"Breakdown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dialects with some important differences in vocabulary and construction. These are shown most strikingly in some of the ballads of that region which have been collected by William Aspinwall Bradley, and by Howard Brockway. Rural schools and the breakdown of complete isolation will probably in time ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... him that he lets you see," replied the man. "His gaiety is all forced. If you could see him after you leave you would realize that he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Your father is not an old man in years, but he has placed a constant surtax on his nervous system for the last twenty-five years without a let-up, and it doesn't make any difference how good a machine may be it is ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and as with deft fingers he would strike some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten, he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled, while his hearers would catch the inspiration, and an old-fashioned 'walk-round' and 'negro breakdown', in which all would participate, would be the inevitable result. At other times, with our musical instruments, we would sally forth into the night and 'neath moon and stars and under 'Bonny Bell window panes' — ah, those serenades! were there ever or will there ever be anything like them again? ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... he is restless, is given to little tricks like pulling at his hair, or biting his nails, he is nervous. The mother excuses her spoiled child on the ground of his nervousness, and I have seen a thoroughly bad boy who branded his baby sister with a heated spoon called "nervous." A "nervous breakdown" is a familiar verbal disguise for one or other of the sinister faces ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the chestnut where you want to mature them fairly early in the fall, it might work all right, because it will withhold the nitrogen in the breakdown of your sawdust. But apparently, it works pretty well. I think it was Mr. Sam Hemming who suggested using it in the rows. Most of our State Forests and Waters nurseries in their seedling beds, plant their seedlings, including chestnuts, make a mixture of sawdust and sand, about one of sawdust ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... went to work at the loading, and in the end six wagons were carrying capacity. The seventh lead wagon was an extra, which Jo had decided to use only in case of a breakdown. With thirty tons of hay, grain, case goods, and barreled provisions they started back early the following morning. Jo's heart was light, for this was exceedingly good business, and it was coming faster than she had dared to hope, with ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... certain minor Roman institutions from which it had grown, seem to have disappeared with the Saxon occupation of Britain. The general conditions which favoured its development—the almost complete breakdown of the central government and the difficult and interrupted means of communication—existed in far less degree in the Saxon states than in the more extensive Frankish territories. Such rudimentary practices as seem parallel ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... gentlemen were personal and intimate friends of the prisoners: some were connected by closer ties; and one of the most trying experiences for the prisoners was to witness the complete breakdown of the minor officials employed in the carrying out of this tragic farce. The judge's first order was for the removal of all ladies. The wives and relatives of many of the prisoners had been warned by them beforehand of what was likely to happen ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... these damned geeks, the more they expect from you.... When you get your vehicle re-ammoed, lieutenant, suppose you buzz back to where you machine-gunned that first gang. If there are any more around, they'll have moved in for the free meal by now." This breakdown of the Jeels' taboo against eating fellow-tribesmen was one of the best things he'd heard from the cannibal-extermination project for ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... Zarzuela.[EN28] The boy Husayn Gennah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious Midian. And, to make the shock more violent, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... W. and some of his friends were discussing it in the train coming home. They were all convinced of his guilt, had no doubt as to what the sentence of the court would be—death and degradation—but thought that physical fatigue and great depression must have caused a general breakdown. The end every one knows. He was condemned to be shot and degraded. The first part of the sentence was cancelled on account of his former services, but he was degraded, imprisoned, escaped, and finished his life in Spain in poverty and obscurity, deserted ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... pocket, of the most unsympathetic being of the present day, should be considered sufficient three hundred years ago, to convict the narrator of a crime worthy of death; yet so it was. This sad picture of the breakdown of a poor woman's intellect in the unequal struggle against poverty and sickness is only made visible to us by the light of the flames that, mercifully to her perhaps, took poor Bessie Dunlop away for ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... way, that we are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course, only calling an early grave by another name. They cannot seem to get the truth into their heads that as they have been helped by others so should they now help ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... he would not trace them, although he might easily have cabled and caused his son-in-law's arrest. For a month he went about in a sort of daze, speaking to almost no one and sitting for hours alone in his room. The doctor feared for his sanity, but when the breakdown came it was in the form of a second paralytic stroke which left him a helpless, crippled dependent, weak and ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... from reproduction would in the long run be fatal to the group. Yet this is what occurs in large measure in modern civilized society. Reproduction is a biological function. It is non-competitive, as far as the individual is concerned, and offers no material rewards. The breakdown of the group's control over the detailed conduct and behaviour of its members is accompanied by an increasing stress upon material rewards to individuals. So with growing individualism, in the half of ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... weight upon him. Even before this time he had observed a little discrepancy between his father's words and deeds, between his wide liberal theories and his harsh petty despotism; but he had not expected such a complete breakdown. His confirmed egoism was patent now in everything. Young Lavretsky was getting ready! to go to Moscow, to prepare for the university, when a new unexpected calamity overtook Ivan Petrovitch; he became blind, and hopelessly blind, in ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... a total breakdown; the army had disappeared, and the artillery. The very sovereign was gone, and with him the country's honor. That had sunk out of sight amid the scornful laughter with which Europe hailed this undignified defeat. The Czar was in full flight. All Peter's plans of conquest, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... asserted[1] that, whoever laid claim to the parentage of Confederation, the real parent was Deadlock. But this was the critic, not the historian, who spoke. The causes lay far deeper than in the breakdown of party government in Canada. Events of profound significance were about to change an atmosphere overladen with partisanship and to strike ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... a few minutes' rest when the clown came on, and perhaps that would help her to go through the rest of the act without an absolute breakdown. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... effect of supplementary wages of vice in lowering the wages of women in industry; still another is the constant temptation of shop-girls to imitate their patrons' vulgar displays of finery. But of all the economic factors contributing to the moral breakdown of girls, the most general and inexcusable is the failure of our public schools to provide vocational training, although it is certain that above fifty per cent of all girls leave the schools to become wage-earners. Failure to gain a living wage is undoubtedly one of ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... Sir Arthur Sullivan, in the struggling years of his career, once showed great presence of mind, which saved the entire breakdown of a performance of 'Faust.' In the midst of the church scene, the wire connecting the pedal under Costa's foot with the metronome stick at the organ, broke. Costa was the conductor. In the concerted ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... if it did Germany little good, has done and is still doing colossal harm to us. Also he tends to forget that Lord HAIG and his little lot in France at any rate helped the Committee to effect the breakdown of the German moral in 1918 and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... perfectly horrible idea! Why, she isn't born yet!' 'No,' said the young man, 'but I have my eye on her mother.' At this, Brett, who was holding a light for his master's cigarette, turned away convulsively, with a sudden dip of the head, and vanished from the room. His breakdown touched and pleased all four beholders. But—was it a genuine lapse? Or merely a feint to thrill us?—the feint of an equilibrist so secure that he can pretend to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... half-way through high school when her brother Benjamin was born and for two years after she graduated, her mother's ill health, the familiar breakdown of the middle forties, kept her at home. Then she defied her father and took a job in a down-town office. What he objected to, of course, was not her going to work but the use she made of the independence with which self-support provided her. The quarrel never came to a real break ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Wharton? The last letter I had from him he made light of his health. But you know he only just avoided a breakdown in that strike business. We only pulled him through by the skin of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had, it appeared, suffered a severe nervous breakdown. The physicians had ordered immediate dropping of business ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... deserted." These faults of the wife are responsible for as many desertions, probably, as are the faults of the husband. When the man and the wife are both industrial failures we get the extremity of family breakdown to be found in records of "chronic ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... said F.F. with his melancholy ardent glance, when Mr. Prohack had replied suitably to his opening question. "I'd no idea you'd been unwell. I hope it isn't what's called a breakdown." ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... stronghold of Inclusionism is in aeronautics. I think that the stronghold of the Old Dominant, when it was new, was in the invention of the telescope. Or that coincidentally with the breakdown of Exclusionism appears the means of finding out—whether there are vast aerial fields of ice and floating lakes full of frogs and fishes or not—where carved stones and black substances and great quantities of vegetable matter and flesh, which may be dragons' flesh, come from—whether ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... a bottle of tonic and Mr and Mrs M'Swat many fears. Poor kind-hearted souls, they got in a great state, and understood about as much of the cause of my breakdown as I do of the inside of the moon. They ascribed it to the paltry amount of teaching and work ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... of the experience gained at this station through the use of these crude plug-switches, Mr. Edison started a competition among a few of his assistants to devise something better. The result was the invention of a "breakdown" switch by Mr. W. S. Andrews, which was accepted by Mr. Edison as the best of the devices suggested, and was developed and used for a ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... boy," urged the doctor; "it can profit us nothing, it can profit Myra nothing, for you to shatter your nerves at a time when real trials are before you. You are inviting another breakdown. Oh! I know it is hard; but for everybody's sake try to keep ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... of the Terms of Surrender, about which I will address you immediately. I earnestly hope that there may be no delay in acceding to this request. The work to be got through in the immediate future is so enormous that, unless we can get the fundamental questions of finance settled promptly, a breakdown is inevitable. It would be a great relief to my mind to feel that services already started and working well were provided for at least for some months ahead, before I plunge into the new and heavy job of restoring the Boer population, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... padre, and Capt. Lidderdale, R.A.M.C, our battalion doctor, were both going by the same train, so I was not without company. When 2.15 A.M. came there was no train, and we kept walking about till dawn broke, but still no train. The R.T.O. then told us that there had been a breakdown and that the train could not be expected for a long time. So we decided to go and get breakfast at our billets and then to go to Amiens by motor-lorry, and catch the train there. At least there would be less chance of being shelled there, ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... estimated with best judgment. This is true particularly for the response of individuals as well as governmental and other institutions. Popular assumptions of post-disaster behavior include antisocial behavior and the need for martial law, the breakdown of government institutions, and the requirement for the quick assertion of outside leadership and control. Practical experience and field studies of disasters, however, indicate that these assumptions are not ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... and begged like frightened children to be taken; but we dared not risk a breakdown and had to refuse. But never shall I forget the look ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... around the bed talking, Elizabeth telling briefly of her own experiences and her wedding trip which they were taking back over the old trail, and the old man and woman speaking of their trouble, the woman's breakdown and how the doctor at Malta said there was a chance she could get well if she went to a great doctor in Chicago, but how they had no money unless they sold the ranch and that nobody ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... we find set forth in the pages of the Old Testament. How, then, did the transition take place from the maternal system, in which the mother was so important in the family, to the paternal system, in which the father was so all-important? What were the causes which brought about the breakdown of the maternal system and the gradual development of the patriarchal family? Some of these causes we can clearly make out from the study of ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... desk and wheeled about in her chair with a perplexed expression on her strong, handsome face. Generally speaking, she went her way with courage and conviction, but since Conning Truedale's breakdown, an element in her had arisen that demanded recognition and she had yet to learn how to control it ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... suffering from chronic diabetes and a general breakdown, which was about to compel his retirement from the force. Operated on August 9. Left the hospital yesterday feeling like ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... you should have a breakdown on that lonely road? There is neither station nor house from ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... were the inevitable and heroic prelude to the victorious recoil of August, and the final battles of the war. Inevitable, because no forethought or exertion on the British side could have averted the German onslaught, determined as it was by the breakdown of the whole Eastern front of the war, and the letting loose upon the Western front of immense forces previously held by the Russian armies. These forces, after the Russian debacle, were released against us, week by ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of France the one main thing actually touching the lives of the people, after their religion (which the complete breakdown of the anti-clerical threat had secured), was the sale of their principal manufacture. This sale was rendered difficult from a number of reasons, one of which, perhaps not the chief, but the most apparent and the most easily remediable, was the adulteration and fraud ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... never suspected the nephew. Only two people suspect him: the broken-hearted girl and an old friend of his father. This gentleman puts a detective on the trail. (The detective is impersonated by Ralph Lewis.) The gradual breakdown of the victim is traced by dramatic degrees. This is the second case of the thing I have argued as being generally impossible in a photoplay chronicle of a private person, and which the considerations of chapter twelve indicate as exceptional. We ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... sensations. In such a transcript as Sir Theodore's all this is lost: Heine becomes a mere prentice-metrist; he sets the teeth on edge as surely as Browning himself; the verse that recalled a dance of naiads suggests a springless cart on a Highland road; Terpsichore is made to prance a hobnailed breakdown. The poem disappears, and in its place you have an indifferent copy of verses. You look at the pages from afar, and your impression is that they are not unlike Heine; you look into them, and Heine has vanished. The man is gone, and only an awkward, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... because each knew to a nicety how soon a gallon of petrol would vaporize in the Du Vallon's six cylinders. Having taken the precaution to measure that exact quantity into the tank before leaving Cheddar, they were prepared for a breakdown at any point within a few hundred yards of the precise ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... to hide the breakdown, Clare's nerve gave way. She had forced the crisis in order to clear herself, but saw that she could not do so. Dick's statement was convincing; the papers had been stolen while he was in their house, ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... muttered in Marvel's ears. Peering ahead, he descried a small light. He was passing a wood at the time, and the windy tumult as well as the roaring from the loch made confusion for his hearing; but presently he recognised the intruding sound as the throbbing of a motor. "Some silly fool got a breakdown," he was thinking sympathetically, when a terrific gust caught and fairly staggered him. Ere he fully recovered balance and breath something cold and clammy fell upon his face, was dragged down over his shoulders and arms, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... at last they found the motor pool. And there were three groundcars, all in various stages of breakdown or dismantlement. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... of that. Unfortunately, Mrs. Rivers had a very convenient breakdown, when she heard the news; she is now in a hospital in New York, and won't be back until after the funeral. Prostrated with grief. Or something. And this case is due to blow up like Hiroshima before then. Well, we can't get fees from everybody." That, of course, was one of the sad things of ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... at this time was in a mighty hurry about his literary supplies, I had to undertake again pretty much such a spell of work as I had undertaken with Val Strange, and with an almost equally unfortunate result. My methods of work have often brought me near a nervous breakdown, and by the time at which Rainbow Gold was finished, I was all but a wreck. It had been arranged between the editor of the Cornhill and myself that the completed copy of my book should be in his hands on a given date, and for some reason I was afraid to trust it to the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... an attempt at one. Krebs had not been born yesterday, he had avoided the wiles of the politicians heretofore, he wouldn't be fool enough to be taken in now. I told myself that if I were not in a state bordering on a nervous breakdown, I should laugh at such morbid fears, I steadied myself sufficiently to dictate the extract from my speech that was to be published. I was to make addresses at two halls, alternating with Parks, the mayoralty candidate. At four o'clock I went back to my room in the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said Jonas; 'you may come and dine with us at the Dragon. We were forced to come down to Salisbury last night, on some business, and I got him to bring me over here this morning, in his carriage; at least, not his own carriage, for we had a breakdown in the night, but one we hired instead; it's all the same. Mind what you're about, you know. He's not used to all sorts; he only mixes ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Jean Cabot find her summer planned for her. Instead of joining Uncle Bob and enjoying months of bathing and sailing on the North Shore she helped nurse Uncle Tom Curtis back to health. For the breakdown proved to be of much longer duration than any of them had foreseen. The exhausted system was slow in reacting and it was weeks before the turning point toward recovery was reached. During those tedious hours of waiting Jean was the sole person ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... earth's the matter?" she inquired, fumbling in her pocket for the key as her husband executed a clumsy but noisy breakdown on the ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... revolutions so much, and the practical work of revolutions so little, that we are apt to see only the stage effects, so to speak, of these great movements; the fight of the first days; the barricades. But this fight, this first skirmish, is soon ended, and it only after the breakdown of the old system that the real work of revolution can ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... into the environment of the soul and became, henceforth, not a spiritual mind, but a mind "sensual," "devilish," a mind continually suggesting to the soul fresh and unlimited gratification of its desires. With the breakdown of soul and mind, the spirit lost its vital relationship to God, lost its function as a connecting link with, and a transmitter of, the mind and will of God; so that it could no longer enable man to know and understand God; and feeling the influence of the mind, instead of influencing it, followed ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... understand what was going on. 'By-the-bye, what is this same constitution they are making such a noise about?' asked a lazzarone who had been shouting 'Viva la Costituzione' all the day. Within a few weeks of the breakdown at Novara, Count Confalonieri wrote wisely to Gino Capponi that revolutions are not made by high intelligences, but by the masses which are moved by enthusiasm, and for a possibility of success, the word Constitution, the least magical of words, should have been replaced by the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... such a loss of mental tone as would lead in turn to moral acolasia, sensual excess, and physical ruin. But in Sir John's case the cause was not adequate; he had, so far as I know, never wholly given the reins to sensuality, and the change was too abrupt and the breakdown of body and mind too complete to be accounted for by such events as those ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... their hands. They had practically annihilated Halil Bey's original corps and cleared the Turkish troops out for many miles around. A Turkish offensive in the Province of Azerbaijan ended in a complete breakdown. On their right wing the Russians occupied Turkish territory between the old frontier and the line of the rivers Chorokh and Tortun and the mountain range of Tchakhir Baba. A violent counterattack made by ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... satisfaction, in the knowledge that it would cause him to be envied by less fortunate lads. It was necessary, however, to tinker a great deal over the machine to keep it in running order, and the joshing flung at him by the Oakdale lads whenever he had a breakdown had been anything but ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... well as anomalous in its action. Under civilization with its division of labour, the various functions of mind and body are very unequally exercised. There is overwork or misuse of one part and disuse and neglect of others, leading to the partial breakdown or degeneration of various organs and to general deterioration of health through disturbed balance of the constitution. The brain, or rather particular parts of it, are often over-stimulated, while the body is neglected. ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... briefly stated, is that, owing to bad management, lack of foresight, and the almost complete breakdown of the commissary and medical departments of the army, our soldiers in Cuba suffered greater hardships and privations, in certain ways, than were ever before endured by an American army in the field. They were not half equipped, nor half fed, nor half ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... Maartens do, with a bevy of laughing girls about him, tweaking his nose, pinching his arms, tickling his ribs till he pranced? To escape such torment Hans Amden cleared a space and gave a clumsy-footed Hollandish breakdown till all the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... gloomy utterances may be found in those superficial indications of chaos such as the breakdown of exchange and of international trade; the severe business depression; the waste and inefficiency of industry; the prevalence of unrest and sabotage, and the ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... the doctor hurriedly; "with care, and under favourable circumstances, there might be no further breakdown for another year; but"—with a keen look at his patient—"I will not undertake ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that on the afternoon of the opening ceremony the Countess's carriage broke down in Sneyd Vale, two miles from Sneyd and three miles from Hanbridge. Fourth, that five minutes later Denry, all in his best clothes, drove up behind his mule. Fifth, that Denry drove right past the breakdown, apparently not noticing it. Sixth, that Jock, touching his hat to Denry as if to a stranger (for, of course, while on duty a footman must be dead to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... affects Capital.—Now the force which brings about all these movements is the force of competition. Every increase of knowledge, every improvement of communication, every breakdown of international or local barriers, increases the advantage of the big business, and makes the struggle for existence among small businesses more keen and more hopeless. It is the desire to escape from the heavy and harassing ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... would seem that the addition of this last demand, namely, of satisfying the sexual desires of the husband during the period of pregnancy, might prove "the straw that breaks the camel's back," and result in the more or less complete nervous breakdown of the woman. The author submits this question to all fair-minded men: Is it not due to the wife that she be not asked to satisfy the recurring sexual desires of the husband during the period when her life ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... which may be recognized easily as it will also contain myself and another civilian in plain clothes. At the psychological moment a white flag will be shown from it, waved perhaps surreptitiously by one of the civilians. In the event of breakdown of the automobile a horsed vehicle will be used and the same signal will apply. For the sake of myself and the other civilian, please instruct all officers to keep a sharp lookout and protect the party from being ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... rods when a smell of overheated metals assailed the air, and with a tired wheezing somewhere down in its vital organs, the automobile halted itself. The chauffeur spent some time tinkering among its innermost works before he stood up, hot and sweaty and disgusted, to announce that the breakdown was serious in character. He undertook to explain in highly technical terms the exact nature of the trouble, but his master had no turn for mechanics and small patience for listening. He gathered that it would take at least an hour to mend the mishap, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... ominously. Two and a half years of office work were telling on him, although he scarcely realized to what extent, and but for a very fortunate circumstance—which seemed to Evan an extremely unfortunate one—he would have experienced a nervous breakdown before long. But more ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... long time, the many irons rose and fell, the pace of the room in no wise diminished; while the forewoman strode the aisles with a threatening eye for incipient breakdown and hysteria. Occasionally an ironer lost the stride for an instant, gasped or sighed, then caught it up again with weary determination. The long summer day waned, but not the heat, and under the raw flare of electric light ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... borne in mind that these high prices in part represented the depreciation of Confederate paper money. Drastic drafting and the arming of negroes could avail little for lack of accoutrements and food. Thus Lee's capitulation at Appomattox (April 9, 1865) represents less a defeat of his army than the breakdown of the Confederacy at large. So true and impressive is this that reflection upon it makes the last year of Lee's commandership seem peculiarly glorious. Only by rarest genius, surely, were those dazzling tactics, that lynx-eyed, sleepless watchfulness, that superhuman patience and superhuman ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... host to make his name ridiculous." In commenting on their failure, an Athenaeum critic has explained the pre-established fitness of the ottava rima—the first six lines of which are a dance, and the concluding couplet a "breakdown"—for the mock-heroic. Byron's choice of this measure may have been suggested by Whistlecraft; but, he had studied its cadence in Pulci, and the Novelle Galanti of Casti, to whom he is indebted for other features of his satire; and he added to what has been well termed its characteristic ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... I said, 'I guess I feel an almighty fool, but I owe it to you to let you know that it wasn't the Bill Sikes business I was up to.' Then I went on and mumbled out something about a girl. I trotted out the stern guardian business, and a nervous breakdown, and finally explained that I had fancied I recognized her among the patients at the home, hence my nocturnal adventures. I guess it was just the kind of story he was expecting. 'Quite a romance,' he said genially, when I'd finished. 'Now, doc,' I went on, 'will you be ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... apologies, those which deserved an answer. Several did not; they were from people whom she hoped never to see again—people who wrote in fulsome terms, because they fancied she would become a celebrity. The news of her breakdown had appeared in a few newspapers, and brought her letters of sympathy; these also lay unanswered. On a day of late autumn she brought herself to the task of looking through this correspondence, and in the end she burnt it all. Among ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... small steamboat on the Savannah River one night. We were tied up till morning along the river bank under the trees of the deep swamp. Twilight and the swamp silence had settled about us. The moon came up. A banjo had been twanging, but the breakdown was done, the shuffling feet quiet. The little cottonboat had become a part of the moonlit silence and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... percent Scandinavian, and the Poles, Bohemians, and Italians formed about 5 percent. The strong predominance of the foreign element in American trade unions should not appear unusual, since, owing to the breakdown of the apprenticeship system, the United States had been drawing its supply of skilled ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... in abbreviated skirts and low-cut dress, winking and blinking in ironical shyness, and concluding with a flaunting of her gown, a toe pointed ceilingward, and a lively "breakdown." Then she vanished with a hop, skip and a bow, reappeared with a ravishing smile and threw a generous assortment of kisses among the audience, and disappeared with another hop, skip and a bow, as Impecunious Jordan burst upon the spectators ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... would be wiser to eliminate the tubes from the circuit, for they put certain restrictions on the line. The main power plant in the city has tube banks capable of handling anything the line would. I suggest that your voltage be set at the maximum that the line will carry without breakdown, and the amperage can be made as high as possible without ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... eight-and-twenty turn into an incomparable Amfortas at fifty. For the actor, it often happens that the first sign of age is fatigue; in the singer's day, the first shadow is an eclipse, the first false note is disaster, the first breakdown is often a heart-rending failure that brings real tears to the eyes of younger comrades. The exquisite voice does not grow weak and pathetic and ethereal by degrees, so that we still love to hear it, even to the end; far more often it is suddenly flat or sharp by a quarter of a tone throughout ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... not the words so much, but the tone of his voice that maddened Paul. Throughout the day he had been in a state of intense excitement. It seemed to him as though his nerves were raw, and he knew that he was on the point of a breakdown. Bolitho's tones, therefore, maddened him, and he was almost beside himself. "Yes, you have ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... towards her. "Am I speaking to Mrs. Bauer?" he asked, in a sharp, quick tone. And then, as she said "Yes," and dropped a little curtsey, he went on: "I had a breakdown—a most tiresome thing! But I suppose it makes no difference? You have ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... pleasant room, having in it the statue of a saint, and full of a country air. But I had done too much in this night march, as you will presently learn, for my next day was a day without salt, and in it appreciation left me. And this breakdown of appreciation was due to what I did not know at the time to be fatigue, but to what was undoubtedly ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... opposition they became masters of the situation. To be sure, the commandants and proprietors of the depots tried not to recognize them, but a mere application to the soldiers' committee or the employees of each institution sufficed to cause the immediate breakdown of the opposition. After that, arms were issued only ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... O'Connor said. "None, I'm afraid. We did at one time feel that there had been a mental breakdown early in the boy's life, and, indeed, it's perfectly possible that he was normal for the first year or so. The records we did manage to get on that period, however, were very much confused, and there was never any way of telling anything at all, for certain. It's easy to see what ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... Try and amuse yourself somehow. Ask yourself a riddle. Tell yourself a few anecdotes. I'll be with you in a moment. I say, I wonder what the cove is doing at Belpher? Deuced civil cove," said Reggie approvingly. "I liked him. And now, business of repairing breakdown." ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of the players may move forward after once landing on the backs. If all of the bungs succeed in seating themselves without any break occurring among the buckets, it counts one in favor of the buckets. When such a breakdown occurs, the two parties change places, the bungs taking the place of the buckets; otherwise the game is repeated with the same bungs and buckets. The party wins which has the highest score to its ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... or fondled you. She dropped all her friends; she never made calls; she refused to see callers. I consulted specialists and all the satisfaction I had was that she was of a peculiarly high-strung nature and that in certain phases of melancholia, where there is no complete mental and physical breakdown, the patient turns on the one whom she would hold nearest and dearest if she were normal. The child that had taken her strength became the virtual passion of her worship, which she would ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... in a general retirement all along the River Dvina. The Allies then became interested in the Kaiser's probable choice of a line of defense for the winter on the northern section of his Russian front. The breakdown of the German offensive was attributed by the Allies to three things—the increase in the Russian ammunition supply, a German shortage of munitions, and the weakening of the German line for ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... threat to build a railroad from Berlin to Bagdad and tap the riches of the East, led the British to form alliances with their traditional enemies—the French and the Russians. Russia, after the breakdown of Czarism in 1917, dropped out of the Entente, and the United States took her place among the Allies of the British Empire. During the struggle France was reduced to a mere shell of her former power. The War of 1914 bled her white, loaded her with debt, disorganized her industries, ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... up from Magna Graecia and whose formal acceptance into the state-cult formed one of the earliest incidents in the breakdown of the old agricultural religion, was Castor, with his twin-brother Pollux, although brother Pollux was always an insignificant partner, so much so that the temple which was subsequently built to them both was referred to either ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... to overcome. My eldest brother had a nervous breakdown while working on the DEW Line (he was posted on the Arctic Circle watching radar screens for a possible incoming attack from Russia). I believe his collapse actually began with our childhood nutrition. While in the Arctic all his foods came from cans. He also was working long hours ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... the road, a hundred paces from the place of our breakdown, a cliff of soft stone, the foot of which was quarried in several places. We resolved to wait in one of those caves, warming ourselves until the return of the boy sent to Tournus. The second boy tied the ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... perfection of human methods, which the Socialists flatly deny. Universal Private Ownership, an extreme development of the sentiment of individual autonomy and the limitation of the State to the merest police functions, were a necessary outcome of the breakdown of the unprogressive authoritative Feudal System in alliance with a dogmatic Church. It reached its maximum in the eighteenth century, when even some of the prisons and workhouses were run by private contract, when people issued a private money, the old token coinage, and even regiments ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... very capable one, I fancy,' said Marcella. 'We had nearly an hour's talk before you came. But she won't be able to stand the work. There'll be another breakdown before long.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... recovered from its apparently complete breakdown of a few years ago to be able to dispose of the largest revenue that had ever been at the disposal of any French Government, and this fact is of interest to us chiefly because it is one of the most definite and most significant proofs of the remarkable inherent strength of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... the men, had a sympathetic influence upon all about him. His voice had the same sort of influence upon them as the drum and fife on a soldier's march: it quickened their movements. We were often called in by our neighbour manufacturers to repair a breakdown of their engines. That was always a sad disaster, as all hands were idle until the repair was effected. Archy was in his glory on such occasions. By his ready zeal and energy he soon got over the difficulty, repaired the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... see the dilemma through to an end of some sort, but to my joyful surprise Bertie used all his wiles upon the family to induce them to stop at Fontainebleau. It was a beautiful place, he argued, and they would like it so much, that they would come to think the breakdown a blessing in disguise. In any case, he had intended advising them to pause for tea, and to stay the night if they cared for the place. They would find a good hotel, practically in the forest; and he had an acquaintance who owned a chateau near by, a very ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... that our 1960 program now cannot possibly be fulfilled until 1965. If the situation develops as forecast in Dr. Forster's statement, our entire nuclear weapons program will grind to a halt within two weeks. If we drain men from civilian research, it will cause a total breakdown in the civilian atomic power production program. As you all know, the nation's entire economic expansion program is based on the availability of that power. Without it, industry will be forced into a deep freeze. That in turn means we might as well run up ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... the above, there is in course of construction still more powerful pumps of 40 in. diameter, which will provide against contingencies, and prevent delay in case of a breakdown such as occurred lately on the Liverpool side of the works. The nature of the rock is the new red sandstone, of a solid and compact character, favorable for tunneling, and yielding only a moderate quantity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... causes of the moral breakdown of the Empire and of the French army do not help us to much that is novel. He lays more than the usual stress on Ultramontanism as an influence. The death of the archbishop of Paris could have been prevented, he thinks, had the Versailles authorities acted with due promptness and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... saw no difficulties, no dangers, no risks of breakdown in my girlish scheme. Already my husband had got all he had bargained for. He had got my father's money in exchange for his noble name, and if he wanted more, if he wanted the love of his wife, let him earn it, let him ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... and steel for permanent investment, bound to yield large dividends; cloth as the cheapest exchange for invaluable raw material; liquor to tickle the appetites of the natives and render the alienation of land and the breakdown of customary law easier; eventually forced and contract labor under white drivers to increase and systematize the production of raw materials. These materials are capable of indefinite expansion: cotton may yet challenge the southern United States, fruits and vegetables, hides and skins, lumber ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... were happening behind the screen. Good God! was France to see another annee terrible, a second edition of 1870, with the same old tale of unreadiness, corruption in high quarters, breakdown of organization, and national humiliation ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... executed a sort of breakdown dance, so great was her satisfaction at the unexpected way in which her wishes had been carried out. But the disappointment and wrath of Joe over this sudden overthrow of his schemes were ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... him—not much fight, as he himself said. Not the sort to survive. Life was too strong—too difficult for him. He bungled everything—even an exam. It would be wiser, more consistent to let him drift. And yet at sight of that futile breakdown, it was not impatience or contempt that Robert felt, but a choking tenderness—a fierce pity. He had to protect him—pull him through. He had promised so much—he forgot when: that afternoon lying in the long, sooty grass behind the biscuit factory, or that night when he had dragged ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... under some trying circumstances and never with any hint of breakdown, yet just now he wondered if unexpected good tidings were not about to accomplish what bad news could not—carry out the dam of her own hard-schooled repression on a flood of tears. Her eyes became suddenly misty and her lips ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the controls of the 'copter. Easing the ship into the sky toward Washington, he searched out a news report on the radio, listened with a dull feeling in the pit of his stomach as the story came through about the breakdown of the Berlin Conference, the declaration of war, the President's meeting with Congress that morning, his formal request for full wartime power, the granting of permission by a wide-eyed, frightened legislature. Shandor settled back, staring ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... stupid enough, today, to want to be a dictator. That ended by the middle of the Twenty-first Century. Everybody knows what happened to Mussolini, and Hitler, and Stalin, and all their imitators. Why, it is as much the public fear of Big Government as the breakdown of civil power because of the administrative handicap of a shortage of Literate administrators that is responsible for the disgraceful lawlessness of the past hundred years. Thus, it speaks well for the public trust in Chester Pelton's known ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... happened since. If you remember—twenty years ago, when you and your wife arrived to settle here, I then came to ask you to bury the feud between us, and to let us meet again at least as neighbours and acquaintances. You refused. Then came the breakdown of your marriage. I ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... keynote of whatever was vital in any of them. And the reason of this is not far to seek. We have seen already (p. 82) how the chaos of sophistic doctrine was largely conditioned, if not produced, by the breakdown of the old civic life of Greece. The process hardly suffered delay from all the efforts of Socrates and Plato. Cosmopolitanism was already a point of union between the Cynics and Cyrenaics (see p. 128). And the march of politics was always tending in the ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... minute dragging a half-frightened, half-pleased little Belgian scullery maid and whirled her about to waltz music until she dropped for want of breath to carry her another turn; after which he did a solo—Teutonic version—of a darky breakdown, stopping only to ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... seemed at first a simple matter to do away with Gray. That had been mistake number one. The miserable breakdown of that plan, the refusal of his hireling to go forward, and the impossibility of securing a trustworthy substitute convinced him finally that he had erred grievously in his method. Some men are invulnerable to open attack, and Gray, it seemed, had been wet in the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... who used to like me long ago. Girls who knew me at school say to themselves, 'Fancy poor old Janet being like that all the time, and we never knew!' and they rush down to see me again. They sit hopefully round me as long as they can bear it; then, after the breakdown, they go away indignant and never think ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various |
