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Verge   Listen
verb
Verge  v. i.  (past & past part. verged; pres. part. verging)  
1.
To border upon; to tend; to incline; to come near; to approach.
2.
To tend downward; to bend; to slope; as, a hill verges to the north. "Our soul, from original instinct, vergeth towards him as its center." "I find myself verging to that period of life which is to be labor and sorrow."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books



... happiness, and because he had bequeathed her nothing but memories full of fragrance, yet full of torment. And there she was, sitting in her lonely room amongst the faded mementoes of a youth that had passed unprofitably and friendlessly; there she was, on the verge of the time when there would be no more hopes and no more desires—life had slipped through her fingers, and she ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... surprise the Duke of Cumberland's army and their dejected return to Drummossie Moor after the failure of the attempt. Many of the men and officers slipped away to Inverness in search of refreshments, being on the verge of starvation; others flung themselves down on the heath, sullen, dejected, and exhausted, to forget their hunger for ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... Especially on an evening when at the highest moment of her justifiable wrath Mr. Freddie would appear and nonchalantly suggest a "few eats for some chaps who'd dropped in" as casually as though Janet were not already on the verge of explosion. Of course she would prepare the lunch, stabbing the bread-saw viciously into the defenseless loaf and muttering dark things as she assembled something she called "old doves" on a big Sheffield platter. Janet couldn't cook at all but she could arrange things as beautifully ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... have 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 the source ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... intents and purposes, as much slaves, when twenty, independent of them, govern, as when but one domineers. The tyranny is even more felt, as every individual of the nobles has the haughtiness of a sultan; the people are more miserable, as they seem on the verge of liberty, from which they are forever debarred; this fallacious idea of liberty, whilst it presents a vain shadow of happiness to the subject, binds faster the chains of his subjection. What is left undone by the natural avarice and pride of those who are raised above the others, is completed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... fertilized by the mountain-brooks yields scarcely more than enough to supply the present number of inhabitants. Nowhere does it exceed two or three miles in breadth, except along the eastern shore of Lake Utah, where it extends from the base of the mountains to the verge of the lake. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... distinguished justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The youngest, Dr. Henry M. Field, was eminent alike as theologian and author. The name of the remaining brother, Cyrus W. Field, is, and will continue, a household word in two hemispheres. After repeated failures, to the verge even of extremity, "the trier of spirits," the dream of his life became a reality. The Atlantic cable was laid, and, in the words of John Bright, Mr. Field had "moored the New ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... to the avarice of gold-hunters, and that some adventurers have collected from 1,200 to 1,800 dollars a-day; the probable average of each man's earnings being from 8 to 10 dollars a-day, or, let us say, L2. The same authority avers there is room and verge enough for the profitable working, to that extent, of a hundred thousand persons. And it is likely enough before long that such a number may be tempted to seek their easily acquired fortune in the golden sands of El Sacramento and elsewhere. Now ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... sin delivers over people to shameful affections, to a reprobate sense; he suffers them to be a hell unto themselves. And nature seldom fails to avenge herself for the outrages suffered. She uses the flail of disease and remorse, of misery and disgust, and she scourges the culprit to the verge of the grave, often to the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... for Lee was on the verge of saying something about Ben's infatuation; but she didn't, and Alice knew why she didn't, for she asked, rather abruptly: "Won't you come over Thursday night? I'm going to take the Haneys to dinner at the hotel." She flushed under Lee's gaze. "It's really Bennie's party, and ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... swill'd high over his drowning head, When his nostrils and lungs were filled, when his feet and hands were as lead, When against the rock he was hurl'd, and suck'd again to the sea, On the shores of another world, on the brink of eternity, On the verge of annihilation, did it come to that swimmer strong, The sudden interpretation of your mystical, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... Life stands on the verge of a single breath; and this world is an existence between two nonentities. Such as truck their deen, or religious practice, for worldly pelf are asses. They sold Joseph, and what got they by their bargain?—"Did I not covenant with you, O ye sons of Adam, that you should ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... advantages, it palls upon the mind (though it does not upon the ear); and the reason is obvious, the machinery is so violent, that it destroys the effect it is intended to excite. Had the story been kept within the utmost verge of probability, the effect had been preserved, without losing the least circumstance that excites or ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... its ivy-covered stone balustrade, the sun-dial, the two white peacocks, and far away, the park with a blue mist among the trees. And I haven't learned yet to love my beautiful room at Mrs. Ess Kay's, though I admire it immensely—admire to the verge of awe. ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... four hours, though it was thought that he must be killed, and his reason was that, if he lost, he would have to beg his bread. Now-a-days he would have a valet, a secretary, a manager, and a crowd of plutocratic admirers who would load him with money and luxuries. I was tickled to the verge of laughter by finding that one of these gentry was paid thirty pounds per night for exhibiting his skill, and my amusement was increased when it turned out that one of those who paid him thirty pounds strongly objected on learning that ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... gipsy led Shakespeare from shame to shame, to the verge of madness. The sonnets give us the story, the whole terrible, sinful, magical story of ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... boldest book ever written. There are no similitudes in Ossian or the Iliad or the Odyssey so daring. Its imagery sometimes seems on the verge of the reckless, but only seems so. The fact is that God would startle and arouse and propel men and nations. A tame and limping similitude would fail to accomplish the object. While there are times when He employs in the Bible the gentle dew and the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... of teak as a plan flashed into his mind. He crept forward inch by inch until he was on the verge of the gap they had torn in the road. Yet all the time a friendly rib of rock at the projecting angle of the precipice protected him from the long iron-barrelled muzzle-loaders carried ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... of her own subconscious self," said the Tracer quietly. "Science has been forced to admit such things, and, as you know, we are on the verge of understanding the alphabet of some of the unknown forces which we ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... 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

... After unclean town streets the country air was a perfume by contrast, or actually scented with pinewoods. One seemed to breathe with it fancies of the woods, the hills, and water—of a sort of souls in the landscape, but cheerful and genial now, happy souls! A distant group of pines on the verge of a great upland awoke a violent desire to be there—seemed to challenge one to proceed thither. Was their infinite view thence? It was like an outpost of some far-off fancy land, a pledge of the reality of such. Above Cassel, the airy hills curved in ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... to the new home, was also real. In life he was James Lampton, cousin to Mrs. Clemens, a gentle and radiant merchant of dreams, who believed himself heir to an English earldom and was always on the verge of colossal fortune. With others of the Lampton kin, he was already settled in Missouri and had written back glowing accounts; though perhaps not more glowing than those which had come from another relative, John Quarles, ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Westminster. The essential principle of the new constitution is that there shall be but one Executive in Ireland. The moment that the British Government intervenes to support the judgment of British Courts, we have in Ireland two hostile Executives. We tremble on the verge either of legal revolution or of civil war. An English Cabinet, I suspect, will hardly enforce the unpopular rights of a hated plaintiff by ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... and stamped his feet, and walked round the faithful servant, whose lustrous eyes were closing in calm content with the cud he had already found. Often, while making the circuit, he paused, and, shading his eyes with his hands, examined the desert to the extremest verge of vision; and always, when the survey was ended, his face clouded with disappointment, slight, but enough to advise a shrewd spectator that he was there expecting company, if not by appointment; at the same time, the spectator would ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... forest solitudes one climbs O'er crags, that proudly tower above the deep, Along the verge of the cliff, and he can hear The low dash of the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... ahead lay a deep and narrow gully, hid by bushes that grew rankly along its verge. Straight toward this the Princess Emma von der Tann rode. Behind her came her pursuers—two quite close and the others trailing farther in the rear. The girl reined in a trifle, letting the troopers that were closest to her gain until they were but a few strides behind, then she put ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... contents were even more of a surprise. It began, as Mrs. Jarvis's letters invariably did, with an account of her sufferings. Such prostrating headaches she had endured. Dr. Ralston had declared she was on the verge of a nervous collapse, and must leave the city as soon as she was able to travel. She did not wish to reproach Beth, but there could be no doubt as to the cause. It had been so all her life. Those to whom she had given most, for whom she had made the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... importance of the issue, and the one never relaxed their desperate efforts to drive back the besiegers—the other with astonishing tenacity held on against all odds; while scores of native chiefs hesitated on the verge, waiting, until they saw the end of the struggle at Delhi. It was called the siege of Delhi, but it should rather have been called the siege of the Ridge, for it was our force rather than that of the enemy which was besieged. Never before in the history of the world did three thousand men sit down ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... safe while owned by another. In fact, he "hated the very name of slaveholder." The limit of the box not admitting of straightening himself out he was taken with the cramp on the road, suffered indescribable misery, and had his faith taxed to the utmost,—indeed was brought to the very verge of "screaming aloud" ere relief came. However, he controlled himself, though only for a short season, for before a great while an excessive faintness came over him. Here nature became quite exhausted. He thought he ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... she curtsied. "Is that yerself, Mrs O'Rorke?" She was evidently on the verge of tears. Teressa looked pityingly ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... allies in the 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

... which made his royal father at times truly great; it showed, too, but little inheritance from the proud beauty of de Montespan. Vastly inferior to both, and to his ambitious wife whose schemes he adopted when they succeeded and disowned when they failed, the Duke trembled now upon the verge of a mighty intrigue which perchance would make him master of an empire, perchance consign him to the Bastille or to the block. Well he knew that the abandoned Philip of Orleans, though he sometimes forgot his friends, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... the verge of wild laughter. Donizetti! Pirates! Glass beads for which Cleigh had voyaged sixteen thousand miles! A father and son who ignored each other! She choked down this desire to laugh, because she was afraid ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... Clementina's father dreamed of a peerage, secured by the influence of aristocratic connections. All that the young folks stipulated for (and on that point their firmness was supernatural) was that the marriage should be quiet, almost to the verge ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... despair. Cambyses, surprised at this excessive grief in a man who up till then had exhibited such 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 him were moved with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... apparently illimitable, but interrupted northward by a chain of table-topped hills, and along its southern edge by a continuous cliff, rising wall-like to the height of several hundred feet, and trending each way beyond the verge ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... lunch and then only occasionally. The cold is intense, -40 deg. at mid-day. My companions are unendingly cheerful, but we are all on the verge of serious frost-bites, and though we constantly talk of fetching through I don't think anyone of us believes it ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... shield complete, the artist crowned With his last hand, and poured the ocean round; In living silver seemed the waves to roll, And beat the buckler's verge, and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Priestcraft's harpy minions, 95 And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! And there I felt thee!—on that sea-cliff's verge, Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above, 100 Had made one murmur with the distant surge! Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... from the rest of us by a small table; but he barely tasted it, and after a bit he lay down in his corner, with his arm for a pillow, and almost instantly was asleep, breathing heavily, like a man on the verge of exhaustion. A few minutes later we heard, from Sergeant Rosenthal, that the prisoner's brother-in-law had been killed the day before, and that he—the little officer—had ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... 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 Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... thou? O thou great mysterious terror! The way to thee, we know; diseases, famine, Sword, fire, and all thy ever open gates, That day and night stand ready to receive us. But what, beyond them? who will draw that veil? Yet death's not there.——No, 'tis a point of time; The verge 'twixt mortal, and immortal Being. It mocks our thought——On this side all is life; And when we've reach'd it, in that very instant, 'Tis past the thinking of——O if it be The pangs, the throes, the agonizing struggle, When soul and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... with a hammer, scratched my nose on an obstinate hemlock bough, and lost a bran span new pair of scissors. I think it is high time to leave this place. I'm not on the reception committee, 'tis true, but I have weighty matters to consider and am on the verge of a perilous undertaking." She uttered the last words in an all too familiar undertone, shooting a mischievous glance at her friends which caused Grace, Anne and Miriam to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... intelligence of this military leader was displayed in the reforms he made where all had been confusion. France was weary of the republican government which had brought her to the verge of bankruptcy and ruin, and inclined to look favourably on ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... moral situation. By an incomparable succession of pictures Hawthorne exhibits the travail of their souls. In the greatest scene of all, that between Hester and Arthur in the forest, the Puritan framework of the story gives way beneath the weight of human passion, and we seem on the verge of another and perhaps larger solution than was actually worked out by the logic of succeeding events. But though the book has been called Christless, prayerless, hopeless, no mature person ever reads it without a deepened sense of the impotence of all mechanistic ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... wife, at his prospect of being United States senator was on the verge of realization, reminded him of her prophecy, away back in the fifties, that he would attain the highest niche—the inevitable feminine "I told you so!" he clasped his knees in keen enjoyment, and, laughing a ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... his day, Passed out of the Italian sun To the dark where all is done, Fallen upon the verge of May; Here at life's and April's end How should song salute my friend Dead ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... by his companion's horsemanship, for Dan rode leaning far to the right of his saddle, with his head bowed. Several times Haines was on the verge of speaking, but he refrained. He commenced to sing in the exultation of freedom. An hour before he had been in the "rat-trap" with a circle of lynchers around him, and only two terror-stricken guards to save him from the most horrible of deaths. Then came Fate and tore him away and gave ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... scenery 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, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... account of the bellicose character of the mosquitoes that inhabit this particular region; their special mode of attack being to invade the camels' sensitive nostrils, which drives these patient beasts of burden to the last verge of distraction, sometimes even worrying them to death. Stopping for dinner at the village of Sabanja, the scenes familiar in connection with a halt for refreshments in the Balkan Peninsula are enacted; though for bland ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... unfit to allot its proper place to the most insignificant fact; all her heart stunned by a cataclysm she had no wits to give a name to. She had come with a rare courage and endurance to be at close quarters with this mystery, whatever it was, at once. On the very verge of full knowledge of it, this terror had come upon her, and she stood trembling, sick with dread undefined, glad she need not speak or call out. It would pass, and then she would call to Ruth, whose voice she could hear in the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... a treaty with the Spanish minister, but the King refused to ratify it, and he was recalled, when the Earl of Sandwich was sent to replace him, who arrived at Corunna in March following. Previous to this circumstance, Lady Fanshawe intended to return to England to see her father, who was on the verge of the grave; but she then resolved to wait for ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... florins; and the burden of taxation, though it had become almost unendurable, failed to provide for the interest on the debt and the necessary expenses of administration. The State was in fact on the verge of bankruptcy. The appointment in 1842 of F.A. van Hall (formerly an Amsterdam advocate, who had held the post of minister of justice) to be finance minister opened out a means of salvation. The arrears to 1840 amounted to 35 million florins; the deficit for 1841-3 had to be covered, and means provided ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... 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 ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... a moment, still gripping Ida, who was on the verge of collapse. She looked at Cora ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose

... the shape of another petition from the "Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery," signed by its venerable president, Benjamin Franklin. This petition asked Congress to "step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men."[25] Hartley of Pennsylvania called up the memorial of the preceding day, and it was read a second time and a motion for commitment made. Plain words now came from Tucker of South ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... is scarcely less abundance for panegyrists to expatiate upon. Certainly he was a man to attract some attention and to carry some weight, yet not more than many another of whom the world never hears. At the time of his marriage, however, he is upon the verge of development; a new period of his life is about to begin; what had been dangerous and evil in his ways disappears; the breadth, originality, and practical character of his mind are about to show themselves. He has settled to a steady occupation; he is industrious and thrifty; he has gathered ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... quarrel with Turkey, with its alternative of war or humiliation for Russia; an educational system rotten with official hypocrisy; a Church in which conduct counted for nothing, orthodoxy and ceremonial observance for everything; economical and financial conditions scarce recovering from the verge of ruin; and lastly, that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Volume, and carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favour us with their most concentrated attention: let these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?—As exordium to the whole, stand here ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... to the extreme verge of the bushes, between which and the water there was a space of about thirty yards. With a quiet cat-like run he crossed this space, rushed up the plank gangway, and leaped upon the deck, with ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... deep snow enclosed between high walls with innumerable windows. Here and there a dim yellow light hung within the four-square mass of darkness. The house was an enormous slum, a hive of human vermin, a monumental abode of misery towering on the verge of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... would they give up the guns; they probably expected this foray, and intended to fight till the last. They had not gone in search of ivory while this was enacting, consequently Mohamad's men have got the start of them completely, by going along Lualaba to Kasongo's, and then along the western verge of the Metamba or forest to Loinde or Rindi River. The last men sent took to fighting instead of trading, and returned empty; the experience gained thus, and at the south-west, will probably lead them to conclude that the Manyuema are not to be shot down without reasonable cause. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... reason why he should take this tone with me if he felt like it. I looked like a derelict and was acting like one. Moreover, I was tormented to the verge of madness by the fear that the conductor might come along on a ticket-punching tour, and that by this means Barton would learn my ultimate destination—which would be equivalent, I fancied, to publishing it in ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... Mrs. Falconer a second visit. He had not been able to get over the remembrance of the desolation in which he had left her. But he could do nothing for her, he thought, till it was warm weather. He was accompanied by his daughter, a woman approaching the further verge of youth, bulky and florid, and as full of tenderness as her large frame could hold. After much, and, for a long time, apparently useless persuasion, they at last believed they had prevailed upon her to pay them a visit for a fortnight. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... a little horrified, looked at her billowy, bediamonded hostess, then at young Delancy Grandcourt, who, not perceptibly abashed by his mother's left-handed compliments, lounged beside her, apparently on the verge of a yawn. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier and flightier,— Rapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning

... has reared; it would seem to him to commit a crime. He uses the fowls, however (which are a trifle smaller than those in Europe) as a means of exchange for tobacco, rice and other articles but he would never eat one himself unless reduced to the verge of starvation. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... manage that for you, the next time I go to market; and—" In the emotion of the moment, Mr Grey was on the point of offering the use of his own horse when it should be at home: but he stopped short on the verge of his rash generosity. He was very particular about no one riding his horse but himself and the man who groomed it: he remembered his friend Hope's rapid riding and 'enthusiasm' and suspected that he should ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... bowed, 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 ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Duryodhana with his adherents. Else, O king, he will beforehand bring the whole earth obedient to his will. O foremost of monarchs, all this is the result of thy addiction to gambling. We are on the verge of destruction already, in consequence of thy promise of living one year undiscovered. I do not find the country where, if we live, the wicked-minded Suyodhana may not be able to trace us by his spies. And finding us out, that wretch will ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... that its persuasive force would be felt very soon. The country, they reasoned, owing to the manifold restrictions imposed upon its overseas trade by the Anglo-French Fleet, had been on short commons for some time past. The total stoppage of maritime traffic would bring it to the verge of famine within a week. And, in fact, before the end of the month Greece was feeling the pinch.[3] As might have been expected, the first to feel it were the poor. Both the authorities and private ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... Kate Ferris, who kept Priscilla on the verge of nervous prostration for a whole semester, entered upon her college career in an entirely unpremeditated and impromptu manner. It began one day away back in November. Georgie Merriles and Patty had just strolled home from the ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... must have been struck by his openness in some respects and the absolute mystery with which he surrounded himself in others. Where he lived, what he was doing, what his life was like—all these facts were hidden from his companion, till he revealed himself at last, on the verge of his hoped-for triumph. But, on the other hand, the sentiments and impressions of which M. de Petigny read afterwards in Balzac's books seemed to him only a pale, distant echo of the rich and vivid expressions which fell from his lips in these intimate talks. Magnetism, in which he had a strong ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... to count, while in the methodic unvarying note of her voice there was a rasping reiteration that began to affect the company. A slight gasping breath, uncontrollable, almost on the verge of hysterics, was heard, and a man nervously clearing ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... while at the same time two long-restrained tears rolled, like liquid pearls, from her large blue eyes over her rosy cheeks. Softly and with her little head always bowed down she crossed the apartment to the tapestry door; but, just as she was on the verge of the threshold, she stopped, turned around, and an expression of radiant joy flashed across ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... at ten dollars apiece with spirits of that class was cheap to the verge of the ludicrous. Their advice ought to be worth millions—yes, ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... few steps, he paused idly a moment on the verge of this green "God's-acre" to read a perpendicular slab on a wall, and his face broadened into a smile as he followed the absurdly elaborate biography of a rich, self-made merchant who had taught himself to read. "Reader, go thou and do likewise," was the delicious bull at ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... property of the Pater, of Marti, or, in fact, of any Cuban, she will at once become an object of suspicion to the Spanish Government, and her movements will be so jealously watched that it will become difficult, almost to the verge of impossibility, for her to render any of those services for which she is specially intended. You see that, Jack, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... characterized the five years between the death of the last male P[vr]emysl and the elevation of the first Luxemburg to the throne of Bohemia. That period was a sort of interregnum which was filled up with civil war, with murders among relatives, and was bringing Bohemia to the verge ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... Still uncertainty—even on the verge of eternity—strange, doubtless, and reprehensible to Right Reverend persons, who never 'cast away' anything; to whom a religious profession has been a highway to pleasure and preferment, who live in the comfortable ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... and compromising the withdrawal to the new lines which was already determined upon. Says French: "In a moment the order was given. The men divested themselves of all but their fighting equipment, and the battalions marched in line across the plain with a steady pace, receiving at the verge of the woods the enemy's fire. It was returned with great effect, followed up by an impetuous charge.... The enemy, at first panic-stricken by the sudden attack on his flank, broke to the right in masses, leaving in our hands several hundred prisoners, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... they were, standing together on the very verge of the mound, beyond the firs, some ten yards in front of the last comers, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... tread the verge of Jordan Bid my anxious fears subside; Death of death, and hell's destruction, Land me safe on Canaan's side. Songs of praises I ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... you to make it a rule for yourself always to go to an older friend, when you want to talk about anything that might be not quite nice, or that might verge on silliness. If conscience or prudence give any pricks in the matter, go to an elder. You do not know how much such a rule would save you from, and if you say, "but that is impossible, she would not understand!" then I say to you, "well, it is ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... young people they were sporting upon the verge of a precipice, but its slippery edge was concealed by flowers. They were playing with the firebrands of death and thought they were ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... never to have left her last spring. I should have found work here and not gone gallumpin' all over the country." Her chin trembled. She was on the verge of tears. ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... a time-keeper. In the first place, a clock must be plumb (that is level;) and what I mean by plumb, is not treing up the case to a level, but it is to put the case in a position so that the beats or sounds of the wheel-teeth striking the verge are equal. It is not necessary to go by the sound, if the face is taken off so that you can see the verge. You can then notice and see whether the verge holds on to the teeth at each end the same length of time; or (in other words) whether the vibrations ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome

... nothing but the porter hurrying along, bent down under the weight of my bag, and the wind blew icily. I buttoned up my coat. And then I regretted the warmth of the carriage, the comfort of my corner and my rug; I wished I had peacefully continued my journey to Madrid—I was on the verge of turning back as I heard the whistling of the train. I hesitated, but the porter hurried on, and fearing to lose him in the night, I sprang forwards. Then the puffing of the engine, and on the smoke the bright reflection of the furnace, and the train steamed away; like Abd-er-Rahman, ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... is burnt so long as to leave a tolerably large wick, blow it out; a dense smoke, which is composed of hydrogen and carbon, will immediately rise. Then, if another candle, or lighted taper, be applied to the utmost verge of this smoke, a very strange phenomenon will take place. The flame of the lighted candle will be conveyed to that just blown out, as if it were borne on a cloud, or, rather, it will seem like a mimic flash of lightning proceeding at a ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... of his mother—the tyranny of these he cannot shake off. Servants of his will, they at the same time master him. They may not coerce genius, but they dictate and sway every action of the clay-born. If he hesitate on the verge of a new departure, they whip him back into the well-greased groove; if he pause, bewildered, at sight of some unexplored domain, they rise like ubiquitous finger-posts and direct him by the village path to the communal meadow. And he permits ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... Seven years, my Lord, have now 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... own, while the latter, not noticing the fraud, or pretending not to notice it, went to sleep in a stranger's arms, in defiance of all human rights. Awaking at last, I felt the bed over and found that it had been despoiled of its treasure: then, by all that lovers hold dear, I swear I was on the verge of transfixing them both with my sword and uniting their sleep with death. At last, however, I adopted a more rational plan; I spanked Giton into wakefulness, and, glaring at Ascyltos, "Since you have broken faith by this outrage," I gritted ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... loved her "negroes," and would make a great fuss over them. Not infrequently she would have very serious difficulty with her overseers. Having license to do as they pleased, they would of course carry their cruelties to the most extreme verge of punishment. If a slave was maimed or killed under their correction, it was no loss of theirs. "One of the overseers by the name of Bill Anderson once shot a young slave man called Luke and wounded him so seriously that he was not expected ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... politicians at one and the same time, in a high social position and in the flower of their age, could not reconcile themselves to the Constable de Montmorency's system, defensive solely and prudential to the verge of inertness; they thought that, in order to repair the reverses of France and for the sake of their own fame, there was something else to be done, and they impatiently ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... advanced the whole division through the woods to the open fields on their farther or western verge, and seeing the Confederates in force on the knoll beyond, to which they had retired, halted and began to observe ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... cases (A) ladies, in their usual health, saw their husbands in their rooms, when, in fact, they were in the drawing- room or study. Here then are eight cases of non-coincidental hallucination, some of people awake, some of people probably on the verge of sleep, which are wholly without 'coincidence,' wholly unveridical. None of the 'percipients' was addicted to ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... the two horses, bending their strength sturdily to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep cleft of the gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and with chasms cut in the solid rock by centuries of erosion, ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... it was, ought now to be within the range of our vision, and Murdock intently scrutinised the darkening sea ahead for some sign of it, but in vain. Then he turned his glances shoreward and saw Cunningham standing on the verge of the bluff, vigorously waving us to ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... declared that, "as regards the natural limit of the action, the more extended will always be the more beautiful, so long as it is easily surveyed." Shakespeare's practice is strictly correspondent to this rule. But with this rule in mind, he went to the very verge of these limits. He chose his matter as rich and full as possible; he extended its form according to its requirements, but no further: it will not be found, in any of his dramas, that the thought is exhausted before the end; that there is any superfluous extension of the form, or any ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote ...
— The Plague • Teddy Keller

... you then, that I saw the exact place where you had disappeared, so that it did not take me long to find the opening to the tunnel. I must say that I funked following you farther; but my curiosity grew. I was on the verge of a big discovery. If I followed you, I should find out the secret which would explain the mystery about you, and set you right with the school. Believe me, Paul, that was what I longed for, and I don't think that anything short of that would have made me go farther, and ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... observed solely in individuals more or less decidedly abnormal mentally, because in the great majority of cases, if there does not actually exist a frank mental disorder, these individuals lack in a marked degree psychic balance and are constantly on the verge of a psychosis. Penta, in a most thorough study of the subject of malingering, likewise comes to the conclusion that it is always a morbid phenomenon. It is a tool almost always resorted to by the weak and incompetent whenever confronted with an especially ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... me with peevish disgust. But in proportion as I hated it I was eager to have it done and be done with it, and succeed, and stuff my ears and begone from the scene. When she presently came to the verge of the beech wood, and, entering a little open clearing, seemed to loiter, I went cautiously. This, I thought, must be the rendezvous; and I held back warily, looking to see him ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... intellectual intercourse to vague speculations as to our future destiny. During the course of a long and not, I trust, altogether unprofitable career, it has not unfrequently been my lot to find myself on the verge of being indicted, sued, assassinated, hung. Yet here I sit, as yet unimmolated on the altar of phrenetic vengeance. This is ascribable to the fact that my friends and pupils always adopt a more favourable opinion of me long before I part with them; and ere many days (and this I divine by infallible ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... repeated, but their very accumulation heightens the impression of a great unheard-of purpose, for which human powers and motives by themselves are insufficient. In the murder of Clytemnestra, and her heart-rending appeals, the poet, without disguising her guilt, has gone to the very verge of what was allowable in awakening our sympathy with her sufferings. The crime which is to be punished is kept in view from the very first by the grave, and, at the conclusion, it is brought still nearer to our minds by the unfolding the fatal garment: ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... verge of the crater, at the very summit of the mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock upon which it was built projected over a precipice, whose abysses were concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... ancient Egypt. In the twenty-ninth year of Rameses III a deputation of workmen employed in the Theban necropolis met the superintendent and the priests with a statement of their grievances. "Behold," said the spokesman, "we are brought to the verge of famine. We have neither food, nor oil, nor clothing; we have no fish; we have no vegetables. Already we have sent up a petition to our sovereign lord the Pharaoh, praying that he will give us these things and we are going to appeal to the Governor that we may have the wherewithal to live." ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... latent principle of common sense, which, when they fairly approach the precipice, always brings them to a stand, and makes them as wise to devise a remedy as they were rash in hastening to the danger. Are we not approaching the very verge of the precipice? Can we not already hear the roar of the waters below? Is not now the time, if ever, when our stern principles and sound common sense must wake ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher

... dead and—unrecognizable! My heart refused to be altogether sad. I was on my way to deliver him from durance vile. There seemed a kinship between the season and myself, I mused, seeing the goldenrod turning bronze and droopy along the way. Here was I, in the full fruition of womanhood, on the verge of my decline into autumn, and lo! by the grace of God, I had found my man, my master. He had touched me with his own fire and courage. I didn't care what happened to Andrew, or to Sabine Farm, or to anything else in the world. Here were my hearth and ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... of Miss Milner that would have taught her, without other instruction, what manners to observe towards her deputed father; yet, from some volatile thought, or some quick sense of feeling, which she had not been accustomed to subdue, she was perpetually on the verge of treating him with levity; but he would immediately recall her recollection by a reserve too awful, and a gentleness too sacred for her to violate. The distinction which both required, was thus, by his skilful ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... sensibility was at the mercy of such trivial accidents. ... Yes; that, and the cold and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of starved aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over which, once or twice before, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... of the '98 Rebellion, in the dark and evil days of the famine of 1847, or through the murderous retaliations that followed, the Irish priesthood stood staunchly by Ireland. Those who remained faithful then are not likely to desert the cause of their people now that it is on the verge of success. A broader and more enlightened view of the future was expressed to me by that distinguished man the Vice-president of Maynooth College, when he said:—"We do not expect any direct gain for our faith, but ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender

... before my destiny had unfolded far enough to be actually alarming. I was as one floating in fancied security down the calm river above their famous Niagara Falls—to be presently dashed without warning over the horrible verge. I mean to say, I ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... its lovely scenery; round it the other nineteen Canary Islands; the eye then glances over an immense expanse of waters, beyond which may be descried in the distance the dark forests of the African coast, and even the yellow stripe which marks the verge of the great Desert. With thoughts full of the enjoyments which awaited us, we approached the town. We planned parties to see the country and climb the Peak; and our scientific associates, holding themselves in readiness to land as soon as the boat could be ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... the time you would not see your fish at all, but only hear the savage plunge as he swirled down with your fly. At other times, as you struck sharply at the plunge, your fly would come back to you, or tangle itself up in unseen snags; and far out, where the verge of the firelight rippled away into darkness, you would see a sharp wave-wedge shooting away, which told you that your trout was only a musquash. Swimming quietly by, he had seen you and your fire, and slapped his tail down hard on the water to make you jump. That is a way ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... as I near approach'd the verge of life, Some kind relation (for I'd have no wife) Should take upon him all my worldly care, While I did for ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... opinion that the same shore might be reached by crossing the Atlantic, where it had never been traversed before, was based upon mere surmise. No wonder that his crew were disheartened and on the verge of open mutiny when, under such circumstances, after about sixty-nine days had elapsed since they had sailed from Palos on August 3, 1492, they had still not reached the longed-for land. What faith, ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro

... to Miss Clara Reeve, who hoped to attain success in the attempt to unite the romance and the novel by limiting all supernatural occurrences to the verge of probability. It is obvious that the line would be difficult to draw. Miss Reeve drew it at ghosts. In the "Old English Baron," she took a story similar to that of Walpole. She presented to the reader a castle whose real owner had been murdered, and ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... to the heart, dear Dairy. One of my dearest dreams has always been a delicate noze, slightly arched and long enough to be truly aristocratic. Not realy acqualine but on the verge. I HATE my ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... breakfast." The next day they breakfasted, as our hero always breakfasted in those days, on truffles and champagne. Harel's proposition was this: "My project is to diminish your salary one-half."—"What!" cried Lemaitre in very natural surprise, "are you mocking me?"—"The theatre is on the verge of bankruptcy," pleaded Harel.—"How can that be? I have earned more than a million francs for it. What the devil do you do with your money?"—"My dear fellow," quoth Harel, "what do you do with yours?"—"Ah! that's different: I have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... she any kind of explanation of the wave of sympathy that had come to her as clearly as though it had been sent over an electric wire. All she knew was that she was out of breath for no apparent reason, and on the verge of tears at seeing no one there to meet her. Once before, on her sixth birth day, the same call had been sent to her when she was playing alone with her dolls in the semitropical garden of a hired house in ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... 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 he himself ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... Unchecked, unchanged by man's devices. This art the Arabian Geber taught, And in alembics, finely wrought, Distilling herbs and flowers, discovered The secret that so long had hovered Upon the misty verge of Truth, The Elixir of Perpetual Youth, Called Alcohol, in the Arab speech! Like him, this ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... me again: but say to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood: Who, once a day with his embossed froth ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... the verge of saying that he had tried Ed Brevoort's Luger once. He realized in a flash how close the sheriff had come to trapping him. "I never took to them ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... he arrived in New York. He had been a young man when he left America; he was now leaning toward the farther verge of his prime. In character he had refined and sobered greatly; and he had more than fulfilled his promise of literary excellence. He had still twenty-six years to live, and was to do much useful service ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton

... He hadn't been there for several days. That was all they knew. Yes, there had been talk of giving the case to a detective agency, but they weren't sure it had been done. And here is his poor mother up in New Rochelle, almost on the verge of nervous prostration. There is his fiancee, too; little Betty Parsons, who is crying her eyes out. Nice girl, Betty. And it's a shame that something isn't being done. Anyway, I shall do what ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... sometimes, if he were worthy, to be the Papa of Christendom, and Commander of all Kings,—I perceive how the old Christian society continued healthy, vital, and was strong and heroic. When I contrast this with the noble aims now held out to noble souls born in remote huts, or beyond the verge of Palace-Yard; and think of what your Lordship has done in the way of making priests and papas,—I see a society without lungs, fast wheezing itself to death, in horrid convulsions; ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... whole party began pushing up the rock,—the hindermost pushing the front ones faster than they would have gone of themselves. On they came, and in a moment the burly form of Tom appeared in sight, almost at the verge of the chasm. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... out of the way. Much as I personally like Mr. Barney it has been a great burden to me to retain him in his place when nearly all our friends in New York were directly or indirectly urging his removal. Then the appointment of Judge Hogeboom to be general appraiser brought me to the verge of open revolt. Now the appointment of Mr. Field would precipitate me in it, unless Senator Morgan and those feeling as he does could be brought to concur in it. Strained as I already am at this point, I do ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... spot that had been the scene of an exquisite torture. No defined plans were before him, save to get far away from any who could have had the least knowledge of him previously. No fugitive from justice ever felt more nervous haste. He pushed on, never pausing till he reached the very verge of civilisation in the far south-west. Not that he would be a hermit or misanthrope, but perchance find a people destitute of the gospel. He would bring it to them. He must preach Christ till death. This should be his joy and comfort; henceforth ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... 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!' She started up from her chair—her ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... nothing at all then—nothing that any one would pay a cent to read. I have told you from the start that what you want is a grande passion, something to stir your soul to its depths. You are on the verge of that experience. Already you have had a glimpse of what it will be like. For the first time the touch of a woman's fingers has driven sleep from your eyelids. No, you didn't tell me you laid awake all night, but I saw it by looking at you. You can shut yourself up in your room now, and rhapsodize ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... was silent indeed now. In the room where paralysis had fallen on him a bed was brought, and he lay nerveless on the verge of a still deeper silence. The hours went by. His eyes opened, he saw and recognised them all, but his look rested only on Faith and Soolsby; and, as time went on, these were the only faces to which he gave an answering look of understanding. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... which is engaged in military service at a distance from their homes? Most assuredly none. Precipitated headlong from a state of apparent profound security and prosperity into a series of calamitous events which have brought the country to the verge of ruin, neither the nation or its governors have had leisure to prepare themselves for any of the disastrous circumstances they have had to encounter, least of all for the momentous change which the President's proclamation announces as imminent: a measure of supreme importance, not deliberately ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... began to shake. He looked like a man on the verge of a collapse. He was still, however, able to ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fields all pink with sainfoin, she has covered the two miles and a half; and here she is, back at the nest, after foraging on the way, for the doughty creature arrives with her abdomen yellow with pollen. To come home again from the verge of the horizon is wonderful in itself; to come home with a well-filled pollen-brush is superlative economy. A journey, even a forced journey, always becomes ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... letter through tears of joy. He was unspeakably happy. He had prayed for a year, and now his prayers were on the verge of being answered. A holiness preacher, mysterious being, was actually to set foot on Mount Olivet soil. The doctrine of full salvation was to invade the precincts ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison

... lower and the higher kind of happiness, and is the aim of the noblest, as well as of the meanest of mankind?' If we say 'Not pleasure, not virtue, not wisdom, nor yet any quality which we can abstract from these'—what then? After seeming to hover for a time on the verge of a great truth, we have gained ...
— Philebus • Plato

... girl was always on the verge of starvation, and only molasses cakes could rescue ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... Spreading your Net on the Ground smooth and flat, stake the two lower ends firm, and let the upper ends be extended on the long Cord; of which the further end must be fastned to the Ground, three Fathoms from the Net, the Stake in a direct Line with the lower Verge of the Net; the other, ten or twelve fathom long, have in your hand at the aforsaid distance, and get some shelter of Art or Nature, to keep you from the curious and shy Eye of the Game; having your Net so ready that ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... in the circumstances. We're a pretty queer lot, aren't we? You, for instance—on the verge of the grave, and breaking your promise to me as if ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... the tournament arrived the field of contest at Ashby-de-la-Zouche presented a brilliant and romantic scene. On the verge of a wood was an extensive meadow, of the finest and most beautiful green turf, surrounded on one side by the forest, and fringed on the other by straggling oak-trees. The ground, as if fashioned on purpose for the martial display which was intended, sloped gradually ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... offered to walk and run by the side of the donkey, so as to kape him on his legs. It was in this wise that Miss Peabody approached Balkilly Castle; and when a gilded gentleman-in-waiting lifted her from Rooney's 'plain cart,' she was just on the verge of hysterics. Fortunately his Magnificence was English, and betrayed no surprise at the arrival in this humble fashion of a dinner guest, but simply summoned the Irish housekeeper, who revived her with wine, and called on all the saints to witness that she'd never ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... whether he slept or woke, for the events of the past days, coupled with the disappointment of not being set ashore as he had hoped, had brought even his determined courage to a low ebb. He was on the verge of a fever, and Bob's prescription of rest and sleep was what he most needed. Made snug at the back side of the berth, where little or no light came, he fell into a fitful slumber. Bob took a last look to see that his friend was comfortable and went ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... looking back on the story of Jacob's wrestling at Peniel, says, first, that 'he had power with God, yea, he had power over the angel,' and then goes on to say that 'there He spake with us, even Jehovah.' And Malachi, on the last verge of Old Testament prophecy, goes furthest of all in seeming to run together the conceptions of Jehovah and the Angel of Jehovah, for he says, 'The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple; and the angel of the covenant ... behold, he cometh.' From this imperfect resume, we see that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... imperceptible twitching tightened her lips; then the young mouth relaxed, drooping a trifle at the corners. Lying there, so outwardly calm, her tired, faraway gaze fixed absently on him, she seemed on the verge of slumber. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... see the faintest glimmer of it? Who could see anything but the ill-omened figure of Michael Vanstone, posted darkly on the verge of the present time—and closing all the prospect that ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... foolish, but harmful, chiefly in that it took his time and his mind and his energy from his work. He not only neglected his studies, but he fell in with the wild young bucks of the town, learned to play cards, took more wine than was good for him sometimes, was on the verge of several duels, and night after night raced home in his buggy against the coming dawn. Though Miss Lucy looked worried, the indulgent old Major made no protest. Indeed he was rather pleased. Chad was sowing his wild oats—it ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... Baseek erred. Had he contented himself with looking fierce and ominous, all would have been well. White Fang, on the verge of retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him. But Baseek did not wait. He considered the victory already his and stepped forward to the meat. As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fang bristled slightly. Even then it was not too ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... brief moment when Egypt appeared to be, quite unknowingly, on the verge of an attempted reconquest of her lost province. There was a misunderstanding with Turkey regarding the delineation of the Syrio-Sinaitic frontier; and, immediately, the Egyptian Government took strong action and insisted that the question should ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... civilization. Air and water are polluted, rivers and streams serve as sewers and dumping grounds, forests are swept away and fishes are driven from the streams. Many birds are becoming extinct, and certain mammals are on the verge of extermination. Vulgar advertisements hide the landscape, and in all that disfigures the wonderful heritage of the beauty of Nature to-day, we Americans are ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... at Mr. Emerson's, I returned through the woods, and, entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near the path which bends along its verge. It was Margaret herself. She had been there the whole afternoon, meditating or reading, for she had a book in her hand with some strange title which I did not understand and have forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... the last her thought was for others, and for the services she could render. In this very letter, written, as it were, on the verge of the tomb, she speaks with gratitude and gladness of the advancement of her favourite attendant, Omar. This Omar had been recommended to her by the janissary of the American Consul-General, and so far back as 1862, when in Alexandria, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon



Words linked to "Verge" :   U.K., staff, limit, threshold, sceptre, bauble, UK, edge, bound, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, brink, border



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