"Crucial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of accomplishment. Cater's cooperation, about which he had been so slow, would infuse new blood into the business. It was maddening at times to have so many good uses for money, and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. He had approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to find him cautiously negative where once ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... for the Boer cause now rests upon the intervention of other Powers, and the crucial moment for the British Government is at hand. That the Nation is resolved to brook no intervention is absolutely certain, and that it is ready to make great sacrifices and great efforts to resist any attempt at intervention seems equally beyond doubt. Has the Government appreciated either the ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... considered, as they have had time to be modified by the conditions. If you can give me the facts, or your general impression from your study of these floras, I shall be much obliged. I see, of course, many other objections to Geddes's theory, but this seems to offer a crucial test.—Believe me yours ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... fulfillment of single aloneness, through love, is made impossible for us by the ideal, the monomania of more love. At the very age dangereuse, when a woman should be accomplishing her own fulfillment into maturity and rich quiescence, she turns rabidly to seek a new lover. At the very crucial time when she should be coming to a state of pure equilibrium and rest with her husband, she turns rabidly against rest or peace or equilibrium or husband in any shape or form, and demands more love, more love, a new sort of lover, one who will "understand" ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... reverent record of those crucial moments when men burst through their habits, a love of the past would not be the butt on which every sophomoric radical can practice his wit. But almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... The Kid handled his cards smoothly, surely, paying and taking bets with machine-like calm. The on-lookers ceased talking and prepared to watch, for now came the crucial test of the evening. Faro is to other games as ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... to tremble. At the crucial moment he appeared to lose the courage of his conviction. The great banth turned back toward the advancing bowmen and growled. Carthoris placed himself between Thuvia and the enemy and, facing them, awaited the ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the crucial moment comes—when the die is to be cast and the promise asked and given that will bind the two lives together, halt for a moment until one asks and the ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... talkers are at times afflicted with aphasia and lose the simplest and most familiar word at just the crucial moment—the very word which is necessary to the point they wish to make. This happens more often with elderly people; and it was on such an occasion that I heard a catchword fiend, a moderately young person, use her pet phrase as a red lantern to stop better, ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... came the ascertaining, by boiling a thermometer, of the altitude of the station above the sea-level; of the latitude of the station by the meridian altitude of the star taken with a sextant; and of the compass variation by azimuth. Occasionally there was the fixing of certain crucial stations, at intervals of sixty miles or so, by lunar observations, or distances of the moon either from the sun or from certain given stars, for determining the longitude, by which the original-timed course can be drawn out with certainty on the map by proportion. Should a date be lost, you can ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... no help for it but that the convictions of eighteen centuries in this respect must be surrendered. But if Tischendorf and Tregelles are wrong in this particular, it follows of necessity that doubt is thrown over the whole of their critical method. The case is a crucial one. Every page of theirs incurs suspicion, if their deliberate verdict in this instance shall prove to ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... some previous existence in a prehistoric cave, or, more tormenting still, with the tingling, psychic prophecy of some amazing emotional experience yet to come. The sort of face, in fact, that almost inevitably flares up into a woman's startled vision at the one crucial moment in her life when she is not supposed to ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... in my mind, personally, has always been the crucial and almost the governing consideration, namely, the position of ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... or sick. I fancy it's a little of both. Possibly if she wasn't rich he wouldn't care so much when she fell ill. That's the trouble with these New-Englanders, anyhow—they've always got grandmothers to fall down at crucial moments. Next time I go into this sort of thing it'll be with a crowd without ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... morning. A storm was raging without, while within, thousands in the great hall were impatiently and loudly demanding an immediate vote. More than one of the chief orators of the party,—men well known to the country—had in vain attempted to be heard. Chaos seemed to have come again at the crucial moment that McKenzie, standing upon his chair in the centre of the vast enclosure, began: "If I speak longer than two minutes, I hope that some honest half-drowned Democrat will suspend my carcass from one of the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... are a comparatively recent addition, in which case the statue may be a work of the fourth century, or they were cast together with the figure. If the latter be the fact the statue is of a comparatively recent age. Doubts on the subject might be dispelled by a careful examination of these crucial details, which I have not been able ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... or the wind; for Turnbull had put one foot in a crack of the tree and gone up it as quickly and softly as a cat. Somewhat more laboriously but in equal silence the long legs of the Highlander had followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the cloud of leaves, they saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and die into the dust and mists of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... a crucial moment. There was no telling whether or not the cellar was occupied. All that Garry could do was to push upward and trust to chance. Very carefully ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... This was the crucial moment and she looked at him with dumb appeal in her fine eyes. Then, seeing nothing in his face to reassure her, she dropped her gaze. Her chest heaved ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Commerce was dead, the Government of the Confederation was impotent, petty insurrections were common, the States were quarreling continually with one another over all kinds of trivial matters, England still remained more or less hostile, and foreign complications began to appear. That during such a crucial period, and for some years following, but little or no attention was anywhere given to the question of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... place the Empress beneath his influence by bringing her to the brink of despair? He had not yet met Nicholas II., and it was his intention to place his amazing and mysterious grip upon him also at the crucial moment. So again the Empress sent him a communication—a letter written in her own hand, and delivered by one ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... most gregarious of animals, should find himself alone. And no sooner are these first difficulties overcome, than fresh perils spring up upon the other side; and the bourgeois and the tourist are knocking at the gate. This is the crucial moment for the colony. If these intruders gain a footing, they not only banish freedom and amenity; pretty soon, by means of their long purses, they will have undone the education of the innkeeper; prices will rise and credit shorten; ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... five inches across, was found beneath the fascia lata at the distal side of the fracture. I cannot however say that I did not observe many equally severe injuries to the femur produced by Mauser bullets in our own men, and as far as fractures of the skull went, a somewhat crucial test, among the men brought off the battlefield alive, I never saw ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... noble and steadfast old Friend, could hardly fail to be known as a friend of the slave. Like her father she was ready to labor, and sacrifice and suffer in his cause, and had already made this apparent, had borne persecution, the crucial test of principle, before the war which gave to the world the prominent idea of freedom for all, and thus wiped the darkest stain from our starry banner, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... from a version that preceded our own. His rules of self-discipline and spiritual culture, while wholly free from unwholesome asceticism, nevertheless required the curbing of all desires, and the utter subjection of every natural prompting to a crucial test, before its innocent or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... a failure to distinguish between the possible inheritance of a particular modification, and the possible inheritance of indirect results of that modification, or of changes correlated with it. This is a nice but crucial point on which most popular writers are confused. Let us examine it through a hypothetical case. A woman, not herself strong, bears a child that is weak. The woman then goes in for athletics, in order better to fit herself for motherhood; she specializes on tennis. After a few years she bears ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... economic opportunities. With the representatives of the more privileged portion of the community, it would increase sympathy for labor, create a disposition of mind which can discover the culturing elements in useful activity, and increase a sense of social responsibility. The crucial position of the question of vocational education at present is due, in other words, to the fact that it concentrates in a specific issue two fundamental questions:—Whether intelligence is best exercised apart from or within activity which puts nature to human use, and whether ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... transmutation of species. The question had implications far beyond the bounds of paleontology, of course. The main evidence yet presented had been drawn from quite other fields, but by common consent the record in the rocks might furnish a crucial test of the truth or falsity of the hypothesis. "He who rejects this view of the imperfections of the geological record," said Darwin, "will rightly ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... all crucial. For the first law of all learning is self-activity. There is no possibility of teaching a child who is not mentally awake. Only the active mind grasps, assimilates, remembers, applies. The birth of new ideas, the reaching of convictions, the arriving at decisions all come in ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... to have had just the opposite result. One day he said to his wife how surprising it was that it had not landed him in the hottest of hot water, and how puzzled he was to account for what seemed to have been its effect. Then she confessed to him what had happened on that crucial night, how she had taken the body away and hung it in front of the other house, and what she partly knew and partly guessed about the results of the affair. At once he realized that her instant and audacious retaliation was what had made possible his success and his growing popularity. ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... brow a heavy dew not of the heat, but like that on the forehead of a man in crucial pain. I made nervous haste to seize the opportunity, and said ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... opens before Sordello; he is discovered to be—not a nameless minstrel, but the son of the great Ghibelline chief, Salinguerra; more marvelous still, he is loved by Palma, in her youthful beauty and fascination; and the crucial question comes, as in some form it must come to every life, whether he shall choose all the kingdoms of power and glory, or that kingdom which is not of earth, and ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... forgiven you, Fred—never!" said my better-half, emphatically, when I told her how near I had come to the crucial act. "I should have hated everything. Besides, no one nowadays thinks anything of Poultney Briggs as a decorator. He is ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... rifles answered the challenge of the Germans, though, because of the fact that the ranks of the defenders had been sadly depleted, their weapons spoke not so often. But when they did speak, men fell; for, at this crucial stage of the battle, they were making ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... archaic, but thought-stifling. The Turkish authorities, thinking to extinguish this light of liberty, have greatly added to its flame, and their high-handed action has materially assisted the creation of a wider public opinion and a better understanding of this crucial problem." The other question exercising opinion in Ḥaifa is the formation of a military and strategic quarter out of Akka, which in this is resuming its bygone importance. Six regiments of soldiers are to be quartered there. Many officers have already arrived and are hunting for houses, and ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... water-buckets, were three French flying officers and a civilian whom I recognized as the private secretary of M. Venizelos. Two nurses were just rising from unfinished plates of soup in response to word that a crucial abdominal operation awaited ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... The Colonel dodged rapidly out of the door to evade the human tornado within, and the situation became crucial. Even the tinsmith, who arrived at that moment, a man of phlegmatic disposition, was moved out of his ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... On these crucial points the evidence at our disposal is far from complete, and we can do little more than offer suggestions towards the solution of ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... brought up against without distress or shock, but with a kind of recognising thrill in contact at last with the necessity for action, decision, a climax of high heart-beats. She saw with surprise that she had lived with her passion these weeks and months half consciously expecting that a crucial moment would dissolve it, like a person aware that he dreams and will presently awake. She had not faced till now any exigency of her case. But the crucial moment had leapt upon her, pointing out the subjection of her life, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... canter in the tan for my own amusement, the little door under the gallery opened, and Fozzard appeared, introducing a middle-aged lady and a young girl, who remained standing there while he advanced toward me, and presently began to put me through all my most crucial exercises, apparently for their edification. I was always delighted to go through these particular feats, which amused me excessively, and in which I took great pride. So I sat through them all, till, upon a sign from the elder lady, Fozzard, with extreme deference, opened the door ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... root of most of her little vanities and weaknesses—and of all the big sacrifices of which she is capable as well. So she may be forgiven the former, and trusted to fall short but rarely of the latter when the crucial test comes. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the second time, at the crucial moment, Felicia Verity made irruption upon the scene. But though her entrance was hurried, it differed fundamentally from that earlier one; so that both the man and the girl, standing in the proximity of their intimate colloquy before the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... about 'Security,' Lance. Dad wrote me out an O.K. to skitter up this close to the Launching Area. You know"—she gestured self-consciously—"big crucial moment ... lovers' farewell ... I pulled all the stops, but ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... sensation, any more than we can comprehend the connection between inorganic and organic existence. But, if the absence of "experimental evidence" does not disprove the hypothesis in the one case, it can not disprove it in the other. There are two crucial points in which the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... recorded matter. The age, indeed, breathes sublimity, and abounds with the marvellous, the romantic, and the grotesque. But as I have already stated, the presence or absence of these qualities has no crucial significance. Love and reverence and the poetic imagination always effect such changes in the object of their passion. They are the essential condition of the transference of the real into the world of art. AEval, of Carriglea, the fairy queen of Munster, is one of the most important characters ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... to London was one of the crucial events in the life of Marx. It became possible for him, in the classic land of capitalism, to pursue his economic studies in a way that was not possible anywhere else in the world. As Liebknecht says: "Here in London, the metropolis ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Burckhardt's Tables were put in evidence almost always by the Altazimuth Observations, in portions of the Moon's Orbit which could not be touched by the meridional instruments; they amounted sometimes to nearly 40" of arc, and they naturally became the crucial errors for distinction between Burckhardt's and Hansen's Tables. Those errors are in all cases corrected with great accuracy by Hansen's Tables.'—The Report concludes with the following paragraph: 'With the inauguration of the new Equatoreal will terminate the entire change from ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... as a matter of fact, vote against this preamble, and the government was saved only because Balfour and the Conservatives lent it their support. It still remains to be seen if the Labourites will detach themselves from the Liberals on a really crucial question, one on which they know the Conservatives will remain in the opposition—in other words, whether they will do the only thing that can possibly show any real independence or make them a factor of first importance in the nation's politics, that ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... envy is a corner-stone of our competitive system." Mr. [287] Cunningham's physiological studies will have informed him that the process of "shutting the eyes," in the literal sense of the words, is not always wilful; and I propose to illustrate, by the crucial instance his own letter furnishes, that the "shutting of the eyes" of the mind to the obvious consequences of accepted propositions may also be involuntary. At least, I ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of establishing the authority of Parliament, I protest to your lordship I cannot conceive of a single step the Parliament can take to increase it that will not tend to diminish it, and after abundance of mischief they must finally lose it." So whenever the crucial test was applied these two men found themselves utterly at variance, and the hopelessness of a peaceful conclusion would have been obvious, had not each shunned a prospect ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... was on board a ship—a ship ploughing her way through the ice-fields as she neared Stockholm; salt sea air flicked his nostrils, he heard the broken ice tearing the keel like a million files, he was sensible of the crucial sensation—the tremendous quiver—as the vessel slipped from her bondage into the cradle of the sea, a sentient ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... impossible, I told myself, that I had met the man before. His remarkable and uncommon cast of features had no niche in my recollection, and yet I knew that in some crucial moment I had looked into those pale and ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... Alfieri had failed in his quest. The Italian commander of the troops, refusing to sanction useless labor any longer, had marched north with his men. Alfieri, still clinging desperately to a chimera, had decided to remain and scour the desert until his stores gave out. And, at this crucial moment in his enterprise, came Hussain, the unconscious emissary of his rivals. The fact that the Arab was a prisoner spoke volumes. He had tried to communicate with Abdullah, and the watchful Italian had guessed ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... pretty chorus increased by some others who, hastily coming to the rescue, also became entangled. The rest, chiefly onlookers, refrained from too close acquaintance with the very apparent cause of all the trouble. But the truly crucial part of the crisis was due to the fact that those who suffered by contact with the wires found it impossible to get away from ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... probability increased rapidly by a sort of geometrical progression. The probabilities multiplied into one another. It is a perfectly sound method, for one knows that if a hypothesis be true, it will lead one, sooner or later, to a crucial fact by which its truth ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... you, circumstances are against her. And neither she nor her mother will try to find out, if they believe I see them dimly. That is where you come in. Only make them believe that. Don't let them suppose I am all in the dark. Say nothing of your crucial experiment just now. Irene—dear girl—has been a good sister to me, and has told many good round lies for my sake. But she will explain to God. I cannot ask you, Lord Ancester, to tell stories on my behalf. My petition is only for a modest prevarication—the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... rocking from the shock of the experiences of the last hour and the last fortnight. Even had she met Peter it might have been to yield with a sort of collapse to mental and physical exhaustion. But to be forced to make a fresh effort now, one of the crucial and fearful struggles of a lifetime, to present her case to Martin now, and force him to her viewpoint, was ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... all the evidence before the magistrates with great care, and I have just talked over the crucial points with Aldous, who followed everything to-day, as you know, and seems to have taken special note of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which Carlyle has had so much to say. A trial between the Mights often throws considerable light upon the question of the Rights; and, until at any rate the true Might has been ascertained by this crucial test, one may without half-heartedness admit that both of the opposing Rights, the conservative and the disruptive, are genuine rights, mutually antagonistic and internecine, but neither ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... scholar all his life. He taught ethics. He believed in right. He practised his creed. When he came to the crucial experiment he found himself dealing with a rogue. The Rhamda helped him just so far; but once he had the professor in his power it was not his purpose to release him until he was secure of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... problem of African slavery was the incidental issue of Free Trade and Protection,—apparently only economical and industrial in character, but in reality fundamentally crucial. And behind this lay the constitutional question, involving as it did not only the conflicting theories of a strict or liberal construction of the fundamental law, but nationality also,—the right of a Sovereign State to withdraw ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... particular. Counsel for the prosecution re-reads his brief, underlines the significant points, forgets that his pencil is a blue one and licks it. On a side-table, impervious to their surroundings and apparently unconcerned with their significance, sit the crucial boots. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... crucial hour had come. This was the first move of Pasquale in the programme to destroy him. He made no protest, but stepped forward at once, leading his horse by the bridle. The sergeant was a little dubious about ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... "Just at the crucial moment, Terry met an old friend who offered him a political job, organising republican workingmen's clubs, and Terry accepted it. No one can understand how bitter this was to Terry. To work for a political organisation was to him great degradation. He did it for my sake, for the thirty-five ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... appear whether they were English or American, attempted his conversion; but the astute savage, after listening to their eloquent statements of the power of faith, pressed on them as a crucial test to throw themselves from the top of an adjacent precipice, making his reception of their religion contingent on their arrival unhurt at its base. He built large heiaus, amongst others the one at Kawaihae, at the dedication of which to his favourite war god eleven ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the right mate earlier in life. People who have their first child when over thirty-five are themselves over fifty when the child goes through adolescence—an age which may make it difficult to help the child meet its crucial problems in the tone of one good friend to another. If you cannot have your children before thirty-five, you must make every effort to remain young enough for spiritual companionship with them. The best age for parenthood is to be determined, ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... were not Erasmus and his fellow-workers as leaders of civilization on a wrong track? Was it true reality they were aiming at? Was their proud Latinity not a fatal error? There is one of the crucial points ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... America's Mission in the Peace Movement America's Mission to Mankind America's Obligation The Arbiter of the World Arbitration versus War The Challenge of Thor The Conflict of War and Peace A Congress of Nations The Cost of Militarism The Cost of Peace The Crucial Parallelism The Dawn of Peace The Dawn of Universal Peace Democracy and Peace Diplomacy and Peace Disillusionment The Dominant Ideal The End; and the Means The Evolution of a Higher Patriotism The Evolution of Justice The Evolution of Law The Evolution of National Greatness as a World ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... the three people concerned in another runaway match were sitting in the twilight. No one would have guessed that the forlorn, drooping little figure by the window was the bride of the morrow, and the idea of an elopement was as far removed from her as from a Jenny Wren. For, as the crucial moment approached, poor Miss Arabella's small courage had dwindled away. To get married would have been a tremendous undertaking in itself, but to elope! For the first time, she realized the magnitude of the enterprise. To get away from Susan's rule back into the joy of girlhood dreams, had seemed, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... conquered," were the words that came to her when the crucial test had been passed, and she had parted with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... join in the game the others were playing, which was animal grab, though usually he enjoyed it very much. Peter liked games, though he seldom won them. But this evening he played patience by himself and sat by Rhoda and consulted her at crucial moments, and babbled of many things and knew whenever Vyvian looked and Rhoda shook. At half-past nine Vyvian stopped talking to Hilary and crossed the room and took the arm-chair on Rhoda's ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... Italy and Portugal, and inspired them anew, as often as they returned baffled and discouraged, with his own perennial enthusiasm. Between 1435 and 1460, famous captains in his service—Gil Eannes, Denis Diaz, the Venetian Cadamosto—made those crucial voyages round the Point of Bojador, past the desert to Cape Verde, and beyond as far as Sierra Leone. After 1443 the labors of the Navigator were no longer thought to be wasted; for when the rich traffic ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... us, for the compromise of 1850. That compromise is not yet complete. The question of this unwelcome lady still remains to be adjusted. Were Mr. Clay not quite so old, I might suggest his name for this last and most crucial endeavor of a long ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... not interested in the sick squatter, so he gave no sign of sympathy. Rather, he wanted to come to the crucial point immediately, but Tess was so unapproachable that he remained quiet a few embarrassing moments to think of ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... injunction to treat this man with particular courtesy, and was in a quandary what to do in case he came to the crucial point. But to her surprise, instead of pressing his own suit, Mr. Weil began to support in a mild manner the cause ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... side any leader who has proved himself to be gifted with this happy faculty. Even our statesmen seem not to have felt the kindling inspiration of a great occasion. The country is going through a trial more crucial, if possible, than that of the Revolution; but no state-paper has thus far appeared, comparable in anything but quantity to the documents of our