton
... least inclined did he feel to give up now, the power which he believed, of right, belonged to him. A sharp retort trembled for a moment on his lips; but he kept back its utterance. He did not, however, waver a single line from his purpose, but rather felt it ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... sent up the river to check the Serbian cavalry division, which was trying to work its way around the marshes and thus cut off the Austrian force entirely. But this movement of the left wing was merely a feint; it was intended simply to make the Austrian line waver. While the Austrians were maneuvering in answer to this feint, the Serbian center was ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the past year; and he surveyed his writing with a feeling of angry dismay. Try as he might, with a frowning concentration, to pen the words and numerals firmly, presently his attention would slip, his hand waver ever so slightly, and a sudden stricken appearance of old age fasten on the characters.... By heaven, to-night he'd throw all that stinking ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Cecilia Cricklander as an aid to their advancement. He glossed over nothing of his own baseness, but went on to show how, from the moment he had seen her upon that Good Friday at the orchard house, his determination about Cecilia Cricklander had begun to waver, until the night under the tree when passion overcame every barrier and he knew he must possess her—Halcyone—for ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... is golden; to be wise and true rejoices every heart. But evil influences waver the scales of justice and mercy. No personal considerations should allow any root of bitterness to spring up between Christian Scientists, nor cause any misapprehension as to the motives of others. We must love our ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... and the men waver, Capt. Blakely with a cheer called up the boarders of the "Wasp;" and in an instant a stream of shouting sailors, cutlass in hand, was pouring over the hammock-nettings, and driving the foe backward on his own decks. The British still fought stubbornly; but their numbers were ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... stipitate, the stipe about one-fourth to one-third the total height, black polished shining; hypothallus distinct, common to all sporangia, purple-brown, shining; columella distinct, attaining almost the summit of the sporangium but inclined to waver a little at last, in other words, flexuose toward the top, freely branching, the branches rather stout, anastomosing to support the capillitial net; the meshes larger, several times the spore-diameter, the spores sooty-brown, distinctly ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... the hour of conflict drew near' (and this was a conflict to be dreaded even by him'), he began to waver, and to abate much of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... violent thunderstorm broke over the contending armies, and struck terror into the Syracusans, who regarded it as an omen of defeat. But the seasoned soldiers of Nicias saw nothing unusual in an autumn tempest, and perceiving the enemy to waver, they pressed their attack, and broke through the opposing lines. The whole Syracusan army now fell back upon Syracuse, but they retired without haste or disorder, and their retreat was covered by a numerous and efficient ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... amusements should be indulged in, and good moral company cultivated. They become suspicious, skeptical, and believe that they are victims of imposture. When they lose self-reliance, their faith and trust in others begins to waver, especially if their health does not improve so rapidly as they had anticipated: As much depends upon the faithful observance of the hygienic rules as upon the constant and proper use of medicines. The rapidity of recovery depends upon the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and be exalted in men's eyes and become even with these." Presently, he beheld one of the mountebanks, who was present at the feast, climbing up to the top of a high and towering wall and throwing himself down to the ground and alighting on his feet. Whereupon the waver said to himself, "Needs must I do as this one hath done, for surely I shall not fail of it." So he arose and swarmed upon the wall and casting himself down, broke his neck against the ground and died forthright. "Now I tell thee this that thou sayst get thy living by what way thou knowest and thoroughly ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... has cut off the lamps—he's released the platform. God! Look—Foulet!" My voice tore through my throat; my eyes burned with sudden, blinding emotion. In the soft darkness of the starry night I could see the platform waver, topple, rise! It rose straight up, tilting and swaying in the light breeze. What was it Fraser had said? If it was released it would go straight to the stars! It was on ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... Then it disappeared, blinked out again. I opened my mouth to call Casey's attention to it—though I felt that he was watching it with that steady, squinting stare of his that never seems to wink or waver for a second—but there it was again, come to a stop just under the crest of the mountain where the white slide was topped by a black rim capped with bleak, bare rock like a crude skullcap on Tippipah. The fire flared, dimmed, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... movements were slow and methodical, and his heavy-lidded, slow-moving eyes gave him the appearance of being half asleep or dazed. Yet they were eyes that saw everything, that had been trained to see everything through all his twenty years and odd in the ring. They were eyes that did not blink or waver before an impending blow, but that ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... imitate their cries, and often caused the leaders to turn, to waver in their course as I uttered my ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... bank of the Vistula. Three detached corps remained stationed there. The Polish general, Skrzynecki, who had succeeded Prince Radzivil in the command, then took the offensive. He defeated the Russians under Geismas at Waver, and General Rosen at Dembevilkie and Igknie, but then stopped short. In the meanwhile a Polish expedition into Volhynia failed completely. Dvernicki was driven back into Gallicia. Another Polish expedition sent into Lithuania under Vilna likewise ended ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... those who are destined to reach the heights, Shakespeare seems to have grown slowly, and even at twenty-eight or thirty years of age his grasp of character was so uncertain, his style so little formed, so apt to waver from blank verse to rhyme, that it is difficult to determine exactly what he did write. We may take it, I think, as certain that he wrote more than we who have his mature work in mind are inclined to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... described her as living in the midst of the Court, flattered and caressed by all, and on the highest terms of favour with the King and Madame de Maintenon. She found her position, indeed, so far above her hopes, that she began to waver in her intention of returning to Spain. The age and the health of Madame de Maintenon tempted her. She would have preferred to govern here rather than in Spain. Flattered by the attentions paid her, she thought those attentions, or, I may say, rather ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... The little birds quaver, Dugperler bade Pearls from night's weeping; Blomsterblade, The flowers are steeping Som Vindene gynge; In the winds which waver; Og med svaevende Fjed To the meadows, fleet En Mo hendandser A maiden boundeth; Til Marken afsted. Violet fillet neat Violer hende krandser, Her brows surroundeth; Hendes Rosenkind braender, Her cheeks are glowing, Hun har Liljehaender; Lilly hands she's showing; ...
— The Gold Horns • Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager
... and from its top were firing down on the defenders of the barricade. Inch by inch they won their way up the barricade, already thickly covered with dead; and then Charlie, seeing that his men were beginning to waver, gave the signal. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... nothing good to report. Years of sick idleness and barrenness have grown wearisome to me. I do nothing. I waver and hover, and painfully speculate even now as to health, and where I shall spend the summer out of London! I am a very poor fellow;—but hope to grow better by and by. Then this alluvies of foul lazy stuff that has long swum over me may perhaps yield the better harvest. Esperons!—Hail ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... anxious about dying, with the family I have on my hands, neighbour," said father, his rifle holding without a waver, "but unless you put away that weapon, and listen to reason, you cannot enter my house. Calm yourself, man, and hear what there is to be said! Examine the proof, that is here waiting to be offered ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... be useless to repeat the conversation that here ensued, suffice it to say, that Montraville used every argument that had formerly been successful, Charlotte's resolution began to waver, and he drew her almost ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... blond-headed urchins and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range or, boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan. So long did the artist waver between these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion, he had finally conceived and completed both designs. With the proverbially tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to sacrifice ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... getting sight of the enemy's army, a volley of four pieces was fired, which made four beautiful lanes in their squadrons and battalions. That pulled them up quite short; and three or four volleys in succession, which produced marvellous effects, made them waver, and, little by little, retire all of them behind the turn of the valley, out of cannon-shot, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... She would never have forgiven herself had she left him to carry his sorrow alone. Perhaps this poor soul needed her more. With delight one moment and shame the next, she saw herself drifting towards him. Nevertheless she did not waver, nor change the date ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... any occasion to waver in my first judgment of the Colonel. The old gentleman seemed to me, and still seems in the retrospect, the salt of the earth. I had occasion to see him in the extremes of hardship, hunger and cold; he was dying, and ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... floating from the Lemnian isle, And over Helen crush'd his poppy crown, Her soft lids waver'd for a little while, Then on her carven bed she laid her down, And Sleep, the comforter of king and clown, Kind Sleep the sweetest, near akin to Death, Held her as close as Death doth men that drown, So close that none might ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... against the rock-bound coasts of the gloomy promontory and the isles of Re and Oleron. As the vigor of the storm increased, the harbor towers Saint Nicholas and the Chain, looming in the blur like suppliant arms, and the sea walls began gradually to waver and recede in the accumulating haze, while across the dim yellow flame in the tower of the Lantern the snow flurried in grey, shapeless, interminable shadows. Hither and thither the wind rushed, bold and blusterous, sometimes carrying landward ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... glance waver. Her hold on the door was less firm. He pushed against it. She fell back, and he took her into his arms and pressed ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... learn to like him a little? Won't you tolerate him?—I could almost say, for my sake! He and I are at variance on certain points, but taking him altogether, I am under deeper obligations to him than to any man on earth. He has found where I bend and waver.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... instance I have met, for now two whole years, of being understood as to my own retiring inclinations; and it is singular I should first meet with it from the only person who makes them waver. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... hard to keep his eyes steadily on mine; but they would waver and shift. Not, however, before I had found deep down in them the beginnings of fear. "You see, you were mistaken," said I. "You have nothing to say to ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... heat of the battle, the Prince, finding thirty-six squadrons of French coming down upon our army, sent Ligonier to order our thirty-two squadrons, under Lord George to advance. During that transaction, the French appeared to waver; and Prince Ferdinand, willing, as it is supposed, to give the honour to the British horse of terminating the day, sent Fitzroy to bid Lord George bring up only the British cavalry. Ligonier had but just delivered his message, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the intense earnestness of the lover was exerting powerful influence over the affectionate maiden, for she began to waver. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... the latter talked; his gaze did not waver as Lawler concluded. But a slight stain appeared in his cheeks, which instantly receded, leaving them normal again. But that slight flush betrayed Hatfield to Lawler; it told Lawler that Hatfield knew why ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... were all there, striving for mastery; no furtive weakening, no uncertain questioning, no remonstrance of reproval—nothing but just unlimited faith and love. If the boy's look had angered him, had caused him to waver, had made the self-sacrifice seem too great when repaid with ingratitude, all these thoughts vanished in an instant, obliterated by that one look of unalterable love. In the hour of darkness the girl stood by him, and he would also stand firm. She would believe ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... eve is Sigurd in the ancient Niblung hall, Where the cloudy hangings waver and the flickering shadows fall, And he sits by the Kings on the high-seat, and wise of men he seems, And of many a hidden marvel past thought of man he dreams: On the Head of Hindfell he thinketh, and how fair the woman was, And how that his love hath blossomed, and the fruit shall come ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... became, Tenacious both, and both to blame. Yet often an upbraiding look Controul'd the sentence as I spoke; Prompt and direct its flight arose, But sunk or waver'd at the close. Often, beneath his softening eye, I felt my resolution die; And, half-relentingly, forgot His ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... when there arose from the camp a sound to chill the flesh of any listener, a wail which could not have come from the throat of any normal living thing, intelligent being or animal. Ululating in ear-torturing intensity, the cry sank to a faint, ominous echo of itself, to waver up ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... cry out. The sex-call had been stronger than he had realized; therefore, to his present grief was added an inescapable, almost irresistible feeling of physical distress—a frenzy of balked desire—which caused him to waver ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... an Editor's ever a man of resource, He is never tied down to one definite course: He shrank not a shrink nor waver'd a wave, He blank not a blink nor quaver'd a quave; But, pointing upstairs as he turn'd to the door, Said "Editor's ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... drawn with schoolboy pencils all brought to judgment suddenly by one straight line drawn with a ruler. All the amateur lines seemed to reel to right and left. A moment before I could have sworn they stood as straight as lances; now I could see them curve and waver everywhere, like scimitars and yataghans. Compared with the telegraph post the pines were crooked—and alive. That lonely vertical rod at once deformed and enfranchised the forest. It tangled it all together and yet made it free, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... children, who fancied she, also, was about to faint as Moses had done, yet she did not fall nor did her gaze waver; and impelled by its sternness to make ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... Naturally, Charles was not content. Then, too, it looked as though he had lost a useful friend as well as a neighbour, for the new Duke of Guienne was formally reconciled to his brother and took oath that his fraternal devotion to his monarch should never again waver. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... peasant, science as already known and faith in one God, Creator and Father of all things, must go hand in hand. Education and civilization will do much for the ignorant inaka or boors, but for the cultured whose minds waver and whose feet flounder, as well as for the unlearned and priest-ridden, there is no surer help and healing than that faith in the Heavenly Father which gives the unifying thought to him who looks ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... defined, and at half past three in the afternoon a general advance was ordered. The Union skirmishers encountered at first a series of rifle-pits. The orders had been to take these, and nothing more was expected. The battle waged with great fury, and soon the Confederates were seen to waver and abandon first one pit ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... search: he grew hot and forgot all fear, except a spasm of terror lest his light should burn low and die out. The bleating had quite ceased now, and there was not even a sigh to guide him; but he knew that near him the lambs must be, and he did not waver nor despair. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... made up. I own that I might have preferred another course, and Heaven knows it is not that I think myself worthy of this; but I have been brought up to this, and I will not waver. It is marked out for me as plainly as your earldom for you, and I will do my duty in it as my appointed calling. There lies my course of honest independence: you call it pride—see what those are who are devoid of it: there lie my means of educating my sister, providing ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... humanity. Then let not this appalling injustice bring down the wrath of offended Heaven on our country—join with us in the endeavour to benefit mankind, and be determined that your zeal shall not waver, nor your exertions diminish, while a single spot in our land is polluted ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... of Irish affairs. In the one sense it means only that Ireland shall remain part of the British Empire, in the other that Ireland shall still be part of the United Kingdom. And, what is of great importance, the mass of Englishmen waver between these two interpretations of Imperial supremacy. When they think of Home Rule as satisfying Ireland, they hold that it gives Irishmen everything which they can possibly ask. When they think of Home Rule as not dismembering the United Kingdom, they fancy ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... the six in front seemed to waver in their course—as if undecided as to what direction they should take. Only for a moment, however, and then heading their horses along the shore of the lake, they pressed on in wildest flight. Galloping at such a rapid pace they appeared ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... suggestion may be; lacking all flavour of the extraordinary as it does; without novelty and confessedly old-fashioned; we have but this to commend to all who waver and doubt, to all whose voices falter as they seek to utter the mighty affirmations of the Gospel:—That the way to win again the old assurance is to come back to the source of their sublime vocation, determined, whatever may befall, there to abide all the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for the defense of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... had the effect of bringing the true facts of the case to Hsiang-yn's notice, and she began to waver in ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... I require for what I have to undergo to keep up the faith of my disciples; but there are many who waver, some who doubt, and I find that my movements are watched. I cannot trust the woman in this house. I think she is a spy set upon me, but I cannot remove her, as this house, and all which it contains, are not mine, but belong to the disciples in general. There is another woman, not far ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... not waver. He did not repine. He made no reproach, even in his own thoughts. He had only lost all the hope out of his life and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... loud giggles that in their London trudges used to break from her attendant, but for all the years of her tendency to produce socially that impression of an excess of the queer something which had seemed to waver so widely between innocence and guilt. On the spot, at Boulogne, though there might have been excess there was at least no wavering; she recognised, she understood, she adored and took possession; feeling herself attuned to everything and laying her hand, right and left, on what ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... of this public sentiment, he still did not waver in his loyalty to the old pieces. Day after day he unpacked and dusted and polished them with loving devotion. They spoke to him of other days, and when he was quite sure that the last freight ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... word "shame" coming from his own lips as a comment on himself never caused her the slightest pang of fear. She had quickly hidden the tiny packet in her kerchief. She would act point by point exactly as he had ordered her to do, and she knew that Ffoulkes would never waver either. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... the choice of three instruments to select from; but his heart did not waver for long, ere it became fixed upon the pianoforte as the fittest interpreter of his genius, and he was true to his first love to the end. His 'Three Sonatas for the Pianoforte,' written about this time, gives us the first record of his published ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... it aside lightly, as a man should, for if one followed every vagrant fancy and intuition, taking account of signs and omens, he would slue and waver in his course like a toy boat in a mill pond, which after great labor and adventure comes, in the end, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... have to tell Your Majesty is of importance, he exclaimed, and Monmouth seemed to waver, whilst Grey looked disdainful unbelief of the importance of any communication ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... and only time Karin had been known to waver, or to express any doubt as to the advisability of the ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... the head of the oncoming column. That column veered somewhat to the right as it came. The line staggered, but pressed on. It came within the range of the Union musketry. Gaps opened here and there. Armistead, who led the advance, saw his forces sink to the earth; but he did not waver. Nearer and nearer the column came to the Union line. It struck the Union line. There was a momentary melee among the guns, and then all was over. Hancock's infantry rose with flash on flash from among the rocks by which they were partially protected. The Confederates were scattered ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... event, the death of the Emperor, will have a softening influence on my personal fate, remains questionable. In a few weeks I shall have direct news. Whatever it may turn out to be, I cannot waver or hesitate. To you, dearest Richard, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... to God at twelve o'clock for his salvation. She said nothing to him; but every day at that hour she told the Lord about her husband. At the end of twelve months there was no change in him. But she did not give up. Six months more went past. Her faith began to waver, and she said, "Will I have to give him up at last? Perhaps when I am dead He will answer my prayers." When she had got to that point, it seemed just as if God had got her where he wanted her. The man came home to dinner one day. His wife was in the dining-room waiting for him, but he didn't ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... round her knees, conscious, poor soul, that the worst struggle is here, the quickest agony here. But she does not waver for an instant. And her weapons are all ready. The inmost soul of her is a fortress well stored, whence at any moment the mere personal craving of the natural man ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no sooner had Bruix joined them than he began in words as clear as they were concise: "I have seen them; they waver!" ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... began. Public opinion commenced to waver. No one knew whose turn to be hanged would come next. Emboldened by their fatal success, accusers whispered of people in high places as leagued with the Evil One. An Andover minister narrowly escaped death. The Beverly minister, Hale, one of the ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... difficulty lay in the necessity of concealing the step she was about to take from her aunt, whose violent opposition would throw a fearful obstacle in the way. It was easier to avoid than to surmount such a barrier; but if it could not be avoided, it must be surmounted. In that decision she could not waver. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... to marry Cecilia Cricklander as an aid to their advancement. He glossed over nothing of his own baseness, but went on to show how, from the moment he had seen her upon that Good Friday at the orchard house, his determination about Cecilia Cricklander had begun to waver, until the night under the tree when passion overcame every barrier and he knew he must ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... ground. For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for the defense of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... over again. He was sick at both heart and brain. Could it be true? Could those men be dead? The wise Boyd, the cheerful Little Giant, and the grave and kindly Brady? Once more he looked Heraka straight in the eye, but the gaze of the chief did not waver. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... the second time. Hence he proceeded to menace the Peloponnese, where he formed an alliance with the Argives, who promised him that they would openly embrace the Persian cause. At the same time the Athenians, finding that Sparta took no steps to help them, began to waver in their resistance, and to contemplate accepting the terms which Mardonius was still willing to grant them. The fate of Greece trembled in the balance, and apparently was determined by the accident of a death and a succession, rather than by any wide-spread patriotic feeling or any settled ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... butchers with eloquent hatred, desire to serve God according to the yearning of their own souls, and believe what their own hearts dictate-and these men call the Prince their Father William. Wait a little! As soon as trouble oppresses us, the poor and lowly will stand firm, if the rich and great waver and deny ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Let us not waver in our faith in God's overruling providence, and in the reality of His interposition in answer to prayer for the deliverance and help of his people under any and all circumstances. "In everything, ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... representative, the imperial procurator with power to crucify or to save; officially he was an autocrat. His conviction of Christ's blamelessness and his desire to save Him from the cross are beyond question. Why did Pilate waver, hesitate, vacillate, and at length yield contrary to his conscience and his will? Because, after all, he was more slave than freeman. He was in servitude to his past. He knew that should complaint be made of him at Rome, his corruption and cruelties, his extortions and the unjustifiable slaughter ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... shop door, and the impact set a bell clanging. The sense of it shot up his spine of a sudden, and at each stroke of the clapper he felt he had sold his soul to the devil. But Miss Oliver stood in front of him, with a smile on her face that seemed to waver the more she fixed it: and at this moment the voice ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... interrogation, but he felt himself shrink on the floor when he saw the slightest movement on the part of his executioner. The torture of that short period was the refinement of cruelty, but never for one moment did he waver from his fixed determination to face his inquisitors like a man and a son ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... dimmed its shine. I will not tell thee when 't was shred, Nor from what guiltless victim's head,— My brain would turn!—but it shall wave Like plumage on thy helmet brave, Till sun and wind shall bleach the stain, And thou wilt bring it me again. I waver still.—O God! more bright Let reason beam her parting light!— O. by thy knighthood's honored sign, And for thy life preserved by mine, When thou shalt see a darksome man, Who boasts him Chief of Alpine's Clan, With tartars broad and shadowy plume, And hand of blood, and brow of gloom ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... mighty doctors doubted there. The Pope himself waver'd; and more than one Row'd in that galley—Gardiner to wit, Whom truly I deny not to have been Your faithful friend and trusty councillor. Hath not your Highness ever read his book. His tractate upon True Obedience, Writ ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Dhritarashtra whose knowledge only was his eyes, on hearing these words of his son and recollecting everything that Kanika had, said unto him, became afflicted with sorrow, and his mind also thereupon began to waver. Then Duryodhana and Karna, and Sakuni, the son of Suvala, and Duhsasana as their fourth, held a consultation together. Prince Duryodhana said unto Dhritarashtra, 'Send, O father, by some clever contrivance, the Pandavas to the town of Varanavata. We shall then have no fear of them.' Dhritarashtra, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... luck; it was simple lack of faith," says Cora. "I put myself in tune with the Infinite and make my claim upon the all-good—and then I waver. The loss of that dollar ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... fell. Terrible the contest. It was like a thunder-storm among the mountains,—like the growling of the angry surf upon the shore of the ocean. How trying, after hours of hard fighting, to see the lines waver and behold the Rebels move victoriously over the field! with disaster setting in, and to know that all that is worth living for is ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... of my narrative I enumerate his writings, I shall take care that my readers shall not be left to waver in doubt, between certainty and conjecture, with regard to their authenticity; and, for that purpose, shall mark with an asterisk (*) those which he acknowledged to his friends, and with a dagger (dagger) those which are ascertained to be his by internal evidence. When ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... ground, And ere the beast falls bleeding Another horse is found. His right arm falls—'tis wounded; He waves on high his left; In vain he leads the movement, The ranks in twain are cleft. The men in scarlet waver Before the men in brown, And fly in utter panic— ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... this love, if indeed you would improve it. You must not be shaken as to the doctrine and grounds of it (Eph 3:17). These you must be well acquainted with: for he that is but a child in this doctrine, is not capable as yet, of falling in with these exhortations: For such waver, and fear when tempted; and "he that feareth is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18), nor can he so improve it for himself and soul's good as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... deep into the sick woman's eyes. It wavered there darkly, submerged, half-suspended, as you may see the weed waver in a dim seapool. Did a bubble, a gleam, float up from the depths? At any rate, the ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Killybegs above the crags The gray gulls pipe with voices thinned, And all the green trees are like flags That wave and waver in the wind. ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... cover, and braved the enemy in open conflict. In spite of Tenskwatawa's prophecies, the American bullets wrought deadly havoc among the warriors, who, seeing that they had been deceived, began to waver. Finally, the Indians gave way before a terrific charge and fled to the woods, while the soldiers applied the ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... look as of a nervous nineteenth-century Apollo, and you will understand that there is mighty little comfort in seeing him in a bad way. He was tolerably foolish last summer at Baden Baden, but he got on his feet, and for a while he was steady. Then he began to waver again, and at last toppled over. Now, literally, he 's lying prone. He came into my room last night, miserably tipsy. I assure you, it did n't amuse me..... About Miss Light it 's a long story. She is one of the great beauties of all time, and worth coming barefoot to Rome, like the pilgrims ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Madame des Ursins, I described her as living in the midst of the Court, flattered and caressed by all, and on the highest terms of favour with the King and Madame de Maintenon. She found her position, indeed, so far above her hopes, that she began to waver in her intention of returning to Spain. The age and the health of Madame de Maintenon tempted her. She would have preferred to govern here rather than in Spain. Flattered by the attentions paid her, she thought those attentions, or, I may say, rather those servile adorations, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... with Bob," hesitated Bob's uncle, for at the sight of so much ready money he began to waver in his resolutions to let Bob ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... astride a spar and try to knock each other off. It requires a good deal of knack to keep your balance while some one is pounding you with a large pillow. You are not allowed to touch the spar with your hands, hence the difficulty of holding a difficult position. When a man begins to waver the other redoubles his attack, and slowly at first, but surely, the defeated gladiator tumbles off the spar into a canvas stretched several feet below. It is lots of fun, especially for the spectator and ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... confess. "I speak before God," he answered, "that I am clear from this accusation."—"What, in all respects?"—"Yes, in all respects." The girls were struck with dumbness; and Ann Putnam, re-affirming that he was the man that hurt her, "was taken with a fit." Mary Walcot began to waver in her confidence, and Mercy Lewis said, "It is not the man." This unprecedented variance in the testimony of the girls brought matters to a stand; and he was sent out for a time, while others ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of poverty—the child of want—whose home was a garret, and who was familiar with the chills of winter and the cravings of hunger,—did she, while listening to the splendid promises of the rich man who knelt at her feet, for a moment waver in her pride of virtue, or even dream of accepting his brilliant offers? No! for even had she no other scruples, a host of holy memories encircled her heart, as a shield of power against the tempter's wiles,—the memory of home, of the two loved beings she had left there, of ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... reeled for a moment under this terrible fire, but they did not waver. Support was hurried to them. It ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... Torato, thirty miles from Moquequa. The road led over passes and wound around mountain sides, and from several points of vantage I could see the army on the march, with General Pierola and a priest by his side in the lead. The priest was there to inspire courage in those who might waver. The army numbered six hundred infantry and two hundred cavalry, many of whom did not know the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... her back on the bustle of the station, all the lines in her face seemed to waver and the eyes to brighten. Finally, when the train rolled up to the platform and a young-looking elderly man swung himself nimbly off the steps, the color flared up in her cheeks, only to sink as suddenly; like a candle flame in a ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... It smelt of burning, like a gipsy camp. The road seemed to waver in the flickering of the flames, the ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... fell into place with a shout. To hold the projecting pole levered up at that height was a test of weight and muscle, even without their man on the end of it; but there were plenty more to help pull, did their united force waver. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... historical authority of the four Gospels, documents whose authorship and date are lost in obscurity. Even of "orthodox" theologians few, with any claims to scholarship, now hold that these Gospels, as they stand, were written by the persons whose names they bear. They wander and waver in a thick fog. See Milman's "History of Christianity," vol. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... almost every action of men who scarce waver save under her assaults. For reason has been obliged to yield, and the wisest reason takes as her own principles those which the imagination of man has everywhere rashly introduced. [He who would follow reason ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... made it impossible for Bruce again to waver. He could not hope for pardon; he must be victorious or share the fate of Wallace. He summoned his adherents, including young James Douglas, received the support of the Bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow, hurried to Scone, and ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... before. Far up, against the tender summer sky, flapped the Royal Standard; and the lilies of France, once more on their blue ground, indicated that the King was in residence. Even as they looked, however, the banner seemed to waver a little; and simultaneously a sudden ringing sound from a shadowed portico a couple of hundred yards away brought Father Jervis to ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... that—you'll be a great figure to me. Count on my highest appreciation, my devotion. You'll give me satisfaction—if that has any weight with you." After which, as Paul appeared still to waver, his host added: "Do you remember what you said to ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... moral so subtly expressed that every soldier or sailor who reads it will think seriously of it if the temptation to such disloyalty should enter his mind. This story of the young man who tried to desert at Salonika may well have a heartening influence upon all men in uniforms who waver in the path of duty—especially in these days of vast military operations when a whole world is in arms. It belongs in patriotic literature by the side of Edward Everett Hale's "The Man Without a Country." The motif is the same—that ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis
... but the rails will be made and sold by Americans in Ontario. Gentlemen, all I ask is that you have faith in your own country, as much faith as has been shown by your neighbors across the line. Your Dominion is now what the United States was fifty years ago and we did not waver. The capital of our allied companies is twenty-seven million dollars. It comes, every cent of it, from Philadelphia. We do not need your money, but will welcome any who wish to join us. Once again, gentlemen, and last of all, have faith in your own country!" Then, with a graceful ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... the day the pseudo-king rode back and forth along his lines. Three of his staff were killed and two horses were shot from beneath him, but from the moment that he appeared the Luthanian line ceased to waver or fall back. The advanced trenches that they had abandoned to the Austrians they took again at the point of the bayonet. Charge after charge they repulsed, and all the time there hovered above the enemy Lutha's sole aeroplane, watching, watching, ever watching for ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Columbus, with wonderful tact and patience, explained all these appearances. But the more he argued, the louder became their murmurs. At last they secretly determined to throw him overboard. Although he knew their feelings, he did not waver, but declared that he would proceed till the enterprise ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... that the intense earnestness of the lover was exerting powerful influence over the affectionate maiden, for she began to waver. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... the record shall endure to show that I, the disgraced and the deceased Fibble, would, from the confines of the silent tomb, beg forgiveness for my criminal indiscretion. I shall write all! My tears descending as I write bedew the sheet, and beneath my swimming eyes the lines waver, but in haste I write on, lest the slayer find me before my final ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... soldier, when he goes to meet the foe, May darkly understand that death is near, Yet bravely marches on to destiny. I too behold a shadow in my path; I too go on, nor waver in my way. ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... did not quite come up to my childish idea of a boy hero, but I admired his self-reliance and bravery. I did not want him to despise me or my lack of spirit. I began to waver in ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of course; he did not waver at all from his old if vague conception of a seat in Parliament as a natural part of the outfit of a powerful country magnate. And in a hundred other ways men should think of him as powerful, and look up to him. He would go to church ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... now," he said, as, seated in a comfortable lounge chair, he watched Beatrice busy over some patterns which she had just received from London. "It isn't your standpoint, of course, and no doubt you would be fully in your right to say, 'I told you so,' when I confess that I am beginning to waver." ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... heart did not bid her stay for his sake. Her father had needed her. She would never have forgiven herself had she left him to carry his sorrow alone. Perhaps this poor soul needed her more. With delight one moment and shame the next, she saw herself drifting towards him. Nevertheless she did not waver, nor change ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... witch, but met every thing in that way with patience, as the dream of her soul was revenge, and that dream by such means alone could be realized. However, when on the very point of its completion, one of those sudden and mysterious changes which often takes place in the human mind made her waver in her purpose; and the child of her intended victim having behaved so tenderly and so kindly when all the rest hooted at and tormented her, made her fervently wish that she could turn the fierce men around her from that fell purpose ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... fight, in which the forces of France had almost come to wreck. A gallant hero had led his division to victory. During a short respite he had removed his helmet, and was watching the life-and-death struggle in the valley below him. Suddenly he saw the French line waver. Bidding his men follow him, and with his lion-like hair streaming in the wind, he galloped into the thick of the fray. Right and left he struck; left and right the enemy fell before him. The battle was won for France; but on a heap of corpses he was ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... get out, because I figure that is just what the management will tell us to do, once Hotlips lets go. Hotlips puffs out his cheeks and a soft note slides from the end of the trumpet—low, clear, and beautiful, without a waver in a spaceload. Only a few people close by can hear the note and they do not pay us any attention, except to think that maybe we are a little nuttier than ...
— The Flying Cuspidors • V. R. Francis
... pieces was fired, which made four beautiful lanes in their squadrons and battalions. That pulled them up quite short; and three or four volleys in succession, which produced marvellous effects, made them waver, and, little by little, retire all of them behind the turn of the valley, out of cannon-shot, and finally ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... minutes passed before there was any evident effect; the men from Earth were waiting for that great ship to waver, to wobble from its course. Suddenly Arcot gave a cry of surprise. Startled amazement was written all over his face, as his companions turned in wonderment to see that he was partially visible! The Solarite, ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... those employing it. Public-houses are now almost the only shops that use the ancient signs, and the mysterious attraction which they exercise may be (by the optimistic) explained in this manner. There are taverns with names so dreamlike and exquisite that even Sir Wilfrid Lawson might waver on the threshold for a moment, suffering the poet to struggle with the moralist. So it was with the heraldic images. It is impossible to believe that the red lion of Scotland acted upon those employing it merely as a naked convenience like a number or a letter; it is impossible to ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... bent, and stationary line, so too the morale of the defenders fell. The British and Indian troops alike were exhausted by the long march and by the torments of thirst in the sultry heat. Under the fire of the Afghan cannon and the frontal and flank advance of the enemy, the line began to waver about 2 P.M., and two of the foremost guns were lost. A native regiment in the centre, Jacob's Rifles, fled in utter confusion and spread disorder on the flanks, where the 1st Bombay Grenadiers and the 66th line regiment had long ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... all the work by which man had been made repeated before my eyes. I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from itself, and then again reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the beasts whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to the depths, even to the abyss of all being. The principle of life, which makes organism, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... 'The passengers got up two dances, and quite a number of gentlemen invited me, but I declined with thanks, though I would not say it is wrong in itself.'" Lindsay seemed to waver; her glance went near enough to him to show her that his face had a red tinge of embarrassment. He looked at the letter uncertainly, on the ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... as the birds, catching sight of my cap, raised their long necks in alarm. Bang! Up they rose with a noise of wings, leaving not one behind! Vainly I watched the flock, thinking that some of the birds I must have hit would soon be seen to waver in their course and then drop to earth. But none wavered or fell. I went home as much puzzled as disappointed. Late in the day my brother returned with one upland goose and three or four ducks, and inquired if I had had any luck. I told him my sad story, whereupon he burst ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... lead us on! We follow! Why defer Until to-morrow, what to-day may do? Tell's arm was free when we at Rootli swore. This foul enormity was yet undone. And change of circumstance brings change of vow; Who such a coward as to waver still? ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... heavily, but he was not drunk. He drew from his pocket a watch and laid it on the arm of the chair. Roy noticed that the rim of the revolver did not waver. It was pointed ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... with their hearty Kind impetuosity our march impeding. The old man, weeping that he sees this day, Embraces his long-lost son: a stranger He revisits his old home; with spreading boughs The tree o'ershadows him at his return, Which waver'd as a twig when he departed; And modest blushing comes a maid to meet him, Whom on her nurse's breast he left. O happy, For whom some kindly door like this, for whom Soft arms to clasp him ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... at the branches, and down to the water at their feet; and now it seemed to them as though the Tree had verily growth in it, for they beheld its roots, that they went out from the mound or islet of earth into the water, and spread abroad therein, and seemed to waver about. So they walked around the Tree, and looked up at the shields that hung on its branches, but saw no blazon that they knew, though they were many and diverse; and the armour also and weapons were very ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... eagerness. I saw him waver. And for one instant a great hope fluttered in my heart. But his teeth met. His face ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... instant on a rock which he had just reached, waving his sword above his head, and then fell backwards over the men who were coming up behind him. The Frau instantly seized the gun, and began reloading it. The pirates, who had been quickly advancing, now appeared to waver. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... while his mind was greatly obscured by the strong potations he had taken, Theodore Wilmer began to waver. It did not seem half so wrong, nor half so disgraceful, to play for money, as it did at first. Finally, he agreed to meet his friend that evening, and get introduced to some one of the many gambling establishments ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... lictors of Claudius have seized upon the daughter of the centurion; the people have risen in wrath at the outrage; and, for a moment, there is hope of deliverance. But the name of the decemvir still carries terror with it, and the commons waver at the sound. In this crisis, Icilius, the betrothed of the virgin, appears, and delivers a long essay of some fifty double lines, upon the spirit and tendency of the Roman constitution. This is a great error. Speeches, when delivered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in "taking ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... strong enough to heave up solid rocks, and to make the firm ground upon which we tread, and upon which the houses are built, waver to and fro like the restless sea, so that the strongest buildings begin to totter and fall, and the bravest ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... cry. The form in front of him seemed to waver a moment. Then Tressady himself mounted, caught her, and in another moment, after a few plunges from the excited horse, they were off down Manx Road, followed by a shouting crowd ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who had cruelly forsaken her. He actually took some of the steps she urged; he addressed inquiries to the insane asylums, far and near; and in these futile endeavors, made only with the desire of failure, his own reason seemed sometimes to waver. She insisted that Atherton should know all the steps they were taking; and his sense of his old friend's exact and perfect knowledge of his motives was a keener torture than even her father's silent scorn of his efforts, or the worship in which his ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... tender preference for Richard. As far as he might, Storri had taught himself contempt for Richard. This was not the simplest task; it is hard to despise one whom your heart fears, and before whose glance your own eyes waver and give way. Still, Storri got on with his contempt beyond what one might have imagined. He considered all Americans beneath him, and Richard was an American. There he had an advantage at the start. Also, Richard was of the newspapers. Even those Americans about him, with their own sneers ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... begin to waver about my party. I don't know, after all, but the desire of paying off social debts prompted the idea; perhaps we might try some of the agreeable things suggested. But, dear me! there's the baby. We'll finish the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for Bob. One cannot help one's thoughts, and for an instant the idea of going to Geddington with the team, as he would certainly do if Mike did not play, made him waver. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... credulity often accuse unbelievers of insincerity, because they sometimes waver in their principles, alter their minds in sickness, and retract at death. When the body is disordered, the faculty of reasoning is commonly disordered with it. At the approach of death, man, weak and decayed, is sometimes himself sensible that Reason abandons him, and that Prejudice returns. ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... came out of it a sound, a low, hoarse din. Maine and Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, New York and Rhode Island, saw and heard. There was a waver as of grain beneath wind over the field, then the grain stood stiff against the wind, and all ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... He didn't waver on his feet as the others did. But he wore the same magnetic-soled shoes. Joe knew, with private amusement, that Brown must have worked hard to get a ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... bottle and tins on a stool near the woman. Quinn's glance did not waver, and not a word passed his swollen lips; but his wife snatched up one ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... Equanimity as regards one's own joys and sorrows.[14] Each of these feelings was to be deliberately practised, beginning with a single object, and gradually increasing till the whole world was suffused with the feeling. "Our mind shall not waver. No evil speech will we utter. Tender and compassionate will we abide, loving in heart, void of malice within. And we will be ever suffusing such a one with the rays of our loving thought. And with that feeling as a basis we will ever be suffusing the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... been judiciously placed in commanding positions, and masked with breastworks of stone and earth hastily thrown up. Their fire was reserved till the Spaniards got close to them; then from each battery the iron shower went forth, sweeping through the ranks of the Spanish troops. I could see them waver and attempt to turn back; but urged on by their officers, they again advanced. A portion attempted to storm the heights on which the cannon were posted; but thousands of Indians were behind the batteries, and they were driven back with great slaughter. Still ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in his stride, held fast by sheer amazement. The revolver pointed straight at him. It did not waver a hair's breadth. He knew how well she could shoot. Only the day before she had killed a circling hawk with a rifle. The bird had dropped like a plummet, dead before it struck the ground. Now, as his gaze took in the pantherish ferocity ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... presiding consul felt that the continuance of Caesar in his governorship was a menace to the safety of the Republic. Let the Conscript Fathers express themselves boldly, and he, Lentulus, would not desert them; let them waver and try to court the favour of Caesar as in former times, and the consul would have to look to his own safety—and he could make his ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... decrees of Jefferson Davis, criticised by many friends at home, and contemptuously received by brother officers at headquarters, in the field, in the trenches, and at the mess table; yet, you did not waver in your fidelity to principle or in your heroic leadership of those whose valor was denied until it was proven ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Wingate's side, the sight of Hallam's physical infirmity had roused regret at the action he must take. Up till this meeting he had lived with but one object in view—the possession of Fairacres; nor did he now waver in his determination. There had simply entered into the matter a sentiment of compassion which was a surprise to himself, and which he banished as completely ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... we wonn'd together, I and my Willie (O love my love): I need hardly remark it was glorious weather, And flitterbats waver'd ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... love were all there, striving for mastery; no furtive weakening, no uncertain questioning, no remonstrance of reproval—nothing but just unlimited faith and love. If the boy's look had angered him, had caused him to waver, had made the self-sacrifice seem too great when repaid with ingratitude, all these thoughts vanished in an instant, obliterated by that one look of unalterable love. In the hour of darkness the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... on an eve is Sigurd in the ancient Niblung hall, Where the cloudy hangings waver and the flickering shadows fall, And he sits by the Kings on the high-seat, and wise of men he seems, And of many a hidden marvel past thought of man he dreams: On the Head of Hindfell he thinketh, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... as hours. He saw a tall fern waver and tremble. A rabbit, or perhaps a snake, had brushed it. Other ferns moved, their tops agitated, perhaps, by a faint breeze. No; that wavering line came straight toward him; it could not be the wind; it marked the course of a creeping, noiseless ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... it was coming nearer every second. But into the straight they came, and the crowd sprang to its feet with wild yells for Dennis. Twenty yards from home Richards, who had picked up all but two yards of the lead, began to stagger and waver, while Dennis hung to it true and steady, and breasted the tape three yards in advance, winning his ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... than her's are braver, Her women's hearts ne'er waver; I'd freely die to save her, And think ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... the table in our closed room served to quiet these qualms considerably. Nevertheless, I was not displeased to remember our bargain with Don Sanchez, feeling that I should breathe more freely when he had taken this store of gold out of my hands, etc. Thus did my mind waver this way and that, like a weather-cock to ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... discovered that Archie's desk had been opened and L46 in notes and gold taken. Neither of the men had any doubt as to the thief; and therefore Archie was angry and astonished to find his father doubt and waver and seem averse to pursue him. At last he acknowledged all, told Archie that if he made known his loss, he also must confess that he had knowingly harbored an acknowledged thief, and tacitly given him the opportunity of wronging his employer. He doubted very much whether anyone would ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... weapons. He walked backward to the airlock, his blaster covering them, the tensely waiting manner in which they watched his progress telling him that the slightest relaxation of his vigilance would mean his death. He did not let the muzzle of the blaster waver until he was inside the airlock and the outer door had ...
— Cry from a Far Planet • Tom Godwin
... Valerius Festus[452] at first loyally seconded 98 the enthusiasm of the province. After a while he began to waver. In his official letters and edicts he still acknowledged Vitellius, while in secret communication with Vespasian and ready to support whichever party proved successful. In Raetia and the Gallic provinces some centurions and men carrying letters and edicts from Vespasian were taken prisoners ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... came in a bodiless waver over the miles. "A W? Can you hear me? I can give you a tip. Just about three hours ahead of the radio and newspapers. Can you understand me? Our big competitor has bought the adjoining property. Do you get me, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... became now more anxious than ever, but this feeling did not in the slightest degree, disturb his self-possession, or cause him to waver in the resolution he had from the first adopted. He waited patiently, until, as he expected, he heard a corner of one of the buffalo hides turned up, and beheld reflected, against the back-ground of light, thus suddenly introduced, the upper part of a human being, whose shorn head, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... hundred straight lines drawn with schoolboy pencils all brought to judgment suddenly by one straight line drawn with a ruler. All the amateur lines seemed to reel to right and left. A moment before I could have sworn they stood as straight as lances; now I could see them curve and waver everywhere, like scimitars and yataghans. Compared with the telegraph post the pines were crooked—and alive. That lonely vertical rod at once deformed and enfranchised the forest. It tangled it all ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... the Lemnian isle, And over Helen crush'd his poppy crown, Her soft lids waver'd for a little while, Then on her carven bed she laid her down, And Sleep, the comforter of king and clown, Kind Sleep the sweetest, near akin to Death, Held her as close as Death doth men that drown, So close that none might hear her ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... surprised into meeting his gaze fairly. His eyes did not waver. She rocked vigorously, showing some embarrassment and giving ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... said Billy quietly. "You've done what you thought was your duty. You've kept your word to th' law, an' I believe you'll keep your word with me. If I say the word that'll save us now will you go back to headquarters an' report me dead?" For a full half minute their eyes did not waver. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... it clicked and did not, as Warwick had feared, let it slip through his fingers back against the breach. "Yes, Sahib," he whispered breathlessly. His little brave heart seemed about to explode in his breast. But it was the test, and he knew he must not waver in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... waited and watched for a long time. At last there was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft and rippling sound, and all at once the shape appeared, and came on towards me gradually. I opened my parchment scroll, and read aloud the command. She paused, and seemed to waver and doubt; stood still; then I rehearsed the sentence, sounding out every syllable like a chant. She drew near my ring, but halted at first outside, on the brink. I sounded again, and now at the third time I gave the signal in Syriac,—the speech which ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... and then, when their own trumpet sounded the signal for attack, and they let themselves fall with their whole weight upon the masses of the enemy, brandishing their spears above the upper edge of their bucklers, there was no force of native troops or company of Mashauasha that did not waver beneath the shock and finally give way before their attack. The Egyptians felt themselves incapable of overcoming them except by superior numbers or by stratagem, and it was the knowledge of their own hopeless inferiority which prevented the feudal ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... naked and black near the road; higher, it is veiled by a heavy green drapery of lianas, curling creepers, unfamiliar vines. All around you are sounds of crawling, dull echoes of dropping; the thick growths far up waver in the breathless air as if something were moving sinuously through them. And always the odor of humid decomposition. Farther on, the road looks wilder, sloping between black rocks, through strange vaultings of foliage and night-black shadows. Its lonesomeness oppresses; one returns without regret, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... he was too old a soldier to have his hopes raised high, and from that time to the present he had received no further communication on the subject— indeed, he had reason to believe that the King had forgotten all about him. Though he did not in consequence of this waver in his loyalty, it did not increase his affection for the King, and made him criticise the monarch's proceeding with more minuteness than might otherwise have been the case. He had ever been a firm Protestant, and he had become still more attached to the Reformed principles, and more enlightened, ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... days for Daisy, but she never flinched from her post, and stood resolutely between the sick man and that other one in the corner until the latter seemed to waver a little; his shadow was not so black, his presence so all-pervading, and there was hope for Tom. His reason came back at last, and the fever left him, but weak as a child, with no power to move even his poor wasted hands which ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... night after night the work will be postponed, till at last it is too late, and the Hun has got through, and raided the trench. If you hesitate or ask advice you are lost. You have to make up your mind in an instant, and to stand by it. If you waver your men will never have confidence ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... rifle a-waver, watching the glimpse of tawny color in the veldt-grass and waiting the thunder and ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... eyes. It seemed to him that he had been looking into those same eyes for centuries, as though he had always known them, and the soul that looked out of them into his. He bent his head lower, and stretching out his arms drew her to him, and the eyes did not waver. He raised her and held her close against his breast. Her ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... from me could bring him hither. He may already be on his way to join the king, as I bade him in my last message. The uncertainty, the danger of this situation, can be met only in one way. On leaving Rome I saw my duty plain before me. A desire to pleasure my friend made me waver, but I was wrong—if Basil is to have Veranilda for his bride he can only receive her from the hands of Totila. Anything else would mean peril to the friend I love, and disrespect, even treachery, to the king I honour. And so it shall be; I will ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... cloak?" It was the bird which the traveler had received from the Princess. He drew it forth, but did not say whose gift it was nor whence it came, because of the contempt with which his companion had spoken of the mystic country and its Rulers. Already he began to waver in his loyalty towards the Princess, and to desire greatly the knowledges of which the stranger told him. For this traveler, though he cared nothing for pleasure, or for the beauty of sensuous things, was greatly taken by the wish to be wise; only he did not rightly know in what wisdom consists. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... actions, in the particular usage of such things as they know certainly, in their general kind, to be agreeable to truth and righteousness. Such Christians are impeded by the ceremonies from going on in their Christian course so fast as otherwise they would, if not also made to waver or stumble. And thus are they properly scandalised according to my fifth proposition. Si quis nostra culpa vel impingit, vel abducitur a recto cursu, vel tardatur, cum dicimur offendere, saith Calvin.(423) Porro scandalum est dictum vel factum ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the little detachment, which was about twice as strong as the last, and the lads fired once more, with the result that two of the attacking party went down; but instead of the rest turning tail in panic and rushing back, they followed their officer a dozen yards farther. Then they began to waver, checked their pace, and stood hesitating; while, in spite of their officer excitedly shouting and waving his sword to make them advance, they came to a stand, with the brave fellow some distance in front, where the lads could hear him shout and rage before making a dash back at the leading files, ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... of her anxiety to set her doubts at rest, Emily's faith in her own good resolutions began to waver. The temptation to say something which might set her aunt talking again was too strong to be resisted—if she remained at the bedside. Despairing of herself she rose and turned to the door. In the moment that passed while she crossed the room the very words occurred to ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... and sense of humour, the grave puzzled faces of the dogs, delighted me. Then a whim seized me. I knelt down on the rug, and asked him to give me some. He held out the biscuit and laid it against my lips; I saw his eye waver; there was a gleam of mischief—the biscuit was half snatched away, and I felt absurdly chagrined. But in an instant the little face melted into the sweetest, keenest smile, and he almost choked me in his eagerness to thrust the biscuit down my throat. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the ceaseless murmur of the waves, as they broke upon the shore sounded like a requiem in his ears; but not once did he waver in his purpose. It might be that Renie would prove a true prophet, and if the tide served right those very waves, or rather their successors, might cast his body upon the shore; but despite ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... man's consciousness appeared to waver for a second. "Why, I'm Professor Todd from ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... replace and refill the mind, to lift up and enlighten the Japanese peasant, science as already known and faith in one God, Creator and Father of all things, must go hand in hand. Education and civilization will do much for the ignorant inaka or boors, but for the cultured whose minds waver and whose feet flounder, as well as for the unlearned and priest-ridden, there is no surer help and healing than that faith in the Heavenly Father which gives the unifying thought to him who ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... insane upon this subject. To avoid this, harmless amusements should be indulged in, and good moral company cultivated. They become suspicious, skeptical, and believe that they are victims of imposture. When they lose self-reliance, their faith and trust in others begins to waver, especially if their health does not improve so rapidly as they had anticipated: As much depends upon the faithful observance of the hygienic rules as upon the constant and proper use of medicines. The rapidity of recovery depends upon the constitutional ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... metal and paid particular attention to Moultrie. Early in the forenoon the smoke began to rise from within the walls of Sumter; "the tort was on fire." Shots now rain upon the walls of the burning fort with greater fury than ever. The flag was seen to waver, then slowly bend over the staff and fall. A shout of triumph rent the air from the thousands of spectators on the islands and the mainland. Flags and handkerchiefs waved from the hands of excited throngs in the city, as tokens of approval of eager ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... New York: "But why on earth don't you and Nick go to my little place at Versailles for the honeymoon? I'm off to China, and you could have it to yourselves all summer," the offer had been tempting enough to make the lovers waver. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... would have. But as I say, I hesitated. It didn't seem exactly wise to separate you from your family, surround you with different environments and then have you come home to—the alley. I know your loyal little heart would never waver in its affection for them, but such a decided change would ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... intentness of a human being. An uncanny feeling took possession of the boy. He laughed nervously, half expecting the solemn starer to smile in return—with the smile of Colonel Grand. But the deer's eyes did not blink or waver, nor was there the slightest deviation of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... at her keenly, but her deep eyes did not waver. "You may have got used to it," he said obstinately, "but I'll wager anything that when you first came you ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
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