"Laggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... irresistible attractions for the gardener, and this drew his laggard steps from their idle excursion, back to the freshly spaded spot enriched by leaf mould, and carefully picketed against the incursions of scratching hens. Here he busied himself in planting lettuce seed, forgetful of Scipio, who lolled sleepily in the shadow ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... But she knew also that never by word or sign or deed would Harley P. Hennage indicate that he had heard it. It was like him to ascribe her agitation to illness, and as she turned her heavy footsteps toward the Hat Ranch the memory of that loving lie brought the laggard tears at last, and she wept aloud. In her agony she was conscious of a feeling of gratitude to the Almighty for His perfect workmanship in fashioning a man who was not one of the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... lovingly against his violin he felt that he was made of different clay from other "niggahs." During the day he indulged in moods by the divine right and impulse of genius, imitating his gifted brothers unconsciously. In waiting on the table, washing dishes, and hoeing the garden, he was as great a laggard as Pegasus would have been if compelled to the labors of a cart- horse; but when night came, and uncongenial toil was over, his soul expanded. His corrugated brow unwrinkled itself; his great black fingers flew ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... to rise and hurl God's flame world-wide, As Lincoln hurled it, setting free a race From Sphinx-shaped wrong—a beast with human face? That shattered, how our land rose glorified And, from the stars last laggard, soared, their guide! Oh, who can take Promethean Lincoln's place, To bring light where-so-ever he can trace A Human, with his ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... and patriotism is the effort to extend our foreign commerce. To this end our merchant marine should be improved and enlarged. We should do our full share of the carrying trade of the world. We do not do it now. We should be the laggard no longer. The inferiority of our merchant marine is justly humiliating to the national pride. The Government by every proper constitutional means, should aid in making our ships familiar visitors at every commercial port of the ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... victories in the land of promise. The women listen, nodding and swaying their bodies sympathetically. He works himself into a frenzy, in which the fiddlers vainly try to keep up with him. He turns and digs the laggard angrily in the side without losing the metre. The climax comes. The bride bursts into hysterical sobs, while the women wipe their eyes. A plate, heretofore concealed under his coat, is whisked out. He has conquered; the inevitable collection is ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... them rise and continue their sports. "Night is come and I must ask a lodging of you—even as your chaplain gave me of his hospitality yester e'en," he said, comfortably. "And tell me, Robin, where is your Marian? What laggard in love are you to be here ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Nor did those laggard hours pass less bitterly for M. de Camors. He tried to take no rest, but walked up and down his apartment until daylight in a sort of frenzy. The distress of this poor child wounded him to the heart. The souvenirs of the past rose before ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... its dangers, therefore it were better to stay where he was. During a critical period the Natal Army was of as little use to Lord Roberts as were the Spanish contingents to Wellington in the Peninsula; and its laggard action retarded the progress of the war. Lord Roberts laid his plans for the advance on the assumption that it would be in operation on his right flank when he reached Pretoria, and if L. Botha had found it pressing on him when he was playing at peace-making in June, instead of engaged in ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... he said, leaning over his chair and talking low, 'you are no Frenchman, and the more of a man on that account. You and I have had our differences. I have blamed you, and you me. But I have never found you a laggard when there was work for the sword or adventure for the heart. Now, of all adventures in the world the highest in which a man may engage is here. Across those hills lies the city of God, of which (I suppose) no soul among us might, unhelped, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... away the sunlit hours of life (Unsatisfied, sad life), We wake in shadow and we rise in gloom. False as a wanton's artificial bloom Is that made light we labour in till dawn (The lonely, laggard dawn). ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... declared that clever men must reform everything, and went so far, at last, that, forgetting his rank of Junior Gentleman of the Imperial Bedchamber, and his official career, he called Lavretzky a "laggard conservative," he even hinted,—in a very remote way, it is true,—at his false position in society. Lavretzky did not get angry, did not raise his voice (he remembered that Mikhalevitch also had called him ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... calibre, sensual, exterior life. To such, or the luckiest of them, as we see, the audiences are limitless and profitable; but they cease presently. While this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interior or spiritual life, the audiences were limited, and often laggard—but they last forever. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... his art of verse-making. With a laugh of scorn, he demanded if the wind and the waterfalls and the birds learned music from beardless boys and draggle-coated dominies with armfuls of books. However, it may have been with his Pegasus, his mount for the hunt was no laggard. He rode a knob-jointed, muscular brute, that carried him like poetic inspiration wherever it pleased. Though Pierre's right hand was busied upholding the hunters' flag, and he had but one arm to bow-string the broncho's arching neck, the half-breed poet kept his seat with the easy grace ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the sun had gone to rest and the stately peaks had changed from pink to lavender, from gold to copper, and from purple to gray, when the evening star had cleared the horizon and had begun to wink and beckon to the laggard moon, then again the village awoke to life, and the royal feast began. Fires were kindled and great flat stones were heated. Choice cuts of elk, the tenderloin and tongues and hams of sheep were roasted. Venison steak and ribs were broiled to a turn. The bridal couple ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... and swept away the year's harvest. The banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestral foes. Perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw as he was, he, and not the morbid laggard at Gibeah, who was only stirred to action by mad jealousy, was the sword of Israel. The little band bursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered Philistines, recaptures the cattle which like moss troopers they were driving ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... no telling just where that same laggard might be when the runners turned and headed for the home stake. He might be playing the waiting game that so often proves fruitful in ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... but a cordially kind friend, to say nothing of a charming writer. The way is marked out for him by one who has trodden it, and who, as we can gather, from the evident culture and literary grace of his pages and his renown as a preacher of missions, has been no laggard in those studies which he so earnestly recommends to young priests and ecclesiastical students. . . . If Father Phelan's lessons were taken to heart by the coming race of priests we, or at least our children, would behold the Catholic pulpit transformed ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... am, perhaps, a laggard who dwells in the past rather than the present; still, it seems to me that such an article as that which appeared recently in Blackwood from the talented pen of Prof. Mowberry, of Oxford University, is utterly unjustifiable. Under the title of "Did the People of London ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... for us too short, too dear! The laggard body lame behind the soul; Pain, that ne'er marr'd the mind's serene control; Breathing on earth heaven's aether atmosphere, God with thee, and the love that casts out fear! A soul in life's salt ocean guarding sure The freshness of ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... phantom of Pale Winter died, Methought the Voice of Spring within me cried, "When Hymen's rose-decked altars glow within, Why nods the laggard Bachelor outside?" ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... the trial of the King came on, he took a bold and dangerous share in the proceedings, which destroyed what little popularity the ruin of his federal schemes had left him, and came near costing him his head. He was already so great a laggard behind the revolutionary march, that he did not suspect the determination of the Mountain to put the King to death. Louis was guilty, no doubt, Paine thought,—but not of any great crime. Banishment for life, or until the new government be consolidated,—say ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... shut off the direct light of the moonbeams and left the abyss again in dense darkness long before the coming of the laggard dawn. Blake slept on, storing up strength for the renewal of the battle. Yet even he could not outsleep the reluctant lingering of night. He awoke while the tiny flame of the watchfire still flickered bright against the inky darkness ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... and beautiful thing to see that king of horses—sweep back around the slowest of his mustangs, shake his head at the barking guns, and then circle forward again as though he would show the laggard what running should be. The cowpunchers could have shot him as he veered back; they could have salted him with lead as he flashed broadside, but the orders of their chief restrained them. Lew Hervey's lightest word had a weight ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Since Aram was far distant he disregards the wishes of his parents and marries one of the daughters of the land. No ambition stirred him and no devotion to Jehovah or to the ideals of his race gave content and direction to his life. Thus he remained a laggard, and the half-nomadic, robber people that he represented became but a stagnant pool, compared with the onrushing ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... general life of the human race is called Progress, the collective stride of the human race is called Progress. Progress advances; it makes the great human and terrestrial journey towards the celestial and the divine; it has its halting places where it rallies the laggard troop, it has its stations where it meditates, in the presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiled on its horizon, it has its nights when it sleeps; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... flourishing Liverpool slave-trade with all its allied interests; sacrificing, too, the immediate prosperity of its West Indian colonies, whose plantations were tilled exclusively with slave labor, and even paying heavy cash indemnity to Spain to secure her acquiescence. Unhappily, the United States was as laggard as England was active. Indeed, a curious manifestation of national pride made the American flag the slaver's badge of immunity, for the Government stubbornly—and properly—refused to grant to British cruisers the right to search vessels under our flag, and ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... both temporal and spiritual, surrounds us, and which might be effectually relieved, were all Christians, many of whom are laggard in effort and niggard in bounty, to manifest a tithe of the self-denial which Mr. Ellerthorpe practiced. 'What maintains one vice, would support two children.' Robert Hall says:—It is the practice of self-denial in a thousand little instances ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... came and the settlement had increased by one or two families, and laggard capital had been hurried up to relieve the still beleaguered and locked-up wealth of Burnt Ridge, the needs of the community and the claims of the widow of John Baker were so well told in political quarters that the post-office of Laurel Run was created expressly for her. Every man ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... choose. Patriotism with me is not an empty word. It is one of the passions of my life. I believe in this Republic. For the moment the people are asleep. But time is slowly shaping the issue that will move the last laggard. We are beginning dimly to see that there is something more precious in our life than the mere tonnage of national wealth—the spirit of freedom and initiative in our people! Shall they become merely the hired men of a few monied kings? Or shall the avenues ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... villagers would be about the roads for an hour or more, and it would be well to delay on the island, and he chose a high rock to sit upon. His hand ran the water off his hard thighs, and then off his long, thin arms, and he watched the laggard moon rising slowly in the dusky night, like a duck from the marshes. Supporting himself with one arm, he let himself down the rock and dabbled his foot in the water, and the splashing of the water reminded him of little Philip Rean, who ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Sterne, the Restoration, and the Elizabethan dramatists. The Association will have to risk the refusal; but I would not discourage the Association from the adventure. It must not abandon the tope of finding a magistrate who, anxious to prove himself no moral laggard, will do all that is asked of him. A very pretty selection of "spicy bits" can be picked from "Don Juan," and toward this compilation every member, male and female, might contribute. The reading of these selections in Bow Street in a crowded ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to the gate and leaning upon it, looked down the street toward the log-landing where Bryce was ragging the laggard crew into some thing like their old-time speed. Presently the locomotive backed in and coupled to the log tram, and when she saw Bryce leap aboard and seat himself on a top log in such a position that he could not fail to see her at the gate, she ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... to his crew, much disgusted, ordered the freshly arrived tug to wait for a tow, and spurred laggard ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... O lavish Nature! why That dark unfathomable eye, Where lurks a Spirit that replies To stillest mood of softest skies, Yet hints at peace to be o'erthrown, Another's first, and then her own?) Such haply, yon Italian Maid, Our Lady's laggard Votaress, Halting beneath the chestnut shade To accomplish there her loveliness: Nice aid maternal fingers lend; A Sister serves with slacker hand; Then, glittering like a star, she joins the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the Young Doctor. Yet his feet were laggard, for he was not so sure that there would be another home for Jean Jacques with his grandchild as its star. He was thinking of Norah, to whom a waif of the prairie had made home what home should be for herself and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no sharper spur to urge on the laggard. Haw-Haw Langley raced out of the barn a full stride before Mac Strann. They hurried together to the little rise of ground behind which they had left their horses, and as they ran the scream which had curdled the blood of ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... having provided himself with a long pole to which a sharp knife-blade had been bound, would watch his opportunity to cut the thong that secured the blind-cloth about the animal's eyes. Woe now to him who was dull of eye or laggard of foot! ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... but divine that during my absence his flesh had been growing more and more laggard to the enterprise, his spirit ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... e'er forget?— How, in the coiled perplexities of youth, In our wild climate, in our scowling town, We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed and feared? The belching winter wind, the missile rain, The rare and welcome silence of the snows, The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night, The grimy spell of the nocturnal town, Do you remember?—Ah, could one forget! As when the fevered sick that all night long Listed the wind intone, and hear at last The ever-welcome voice of chanticleer Sing in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was no laggard. Whether she increased her speed at sight of the light which was seemingly hustling down the river after her, or whether she simply held her former rate, she was going at a tremendous pace. Soon leaving Long Ledge on their right, the pursuer shot into the ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... beauty of defence and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... with all the enlightened and progressive nations of the world and were desperately and hopelessly striving to meet the stress of modern commerce and competition with a debased and unsuitable currency and in association with the few weak and laggard nations which have silver alone ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... poetic word—mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... bring His goodness into question, to throw doubt on His revelation, and to make it the laughing stock of the irreligious, than thus to clip the wings of faith, to throw her into a dungeon, to keep her from the light of day, to make her read through. Hebrew spectacles, and to force her to be a laggard and dullard, instead of a bright and volatile spirit, forward and foremost in the race ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... marks out a shining way, And swift the shepherds are the path to take. I long to go! O laggard feet, why stay? Alas! the vision fades, and ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... covered with the relics of the family breakfast long after Mr. Vincy had gone with his second son to the warehouse, and when Miss Morgan was already far on in morning lessons with the younger girls in the schoolroom. It awaited the family laggard, who found any sort of inconvenience (to others) less disagreeable than getting up when he was called. This was the case one morning of the October in which we have lately seen Mr. Casaubon visiting the Grange; and though the room was a little ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... A youth like you, gifted with courage, skill, and health,—the state demands some activity at your hands; 'tis ill to be a laggard." ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... command; they rushed forward; not a laggard in the ranks; not a man who shirked the leaden shower; not one who failed to offer his breast openly and fearlessly to the red death which to them might come when it would. Unwaveringly over rocks, chasms and mines, they followed the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... rudeness, the pastimes she thought out for children; I saw her nursing the helplessness which leaned upon her, and turning aside the contempt of pioneer women who passionately admired strong men. I saw her eyes waiting on the distant laggard who stupidly pursued his own affairs until it was too late to protect her. I read the entries over and over. When day broke it seemed to me the morning after my own death, such knowing and experiencing had passed through me. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... rattled out a challenge of drums; loud music struck upon the air. Starting instantly to go to Julia, Noble's left leg first received the electric impulse and crossed his laggard right; but he was no pacer, and thus stumbled upon himself and plunged. Still convulsive, he came headlong before her, and was the only person near who remained unaware that his dispersal of an intervening group had the appearance of extreme ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... about you are carrying on their business or their benevolence at a pace which drains the life out of you, resolutely take a slower pace; be called a laggard, make less money, accomplish less work than they, but be what you were meant to be and can be. You have your natural limit of power as much as an engine,—ten-horse power, or twenty, or a hundred. You are fit to do certain kinds of work, and you need a certain kind and amount of ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... meteorite he had mentioned without difficulty. It was a large body, about three times the mass of the Ertak, and some distance above us—a laggard in the ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... goggles and organize elections—Farmer organizes group ideas, to oppose old line politics—Say Eastern old parties effete in West—Townsmen league with farmers, common interest; low price wheat means lean purchases and laggard towns—By this time young man Crerar in Wpg., taken from managing small elevator company to be general manager G.G. Grain Co.—Co-op. movement develops in all associations, for buying and selling—G.G.G. Co. give farmer equal rights with city man in speculation on ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... stayed not for [v]brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Esk river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... And she, so much her heart the world disdains, Longer to tread life's wearying round repines. Hence still in her sweet frame we view decay All that to earth can joy and radiance lend, Or serve as mirror to this laggard age; And Death's dread purpose should not Pity stay, Too well I see where all those hopes must end, With which I fondly soothed ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... first, but with a more laggard step as he plunged into the shelter of the great rocks, for he had had nothing to eat since the night before, and was beginning to be conscious of his weakness. But he strode on, doggedly enough, for more than an hour, until he found himself at a part of the coast he had not seen before—a ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... alive and half a monumental marble. There are armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see the troops marshaled on the high parade; and at night after the early winter even-fall, and in the morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was once the scene of imperial deliberations. Close by, in the High Street perhaps, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... completed; for at this moment in bustled Aunt Alison—in appearance a white-haired, rosy-faced little matron, very brisk in her movements and very shrewd-eyed. A dear old lady, dearer than ever to me in that she had tried so hard to bring Isobel and my laggard self together. She had, as usual, more to say than could be said in the time at her disposal. As we proceeded ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... they would lay no more lilies on biers— Let them say! For we are swift to enchant and tire Time's will! Our feet are wiser than all desire, Our song is better than faith or fame; To whom it is given no ill e'er came, Who has it not grows chill! Who has it not grows laggard and lame, Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre, Smitten and never still!... Last night ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... with bells; if a peasant's cart was in the way and did not hasten at the sound of the familiar little bells to move out, the heiduck in coloured livery, with a sword at his side, sitting by the driver, shouted an order and an oath to the laggard, and the coachman, while dashing by, dealt the disrespectful loiterer a well-aimed blow. He might even fare still worse if the humor happened to seize the grandee ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... on his way some of the hotel servants, who even thus early had commenced work, for your industrious Frenchman is no laggard in the morning. Going to the hall-porter's office he found that functionary snoring peacefully. The poor fellow was evidently tired out, and twenty telephone bells might have jangled in ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... wicked ones into the abyss, the proud by the hair of the head, and so also every sinner by the member through which he sinned. Beneath them is seen Charon with his black boat, just as Dante described him in the "Inferno," on muddy Acheron, raising his oar to strike some laggard soul. As the bark touches the bank, pushed on by Divine justice, all these souls strive to fling themselves ashore, so that fear, as the poet says, is changed into longing. Afterwards they receive from Minos their sentence, to be dragged by demons to the bottomless pit, where are marvellous contortions, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... he said in a low tone, and speaking with some effort.. "forgive me and have patience with my laggard comprehension, . . I am perplexed at heart and slow of thought; wilt thou assure me faithfully, that this God-Man thou speakest of is ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... repeated calls been made upon the South to rally to the rescue? When, where, or how, has she been laggard or deserter? ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... longer playing laggard, and for a very good reason: since an albacore, nearly full three feet in length, was swimming after it and doing his very best to overtake it. Both were exerting every bit of muscular strength that lay ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... the laggard line, The colonel's horse we spied— Bay Billy, with his trappings on, His nostrils swelling wide, As though still on his gallant ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... come now and claim her, when perils were past, when there was naught left to do but lead her to the altar? Could he be worthy of such a pearl of womanhood, this laggard who, because a fever touched him, sat him down in an inn within a few hours' ride of her to rest him, as though the world held no ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... his views, and, at his suggestion, wrote letters to the Pope, and to the most influential Monarchs of Christendom, detailing the sorrows of the faithful, and urging them to take up arms in their defence. Peter was not a laggard in the work. Taking an affectionate farewell of the Patriarch, he returned in all haste to Italy. Pope Urban II. occupied the apostolic chair. It was at that time far from being an easy seat. His predecessor, Gregory, had bequeathed him a host of disputes with the Emperor Henry IV., of Germany; ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... mind HIM." In reality Filgee pere, a widower of two years' standing, had tacitly allowed the discipline of his family to devolve upon Rupert. Remembering this, the master could only say, "Very well," and good-naturedly dismiss the pupil to his seat and the subject from his mind. The last laggard had just slipped in, the master had glanced over the occupied benches with his hand upon his warning bell, when there was a quick step on the gravel, a flutter of skirts like the sound of alighting birds, and a ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... seemed to be a thousand novel things to be done, and yet she could think of nothing whatever that she needed to do at that moment; so she occupied herself with the muffler. Before she reappeared Cyril had gone to school, he who was usually a laggard. The truth was that he could no longer contain within himself a recital of the night, and in particular of the fact that he had been the first to hear the summons of the murderer on the window-pane. This imperious news had to be imparted to somebody, as a preliminary to ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and marched; Over the hills and dales of Maryland Along the famous river wound our way. On picket-duty at the frequent fords For weary, laggard months were we employed Guarding the broad Potomac, while our foes, Stealthily watching for their human game, Lurked like Apaches on the wooded shores. Bands of enemy's cavalry by night Along the line of river prowled, and sought To dash across and raid in Maryland. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... tamer of the steed, Great Neptune's son. Fire nor the steel's sharp stroke Could lay him lifeless, so the Fates decreed. Grasping his sword, a laggard race he woke, Disused to war, and tardy to provoke. Behind him throng Fescennia's ranks to fight, Men from Flavinia, and Faliscum's folk, And those whom fair Capena's groves delight, Ciminius' mount and lake, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... sound asleep, but beneath their lids her little black eyes continued watching. At last, however, she had to rise from her bed; and next day Helene presented her with the promised bonnet and gown. When the doctor made his appearance that afternoon the old woman's laggard memory seemed suddenly stirred. "Gracious goodness!" said she, "I've forgotten my neighbor's soup-pot; I promised ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... There was Tom Brangwyn, and there was Kurt Fawzi and his wife, and Lynne. And there was Senta herself, fat and dumpy, in one of her preposterous red-and-purple dresses, bustling about, bubbling happily one moment and screaming invective at some laggard waiter the next. ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... after contemplating her, and looking over the schooner's side for some time, "this craft has got as clean a pair of heels as any vessel I was ever aboard; and though our brig, I'll allow, is no laggard, I doubt if she'll overtake her, if the wind holds steady, before we reach the West Indies, where, I ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... attend greatly extended; and the voice of the State has been uttered in a firmer tone than ever before in English educational history. Taxes have been increased; the scope of the school system extended; all elements of the system better integrated; laggard local educational authorities subjected to firmer control; the training of teachers looked after more carefully than ever before; and the foundations for unlimited improvement and progress in education laid down. Still, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... from his habitation, a small prairie of circular form, that is now generally known in that region of the country by the name of Prairie Round. Three hours were necessary to reach it, and this so much the more, because Margery's shorter steps were to be considered. Margery, however, was no laggard on a path. Young, active, light of foot, and trained in exertions of this nature, her presence did not probably retard ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... I felt his fingers tighten suddenly, for there, at the open doorway of the inn, with the early glory of the morning all about her, stood Prue. As we watched, she began to cross the road towards the smithy, with laggard step and drooping head. ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... splicing, the pin having been neglected in the furious haste, and swinging free, fell crashing through the timbers upon the scurrying, scrambling men below. On its way it swept off the middle bent Rory, who was madly entreating a laggard to drop to the earth, but who, flung by good fortune against a brace, clung there. On the plate went in its path of destruction, missing several men by hairs' breadths, but striking at last with smashing cruel force across the ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... hands that idly fold, And lips that woo the reed's accord, When laggard Time the hour has tolled For true with false and new with old To fight the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... studied intently my comrades; and while in secret I shared their own hardy lives, I was more than content to appear a cipher among them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with my school-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood or inclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company I was lower than the least of them; in my solitude, at their head I captured the universe. Daily, to and fro, for two or three years I journeyed between my home and this school, with a couple of two-mile walks and a couple of train ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... in the chase Unconquer'd; those adulterous locks, though late, Shall gory dust deface. Hark! 'tis the death-cry of your race! look back! Ulysses comes, and Pylian Nestor grey; See! Salaminian Teucer on your track, And Sthenelus, in the fray Versed, or with whip and rein, should need require, No laggard. Merion too your eyes shall know From far. Tydides, fiercer than his sire, Pursues you, all aglow; Him, as the stag forgets to graze for fright, Seeing the wolf at distance in the glade, And flies, high panting, you shall fly, despite Boasts ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Brahe's false statement of the condition of his party held out no encouragement that they might be able to overtake him; but there was a chance that a new party might even then be coming up, or that the laggard Wright would be on the advance at last, as proved to be the fact. A Melbourne paper, commenting on these points, had the following remarks, which were as just as they were doubly painful, being ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... set up, what? in its place. A foul, decaying object—a slave oligarchy, which, do what it will, is, at each decennial census, seen to fall steadily farther and farther into the rear even of the most laggard of the Free States, in all that goes to make up our American civilization.[1] And all this because it sees that the life of the republic is the death of slavery, and free labor the eternal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdroeckh is now a man without Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers-off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdroeckh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sailing ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... not know that she would be here! Bobby would have met her at his best, and his best is more to my liking than the count's. He has a way about him that the women like. He's no laggard. But money ought not to count with Betty. She is worth at least a quarter of a million. Her mother left all her property to her, and her father acts only as trustee. Senator Blank's house rents for eight ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, the Pages, and George Mason. But between the two groups, after all, was surprising harmony, which is thus explained by one who in all that business had a great part and who never was a laggard:— ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Greek, it was evident, heard of the murders at the earliest possible moment; Julius too was singularly well informed, though his interest in Kosnovian affairs had long seemed dormant; even the fiery Stampoff was no laggard once the news was bruited. Alec went so far as to fix the exact time at which Julius appeared in the Rue Boissiere. He knew something of the ways of newspapers, and was well aware that no private person could hope to obtain such important intelligence before the press. He himself ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... on brute force, if on nothing else; and force is, after all, the ultimate basis of all government. I do not mean to underrate the cleverness of women. The first man was overreached by Eve; and the last woman will probably turn the head of the laggard who brings up the rear of the human race. If a wife is only half of the scissors, as Franklin suggests, she is often the half with the point. But feminine ability is not of the ruling kind. You dance, for instance, better than men, if the gymnastic capers of acrobats and tumblers can be called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... ears sought for two sounds with agonizing acuteness—the firm, rapid step of Jonah mounting the stairs winding from the shop, or the nonchalant, laggard footfall of Ray ascending from the stairs at the rear. Would Cassidy send the bottle and trust her for the other eighteen pence? Would Jonah hurry back to meet Miss Grimes? Presently her ear distinguished the light, uncertain step ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... before the laggard line The colonel's horse we spied— Bay Billy, with his trappings on, His nostrils swelling wide, As though still on his gallant back ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... ask Kathleen tonight," replied Spencer, with drunken dignity. "I'm no la-laggard. Speak to Whitney, too; though that isn't important—he won't refuse." He cogitated darkly for a moment. "If he does ... I'll ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... you? Six months to wait? That will not do for me! My blood is boiling in my veins; I must needs cool it! If these laggard rulers, with their clumsy methods, cannot put an army in the field before the spring, surely there are men enough amongst us to go forth—a hardy band of woodsmen and huntsmen—and hunt and harry, and slay and destroy, even as they ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... For that matter, he might never return to Earth. This Ronny Bronston had realized before he ever applied for an interplanetary appointment. Mankind was exploding through this spiral arm of the galaxy. There was a racial enthusiasm about it all. Man's destiny lay out in the stars, only a laggard stayed home of his own accord. It was the ambition of every youth to join the snowballing avalanche of ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Who knows but what old Noll's police-patrol is lurking in this cutthroat alley? ... Endicott, take the bank again.... I'll swear I'll ruin ye ere the moon—which I do not see—disappears down the horizon. Sir Michael, try my system.... Overbury, art a laggard? ... Let us laugh and be merry—to-morrow is the Jewish Sabbath—and after that Puritanic Sunday ... after which mayhap, we'll all go to hell, driven thither by my Lord Protector. Wench, another bumper ... canary, sack or muscadel ... no ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... hid her heart behind a mask, And held him to his manly course; One hour in love she bade him bask, And then she drove, with playful force, The laggard to ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... Zenobia, as we left the room, "that Mr. Hollingsworth should be such a laggard. I should not have thought him at all the sort of person to be turned back by a puff of contrary wind, or a few ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an all-day job in the boiling alone but the rich and tasty product is considered well worth the effort and any mountain woman who cannot display shelves laden with jars of apple-butter would be considered a laggard indeed. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... sacre musicians!" exclaimed the general to-night as he puffed at his cigarette. "If there's a laggard in my camp, you may be sure it is one of those little devils with a horn or a whistle. Mon Dieu! Once during the manoeuvres outside of Perigord I found three of them who refused to sleep on the ground—stole off and begged a lodging in ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... a mere accident that of a group of depreciatory and contemptuous words ending in 'ard', at least one half should have dropped out of use; I refer to that group of which 'dotard', 'laggard', 'braggard', now spelt 'braggart', 'sluggard', 'buzzard', 'bastard', 'wizard', may be taken as surviving specimens; 'blinkard' (Homilies), 'dizzard' (Burton), 'dullard' (Udal), 'musard' (Chaucer), 'trichard' (Political Songs), 'shreward' (Robert of Gloucester), ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... of the sword-edge; There was red on the weapon I wielded In the war with the glorious and gallant: Yet not where the broadsword,—the blood wand,— Was borne by the lords of the falchion, But low in the straw like a laggard, O my lady, ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring! Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers! The climbing sun with new recovered powers Does warm thee into being, through the ring Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... street, and hurried in to avoid her, looking ostentatiously in the opposite direction. But that was a turning-point. Shame overtook him. On Friday his belief in love was warm and living again, and his heart full of remorse for laggard days. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... these people is a very serious and ceremonious matter, a kind of worship and incantation rather than amusement. Never do man and woman dance together, as in the waltz and polka of civilised people. The very word for dancing, "nolavoa," means literally "to work." The wise old man may reproach laggard, inexperienced younger ones, saying, "Why do you not go to work?" meaning that they should go to the dance and not stand idly about while the feast is going on. If the Tarahumares did not comply with the commands of Father Sun and dance, the latter would come ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... this ye laggard spirits? What negligence, what standing still is this? Run to the mountain to strip off the slough That lets not God be ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... passed without any news of Maganga. Accordingly, Shaw and Bombay were sent to hurry him up by all means. On the fourth morning Shaw and Bombay returned, followed by the procrastinating Maganga and his laggard people. Questions only elicited an excuse that his men had been too sick, and he had feared to tax their strength before they were quite equal to stand the fatigue. Moreover he suggested that as they would be compelled to stay one day more at the camp, I might ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... loveliness, inasmuch as her skin was brown, her eyes dark, and her complexion brilliant. As Mrs. Middleton was at this time but little known at court, Grammont found some difficulty in obtaining an introduction to her as promptly as he desired; but feeling anxious to make her acquaintance, and being no laggard in love, he without hesitation applied to her porter for admittance, and took one of her lovers into his confidence. This latter gallant rejoiced in the name of Jones, and subsequently became Earl of Ranelagh. In the fulness of his heart towards one who experienced a fellow feeling, he resolved ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... have spoken some friendly consoling word of her mother; but his heart, more than his strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying eyes were a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the wakeful hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under the light of that laggard letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes. The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself on other aliment. The Doctor comes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... saw, the Sidonian chief was filled with double joy and cried, 'Fly, Varro, fly and survive defeat; enough that Paulus lieth low! Go, consul, tell all the tale of Cannae to the fathers, to laggard Fabius, to the people. If so thou long'st to live, I will grant thee, Varro, to flee once more as thou fleest to-day. But let him, whose heart was bold and worthy to be my foe, and all aflame with mighty valour, be honoured with the last rites of burial and all the honour of the ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Queen Sophie has been in almost complete control of the female portion of the Sidi community. She has no place in the chain of dancing fanatics but stands in the centre near the drummers, now breaking into a "pas seul" on her own account, now urging a laggard with all the force of a powerful vocabulary, beating time the while upon the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Eske river where ford there was none; But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... clocks that never told the time, or, if wound up by any chance, told it wrong, and struck unearthly numbers, which are not upon the dial; the accidental tinklings among the pendant lustres, more startling than alarm-bells; the softened sounds and laggard air that made their way among these objects, and a phantom crowd of others, shrouded and hooded, and made spectral of shape. But, besides, there was the great staircase, where the lord of the place so rarely set his foot, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... our elder brethren; and in each case, a monk who followed at a distance of fifty yards was able to perceive that they were watched. The town is full of rough men, the hangers-on of the army; some, indeed, are followers of laggard knights, but the greater portion are men who merely pursue the army with a view to gain by its necessities, to buy plunder from the soldiers, and to rob, and, if necessary, to murder should there be a hope of obtaining ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... clear the Thames tragedy of all its mystery and to relieve him of any suspicion as being the murderer. But this cannot be. The presence of both Laniers undisguised upon the public streets of Calcutta is proof that justice has been laggard. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... "do they come for me? Is it so late? Have I played the laggard? Nay, it yet wants near an hour to the time they expected me. Well, some kindness, some attention from my good father-in-law; I must thank him for it. What! my hand trembles. How weak are these poor nerves; I must rest and recall ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the taste, the ingenuity, and the solidity of their workmanship. Where so many regions have but recently been peopled, there is, it need hardly be said, much to be done, and it is most satisfactory to see how each city and town is bending itself to the task to prove that there is no laggard in the patriotic competition. I have gladly attended several of these shows, and it is a feature peculiar to this country that the industrial exhibition so generally accompanies the agricultural show. Whether this shall always be the case as in the gathering ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... they would take down one of the monster green canisters, purchased of the retiring Jonas Carr for the purpose of striking awe into the bosoms of customers, but a few of which did, of a truth, hold tea, and select the special mixture to the taste of the laggard customer. It was an aggravation of the hardship when, in place of the maid, the mistress would run in. In that case Mrs. Day must stand for a half hour to listen to talk of the neighbour's children's ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... bottom dared not murder the king, he only toyed with the thought. He must be instigated from without, if the deed is not to be put off until the Greek calends. Lady Macbeth from the very beginning feels it her task to strengthen her laggard and doubting husband in his ambition. This Shakespeare had already found in Holinshed. As the chronicle has pictured it: "Still more did his wife urge him on to attack the king, for she was exorbitantly ambitious and burned with an inextinguishable desire to bear the name of queen."[34] While she ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... away ran the little girl to her old nurse, and the next half-hour was spent in satisfying her hunger. As she was returning, with laggard step, she happened to spy, from the window, a beautiful butterfly fluttering about the rose-bushes in the garden; and, quite forgetting her unfinished exercise, away she flew in chase of ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... join up with the laggard inattention of custom. With himself each man brings his rifle, his pouches of cartridges, his water-bottle, and a pouch that contains a lump of bread. Volpatte is still eating, with protruding and palpitating cheek. Paradis, with purple nose and chattering teeth, growls. Fouillade ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... valiant Menelaus they Were thus engag'd, advanc'd the Trojan hosts: They donn'd their arms, and for the fight prepar'd. In Agamemnon then no trace was seen Of laggard sloth, no shrinking from the fight, But full of ardour to the field he rush'd. He left his horses and brass-mounted car (The champing horses by Eurymedon, The son of Ptolemy, Peiraeus' son, Were held aloof), but with repeated charge Still to be near at ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the President's chair who was more genuinely a democrat or held more tenaciously to his faith in democracy than Woodrow Wilson, but no other man ever sat in the President's chair who was so contemptuous of all intellect that was inferior to his own or so impatient with its laggard processes. ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... determined to be on hand when wanted. For we do not gather that the lower animals stand in need of his services, or are capable of benefiting by them. One might be tempted to conceive him as guiding the course of evolution and hastening its laggard process; but (as we shall see) he scorns the role of Providence, and resolutely abstains from any intromission in organic or meteorological concerns. It would be pleasant to think that he had something to do with (for instance) the retreat of the ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... under the cutwater. Plop! plop! they went; and sometimes one would turn sidewise and look up roguishly with his twinkling seal-like eyes. Plop! plop! Finally all save one sank gracefully out of sight. The laggard crisscrossed the cutwater a dozen times, just to show the watchers how extremely clever he was; and then, with a plop! that was louder than any previous one, he vanished into ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... betakes himself to haunts of his own till male and female, old and young, meet again on common ground, late in the fall. But rob the sitting bird of her eggs, or destroy her tender young, and she immediately sets out in quest of a male, who is no laggard when he hears her call. The same is true of ducks, and other aquatic fowls. The propagating instinct is strong, and surmounts all ordinary difficulties. No doubt the widowhood I had caused in the case of the woodpeckers was of short duration, and chance brought, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... his feet and said rather coldly that he hoped his uncle was well, but it was the old man whose eagerness in holding out his hand made Nicky's advance seem laggard. Nicky had taken a dislike to his uncle; he could not tell why. He flattered himself he was not a snob, but he thought this old Rip Van Winkle a terrible thing to drop into any family out of the blue. Archelaus lowered himself into a chair beside his nephew and began to try and make conversation. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the first time distributed the colonists into a series of settlements up and down the river for farming and live-stock tending; they spurred the willing workers by assigning them three-acre private gardens; and they mercilessly coerced the laggard. They transformed the colony from a distraught camp into a group of severely disciplined farms, owned by the London Company, administered by its officials, and operated partly by its servants, partly by its tenants who paid rent in the form of labor. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips |
