"Infirm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men who had gone for Andrew were much too infirm to get close to "The Falcon." For with the daylight her work had begun, and she was surrounded on all sides by a melee of fishing-boats. Some were discharging their boxes of fish; others were struggling to get some point of vantage; others again fighting to escape the uproar. The ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... altogether the legitimate commander of the Two Hundredth Volunteers. During all his late visits to the farm, and especially since the defection and ostracism of Richard, he had made his "strong point" in paying great attention to the infirm old gentleman; and as personal attention is always pleasant and flattering, and more particularly so to the old, crippled, tedious and tiresome, he had succeeded in winning a place in the old man's ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... following is Bligh's character of Judge Atkins—"He has been accustomed to inebriety—he has been the ridicule of the community, sentence of death has been pronounced in moments of intoxication, his determination is weak, his opinions floating and infirm, his knowledge of the law insignificant and subject to private inclination; and confidential cases of the crown, where due secresy is required, he is not to be trusted with." (Letter to Secretary of State.) Yet Atkins was ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Boy' to hundreds. It is in the character of the old man to tell his story, which an impatient reader must feel tedious. But, good heavens! such a figure, in such a place; a pious, self-respecting, miserably infirm and pleased old man ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... the equal in conversation of any of the great men with whom he was brought in contact, without being great himself, thereby resembling Louis XIV. He had handsome features, a musical voice, pleasing manners, and singular urbanity, without being condescending. He was infirm in his legs, which prevented him from taking exercise, except in his long daily drives, drawn in his magnificent carriage by eight horses, with outriders ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... which was much in my mind during my week's stay at Norton. That remote little village without a squire or any person of means or education in or near it capable of feeling the slightest interest in the people, except the parson, an old infirm man who was never seen but once a week—how wanting in some essential thing it appeared! It seemed to me that the one thing which might be done in these small centres of rural life to brighten and beautify existence is precisely the thing which is never done, also that what really is being ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... reputation by leading several plundering expeditions into England. In 1389 after his elder brother John, earl of Carrick, had been incapacitated by an accident, and when his father the king was old and infirm, he was chosen governor of Scotland by the estates; and he retained the control of affairs after his brother John became king as Robert III. in 1390. In April 1308 he was created duke of Albany; but in the following year his nephew David, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... way to pauperism themselves are exclusively burdened with the support of the vagrant poor? It is like putting additional weight on a man already sinking under the burden he bears. The landlords suppose, that because the maintenance of the idle who are able, and of the aged and infirm who are not able to work, comes upon the renters of land, they themselves are exempted from their support. This, if true, is as bitter a stigma upon their humanity as upon their sense of justice: but it is not true. Though the cost of supporting such an incredible ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... of a laudatory inscription. It can still be seen in the cloisters of the monastery: "Here lies the body of Crescentius, the illustrious, the honorable citizen of Rome, the great leader, the great descendant of a great family," etc. "Christ the Saviour of our souls made him infirm and an invalid, so that, abandoning any further hope of worldly success, he entered this monastery, and spent his last years in ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... your sake, but for my own; that I may endeavour to relieve myself of sensations that oppress me. I feel it incumbent on me to write; yet what can I say? I have no words. I despair of any opportunity of retribution: I am aged, infirm, and feeble. I am going down to the grave; but still I have life enough to revive and feel a new existence, at the recital of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... commoted and made uncomfortable thereby. This species of nervous sympathy (though a pretty characteristic enough, sentimentally considered, and apparently betokening an actual bond of love among us) was yet found rather inconvenient in its practical operation, mortal tempers being so infirm and variable as they are. If one of us happened to give his neighbor a box on the ear, the tingle was immediately felt on the same side of everybody's head. Thus, even on the supposition that we were far less quarrelsome than ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the despotic sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia in their crusade against liberal ideas in other countries. Against these difficulties, and many more, Louis XVIII. had to contend. He was an infirm man, physically incapable of exertion,—a man who only wanted to be let alone, and to avoid by every means in his power the calamity of ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... you a word of precaution. That is a bad man. Negroes would rather be sold to a sugar plantation in Louisiana any time than be sold to him. He soon works them down; in two years, fine, healthy fellows become lame, infirm, and sickly under him; he never gives them a holiday, and seldom a Sunday, and half-starves them at that. If his feelings had been in a peculiar mood at the instant you cut that cord, and he had not ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... priests [o], enrolled their names; and to decline this meritorious service, was branded with the reproach of impiety, or what perhaps was esteemed still more disgraceful, of cowardice and pusillanimity [p]. The infirm and aged contributed to the expedition by presents and money; and many of them, not satisfied with the merit of this atonement, attended it in person, and were determined, if possible, to breathe their last in sight of that city where their Saviour ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... I have a strong idea, perhaps more deeply impressed upon me by subsequent hard usage, that I was during my childhood the object of much solicitude and affection. I have an indistinct remembrance of a good-looking man whom I used to call papa, and of a lady who was infirm in health, and who, I think, must have been my mother but it is an imperfect and confused recollection. I remember too a tall thin kind tempered man in black, who used to teach me my letters and walk out with me;—and I ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Canada. Meeting by accident at the Chateau of Meudon near Paris, they planned their enterprise, and decided to found a colony of devotees, composed of an order of priests, an order of sisters to care for the sick and infirm, and an order of nuns for the teaching of young Indians and the children of settlers at the mission. These two enthusiasts went to work in a quite practical way to realize their ambition. They succeeded in interesting the Baron de Fancamp and three other wealthy gentlemen, and soon had a sum—about ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... and last wife, and an ardent Protestant and reformer, also narrowly escaped, and would undoubtedly at last have gone to the block. But Henry, who at fifty-six was infirm and wrecked in health, died in the year 1547, the signing of death-warrants being his occupation ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... O'Meara came to stay at Lisconnel on sick leave. The O'Mearas lived in one of the three cabins which used to stand near the O'Beirne's forge, but which the great Famine and Fever year left tenantless for ever after. Their household consisted of the two infirm old people with their melancholy middle-aged son Tim, and their sickly grandson, little Joe Egan, who was Denis's cousin. Now Denis had been wounded in a battle somewhere out in India, and had been promoted sergeant—"and he but a young ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... readers will see little more than the essential difference between Christianity and Paganism. But this, on consideration, I doubt. The Christian Church may be right in its estimate of sudden death; and it is a natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that which seems most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... replied to letters, directed the affairs of the house, received information and letters from her spies, and returned to Versailles just as the King was ready to enter her rooms. When older and more infirm, she would lie down in bed on arriving between seven and eight o'clock in the morning at Saint-Cyr, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... situation to give annoyance for that day, as a sick-headache seized her and she kept her room. Infirm of will, purely social in her marriage relations, and never aiming higher than respectability, she missed the coarse mark of her husband who, with all his moral defections, probably was her moral equal, his vital standard higher, his tone a genial hypocrisy, and at bottom ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... mentally infirm—that is, persons who, through mental infirmity arising from age or decay of their faculties, are incapable of managing themselves or ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... at the winds; for though they cannot properly be said to be infirmities of trees; yet they are amongst the principal causes that render trees infirm. I know no surer protection against them, than (as we said) to shelter and stake them whilst they are young, till they have well establish'd roots; and with this caution, that in case any goodly trees (which you would desire especially to preserve and redress) chance to be prostrated ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... body of the infirm they form a canopy of medicinal herbs; the Ala and the company present paint themselves in the most horrible manner possible and as soon as it is quite dark (any sort of light is absolutely forbidden) they dispose ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... to hers. "You?" he asked. And then he tried to approach her, but he had become too infirm. ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... right hand. Now this sanctification is not That holiness which is in us, but that Which in the person of this Jesus is, And can inherently be only his. But is imputed to us for our good. As is his active righteousness and blood; Which is the cause, though we infirm are found, That mercy and forgiveness doth abound To us-ward, and that why we are not shent[16] And empty, and away rebuked sent, Because that all we do imperfect is. Bless God, then, for this holiness of his, And learn to look by faith on that alone, When thou seest thou ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lies, for anybody to gloat over that wants to—and there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest. How I should like to describe her—just to see what a holy indignation I could stir up in the world—just to hear the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my grossness and ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... helpless, than an equal number in Southern slavery. In slavery the stripes fall upon the evil disposed, vicious, buck negro fellows. But when removed from the white man's authority, the latter make them fall on helpless women and children, the weak and the infirm. Good conduct, so far from being ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... distress; it is this pity which, in a state of nature, stands for laws, for manners, for virtue, with this advantage, that no one is tempted to disobey her sweet and gentle voice: it is this pity which will always hinder a robust savage from plundering a feeble child, or infirm old man, of the subsistence they have acquired with pain and difficulty, if he has but the least prospect of providing for himself by any other means: it is this pity which, instead of that sublime maxim of argumentative ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... There were no marriage laws. Two-thirds of the children born were destroyed. If an infant was ailing or troublesome, the mother scooped a hole in the ground, covered the child with earth and trampled out its life. The aged and infirm were taken to the brow of a precipice and pushed over. The sick were removed to such a distance that their groans could not annoy, and left to die. The insane were ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... elm, and Wealth the vine, Stanch and strong the tendrils twine; Through the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm. Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim the sea, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to droop, she ceased to sing at her work, her face grew wan, yellow and sad. Yet still she worked—there were no servants to distress her—and when her own work was done she went out among the neighbors and helped them—she cared for the sick, the infirm, she dressed the new-born babe, and closed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... in the court-yard of the prison, while without the prison stood the usual armed soldier, about two dozen trucks for the baggage, and the infirm convicts, and on the corner a crowd of relatives and friends of the convicts, waiting for a chance to see the exiles as they emerged from the prison, and, if possible, to have a last few words with them, or deliver some things they had brought ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... in Christ was eighty-two years of age, and exceedingly infirm; from whence it was supposed, that he could scarcely be heard. However, when he was taken to the place of execution, he expressed his religious sentiments with such courage, and at the same time composure of mind, as astonished even his enemies. As soon as he was fastened ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Elias Dayton, who was to proceed to Johnstown, "and give notice to the Highlanders, who live in the vicinity of the town, to repair to it; and when any number are collected there, you will send off their baggage, infirm women and children, in wagons." Sir John was to be taken prisoner, carefully guarded and brought to Albany, but "he is by no means to experience the least ill-treatment in his own person, or those of his family."[118] General Schuyler had previously written (May 10th) to Sir ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... city. Nobles, artisans, peasants, even priests, enrolled their names; and to decline this meritorious service was branded with the reproach of impiety, or, what perhaps was esteemed still more disgraceful, of cowardice and pusillanimity. The infirm and aged contributed to the expedition by presents and money; and many of them, not satisfied with the merit of this atonement, attended it in person, and were determined, if possible, to breathe their last in sight of that city where their Saviour had died ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... observed in him from the first a marked coldness about his marriage and other private circumstances, a coldness which he had hitherto preferred to any warmth of familiarity between them. He deferred the intention from day to day, his habit of acting on his conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every possible conclusion and its consequent act. He saw Mr. Bulstrode often, but he did not try to use any occasion for his private purpose. At one moment he thought, "I will write a letter: I prefer that to any circuitous talk;" at another he thought, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... said the missionary, "like only processions in the open air. When I last celebrated the festival of San Antonio, the patron of my village, the Indians of Inirida were present at mass. 'Your God,' said they to me, 'keeps himself shut up in a house, as if he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains come.'" Among the more numerous, and on this account less barbarous tribes, religious societies of a singular kind are formed. Some old Indians pretend ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Syria and Cilicia, of Africa and Spain, was awakened by the trumpet which proclaimed a holy war against the infidels. The rich were ambitious of death or victory in the cause of God; the poor were allured by the hopes of plunder; and the old, the infirm, and the women, assumed their share of meritorious service by sending their substitutes, with arms and horses, into the field. These offensive and defensive arms were similar in strength and temper to those of the Romans, whom they far excelled ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... facts, at first took sides with him and assailed us. These attacks, of course, had no effect upon the man's case; but, after he had remained in prison for several weeks, on understanding that his health was infirm, and being satisfied that he had been sufficiently ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... old carts, both of which had lost a wheel. Everything was in keeping. At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a decrepit and infirm old man at the angle of the house, its fit occupant. The grass, however, was very green and beautiful around this dwelling, and, the sunshine falling brightly on it, the whole effect was cheerful and pleasant. It seemed as if the world was so glad that this desolate old place, where there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Marchese. An idea was started at one moment that the old friar at St. Apollinare might have been the man. Strangely enough he also was in or near the Pineta much about the same time. But the total absence of all assignable motive—an infirm octogenarian; no, that is not it. But the truth is, Signor Marchese, that our inquiries with reference to this Padre Fabiano have brought to light facts which tend to make the case stronger against the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... and apologized for having broken the silence imposed upon him by Pope Paul; he offered to go into retirement again; stated that he was old, infirm, without funds, and excused himself from obeying the order to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to give such Comitions to somebody else; as I never could be the author of any such advice, so I am incapable of acting in an affair that will do you, Sir, infinite prejudice, and cover me with dishonour, and am, besides these Considerations, grown so infirm that I beg your R.H. will be graciously pleased to give me leave to retire. . . . I may have been mistaken in some things, which I hope you will pardon, I do not write this as my own opinion, but really to get your affairs in a true light. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... to so strict an observance of its fasts, as proved extremely injurious to her health. Upon which Dr. Denton Nicholas, a very ingenious learned physician of her acquaintance, advised her to abate of those rigours of abstinence, as insupportable to a constitution naturally infirm. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... lamp," is mistaken. Men who occupy such a high position must be well tested, faithful men. Do they not hold in their hands the lives of emigrants seeking foreign shores for work—good successful traders, bringing home their savings to make widowed mothers, or aged and infirm fathers happy—sailor lads, for whose return fair English maidens pray with love's longing, and little children, who are to grow up into statesmen, philanthropists, and deliverers? Would it do for light-house-keepers to be men who trembled ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... purchased. That they should not work on Sundays and other holy-days. That extra labour, or night-work, out of crop, should be prohibited. That a limited number of stripes should be inflicted upon them. That they should have annually a suit of clothes. That old infirm slaves should be properly cared for, &c.—Now it can hardly be conceived, that if this author had tried to injure his cause, or contradict himself, he could not have done it in a more effectual ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... sometimes owe their success to the misfortune which weights them. They seldom know beforehand how far they are going to reach, and this helps them; for if they knew the greatness of the task before them they would not attempt it. He who knows he is infirm, and would yet climb, does not think of the summit which he believes to be beyond his reach but climbs slowly onwards, taking very short steps, looking below as often as he likes but not above him, never trying his powers but seldom ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... understands that she has no business in the building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the principal door; while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the Universe. But the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the densest part of Bethnal Green. Their abstraction from the objects ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the wailings of terrified women, the infirm condition of the aged, and the helplessness of childhood; such as strove to provide for themselves and those who labored to assist others; these dragging the feeble, those waiting for them; some hurrying, others lingering; altogether created a scene of universal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... signifies a hut or cottage surrounded by a garden. The word ipure has the same signification.) A narrow path leads from the hill of San Francisco across the forest to the hospital of the Capuchins, a very agreeable country-house, which the Aragonese monks have built as a retreat for old infirm missionaries, who can no longer fulfil the duties of their ministry. As we advance to the west, the trees of the forest become more vigorous, and we meet with a few monkeys,* (* The common machi, or weeping monkey.) ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... reason, beside the torture of boiling water, they inflicted others upon her. They made her stand upright a long time upon a small rock, threatening her with insults and affronts; but the more they insisted, the stronger they found her. The others, being weak and infirm, were not tortured so long, because the tyrant did not intend to kill them, but only to conquer them; and for this reason they had, during the whole time, a physician upon the mountain ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... suggestion; she only stood there with a dim, though not a languid smile, and with an effect of irresponsible, incompetent youth which was almost comically at variance with the faded facts of her person. She was not infirm, like her aunt, but she struck me as still more helpless, because her inefficiency was spiritual, which was not the case with Miss Bordereau's. I waited to see if she would offer to show me the rest of the ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... was more in the infirmary; and had oftener a warm seat by the fire, and was spoken to with more deference. But this might be solely owing to the way she made with the people by her own acts and manners. The invalids and the infirm grew so fond of her that they poured out to her all their complaints. She was favored with the knowledge of every painful sensation as it passed, and every uneasy thought as ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... zeal Upon the institution of the Visitation Order His defence of his new Congregation of the Visitation Upon the odour of sanctity He rebukes Pharisaism Upon religious Superiors Upon unlearned Superiors Upon the founding of Convents Upon receiving the infirm into Communities Upon self pity Upon the government of Nuns by religious men That we must not be wedded to our own plans His views regarding Ecclesiastical dignities His promotion to the Bishopric of Geneva and ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... story is confirmed by every subsequent narration. It would be not worth so minute a record, were it not the triumph of liberty as well as of superstition. The states of Lombardy owed to it the confirmation of their privileges; and Alexander had reason to thank the Almighty, who had enabled an infirm, unarmed old man to subdue a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Miani, at the same period founded a congregation, called the Somascan, for the education of the destitute and orphaned, and for the reception of the sick and infirm into hospitals. The terrible state in which Lombardy had been left by war rendered this institution highly valuable. Of a similar type was the order of the Barnabites, who were first incorporated at Milan, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Church-Articles are surely articles of price to him; and in these times one has to be tolerant of many strange 'Articles,' and of many still stranger 'No-articles,' which go about placarding themselves in a very distracted manner,—the numerous long placard-poles, and questionable infirm paste-pots, interfering ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... before, had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard fighting, had now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he may be called in history, he was known in camps and on the battlefield under the nickname of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gate he was run into by a man who came rushing out of the yard, in a state of violent agitation. In this man's hand was something that glittered, and though the encounter nearly upset them both, he had not stopped to utter an apology, but stumbled away out of sight with a hasty but infirm step, which showed he was neither young nor active. The minister had failed to see his face, but noticed the ends of a long beard blowing over his ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... charitable thoughts, and on good deeds intent, kissing the little children, giving a rosy apple to one, and a playful tap to another; offering a sly word of hope to the young girls, and a few kind ones to the aged and infirm,—all the village is elated; and the old maids fail not to present him with a fat fowl, or some such substantial expression of their respect. But if, alas! the good cure should appear walking with a slow and solemn step, his hands behind his back, his eyes fixed upon the ground, and ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... greediness, it is a very pitiful thing, I remember an old lady who lived with her son in a small parsonage full of boisterous children. They were very good to her, but she was sadly in the way. She herself had lost almost all interest in life; she was deaf and infirm and cross. She was condemned to eat the plainest of food; and I used to see her mumbling little slices of stale bread, and looking with malignant envy at the children eating big hunches of heavy cake. It was impossible to give her any pleasure, and she had no ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that kind of annoyance at all events," she answered without hesitation, making the promise, not because she was infirm of purpose, but because she was indefinite; she had no impulse at the time to do anything, and no notion that she would ever feel impelled to act in opposition to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... convent; this had thoroughly aroused the abbe's suspicions, in spite of his first enthusiasm at the penitence of the sinner. The Carmelites had persecuted him in his youth, and in the end the prior had driven him to secularize himself. The prior was still alive, old but implacable; infirm, and withdrawn from the world, but strong in his hatred, and his passion for intrigue. The abbe could not hear his name without shuddering, and he begged me to ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... appears that the common practice of reading all three together, is an innovation, and if an ancient or infirm clergyman do read them at two or three several times, he is more strictly conformable; however, this is much better than to omit any part of the liturgy, or to read all three offices into one, as is now commonly done, without any ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... extended, generally in the direction of better education, more technical and practical and less "classical."[1] Charity includes a largely increased recreation for the people, State provision for many more classes of the invalid and incompetent, specialized homes for various sorts of infirm or inebriate, and some little charity in the guise of bounties of seed, etc., to needy farmers, which latter, however, have usually been ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... and was seen no more: But whether o'er the waters, as of old Footing that Galilean Sea, with faith Not now infirm he reached the southern shore, Or passed from sight as one whom crowds conceal, The fisher knew not. At the tent arrived, Before its little door he bent, and lo! Within, there knelt a venerable man With ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... there issued out a clear Spring of Water, at which a Soldier alighted from his Horse to drink. He was no sooner gone than a little Boy came to the same Place, and finding a Purse of Gold which the Soldier had dropped, took it up and went away with it. Immediately after this came an infirm old Man, weary with Age and Travelling, and having quenched his Thirst, sat down to rest himself by the Side of the Spring. The Soldier missing his Purse returns to search for it, and demands it of the old Man, who affirms he had not seen it, and appeals to Heaven in witness of his Innocence. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... upon seats, visiting or in business conference, their fingers occupied with watermelon seeds or with packages of cooked snails. Along the pathway leading to the pagoda beggars had distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of two or three hundred feet, asking alms, most of them infirm with age or in some other way physically disabled. We saw but one who appeared ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... facilitated by the previous efforts of our guides. We were constantly walking over ground strewed with crumbling blocks of ice, the recent fall of which was proved by their sharp white fractures, and with a thing like an infirm toad stool twenty feet high, towering above our heads. Once we passed under a natural arch of ice, built in evident disregard of all principles of architectural stability. Hurrying judiciously at such critical points, and creeping slowly round those where the footing was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... eight hogsheads of tobacco and sixty barrels of flour, but ran aground at Smith's point, sprung a leak, and was obliged to return to Baltimore to refit. Having stopped his leak, he took his cargo on board again, and his health being infirm, he engaged Captain William M'Neil* to go with him, and on the 20th of June sailed for Norfolk in Virginia, and, on the 22nd, came to in Hampton road, at the mouth of the river on which Norfolk is. Learning here, that tobacco would be better than flour for ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... voluminous philosophical dissertation on the subject, whilst the Filipinos sought brief facts and tangible conditions. The Filipinos then offered to address a note to the Spanish Consul in Manila to the effect that the prisoners who were infirm would be delivered at certain ports as already stated, and that he could send ships for them on certain terms. Still the commissioners lingered in Tarlac, and on October 23 the Filipinos made the following ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... in Ireland. They would have gone last autumn, but for Guy's illness, and now Aunt Charlotte wrote to hasten the performance of the project. Lady Mabel was very anxious to see them, she said; and having grown much more infirm of late, seemed to think it would be the last meeting with her son. She talked so much of Mrs. Edmonstone and Laura, that it was plain that she wished extremely for a visit from them, though she did not like to ask it, in the present state of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shock of her husband's violent death. The white garments of widowhood which draped her found little response either in the gravity of her demeanour or in the expression of her face. But on the Dowager Lady the effect was very different. She became an old, infirm woman all at once; but her manner was softer and gentler. She learned to make more allowance for temperaments which entirely differed from hers. There were no further efforts to repress her little grandson's noisy glee, no more cold responses to his occasionally troublesome demonstrations of affection. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... one, who came in, swaying with different movements, one inclining to the right, while the other inclined to the left. And three worthy women appeared, limping, dragging their legs behind them, crippled by illness and deformed through old age, three infirm old women, past service, the only three pensioners who were able to walk in the home ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the field Is crowned with laurel, and his shining way Is full of shouts and roses. If he fall, His nation builds his monument of glory. But mark the alchemist who walks the streets, His look is down, his step infirm, his hair And cheeks are burned to ashes by his thought; The volumes he consumes, consume in turn; They are but fuel to his fiery brain, Which being fed requires the more to feed on. The people gaze on him with curious looks, And step ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... observed with elaborate indifference, "how humiliating this thing is becoming to me. I have always had a theory that invalids and people when they begin to get old and infirm, should be put away some place where they can undergo the unpleasant struggle alone. It's purely selfish—there's something about the sanctity of the individual. Dogs have it right—you know the way they creep off? But I suppose I won't. Pride fails when the body weakens, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... that region, except the infirm, stayed indoors to shiver by a fire. Eagle and the girls in their warm capotes breasted with me the coldest winter days. She was as happy as they were; her cheeks tingled as pink as theirs. Sometimes I thought her eyes must answer me with her old self-command; their bright ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... every passion ruled, With every vice his youth had cooled; Disease his tainted blood assails; His spirits droop, his vigour fails; With secret ills at home he pines, And, like infirm old age, declines. As, twinged with pain, he pensive sits, And raves, and prays, and swears by fits, A ghastly phantom, lean and wan, Before him rose, and thus began: 10 'My name, perhaps, hath reached your ear; Attend, and be ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... hypocritical scoundrel!" muttered Walter between his teeth, and glancing again at the bed, though the epithet was meant to apply to Jackson and not to Arthur. "What can I do to circumvent him? Write to Horace, of course, and warn him of Elsie's danger." And though usually vacillating and infirm of purpose, on this occasion Walter showed himself both prompt and decided. The next mail carried the news of his discovery to Elsie's natural protector,—her father, who with Rose, the Allison family, and little Horace, was still at ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... coming to us, who I know is a favourite of yours. Or is it the other way, and are you a favourite of hers? I did ask Lady Hartletop, but she cannot get away from the poor marquis, who is, you know, so very infirm. The duke isn't at Gatherum at present, but, of course, I don't mean that that has anything to do with dear Lady Hartletop coming to us. I believe we shall have the house full, and shall not want for nymphs ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Council living anywhere near London. That same afternoon another meeting of the council was held. Somers himself, the great Whig leader whose {47} services had made the party illustrious in former reigns, and whose fame sheds a lustre on them even to this hour—Somers, aged, infirm, decaying as he was in body and in mind—hastened to attend the summons, and to lend his strength and his authority to the measures on which his colleagues had determined. The council ordered the concentration of several ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... nations, where people study to have their horses and dogs of the finest breed they can procure either by interest or money; and yet keep their wives shut up, that they may have children by none but themselves, though they may happen to be doting, decrepit, or infirm. As if children, when sprung from a bad stock, and consequently good for nothing, were no detriment to those whom they belong to, and who have the trouble of bringing them up, nor any advantage, when well descended and of a generous disposition. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... nook in the midst of the woods, about five miles from the pleasant seaport where I was born. The cottage was not a spacious one. It had but few rooms in it; but it was amply large for my aged grandparents, I remember. They lived happily there. My grandfather was somewhat infirm; my grandmother was a very vigorous person for one of seventy-five; this was her age at the time of my first recollection of her. She used to walk from her cottage to our home; and once I walked with her, but was exceedingly mortified that I could not endure the walk ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... so he sent word to all the best and cleverest goldsmiths in the country that they should make these checkers for the Princesses. For all they tried there was no one who could make them. At last all the goldsmiths had been to the palace except one, and he was an old, infirm man who had not done any work for many years except odd jobs, by which he was just able to keep himself alive. To him the soldier went and asked to be apprenticed. The old man was so glad to get him, ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... that, because I lived at a plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You may not be sorry to learn, that, though not what great merchants call very rich, I was comfortable,—comfortable,—so that most of those moderate luxuries I described in my verses on Contentment—most of them, I say—were within our reach, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the London of sixty years before, its mendicants "were so many of its sights, its Lions." The city literally swarmed with beggars. At every turn we came upon some living torso, distorted limb and hideous sore. Begging seemed to be the accepted livelihood of cripples, blind folk and the infirm. Let us hope that by this time something better has been devised for them all. Was it here that Richepin partly studied the mendicant fraternity, giving us in poetry his astounding appreciation, psychological and linguistic? And perhaps ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of pleasing Louis XI. was to offer him some present relating to his favourite pastime, either pointers, hounds, falcons, or varlets who were adepts in the art of venery or hawking (Figs. 139 and 140). When the cunning monarch became old and infirm, in order to make his enemies believe that he was still young and vigorous, he sent messengers everywhere, even to the most remote countries, to purchase horses, dogs, and falcons, for which, according to Comines, he ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... to Mrs Lumpy, found the story to be true, and that the poor half-blind old woman was quite unable to support the boy and herself. The lady prevailed on the old woman to attend the meetings for poor, aged, and infirm women in Miss Macpherson's "Beehive," and little Tim was taken into the "Home for Destitute Little Boys under ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... they were free during the war, but the war is now over, and they must go to work again as before. The reports from sub-commissioners nearest that locality show that the blacks are in a much worse state than ever before, the able-bodied being kept at work under the lash, and the young and infirm driven off to care for themselves. As to protection from the civil authorities, there is no such thing outside of this city." (Accompanying document ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... taken part were confined, according to his own romantic account in a speech in Congress, to stealing ducks and onions from the civil population; his Ministers were as ignorant in the matter as he; their military adviser, Scott, was so infirm that he had soon to retire, and it proved most difficult to replace him. Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, started with knowledge of affairs, including military affairs; he had been Secretary of War in Pierce's Cabinet ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... such rows of 2 and 4. I will state at once that the greatest number of such rows that is possible is sixteen. But the jailer only allows four men to be removed to other cells, and informs me that, as the man who is seated in the bottom right-hand corner is infirm, he must not be moved. Now, how are we to get those sixteen rows of even numbers under ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... has happened to this man?" Somebody answered, "Such a one has given him bad names!" He said, "This paltry wretch is able to carry a thousand-weight of stone, and cannot bear with one light word! Cease to boast of thy strong arm and pretended manhood, infirm as thou art in mind, and mean in spirit. What difference is there between such a man and a woman? Though thou art strong of arm, let thy mouth utter sweet words; it is no proof of courage to thrust thy fist into another man's face:—Though thou art ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... he was indisputably alive. They saw enough to assure them of this, but they did not see enough to prevent their being able to regard their master as a conqueror over death and the grave, even though it could be shewn (which certainly cannot be done) that he continued in infirm health, and ultimately died of ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... his sofa at his erect inquisitor and feeling partly like a happy little boy when the school-master is gay, and partly like some pilgrim of old who might have consulted a world-famous oracle. St. George's own performance had been infirm, but as an ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... lodging, some schooling and indifferent clothes for the privilege of working like a little drudge in the house of the grim cousin who sheltered her. The death of this cousin flung Margaret on her own resources. A friend had procured her employment as the "companion" of a rich, eccentric old lady, infirm of health and temper. Margaret lived with her for five years, and to the young girl they seemed treble the time. Her employer was fault-finding, peevish, unreasonable, and many a time Margaret's patience ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... himself for that concentrated effort which alone secures success, and his time of carelessness and sloth shall be far left behind. But the sinister influence of to-day saps his will and renders him infirm; each new to-day is wasted amid thoughts of visionary to-morrows which take all the power from his soul; and, when he is nerveless, powerless, tired, discontented with the very sight of the sun, he finds suddenly that his feet are on the edge of the gulf, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... it is, Duplessis," said the Vicomte de Breze, whose habitual light good temper seemed exchanged for insolent swagger—"I tell you what it is, your friend the Emperor has no more courage than a chicken. He is grown old, and infirm, and lazy; he knows that he can't even mount on horseback. But if, before this day week, he has not declared war on the Prussians, he will be lucky if he can get off as quietly as poor Louis Philippe did under shelter of his umbrella, and ticketed 'Schmidt.' Or could you not, M. Duplessis, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... spite of the fact that I had been robbed of my rightful heritage, he was proud that he had a Pennington for a grandson. Thus I am sure that it was his will that I should have the Barton for my own. But during the last few years he had been very feeble and infirm, and thus in the hands of a clever lawyer he could easily be deceived as to what ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... more encouraged to lay this performance at the feet of your Highness, because, with a change in the grammatical person, it preserves, almost as in a reprint, Israel Potter's autobiographical story. Shortly after his return in infirm old age to his native land, a little narrative of his adventures, forlornly published on sleazy gray paper, appeared among the peddlers, written, probably, not by himself, but taken down from his lips by another. But like the crutch-marks of the cripple by the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... led the way up the infirm staircase. At the fourth floor she pushed open a door and showed them into a long loft-like room with high ceiling and mansard windows. There came a squawking and fluttering from somewhere above as ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... noble exception not to be forgotten. To the Hospital of San Michele Cardinal Tosti has given a new life and vigor, and set an example worthy of his elevated position in the Church. This foundation was formerly an asylum for poor children and infirm and aged persons; but of late years an industrial and educational system has been ingrafted upon it, until it has become one of the most enlarged and liberal institutions that can anywhere be found. It now embraces not only an asylum for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the Hotel Dieu in the Middle Ages was superior to our modern hospitals. Among many details denoting the tender forethought of the administrator, we may note that in the ward for the grievously sick and infirm the beds were made lower, and 60 cottes of white fur and 300 felt boots were provided to keep the poor patients warm when they were moved from their beds to the chambres aisees. In later times, lax management and the decline of piety which came with the religious and political changes of ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... very rare treasure and pleasure. And with fingers that almost trembled with delight, I wrote down paper and pens and a bottle of ink for Darry. Next, I heard of an old woman at the quarters, who was ailing and infirm, and I am afraid ill-treated, who at all events was in need of comfort, and had nothing but straw and the floor to rest her poor bones on at night. A soft pallet for her went down instantly on my list; my ink and tears mingled together as I wrote; and I soon found that my purse ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the priests and monks grow very assiduous in their attentions, and the relatives become in proportion uneasy. I was introduced at Rome to a Signor Bondini, who had a wealthy relative in the Regno di Napoli, on the verge of eighty, and very infirm. There was a monastery in his immediate neighbourhood, and the monks of that establishment were in daily attendance upon him. His friends in Rome felt much anxiety regarding the disposal of his property. How the matter ended I know not; but I trust, for the sake of my acquaintance, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... apparel and sally forth in grand procession, with banners flying, to meet the princess and her company and do them honour, and let cry throughout the city that neither cloistered damsel nor honoured lady nor infirm old woman should fail to go forth to meet the bride. So they all went out to meet her and the chiefest of them vied in doing her service, meaning to bring her to the King's palace by night. Moreover, the grandees agreed to decorate the road and stand on either side, whilst the bride should pass ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... first attracts and then holds our attention. A person must have some tag by which he is identified, or, so far as we are concerned, he becomes one of the innumerable lost articles. There are persons who are like umbrellas, very useful, but always liable to be forgotten. The memory is an infirm faculty, and must be humored. It often clings to mere trifles. The man with the flamboyant necktie whom you saw on the 8.40 train may also be the author of a volume of exquisite lyrics; but you never saw the lyrics, and you did see the necktie. In the scale of being, the necktie may be the least ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... am now very old, monsieur, and very infirm. I have often thought, in my lonely hours, of the unhappiness of my child on her marriage with you, and have doubted the wisdom of that authority which I exercised so severely over her. The vision of that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the father of twins; and a third announced the marriage of pretty Jenny Caroff, a girl well known to all the Icelanders, with some rich and infirm old resident of the Commune of Plourivo. As they were eyeing each other as if through white gauze, this also appeared to alter the sound of the voices, which came as if muffled ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... wearisome solitude of the long evenings did indeed suggest to me the convenience of a club in my neighbourhood, but I have been hindered from attending it by want of breath.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 340. 'Dec. 31. I have much need of entertainment; spiritless, infirm, sleepless, and solitary, looking back with sorrow and forward with terrour.' Ib, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... danger often lurks where least expected. Oliver Trench was not an architect either by nature or training. His bower had been erected on several false principles. The bouncing of a big man inside was too much for its infirm constitution. Its weak points were discovered by the captain. A bounce into one of its salient supports proved fatal, and the structure finally collapsed, burying its family in a compost of ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... tax was levied for the war with the Turks, Luther himself begged the Elector not to exempt him with his scanty goods. He would gladly, he said, if not too old and too infirm, 'be one of the army himself.' In 1542 he brought out for his countrymen a refutation of the Koran, written in earlier days, that they might learn what a shameful faith was Mahomed's, and not suffer themselves to be perverted, in case by God's decree they should see the Turks victorious, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... was Dr. Channing who, more than any other, was responsible for her intemperate zeal! It appears that Dr. Channing, "not without solicitude," as he writes her, was watching over his eager disciple. "Your infirm health," he says, "seems to darken your prospect of usefulness. But I believe your constitution will yet be built up, if you will give it a fair chance. You must learn to give up your plans of usefulness as much as those of gratification, ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... of Laig; and in a fray, in which his party had the worse, his back was broken, and he was forced off half dead to sea. Several months after, on his partial recovery, he returned, crook-backed and infirm, to wreak his vengeance on the inhabitants, all of whom, warned of his coming by the array of his galleys in the offing, hid themselves in the cave, in which, however, they were ultimately betrayed—as narrated by Sir Walter and Mr. Wilson—by the track of some footpaths in a ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... from conviction. Yet we have hope of better days. My uncle is infirm, and of an age that threatens hourly. Or if he lives, You never have offended him; and for distresses so unmerited, he will ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... all the Jews out of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Within the Term of 5 Weeks. Which is the Latter End of January for those in Prague. & those in Bohemia are allow'd 6 Months. as appears by the original Decree of Her Majesty—Therefore What shall we poor Souls do, in the first place, the Children Women, infirm & Aged. Which are not in a Condition to Walk. Especially at this present Juncture Being Cold & frosty Weather. Likewise In the Condition we are at Present in for the Stripd many Hundreds quite to their shirts. Not only that. but the World Is Closed to us. by reason all Roads are ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... into regions that correct them. He that is tabidly inclined, were unwise to pass his days in Portugal: cholical persons will find little comfort in Austria or Vienna: he that is weak- legged must not be in love with Rome, nor an infirm head with Venice or Paris. Death hath not only par- ticular stars in heaven, but malevolent places on earth, which single out our infirmities, and strike at our weaker parts; in which concern, passager and migrant birds have the great advantages, who ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... years, and the result has been that they have so far lost the use of their limbs that they are utterly incapable of rising." The rooms over the cells were appropriated to the sick. Mr. Rice found twenty-four persons lying in one room, some old, some infirm, and in the centre of the room a corpse; one or two were dying. In the adjoining room he found a woman in a state of distraction, the corpse of her child left upon her knees for two days; it was almost ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... of trade in time taught them that it would not be wise to trust to the loom, and accordingly Nanny was at some pains to learn mantua-making; and it was fortunate that she did so—for the tambouring gradually went out of fashion, and the flowering which followed suited less the infirm constitution of poor Nanny. The making of gowns for ordinary occasions led to the making of mournings, and the making of mournings naturally often caused Nanny to be called in at deaths, which, in process of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... They summoned Galileo to appear before them at Rome, to answer in person the charges under which he lay. The Tuscan ambassador expostulated warmly with the court of Rome on the inhumanity of this proceeding. He urged his advanced age, his infirm health, the discomforts of the journey, and the miseries of the quarantine,[34] as motives for reconsidering their decision: But the Pope was inexorable, and though it was agreed to relax the quarantine as ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... Commandments he had reverenced as a child, and forgotten as a man. He approached the old seat; it looked cold and desolate. The cushion had been removed, and the Bible was not there. Perhaps his mother now occupied a poorer seat, or possibly she had grown infirm and could not reach the church alone. He dared not think of what he feared. A cold feeling crept over him, and he trembled violently as he turned away. 'An old man entered the porch just as he reached it. Edmunds started back, for he knew him well; many ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... strength. Amasis orders a statue just as I should a sword. Breadth and length being specified, we both of us know quite well, before the master has begun his work, what we shall receive when it is finished. How could I possibly fashion an infirm old man like an eager youth? a pugilist like a runner in the foot-race? a poet like a warrior? Put Ibykus and our Spartan friend side by side, and tell me what you would say, were I to give to the stern warrior the gentle features and gestures of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hard, heard nothing of the question. The sexton, as he could not reach to touch him with his crutch, and was too infirm to rise without assistance, called his attention by throwing a little mould upon his ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the north, and at eleven o'clock the next day, August 5th, we saw land again, at about ten leagues distant. This noon we were in latitude 25 degrees 30 minutes, and in the afternoon our cook died, an old man, who had been sick a great while, being infirm before we came out ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... fluids of a magnet which sends to a distant subject an order to traverse all Paris to rejoin it. Science has no call to contest these phenomena. On the other hand, Dr. Brown-Sequard rejuvenates infirm old men and revitalizes the impotent with distillations from the parts of rabbits and cavies. Were not the elixirs of life and the love philtres which the witches sold to the senile and impotent composed of similar or analogous substances? ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... fixed, as in our private schools of to-day. Instead, the pupil made a present to the master, usually at some understood rate, though some masters left the size of the fee to the liberality of their pupils. [17] The pedagogue, copied from Greece, was nearly always an old or infirm ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... bring this long letter to an end. I wish I could see an end to the campaign. When I come home "an old, old, aged and infirm old man," I mean to pass the evening of my days in a quiet cottage with its full allowance of honeysuckle and roses. There I shall grow sweet williams and, if I can stand the extra excitement, perhaps keep a pig. They tell me the Times has pronounced the war over. I would be glad to pay ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... defraud the priest's heirs of their inheritance. Priests shall be bound, in regard to their wills, by the same law as other people. (16) If a man has sexual intercourse with a woman to whom he is engaged, he shall not be punished, since they are already married in the eye of God. (17) No person who is infirm shall be compelled by priests to make a will. (18) The sacrament shall not be withheld from any one for debt or other reason. The church or priest has a remedy in court. (19) Fines for adultery and fornication belong to the king, not to the bishop. (20) The ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... read:—"Another nun, being somewhat infirm, her priest confessed her in her own room. After a time, the invalid penitent found herself in what is called an interesting situation, on which account, the physician declaring that her complaint was dropsy, she was sent away ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... one, as she had business enough on her hands: sixteen years makes a great difference in any set of people. The old acquaintances of her father in his better days were almost all dead or removed; there were one or two remaining, and these Ellinor received; one or two more, old and infirm, confined to their houses, she planned to call upon before leaving Hamley. Every evening, when Dixon had done his work at Mr. Osbaldistone's, he came up to the Parsonage, ostensibly to help her in moving or packing books, but really because these two clung to ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... insensible Stoic; virtue does not procure impassibility; honesty gives no exemption from misfortune, but it enables him to bear cheerly up against it; to cast off despair, to keep his own company: if he is infirm, if he is worn with disease, he has less to complain of than the vicious being who is oppressed with sickness, who is enfeebled by years; if he is indigent, he is less unhappy in his poverty; if he is in disgrace, he can endure it with fortitude, he ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... they were sitting in a private room to hear the opinion of each one of the Brothers, and on bended knees with their hands clasped they besought them instantly, and with all their hearts, to grant absolution to this Father for that he was infirm and aged; this they said was the time to show him pity, and this was what he desired as he had told to certain of ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... with the knowledge and approbation of the said Jonathan Sewell; that Jonathan Sewell had advised the arrest of Messrs. Bedard, Blanchet and Taschereau, upon an unfounded pretext; that Jonathan Sewell had instigated the oppression of the old and infirm Francois Corbeil, by which the old man lost his life; that Jonathan Sewell had instigated Sir James Henry Craig to issue a proclamation causing the public to believe that Mr. Bedard had been guilty of ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... night, May 5th, 1840, Lord William Russell, infirm, deaf, and aged, being in his seventy-third year, was murdered in his bed. He was a widower, living at No. 14 Norfolk Street, Park Lane, London, a small house, occupied by only himself and three servants,—Courvoisier, a young Swiss valet, and two women, a cook and ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... volume —himself more encumbered with pieces, dyptic fragments, boxes, charters, and registers concerning the history of Touraine than is a gleaner with stalks of straw in the month of August—this man, old, infirm, and gouty, who had been drinking in his corner without saying a word, smiled the smile of a wise man and knitted his brows, the said smile finally resolving itself into a pish! well articulated, which the Author heard and understood it to be ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... determined him at length to dismiss his domestics. Emily seldom opposed her father's wishes by questions or remonstrances, or she would now have asked why he did not take a servant, and have represented that his infirm health made one almost necessary. But when, on the eve of their departure, she found that he had dismissed Jacques, Francis, and Mary, and detained only Theresa the old housekeeper, she was extremely surprised, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... name Had been enroll'd in such a list of heroes! If I was too infirm to serve my country, I might have prov'd my ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... letter back in the envelope, and the envelope in his pocket. "She knows," he repeated. What under heaven had Dorothea been telling her? He must see Dorothea and have it stopped. Did she think him a feeble and infirm person who leaned on a stick, or a crabbed and cross one who had no manners? He would have to call, if only to thank her for her note. No. He would do that in writing. Next week, perhaps, he might ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... who was at this time old and infirm, was aroused from his slumbers by the dreadful din, and immediately began to seize his armor, and to prepare himself for rushing into the fight. His wife, however, Hecuba, begged and entreated him to desist. She saw that ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... this, your Excellency. I have a decrepit old uncle who owns three hundred souls and two thousand roubles-worth of other property. Also, except for myself, he possesses not a single heir. Now, although his infirm state of health will not permit of his managing his property in person, he will not allow me either to manage it. And the reason for his conduct—his very strange conduct—he states as follows: 'I do not know my nephew, and very likely ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and grace. A few weeks before the appointed time for the wedding a malignant disease stole on, spreading sorrow and anxiety over the greater part of the land. Young girls were principally its victims. It seemed to pass scornfully over the aged and infirm. Veile's daughter was also laid hold upon by it. Before three days had passed there was a corpse in the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... bivouac fires twinkled nightly in the Jordan Valley; and the authorities seemed to be singularly blind to this flagrant disobedience of orders. During the day at stated hours groups of men riding aged and infirm horses were strung out at 50-yard intervals, engaged in the gentle pastime of dragging sacks and branches along the roads; they made so much dust that it might easily have been caused by, say, a cavalry division going to water. Also, thousands of tiny tents sprang up round the bivouac ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... them that they were friends, and not enemies. During this investigation into every corner of the village, George and Harry were the most active. They found many amusing things, but the care of the sick and the infirm was the first duty, and they had ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... to come out when he perceived that he was being asked for by an old lady who was too infirm to walk; after which the Grandmother began to upbraid him at length, and with great vehemence, for his alleged usuriousness, and to bargain with him in a mixture of Russian, French, and German—I acting as interpreter. Meanwhile, the grave-faced official ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of No. 1 is original and ingenious; its large open central space is valuable for purposes of ventilation, and as affording opportunity for exercise under cover in stormy weather for infants and infirm people. This advantage is perhaps compensated for in the other house by the fact of each tenement reaching from back to front of the house, thus securing within itself the means of a thorough draught of fresh air. Both plans are excellent, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... indignantly. "Can't you see that I'm perfectly sober? It was the merest temporary fit, and I've shaken it off. Don't you see?" He got upon his feet, staggered, but shook himself like a dog coming out of the water, and came to the door with infirm steps. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... edicts commanding the reclamation of waste lands, but advanced from the treasury the price of the necessary seed-corn, implements, and beasts to all poor persons willing to carry out his orders. Other poor persons, especially the infirm and those disabled by bodily defect, were relieved from his privy purse; mendicancy was forbidden, and idleness made an offence. The lands forfeited by the followers of Mazdak were distributed to necessitous cultivators. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... For what else—when he's so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? He's exquisite—so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, "it's their uncle's fault. If ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... time when I write these lines, old and infirm, my legs scarcely able to sustain me, my thoughts revert involuntarily to that epoch of my life when, young and vigorous, I bore the greatest fatigues, and walked day and night, in the mountainous countries which separate the kingdoms of Valencia and Catalonia from the kingdom of Aragon, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago |
