"Lapsing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the soft, slow sound of lapsing waters, the rocking on the tide, the long sway of some idle weed. Here a jet of tune was flung out from a distant bark, here a high octave flashed like a passing torch through night-shadows, and lofty arching darkness told ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... about the dark stranger, as in his illness he had forgotten all that this episode had reminded him of. I don't like this lapsing into forgetfulness. It may make or continue some injury to the brain. I must not ask him, for fear I shall do more harm than good, but I must somehow learn the facts of his journey abroad. The time is come, I ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... the response, and then unconsciously lapsing into his rhythmical way of expressing himself, the old man added: "Though flying through the air so high they'll come back ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... was killed in a duel at Washington by William J. Graves, of Kentucky. This event occurred forty-five years ago, but the outcry with which it was received even at that time—one of the newspaper moralists lapsing into rhyme as he deplored the cruel custom which led excellent men ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... cannot so in any real sense be his. There does not exist such a power of possessing as he would arrogate. There is not such a sense of having as that of which he has conceived the shadow in his degenerate and lapsing imagination. The real owner of his demesne is that pedlar passing his gate, into a divine soul receiving the sweetnesses which not all the greed of the so-counted possessor can keep within his walls: ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... waters coursed Which willow branches, lapsing low, Breaking their crystal gliding forced To sing as ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... of the family, and a great source of trouble. He may justly be accused at times of lapsing into disloyalty. He was guilty both on the island and after his arrival in England of committing the same fault, but in this latter instance he may have had a purpose, as he was asking favours from men who were bitterly hostile to his benefactor. He knew they ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... hand, Mr. Armadale!" cried Pedgift Senior, warmly; "I honor you for being so angry with me. The neighborhood may say what it pleases; you're a gentleman, sir, in the best sense of the word. Now," pursued the lawyer, dropping Allan's hand, and lapsing back instantly from sentiment to business, "just hear what I have got to say in my own defense. Suppose Miss Gwilt's real position happens to be nothing like what you are generously determined to ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... as a window at the stars twinkling on the black sky; she was awaiting the time of start for her appointed meeting-place. With quiet happiness she thought of that meeting in the great forest, far from all human eyes and sounds. Her soul, lapsing again into the savage mood, which the genius of civilisation working by the hand of Mrs. Vinck could never destroy, experienced a feeling of pride and of some slight trouble at the high value her worldly-wise mother had put upon ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... still; the landscape, missing the sunshine, wore an aspect of gloomy solitude. Kenelm came to the banks of the rivulet not far from the spot on which the farmer had first found him. There he sat down, and leaned his cheek on his hand, with eyes fixed on the still and darkened stream lapsing mournfully away: sorrow entered into his heart ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little torrent at all times; in spring it was a river. Now, under the white concave of wintry moonlight, it broke over its stony bed with a fierce persistency of advance. Jerome looked down at the rapid, shifting water-hillocks and listened to their lapsing murmur, incessantly overborne by the gathering rush of onset, then nodded his head conclusively, as if in response to some mental question, and ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his heart could find to say. Their minds were fast lapsing into childhood once more. Punch's unedifying life was fostering languor within their breasts. When the drama drew to its close with the appearance of the devil, and the final fight and general massacre ensued, Helene in leaning back pressed against Henri's hand, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... occidental Russia, thus ravaged by interminable wars, desolated by famine and by flame, was rapidly on the decline, and was fast lapsing into barbarism. Davidovitch had hardly ascended the throne ere he was driven from it by Rostislaf, whom Georges had dethroned. But the remote province of Souzdal, of which Moscow was the capital, situated some seven hundred ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... was lapsing from him thus, and from her own true self yet more, the gallant young sailor, whose last prize had been that useful one misfortune, was dwelling continually upon her image, because he had very little else to do. English ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Kirstie, my woman, you're asking me ower much at last," said Archie, profoundly moved, and lapsing into the broad Scots. "Ye're asking what nae man can grant ye, what only the Lord of heaven can grant ye if He see fit. Ay! And can even He? I can promise ye what I shall do, and you can depend on that. But how I shall feel—my woman, that is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the state of Maine, the story goes, A woman, to secure a lapsing pension, Married a soldier—though the good Lord knows That very common act scarce calls for mention. What makes it worthy to be writ and read— The man she married had been ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Hamilton girl, of course, and the Chamber of Commerce wants the cast to be all local talent," Sprague answered, lapsing unconsciously ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... was against his chest and I could not see, but I heard Maud turn and run swiftly away along the deck. Everything was happening quickly. I had not yet had a glimmering of unconsciousness, and it seemed that an interminable period of time was lapsing before I heard her feet flying back. And just then I felt the whole man sink under me. The breath was leaving his lungs and his chest was collapsing under my weight. Whether it was merely the expelled breath, or his consciousness of ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... anything of my own resolution I should do it. Were Verner's Pride to lapse to me to-morrow, I believe I should set about it the next day. But," Lionel added after a short pause, "there's no probability of its lapsing to me. Therefore I want you to set about it ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... America, whose extension of its federal system over a vast territory suggested what Brazil with its provinces might accomplish in the southern continent. Hence the vast majority of intelligent Brazilians felt that they had become self-reliant enough to establish a republic without fear of lapsing into the unfortunate experiences ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... Good gracious! That was the very thing I had to tell her that morning—that I too was ordered abroad. An estate to be settled—some bothering old claim that had been handed down from generation to generation, and now springing into life again by the lapsing of two lives on the other side. But how to tell her as she looked up into my face with the half-pleading, half-imperious smile that I knew so well? ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... us his Word and his Spirit to aid us in purging out the remaining old leaven, and in holding to our newly-begun purity instead of lapsing from it. We must retain the faith, the Spirit and Christ; and this, as before said, we cannot do if we give place to the old carnal disposition ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... sung to her of love that can never die. But at length my eyes grew dim, the room seemed to darken, the form of Ethelind alternately brightened and waxed indistinct, like the last flickerings of a fire; I swayed toward her, and felt myself lapsing into unconsciousness, with my head resting ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... that Angus McRae gave Whaley is still remembered by one or two old-timers in the Northwest. In crisp, biting words he freed his mind without once lapsing into profanity. He finished with a warning. "Tak tent you never speak to the lass again, or you an' ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... possessed of a power of self-command which we had not before. Or again, we may have a resolution grow on us to serve God more strictly in His house and in private than heretofore. This is a call to higher things; let us beware lest we receive the grace of God in vain. Let us beware of lapsing back; let us avoid temptation. Let us strive by quietness and caution to cherish the feeble flame, and shelter it from the storms of this world. God may be bringing us into a higher world of religious truth, let ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... were the February tints, the aged grass, the leafless trees! What a sense of coolness and repose! I stopped a long time upon a rustic-timbered bridge to look at a little stream that ran beneath the road, winding down through a rough pasture-field, with many thorn-thickets. The water, lapsing slowly through withered flags, had the pure, gem-like quality of the winter stream; in summer it will become dim and turbid with infusorial life, but now it is like a pale jewel. How strange, I thought, to think of this liquid gaseous juice, which we call water, trickling ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not a large family, and their pursuits and habits were very simple; yet the summer was lapsing toward the first pathos of autumn before they found themselves all in such case as to be able to take the day's pleasure they had planned so long. They had agreed often and often that nothing could be more charming than an excursion down the Harbor, either to Gloucester, or to Nahant, or to Nantasket ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... watched her with silent distress; and, lapsing into the habit of indulgent tenderness, she began to think what she imagined that Gwendolen was thinking, and to wish that everything should give way to the possibility of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... did not know it, was that he seemed never disposed to carry the spirit of fancy dress into everyday life. To begin with he had touched both her imagination and senses, and she wanted him to go on doing that. Instead of which he seemed lapsing more and more into reiterated assurances of devotion and the flat competent discharge of humanitarian duties. Always nowadays he was trying to persuade her that what he was doing was the right and ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... and Pederson, since neither of them had been expecting it. Pederson, who had already been slightly distracted, got the major brunt of the force. He managed to jerk his gun free, but his brain was already lapsing into unconsciousness. ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... his friends who sat astonished by this flow of eager, impassioned words. Then he turned again to Lylda's intent, pleading face, regarding her tenderly. "You are very fine, little mother of my son," he said gently, lapsing for a moment into her own style of speech. "It could do no harm," he added ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... almost at her, for the truth of her. Steady and intent and eternal they were, as if they would never change. They seemed to fix and to resolve her. She quivered, feeling herself created, will-less, lapsing into him, into a common will ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... to educate himself and others with himself in Socialism. He has to make and keep this idea of synthetic human effort and of conscious constructive effort clear first to himself and then clear in the general mind. For it is an idea that comes and goes. We are all of us continually lapsing from it towards individual isolation again. He needs, we all need, constant refreshment in this belief if it is to remain a predominant living fact in ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Hundred, lapsing into bad grammar in his grief. "Why, it took an awful paste to land a home run over right field into the woods! And there ain't ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... as even the rainiest clime, Life were even as even this lapsing shore, Might not aught outlive their trustless prime: Vainly fear would wail or hope implore, Vainly grief revile or love adore Seasons clothed in sunshine, rain, or rime Now for me one comfort held in store Stands a sea-mark in the ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... remark that nervous headaches were such trying things; she could never control them except by liberal use of bromides. Mrs. Wilkins was of opinion that if ever she had one she'd cut her head off before she'd use the likes—such stuff as that; lapsing very nearly into the vernacular of her early days; and Mrs. Whaling calmly announced that nothing ever did her so much good as a warm embryocation, whereat there was suppressed sensation on part of the ladies and convulsive throes by Mr. Blake. Ray and Miss Sanford, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... from Bobby was sufficient reply to this. Then, lapsing into his worst grammar, in his excitement he said, 'I never forgetted you one day since I was borned! It's like a bit of my puzzle map,' went on Bobby after a pause. 'It's a plan with a piece left out, and it isn't finished till it's ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... he was thus called. General Lovell having to devote his attention solely to his military duties, the city which had so long been under martial law was escaping out of the hands of the civil authorities and fast lapsing into anarchy. Between one and two in the afternoon Bailey landed, accompanied by Perkins, the first lieutenant of the Cayuga; who, having shared his former perils, was permitted to accompany him in this one also. "We took just a boat and a boat's crew," writes Perkins, "with a flag of truce, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... thickets wherein the great god Pan might have delighted to lurk; fair colonnades thick-carpeted with the petals of roses and framed to greet all cool, benevolent breezes; temples to exquisite divinities; fountains lapsing, murmurous as the laughter of youth, into great basins whose smooth waters welcomed smooth bodies; grottoes deep and mysterious, affording shelter in the fiercest heats. To these enchanted privacies the young and rich who had followed ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... drowses here, and it is difficult to remember that fact is more virtuous than fiction. In other years, when there was life in the city, and this sad ebb of prosperity was full tide in her canals, there might have been some incentive to keep one's thoughts and words from lapsing into habits of luxurious dishonesty, some reason for telling the whole hard truth of things, some policy to serve, some end to gain. But now, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... infused into the flattened lace at the neck, and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton gloves that called attention to the tanned wrists and arms were stripped off and put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was adjusted at a heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly into a fluffy frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... here so prolifically. The person announced that they were dogs, and that an idiosyncrasy of Chinese dogs was to fight. Several wags joined in, and all appeared, through the traveling nincompoop, to know all about my past and present, lapsing into a desultory harangue upon all men and things foreign. The street reminded me of Clovelly—rugged and ragged—and the people were wrinkled and wretched; and, indeed, being a Devonian myself ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... murmured, lapsing into the Western idiom which a whole week spent in the society of her bosom friend was bound to call up. "But why Lord Chilminster?" She pronounced ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Island, in Flushing and its neighborhood. But before the year 1730 the fervid and violent and wonderfully brief early enthusiasm of this Society had long been waning, and the Society, winning no accessions and suffering frequent losses in its membership, was lapsing into that "middle age of Quakerism"[139:1] in which it made itself felt in the life of the people through its almost passive, but yet effective, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... at Dorchster, but in 1637 removed to Salem, where he received grants of land; and there the line continued generation after generation with varying fortune, at one time coming into public service and local distinction, and at another lapsing again into the common lot, as was the case of the long settled families generally. The planter, William Hathorne, shared to the full in the vigor and enterprise of the first generation in New England. He was a leader in war and peace, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... wants a passport?" he said, lapsing into the useful third person, which makes the French language so much more fitted to social and diplomatic purposes than is our ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... if, like her father, she would openly let him see and hear it—but doesn't she? What had he to offer her? How could he overcome her father's dislike? He felt in his soul what would come to him finally, but then, in the lapsing time? And she ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Butsudan, the pleasant garden—all were of the tissue of a dream amid a toil which deposited her on the straw wrappings of the charcoal and in a shed, thoroughly worn out at the end of her long day. The O'Iwa of Samoncho[u] at this end of the lapsing year of service was dormant. But accidents ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... efficiently training his students for their after life-work. In the second place, when the emphasis is laid strongly upon the function of the University as an institution for the carrying on of scientific and literary research there is the danger of again lapsing into the old fallacy that knowledge for knowledge' sake is an end in itself, that the object of education is to acquire and organise systems of means which function in the attainment of no practical end, and that the acquisition of knowledge is valuable for the culture of the ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... front of her and the schoolgirl attitude annoyed and restrained her. Also, the man appeared to be in earnest in what he said. His words at the least and the intention which drove them seemed honorable. She could not give rein to her feelings without lapsing to a barbarity which she might not justify to herself even in anger and might, indeed, blush to remember. Perhaps his chief disqualification consisted in a relationship to Mrs. O'Connor for which he could not justly be held to blame, and for which she sincerely pitied him. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... really finds it safer to suppose that references to ancestor-worship in the Bible were obliterated by late monotheistic editors, who, none the less, are so full and minute in their descriptions of the various heresies into which Israel was eternally lapsing, and must not be allowed to lapse again. Had ancestor-worship been a peche mignon of Israel, the Prophets would have let Israel hear their ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... irritable, with annoyance at the interference with her schemes, at the prospects of her school, and at herself for being out of temper, prone to murmur or to reply tartly, and not able to recover from her mood, but only, as she neared the house, lapsing into her other trouble, and preparing to resist any misjudged, though kind attempt of her father, to make her unsay her rebuke to Miss Bracy. Pride and temper! Ah! Etheldred! where ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the tender stream of melody flows on, never lapsing into anything approaching prettiness or feebleness, flooding us with an overwhelming sense of a far-away past, while full utterance is found for Eva's anxiety, then her despair, and her wish, timidly spoken, to ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... when climbing mountains we have two milk-white steers which majestically draw us along. Their eyes are deep wells of dark, peaceful light, that seem to express broad levels of rich waving grain, pure lapsing streams, olives and vines, and every other sign of plenty and quiet husbandry, with no end of dawns, twilights, and cool thickets. The golden age of rural life slumbers in their great orbs. Byron calls them "the purest gods of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... find you've bitten off a bigger bit than you can chew," replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing into the vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the presence of himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed to take a sort of pride in this great woman. Let those explain ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... began, addressing herself first in Spanish to Demorest, who understood the language better than his wife, and lapsing into her characteristic English as she appealed to them both. It was really very little to interest Don Ricardo—this story of a silly muchacha like herself and a strange caballero. He would go to sleep while she was talking, and to-night he would say to his wife, "Mother ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... congratulate the authors, Messrs. LECHMERE WORRALL, and HAROLD TERRY, on having given the public what they want, without lapsing into banality. The attraction of the first two Acts was not, perhaps, fully sustained in the third, but they gave us quite a cheerful evening; and at the fall of the curtain the audience was so importunate in their applause that Mr. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... spring. And so his heart forever goes inland with the tide, Searching with many voices among the marshes wide. Under the quiet starlight, up through the stirring reeds, With whispering and lamenting it rises and recedes. All night the lapsing rivers croon to their shingly bars The wizardries that mingle the sea-wind and the stars. And all night long wherever the moving waters gleam, The little hills hearken, hearken, the great hills hear and dream. And Malyn keeps the marshes all the sweet summer night, ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... these hopeful plots were raging in his comrade's brain, now sparkling for immediate execution, and anon lapsing disdainfully dark in their chances of fulfilment, "how I wish you'd have let me notch him, Ricky! I'm a safe shot. I never miss. I should feel quite jolly if I'd spanked him once. We should have had the beat of him at that game. I say!" and a sharp thought drew Ripton's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... experience of all—when the loved seem gradually withdrawing from human contact and human desires, their cares parting slowly farther and farther from the cares of those they leave—a gulf ever widening between, already impassable as lapsing ages can make it. But when final departure had left the mind free to work for the heart, Cosmo said to himself—"What if the dying who seem thus divided from us, are but looking over the tops of insignificant earthly things? What if the heart ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... near the wrecked ship while Manulito prowled the haunted corridors and cabins in his space suit, planning his booby trap. At night he drew diagrams on pieces of bark and discussed the possibility of this or that device, sometimes lapsing into technicalities his companions could not follow. But Travis was well satisfied that Manulito knew what he ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... but a temptation, and would be finally conquered. Men do not lose the noble savor of humanity in a moment. Even on the downward road good angels wait anxiously, and whisper in every better moment to the lapsing ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... evidently sustained some internal damage of a nature to cause anxiety. He was lapsing into the most singular manias. While obstinately retaining possession of the over-large flat which he had formerly occupied with his wife and daughter, he now lived there absolutely alone; for he had dismissed his servant, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... producer, and there was manifestly a strain of generous indolence in his composition. There was a loveable want of eagerness about him. Let the encouragement offered have been what it might, he had waited till he was lapsing from middle-life to strike his first noticeable blow; and during the last ten years of his career he put forth but two complete works, and the fragment ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... combined to create dangers, even where they might not have been feared. Daily instruction and inspection of the cottages and their inmates was required. The knowledge that they were under control and supervision was a support to the frightened people and prevented their lapsing into careless habits. Also, there began to develop among them a secret dependence upon, and desire to please "his lordship," as the existing circumstances drew him nearer to them, and unconsciously they were attracted and dominated by his strength. The strong ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... afternoon before the young man reascended to the antechamber, where Pavaniev greeted him with the report: "Great exhaustion, lapsing from semi to total unconsciousness." Any attempt at rousing might possibly prove fatal.—Was there any message?—No?—Then one could but wait.—These things were, indeed, most trying. And so Ivan seated himself on a bench against the wall in the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... figure, at once graceful and stately; the benign air, as of an affable archangel; the critical brow and enquiring eyeglass bent on some very immature performance in penmanship or needlework; and the frightened children and the anxious teacher, gradually lapsing into smiles and peace, as the great man tested the proficiency in some such humble art as spelling. "Well, my little man, and how do you spell dog?" "Please sir, d-o-g." "Capital, very good indeed. I couldn't do it better myself. And now let us go a little further, and see if we can spell cat." ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... suddenly lapsing into a confidential tone, I questioned him: "By the way, Jake, is this the first time you have ever ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... seeing that the king had a great host of warriors at his back, agreed to listen to the teachings of the bishop, and finally to have themselves baptized. Olaf left a priest among them to keep them steadfast in the faith, and to keep them from lapsing ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... said the veteran. "That's why, is it? Well, my dear, the reason why you part your hair in the middle is the reason why I sleep outside the admiral's door. I know how to deal with 'em!" chuckled old Mazey, lapsing into soliloquy, and stirring up his ale in high triumph. "Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives—I know ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... tombs are worth attention, each lapsing further into the bad taste of later ages; yet there is one still deserving admiration, placed close to the head of that of the two Barons. It is the effigy of a lady, aged and serene, with a delicately-carved ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thinly settling,—the new America growing up before my eyes! and him only by me to make me not a stranger there, with talk of absent friends and old times, though scarce the long age of a college course had gone by,—talk lapsing as of old on such rides into serious strains, problems such as the young talk of together and keep their secret, learning life,—the troubles of the heart of youth. And if now I recur to some of the themes we touched on, and set down these memoranda, fragments of life, thinking they ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... replied the baronet, lapsing again into his dreamy manner. "Ring me up when you are going, and I will ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... heard what's become of Shorty and Doble?" the prospector asked, lapsing to ill-concealed anxiety. "I see the sheriff has got a handbill out offerin' a reward for their arrest and conviction. You don't reckon those fellows would bear me ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... "Indeed," and then, lapsing into silence, gave little occasional side-glances at Mr. Wilks, as though in search of any hidden charms about him which ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... of ahm that," said Aladdin, lapsing into full brogue; "oi'm a hireling sojer, mahm, and no inimy av ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... or coalesce. The result is that the separate signal currents which enter a long cable issue from it at the other end in one continuous current, with pulsations at every signal, that is to say, in a lapsing stream, like a jet of water flowing from a constricted spout. The receiving instrument must be sufficiently delicate to manifest every pulsation of the current. Its indicator, in fact, must respond to every rise and fall of the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... please come in,' said the widow, seeing his case. The miller said something about coming in presently; but Anne pressed him to stay, with a tender motion of her lip as it played on the verge of a solicitous smile without quite lapsing into one—her habitual ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... was introducing this set and narrow attitude into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French or expressing himself ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... thrilling pleasure. They illustrated Chopin for me, giving precision and particularity to his messages. And I was ashamed of myself. Yes; at the bottom of my heart I was ashamed of myself because my sensuous being responded to the call of these masterpieces. In my ignorance I thought I was lapsing from a sane and proper ideal. And then—the second miracle in my career, which has been full of miracles—I came across a casual reference, in the Staffordshire Recorder, of all places, to the Mademoiselle de Maupin of Theophile Gautier. Something in the reference, I no longer remember ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Allan launched himself into the full violence of his recital, stumbling recklessly over his figures of speech, lapsing into idioms that it taxed his hearer to follow. Had she been less acquainted with the Caribbean dialects she would have missed much of the story, but, as it was, she followed him closely, urging him on with sharp expressions of amazement and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... wild-flowers blushed 'mid silence and shade; Where, hid from the gaze of the garish noon, They were slily wooed by the trembling moon. It rose—for the guardian zephyrs had flown, And left the valley that night alone. No sigh was borne from the leafy hill, No murmur came from the lapsing rill; The boughs of the willow in silence wept, And the aspen leaves in that sabbath slept. The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute. The slender rush o'er the glassy rill, As a marble shaft, was erect ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... stimulus of the few wants that sent him hunting or fishing kept up his physical health. Never a lover of rude freedom or outdoor life his sedentary predilections and nice tastes kept him from lapsing into barbarian excess; never a sportsman he followed the chase with no feverish exaltation. Even dumb creatures found out his secret, and at times, stalking moodily over the upland, the brown deer and elk would cross his path without fear or molestation, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... endured was this sad reverse! She can be tranquil, but never more will she be happy. To promote her forgetfulness of him, I persuaded her to leave her country, which contained a thousand memorials of past calamity, and which was lapsing fast into civil broils. Clarice has accompanied us, and time may effect the happiness of others by her means, though she can never remove the ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... hard reading man, and a "Sim" of the straitest kind with the "empty bottles,"... I was fast lapsing into a state of literary sensualism.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... innumerable multitude of pieces, of which it is strangely unlikely but some will be out of order; and yet, if any one be so, the whole fabric falls of necessity to the ground: and he that shall put them together, and maturely consider all the possible ways of lapsing and nullifying a priesthood in the Church of Rome, will be very inclinable to think that it is a hundred to one, that among a hundred seeming priests, there is not one true one; nay, that it is not a thing very improbable that, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... growth. Even where I sat, about midway between the root and the topmost bough, my position was lofty enough to serve as an observatory, not for starry investigations, but for those sublunary matters in which lay a lore as infinite as that of the planets. Through one loophole I saw the river lapsing calmly onward, while in the meadow, near its brink, a few of the brethren were digging peat for our winter's fuel. On the interior cart-road of our farm I discerned Hollingsworth, with a yoke of oxen hitched to a drag of stones, that were to be piled into a fence, on which we employed ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... deep, profound and all-pervading reigned. I had been talking, as an old pensioner will talk, of byegone times, of my experiences in a long railway career, and my companion, himself a rising railway man, seemed greatly interested. As we sauntered along, the conversation now and again lapsing into a companionable silence, he suddenly said: "Why don't you write your reminiscences? They would be very interesting, not only to us younger railway men, but to men of your own time too." Until that moment I had never ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... His chief value, however, lay in his power of exciting Van Degen's jealousy. She knew enough of French customs to be aware that such devotion as Chelles' was not likely to have much practical bearing on her future; but Peter had an alarming way of lapsing into security, and as a spur to his ardour she knew the value of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... that Messrs. Boardman and Warner can oversee your local Medical Board and keep the institution from lapsing into the dry rot of a ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... you as rather a weak argument for a man to offer for himself?" returned his companion, lapsing into her Southern drawl which, of late, had not been so prominent; "to ask a girl to bind herself irrevocably to him for life and holding out as an inducement the privilege of reforming him?" and there was a note of scorn in the lazy tones that stung ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... nothing to anybody, least of all to her." He consequently tried, so far as shutting his eyes and stalking grimly about was a trial; but his plan was carried out, it may well be guessed, neither with marked success nor with marked consistency. The days, whether lapsing or lingering, were a stiff reality; the suppression of anxiety was a thin idea; the taste of life itself was the taste of suspense. That he was waiting was in short at the bottom of everything; and it required no great sifting ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of these monsters,—to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them; how they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch of clothing; how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs; how their foreheads fell away ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... breaking up, I thought I could not do better than take M'Corkindale's hint, and accordingly betook myself to Glenmutchkin, along with the Captain of M'Alcohol, and we quartered ourselves upon the Factor for Glentumblers. We found Watty Solder very shaky, and his assistant also lapsing into habits of painful inebriety. We saw little of them except of an evening, for we shot and fished the whole day, and made ourselves remarkably comfortable. By singular good luck, the plans and sections were lodged in time, and the Board of Trade very handsomely ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... of the night We heard the mellow lapsing and return Of night-owls purring in their groundling flight Through ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... have to fear, in all this, is of lapsing into indolence and solitary enjoyment, guarding and hoarding our own happiness. We must measure the effectiveness of our enjoyment by one thing and one thing alone—our increase of affection and sympathy, our interest in other ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... severe exhaustion and shock, heart strained, superficial lesions, bruises, scratches, and so forth. Mentally he is in a great state of excitement and terror, lapsing into delirium at times—that is really the most serious feature. In fact, unless I can calm him I am afraid we may have some brain trouble on top of the other thing. It's ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... Street was wont to adjust its differences over the cards and the wine-cup, it came "heeled," ready for what might befall. From Tomaso, the ragpicker in the farthest rear cellar, to the Signor Undertaker, mainstay and umpire in the varying affairs of life, which had a habit in The Bend of lapsing suddenly upon his professional domain, they were all there, the men of Malpete's village. The baby was named for the village saint, so that it was a kind of communal feast as well. Carmen was there with her man, and ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... their ranches and claims by men with money in other parts of this country as well as across the frontier, and there's usually only one end to the battle when the man without the dollars kicks against the man with plenty. Stay right where you are with mortgages held open, timber rights that are lapsing because you've done nothing, and undeveloped mineral claims, and the man who sits scheming while you're resting will squeeze you out one ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... and praying to the good St. Dunstan to send them each ten shillings, so that they could continue their journey in safety and comfort. You know, he thought it such a pity for two such worthy brothers to be in sore need of food and drink!" The children were unconsciously lapsing into the language of the Robin Hood stories, as ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... of it, lad," said the shepherd, lapsing into his Scotch mode of speech. "We shan't miss the bit sup we ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... was a sort of ocean-hasheesh, or wholesome aliment, I never knew, but certain it is that, from the moment its juices passed my lips, a strange and delightful quietude stole over my weary senses, fast lapsing, as these had seemed, into, unconsciousness when I left my place to seek the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... this pension was mistaken by Macaulay for an original one granted in payment of apostasy. That the difference is very considerable must strike every one, and I for one cannot see that the drawing of the obvious inference can be called sophistry. If the time between the lapsing and the regranting seems long, it has to be observed, first, that arrears to the date of the lapse are carefully specified; secondly, that even in the case of the laureateship patent, four whole months, as has been seen, elapsed between the instruction for it and the patent itself. The circumstances ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... much we may philosophise about sin or attempt to analyse its essence, there is some dark secret there, of which from time to time we are grievously conscious. Who does not know the sense of failure to overcome, of lapsing from a hope or a purpose, the burden of the thought of some cowardice or unkindness which we cannot undo and which we need not have committed? No resolute determinism can ever avail us against the stern verdict of that inner tribunal of the soul, which ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... one-eyed gentleman. "Their prevalence and extent is a proof that the age is lapsing into barbarism. Ah! you remember ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... "No," replied Mrs. Chumley, lapsing into thoughtful mood. "I suppose I couldn't. Squirrels are very pretty. I am afraid I was never like a squirrel. How many inches are you ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... this misshapen monster into form, and to prevent its lapsing again into a wilderness state, only two things, and those very ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... we lapsing into the real good old Indian style of doing business. Thus Indicus orders his first clerk to execute some commission; the senior, having "work" upon his hands, sends a junior; the junior finds the sun hot, and passes on the word ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... side with the Bishop?[2206] He declared that he would ask the Grand Inquisitor of France for an authorisation which should hold good for the diocese of Beauvais. Meanwhile he consented to act in order to satisfy his own conscience and to prevent the proceedings from lapsing, which, in the opinion of all, must have ensued had the trial been instituted without the concurrence of the Holy Inquisition.[2207] All preliminary difficulties were now removed. The Maid was cited to appear on Wednesday, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... time I saw Mr. Davidson it was in Mr. Joseph Simpson's studio, the one under mine in Edwardes Square. He was making a bust of Rabindranath Tagore; and as the great mystic poet disconcerted him by continually lapsing into meditation under this process, thereby emptying his beautiful face of all expression whatever, I had been called down from my studio to talk to him, so as to lure him, if possible, from meditation and keep his features in play. Mr. Davidson ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... you cowards!" roared Dave, forgetting his French and lapsing back into English. "If I go out I'll take one ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... dream of Edward I. had been but a dream, and self-interest and ambition directed the swords of Christian princes against each other rather than against the common foe. The Western Church was lapsing into a state of decay and corruption, from which she was only partially to recover at the cost of disruption and disunion, and the power which the mighty Popes of the twelfth century had gathered into a head became, for that very cause, the tool ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... with it and responsible for it. He could leave it only precariously to a steward and manager, and to convey the revenue of it to him at a distance was a difficult and costly proceeding. To prevent a constant social disturbance by lapsing and dividing property, and in the absence of any organized agency to receive lapsed property, inheritance and preferably primogeniture were of such manifest advantage that the old social organization always tended in the direction of these ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... my shepherd,'" said my father, lapsing into verse. "'The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me into green ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were cries of joy on recognition of those whom fear and terrible forebodings had buried under the blackened remains of once happy homes. But mingled with exclamations of joy were sobs and wails of anguish, as some now realized in the lapsing hours that absent members of ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... huge fragment of the wall jutted into the marsh, and passing this I saw before me, brightened by the sunset, a narrow stretch of dry, baked soil, raised somewhat above the level of the pools, and strewn with shattered bricks and scraps of tiling and potsherds. The musical lapsing of the water now fell upon my ears distinctly, and I saw a little way off a quaint old fountain, standing half a stonecast clear of the wall. With the sunlight bathing it, the limpid water sparkling away from its base, it was the only cheerful object in the landscape; yet I felt an unaccountable ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... arrangements of a whole family, the head of which would willingly contribute a small sum towards maintenance in some suitable place of refuge. It admits of no doubt that many a case, if taken in hand at an early stage, might have been restored to society, instead of lapsing into hopeless, incurable insanity. Serious evil often results from the freedom with which idiots of both sexes are permitted to wander abroad, often teased and goaded to frenzy by thoughtless children, often ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... all the beneficent modifications in the religions of the different people instructed by them were owing to their institution and extension of the Mysteries. In the chaos of popular superstitions, those Mysteries alone kept man from lapsing into absolute brutishness. Zoroaster and Confucius drew their doctrines from the Mysteries. Clemens of Alexandria, speaking of the Great Mysteries, says: "Here ends all instruction. Nature and all things are seen and known." Had moral truths ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Mrs. Picture, ass he doos, and he saided Mrs. Picture to Micky, ass he did." This was plenty for a time, and during that time the witness could go on nodding with her eyes wide open, to present the subject lapsing, for she had found out already how slippery grown-up people are in argument. Great force was added by her curls, which lent themselves to flapping backwards and forwards ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... themselves by these excesses; they become irritable, liable to cold, to rheumatic affections, and nervous depression. They find themselves weary when they rise in the morning. Unfitted for close application to business, they become dilatory and careless, often lapsing into entire lack of energy, and not seldom into the love of intoxicating stimulants. Numbers of husbands and wives entering upon these experiences lose the charm of health, the cheerfulness of life and converse. Home duties become irksome to the wife; the brightness, vivacity, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis |
