"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull 270 Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... bringing messages of good-will from all the world. In the still night, when the scream of the engine's whistle would reach my ears, I would reflect upon the fact that though dwelling in a city whose boundaries were almost at the verge of our nation's great territory, yet we were linked to it by bands of steel, and Plymouth Rock did not seem so far from Shag Rock, nor Bedloe's ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... and went, and no sign of Dave's return. On the verge of tears, Lidey munched a little of the now distasteful food. Her mother, worn out with the pain, which had at last relaxed its grip, fell into a heavy sleep. There was no light in the cabin except the red glow from the open draught of the stove, and the intense, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... class of people I have just mentioned, and the means of doing this could be best effected by coining five-pound notes. This conduct has the appearance of that of an unprincipled insolvent, who, when on the verge of bankruptcy to the amount of many thousands, will borrow as low as five pounds of the servants in his house, and break the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... cautiously, stopping every minute or so to listen. When we came on it at last it was down below us in abysmal darkness, one light shining through a window two feet square in proof we were not hesitating on the verge of ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... bright and silvery the willows sleep Over the shady verge—no mad winds tease Their hoary heads; but quietly they weep Their sprinkling leaves—half fountains and half trees: Their lilies be—and fairer than all these, A solitary Swan her breast of snow Launches against the wave that seems to freeze Into a chaste reflection, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... was driven out by the Scythians and passed into Asia from the Lake Maeotis, under the command of Lygdamis: they further say that the chief part of the Scythian nation and the most warlike part lived at the very verge of the continent, on the coast of the external sea, in a tract shaded, woody, and totally sunless, owing to the extent and closeness of the forests, which reach into the interior as far as the Hercynii[74]; ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... dove than the wisdom of the serpent.[30] His faculties were in fact over-burdened with the weight of his learning, and his published works, which followed one another in quick succession, contained eccentricities, strange to the verge of madness. A layman himself, he held views as to the dignities and power of the priesthood, of which the 'Tatler'[31] might well say that Rome herself had never forged such chains for the consciences of the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of an early time; conquered by his clear, open life the occasional hostility of a later day; and at the period of his accession to the Throne was, without and beyond question, the best liked Prince in Europe—the most universally popular man in the United Kingdom and its external Empire. Upon the verge of His Majesty's Coronation there occurred that sudden and dramatic illness which proved so well the bravery and patience of the man, and increased so greatly the popularity and ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... gloom and irritability. At times he was still as agreeable as ever, but the least coldness on my part, or the commonest kind of attention paid me by others, seemed to exasperate him beyond any attempt at self-government. He was once on the verge of insulting Sir Edmund Ardern, because I had talked to him for an hour together; and there was nothing touching in the fierce jealousy which he showed on these occasions. When under its influence, he seemed absolutely to hate me, and sometimes he quite ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... other prisoners, Grummidge, Stubbs, Blazer, Taylor, and Garnet, were equally reduced and miserable, for the harsh treatment and prolonged journeying through forest and swamp, over hill and dale, on insufficient food, had not only brought them to the verge of the grave, but had killed outright one or two others of the crew ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... talked business or politics at dinner. There were many details of the camp life to be told and many stories of the Von Mindens that invariably brought Papa Wolf to the verge of apoplexy with laughter. Ernest never had been more charming than he was now. And by some magic of his own, he drew Dick out to tell the story of his turquoise mining. Like almost any story of desert endeavor it was full of drama, of quiet ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... even this is an imperfect and surreptitiously obtained copy of an early sketch of the play. That Shakespeare had written this tragedy in 1586, when he was but twenty-two years old, is improbable to the verge of impossibility; and Nash's allusion, if, indeed, he meant a punning sneer at a play, (which is not certain.) was, doubtless, to an old lost version of the Danish tragedy upon which Shakespeare ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... evening of the fourth day, we came to an inn on the verge of the county where my estate was situate. It was one of the wildest parts of Ireland. We could find no horses, nor accommodations of any sort, and we had several miles farther to go. For our only comfort, the dirty landlady, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... a cultivated young lady. She did her hair up in various and complicated fashions, occasionally practiced with a train, and had learned to bow with the latest grace and twist. She remembered Ernestine's little graceful ways, and profited by the remembrance, thereby driving Kat to the verge of desperation, by giving frequent lectures on the necessity of sitting still gracefully, and walking without a skip or jump every third step. With all their little growing differences, they were just as devoted and inseparable as ever. Kittie would sit and ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... the medium height, and added to the sense of grandeur conveyed by her presence. Her carriage was erect to the verge of stiffness, and her step too firm to be quite soundless. Advancing years had not produced any unseemly embonpoint, nor had her figure fallen into the opposite extreme, and sharpened into meagre angularity; its outline retained sufficient roundness not to lose ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... distress upon the savages by destroying their corn. Although the Virginia tribes subsisted partly upon game, their chief support was from their fields of maize, and the entire failure of their crop would have reduced hundreds of them to the verge of starvation.[189] Each year the white men, in small companies, in various parts of the country, brought ruin to the corn fields. Sometimes the savages, in despair at the prospect of famine, made valiant efforts to defend their ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... "It is to you," he said, "that Trevanion must look for more than comfort,—for cheerfulness and satisfaction. Your child is gone from you; the world ebbs away: you two should be all in all to each other. Be so." Thus, after paths so devious, meet those who have parted in youth, now on the verge of age,—there, in the same scenes where Austin and Ellinor had first formed acquaintance; he aiding her to soothe the wounds inflicted by the ambition that had separated their lots, and both taking counsel to insure the happiness of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... featureless grass. With the Boer, direction had become a sense; not only were topographical features, once seen, engraved indelibly on his memory, but many which would be utterly invisible to untrained eyes were often detected at once by inference so unconscious as to verge on instinct. He knew "ground" and its secrets as intimately as the seaman knows the sea, and his memory for locality was that of the Red ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... grew redder and more perturbed; just as Beatrice meant that it should; she seemed to derive a keen pleasure from goading this big, good-looking Englishman to the verge ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... sweet little creature, but the red-haired boy saw that she was on the verge of tears, and he caught her hand and sobbed out loud in sympathy. That ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... That overwhelmed and prostrate lies, And in a moment to the verge Is lifted of a foaming surge— Full suddenly the Ass ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... from boyhood into the bloom of youth, having reached that season in which the young man, now standing upon the verge of independence, shows plainly whether he will enter upon the path of virtue or of vice, he went forth into a quiet place, and sat debating with himself which of those two paths he should pursue; and as he there sat musing, there appeared to him two women of great stature which drew nigh ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Domna, verge pura e fina, ans que fos l'enfantamens, et apres tot eissamens, receup en vos carn humana Jesu Crist, nostre salvaire, si com ses trencamen faire intra.l bels rais, quan ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... stallin'!" George insisted, on the verge of losing his temper. "Molly Lessing's the spit-'n'-image of Marian Blessington—and you know it. What's more—look at their names? Molly for Mary—you make that? Mary and Marian's near enough alike, ain't they? And what's Lessing but ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Otsego, if we except the principal high ways, were, at the early day of our tale, but little better than wood-paths. The high trees that were growing on the very verge of the wheel-tracks excluded the suns rays, unless at meridian; and the slowness of the evaporation, united with the rich mould of vegetable decomposition that covered the whole country to the depth of several inches, occasioned ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of November late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city; and here the sky shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to gray; the smoke did not visibly permeate the air, but it was there, nevertheless—impalpable, thin, no more than the dust of smoke. And then, as the car drove on, the chimneys and stacks of factories came swimming up into view like miles of ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... present, besides the command of a large and warlike army, the new honors of the defeat of Vindex and the subjugation of one considerable part of the Roman empire, namely, the entire Gaul, which had seemed shaking about upon the verge of open revolt. Nor had any man indeed a greater name and reputation than Virginius, who had taken a part of so much consequence in the deliverance of the empire at once from a cruel tyranny and a Gallic war. But he, standing to his first resolves, reserved to the senate the power of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... been on the verge of hysteria, Lowell thought, but, while Helen was plainly under a nervous strain, her self-command returned. The agent was in possession of some information—how much she did not know. Perhaps she could goad him into betraying ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... provide the money for your share, I give bills for mine; I offer them to you, and you undertake, purely out of kindness, to convert them into money. You learn that I, Claparon,—banker, rich, respected (I accept all the virtues under the sun),—that the virtuous Claparon is on the verge of failure, with six million of liabilities to meet: would you, at such a moment, give your signature to guarantee mine? Of course not; you would be mad to do it. Well, Monsieur Lebas, Birotteau is in the position which ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... to be doing pretty well. We next arranged to ride over to Kucainia, a place some twenty-five miles off. It was settled that we were to start at seven o'clock in the morning, but a dense white fog obliterated the outer world—we might have been on the verge of Nowhere. It was more than two hours before the fog lifted sufficiently to enable us to proceed. We went on our way some three miles when a drenching shower came on, and we took shelter in the cavernous interior of an enormous, half-ruined oak-tree. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... done, for Ireland once had a separate Parliament, and the Union was a matter of agreement, the outcome of which was that Mr. Childers's Commission found she was taxed three millions more than she should have been. The colonies are on the alert, with all the rather irritable uppishness of youth on the verge of manhood, and their younger generations are sure to take full advantage of any tactless conduct of the British Government. Such was Froude's view, and nothing has happened since his death to shake its inherent probability. The waves of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... by Ibrahim and his companions in preparation for future work. The invaders were now well provided with every requisite. The besieged were in want of nearly everything. "Invested for ten months," says the contemporary historian, "frequently on the verge of starvation, thinned by fatigue, watching, and wounds, they had already buried fifteen hundred soldiers. The town was in ruins, and they lived amongst the mire and water of their ditches, exposed to the inclemency of a rigorous ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... are sometimes pleasing, and his temerities happy: he has many "verba ardentia" forcible expressions, which he would never have found, but by venturing to the utmost verge of propriety; and flights which would never have been reached, but by one who had very little fear of the shame ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Virtue, is, that the young Women who run into greater Freedoms with the Men are more taken Notice of than I am. The Men are such unthinking Sots, that they do not prefer her who restrains all her Passions and Affections and keeps much within the Bounds of what is lawful, to her who goes to the utmost Verge of Innocence, and parlies at the very Brink of Vice, whether she shall be a Wife or a Mistress. But I must appeal to your Spectatorial Wisdom, who, I find, have passed very much of your Time in the Study of Woman, whether this is not a most unreasonable Proceeding. I have read somewhere, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... widely different. In the first place, there is no trap; then, instead of the piece of flesh, the great attraction, being put in an obscure and hidden path, it should, on the contrary, be placed in an open spot, on the border of a wood, in a glade, or in a field on the verge of the forest, in order that the sportsman who is laying in wait, in ambush, may be able to see what is passing; he must, too, conceal himself as much as possible, either in a thicket under the foliage, in a hut made with ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... on, wheeling as the Penrith road led them, round the verge of the rising ground. Yet still the eyes of Mrs. Dolly Dutton, which, with the head and substantial person to which they belonged, were all turned towards the scene of action, could discern plainly the outline of the gallows-tree, relieved ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... but writing-implements, any metal instruments whatever, even knife and fork, and the books he mentioned, were struck from his list. The inquisitors sent him books which they themselves thought suitable, and which drove him, he said, to the verge of madness. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... party's wonder grew. Most of them dragged themselves forward with stumbling footsteps. Their faces were haggard, their hands moving restlessly and their features twitching. They looked like men who had been for days undergoing severe mental and physical strain and were on the verge of collapse. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... miles to the east, a legionary stood, perhaps, upon the wall of Antoninus, and looked northward toward the mountains of the Picts. For all the interval of time and space, I, when I looked from the cliff-house on the broad Pacific, was that man's heir and analogue: each of us standing on the verge of the Roman Empire (or, as we now call it, Western civilization), each of us gazing onward into zones unromanised. But I was dull. I looked rather backward, keeping a kind eye on Paris; and it required a series of converging incidents to change my attitude ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... With evening, the horizon assumes tints of inexpressible sweetness,—pearl-lights, opaline colors of milk and fire; and in the west are topaz-glowings and wondrous flushings as of nacre. Then, if the sea sleeps, it dreams of all these,—faintly, weirdly,—shadowing them even to the verge ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... for very sick people. Most of this class, from all I can learn, come here only to die, and surely it is better to die comfortably at home, avoiding the thousand discomforts of travel, at a time when they are so heard to bear. It is indeed pitiful to see so many invalids, already on the verge of the grave, making a painful way to quack climates, hoping to change age to youth, and the darkening twilight of their day to morning. No such health-fountain has been found, and this climate, fine as it is, seems, like most others, to ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... the deep husky voice of the prisoner, snatched back, as it were, from the very verge of the grave to liberty and life. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... happened to me till I reached Yellowsands, except an exciting ride on the mail-coach, which connected it with the nearest railway-station some twenty miles away. For the last three or four miles the road ran along the extreme precipitous verge of cliffs that sloped, a giant's wall of grassy mountain, right away down to a dreamy amethystine floor of sea, miles and miles, as it seemed, below. To ride on that coach, as it gallantly staggered betwixt earth and heaven, was to know all the ecstasy of flying, with an added touch ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... the verge of setting out he hesitated. There was more than one reason why he should do so. In the first place, it was exceedingly dangerous to attempt to make his way up the canyon even by daylight, and the sun had already disappeared. He was totally unfamiliar with the windings and would ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... the afternoons that he had spent after his arrival in London, wandering through Clapham with a fading hope of meeting her, had not returned to him. But he was ashamed of his stupid silence, and irritated by the awkwardness of the situation. At one moment he was on the very verge of breaking the compact and saying "Miss Henderson" ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... became softer, gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sherwood Forest,—not consisting, however, of thousand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but of young and thriving plantations, which will require a century or two of slow English growth to give them much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies in this neighborhood, and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ye spring the loveliest flowers That a' our seasons yield; Ye deck sae flush the greenwood bowers, The garden, and the field; The pathway verge by hedge and tree, So fresh, so green, and gay, Where every lovely blue flower's e'e Is opening to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... me a look that was savageness itself. Apparently he was on the verge of giving way to a burst of temper. But he seemed to think better of it, and turning, he jumped into his buggy and ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... them all and laid his hand upon his heart. Tomkins nodded approbation.) "Far, far be it from me to dwell with unbecoming asperity on the conduct of anyone—we are all mortals—and alike liable to err; but when I see a man who has been guilty of an act which has brought him all but within the verge of the prisoners' dock; I say, when I see a man who has been guilty of such an outrage on society as this ruffian Jorrocks, come forward with the daring effrontery that he has this day done, and claim redress where ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... said Gerald. "Giglioli tells me that he's giving up the army, and Brenda has promised to marry him!" He was on the verge of laughing hysterically. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... the general deterioration of morals and manners. The New York hackmen, for instance, are very obliging and attentive; but if it would not seem ungrateful, I would hazard the statement that their attentions are unremitting to the degree of being almost embarrassing, and proffered to the verge of obtrusiveness. I think, in short, that they are hardly quite delicate in their politeness. They press their hospitality on you till you sigh for a little marked neglect. They are not content with simple statement. They offer you their hack, for instance. You decline, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... tranquillity which is always on the verge of being broken, which depends largely on uninterrupted hours, on confidential, velvet-shod servants, on a brooding dove in a cedar, on the absence of the inharmonious or jarring ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... here. These are wild times, good wife, wild and cruel times, and a widow more or less is scarcely worth troubling over. I think we'll just risk you calling in your men, for, God knows, I'm wearied enough to sleep on the verge of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... hotly, and, by the general scandalized look on the faces of the others, Irene judged that luckless Peachy must have been on the verge of betraying some secret. She tactfully turned the conversation with a remark upon the beauty of the sunset, and the clanging of the garden bell opportunely broke up the gathering, and sent the girls hurrying helter-skelter along the terrace in the direction of the house. Irene paused for a moment ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... departed, and, what's worse, With borrow'd money in his purse, Travels at least a hundred leagues, And suffers numberless fatigues. Suppose him now a dean complete, Demurely[8] lolling in his seat, And silver verge, with decent pride, Stuck underneath his cushion side. Suppose him gone through all vexations, Patents, instalments, abjurations, First-fruits, and tenths, and chapter-treats; Dues, payments, fees, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... consultation between the three succeeded. Neither liked to approach the cliff, which was nearly perpendicular at the extremity of the head-land, and was always a trial to the nerves of those who shrunk from standing on the verge of precipices. They stood like persons paralyzed, until Dutton, ashamed of his weakness, and recalling the thousand lessons in coolness and courage he had received in his own manly profession, made a movement ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world, a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we, in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these great carnivals, together with another attraction of great cities, the pomps and festivals of the Pagan worship, broke the monotony of domestic life, which, for the old world, was even more ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... confines, limit, margin, border, edge, line, term, bound, enclosure, marches, termination, bourn, frontier, marge, verge. bourne, landmark, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... delicately beautiful of all the movements of water—the wash of a light sea over broken rock. But no rock was there. A few feet below him a broad ledge stood out, a rough platform as large as a great room, thickly grown with wiry grass and walled in steeply on three sides. There, close to the verge where the cliff at last dropped sheer, a woman was sitting, her arms about her drawn-up knees, her eyes fixed on the trailing smoke of a distant liner, her face full ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... society for the last half-dozen years, and being by nature susceptible to girlish charm had more than once imagined himself seriously in love. There had been, for example, that beautiful blonde whose society had turned a summer holiday into a veritable idyll. He had been on the verge of proposing to her when his uncle had suddenly summoned him home, and—well, somehow the restless misery of the first few days had disappeared with surprising rapidity, the vision had grown dim, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... in a momentary farewell, and Polson saw that the old man's eyes were full of tears. One dropped plump and warm on the tip of his own nose, and there was something comic and touching in the fact, and he giggled and snuffled over it to the verge of ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... of company in the Park when he entered it, but, his present state of mind inducing him to avoid society, he kept aloof from the more frequented walks towards Westminster and Whitehall, and drew to the north, or, as we should now say, the Piccadilly verge of the enclosure, believing he might there enjoy, or rather combat, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of the elm, in the midst of a private road, on the verge of Norwalk, near the habitation of Inglefield, but three miles from my uncle's house. It was now my intention to visit it. The road in which I was travelling led a different way. It was requisite to leave it, therefore, and make a circuit through meadows and over steeps. My ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... down on the old sofa," he said. "There is much to say to you. We are now on the verge of a ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... that sailed out of France. For a short time, as the ship came up with the west end of Elba, it was a serious question whether she would be able to weather it, the lugger having gone past, within a cable's length of the cliffs, on the very verge of the breakers and much closer in than the frigate would dare to follow. But the last had taken the breeze further off the land than the first, and might possibly fetch past the promontory on the tack she was then steering. To have gone about would have been to have abandoned the chase, as ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... saw four dead tigers brought in by a party that had killed them a few miles from the place where my tent was pitched. Tigers are very migratory. They live in the cold weather down in the Bhabhur and the Turai, and as the hot weather advances they follow the herd up the hills on to the verge of the snow. The bears of the hills feed on fruit and vegetables, and usually make away when human beings are seen, but they are very formidable to those who attack them, or come suddenly across their path. In some places wolves abound, and children and animals ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... fortitude, demanded the reason of his conduct. "Son of Cyrus," he replied, "the misfortunes of my house are too unparalleled to weep over, but not the affliction of my friend. When a man, on the verge of old age, falls from luxury and abundance into extreme poverty, one may well lament his fate." When the speech was reported to Cambyses, he fully recognised the truth of it. Croesus, who was also present, shed tears, and the Persians round ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the Ladrones the shipments of silver from Nueva Espana to Manila. With the said intent, they put to sea, but after sailing for several days, they encountered a storm, which brought them all nearly to the verge of destruction. One very dark and stormy night they lost sight of the almiranta, and never saw it again. Seeing himself without this vessel, the general chose as almiranta the fly-boat which he had remaining. This was a vessel of perhaps fifty toneladas ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... appreciable change has been noted in the tiniest stalactite during fifty years. Mrs. Devar then grew genuinely alarmed, since even a designing woman may be a timid one. She bore with the pace until the car seemed to be on the verge of rushing full tilt against a jutting rock. She could endure the strain no longer, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... after long years? Or was it regret at the besmirching of a picture which till now had shone so purely and been so sweetly framed in his memory? He did not know, but for days it depressed him to the verge of melancholy. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... to Galatz, a long half-day's journey. Andreas was not hard to find; he was smoking in the "Concordia" saloon. I saw him before he saw me; he had a furtive air, he was pallid and his lips twitched; he looked to me on the verge of delirium tremens. I approached him from behind, and uttered the one word, "Andreas!" At the word, he started as if he had been shot, spun round, dropped on his knees, with his hands raised beseechingly, and cried in a broken voice, "Before God, master, I thought you were ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... learn the nature of Pa's recently acquired eccentricities, but Allie was flushing and paling as a result of her sudden excursion into the audible. Eventually she trembled upon the verge of speech once more, then she took ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... they had surplus money; but these superfluities are the water of crystallization to scholars, and you can never get them away till the poor fellows effloresce into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcorated with milk watered to the verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was very deep, and in sweeping round had cut out a wide bed, nearly three times its usual breadth. Tall trees grew almost to the verge of the banks on both sides, so that the water was almost always in shadow, while so high were the banks that few breezes were able to ripple its surface. It lay placid all the year, scarcely troubled even in winter, when ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... of the burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea that they did not come to blows. It was all threats, all a terribly effective feint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the tremendous disdain of the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph, are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of men. I asked, after waiting for a while, "Well, what happened?" A futile question. I knew too much already to hope for the grace of a single uplifting touch, for the favour of hinted madness, of shadowed horror. "Nothing," he said. "I ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... mournfully, "I don't want to make you unhappy. If you can find anything to be cheerful about when you're on the verge of starvation, I hope you'll enjoy yourselves, and not mind me. I'm a poor, dependent creetur, and ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of their recorded history, they were in a sense a dependency of America, and now the whirligig of time has restored them in their political relations to the Western Hemisphere. As a dependency of New Spain they constituted the extreme western verge of the Spanish dominions and were commonly known as the Western Islands [2] (Las Islas del Poniente). Their discovery and conquest rounded out an empire which in geographical extent far surpassed anything the world had then seen. When the sun rose in Madrid, it was still early afternoon ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... impossibility? Do we know ourselves or our fellows so thoroughly as to be warranted in denying that deep down in the mysterious 'subliminal consciousness' there is a gate through which spiritual beings may come into contact with human personalities? He would be bold, to the verge of presumption or somewhat further, who should take up such a position. And have we any better right to assume that we know so much of the universe as to be sure that there are no evil spirits there, who can come into contact with human spirits and wield ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... nothing of the edict at the time—for bushmen do not advertise their chivalry—and wandered round the straggling Settlement vaguely surprised at its sobriety, and turning up in such unexpected places that the little bushman was constantly on the verge of apoplexy. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... and simpered at hearing his own praises. But Miss Browning had no notion of having any doctor praised, who had come to settle even on the very verge of Mr. Gibson's practice, so she said to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... promised to be unbroken; that faint flush faded which had crept into her cheeks in the course of her half-whimsical, half-serious harangue; she looked once more what life had made her—a work-worn shop-girl, of lack-lustre charm, on the verge of prematurely middle-aged, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... circulation without the help of travelling agents or the credit system: and to this policy he has adhered. Besides this, he spared no expense which he judged would add to the value of his publications, and his judgment has always set the bounds far off on the very verge of extravagance. Whatever machine promised to keep his office abreast of the times, and increase the capacity for good work, he has dared buy. Whatever man he has thought would brighten and strengthen ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... mature, and were taking on their golden hue, and the long, free shoots of tender growth were reaching out for conquest on right and left in all manner of graceful curves and spirals. Through an opening in this shadowy foliage came a glimpse of the hill-side slope across the valley upon whose verge my studio is perched, and as my eye penetrated this pretty vista it was intercepted by what appeared to be a shadowed portion of a rose branch crossing the opening and mingling with the bittersweet stems. In my idle mood I had for some moments so accepted it without a thought, and ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... not completed his second year when the family moved to a respectable house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of Lissoy, in West Meath. Here the schoolmistress who first put a book into Oliver Goldsmith's hands confessed, "Never was so dull a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... down into a tilted well. A rope that hangs from the centre of the top touches the wall before it reaches the bottom. Standing on the summit, one does not feel altogether comfortable when he looks down from the high side; but to crawl on your breast to the verge on the lower side and try to stretch your neck out far enough to see the base of the tower, makes your flesh creep, and convinces you for a single moment in spite of all your philosophy, that the building is falling. You handle yourself very carefully, all the time, under the silly impression ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... outlandish and foreign to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to be blamed, but the tyrants who are responsible for it. It is the only resource for a helpless and unarmed people when brought to the verge of despair. It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies with ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... have seen that the affectionate parent considers his child like a flower in the bud, as a mine of power that is to be unfolded, as a creature that is to act and to pass through he knows not what, as a canvas that "gives ample room and verge enough," for his prophetic soul to hang over in endless visions, and his intellectual pencil to fill up with various scenes and fortunes. And, if the parent does not understand his child, certainly as little does the child understand his parent. Wherever this relation subsists in its fairest ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... limits.... Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.... We shall lie down," continued the orator, "pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... group of men, however willing, to work without a leader. While the inexperienced rescuers stood hesitating on the verge of action, Corrie Rose in his pink racing costume sprang up the bank, his blue eyes burning in his white face, his lips stained with blood where ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... proportion to the territory round it, which was of no greater extent than many an English or Hungarian nobleman's estate; but the whole if it, to the verge of the rocks which constituted its boundary, was cultivated to the nicest degree, except where certain allotments of mountain and pasture were humanely left free to the sustenance of the harmless animals they had tamed, though not for domestic use. So great is their kindness towards ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of all his noble bounties, which Timon showed to mankind, and this the last sight of him which his countrymen had: for not many days after, a poor soldier, passing by the sea-beach, which was at a little distance from the woods which Timon frequented, found a tomb on the verge of the sea, with an inscription upon it, purporting that it was the grave of Timon the man-hater, who "While he lived, did hate all living men, and dying wished a plague might ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... began to seek my friendship, but I received him coldly, and without the least regret he held aloof from me. I took a hatred to him. His success in the regiment and in the society of ladies brought me to the verge of despair. I began to seek a quarrel with him; to my epigrams he replied with epigrams which always seemed to me more spontaneous and more cutting than mine, and which were decidedly more amusing, for he joked while I fumed. At last, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... but nursemaids and nursery-governesses were one thing with a mistress at the head of the household and quite another without one, as, during the past six months, Mr. Reeve had learned to his sorrow, and the poor man had more than once been driven to the verge of insanity by their want ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... bumped his head repeatedly on the ground. "Do please," he cried, "lay up a store of meritorious acts for yourself and let me off! I couldn't take that were I even on the verge of death!