"Stepping down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stepping down from the platform, while his own red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat with one hand, her handkerchief with the other, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... There it crossed under an arch transecting an arbor that extended from a side door of the one dwelling to a like one of the other, and the brother and sister had just passed this embowered spot and were stepping down a winding descent by which the path sought the old mill-pond, when behind them they observed two women pass athwart their track by way of the arbor, and Ruth smiled and murmured again. The crossing ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... there you are," said Mick, stepping down from a weedy ledge; "and what have you in it at all that you didn't hear ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... Stepping down from the platform into the applauding crowd which eagerly reached for printed copies of the declaration, she and her four companions hurried to the First Unitarian Church where an eager audience awaited their report and hailed ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... little, trim, sturdy figure stepping down the street he muttered to himself, "That child grows more like her mother every day." He heaved a great sigh from the depths of his heart. "Well, God keep her, wise little woman that she is! I wish I were a wiser man. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... raising first one and then another with his spade ready for the keepers; and the work went on, with the doctor stepping down into the hole that was soon formed to examine some of the loose earth and rubbish that the sailor dug out ready for the baskets which were kept going ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... as he was stepping down the gangway. At the end of the gangway the fold of the rug which he was carrying on his arm, caught in the railings. He turned sharply to free it and stepping back, cannoned into an officer of the dock. It threw him off his balance on the ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... so?" said Marcus. "Aufidius! Sejus! I pray you, step this way." His two friends, in some wonder as to his intention, approached the tribunal; and Marcus, stepping down from his curule chair, placed himself between them. "Three villainous rascals, thou didst say. Were they ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... unintentionally he has perpetrated a great wrong, can he parley with pride, or dally, because the haunting ghost of consistency waves him back from the path of a humiliating reparation? Error is easy, confession galling; and stepping down from the censor's seat to share the mortification of the pillory, is at all times a peculiarly painful reverse; hence, powerful indeed must be the conviction which impels a man who prided himself on his legal astuteness, to come boldly into this ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... job had fallen to me by the Captain's orders, and I clambered back, to find him and Mr. Rogers standing by the accommodation ladder on the port side, and in the act of stepping down into the dinghy. Indeed, Mr. Rogers had his foot on the ladder, and seemed to wait only while the Captain gave some instructions to Mr. Goodfellow, who ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... while she climbed by means of her arms clasped over the window sill above. Bella being thus in the house, took the key, which Mary Bell handed her for the purpose, and went along to the entry to unlock the door, while Mary Bell, stepping down from the scaffolding, went to the door on the outside, ready to enter when it should be opened. The children had no doubt that there was a key-hole in the lock on the inside, although there was none made in ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... Plateaus, likewise bounded by vertical, barren cliffs. Between the High Plateaus and the parks, the plateaus may be called, for convenience, Mesa Plateaus, as they are generally outlined by vertical cliffs. This is the case also south of the end of the High Plateaus where, stepping down the great terraces, we arrive at the region immediately adjacent to the Grand Canyon, composed of four plateaus, three of them of mesa character, the Shewits, Uinkaret, Kanab, and Kaibab; and up at the head of Marble Canyon a fifth, the Paria, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the ruined shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Bessie Anderson, and the seven little tow-headed Meads, stair-stepping down the years, played with the third generation here as we used to play in the years gone by. Bill is president of the bank on the corner where the old Whately store stood and is a share-holder in several big Kansas City concerns. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... straight on," said the former; and drawing himself up, he walked straight toward the group, which extended right across the rough pavement and into the road, so that any one who wanted to pass along would be compelled to make a circuit by stepping down first into the ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... ruin'd shrine he stept And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake. There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... realized or even dreamed of at the home in town. There were the broad, shady piazzas to be walked over with dainty footfalls, lest the grown people should be disturbed. There was the mystic retreat within the circle of a group of low-branching pines, the secret of which one penetrated by stepping down from the front piazza at a certain place and there insinuating one's self into a small opening, which only the initiated could discover, among the trees. Here one had a little fragrant sanctum all one's own, carpeted with pine needles, green ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... to the spirit land. Those who remained of the crew had just persuaded her to trust herself to a plank, in the belief that Ossoli and their child had already started for the shore, when just as she was stepping down, a great wave broke over the vessel and swept her into the boiling deep. She never rose again. The ship broke up soon after (about 10 A.M. Mrs. Hasty says, instead of the later hour previously reported); but both mates and most of the crew got on one fragment or another. It was supposed ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... rose and straightened himself and blew out his breath and brushed his hands upon his trousers by way of stepping down into this world again out of the close and dusty loft of his memory. But ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... declared Mr. Brown, rising and stepping down from the platform. "I have been greatly interested in baseball for a number of years. Among other things I have a considerable collection of figures concerning school teams, their sizes and weights, I would like, with your permission, young gentlemen, to take a few ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... He was ten years older than either of them, but so many actual clashing things happening had never come his way before. His ten years' advantage had been spent writing stylistic essays, and such do not fit one for stepping down into the middle of a lot of primitive young emotions. He felt suddenly helpless before these passionate, unjust, emotional young people. He felt a little forlorn, too, as if the main currents of things had been sweeping them ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... ascent of the pinon. The branches were not too close, affording him easy climbing. Before we looked for even a move on the part of the lions, the lower one began stepping down. I yelled a warning, but Jones did not have time to take advantage of it. He had half turned, meaning to swing out and drop, when the lion planted both forepaws upon his back. Jones went sprawling down with the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... and instantaneous manner in which the grooms perform their work in leading off the horses, and putting fresh ones to—the rapid diving for carpet-bags and portmanteaus into the various boots and luggage holes—the stepping down or out (as the case may be) of the passengers—the tip to the coachman—the touch of the hat in return—the remounting of that functionary into his chair of honour—the chick, chick! with which he hints to the pawing greys he is ready for a start—and, finally, the roll off into dim distance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... was landing was not a hospital ship. Someone turned on a TV scanner and picked up the image of a small ship hardly larger than a patrol ship, with just two passengers stepping down the ladder to the ground. Then the camera went close-up. Dal saw the faces of the two men, and his ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... patch. They had grown finely; with their great, spreading leaves they covered the beds as with a wrinkled carpet. Amid them walked a girl, dressed in white, sinking up to her knees in the May greenery; stepping down from the beds into the furrows, she seemed not to walk but to swim over the leaves and to bathe in their bright colour. Her head was shaded with a straw hat, from her brow there waved two pink ribbons and some tresses of bright, loose hair; in her hands she held ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Uncle Zebedee," said Eve, stepping down on to the flat and advancing toward where the old man stood ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... to see whether I could detect the entrance of the hidden creek; but, though I swept it up and down again and again, it continued to justify the "King's" boast. There was no sign of an opening anywhere. Nothing but a straight line of brush, with mangroves here and there stepping down in their fantastic way into the water. And yet we were but a hundred yards from the shore. Certainly "Blackbeard"—if the haunt had really been his—had known his business; for an enemy could have sought him all day along this coast and found no ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... appearing in a breakfast scene where eggs were being served, and a child sitting in a box made manifest his interest in the food. Stepping down to the footlights she tendered the youngster an egg, but his mother drew back her child with a sign ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... look at the place," said George Cannon, suddenly stepping down into the gutter, with a look first in one direction and then in the other for ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... his remarks as, on stepping down, he was button-holed by a man whose entrance had occurred a few minutes before through the swing door which gave exit from the space reserved for witnesses and lawyers into the body ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... not deceived. The woman chose unwarily for the supposed good. The man chose with open eyes for the woman's sake. Could the word gallantry be used? Was it supposed friendship? He would not abandon her? Yet he proved not her friend that day, in stepping down to this new low level. Man's habit of giving smoothly spoken words to woman, while shying sharp-edged stones at her, should in all honesty be stopped. Man can throw no stones at woman. If the woman failed God that day, the man failed both God and the woman. If it be true that through ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... contrivance he devised by which any person attempting to explore it and being unaware of the means to guard against death, must be inevitably swept into eternity. Now, in order to give you an illustration of this danger I will show you the result of any adventurous person stepping down." ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... atmosphere, and withal a refinement, a distinction, not to be classed; and justly might she dislike the being classed. Her humour was a perennial refreshment, a running well, that caught all the colours of light; her wit studded the heavens of the recollection of her. In his heart he felt that it was a stepping down for the brilliant woman to give him her hand; a condescension and an act of valour. She who always led or prompted when they conversed, had now in her generosity abandoned the lead and herself to him, and she deserved ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by the wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, awoke my mind suddenly to the possibility of a Legrandin altogether different from the one whom we knew. The lady gave him some message for her coachman, and while he was stepping down to her carriage the impression of joy, timid and devout, which the introduction had stamped there, still lingered on his face. Carried away in a sort of dream, he smiled, then he began to hurry back towards the lady; he was walking faster than usual, and his shoulders swayed backwards and forwards, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the two are almost twins. When Mr. Churchill was a cadet at Annapolis, before the modern part of the Carvel Hall hotel was built, there were the remains of terraced gardens back of the old mansion, stepping down to an old spring house, and a rivulet which flowed through the grounds was full of watercress. The book describes a party at the house and in these gardens. The Chase house on Maryland Avenue was the one Mr. Churchill thought of as the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... you have?" asked the clerk, stepping down the store on the inside of the counter, while Pat followed ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... at first, and the more so as she felt that Joe was "stepping down" in entering the professional ranks. But Joe was able to show her that scores of college men were doing the same thing that he planned to do, and she had too good sense to press her opposition ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... stepping down from the sky to walk with the Man through the sun-spangled shadows of the grassy paths. They had heard the kindly rumble of His voice like distant thunder and the little tones of the Man as he asked his questions. At six o'clock regularly God had shaken hands with the Man and ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... unvaried, Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: So were it with me if forgetting could be will'd. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, Tell it to forget the source that keeps it fill'd. . . . Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, Arm in arm, all against the raying West, Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossess'd. Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking Whisper'd the world was; morning light is she. Love that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... history compete with yonder book? Could my jaunty, yellow park-phaeton run counter to that grim chariot of thundering war? Could my meek little jog-trot Pegasus meet the shock of yon steed of foaming bit and flaming nostril? Dear, kind reader (with whom I love to talk from time to time, stepping down from the stage where our figures are performing, attired in the habits and using the parlance of past ages),—my kind, patient reader! it is a mercy for both of us that Harry Warrington did not follow the King of the Borussians, as he was minded to do, for then ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... many men care for Tante; so many who were, obviously, in love with her; but she had seen Tante always throned high above the prostrate adorers, idly kind; holding out a hand, perhaps, for them to kiss; smiling, from time to time, if they, fortunately, pleased her; but never, oh never, stepping down towards them. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... without.] Forward. [Military band heard without—"The Battle Cry of Freedom" JENNY takes attitude of holding bridle and trotting.] Rappity—plap—plap—plap, etc. [She imitates the motions of a soldier on horseback, stepping down to rock at side of post; thence to ground and about stage, with the various curvettings of a spirited horse. Chorus of soldiers without, with the band. The music becomes more and more distant. JENNY gradually stops as the music is dying away, and stands, listening. As it dies entirely ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... twelfth. Artistically, the motive remains the same, since it is always the Virgin; but although the Virgin of Chartres is always the Virgin of Majesty, there are degrees in the assertion of her majesty even here, which affect the art, and qualify its feeling. Before stepping down to the thirteenth century, one should look at these changes of the Virgin's ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... "There's Miss Pringle stepping down with cloak and umbrella for Miss Chester," she said, "so I thought I'd just bring the dinner straight in. It's done to a turn, and smells like a nosegay," she added, lifting the ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... old quarter-master, stepping down the ladder, grunts out to the sentry at the cabin door, 'Turn the glass, and strike ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... Canto V. Stepping down from this circle to a lower one, Dante and Virgil reach the second circle of the Inferno, where all who lived unchaste lives are duly punished. Smaller in circumference than the preceding circle,—for Dante's hell is shaped like a graduated funnel,—this place is guarded by ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... live were better—to live at least for tonight. Fury gave him desperation, but for the task before him he needed coolness, too. And realizing that haste might send him hurtling to the bottom of the gorge, he moved more cautiously, stepping down with infinite pains until he reached the brook, which he crossed carefully, and then moved back up ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... encountered Dr. Dunton. The Edmondson-avenue trolley line had just been completed up Charles street, and for the first time this old residential section resounded with the clangor that betokened rapid transit. About 9 one night I observed Dr. Dunton stepping down from the pavement of the Athenaeum Club to cross the street. A trolley car was coming rapidly, but the old gentleman, his head bent in thought and unused as he was to modern inventions and modern bursts of speed, paid no attention and moved in front of it. The motorman ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... reedy cane grass on the other side parted, and a man and a woman came out, stared at me, and then laughed in welcome. They were one Nalik and his wife, people living in my own village. The man carried a long single-barrelled German shot-gun, the woman a basket of pigeons. Stepping down the bank, they waded across and ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... wherever we're going to fight. You're going to be good children; I know it!" He closed the book before him. "School's over now. When we take in again we'll finish the Roman History—I've marked the place." He left his rude old desk and the little platform, and stepping down amongst his pupils, gave to each his hand. Then he divided among them the scanty supply of books, patiently answered a scurry of questions, and outside, upon the sunshiny sward, with the wind in the walnut tree and the larkspur beginning ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... stepping down at his usual scuttle, was wet up to his waist, and shifting with more haste to come up again as if the water had followed him, cried out that "The ship was full of water!" There was no need to hasten the company, some to the pump, others to search for ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... tellin' ye quick!" he answered, and stepping down to his cabin, produced a receipt signed "Immanuel Hildesheim." Burgen-strasse 16 was the address. We found out that this was all the Captain knew, so with ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... to Mountain Spring. It was very rough indeed. Often Elizabeth must make quite a circuit among cat-briars and huckleberry bushes and young underwood, or keep the path at the expense of stepping up and stepping down again over a great stone or rock blocking up the whole way. Sometimes the track was only marked over the grey lichens of an immense head of granite that refused moss and vegetation of every other kind; sometimes it wound among thick alder bushes by the edge of wet ground; and at all ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... behind him and I heard him stepping down the walk, I put both my hands over my heart, just so, and held it tight, for it seemed that it would bound out and ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... reared extravagant masses of pink snow against the blue overhead; beyond it a covered walk of vines shone golden-green. There was not a cloud in the sky. To turn back to the musty room from all this lush and lovely life was like stepping down ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... walked to the door leading into the corridor. This, then, was indeed the end; this the final stepping down from office! After years of what they called public service, he was leaving it all now with a sense of defeat and humiliation. A lump was in the old man's throat; his eyes were blurred. "But you, Frank Leyman," he whispered passionately, turning ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... years old, Lispeth went out for a walk. She did not walk in the manner of English ladies—a mile and a half out, and a ride back again. She covered between twenty and thirty miles in her little constitutionals, all about and about, between Kotgarh and Narkunda. This time she came back at full dusk, stepping down the breakneck descent into Kotgarh with something heavy in her arms. The Chaplain's wife was dozing in the drawing-room when Lispeth came in breathing hard and very exhausted with her burden. Lispeth put it down on the sofa, and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... her arms. She had a sudden conviction, as, holding the blind in her hand, she looked out into the night, that again tragedy was to cross her threshold. Standing for an instant under the fascination of terror, she recovered herself with a shiver, and, stepping down from the chair where she had been fixing the blind, with the instinct of real woman, she ran to the bed of the room where she was, and made it ready. Why did she feel that it was Shiel Crozier's bed which should be made ready? Or did she not feel it? Was it only ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