heroic period. Even Mr. Seward seems to have laid aside his splendid art of generalization, or to have found out the danger of those specious boomerangs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... the enlargement carefully, "is likely to prove crucial. It's very queer. Collins says he didn't write it, and if he did he surely is a wonder at disguising his hand. I doubt if any one could disguise what the rayograph shows. Now, for instance, this ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... was the assurance. The inventor was plainly nervous as the crucial moment of the test approached. He went here and there upon the barbette, testing the various levers and ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... ye? Whence is it—from heaven or of men? Such was the nature of the question addressed by our Saviour to the men of his time, concerning the baptism of John. It is the crucial question by which to test every system that comes to us in the garb of religion: Is it from heaven or of men? And if a true answer to the question can be found, it must determine our attitude toward it; for if it is from heaven, it challenges at once our acceptance ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... a smoky boarding-house lamp, much skirmishing of mosquitoes, and—a manuscript system of philosophy! The prospect was not inviting. The reading of other people's manuscripts is surely the crucial test of a devoted benevolence. There are few ways in which I am so little ready to oblige my fellow-men. I had, indeed, at times, been induced to inspect sundry romances in blotted embryo; but, as yet, nobody had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... my duty." Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. "Could we have permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion ...
— ...After a Few Words... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that I make myself the mouthpiece of all present in offering to the venerable founder of the Institution, which now commences its beneficent career, our congratulations on the completion of his work; and in expressing the conviction, that the remotest posterity will point to it as a crucial instance of the wisdom which natural piety leads all men to ascribe ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... crucial battle. The big push toward the center of Earth's cluster of worlds had begun. Until now, the Kerothi had been fighting the outposts, the planets on the fringes of Earth's sphere of influence which were only lightly colonized, and therefore ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... furnace. It was true, indeed, that the old sailor had amassed considerable wealth during his frequent voyages to the East. It was true also that he was sparing and saving; that he drove bargains to the verge of perdition, and clinched them at the crucial moment. But it was equally true that he was free from fraud. His teas were what they pretended to be, his silks unimpeachable, and no man ever came back upon him with complaints of their genuineness. The world allowed that he was at ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... Oleron entered on his tenancy, and he was anxious to have Romilly ready for publication in the coming autumn. Nevertheless, he did not intend to force its production. Should it demand longer in the doing, so much the worse; he realised its importance, its crucial importance, in his artistic development, and it must have its own length and time. In the workroom he had recently left he had been making excellent progress; Romilly had begun, as the saying is, to speak and act of herself; and he did ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... anti-Trinitarian sense, showing how they were compatible with the Catholic Faith, and citing and dwelling upon other expressions which were totally incompatible with any other belief. He showed that the crucial test of orthodoxy, the one single term at which Arians and semi-Arians scrupled—that is, the Homoousion or Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father—was actually in use before the Nicene Council, and that it was thoroughly in accordance with the teaching of the ante-Nicene ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... desolate little figure, watching the rapid course of the dogcart until it had vanished over the brow of the hill. And then, all at once the tears welled up into his eyes hot, and scalding, and a great sob burst from him, for it seemed to him that his beloved Uncle Porges had failed him at the crucial moment,—had left him solitary just when ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... "yes" to this request than the sitting was fixed for the next morning at 11 o'clock. The crucial matter, of course, was the question of precedence, and this would have been difficult to settle had not the Prime Minister caught a bad cold, which caused his sitting to be delayed for some days. Hence it was that at 11 o'clock punctually I was to portray prince Min-Young-Huan, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... and this holds true as to ringworm also, occurs in sharply-defined, circumscribed patches, and lupus erythematosus has a peculiar violaceous tint and an elevated and marginate border. A microscopic examination of the epidermic scrapings would be of crucial value in ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... elsewhere cheered the efforts of our men in this crucial contest, as the German command threw in more and more first-class troops to stop our advance. We made steady headway in the almost impenetrable and strongly held Argonne Forest, for, despite this reinforcement, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... The little life was safe, rescued at the crucial moment when interference became necessary, by the skill and daring which do not hesitate to use the means at hand when the authorized tools can not be had. Every precaution had been taken against harm from these same unconventional means, and the doctor, ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... that shrimp," returned my lord; "although really it is scarce a fitting mode of expression for one of the senators of the College of Justice. We were hearing the parties in a long, crucial case, before the fifteenth; Creech was moving at some length for an infeftment; when I saw Glenkindie lean forward to Hermiston with his hand over his mouth and make him a secret communication. No one could have guessed its nature from your father; from Glenkindie, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and I am how-things-turn-out and I am different from your little dreams, and I am the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire; all the accidents and imperceptions and the little minutes that shape the crucial hours are mine. I am the exception that proves no rules, the limits of your control, the condiment in ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and surrounds the calmly insane Lieutenant-general of the forces; it would be ill-natured to say that visions of lost railroad commissionerships, lost consulships, lost postmasterships, —yes, of lost senatorships, were in these loyal heads at this crucial time. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... could tell us if Grant is in for ——, and his majority? The election must have taken place, but no one in the room knows of it; that would be a crucial test, as Jane ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... It was a crucial moment for the Glen; and, looking from his vantage point on the verandah, Store Thompson held his breath. That the Orangemen even hesitated to pitch themselves headlong upon the usurpers showed that in the past two ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... California had been in the midst of a crucial political campaign. The State government for forty years had been the servant of a powerful political "machine" controlled by large public service corporations. The people had tired of it and public ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... with the real aristocracy, than any politician for the last twenty years has done. The truth is, we are in a critical situation here in England. Not in one of danger—which is the vulgar material notion of a crisis, but at the crucial point, the point of departure of principles and parties which will hereafter become great and powerful. Old Whiggery is dead, old true blue Toryism of the Robert Inglis school is dead too-and in my eyes a great loss. But as live dogs are ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... rendered still more crucial on May 5 by the placing of the two poles upright in opposite corners of the large cage. For a few minutes after he entered the cage, Julius did not see them, and his time was spent pulling and gnawing at the box. Then he discovered ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... wringing their hands over their "unhappy divisions". Still, we wish to be perfectly just, so, in illustration of our contention, we will select, not one of those innumerable minor points which it would be easy to bring forward, but some really crucial point of doctrine, the importance of which no man in his senses will have the hardihood to deny. Let us say, for instance, the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Can we conceive anything that a devout Christian ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... the slightest mistake might be fatal. After a time the man returned to the request, and his master yielded. Both fasted from one week's end to the other and purified themselves, and then went through all the ceremony of summoning the Archangel of the Law, but at the crucial moment of the invocation Rabbi Israel cried out, "We have made a slip. The Angel of Fire is coming instead. He will burn up the town. Run and tell the people to quit their dwellings and snatch up ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... psychologists make use of hypnotism, automatic writing, crystal-gazing—in short, of any method which will force an entrance into that higher time-world, whereby the forgotten past may become the present. This accomplished, and the crucial moment recovered and transfixed, the victim of the aborted opportunity is led to deal with it as one may deal with the fluid, and may not deal with the fixed. Again his past is plastic to the operation of his intelligence and his will. Here is glad news for mortals: ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... from the fact that analytical apparatus, of a sufficiently delicate nature, was then wholly unknown. Indeed it is only within the last few years that it has been possible to carry out experiments which may be regarded as at all crucial. A short sketch of the development of our knowledge of the relation of nitrogen to the plant will be ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... three daughters of a tradesman to whom he was under obligation, and of course must needs invite them to take tea as his guests. But when the time of reckoning came he found, characteristically enough, that his pocket was empty. Happily some friends were near to rescue him from his difficulty, but the crucial moment of the incident was to be perpetuated in all its ludicrous humour by an artist of a later generation, who, in the painting entitled "An Awkward Position," depicted the poet at the moment when he discovered his pockets ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... brilliant students, have received the bachelor's degree from Harvard, Yale, Oberlin, and seventy other leading colleges. Here we have, then, nearly twenty-five hundred Negro graduates, of whom the crucial query must be made. How far did their training fit them for life? It is of course extremely difficult to collect satisfactory data on such a point,—difficult to reach the men, to get trustworthy testimony, and to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the 88 ranch-house, did not smoke. He did not feel like it. He did not feel like doing anything but facing Lanpher. What he would be moved to do while facing Lanpher he was not sure. Time enough to cross that bridge when the crucial moment should arrive. He knew what he wanted to do, but he knew, too, that he could not do it unless Lanpher made the first break. Otherwise it would be murder, ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... The crucial point in the whole problem of rapid transit with which the citizens of New York had struggled for so many years had been reached, and failure seemed inevitable. The requirements of the Rapid Transit Act were rigid and forbade any solution of the problem which committed the city to share ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... illuminating article upon Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir James Frazer's "The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the History of Oriental Religion," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. II, 1915, p. 122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was primarily a king, and that "it is always as a dead king," "the role of the living king being invariably played by Horus, his son ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... and down. Vaniman obeyed instantly. He had a mental flash that Wagg did know exactly what he was about in his tactics. Lacking all idea of the scheme, Vaniman had not the heart to begin to ask for any details of the big plan at the crucial moment. He allowed himself to be an automaton. It was easy to do one thing at a time, as Wagg commanded; knowing nothing about what Wagg intended to do. Vaniman was not in a position to delay matters by doubts as to the best way of doing the thing. He walked behind the board ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... one!" Rebecca Mary cried out, clearly, courage born within her at the crucial instant. The Time—the Time—had come. She had taken her ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... them the grass was littered by old picnic papers, and this vulgar marring of the woodland glade was curiously akin to the character of this crucial interview between them, for the beauty of its inner import was overlaid with much that was common and garish. A rude bench had been knocked together by some picnicker of the past, and on this Bates was fain to sit down to regain his breath. Sissy stood ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... India . . . is one of the most crucial tests the Church of Christ has ever been put to. The people you think to measure your forces against are such as the giant races of Canaan are nothing to." Bishop French, India ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... Christ's consciousness that He is the light, and enmity to Him darkness. Mark, too, His meek submission, as bowing His head to let the black flood flow over Him. Note that Christ brands enmity to Him as the high-water mark of sin, the crucial instance of man's darkness, the worst thing ever done. Mark the assurance that animated Him, that the eclipse was but for an 'hour.' The victory of the darkness was brief, and it led to the eternal triumph of the Light. By dying He is the death of death. This Jonah ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... substantial services to his party, Douglas had sooner or later to face his constituents with an answer to the crucial question, "What have you done for us?" It is a hard, brutal question, which has blighted many a promising career in American politics. The interest which Douglas exhibited in the Western Harbors bill was due, in part ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... throwing his reserve from behind Gerasdorf into his left, gained time to call up reinforcements from his right at the Bisamberg. Bernadotte moved slowly, and did not render his force effective at the crucial moment. Napoleon was much incensed by his apparent sluggishness. An attack made at seven against Wagram by Oudinot failed. This hamlet was the key of the Austrian position, forming as it did the angle of their line, and the fighting there was desperate. By nine o'clock the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... her? She was coming to the crucial years. She was very fond and sincere now, but she had cause to be grateful. She knew so little of the world, she had a winsome charm that was unfolding every day, she would be attractive to others. Jane was her fervent admirer, Bridget adored her, the babies ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... bread-making will reduce the cost of your bread. That is not the object. Saving of wheat for war needs is the thing we are striving for, and this is as much an act of loyalty as buying Liberty Bonds. It is to meet the crucial world need of bread that we are learning to substitute, and not ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss
... superficial characteristic such as ceremonial. Nor is there any objection to refusing the title of religion to Buddhism and Confucianism, except that an inconvenient lacuna would remain in our vocabulary, for they are not adequately described as philosophies. A crucial instance of the difference in the ideas prevalent in Europe and Eastern Asia is the fact that in China many people belong to two or three religions and it would seem that when Buddhism existed in India the common ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... sure. It seemed to get mixed with my name—on my arm. I think it was only because tennis and Fenwick are a little alike." His companion thought how near the edge of a volcano both were, and resolved to try a crucial experiment. Better an eruption, after all, or a plunge in the crater, than a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... which our fears have power to wound us most grievously is through our affections, and here we are confronted with a real and crucial difficulty. Are we to hold ourselves in, to check the impulses of affection, to use self-restraint, not multiply intimacies, not extend sympathies? One sees every now and then lives which have entwined themselves ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and to forget that we are living in a new world. The problems confronting the pioneer were not the problems we face to-day. It requires great ability to draft a prospectus; in many of our greatest enterprises drafting the prospectus has been the crucial task. But a prospectus is not a going concern. There is a vast difference between promotion and administration. In the promotional stage of our business life we were solving problems made up of unknown quantities, problems for which the only angle of approach ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... landmarks cannot affect our comprehensive estimate of the mise-en-scA"ne. Enough has been said, we believe, in our discussion of the criticism and acting and in our analysis of his dramatic values, to show that the aberrations of Plautus' commentators have been due to their failure to reach the crucial point: the absolute license with which his plays were acted and intended to be acted is at once the explanation of their absurdities and deficiencies. This was true in a far less degree of Terence, who dealt in plots more stataria and less ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... that the 'Sonnets' were printed then in a different order from that which was followed in the volume of 1609. Thus the poem numbered lxvii. in the original edition opens the reissue, and what has been regarded as the crucial ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the opera house the two women in Etta's snug little brougham were silent. Etta had her thoughts to occupy her. She was at the crucial point of a difficult game. She could not afford to allow even a friend to see so much as the corners of ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... leaned across the front seat and added impressively, "Bear one thing in mind, Al. The Sawtooth cannot permit itself to become involved in any scandal, nor in any killing cases. We're just at the most crucial point with our reclamation project, over here on the flat. The legislature is willing to make an appropriation for the building of the canal, and in two or three months at the latest we should begin selling agricultural tracts to the public. The State will also throw ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... it has been proved to be," he returned. "I must congratulate you upon a piece of really brilliant reasoning, Knox. But respecting the most crucial moment of all, we are still without information, unfortunately. However, whilst the presence or otherwise, of Mrs. Camber in Cray's Folly on the night preceding the tragedy may prove to bear intimately upon the case, an experiment which I propose ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... into construction of an acceptable postwar racial policy? The task was clearly beyond the powers of the War Department's Special Planning Division, and in September 1945 McCloy adopted the recommendation of Sommers and Gibson and urged the Secretary of War to turn over this crucial matter to a board of general officers. Out of this board's deliberations, influenced in great measure by opinions previously expressed, would emerge the long-awaited revision of the Army's policy ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... ruled it, the letter required turning at this point, and Deulin, for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a crucial moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and had to pause for an instant before ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... his blood, creeps back to the opium den, not knowing his mother, but immediately recognized by her. She will make the child suffer for the sins of the father, who had destroyed her happiness. Such a theme was one which appealed to Dickens. It must not, however, be urged; and the crucial question after all is concerned with the opium woman as one of the unconscious instruments of justice, aiding with her trifle of circumstantial ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... the desk beside him with the back of his hand, using all his strength, skinning his knuckles so that the blood dripped from them, unnoticed. He waved both arms continually, bending his body almost double and straightening up again, in crucial efforts for emphasis. All the old jingo platitudes that he had learned from campaign speakers throughout his life, the nonsense and brag and blat, the cheap phrases, all the empty balderdash of the platform, rushed to his ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... is eminently plain and practical, if not an all too obvious one. It is this: if all your preparation and confidence fails you at the crucial moment, and memory plays the part of traitor in some particular,—if, in short, you blunder on a detail of the story, never admit it. If it was an unimportant detail which you misstated, pass right on, accepting whatever you said, and continuing with it; if you have been so unfortunate as to ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... The crucial moment came. Jane and 'Moll' scurried across the yard like rabbits, but stopped at the porch door with well-simulated surprise at the sight ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... only owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne's most splendid and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat acrimoniously against that very ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... word of power that is able to tell of sins forgiven, and to conduct us beyond the grave to heaven. One of the greatest of China's sages, Mencius, said, "Instruction can impart information, but not the power to execute." That touches the crucial point. We must have instruction that can come with power divine to execute. We have it only in God's words. Christ said: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... radiating from the wound. There may be severe pain at the back of the head and in the neck. Difficulty in swallowing soon becomes a marked symptom. The speech assumes a sobbing tone, and occasionally the expression of the face is wild and haggard. As regards the crucial diagnostic test of a glass of water, the following account of a patient's attempt to drink is given by Curtis and quoted by Warren: "A glass of water was offered the patient, which he refused to take, saying that he ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... was low, vibrant, and so exceedingly musical that he might have been accused of coolly selecting his best tone; and it became only sweeter when, even more softly, in a semi-whisper of almost crucial pleading, he said, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... oftentimes discloses its poor efficiency only after from four to six months of use. This is due to the fact that from time immemorial women have ordained a period devoted to housecleaning twice a year. And it is at this crucial time that they discover if the routine care of rugs and carpets by their vacuum cleaner has accomplished a work satisfactory to them. This conclusion is well borne out by a conversation we had with a large dealer in vacuum cleaners from the west coast. He freely told us of handling ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks
... especial source of anxiety as he possessed considerable strength throughout New England. To guard against such a danger, Hanna sedulously cultivated the popular demand for Governor McKinley and also fought in the state conventions for delegates even against favorite sons. A crucial state was Illinois, where Senator Cullom was powerful. The Senator says that a representative of McKinley offered him "all sorts of inducements" to withdraw, but McKinley's biographer mentions no such attempt at a bargain. Eventually Cullom made the fight and was defeated, and from then ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... been testing their wings for several days, clinging to the sides of the nest and beating the wings rapidly. And now comes the crucial moment of letting go and attempting actual flight. Several of them have already done it, and I see them resting on the dead limbs of a plum-tree across the road. But more are to follow, and parental anxiety is still rife. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... the latest example I have selected, it is a crucial one. The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther come from a man who is not often rated high as a political thinker, even by those who sympathise with his political views. But here as elsewhere the politician, no less than the poet, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... crucial point the Trust President is on the stand, a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted—and in a year all is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality, I believe." Oh, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... we start building a political organization, here in Pennsylvania. In 1960, I think we can elect you President. The world situation will be crucial, by that time, and we had a good-natured nonentity in the White House then, who let things go till war became inevitable. I think President Hartley can be trusted to take a strong line of policy. In the meantime, you ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... by ice. Both Portland Canal and Lynn Canal are of historical importance, as the question of the true location of the first and the commercial importance to Canada or to the United States of the possession of the second, were the crucial contentions in the disputes over the Alaska-Canadian boundary. At the head of Lynn Canal, the only place on the whole extent of the south-eastern Alaskan coast where a clear-cut waterparting is exhibited between the sea-board and interior drainage, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... louder cries succeeded the coughing. And then came the crucial test by which his daring experiment had to stand or fall. Some one opened the door at the head of the stairs. Now, if ever, he was to be discovered! But as the door was opened the smoke was drawn up, and the German who had come to ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... There comes the crucial moment in the race. See the man with the stronger forearms. They are bands of steel that swell in the forearms of Ben Hur. They swing those flying Arabians into the inner ring. Ben Hur wins the race! Where got the Jew those huge ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... so, too," said Leroy. "The strongest men and women of a down-trodden race may bare their bosoms to an adverse fate and develop courage in the midst of opposition, but we have no right to subject our children to such crucial tests before their characters are formed. For years, when I lived abroad, I had an opportunity to see and hear of men of African descent who had distinguished themselves and obtained a recognition in European circles, which they ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... makes the velocity in air or stellar space greater than in glass or water. By an experiment proposed by Arago, and executed with consummate skill by Foucault and Fizeau, this question was brought to a crucial test, and decided in favour of the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... the door?" he suggested, as one putting the situation to a sort of crucial test. "Does she never sit on a big chair and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... possibilities and probabilities regarding predestination,—a doctrine which is simple enough as long as faith adheres to the plain Word of God, without making rationalistic and sophistical inferences, but which in public controversies has always proved to be a most intricate, crucial, and ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... prescribed quinine had she noted anything unusual in the girl's demeanor. But Annabel had reached a crucial stage in her flirtation with Thad West. The boy was developing a gratifying jealousy of the tenor singer in the Unitarian church choir and must be treated with a nice commingling of indulgence and severity to prevent his asserting himself in the crude masculine fashion, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith |
