"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... third time, with desperate vehemence, turning suddenly about and retiring a little distance, as if it were by no means for his own pleasure that ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... me," he said. "I'm a man of few words. You won't go further this voyage. Captain Barker has surrendered the ship. You'll drop those desperate things in your hands and go for'ard. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... despair And deep reflections on his fair Had swell'd his heart, and made it rise And run in tears out at his eyes, And those sweet airs, which did appease Wild beasts, could give their lord no ease; Then, vex'd that so much grief and love Mov'd not at all the gods above, With desperate thoughts and bold intent, Towards the shades below he went; For thither his fair love was fled, And he must have her from the dead. There in such lines, as did well suit With sad airs and a lover's lute, And in the richest ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... his peace by flight to seek - But how then lecture, if he dar'd not speak! - Now as the Justice for the war prepared, He seem'd just then to question if he dared: "He may resist, although his power be small, And growing desperate may defy us all; One dog attack, and he prepares for flight - Resist another, and he strives to bite; Nor can I say, if this rebellious cur Will fly for safety, or will scorn to stir." Alarm'd by this, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... very thing of all others best calculated to harass her mind and fill it with inexplicable mysteries. She constituted her own reason the sole judge; and then, dubious of the verdict, arraigned reason itself before itself. Now began the desperate struggle. Alone and unaided, she wrestled with some of the grimmest doubts that can assail a human soul. The very prevalence of her own doubts augmented the difficulty. On every side she saw the footprints of skepticism; in history, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... springing to his feet. "You must not forget that she is young and very beautiful and she'll probably be very poor. And God knows there are plenty of us who would like to marry her!" He took a turn or two up and down the room and then stopped before Thorpe, in whose eyes there was a new and desperate anxiety, born of alarm. "She wants me to arrange matters so that she can begin turning over this money soon after she comes down in September. She hasn't touched the principal. If she sticks to her intention, ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Leigh and a small party of gentlemen rode, had made a succession of desperate charges into the midst of the fugitives; and he now said to Leigh and three ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... bygone days were designed by class-hatred, or hatred of race, are dying, very surely dying. The costermonger with his pearl-emblazoned coat has been driven even from that Variety Stage, whereon he sought a desperate sanctuary. The clinquant corslet of the Swiss girl just survives at bals costumes. I am told that the kilt is now confined entirely to certain of the soldiery and to a small cult of Scotch Archaicists. I have seen men flock from the boulevards of one capital ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... free and, a bit breathless, but with the same desperate gaiety, exclaimed: "If this is ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... once more the room from which Mr. Walters and his friends made so brave a defence. There is but little in its present appearance to remind one of that eventful night,—no reminiscences of that desperate attack, save the bullet-hole in the ceiling, which Mr. Walters declares shall remain unfilled as an evidence of the marked attention he has received at ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... cattle stolen, and have always attributed the thefts to the Whipples. All I know about the gang is that it was founded by a fellow named Whipple, an outlaw on the scout, who attracted to himself a desperate gang of fugitives from justice who had taken refuge in ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... might now come at any moment, but the man awaiting him had not yet made up his mind how to word what he had to say—how much to tell, how much to conceal from, his wife's old friend. He was only too well aware that if the desperate attempts which would soon be made to raise the Neptune were successful, and if its human freight were rescued alive, the fact that there had been a woman on board could not be concealed. Thousands would know to-night, and ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... to stake all and to lose—not only for ourselves, but for all others here—that is a weighty decision to make, Gordoon. But the trap promises. Let us think on it for a space. Do you also consult with the Rovers if they wish to take part in what may be desperate folly." ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... this grew desperate, but the more he drove his heels into the horse, the less he stirred him; and not having any suspicion of the tying, he was fain to resign himself and wait till daybreak or until Rocinante could move, firmly persuaded that all this came of something other than Sancho's ingenuity. So he ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Franspoort. To the right and left of us some desperate fighting went on for several days, and at Donkerhoek a fierce battle took place, but we were ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... you, and you only. To let me be with you. To let me win you in time, as you should be won. I am not mad, though I am desperate. I know what is due to your station and mine—even while I dare to say I love you. Let me hope, Maruja, I ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... gasped Frank. He had come upon it in a last desperate dive into his watch-pocket, in which he never by any chance kept anything. Of course it was for that very reason, that it might be alone and accessible, that he had placed it there. Ring and note were handed to the vicar, who deftly concealed the one ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... Roland, and to his glory as the unyielding champion of France and Christendom. It is not as in the Iliad, where different heroes have their day, or as at Maldon, where the fall of the captain leads to the more desperate defence and the more exalted heroism of his companions. Roland is the absolute master of the Song of Roland. No other heroic poetry conveys the same effect of pre-eminent simplicity and grandeur. There is hardly ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... some of us who have come to believe that in the dead earnest, daily, almost desperate struggle of modern life, the real solid idealist will have to care enough about his ideals to arrange to have two complete sets, one set which he calls his personal ideals, which are of such a nature that he can carry them out alone and rigidly and quite by himself, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova commissioned him to paint a panel: but when he saw it sketched, having little knowledge of that art, the Saints appeared to him like devils; for it was Rosso's custom in his oil-sketches to give a sort of savage and desperate air to the faces, after which, in finishing them, he would sweeten the expressions and bring them to a proper form. At this the patron fled from his house and would not have the picture, saying that the painter had ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... frame. I closed my eyes, as if about to roll to the bottom of the abyss, and I gave to my body a violent impulse on the side next to the hacienda, the surface of which offered not a single projection, not a tuft of weeds to check my descent. This sudden movement joined to the desperate struggles of my horse, was the salvation of my life. He had sprung up again on his legs, which seemed ready to fall from under him, so desperately did I ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... escape from this evil fate. The crew were all removed from the ship, excepting Lyde and one boy, who, under a prize-master and six men, were to help in sailing her to St Malo. The idea of returning to the identical prison where he had endured such misery made Lyde desperate, and, finding no easier expedient, he determined to pit himself against the seven as soon as he could persuade the boy to join him. The boy, not unnaturally, hung back from such a venture, and before he could screw his courage to the sticking-place they had arrived off a small harbour ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... whom I have already spoken and who have an appetite for human flesh. There are likewise different species of birds, and in many places bats[4] as large as pigeons flew about the Spaniards as soon as twilight fell, biting them so cruelly that the men, rendered desperate, were obliged to give way before them as though they had been harpies. One night, while sleeping on the sand, a monster issued from the sea and seized a Spaniard by the back and, notwithstanding the presence of his companions, carried ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... be too wise not to see the fatal consequence of this usurpation and wish to resist it, yet the torrent of violence has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them. The authors and promoters of this desperate conspiracy have, in the conduct of it, derived great advantage from the difference of our intentions and theirs. They meant only to amuse by vague expressions of attachment to the parent state, and the strongest protestations of loyalty to me, whilst they were preparing for a general revolt. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... Rendered desperate by the nature of his situation Perk threw up both hands and chancing to come in contact with a human form, closed in with what might almost be called a death grip—his one object being to thus hold the unseen enemy close and prevent him ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... soberness with a headache, or, in more serious cases, until proper conveyance could be got round for Godstone. The cage has seen at least one exciting rescue. This was some fifty or sixty years ago, when a number of desperate characters vaguely described as the Copthorne poachers were captured and haled into prison. As to the exact number of captives, tradition varies; but the legend which is the most respectful to the powers of the local constable sets it at ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... too raised Yon rustic tomb, and 'twas this cave received her When, desperate at your loss, she fled the court. Here long she sorrowed, here at length she died, Died of a broken heart! Ay weep, my father; For know the king shall pay each tear thou ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... don't take care I'm ruin'd still. They're growing desperate, and making tow'rd me With ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... planter, considerably advanced in life, had come from his farm to be a spectator of the shipwreck; his heart was melted at the sight of the unhappy seamen, and knowing the bold and enterprizing spirit of his horse, and his particular excellence as a swimmer, he instantly determined to make a desperate effort for their deliverance. He alighted, and blew a little brandy into his horse's nostrils, and again seating himself in the saddle, he instantly pushed into the midst of the breakers. At first both disappeared, but it was not long before they floated ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... downstairs to watch proceedings, leaving Matthieu by the window, ready at a moment's notice to put his desperate project into execution. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... A sort of desperate hope gleamed in the eye of the other competitor in the final. He swung with renewed vigour. His ball sang through the air, and lay within chip-shot distance ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... whether my predilection was really bona fide love or not; it didn't seem like the love I had read about in novels; and yet I felt very miserable at the idea of Ellen's loving anybody else. I was in a desperate quandary. ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... pursuit with marvelous agility and cunning, but one by one we captured them, and punished them summarily. At last we surrounded a band of Thugs, and to our amazement found among them a European and a small boy. At our attack the Hindus made a desperate resistance, and killed themselves rather than fall into our hands; but the European, leading forward the little boy, fell on his knees and implored us ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... went up again at once, and more than an hour subsequently, when their father paid one of his domiciliary visits, there they still were, with their Latin and Greek spread out, Norman trying to strengthen all doubtful points, but in a desperate desultory manner, that only confused him more and more, till he was obliged to lay his head down on the table, shut his eyes, and run his fingers through his hair, before he could recollect the simplest matter; his renderings alternated with groans, and, cold as was the ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... for his head, which they proceeded to kick until he died. Nor did they spare the notaries of Roumanian origin, which made it seem as if this outbreak of lawlessness—directed from who knows where—had the high political end of making the country appear to the Entente in such a desperate condition that an army must be introduced, and as the Serbs were thought to be a long way off, with the railways and the roads before them ruined by the Austrians, it looked as if Roumania's army was the only one available. On the Monday and the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... him on the field of slaughter. I will telegraph pages. I will refurbish my military vocabulary, and speak of deploying and massing and throwing out advance guards, and that sort of thing. I will move detachments and advance brigades, and invent strategy. We will have desperate fighting in the columns of the Argus, whatever there is on the fields of Canada. But to a man who has seen real war this opra-bouffe masquerade of fighting——I don't want to say anything harsh, but to me it ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... knowing how unlikely it was that any one would be so desperate as to shoot at him. "You can't stop me with that ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... a case of being allowed," he said. "I should never be left quite alone like that; and anyway, they don't lay down a code of morals for us in the Queen's Regulations. It is understood that a British officer will play the man, even in desperate straits." ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... that she might sleep without dreaming that I was stealing upstairs to cut her throat. In America I went out west and fell in with a man who was wanted by the police for holding up trains. It was he who had the idea of holding up motors cars—in the South of Europe: a welcome idea to a desperate and disappointed man. He gave me some valuable introductions to capitalists of the right sort. I formed a syndicate; and the present enterprise is the result. I became leader, as the Jew always becomes leader, by his brains and imagination. But with all my pride of race I would give ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... child," Doris was pleading, rather than explaining. "I think at the first he will agree to the proposal—what else can he do? The shock—remember, he does not even know that a child is expected! Dare we refuse Meredith's child this only and desperate chance—knowing what we do?" ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... them, and hung up some of the carcass left by the bear near by. When he attempted to get this meat, he would tread on the trap, and the teeth would spring together, and catch him by the leg. They always fought to get free. I once saw a bear that had been making a desperate effort to get away. His leg was broken, the skin and flesh were all torn away, and he was held by the tendons. It was a foreleg that was caught, and he would put his hind feet against the jaws of the trap, and then draw by pressing ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... was quick to appropriate, Mr. Buckton having so frequent a perverse instinct for catching first any eye that promised the sort of entertainment with which she had her peculiar affinity. The amusements of captives are full of a desperate contrivance, and one of our young friend's ha'pennyworths had been the charming tale of "Picciola." It was of course the law of the place that they were never to take no notice, as Mr. Buckton said, whom they served; but this also never prevented, certainly on the same gentleman's ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... and met him more than half-way. Then he goes to London, gets better information, looks at the will in Doctors' Commons, maybe, finds it a slowish speculation, and wants to let her down easy; whereof she has no notion, writes two letters to his one, as we know, gets desperate, and makes ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Sit down awhile that I may tell you; my story is very long and tedious. I am caught in the claws of love, for which reason I am desperate." On hearing this, he unfastened his waist band, and having washed his hands and face, he took some food and gave me some likewise. When he finished his meal, he said, "Say what has befallen thee?" I related all the adventures of the old ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... Le Chevalier, who had just returned from a journey to Paris, heard from the lawyer Vanier, who was quite as much in debt as his client, that the pecuniary situation was desperate. "I dread," wrote Vanier, "the accomplishment of the psalm: Unde veniet auxilium nobis quia perimus." To which Le Chevalier replied, as he invariably did: "In six weeks, or perhaps less, the King will be again on his throne. Brighter days will dawn, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... once set up, must run its course, I suppose. It never has appeared to me that I slept at all that night, yet perhaps I did. Long before daylight, however, I was again shedding hot tears and laying wild plans. But my thoughts had now taken on an even gloomier and more desperate shade. What was the use of my going home, I thought; my mother did not want me there. What was the use of living in such a hopelessly dreary world! Live there at the Old Squire's I could not, would not; of that I was certain. I never could endure it. The thought of existing there, as ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... courage—that their hatred, their abhorrence of Colonel Hannay was such that they clung round him by thousands and thousands;—that when Major Naylor rescued him, they refused life from the hand that could rescue Hannay;—that they nourished this desperate consolation, that by their death they should at least thin the number of wretches who suffered by his devastation and extortion. He says that, when he crossed the river, he found the poor wretches quivering upon the parched banks of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... if men wished to get rid of slavery in our country they must be ready to sacrifice themselves if need be. His words sank deep into my mind, and I have sometimes thought that they may have had something to do in leading John Brown to make his desperate attempt on ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... out ever before me, sleeping or waking. Each moment as the express rushed south increased the distance between us, yet was I not on my way back to England with a clear and distinct purpose? I snatched at any clue, however small, with desperate eagerness, as a drowning man clutches ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... he talked to her the excited gibberish of the grown-up, he little thought what he forced upon you; what the things he called minutes really were, measured by a mind unused; what passive and then what desperate weariness he held you to by his slightly gesticulating hands that pressed some absent-minded caress, rated by you at its right value, in the pauses of his anecdotes. You, meanwhile, were infinitely tired of watching the ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... thought was to attempt to rush toward the vessel, to seize one of the four canoes which lay at the head of the bay, and endeavour to force a passage on board. But the utter impossibility of succeeding in this desperate task soon became evident. The country, as I said before, was literally swarming with the natives, skulking among the bushes and recesses of the hills, so as not to be observed from the schooner. In our immediate vicinity especially, and blockading the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... swiftness and looked earnestly at Trent. The sudden sight of his face was almost terrible, so white and worn it was. Yet it was a young man's face. There was not a wrinkle about the haggard blue eyes, for all their tale of strain and desperate fatigue. As the two approached each other, Trent noted with admiration the man's breadth of shoulder and lithe, strong figure. In his carriage, inelastic as weariness had made it; in his handsome, regular features; in his short, smooth, yellow ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... 6: It was this Vlakfontein which was destined to become notorious in the later history of the war. On the 29th of last May (1901), the 7th Battalion I.Y. lost heavily in a desperate fight at this place. Of the many gallant officers and men killed, all the members of the Battalion, past and present, must specially deplore the death of Surgeon-Captain Welford, one of the kindest and most self-sacrificing of men. Also Captain ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... You win everything from me, Jackson. I'm a lame duck now, and if my luck doesn't soon begin to turn, I'll—do something desperate, I believe." ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... too. He felt that he was on the wrong road, that he was getting into a rut at Carthage, as he had got into a rut at Thagaste. He must succeed, whatever the cost!... And then he gave way to one of those moments of weariness, when a man has no further hope of saving himself save by some desperate step. He was sick of where he was and of those about him. His friends, whom he knew too well, had nothing more to teach him, and could not help him in the only search which passionately interested him. And his entanglement became irksome. Here was nine ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... had arrived within sight of Thermopylae. He had heard that a handful of desperate men, commanded by a Spartan, had determined to dispute his passage, but he refused to believe the news. He was still more astonished when a horseman, whom he had sent to reconnoitre, brought back word that he had seen several Spartans ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... them, nor did they see me; I thought it would be better to keep out of the way of such desperate characters in a lonely place. I learned from a friend of theirs at Date Creek that they intend to open a ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... educated, and (I hoped I might say without offence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed that instances of slight incongruity in such wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut,—he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... only made matters worse. The horse leaped and plunged, slipped badly on the hills, progressed awkwardly over the fallen logs, and flew into wild panic when he came to the quagmires. The man's temper fell far below the danger point in the first hour, and he was savage and desperate before half of ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... herself to look old. She brisked up with a kittenish purr when disturbed, and remarked that the Hengishire air was like champagne. "My spirits are positively wild and wayward," said the would-be Hebe with a desperate attempt ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... helped to make it safe for their children's children. Now it's behind the frontier and women of your kind live there. In other words"—I was growing a trifle desperate, for her gaze, while persistent, was rather blank—"you don't fit in out here. I doubt if you know how to run bullets or load a gun or throw an ax. I'm sure you'd find it very disagreeable to go barefooted. It isn't your place. Your values shine when you are back ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... the strange story of a sharp encounter with the hostile Kookies, in which a couple of English mountain guns, long before abandoned by a British expeditionary force, had been served with due professional skill and most desperate dash by a reckless man, easily recognized as an English refugee artillerist. The wounded escaped British soldier, who had died after denouncing the deserting adventurer, had left his parting advice to the Royal Artillery to burn the fearless ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Miss Grace Mavis, to represent that Mrs. Allen had recommended them—nay, had urged them—just to come that way, informally and without fear; Mrs. Allen who had been prevented only by the pressure of occupations so characteristic of her (especially when up from Mattapoisett for a few hours' desperate shopping) from herself calling in the course of the day to explain who they were and what was the favour they had to ask of her benevolent friend. Good-natured women understand each other even when so divided ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... inexactly and meditated a desperate resignation of the whole job to Mrs. Rabbit. Then he made an effort ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... insane man who deliberately bored holes through his skull, and at different times, at a point above the ear, he inserted into his brain five pieces of No. 20 broom wire from 2 1/16 to 6 3/4 inches in length, a fourpenny nail 2 1/4 inches long, and a needle 1 5/8 inches long. Despite these desperate attempts at suicide he lived several months, finally accomplishing his purpose by taking an overdose of morphin. MacQueen has given the history of a man of thirty-five, who drove one three-inch nail into his forehead, another close to his occiput, and a third into his vertex ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... that their situation was still desperate. Should a storm spring up,—even an ordinary gale,—not only would their canvas water-cask be bilged, and its contents spilled out to mingle with the briny billow, but their frail embarkation would be in danger of going to pieces, or of being whelmed fathoms deep under the frothing waves. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... rendered the year's work of the National Assembly fruitless, and its members gradually dispersed, with the exception of the radicals, who made a last desperate effort to found a republic. Austria now insisted upon the restablishment of the old diet, and nearly came to war with Prussia over the policy to be pursued. Hostilities were only averted by the ignominious submission of Prussia to the demands of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... what I say applies to almost all. You see, you must get down beneath the gentleman or would-be gentleman-farmer, down to the man who never conceived the idea of ruffling it with gentlefolk. Also, you must not go down to the mere labourer. But they are desperate gossips—gossips not so much in matters local and insular, as in matters universal. The gossiping tone does proceed into the universal, does it not? The hilarity with which they will range the far horizons of thought is so childlike (you know how children are about that); a chatter that sparkles ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... revenues. He declared that he could have endured the calamity if penury had been all. Early in 1604 he wrote that, if Sherborne could be assured, he should take his loss for a gain, nothing having been lost that could have bettered his family, 'but the lease of the wines, which was desperate before his troubles.' He did not wish for his wife and son, 'God knows, the least proportion of plenty, having forgotten that happiness which found too much too little.' His one desire was that they should be able to eat ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... to go with me to see Doctor Phelps about Tim!' she said. 'I can manage to get leave of absence for both of us in one way or another, for I am desperate ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... turned and was bracing his back against the Fat Woman, his heels digging into the shifting cinders in a desperate attempt to prevent the woman's slipping ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... how strong the swimmer. For the current was stronger than the mere strength of a human being. She knew that if Hap Smith clung tight to his reins he might be pulled ashore in due time, if all went well for him. She knew that Winifred Waverly had never been in such desperate straits. And finally she understood, and the knowledge was infinitely sweet to her in her moment of need, why the man yonder had been sitting his horse so idly in the rain, and just why ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... of the tale is just war, pure and simple. Launcelot retreated to his town and castle of Joyous Gard, and gathered there a great following of knights. The king, with a great host, went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days, and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpses and cast-iron. Then the Church patched up a peace between Arthur and Launcelot and the queen and everybody—everybody but Sir Gawaine. He was bitter about the slaying ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Dutch, and carried to its culmination by the English centered on the west coast near the seat of perhaps the oldest and most interesting culture of Africa. It came at a critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin, Mossiland, and Nupe had exhausted itself in a desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood of Mohammedan culture. It has succeeded in maintaining its small, loosely federated city-states suited to trade, industry, and art. It had developed strong resistance toward ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... clear away all the guns, and to open the arm-chest, to come at the muskets and pistols. I heard the rattling of the boarding-pikes, too, as they were cut adrift from the spanker-boom, and fell upon the deck. All this sounded very ominous, and I began to think we should have a desperate engagement first, and then have ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the paper, Grogan; I'll be responsible for its safety," returned the captain, who seemed to be drawn more and more toward a belief in Jack's innocence; for there was something in the clear gray eyes that met his gaze to convince him that this lad could never be a desperate criminal. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... from the Solomon, the Republican, the Arkansas valleys. A settlement was raided on Smoky Fork; stages were attacked near the Caches, and one burned; a wagon train was ambushed in the Raton Pass, and only escaped after desperate fighting. Altogether the situation appeared extremely serious and the ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... that come under the shade fall down dead! You give upas juice in these desperate cases: ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the barren bluff the slender woman's figure stands on the pinnacle of night, outlined against a starry sky. The cool night breeze wafts to her burning ear snatches of song and drum. With desperate hate she bites ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... until fifteen minutes before one o'clock on Sunday—the day before the wedding. The last train by which I could possibly reach home in time was to leave Orange Court House for Richmond at six o'clock that evening, and the Court House was nineteen miles off. It seemed pretty desperate, but I was bound to make it. I had had a very slim breakfast that morning; I swapped my share of dinner that evening with a fellow for two crackers, which he happened to have, and lit ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... sprang, and it was said that he had been a camel driver. He was called Mohammed the Lame, because a leg badly set after a fracture had left him halting, and he was a shrewd man, far-seeing, ruthless, and ambitious. With a few companions as desperate as himself, he attacked the capital of a small state in the North which was distracted by the death of its ruler, seized it, ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... advise or help her or be her companion in inevitable death. Her thoughts must have gone to her brother, with his strength and courage, his skill as a swimmer; but he was far away, unconscious of her desperate extremity. She had to choose, and the river was her choice. With that tragic conception of the drowning of Zenobia fresh in his mind, the realization of his sister's fate must have gained additional poignancy ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... north, and added to his kingdom some of the outlying regions of Media. Artabanus now at length resolved to bestir himself, and collecting his forces, took the field in person. Invading Persia Proper, he engaged in a desperate struggle with his rival. Three great battles were fought between the contending powers. In the last, which took place in the plain of Hormuz, between Bebahan and Shuster, on the course of the Jerahi river, Artabanus was, after a desperate ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... come round with me?" he croaked. How he had managed to acquire the nerve to make the suggestion he could never understand. I suppose that in certain supreme moments a sort of desperate recklessness ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... admitted by some, and by others rejected. But even those that admit them, can admit them only as pleas of necessity; for they consider the reception of mercenaries into our country, as the desperate "remedy of desperate distress;" and think, with great reason, that all means of prevention should be tried, to save us from any second need of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... we'll call to Nell. I am afraid the case must have been desperate, for I am seldom the victim," I said in an undertone to our host, who acquiesced with a laugh. "Harriet Henderson must be dead, for Nell usually sends the worse one to her," ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "To tell you the truth, Norrie, I can't bear to look at that jewel-case of hers. I believe, upon my word, that it is nearly empty. She is very generous, is your mother. She's a very fine woman, and I am desperate proud of her. When M'Dermott helps me to tide over this pinch I'll have all those jewels back again by hook or by crook. Your mother shan't suffer in the long run, and I'll do a lot to the old place—the old house ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... him, and Nan stood very still, her arms hanging down at her sides. But Maryon could read the stricken expression in her eyes—the desperate appeal of them. They ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Charleroi, and the British army prolonged the line to the east of Mons. Against this dike there now burst the full fury of the German advance made by the armies of Kluck and Buelow. (Vol. II, 46-49.) Again the French were defeated after a desperate battle about Charleroi (Vol. II, 54), this time without any rout and after having inflicted very heavy losses. But retreat was inevitable because the Germans succeeded in forcing the crossings of the Meuse at Dinant—that is, in the rear of the main army—while the fall of Namur (Vol. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... large. Men felt a sudden reverence for a mind and heart developed to these noble proportions in so unfriendly a habitat. They turned instinctively to one so familiar with strife for help in solving the desperate problem with which the nation had grappled. And thus it was that, at fifty years of age, Lincoln became a ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... of pointed sticks, but it is more classical to use the feet. If the weight be heavy and the track smooth, the toboggan takes the bit between its teeth; and to steer a couple of full-sized friends in safety requires not only judgment but desperate exertion. On a very steep track, with a keen evening frost, you may have moments almost too appalling to be called enjoyment; the head goes, the world vanishes; your blind steed bounds below your weight; you reach the foot, with ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not very severe and searching, is the same. The leader can rely on the faithfulness of his host: the comrade is sworn to serve. Master Ripton Thompson was naturally loyal. The idea of turning off and forsaking his friend never once crossed his mind, though his condition was desperate, and his friend's behaviour that of a Bedlamite. He announced several times impatiently that they would be too late for dinner. His friend did not budge. Dinner seemed nothing to him. There he lay plucking grass, and patting the old dog's nose, as if incapable of conceiving what a thing hunger ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bounding and barking through the sage-brush after him. Wahb tried to run, but it was no use; the Coyote was soon up with him. Then with a sudden rush of desperate courage Wahb turned and charged his foe. The astonished Coyote gave a scared yowl or two, and fled with his tail between his legs. Thus Wahb learned that war is the ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... suffragettes known as the "militants" resorted to open violence. When arrested for damaging property, they went on a "hunger strike," refusing all nourishment. This greatly embarrassed the government, which in 1913 devised the so-called "Cat and Mouse Act," whereby those who are in desperate straits through their refusal to eat are released temporarily and conditionally, but can be rearrested summarily for failure to comply with the terms of their parole. The weakness in the attitude of the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... contending for the possession of a bone drawn from the slush of the kennel. I have seen boys fight and bruise each other for a crust of bread dropped upon the pavement, and covered with wet mud, or even unsightlier filth. I have entered the abode of this desperate poverty, led thither by children, who have clamored at my side for alms, and found such misery as I am incompetent to express in words. I have seen the living unable to rise from sickness, in the same bed with the dying and the dead. I have known ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Glyde that he had reached this transcendental eyrie of his by painful degrees. No person of Sanchia's acquaintance had suffered more than he by her desperate affair. He had been her first lover, and her only confidant, for she had been what one calls a "difficult" girl, who gave out nothing and had no friends. Her sisters knew very little about her, her mother nothing. It had been Senhouse who had called up the spirit that was in her—that ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Nivelles, and Bluecher's on that of the Meuse from Nivelles to Liege. Both the allied armies hastened to unite at Quatre Bras; but their junction there was already impossible. Bluecher with eighty thousand men was himself attacked by Napoleon at Ligny, and after a desperate contest driven back with terrible loss upon Wavre. On the same day Ney with twenty thousand men, and an equal force under D'Erlon in reserve, appeared before Quatre Bras, where as yet only ten thousand English and the same force of Belgian troops had been able to assemble. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... to him that Mrs. Carter was in pursuit of these treasures, but he did realise that her presence there amongst them brought peril to his mother. Moved then by some desperate urgency which had at its heart his sense that to be left alone in the black passage was worse than the actual lighted vision of his Terror, he crept with trembling knees across the ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... not the artillery that saved Hooker from irretrievable disaster.* (* Lieutenant-Colonel Hamlin, the latest historian of Chancellorsville, has completely disposed of the legend that these fifty guns repulsed a desperate attack on Hazel Grove.) As they followed the remnants of the Eleventh Army Corps, the progress of Rodes and Colston had been far less rapid than when they stormed forward past the Wilderness Church. A regiment of Federal cavalry, riding to Howard's aid by ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... though, of course, the independent worker-class predominated. There were grey-headed old ladies standing there, sturdily charming in the rain; battered-looking, ambiguous women, with something of the desperate bitterness of battered women showing in their eyes; north-country factory girls; cheaply-dressed suburban women; trim, comfortable mothers of families; valiant-eyed girl graduates and undergraduates; lank, hungry-looking creatures, who ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... room with leisurely self-possession that might have been real or a desperate assumption. He was a slightly built young man of about twenty-five, with black hair and eyes, a small, carefully trained moustache, and a dark olive skin. His physiognomy was not displeasing, but his expression had a harsh and supercilious tinge. In attire he erred ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... treatment would drive Essex to madness. "These same gradations of yours"—so Bacon represents himself expostulating with the Queen on her caprices—"are fitter to corrupt than to correct any mind of greatness." They made Essex desperate; he became frightened for his life, and he had reason to be so, though not in the way which he feared. At length came the stupid and ridiculous outbreak of the 8th of February, 1600/1601, a plot to seize the palace and raise the city against the ministers, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... comprehension of which all her "advanced" reading and study had left her mind as blankly ignorant as a little child's. Now it was vain to try to shut her thoughts away from Jermain. She lived over and over the scene with him, she endured with desperate passivity the recollection of his burning lips on her bosom, his fingers pressing into her side. Why not, if every man was like that as soon as he dared? Why not, if that was all that men wanted of women? Why not, if that was the sole ghastly reality which underlay the pretty-smooth ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... of which he delivered a speech which marked him out as the coming man of the French republic, from the spirit of hostility it manifested against the Empire; at the fall of the Empire he stood high in public regard, assumed the direction of affairs, and made desperate attempts to repel the invading Germans; though he failed in this, he never ceased to feel the shame of the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, and strove hard to recover them, but all his efforts ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the irresistible impulse of which nothing could stay. Macdonald had already reached Sussenbrunn, where the archduke and his generals had concentrated their last effort; and the French columns were stopped by their desperate resistance. For a moment they seemed destined to retreat in their turn; but Davout had succeeded in his attack against the heights of Neusiedel. The plateau of Wagram was in our hands; General Oudinot had effected his junction, after taking the position of Baumersdorf; and the Prince of Hohenzollern ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... to the number of fifty or more, and are sure at last to torture him to death, and use him up at a meal. The Buffalo, however, is a huge and furious animal, and when his retreat is cut off, makes desperate and deadly resistance, contending to the last moment for the right of life, and oftentimes deals death by wholesale to ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... such a fate, and this seemed to me to indicate that moral stirrings were at work within me. One night I was amorously attacked in my bedroom by two of the domestics. I experienced an acute horror which I hid under laughter; my resistance was so desperate that I escaped with a tickling. I had been accustomed to sit on the servants' knees, a habit I had innocently retained from childhood; I can now recall in detail the approaches these women had been used to make me. At the time ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... way towards the colonel's quarters," whispered Lennox. "Here, sergeant, there must be some desperate plot—a mine, perhaps, close up to that hut. Quick! ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... they proceeded to walk up and down the hall, she being saved only by her escort from collision with various other couples similarly employed. This interesting exercise lasted for some minutes, varied by attempts at conversation which were about as natural as spasms. Marjory took a desperate resolution. This absurd state of things should not last much longer, if she could help it. "I never could act as if nothing was the matter when something was," she began, "and I can't help it if this is not polite; but I think, from what Mrs. Grove said ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... devoted the whole of my modest fortune to the objects of that society, but had actually been selected as leader of 200 Socialists into the interior of Africa! It was some days before she could grasp and believe the monstrous fact; then followed entreaties, tears, desperate reproaches, and expostulations. I might let the fellows have my money—over which, however, she felt that she should have kept better guard—but, for heaven's sake, could I not stay like an honest man at home? She consulted our family physician as to my responsibility for my actions; but she ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the light of a bright pinon blaze I began to read Great Expectations, a paper edition with the last leaves gone having gotten into camp. As I read Pip's interview in the twilight with the convict on the dreary marshes I was in deep sympathy with the desperate hunger of the terrible man, and when Mrs. Joe buttered the end of the loaf and carved off the slices I myself was hungry enough to cook supper over again. Butter had now been absent from my bill of fare, with a few exceptions, for nearly two years. I was careful to place my ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... method of procuring ushers is by advertisements. None will apply who are not in desperate circumstances, and these are your men. If they know little it is no great matter; they will be the more diligent: and should the children detect their ignorance, or the parents complain, you may easily dismiss them; others such-like are to be had; and it will ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... door along the little gallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid him down to die at his mother's feet. But there was comfort exchanged between them; for he knew from the glance of his mother's eye, that the purpose of his desperate defence was attained. Ah! I remember,' she continued, 'I remember well to have seen one that knew and loved him. Miss Lucy St. Aubin lived and died a maid for his sake, though one of the most beautiful and wealthy matches in this country; all the world ran after her, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... mountain tops, so that it is seen from far and wide, and long before it is approached. We had made the first part of our journey at a snail's pace. No sooner were we on the verge of the hills looking down upon La Bresse, than we set off at a desperate rate, spinning breathlessly round one mountain spur after another, till we were suddenly landed in the village street, dropped, as ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... pressed forward gallantly. The ground was uneven, however, and solid order could not be observed throughout. At length, when they had gained a brookside at the very edge of the wood, the column staggered, quailed, fell into disorder, and then fell back. Some of the more desperate dashed singly into the thicket, bayoneting their enemies, and falling in turn in the fierce grapple. Others of the Confederates ran from the wood, and engaged hand to hand with antagonists, and, in places, a score of combatants ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... about six miles further up the river, when we discovered the European boats and crews lying at anchor abreast of the smoking ruins of what had been a Malay town. Here we learnt that the pirates had been completely routed, after a desperate resistance, that four large towns had been burnt, and seventy-five brass guns of the country, called leilas, had been captured. The victory, however, had not been gained without loss on our side, and had the pirates been better prepared, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... hunger had made desperate, drew his sword, intending to take their meat by force, and said: 'Forbear and eat no more; I must have your food!' The duke asked him, if distress had made him so bold, or if he were a rude despiser of good manners? On this Orlando ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... blame him if just then a desperate longing seized him to throw all prudence, all dignity and honour to the winds and to clasp this exquisite woman for one brief and happy moment in his arms—to forget the world, her position and his—to risk disgrace and betray hospitality, for the sake of one kiss upon ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... together for a moment and then went into the house with hands close-locked and a kind of sad, desperate courage in their young hearts. What would either of them have done, each of them thought, had she been forced to endure alone the life that went on day after day in Deacon ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Army are a remarkable body of men. They are all converted, many from lives of desperate sin. Others have grown up in The Army; almost all have learned what they know of music in the ranks. Twenty years ago, the latter remark might have been received with a smile. Not so to-day, for while the object of Salvation Army music is the same as when it was ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... conditions; he may wait until his last morsel of bread has been eaten." The messenger was a clever man who afterward rendered his own name, that of Klenau, illustrious. He recognized Bonaparte, and, glancing at the terms, found them so generous that he at once admitted the desperate straits of the garrison. This is substantially the account of Napoleon's memoirs. In a contemporary despatch to the Directory there is nothing of it, for he never indulged in such details to them; but he does say in two other despatches what at ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... stab. Bobby stood looking out of the front door, which was open, into the sunny garden beyond, and there the sight of his father's small motor standing puffing away upon the drive filled him suddenly with a desperate resolve. ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... had never before encountered so desperate a knave. As we have said, the affair troubled him greatly. True, he was determined to investigate it thoroughly, but he could not well afford the time to go himself to New York. His chief man at the paper mill had failed to accomplish ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... team at the well, with the sound of oaths. He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to care. His poor, overworked team did not move quickly enough for him, and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes gleamed wrathfully from his ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... very effective prescriptions, but if a person has any heart trouble I would not advise their use except under a physician's care. (Sometimes a patient with neuralgia gets desperate, and he will even resort to morphine). Antipyrine is one of the simplest coal tar remedies, and most persons can safely take it. Persons who are subject to neuralgia or headaches need to take good care of themselves. Get plenty of rest and sleep. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... contained the criminals alleged to be desperate, and as they stood at the windows the chains on their right legs were in sight. It was plainly seen in several cases that the links of the chains used were about three inches long and that three or four turns were taken around the right ankle. In a group of prisoners waiting for ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... himself by reaching for Berry's shoulder with his forepaws, but at the critical moment his buffer flinched, the paws fell short of their objective, and with a startled grunt the terrier fell heavily into the bath, his desperate claws leaving two long abrasions upon ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... were in the same house, she could not withhold herself from endeavours to revive their mutual cordiality; and unsuccessful endeavours continually added fuel to the fire that destroyed her. She formed a desperate purpose to die. ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... round by Fort Pitt to the Chatham lines. And there—who can doubt?—if he seemed to hear the melancholy wind that whistled through the deserted fields as Mr. Winkle took his reluctant stand, a wretched and desperate duellist, his thoughts would also stray to the busy dockyard town and "a blessed little room" in a plain-looking plaster-fronted house from which dated all his early readings ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... enter on that long war which began with the League of Augsburg in 1686, and continued to the peace of Ryswick in 1697,—nine years of desperate fighting, when successes and defeats were nearly balanced, and when the resources of all the contending parties were nearly exhausted. France, at the close of the war, was despoiled of all her conquests and all the additions to her territory made since the Peace of Nimeguen, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Korea, one of the world's most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and spare parts shortages. Industrial and power output have declined in parallel. The nation ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... case in a definite shape before you. Here is a mother in the pangs of parturition. An organic defect, no matter in what shape or form, prevents deliverance by the ordinary channels. All that medical skill can do to assist nature has been done. The case is desperate. Other physicians have been called in for consultation, as the civil law requires before it will tolerate extreme measures. All agree that, if no surgical operation is performed, both mother and child must die. There are the ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... the right HOLY WATER,[18] all other is counterfeit: it will drive away devils and spirits; it will cure enchantments and witchcrafts; it will heal the mad and lunatic (Gal 3:1-3; Mark 16:17,18). It will cure the most desperate melancholy; it will dissolve doubts and mistrusts, though they are grown as hard as stone in the heart (Eze 36:26). It will make you speak well (Col 4:6). It will make you have a white soul, and that is better than to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... life Ariadne and I were leading, we had to have a great deal of money. My poor father sent me his pension, all the little sums he received, borrowed for me wherever he could, and when one day he answered me: "Non habeo," I sent him a desperate telegram in which I besought him to mortgage the estate. A little later I begged him to get money somehow on a second mortgage. He did this too without a murmur and sent me every farthing. Ariadne despised the practical side of life; all this was no concern of hers, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... absolutely compromised? And yet how could he part company from the others, swim ashore, and save himself while they were being drowned? It was a grave problem, and with his frantic desire to retain power, he made desperate endeavours ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... within an ace of the match. Miss Wilson served to me in the left court—a good service out on the side line. I played a straight back-hand shot down the line, passing Mr. Gore's forehand—rather a desperate stroke, as if it failed to pass him it meant certain death from one of his straight-arm volleys. Perhaps he was not guarding his line so well as usual, under the impression that I would not have the courage to try to pass ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... Sir Robert Peel's bold and comprehensive policy, was to devise some method of recruiting forthwith its languishing vital energies—to rescue its financial concerns from the desperate condition in which he found them. With an immediate and perspective increase of expenditure that was perfectly frightful—in the meditation and actual prosecution of vast but useless enterprises—of foreign interference ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... wouldn't do, Jeanne," Harry said with a slight smile, shaking his head. "It was a desperate enterprise for two of us. Besides, it would never do for you to run the risk of being separated from Virginie. Remember you are father and mother and elder sister to her now. The next plan I thought of was to try and get appointed as a warder in the prison, but that seems full of difficulties, ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... the colonists were hardy, but they loved as truly and tenderly as in more peaceful days. Thus, while the hero's adventures with pirates and his search for their hidden treasure is a record of desperate encounters and daring deeds, his love-story and his winning of sweet Mary Vane is ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... think," she objected, shaking her head. "I did not believe that there would be any real danger, with the three servants in the house. Only at the last did I realise the desperate nature ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly known as the "Duchess"; another, who had won the title of "Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... is she, my child? Where is your angel mother, whom I have sought sorrowing so many years? They tell me that you are married,—that it is your husband who watches you with such jealous scrutiny. He must not know who I am. I am a reckless, desperate man. It would be dangerous to us both to meet. Guard my secret as you expect to find your grave peaceful, your eternity free from remorse. When can I see you alone? Where can I meet you? I am in danger, distress,—ruin and death are hanging over me,—I must flee from the city; but I must see you, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... almost to the very letter, had vowed to annihilate every soldier of the British army with the exception of one man, who should reach Jellalabad to tell the story of the massacre of all his comrades. Pottinger was well aware how desperate was the situation of the hapless people on whose behalf he had bent so low his proud soul. Mohun Lal warned him of the treachery the chiefs were plotting, and assured him that unless their sons should accompany the army as hostages, it would be attacked ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... louder the ringing of the hoof-beats. Once he stole a hurried glance through the window which gave on the turnpike. Not half a mile away, their figures black against the sky-line, fiercely lashing their tired horses to fresh effort, were three desperate riders. The couple before him did not raise ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... into the yard, whence his voice could be heard in explosions of laughter. Cameron in the meantime was making heroic attempts to cover up the sound by loud-voiced conversation with Haley, and, rendered desperate by the exigencies of the situation, went so far as to venture a word of praise to Mrs. Haley upon the excellence and abundance ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... "Well," roared the desperate man, throwing the door wide open and stalking out among the crowd, "well, jest you two wimin put on your duds and go right straight home and bring back the old man and woman, and your grandfather, who is nigh on to a hundred; bring ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... deer. In that dizzy moment her feet to her scarce seemed to touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the water's edge. Right on behind they came; and, nerved with strength such as God gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying leap she vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore on to the raft of ice beyond. It was a desperate leap—impossible to anything but madness and despair; and Haley, Sam, and Andy, instinctively cried out, and lifted up ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... off. Then Crinkett with his sharp eyes saw another boat pushed off from the shore, and heard a voice declare that the Julius Vogel had received a signal not to start. Then Crinkett knew that a time of desperate trouble had come upon him, and he bethought himself what he would do. Were he to jump overboard, they would simply pick him up. Nor was he quite sure that he wished to die. The money which he had kept had not been obtained fraudulently, and would be left to him, he thought, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... for, since he had cheated the publishing house which employed him of all he had been able to get into his hands. There was reason to believe that he had heavy debts, especially gambling ones, and that he had become desperate since he no longer had his step-sister to ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... every wrong—nay, it is not every grievous wrong—which can justify a resort to such a fearful alternative. This ought to be the last desperate remedy of a despairing people, after every other constitutional means of conciliation had been exhausted. We should reflect that under this free Government there is an incessant ebb and flow in public opinion. The slavery question, like everything human, will have its day. I firmly believe ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... gorge, seemed in danger of perishing to the last man, so cleverly and sagaciously were the commandant's measures taken. But Hulot's cannon were powerless at these two points; and here, the town of Fougeres being quite safe, began one of those desperate struggles which denoted the character of ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... impalpable Undine, a creation of sea-foam and sea-flower; an exquisite suggestion of the ethereal which floated beauty, as it were, into her face. I know little of women, save what these past few grievous months have taught me; but I know that hours of anxious thought and desperate hope lay behind this effect of fragile loveliness. The wit of woman could not have rendered a woman's body a greater contrast to that of her rival; and with infinite subtlety she had imbued the contrast with the deeper ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke |
