"Eleventh hour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discontent, or any of the passions that debase; a life so honest and composed; a soul like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch in music—as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chatting at the eleventh hour, under the shadow ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Voices to speak and sing, not to utter Lamentations; Hands, to doe God's Work; Feet, and it may be, Wings, to carry us on his Errands. Such will be the Blessedness of his glorified Saints; even of those who, having been Servants of Satan till the eleventh Hour, laboured penitentlie and diligentlie for their heavenlie Master one Hour before Sunset; but as for those who, dying in mere Infancie, never committed actuall Sin, they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth! 'Oh, think of this, dear Rose, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,—I confess that I am astonished at the power ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... not longer to make your peace with a long-suffering God; even in this eleventh hour He will not ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... poor sort of friend, Judith, one who has been blind till the eleventh hour and is then found wanting. I feel so guilty to you, to your brother's wife, to that little child who put out his arms so trustfully to me that night, but I never imagined that things would come to such a pass as this. The smaller ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... colleague's courtly manners, yet vaguely in his stupid, blundering way he grudgingly admitted that mayhap it was better to allow citizen Chauvelin to deal with the Englishman. There was always the danger that if his own violent temper got the better of him, he might even at this eleventh hour order this insolent prisoner to summary trial and the guillotine, and thus lose the final chance of the more ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... good days. I had the satisfaction of a row royal with the Lord High Humbug to account for my hurried departure. But, as a matter of fact, if Teddy Garland hadn't got his Blue at the eleventh hour I should be ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... seriousness of the position they would be willing to make proper concessions, and he said in conclusion that the people of Johannesburg, if they were as good as their professions and desired reform and not revolution, would even at the eleventh hour be willing to meet the Government. The member of the Reform Committee replied that this was undoubtedly the attitude of the Johannesburg people, but that it was absolutely useless to keep on patiently waiting for the fulfilment of promises which were only ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... posture, appalled him; it was as one who gazed on the Medusa's head, and felt, without a struggle, the human being gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not idiocy,—it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as the night advanced towards the eleventh hour—the hour in which Glyndon had concluded his tale—she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed. Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look of unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the clock struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was awkward. This refusal at the eleventh hour was very annoying. I was not expected alone, but alone I should have to go. There was no alternative, and the absence of the doyenne must explain itself as best ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... I don't think you need to speak," resumed his wife. "When such a loud providence is a-knockin' at your door, I think you'd better be a-searchin' your own heart,—here it is the eleventh hour, and you hain't come ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... man, woman or child in this town, or any other, that can bear more than I can. I always was independent, thank the Lord. After living without the help of man this long, I hope I can get along without it at the eleventh hour. As to its being a money concern, I don't believe a word of it, and I wouldn't walk across the room, if it just concerned myself alone; but when I see the name of my poor, dead brother, I feel a command on me, just as if I saw it printed on tablets of stone, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the grace of his own frantic eleventh hour efforts and his teachers' clemency and Honor Carmody—to graduate. Barring calamities, he would possess a diploma in February. Honor was tremendously earnest about it; Carter, to whom learning came as easily as the air he breathed, faintly amused. She thought, sometimes, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... you pay the money in? And, oh! in you, my dear nephew, may grace yet fructify, and may you be brought, even at the eleventh hour, to a slow conviction that all on this earth is vanity and vexation of spirit—drums, colors, scarlet and fine linen, hounds running after hares, women whirling round, as they tell me they do, in that invention of the evil one called a waltz, all these are ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... friendly attitude of the banks; they were now politely reluctant, as one of the agents expressed it, which really meant that opposition to the loan had appeared from some unexpected source, as a sort of eleventh hour obstacle. The heads of the two banks had as much as said that negotiations were at an end, that was the long and short of it; it really didn't matter what was back of their sudden change of front, the ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... are as ants ever preparing their meat in the summer, and ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey.... And to pay due regard to truth ... although they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the Lord's vineyard ..., they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the other vinedressers; following in the footsteps of Paul, the last to be called but the first ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... my memory ever since. Thank Heaven! the eleventh hour must have struck long ago, and Hortense and her friend must be fast asleep and well out of the cold by now—they need walk those evil streets ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... pants for honest employment. And may it not offend your Highness, for one so ill-read as myself in aught that is good or godly, to remind you that the Bible somewhere tells of those who were received into pardon and glory at the eleventh hour. As to myself, could your Highness make me what my heart has so panted after, but as vainly as the carrion-crow might seek to be the gallant falcon of the chase—could you give me a well-proportioned figure—make me one who could repel an injury or protect a friend—stretch ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... director of St.-Gobain ordered two immense tables, and when these were sent to the manufactory, had them skilfully thrown into one. Upon the gigantic table thus prepared the grand mirror of the Exposition of 1889 was cast at the eleventh hour. This mirror was the special delight of the Shah of Persia during his visit of this year to Paris; and as I suppose the seven plate-glass manufactories which have grown up in my own beloved country under the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... by taking on the champion. Dashed sad case, between ourselves! This poor egg's nominee has given him the raspberry at the eleventh hour, and only you can save him. And you owe it to him to do something you know, because it was your jolly old mater's lecture last night that made the nominee quit. You must charge in and take his place. Sort of poetic ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... Ming power was collapsing before the onset of Li Tseching, there still remained the large and well-trained Ming army in garrison on the Manchu frontier, under command of the able general, Wou Sankwei. At the eleventh hour the Emperor Tsonching had sent a message to Wou Sankwei, begging him to come in all haste to save the capital; and that general, evacuating Ningyuen, and leaving a small garrison at Shanhaikwan, had begun his march for Pekin, when ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... car, was driven back to New York. On the way he invented a story to explain why, at the eleventh hour, he had jilted Aline Proctor; but when his thoughts reverted to the young man he had seen working with his sleeves rolled up he decided it would be safer to let Miss Proctor tell of the broken engagement ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... Braddock, grateful to his benefactor, and enraged at everybody else, pronounced him "Almost the only instance of ability and honesty I have known in these provinces."[206] More wagons and more horses gradually arrived, and at the eleventh hour the march began. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Roosevelt turned upon the machine. All through the stormy days of that stormy Chicago convention Senator Borah could be found at the side of that one leader for whom he had a consistent regard. He was with him up to the very last moment before the die was cast. He was almost successful at the eleventh hour in inducing Mr. Roosevelt to abandon his mad project. They were closeted together on the evening of the clamorous meeting of the progressives in ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... together, to see some ruin in which Lady Grace had manifested a sudden interest, the third horse, which had been brought round for another of the men, being sent back to the stables, his destined rider having decided, at the eleventh hour, to join the rest of the party in a little desultory rabbit shooting in the park, which he proceeded to do with much chuckling over his extraordinary ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... legislate for a nation in whose feelings and affections, wants and interests, opinions and prejudices, we have no sympathy." Are "The Incompatibles" to be always incompatible, or can we now, even at the eleventh hour, make some effort to understand the working of the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... husband, who has survived her, but, as Halloran would say, 'It's a deal easier getting the same fortune by marrying the stepmother's daughter, who has come into it by Faynie's father cutting her off at the eleventh hour.' ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... had hitherto proved favourable to our brave explorers, did not desert them at the eleventh hour. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... we have made lately, whom we like so much, that we have been vociferously abusing the system of faire part in this city, since, owing to the mistake of a servant, we have until now been deprived of the pleasure of knowing her. The mistake is rectified at the eleventh hour. The lady is the Seora de G—-z P—-a, one of the most accomplished and well-informed women in Mexico; and though our friendship has been short, I trust ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... best laid plans, we are prevented from fulfilling our promise, let the regret sent be prompt, that your hostess, especially if the entertainment be a dinner or luncheon may possibly, even at the eleventh hour, be able to supply the vacancy. Make it explanatory as well, that she may feel positive that no mere whim has caused ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... At the eleventh hour, the long-looked-for succors were come. Ribaut had been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families, and young nobles weary of a two-years' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... At the eleventh hour, under grave illness, I gather up the pieces of prose and poetry left over since publishing, a while since, my first and main volume, "Leaves or Grass"—pieces, here, some new, some old— nearly all of them (sombre as many are, making this ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... know what you're going to write on or anything that you're going to say?" asked Betty, who always wrote her papers as soon as they were assigned, to get them off her mind, and who longed to know the secret of waiting serenely until the eleventh hour. ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... opposition to, or neglect of, the freedom movement, came to its help in the closing scenes of a great conflict, while the earlier, and certainly equally meritorious, workers and fighters have been quite left out of the account. The writer does not object to laborers who entered the field at the eleventh hour, sharing with those who bore the heat and burden of the day; but when there is a disposition to give to them all the earnings he does feel ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... opportunity of leaving his home, his country, and his friends. A private expedition to make excavations among the ruined cities of Central America is, it seems, about to sail from Liverpool. The draughtsman who had been already appointed to accompany it has lost heart, and withdrawn at the eleventh hour, and Walter is to fill his place. He is to be engaged for six months certain, from the time of the landing in Honduras, and for a year afterwards, if the excavations are successful, and if the funds hold out. His ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... it too late to start again? At this eleventh hour depose A Council whose united brain Apparently is comatose? Replace the Big Four with a Monstrous One, And hand the whole show over to The ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the politicians had their way and Castelnau, Joffre's second in command, came over to their view and set out for Verdun to organize the defence for the position at the eleventh hour. He had with him Petain, the man who had commanded the French army in the Battle of Champagne and henceforth commanded the army that was hurried to the Verdun sector. France now took up definitely the gage of battle as Germany had laid it down. Verdun ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... about to go to "see to things," taking Bertie, his right-hand boy, with him, but leaving Nellie with me. Bertie had expressed himself quite agreeable to the arrangement, but at the eleventh hour refused to go without Nellie; and Nellie, preferring the now fascinating homestead to the company of her lord and master, refused to go with him, and Mac was at ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Day dawned. Their vast military machine moved with precision and unity. But there was a surprise awaiting them. The Belgians were to offer a serious resistance to passage through their territory—a firm refusal had been delivered at the eleventh hour. The vanguard was thrown forward from Von Kluck's army at Aix, to break through the defenses of Liege and seize the western railways. This force of three divisions was commanded by General von Emmich, one of them joining ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... tables might be compiled from the learned notes and introductions of Prof. Child to his English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1898). A common plot is the story of the faithful leman, whose lord brings home "a braw new bride," and who recovers his affection at the eleventh hour. In Scotland this is the ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Annie; in Danish it is Skiaen Anna. It occurs twice in M. Fauriel's collection of Romaic songs. Again, there is the familiar ballad about a girl who pretends to be dead, that she may be borne ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... ideals and the literature of the English race. Had it not been for this Version, current English speech and literature would be vastly different. Such words and expressions as "scapegoat," "a labor of love," "the eleventh hour," "to cast pearls before swine," and "a howling wilderness" are in constant use because the language of this translation of the Bible has become incorporated in our daily speech, as well as in ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... cow-paths through the wilderness of sense that great hardihood is required even to suggest that there may be other and better ways of traversing the empirical common. So it is that the fear of being proclaimed a Brazenhead has restrained me until this eleventh hour from telling of my discoveries concerning the fourth-dimensional reaches of our Exposition. That I have the courage now is due to my desire to help in its preservation; not to the end of enclosing it in a brass wall, but to lift it out of the realm of things temporal and give it permanent ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... on the morrow, and, as inconsequently befell, with Waymarsh massively of the party. The latter announced, at the eleventh hour and much to his friend's surprise, that, damn it, he would as soon join him as do anything else; on which they proceeded together, strolling in a state of detachment practically luxurious for them to ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... neither class. In addition to looking like one of those things that come out of hollow trees, he is universally admitted to be a dumb brick of the first water. No soul. No conversation. In short, any girl who, having been rash enough to get engaged to him, has managed at the eleventh hour to slide out is justly entitled to consider herself ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Thus, at the eleventh hour in the life of this important patent, after a long period of costly litigation, Edison and his associates were compelled to assume the defensive against a claimant whose utterly baseless pretensions had already been thoroughly investigated and rejected years before by every interested party, and ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... both shall have a bridal favour. We will confer with each. When the golden sand runs out at the eleventh hour, the dial will be alone and in shadow; for if it please thee, we must be wed secretly and in haste. I noticed but awhile ago how beautiful the dial was. So the sands shall give us the hour, the dial the altar, and the nightingale ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... if I was only laid in my grave, is my wish. John, what shall I say? In the first place, can you ever forgive me? for God alone knows that I am penitent if there ever was one in the world. I can hardly hope to be forgiven, for my sins are almost beyond redemption, but God will forgive at the eleventh hour, and I want to be forgiven and reform. I will reform. I have seen enough, and now I want to settle down and live a virtuous and respectable life the rest of my days and die a happy death, for I have spent many an hour of late in deep thought, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... his letter to Lady Holland, May 14, 1835;—"Liberals of the eleventh hour abound! and there are some of the first hour, of whose work in the toil and heat of the day I ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... had ever entered into my calculations or found room in my hopes. By a brisk appeal to them, it almost seemed that I might work my salvation in this eleventh hour. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... Louis Napoleon, the distribution of the eagles. We have done our possible and impossible to get tickets, because I had taken strongly into my head to want to go, and because Robert, who didn't care for it himself, cared for it for me; but here's the eleventh hour and our prospects remain gloomy. We did not apply sufficiently soon, I am afraid, and the name of the applicants has been legion. It will be a grand sight, and full of significances. Nevertheless, the empire won't come so; you will ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... resolved to increase, and his dispositions were of the highest military excellence; but it is asserted that he would have been beaten, because of the superiority of the enemy in men, but for the coming up, at the eleventh hour, of the Duke of Norfolk, who was the Joseph Johnston of 1461, doing for Edward what the Secessionist Johnston did for Beauregard in 1861. The Lancastrians then gave way, and retreated, at first in orderly fashion, but finally falling into a panic, when they were cut ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the line deeply pondering the startling report of the good Colonel. We had been hearing various rumors that the enemy was frantically suing for peace; all these we had set down as but propaganda. If the end were in sight, why this terrific eleventh hour barrage? ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... master! Walkyn, methinks, is not a jovial soul, lord, and when he smileth it behoveth others to frown and—beware. So prithee eat hearty, lord, for, in a while the sun will stand above yon whin-bush, and then 'twill be the eleventh hour, and at the eleventh hour must I wash thy hurt and be-plaster it with this ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... night, came the voice of Ivan Veliki, from the distant Kremlin, booming the eleventh hour. As the last stroke trembled through the room and echoed into silence, Sophia Gregoriev lifted herself suddenly to a sitting posture. Her eyes widened, joyously, upon some distant scene, and a cry of ecstatic wonder broke from her lips. Then, in a breath, the divine ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... his policy was encouraging and bringing round him, as dependents and followers, the members of the mendicant orders—the labourers called to the vineyard in the eleventh hour, as he calls them. These he set to cater for him, and he triumphantly asks, "Among so many of the keenest hunters, what leveret could lie hid? What fry could evade the hook, the net, or the trawl of these men? From ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... with a nervous breakdown and President Walker had at the eleventh hour been able to procure a substitute. The wise President understood very well that there was a cure to his nervous breakdown, but that it had to be taken on the other side of the Atlantic; so she was delighted to hasten his departure. ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... have hard measure: the Quakers are indulged with the liberty denied to us. They are; and dearly have they earned it. You have come in (as a sect, at least) in the cool of the evening, at the eleventh hour. The Quaker character was hardened in the fires of persecution in the seventeenth century,—not quite to the stake and fagot, but little short of that: they grew up and thrived against noisome prisons, cruel beatings, whippings, stockings. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... know it, I believe it, but no one must know. I see it all. She repented of marrying me at the eleventh hour, and ere it was too late she fled with the lover who must have awaited her, in an agony ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... obtained all this information. I only know that it proved correct in each particular. I was not indeed deeply interested before the event, since Raffles assured me that it was "a one-man job," and naturally intended to be the one man himself. It was only at the eleventh hour that our positions were inverted by the wholly unexpected selection of Raffles for the English team ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Messrs. Quirk and Gammon, and then at his juniors, to whom, before the arrival of their clients and Mr. Mortmain, he had been mentioning the essential link which, a month before, he had pointed out as missing, and the marvellous good fortune by which they had been able to supply it at the eleventh hour. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... in one of the front row chairs with Eleanor and Phyllis. In their dressing room, Madge was trying to comfort Lillian, who had lost her courage at the eleventh hour. When the time came for her to go on, however, Lillian forgot her stage fright and made her first entrance with the air of a seasoned trouper. The heavy work of the play lay between Flora Harris and Madge, and in the enactment of the little ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... so that He might lead him to the beatitude of the blessed.... It were better for me to fall into the hands of man than to disobey the command of my Lord." The saint had interpreted the will of God, and the archbishop, sanctioning a sudden rumour that the deceased had received absolution at the eleventh hour, yielded. But the bishop's yielding by no means countenanced the belief that God might, for once, tolerate the body of an excommunicate in sacred ground, far from it—the vision of the abbess Hildegarde had merely served to ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... plainly their highways. The only defenses of these streams were Forts Henry and Donelson—weak works inefficiently garrisoned; for the half million appropriated by Congress for their defense at the eleventh hour could not have been used in time, even had the money ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... at the advisability of separating the too youthful couple, and of giving the Prince military employment until his young wife attained a more mature age; but suggested that some way should be found, even at the eleventh hour, of allying Alfonso ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... good deal of luggage piled on the well, and two ladies sat together on one side. I recognized Hilda at once. The other lady I supposed, quite rightly, to be her mother. I ought, I saw afterward, to have made some effort, even at that eleventh hour, to keep her in play. I do not think I could have succeeded, but it was certainly my duty to try. My nerve unfortunately failed and I simply drove past, raising my hat and bowing ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... the Naval Brigade reads like a fairy story. Ladysmith on the point of exhaustion, with all its troops engaged and no big guns wherewith to meet the terrific assaults of the six-inch cannon on Pepworth Hill, was almost in despair. At the eleventh hour up came the Naval Brigade under Captain the Hon. Hedworth Lambton of H.M.S. Powerful with 280 Bluejackets, two 4.7 guns, and four twelve-and-a-half-pounders. Then the affair was done. It was just one, two, three, and away—for the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... if he had not been faithful to Christ and his mother, the champion of Rome might have offered the fourth opime spoils to the Jupiter of the Capitol. [103] In the battle of Nineveh, which was fiercely fought from daybreak to the eleventh hour, twenty-eight standards, besides those which might be broken or torn, were taken from the Persians; the greatest part of their army was cut in pieces, and the victors, concealing their own loss, passed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... past invitation zone, and Father had been fearfully hoarding his resources at the expense of his friends, to hold out against high charges at a big hotel. There was said to be a very big one indeed, at the Springs, with bills to match; but at the eleventh hour one of Father's devoted band of rich widows (the widows thoughtfully provided for him by deceased financiers) took a furnished cottage there and asked us to visit her. She was an unusually nice widow, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... disturbed the splendidly even and sane and healthy tenor of this tempestuous and incessantly active life, was the night before the introduction of the Home Rule Bill. There are points to be finally settled—clauses to be ultimately fixed—phrases to be polished or pared at the eleventh hour in all human affairs. Measures finally settled and fixed for weeks before the last hour exist—like all perfection—only in the brains and pages of dramatists ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... as planned, it all fell out. Captain Toltbon was put in irons, and Riel declared that for the sake of peace and order he must be shot. Many people came and implored him to spare the condemned man's life; but he was inexorable. "At the eleventh hour," however, as the newspapers put it, ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... I have learned to love you, I have been so wrapped up in my love, with my happiness gilding everything about me, that I have never really faced the prosaic facts of life or discussed with you what our marriage will really necessitate. And now, at this eleventh hour, I realise that I have led you on in ignorance to an act which will perhaps take a great deal of the sunshine out of your life. What have I to offer you in exchange for the sacrifice which you will make for me? Myself, my love, and all that I have—but how little ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... and these I get as the husband of the great heiress. Should I get them as her dependant? No: for more than six years I have built my schemes and shaped my conduct according to one assured and definite object; and that object I shall not now, at the eleventh hour, let slip from my hands. Enough of this: you will pass Brook-Green in returning from Cornwall; you will take Evelyn with you to Paris,—leave the rest to me. Fear no folly, no violence, from my plans, whatever they may be: I work in the dark. Nor do I despair that ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was there to leaven it and justify his high office before Him that consigned the trust; and ever deeper and deeper we sank in the slough of corruption, until was brought about this pass—that naught but some scourging despotism of the Church should acquit us of the fate of Sodom. That such, at the eleventh hour, was vouchsafed us of God's mercy, it is my purpose to show; and, doubtless, this offering of a loop-hole was to account by reason of the devil's having debarked his reserves, as it were, in our port; and so quartering upon us ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... man that came to him at the eleventh hour. This man was idle all the day long. He had a whole gospel day to come in, and he played it all away save only the last hour thereof. But at last, at the eleventh hour, he came, and goes into the vineyard to work with the rest of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "We could have spared him perfectly. What business has he turning up at the eleventh hour? He didn't cross the ocean with her. He didn't suspect her unforgivably. He didn't help her, and disguise himself as a chauffeur for her, and wing Schwartzmann, and bruise up the other chaps and send them rolling in a heap. This is my adventure. He must have had a hundred. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... referendum, upon petition of at least 10,000 legal voters filed within a specified time. The effort to secure these names lagged and without doubt would have been given up had it not been for Frank E. Mace, former State Forest Commissioner, who organized committees all over the State at the eleventh hour and petitions bearing 12,000 signatures were filed July 3, within 90 days after the Legislature adjourned, as required. As there was doubt about the constitutionality of this referendum, the State Supreme Court, on July 9, 1919, was requested by Governor Milliken ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... rapidly: the working-classes plunged daily deeper and deeper into misery and starvation, ready to listen to the most desperate suggestions: and a Government bewildered with a consciousness of incompetency, and of the swiftly approaching consequences of their misrule, at the eleventh hour—on the eve of a general election— suddenly resolving (in the language of their own leader) to stir society to its foundations, by proposing a wild and ruinous alteration in the Corn-Laws, declaring that it, and it only, would bring cheap bread to the doors of the very poorest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... it is to be presumed she intends asking some other company. I cannot possibly disappoint her. I can speak feelingly as to the annoyance (for I have known it by my own experience) when after inviting a number of my friends to meet some strangers, the strangers have sent an excuse almost at the eleventh hour. I think no inducements, however strong, could tempt me ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... e'en in the final hour, 'spite of his creed of crime, His ruthless heart and fierce belief, love triumphed for a time. "Irene! girl!" he wildly prayed, "brave not Rome's fearful power! Mad as thou art, she'll pardon thee, e'en in the eleventh hour; Cast but one grain of incense on yon bright and sacred fire, And outraged as thy rulers are, 'twill ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... had been "nipped;" how, after inconceivable toil, the members of the expedition had gained the land; how they had marched southward toward the Chuckch settlements; how, at the eleventh hour, the survivors, exhausted and starving, had been rescued by the steam whalers; how these whalers themselves had been caught in the ice, and how the survivors of the Freja had been obliged to spend another winter in the Arctic. She learned the details ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Island, on the north side of the harbour, is situated Coal Head, where a party had been lately at work. This party, hastily withdrawn by Vickers to assist in the business of devastation, had left behind it some tools and timber, and at the eleventh hour a boat's crew was sent to bring away the debris. The tools were duly collected, and the pine logs—worth twenty-five shillings apiece in Hobart Town—duly rafted and chained. The timber was secured, and the convicts, towing ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... prejudged scientific opponents, or the subtlety of orthodox special pleaders, have yet exerted their full force in mystifying the real issues of the great controversy which has been set afoot, and whose end is hardly likely to be seen by this generation; so that, at this eleventh hour, and even failing anything new, it may be useful to state afresh that which is true, and to put the fundamental positions advocated by Mr. Darwin in such a form that they may be grasped by those whose special studies lie in other ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... as strong as it was simple. There had never been any people to shake her convictions with arguments, nor books to suggest doubts. And now in her soul she had called for help and she believed it would come even at the eleventh hour. ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... house. Suddenly the watchman's horn is heard in the distance. Every one rushes off, and the street is left to the quiet moonlight and the quaint old watchman, who paces up the street solemnly proclaiming the eleventh hour. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the last—the letter he wrote to encourage me, when I hesitated as the terrible time came nearer and nearer; the letter that revived me when my resolution failed at the eleventh hour. I read on, line after line, till ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the name 'Mr. Gastrell' was also in the passenger list, because a cousin of mine should have been on board. At the eleventh hour he was prevented from sailing, and it was upon receipt of a cable from him that I decided to catch the next boat to the Canaries ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... But Diana's nature had been ennobled and fortified by the mental struggle and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and she was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her father's even at this eleventh hour. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... management of things. Vandover, he made his protege, taking over the charge of such business as the two had in common. It was he who had found the room in Matthew's, getting it away from all other applicants, securing it at the eleventh hour. He put Vandover's name on the waiting list at Memorial, saw that he filled out his blanks at the proper time, helped him balance his accounts, guided him in the choice of his courses and in the making out of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... their master-spirits and spokesmen, spared the shame of their duplicity in those early days of August 1914. A large group of them, including commercial and professional men, drew up a long address to the neutral countries, in which they said that down to the eleventh hour they had "never dreamt of war," never thought of depriving other nations of light and air or of thrusting anybody from his place. And yet the ink of their protest was not yet dry when they gave themselves the lie by showing that down to the last detail of preparation they ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... overwhelming. If Lord Dreever's statement was correct and Jimmy had really succeeded in winning Molly's affection, this would indeed be a rescue at the eleventh hour. It was with a Nunc-Dimittis air that he felt for his cigar-case, and extended it toward the detective. A cigar from his own private case was with him a mark of supreme favor and good-will, a sort of accolade which he bestowed only upon ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... House (Sir C. Grogram, Devonport) said that...." The words came haltingly to my ears as the man's voice followed the jerks of the little instrument "... the Government obviously could not ... alter its policy at ... eleventh hour ... at dictates of ... quite irresponsible person in one of ... the daily ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... can only bid your ladyship farewell," said the offended Major, with a ceremonious bow. Then turning to me: "Good-bye, my dear Miss Janet, for the present. Even at this, the eleventh hour, I must intercede with Lady Chillington to grant you permission to come and spend part of next week with us at ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... new plan had not been successful, after all; it had failed ignominiously at the eleventh hour. A great deal of effort had been expended in the private office of this director and that, and a futile attempt made to bring four or five of them together at the office of the bank itself, that the matter might be clenched and the contract signed. But the directors were elusive, and cost ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... played by George Powell, a vigorous and passionate actor, who also spoke a new prologue written for the nonce by Cibber, then a mere struggler in the ranks. Colley's verses were accepted at the eleventh hour in default of better, and he tells us how chagrined he was not to be allowed to deliver them in person. The house was very full the first day, but on the morrow it was empty, probably owing to the inexperience of many of the actors and a too ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... anvil rose above the thousand lesser noises of the castle courts, the shouting of commands, the rattle of steel, the ringing of iron hoof on stone flags, as these artificers hastened, sweating and cursing, through the eleventh hour repairs to armor, lance and sword, or to reset a shoe upon a refractory, ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the company that had reached Bellecour in the eleventh hour, to claim the attention of the assailants. But the peasants, as we have seen, were by no means disposed to submit to interference, and this they signified by the menacing front they showed the military, abandoning their attack upon the Chateau until they should be clear concerning ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... think over it a while. You can keep back your invitation till the very last minute, you know, for if you do decide to let Clara have it, she will be glad to accept even at the eleventh hour, I am sure." ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... met to discuss again all phases of the contest; the freshness of the dogs, the stamina of the men, the possibility of accidents; for a broken harness, a refractory leader, an error in judgment, may mean overwhelming defeat at the eleventh hour. ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... eleventh hour the Committee stage of the Coal Commission Bill in the Commons was not encouraging. The Labour representatives moved amendment after amendment, designed either to wreck the measure or to make the Commission a mere registration-office to approve ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... effort to reform her, at the eleventh hour, the Regent packed de Riom off to his regiment. A few days later, the Duchesse invited her father to a sumptuous banquet on the terrace at Meudon, at which, regardless of her delicate health, she ate and drank more voraciously than ever. The same evening she was taken ill; and when, on ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... drawing back. He had cast in his lot with the army, and he meant to fight his very best that day; but he realized the hopelessness of the contest before them, and although, if the General could only be aroused in time to a sense of his own blunder, and would at the eleventh hour order up the cannon, and take those steps which might ensure success, the tide of battle might soon be turned. Yet no man felt any confidence in him as a leader, and it was only the ignorant soldiers, unaware of what lay before them, who rose to greet the coming day with hope and confidence ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... plane of evolution and attempt to give them an enlightenment for which the stronger races have prepared themselves by ages of growth." There is in this utterance a tinge of the feeling which actuated the laborers who had borne the heat and burden of the day when they objected to the eleventh hour intruders being received on equal terms with themselves. One answer suffices for both: "Other men have labored, and ye are entered into their labors." It is true that the Negro misses evolution and his adjustment to his environment is made the more difficult on that account. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... chapel. A sorrow nobly borne confers a kind of moral rank. Her neighbors, with respect and pity, stood aside silently. She appeared to be quite unconscious of them. At Phyllis and Elizabeth she looked with great sad eyes, and shook her head mournfully. To the preacher she said, "It's t' eleventh hour, sir, and ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... MASTER,-I am well. I slept a little more than usual for my slight cold, which seems to be well again. So I spent the time from the eleventh hour of the night to the third of the day partly in reading in Cato's Agriculture, partly in writing, not quite so badly as yesterday indeed. Then, after waiting upon my father, I soothed my throat with honey-water, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... contrast, they at the same time record that of faithful souls, who, upheld by its strength, never swerved from their allegiance to God. They tell of saintly penitents, dating their first correspondence with its inspirations from the eleventh hour, and of docile hearts, obedient from earliest childhood to its voice. They show us, side by side, profaned temples re-consecrated, and holy sanctuaries never sullied; scentless flowers restored to fragrance, and garlands of purity from which not a blossom or even ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... he valued his soul's health, to detail the particulars of his crime, but his eye fell. That dark enemy, who takes care to leave in the heart just hope enough to keep despair alive, tongue-tied him, and he would not—even now, at the eleventh hour—give up the vain imagination that the case of his companion might yet be confounded with his, to the escape of both—and vain it was. It had not been felt advisable so far to make him acquainted with the truth, that this had already been sifted and decided; and I judged this to be the time. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... to sleep I was made to recognize a new factor in the conditions of navigation, now that the tideless Baltic was left behind us. A strong current was sluicing past our sides, and at the eleventh hour I was turned out, clad in pyjamas and oilskins (a horrible combination), to assist in running out a kedge ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... camels—the company camel would already be over-weighted by the mess box and X.'s valise—with its extra blanket and extravagant under-clothing. Great would be the searchings of heart. Still everything always came right in the end—the Brigade sent us some "buckshee" camels at the eleventh hour, or at worst we got permission to send some stuff by train, when it could be delivered in due course somewhere within reach. Something always did have to go by train anyway, for we had now a second blanket per man, and there were not enough camels to carry these, so that ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... more tricky. I had to get plain proof that my man was a spy in the dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the very last minute, but to make dead certain of stopping him at the fifty-fifth second of the eleventh hour." ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... been made were great, the evil of civil war obvious, the advantages even of victory doubtful. The former errors of the King might be imputed to youth, to the pressure of circumstances, to the influence of evil counsel, to the undefined state of the law. We firmly believe that if, even at this eleventh hour, Charles had acted fairly towards his people, if he had even acted fairly towards his own partisans, the House of Commons would have given him a fair chance of retrieving the public confidence. Such was the opinion of Clarendon. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... At the eleventh hour Dmitrieff grasped the situation and applied to Ivanoff for reenforcements. Owing to some blunder the appeal never reached the Russian chief, and Dmitrieff had to do the best he could. Nothing now could save his small force from those grim lines of gaping muzzles ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... 1 of the Military Convention. As this article originally stood, the promise of mutual support was expressly limited to the "case of war between Greece and Bulgaria or between Servia and Bulgaria." It was altered at the eleventh hour at Servia's request, and not without objections on the part of Greek military men, into a "case of war between one of the allied States and a third Power breaking out under the circumstances foreseen by ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... me, very good," he said, fervently. "His habit is to move in mystery, yet sometimes he permits us to think we see and understand him. I am old, dear, and must go; but now, in this eleventh hour, when my hope was beginning to die, he sends me this one with a promise, and I am lifted up. I see the way to a great part in a circumstance itself so great that it shall be as a new birth to the whole world. And I see a reason for the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the door. I had entered the house, armed in my own mind with a last desperate resolve, only to be communicated to him, or to anybody, in the final emergency and at the eleventh hour. The time had come for saying what I had hoped with my whole ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... slothful servant in thy family, an idle laborer in thy vineyard, 'an unfruitful branch,' a poor dwarfish member in thy body. Grant, O grant a little fruit on the topmost bough. O, at the 'eleventh hour' may I begin to work, to bear some fruit, to the glory of that grace by which my soul is saved from the wages of sin, death, and hell, and made heir, by free gift, of the wages of righteousness, eternal life, and glory. I wait ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... YEARS Condensed Word-Picture of the Happenings of the Most Momentous Fifty-two Months in All History—Leading Up to the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... "At the eleventh hour, when I had begun to despair of his recovery, the doctor reported the patient restored to his senses. I then told him, Doctor Benoit, that the very moment Evan Lamotte was able to listen, and ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... in the island, the report brought back by Escobar must have completely disappointed him. No time was to be lost if he wished to claim any merit in his deliverance, or to avoid the disgrace of having totally neglected him. He exerted himself, therefore, at the eleventh hour, and dispatched a caravel at the same time with the ship sent by Diego Mendez. The latter, having faithfully discharged this part of his mission, and seen the ships depart, proceeded to Spain on the further concerns of the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... cut at last week's party, and commendably determined to try and remedy his defects, to the mature business- or even professional-man, humiliated because his accomplished wife's every sentence made him feel ashamed of his squandered youth, and so constrained, at the eleventh hour, to employ a private tutor—it is difficult for me not to recognize that in a country where the children enjoy so many privileges, where they are taught regularly, systematically, patiently, conscientiously—where, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... capture of Berber a small British force left Siut, on the Nile, for Assuan; but this move, which would have sent a thrill through the Sudan in March, had little effect at midsummer. Even so, a prompt advance on Dongola and thence on Berber would probably have saved the situation at the eleventh hour. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... siding with Prinsloo on the question of a surrender, had it destroyed whilst Prinsloo's was forwarded. This settled the whole affair. The positions were evacuated, and in part occupied by the enemy. Still, at the eleventh hour, there was a possibility of escape. The long trail of waggons would have been captured, but most, if not all, the burghers could have found their way out. But no, they were to be duped by a set of unscrupulous ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... still delayed by the two stouts. I have just attempted to chat over the affair with JESSIMINA and Madame MANKLETOW, and ascertain whether the former will not accept myself at the eleventh hour as payment in full of all damages, costs, &c. Mrs M. replies that the jurymen are notoriously in favour of her daughter, and that she would as soon see her in gates of grave as the bride of a black man. On closer approach to JESSIMINA, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... For a moment that day the earl had aroused his anger, as you may have judged from the sudden resolve upon which he had acted when he delivered him that letter, thus embarking at the eleventh hour upon a task which he had already determined to abandon. He knew not now whether to rejoice or deplore that he had acted upon that angry impulse. He knew not, indeed, whether to pity or despise this man who was swayed by no such high motives as must have affected ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... all the doubts concerning Prescott and Holmes. Now they were the most sensational players in the Army team. Justly Brayton received his full share of credit both for taking on Prescott and Holmes at the eleventh hour, and also for carrying out so cleverly his own captain's part of the strategy that had won. Lehigh's team went off the field dejected. The visitors had counted on victory as theirs. There was a noticeable silence among the Lehigh "boosters" as they clambered ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... back, his face white and tense. Had his plans failed at the eleventh hour, could anyone have played him false? If the game was up, they should never take him alive. Leaving Helen, he drew a revolver, and, going quickly into the inner hall, he waited in grim silence for the visitors to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... with Jean and Pierre, and live till these wars are forgotten," Joan muttered; "and at the eleventh hour Noel and the Paladin will join these, but not of their own desire." The voice was so low that I was not perfectly sure that these were the words, but they seemed to be. It makes one feel creepy to hear ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... between the gorges of throttling mountain. The failure of the Italians to achieve what here upon the ground appears so simple delivered Italy hand-bound to strangers. Had they but succeeded in arresting Charles and destroying his forces at Fornovo, it is just possible that then—even then, at the eleventh hour—Italy might have gained the sense of national coherence, or at least have proved herself capable of holding by her leagues the foreigner at bay. As it was, the battle of Fornovo, in spite of Venetian bonfires and Mantuan Madonnas of Victory, made her conscious of incompetence and convicted her ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the place of punishment Reynard tried to think of some plan by means of which he could save himself even at the eleventh hour; and knowing that some scheme would occur to him if he could only gain a little time, he humbly implored permission to make a public confession of his manifold sins ere he paid the penalty of his crimes. Anxious to hear all he might have to say, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... clock of the church on the hill sent the mournful tones of the eleventh hour over the silent city. Charles counted the solemn booms of the church bell, and then, as if resuming the conversation with Henry: "Eleven o'clock, and father not come home yet! I am sure I don't know what keeps father out every night so late; if poor mother were alive, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... I see! it was for this that I was preserved: I to be a sort of new-fangled Adam—and this little creature to be my Eve! That is it! The White does not admit defeat: he would recommence the Race again! At the last, the eleventh hour—in spite of all—he would turn defeat into victory, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel |