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... wholesome. Mrs. Brooker makes it regularly every year, and—we sell a twenty-gallon barrel over the counter, besides what we keep for ourselves. And if I am to be exposed to mockery when Providence has snatched me from the verge of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... unconscious of what they did, fired at his body as it made its rapid way to the water; but, as they afterwards found, neither of the bullets struck him. Morton, when his prey thus leaped forth, escaping him for awhile, was already on the verge of the cavern,—had even then prepared his foot for that onward spring which should bring him to the throat of his foe. But he arrested himself, and for a moment stood there watching the body as it struck the water, and ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... ordinary slate-grey. Without any pretension to good looks, Martin Grimbal displayed what was better—an expression of such frank benignity and goodness that his kind trusted him and relied upon him by intuition. Honest and true to the verge of quixotism was this man in all dealings with his fellows, yet he proved a faulty student of character. First he was in a measure blinded by his own amiable qualities to acute knowledge of human nature; secondly, he was drawn ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... hopelessness of their position; probably with the intensity of youth she exaggerated it, which was scarcely necessary, as a small rut is apt to widen into a bottomless pit if it crosses the path of those who are living up to the utmost verge of a narrow income. As she reviewed the endless instances of her mother's self-abnegation which memory supplied—her cheerful industry, her brave struggle to live like a gentlewoman on a pittance, her tender thought for the welfare and happiness of her children—she felt she could walk through ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... all the credit that is due to him for preventing Sir Edward Carson's arrest, considering that he and his Order had been mainly the cause of bringing Carson to the verge of rebellion, but that gentleman himself seems to have a different opinion about it if we are to put any credence in the following extract from Colonel Repington's Diary of the First World War, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... covered with blood, then, finding that he was about to be forced over the brink, Lotu clasped his brother-in-law and enemy about the neck and both went to their death together. The wife and sister of the two combatants either fainted at the verge and fell or wilfully cast herself from the same cliff. It is not recorded whether these victims of an unruly passion were interred in earth or conveniently disposed of otherwise, but the affair created such a gloom in the neighborhood that the cannibal colony moved away to parts unknown, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... blue hands and bad color, resort to the sun; let it almost blister the skin, and the circulation will answer the attraction. It is a finer stimulous than wine, electricity or massage, and we are on the verge of ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... Cinque Ports. But Earl Warenne, in Rochester castle, blocked the passage of the Dover road over the Medway. Accordingly Montfort marched with a large following of Londoners to Rochester, captured the town, and assaulted the castle with such energy that it was on the verge of surrendering. The news of Warenne's peril reached Henry in the midlands. In five days the royalists made their way from Nottingham to Rochester, a distance of over 160 miles. On their approach Montfort ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... chill,—they hurried homewards, leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings, the open space on the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Spring Chickens and appeared in Morty Sands's bower! Doctor Nesbit in those days called Morty the "head gardener in the 'rosebud garden of girls!'" And a lovely garden it was. Of course, it was more or less democratic; for every one was going to be rich; every one was indeed just on the verge of riches, and lines of caste were loosely drawn. For wealth was the only line that marked the social differences. So when Henry Fenn, the young county attorney, in his new evening clothes brought Margaret Mueller of the Register ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... passed since I waited in your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... central groove is to be held firmly hooked up against the symphysis pubis, and then steadied by the left forefinger in the rectum. The operator pierces the raphe of the perineum with a long straight bistoury about half an inch above the verge of the anus, enters the groove of the staff, and cuts inwards, almost, but not quite, into the bladder. In withdrawing the knife the wound in the urethra is enlarged upwards towards the scrotum. A ball-pointed probe is then passed on the staff into the bladder, the staff is withdrawn, and the ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Mariette's marriage and shortly after the birth and death of her last child, Frau von Niebuhr suddenly returned to her bed, prostrate, on the verge of collapse. The count raged that any wife of his should dare to be ill or absent (when not fulfilling patriotic obligations), consult her own selfish whims by having nerves and lying speechless in bed. But he had a very considerable ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... are almost a mind reader," laughed Grace. "I've been on the verge of a breakdown ever since we left Oakdale, and in this very instant I made up my mind to be brave and not cry a single tear. Look at Anne. She is as calm ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... on the sea, from a house of sir Alexander Macdonald, in the isle of Skie. Little did I once think of seeing this region of obscurity, and little did you once expect a salutation from this verge of European life. I have now the pleasure of going where nobody goes, and seeing what nobody sees. Our design is to visit several of the smaller islands, and then pass over to the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... be; but it is a great exertion to lay one every day, and no sooner is the work finished than I think of the same task to be done on the morrow, until I'm on the verge of nervous prostration,' and Mrs. Goose waddled up and down the room as if she was a living skeleton, instead of the fattest ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... died shortly afterwards. Then events moved very quickly. After Berne had, meanwhile, reformed itself in 1528, Oecolampadius demanded a decision also for Basle. Since the close of 1528 the town had been on the verge of civil war. A popular rising put an end to the resistance of the Council and cleared it of Catholic members; and in February 1529 the old service was prohibited, the images were removed from the churches, the convents abolished, and the University suspended. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... countenance or ill favor, as such banks severally observed or disregarded the ordinary rules of financial prudence. The immediate effect of the refusal of Congress to recharter the Bank of the United States was to bring the Treasury to the verge of bankruptcy. The interference of Parish, Girard, and Astor alone saved the credit of the government, and this interference was no doubt prompted by self-interest. That Mr. Astor was hostile to the bank is certain. Gallatin ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... effect of absurdity. The Registrar laughed, the barristers laughed, the reporters laughed, the serried ranks of the miserable depositors watching anxiously every word, laughed like one man. They laughed hysterically—the poor wretches—on the verge of tears. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... rang, and both Roland and Catherine sprung to their feet in the utmost terror and alarm. Meantime, Mary seemed, by the train of horrible ideas thus suddenly excited, surprised not only beyond self-command, but for the moment beyond the verge of reason. 'Traitress,' she said to the Lady Fleming, 'thou wouldst slay thy sovereign. Call my French guards—a moi! a moi! mes Francais!—I am beset with traitors in mine own palace—they have murdered my husband—Rescue! Rescue! for the Queen of Scotland!' ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... reserve, that had in it no hint of coldness; and, more significant than all, her eyes no longer met his own with that disconcerting directness of gaze which had sealed his lips when they were upon the verge of speech. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... winding of the hills I crept,— No valley so remote but I explored it; Nay, at the very glacier's ice-clad base, I sought and found the homes of living men; And still, where'er my wandering footsteps turn'd, The selfsame hatred of these tyrants met me. For even there, at vegetation's verge, Where the numb'd earth is barren of all fruits, Their grasping hands had been for plunder thrust. Into the hearts of all this honest race, The story of my wrongs struck deep, and now They, to a man, are ours; ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... different with men in the humbler walks of life. Multitudes are doomed to delve and dig. Three-fourths of the race live on the verge of poverty. The energies of most men are consumed in supporting the wants of the body. It is given to multitudes to descend into the coal mine ere the day is risen, to emerge only when night has fallen. Other multitudes toil in the smithy or tend the loom. The division ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... son," answered the Saint, "time spares neither men nor gods. These last are immortal only in the imagination of the short-lived race of men. In reality they suffer the penalties of age, and verge, as the centuries go by, towards irreparable decay. Nymphs grow old as well as women. No rose but turns into an arid hip at last; no Nymph but ends as an ugly Witchwife. Watching as you did the frolic of my little household, you saw how the memory of their bygone youth yet beautifies the Nymphs ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... flew, And flung luxurious coolness round The air, and verdure o'er the ground. 'Twas sweet, when cloudless stars were bright, To view the wave of watery light, And hear its melody by night. And oft had Hassan's Childhood played Around the verge of that cascade; And oft upon his mother's breast 310 That sound had harmonized his rest; And oft had Hassan's Youth along Its bank been soothed by Beauty's song; And softer seemed each melting tone Of Music ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... to take an interest in them. There is Mr. Rankeillor, for instance, whose company in the concluding chapter of Kidnapped was too good to be spared very easily; and there is Lady Allardyce—a wonderfully clever portrait; and Captain Hoseason—we tread for a moment on the verge of re-acquaintance, but are disappointed; and Balfour of Pilrig; and at the end of Part I. away into darkness goes the Lord Advocate Preston-grange, with ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... intended height. The distances of the plants would not be above one foot; and the season to do the work in, may be from the entry of February, till the end of March; or else in September to the beginning of December. When this is finish'd, you must guard both the top of your bank, and outmost verge of your ditch, with a sufficient dry-hedge, interwoven from stake to stake into the earth (which commonly they do on the bank) to secure your quick from the spoil of cattle. And then being careful to repair such as decay, or do not spring, by supplying the dead, and trimming ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... up for doles," Replied the haughty surgeon; "To use your cant, I don't play roles Utility that verge on. First amputation—nothing less— That is my line of business: We surgeon nobs despise all jobs ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... know, and all these working people that think a business is run just to suit them—! And that's why you ought to have been more appreciative of all Lulu did for you—and then running away and bringing her just about to the verge of nervous prostration ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... round the point of danger, and they had almost reached the quiet eddy near the landing-place when the stem of the canoe was caught by the current, which instantly whirled it out from the shore and carried it down stream like an arrow. Another moment, and the gushing water dragged them to the verge of the fall, which thundered and foamed among frightful chasms and rocks many feet below. It was the work of a moment. The stern of the canoe almost overhung the abyss, and the voyageurs plied their paddles ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... written all over its broad steps that lead up to a wide veranda on which many windows look out and smile upon the visitor as he enters. One tall dormer window, overarched with a high peak, comes out to the very edge of the roof to welcome the guest. Two, smaller and more retiring, stand upon the verge of the high-combed house-roof and look down in friendly greeting. There are tall trees in the yard, bending a little to ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... wet child," said Nan, laughing, yet on the verge of tears herself. "You might have been drowned, you WOULD have been had it not been ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... independence. But faith has its limits, as well as temper, and there are points beyond which neither can be stretched without sinking into cowardice, or plunging into credulity. This, my friends, I conceive to be your situation. Hurried to the very verge of both, another step would ruin you for ever. To be tame and unprovoked when injuries press hard upon you, is more than weakness; but to look up for kinder usage without one manly effort of your own, would fix your character, and show the world how richly ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... now evident that the assault must fail unless some accident intervened, for the tide was rising, the reserves all engaged, and no greater effort could be expected from men whose courage had been already pushed to the verge of madness. In this crisis, fortune interfered. A number of powder-barrels, live shells, and combustible materials which the French had accumulated behind the traverses for their defence, caught fire, a bright, consuming flame ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... resort. We are reminded of that vivid description, in one of Cooper's novels, of an Indian in his canoe drawn into the rapids of Niagara and swept over the falls,—who, in his wild efforts to save himself, continued paddling in the air even after he had passed the verge of the cataract. So the Confederate craft has reached the brink of destruction, and we may now look to see some frantic paddling in their air. Or shall we liken it to Milton's bad angel, flying to his new empire, but dropping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... this magnificent vantage-ground lies the valley of the Rio Las Animas Perdidas. On the other verge of the great depression rise the peerless, everlastingly snow-wreathed Spanish Peaks,[75] whose giant summits are grim sentinels that for untold ages have witnessed hundreds of sanguinary conflicts between the wily nomads of the vast plains ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... from which there was no retreat. The screaming and yelling savages closed round them. Fighting was useless; the natives, under cover of the numerous detached rocks, offered no mark for an aim; while the crowd of armed savages thrust them forward with wild yells to the very verge of the great precipice about five hundred feet below. Down they fell! hurled to utter destruction by the mass of Latookas pressing onward! A few fought to the last; but one and all were at length forced, by sheer pressure, over the edge ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... at her, open-mouthed. A shivering thrill passed through him, such as shakes a man on the verge of a ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... result his spirits rose, and he became the best of all possible good companions. Johnnie, who was becoming constantly more fond of him, felt his anxiety increase in proportion to this improvement in mood; it seemed to him that Branch was on the very verge of a collapse. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... verge of recklessness, and would never allow me to pay for anything. Even here, however, disputes often arose between us; as he paid, he wanted me to eat, drink, and dissipate in the same measures as himself. However, I had my own way on most occasions, only ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death, thro' Berkley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing King! She-wolf of France, with unrelenting ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... attached to Hays himself. Certain it is that neither hardship nor prosperity had touched his character. Years ago his emigrant team had broken down in this wild but wooded defile of the Sierras, and he had been forced to a winter encampment, with only a rude log-cabin for shelter, on the very verge of the promised land. Unable to enter it himself, he was nevertheless able to assist the better-equipped teams that followed him with wood and water and a coarse forage gathered from a sheltered slope of wild oats. This was the beginning ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... church is a spacious structure, with a nave, north and south aisles, and a chancel, and a tower at the west end. In the floor is a stone with a Latin inscription, in black letter, round the verge, to the memory of one Gilbert West, who died in 1404. The church is dedicated to St. Helen. In the village the Wesleyan Methodists also have a place of worship. According to the parliamentary returns ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... level, a belt which during the milder periods of the ice-age and immediately after it must have reached as far as the Atlantic. Then we find, still farther to the north, a forest belt, well developed in the Siberia of to-day. Lastly, on the verge of the Arctic sea stretches the tundra, the frozen soil of which is fertile in little else than the lichen known as reindeer moss, whilst to the west, as, for instance, in our islands, moors and bogs represent this zone of barren ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... streets that possessed of themselves, no sufficient barriers to the advance of the flame. Led by their officers, these gallant fellows, carrying in their arms the means of destruction, moved up steadily to the verge of the torrents of fire, and planted their kegs; laying their trains with the hardy indifference that practice can alone create, and with an intelligence that did infinite credit to their coolness. This deliberate courage was rewarded with complete success, and house ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... with the rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts to avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received into the Russian service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes to nothing. During the war in Italy he is several times on the verge of destruction and each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing to various diplomatic considerations the Russian armies—just those which might have destroyed his prestige—do not appear upon the scene till he ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed stealthily behind. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... wholeness of soul, enacts the same dramas. He hears voices on all occasions; he incorporates what little he observes of nature into his verbal dreams; and as each new impulse bubbles to the surface he feels himself on the verge of some inexpressible heaven or hell. He needs but to abandon himself to that seething chaos which perpetually underlies conventional sanity—a chaos in which memory and prophecy, vision and impersonation, sound and sense, are inextricably jumbled ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... her in a curious kind of way, like a broadside of stoniness, but Caroline did not seem to mind it at all. Then the boarder changed her tactics like a general on the verge of defeat. She sidled up to Mr. Spear, the chief engineer, who was giving orders to drag home the engine, and said in an unexpectedly sweet voice, like a trickle of honey off the face of a rock: "My good man, am I to understand that I need apprehend no further danger ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the wooden building, and his niece standing a moment on the veranda watched the long train roll away down the faint blur of track that ran west to the farthest verge of the great white wilderness. Then with a little impatient gesture ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... to work. Hear my opinion. On the lake's left bank, As we sail hence to Brunnen, right against The Mytenstein, deep-hidden in the wood A meadow lies, by shepherds called the Rootli, Because the wood has been uprooted there. 'Tis where our Canton boundaries verge on yours;— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... look which had fascinated him—and so many others—in their day. The perfume which had intoxicated him in the first days of his love of her, and steeped his senses in the sap of youth and Eden, smote them again, here on the verge of the desert before him. He suddenly caught her in his arms and pressed her to him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the steps, he held the rail, and steadied himself. Twice he faltered. His face was as white as his surplice. He closed his eyes, and threw back his head, turning his face heavenward; his lips parted, and he seemed to be on the verge of fainting ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... headed straight for the hole, the Boy had gathered himself for a clear jump to the right, but the sled's sudden swerve to the left broke his angle sharply. He was flung forward on the new impetus, spun over the smooth surface, swept across the verge and under the cloud, clutching wildly at the ragged edge of ice as he ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... small collection can be made up of pictorial watch papers, those rare little pictorial views which once reposed in the interior of the cases of old watches. Watches are by no means common curios of the household, but now and then an old silver verge or a decorated watch case thought little of is found to contain one of those pretty pictures which were chiefly engraved and printed in the eighteenth century. Many of the designs were printed on satin; some were devices in needlework; again others were cut out in ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... window and sat down near her husband. The banker looked hard at his daughter, and a sudden tangling of the lines on his face showed that the first words that flew to the verge of utterance had been suppressed, and that he ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... danger, saw the outrages offered to its flag by the great nations of Europe, while it was scarcely able to maintain its ground against the Indian tribes, and to pay the interest of the debt which had been contracted during the war of independence. It was already on the verge of destruction, when it officially proclaimed its inability to conduct the government, and appealed to the constituent authority of ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... has been organized and systematized into a great commerce to serve the rich and powerful. Here is a whole mess of infamy developed into a great private enterprise that militates against all law and order. It has already brought the United States on more than one occasion to the verge of civil war. And, despite the fact that numerous judges have publicly condemned the work of these agencies, and that various governmental commissions have deprecated in the most solemn words this traffic in crime, it continues to grow and prosper in the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... of the year 1860, the air was full of threatenings. The country was clearly on the verge of civil war, and the feeling almost as intense as it was in the following April, after the flash of Edmund Ruffin's gun had fired ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... to have come up here to defend this city. You ask me my opinion of the present state of the country. It is bad enough. The utter incompetency of Mr. Davis and his West Point generals have brought us to the verge of ruin. If McClellan is unwise enough to fight us here, we shall whip and drive him out of Virginia.... As to Richmond, it will never be taken while ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall |
