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Tottering   /tˈɑtərɪŋ/   Listen
Tottering

adjective
1.
Unsteady in gait as from infirmity or old age.  Synonym: tottery.  "A tottery old man"
2.
(of structures or institutions) having lost stability; failing or on the point of collapse.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tottering" Quotes from Famous Books



... of seventy-five years, the widow of a revolutionary pensioner, came tottering into his law office one day, and told him that a certain pension agent had charged her the exorbitant fee of two hundred dollars for collecting her pension. Lincoln was satisfied by her representations that she had been swindled, and finding that she was not a resident of the town, and that ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... Maister Hairy, and ye're welcome hame; and ye tu, bonny sir" [1] (addressing Lady Juliana, who was calling to her footman to follow her with the mackaw); then, tottering before them, he led the way, while her Ladyship followed, leaning on her husband, her squirrel on her other arm, preceded by her dogs, barking with all their might, and attended by the mackaw, screaming with all his strength; and in this ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... throne of the emperour: the judges of the law will confess my wisdom, and the nobles will contend to heap gifts upon me. If I shall find that my merit, like that of others, excites malignity, or feel myself tottering on the seat of elevation, I may at last retire to academical obscurity, and become, in my lowest ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... excitement in that county. There was an enclosed stage erected and a piano placed upon it and each night speeches were made (and ringing ones too) and I think all the sleepy mossbacks were wide awake at last and realized that their kind of Democracy was tottering and waiting for the last blow. When Benjamin Harrison was elected the twenty-third president of these United States, San Bernardino county had demonstrations never equaled before or since. Every man, woman and ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... looked at the card. It was all he could do to keep himself from tottering. It was the card of the doctor whom he had first consulted about his trouble! The ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair

... until at length they both reached a cedar staircase leading to an upper story; here Fadrique paused to listen, and exclaiming, "She is speaking up there! she is speaking loud! she needs my help!" he dashed up the already burning steps. Heimbert hesitated a moment; he saw the staircase already tottering, and he thought to give a warning cry to his companion; but at the same moment the light ornamental ascent gave way and burst into flames. He could just see Fadrique clinging above to a brass grating and swinging himself up to it, but all means of following him were destroyed. Quickly ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

... rising on his tottering limbs. "Why should I pardon you? There's no occasion for it. To-day it's you, to-morrow it'll be me ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... beauty, that had burst on their enraptured vision on his return from Malta. Where was that gaiety now that made all eyes sparkle, that vivacious spirit that kindled energy in every bosom? How miserable to see him crawling about with a wretched stick, with his thin, pale face, and tottering limbs, and scarcely any other pursuit than to creep about the pleasaunce, where, when the day was fair, his servant would place a camp-stool opposite the cedar tree where he had first beheld Henrietta Temple; and there he would sit, until the unkind winter breeze ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... portrait of his Melie. It represented a little girl with long bleached tresses and a rather sour face. His legs were much swollen, and he could hardly walk. Carlier, undermined by fever, could not swagger any more, but kept tottering about, still with a devil-may-care air, as became a man who remembered his crack regiment. He had become hoarse, sarcastic, and inclined to say unpleasant things. He called it "being frank with you." They had ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... looked again, and saw a breast Gnawed by corruption, wanting rest: He saw him one time drunk with power, Tottering upon Ambition's tower; Then, seized with giddiness and fear, Seeing his downfall in his rear, "O Jupiter!" the rustic said, "Give me again ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... in shirt-waists. Altogether the audience reminded one of a crowd at a picnic. A boy tottering under the weight of a basket laden with candy and fruit was singing his wares. A pretty young woman stood in the center aisle near the second row of seats, her head thrown back, her eyes fixed on ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... my power to keep the people out of a dangerous market and to concentrate the billions of stocks in the hands of the "System," and am not actuated by any desire or necessity for gain. Already the "System's" votaries are tottering under their load and it is certain that in the coming months they will employ every possible means to persuade the public back into their trap. More than ever, then, is it necessary to be firm against their blandishments, for when the crash comes it will be a terrific one, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... Christmas bells! Say to the earth this is the morn Whereon our Saviour King is born; Sing to all men-the bond, the free, The rich, the poor, the high, the low, The little child that sports in glee, The aged folk that tottering go,— Proclaim the morn That Christ is born, That saveth them ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg

... Thursday, and staggered fiercely on throughout the day. Then Friday followed, a roaring, tottering, crashing, smashing fellow of the two days gone before. Millionaires became beggars and beggars millionaires ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... ordered it wrongly. There ought to be a proper sequence according to seniority. Things are turned upside down, if an old man is to go on living with only three teeth in his head, half blind, tottering about with a pair of slaves on each side to hold him up, drivelling and rheumy-eyed, having no joy of life, a living tomb, the derision of his juniors,—and young men are to die in the prime of their ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... face. The blood was streaming over his eyes and cheeks from a wound in the forehead. He was obliged to lean with both hands against the wall for support, while, with a superhuman effort of will, he compelled his tottering knees to carry him forward, his sole thought being that he must keep upright until he had fulfilled his errand. When Heideck inquired sympathetically after the nature of his wound, he even attempted to wreathe his pale lips, quivering with pain, into a smile, for ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... beyond disputation, that this removal will infuse new strength into the tottering system of slavery, tighten the grasp of the masters upon the throats of the slaves, lull them into a profound and quiet sleep, postpone the hour of emancipation, and enhance the security and value of slave property. The terror of mind which calls for this separation cannot ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... time, that power, which all these changes aimed at securing, remains still as tottering and as uncertain as ever. They are delivered up into the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons, nor gratitude for their favours; who are put about them in appearance to serve, in reality to govern them; and, when the signal is given, to abandon and destroy them, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... only labor was to kill the time (And labor dire it is, and weary woe); They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme; Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go, Or saunter forth, with tottering step and slow: This soon too rude an exercise they find; Straight on the couch their limbs again they throw, Where hours on hours they sighing lie reclined, And court the vapory god, soft breathing in the wind. The Castle of ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... Mr. John Wirt, who, with the aid of a friendly deck hand, was guiding a pale, tottering, very sick Brother Bart ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... so many sources of authority that successive revolutions have destroyed, this power, which alone has arisen in their stead, seems soon destined to absorb the others. While all our ancient beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way one by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces, and of which the prestige is continually on the increase. The age we are about to enter will in truth ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... trust in thee, Divine Mediator! I have chanted the canticle of the new covenant; my race is run; Thou hast pardoned my tottering steps! Sound! sound, quivering strings of my lyre! My heart is full of the bliss of gratitude to my God! What recompense could I ask? I have tasted the cup of angels in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... prisoner then spoke again; hoping by this reiterated reference to his services, to obtain a mitigation of the sentence; but he spoke to those who heard, without compassion, the petitions for mercy which fell from an aged, tottering, and miserable old man. Well has it been said, "Whatever his character or his crimes might be, the humanity of the British Government incurred a deep reproach, from the execution of an old man on the very verge of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... contempt, but of raising them to grandeur and diffusing lustre over their years of decrepitude. In contemplating Anna we do not think of her infirmities when we observe her piety: the meanness of the woman—tottering, crippled, dying—is lost amidst the majesty of the saint, incessantly serving God in his temple, and advancing to the grave "in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season." The dawning of a heavenly day seems to arise upon her "hoary head:" which, "being found ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... my dear, and stayed talking to him for quite half an hour before she came down. She did not ring first; but I saw her from the window almost tottering, and leaning on the footman's arm. He had quite to help her into the carriage. Oh, my dear, is all this trouble never to ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... tottering chair beneath it. It passed through the yawning hay-door and fell resoundingly to the alley below, where—as Penrod and Sam, with cries of dismay, rushed to the door and looked down—it burst asunder and disgorged a large, bruised and chastened cat. Gipsy paused and bent one strange look ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... nobility and the ingratitude of the masses, vacillated between his own generous impulses and the despotic demands of the court party. By the King's weakness, more than by all else, were loosened the foundations of that throne of France, already tottering under its long-accumulated weight of injustice, of mad extravagance, of ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... desolation came upon her in an overwhelming wave. She turned with a great cry, and threw her arms wide to the risen sun, tottering blindly towards the emptiness that stretched beneath her feet. And as she went, she heard the roar of the torrent dashing down over its grim boulders to the great river up which they two had glided in their dream of enchantment ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... tottering. I looked round, and saw that my cousin knelt directly in the path of its fall. I tried to call to him to move; but how could a poor edentate like myself articulate a word? I tried to catch his attention by signs—he would not see. I tried, convulsively, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... civilization—can never be restored, for the opposing principles of freedom and slavery can not exist together. Liberty is life, and every form of government yet tried proves that slavery is death. In obedience to this law, our Republic, divided and distracted by the collisions of caste and class, is tottering to its base, and can only be reconstructed on the sure foundations of impartial freedom to all men. The war in which we are involved is not the result of party or accident, but a forward step in the progress of the race never to be retraced. Revolution is no time for temporizing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... had not moved far away, when, in advance of him, this spectacle met his eye. A dried-up old man, with the stature of a boy of twelve, was tottering about like one out of his mind, in rumpled clothes of old moleskin, showing recent contact with bedding, his ferret eyes, blinking in the sunlight of the snowy boat, as imbecilely eager, and, at intervals, coughing, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... on in it very much as in the days when it was sound. We can choose either to leave it alone, and await the downfall of the city, among whose ruins life will never bloom again, or we can begin the underpinning of the tottering edifice, a process which will last for decades, which will allow no peace to any of us, which will be toilsome and dangerous, and will end almost imperceptibly, when the ancient city has been transformed ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... Russian empires until it won independence from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment in democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan Communist regime, touching off a long and destructive war. The USSR withdrew in 1989 under relentless pressure by internationally supported anti-Communist mujahedin rebels. A series of subsequent civil wars saw ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... other is ignorant, has already established organs that are listened to, and one is sometimes surprised to find, even in the least important sheets, excellent articles emanating from it. Joining hands with all that is fearless and superior in letters, it will deliver us from two scourges: tottering classicism, and false romanticism, which has the presumption to show itself at the feet of the true. For modern genius already has its shadow, its copy, its parasite, its classic, which forms itself upon it, smears itself with its colours, assumes its livery, picks ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... windrows of caked mud stretched across the street in unlovely phalanx, Texas was reminded of itinerant mountain ranges. The stranger who would be so unwary as to take issue with him on this point would regret—if he lived. The unpainted shanties, the huddled, tottering dives, the tumble-down express station—all, even the maudlin masquerade of the High Card Saloon—were institutions inseparable from his thoughts, inviolable and sacred in the measure of his ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... pains, exerting all his sense, Can range aright his shillings, pounds, and pence. The booby father craves a booby son; And by heaven's blessing thinks himself undone. Wants of all kinds are made to fame a plea; One learns to lisp; another not to see: Miss D——, tottering, catches at your hand: Was ever thing so pretty born to stand? Whilst these, what nature gave, disown, through pride, Others affect what nature has denied; What nature has denied, fools will pursue, As apes are ever walking ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... cafe. A woman leads up to him a tottering being whom she introduces to him. "He's ill, Monsieur Fontan, because he ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... opposite shore, and hurled back from it, came swooping with a refluent wave, that even from this high hillside was seen to be monstrous. It fell on their decks, drowning and smothering: their masts only were visible above the smother, some pointing firmly, others tottering and breaking. Some rose no more. Others, as the great wave passed on, lurched up into sight again, broken, dismasted, wrenched from their moorings, spinning about aimlessly, tossed like corks amid the spume; and still, its crest arching, its deep note gathering, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... and, tottering towards the spot, looked in. It was an awful sight to look upon. The gully was some ten feet in depth; and at its bottom, among the weeds and cacti, a huge dog was engaged in tearing something that screamed and struggled. It was a man, an Indian. All was explained ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... was a crackling in the underbrush, and some one rushed out at Flossie and Freddie, who were standing under the tree looking up at the tottering trunk which was slowly ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope

... thoughts and interests are seldom apart. All their little pleasures, their minor griefs, youthful hopes, disappointments, are shared with each other. They move together through the opening years of their life. Sometimes old age finds them still together, tottering hand in hand to the grave. Of all her sisters, Bessie could least spare Hatty, and her death left a void in the girl's life that was very difficult to fill. From the first, Bessie had accepted the responsibility of Hatty. Hatty's peculiar temperament, her bad health and unequal ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... fellow," returned the young man, seating himself on the divan; "reassure yourself; we are tottering always, but we never fall, and I begin to believe that we shall pass into a state of immobility, and then the affairs of the Peninsula will ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... something weird and witchlike, of sorceresses and tymbesteres, of wild warnings screeched in his ear, of incantations and devilries and doom. Impatient of these musings, he sought to leap from his bed, and was amazed that the leap subsided into a tottering crawl. He found an ewer and basin, and his ablutions refreshed and invigorated him. He searched for his raiment, and discovered it all except the mantle, dagger, hat, and girdle; and while looking for these, his eye fell on an old tarnished steel mirror. He ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... frivolities, and atone for the mischief thou hast wrought by rendering acceptable service to the Master; by coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Gladly would I take thy training in charge, and guide thy tottering feet along the flowery paths of Homiletics. Who knoweth into what vessels the All-seeing One may elect to pour his spirit? Perchance in mercy I may be spared to behold thee a faithful though humble preacher of the Word. Anne, thy wife, often hath likened me to a ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head

... support and consolation to multitudes of the bravest and best disciples of the heaven-born religion, which he can have known—if at all—only through its slanderers and persecutors. Marcus Aurelius, in a kindred spirit, and under the even heavier burdens of a tottering empire, domestic dissensions, and defeat and disaster abroad, maintained the severest simplicity and purity of life, appropriated portions of his busiest days to devout contemplation, meditated constantly on death, and disciplined himself to regard with contempt ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... admirably adapted to prop up the tottering Coalition, was equally favourable to the consolidation of Bonaparte's power. It helped to band together the French people to resist the imposition of their exiled royal house by external force. Even George III. thought it "much too strong," though he suggested no alteration. At once ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... and when, after so much distance was lost as to give her enemy all the advantage of the wind, a tardy attempt was made to bring the ship up again, the tallest and most important of her masts was seen tottering, until it finally fell, with all ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... magician who has enchanted many thousands before them, and for the space of two hours forgot themselves, their hopes and fears and expectations, while they followed the fortunes of the idle, lovable, unpractical Rip, up the mountain to his sleep of years, and down again, white-haired and tottering, to find himself forgotten by his kin and a stranger in his own home. People about them were weeping on relays of pocket-handkerchiefs, hanging them up one by one as they became soaked, and beginning on others. Imogen ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... shining warriors at the famous battle of Morgarten, resisted with growing success the Savoyard and the Hapsburg sovereignty, and divided in ever changing alliances the fermenting elements of the tottering feudal society. The horn of the Alps, sounding the tocsin over the rocky defile of the Swiss Thermopylae, announced the approaching end of the feudal rule of the middle ages and the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... Jimmie Dale strove to rally his tottering senses. Did they not understand the stupendous mockery of their questions? Did they not understand that he did not know? He had told them so—perhaps he had better tell ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... strength in her embrace, all her soul in the passion of her farewell kiss. Then she stood alone, tottering, sinking. The swift steps, now heavy and uneven, passed out of the hall—the door closed—the motor-car creaked and rolled away—the ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... architect, but his death took place soon after the laying of the foundation stone, and the chapel was not finished for another sixteen years, long after Henry VIII.'s accession, when the monasteries were tottering to their fall. Abbot Islip supervised {93} the building, and it is more than likely that Sir Thomas Lovell, whose bust has lately been placed near Lady Margaret's tomb, had, as executor to both the King and his mother, a share in designing their monuments. In any case, ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... groaning with anguish; huddled up in corners with a lemon-prophylactic against sea-sickness, apparently-pressed to faces which, by some subtle process of colour-adaptation, had acquired the complexion of the fruit; tottering to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... on the lonely tower, Thy thrilling trump had roused the land, When fraud or danger were at hand; By thee, as by the beacon-light, Our pilots had kept course aright; As some proud column, though alone, Thy strength had propp'd the tottering throne. Now is the stately column broke, The beacon-light is quenched in smoke, The trumpet's silver sound is still, The warder silent on the hill! O think how, to his latest day, When death, just hovering, claimed his prey, With Palinure's ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... with icicles, frowning and desolate, an ominous black shape flung itself furiously, and made straight for the eagle, barking hoarsely with rage as it came. Another hollow bark followed, and a second evil ebony form hurled down from the tottering cliff-top, and flapped towards the eagle in the path of the first. Bark echoed bark above the deep mutter of the breakers, and the echoes along the cliffs answered ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... nearly spoilt. Alice, her dulled senses deadening day by day, sat mutely near the fire: her happiness bounded by the consciousness of the presence of her foster-child, knowing that his voice repeated what was passing to her deafened ear, that his arm removed each little obstacle to her tottering steps. And Will, out of the very kindness of his heart, talked more and more merrily than ever. He saw Jem was downcast, and fancied his rattling might cheer him; at any rate, it drowned his aunt's muttered grumblings, and in some measure concealed ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... reason, cousin, is like a three-footed stool—so tottering on every side that whosoever sits on it may soon take a foul fall. For these are the three feet of this tottering stool: fantastical fear, false ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... the wind in quick gusts, then the rain washed over him. Soaked, chilled, already bone-tired, he pitted the tottering strength of his legs against the ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... would have held her at mercy of the next towering greybeard. A boat on the forward skids was smashed to atoms and the wreck swept overboard, and every moment we looked to see our crazy half-deck go tottering to ruin. The fo'ca'sle was awash through a shattered door, and all hands were gathered on the poop for such safety as it held. There was nowhere else where man could stand on the reeling hull, and crouching at the rails, wet and chilled to the ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... crowd before me after this, and I remember nothing clearly until I beheld an infirm and tottering figure led away through the arched doorway, in whom I recognized the tall and stately man I had first seen in company with the wicked woman, but who was now an old man, apparently being supported to his bed to die. As he passed out he laid one ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... future, have met and answered so many grave questions,—questions neither propounded nor solved in any of the two hundred constitutions which Aristotle studied in order to prepare himself for the composition of his "Politics." The world had not yet seen a powerful nation tottering on the brink of anarchy, with all the elements of prosperity in her bosom,—nor a bankrupt state sustaining a war that demanded annual millions, and growing daily in wealth and power,—nor the economical phenomena which followed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... the spikes, tottering, and communicating a convulsion to me as I assisted him in the leap down: no common feat for one of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the wooden bridges from the dam to the water-mill. In the Au grow the yellow water-lilies and brown feathery reeds; the dark velvety flag grows there, high and thick; old and decayed willows, slanting and tottering, hang far out over the stream beside the monk's meadow and by the bleaching ground; but opposite there are gardens upon gardens, each different from the rest, some with pretty flowers and bowers like little dolls' pleasure grounds, often displaying cabbage ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... of Corsica, Sardinia, Naples, and Genoa; letters to the pasha of Scutari, to the Maniotes, etc.) "The islands of Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia are of more interest to us than all Italy put together.... The Turkish empire is daily tottering; the possession of these islands will enable us to support it as long as possible, or to take our portion of it. The time is not remote when we shall feel that, for the real destruction of England, we must get possession of Egypt." ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... iron-shod animal. Tommie heard it one morning just as it was Maggie's usual time to pass, and looked out of his stall. There was Maggie coming down the road with a proud smile on her face, and the baby was there too. But not in her mother's arms. No, she was erect on her own small feet, tottering along in the ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... die, they determined to die in action rather than freeze and starve, like beasts in a pen. At a concerted signal, they attempted to break through the soldiers and reach the open plain. An old man was carried on the back of his tottering son; a mounted soldier pursued them, and hacked father and son to pieces with the same sabre-cuts. A mother was seen flying over the snow with two children clinging about her neck. The wretched savages separated and ran in all directions. But the mounted men cut them down ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller

... dropped starved and exhausted on the line of march, and dozens had been killed and eaten. We had set out blithe and merry, riding jauntily down the wild valley of the Tongue. We straggled in toward the Hills, towing our tottering horses behind us: they had long since grown too weak to carry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... strike him, and then it seemed as if he could walk no longer, but would like to lie down and die. All the same, he had to get home, and the sooner he got home the better, for there was whisky on the table, and that would dull his memory; and, tottering along the area railings, he thought of the whisky, understanding the drunkard for the first time and his temptations. "Anything to forget the agony ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... descended to the town, which has a desolate and forlorn air. Its walls have been partly thrown down by earthquakes, and never repaired. We found our tents already pitched on the bank above the lake, and under one of the tottering towers. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... years as an independent ruler, without reference to the court of Damascus. The state of affairs in the East, indeed, left little leisure to the Umeyyan khalifs to attend to the regulation of a remote province. Their throne was already tottering before the arms and intrigues of the Abbasides, whose black banners, under the guidance of the formidable Abu-Moslem, were even now bearing down from Khorassan upon Syria. The unpopular cause of the Beni-Umeyyah, who were detested ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... fell upon a great, ruined structure, some two hundred yards away. It was the house. Staring, I saw a fearsome sight—over its walls crawled a legion of unholy things, almost covering the old building, from tottering towers to base. I could see them, plainly; ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... Gallion bastion were dismounted, and the bastion itself a heap of ruins. Every day after this grew worse until the 9th, on the evening of which day I went into the ditch accompanied by the engineer, when we were both but too well convinced of the tottering state of the works from the Gallion along the curtain, and indeed the whole, from the east to the north-east. I could not hesitate a moment about the necessity of evacuating the fort. I therefore sent off immediately to Rear-Admiral Thompson, who commanded the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... conspicuous when surrounded by the neutrality of life in Noonoon. However, with the aid of some "powltices" constructed by Grandma Clay and energetically applied by Mrs Bray, and because my hour had not yet come, against the time when we slid into a splendid October I was tottering about once more. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... the Frenchman's deck. The English worked their guns with redoubled vigour. Scarcely had the fire disappeared from one part of the French ship, than it broke forth in another. Her shrouds and running rigging had been cut away, and her remaining mast was tottering. Still the Frenchmen fought on, though they could scarcely, it ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... Rigard, of Frederick, Md., who hired her to a Mr. Reese, in Baltimore; in this situation her duties were general housework and nursing. With these labors, she was not, however, so much dissatisfied as she was with other circumstances of a more alarming nature: her old master was tottering on the verge of the grave, and his son, a trader in New Orleans. These facts kept Matilda in extreme anxiety. For two years prior to her escape, the young trader had been trying to influence his father to let him have her for the Southern market; ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... "Walk not beneath tottering ruins, nor houses being put up, nor climb to the top of a mast, nor approach the edge of a precipice, nor stand in the way of the lightning, nor cross a swollen river, nor voyage at sea, nor ride a skittish horse, nor be shot at by an arrow, nor confront a sword, nor put thyself in ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... confidently assert that every artistic birth is preceded by a period of uneasy gestation in which the unborn child acquires the organs and energy that are to carry it forward on its long journey, if only I possessed the data that would give a tottering support to so comforting a generalisation. Alas! the births of the great slopes of antiquity are shrouded in a night scarcely ruffled by the minute researches of patient archaeologists and impervious to the startling discoveries by experts of more or less palpable forgeries. Of these ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... happy homes and smiling faces. The other is the column of sorrow, moaning with suffering and distress. I saw an aged mother with her white locks and wrinkled face, swoon at the Governor's feet; I saw old men tottering on the staff, with broken hearts and tear stained faces, and heard them plead for their wayward boys. I saw a wife and seven children, clad in rags, and bare-footed, in mid-winter, fall upon their knees around him who held the pardoning power. I saw a little girl climb upon the Governor's ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... interior of the prison, with its tottering weather beaten projections, apparently ready to fall from their resting places, presented an appearance still more gloomy and forbidding. Dampness, and mould of a hundred years growth had obliterated all traces of the fresco paintings that had formerly ornamented the ceiling, ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... Many a weary day's journey, even along the valleys of the North Platte and Sweetwater, brings to view too little grass to sustain the life of a moderate herd; those who have traversed the South Pass in June will generally have just escaped starvation, leaving to those that come straggling or tottering after them a very poor feed. The carcasses of dead animals, in every stage of decomposition, thickly stud the great trail from the banks of the Platte westward to the passes of the Sierra Nevada, and, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... felt a creep as of some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of his voice. She rose, tottering on weak knees. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... "His Masterpiece". Paradise Regained contains some noble passages, but is inferior to Paradise Lost, on which the poet's fame chiefly rests.] It was in 1658, the year of Cromwell's death, when the political power of Puritanism was tottering, that Milton in his blindness began to write Paradise Lost. After stating his theme he begins his epic, as Virgil began the Aneid, in the midst of the action; so that in reading his first book it is well to have in mind an outline of ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... was a very big steer, with horns nearly a yard long, who came close to the mother, just then engaged in cleaning her offspring. She ran off, bleating for her lamb to follow. The little chap, however, came to the conclusion that the steer was calling it, and went tottering up to the huge animal, that towered above him like the side of a canyon, apparently much to the latter's embarrassment. The steer eyed it carefully, and lifted his legs out of the way as the lamb ran against them, even backing a little, as if as surprised as I had been ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... the nurses, and the letter I will give to-morrow," said the old porter, winding up his portion of this double soliloquy, and tottering away with the basket and your humble servant across ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... Irish members glanced defiance, and the Protectionists could scarcely conceal their satisfaction. The reputation of Sir Robert Peel for parliamentary management seemed to be vanishing; never was a government in a more tottering state; and the Whigs especially began to renew their laments that the Edinburgh letter and its consequences had prevented the settlement of the corn question from devolving to the natural arbitrator in the great controversy, their somewhat rash but still unrivalled leader, ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... or King James, according as either should prevail. The queen, especially in her latter days, inclined towards her own family. The prince was lying actually in London, within a stone's-cast of his sister's palace; the first minister toppling to his fall, and so tottering that the weakest push of a woman's finger would send him down; and as for Bolingbroke, his successor, we know on whose side his power and his splendid eloquence would be on the day when the queen should appear openly before her council and say:—"This, my lords, is my brother; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... An ancient, tottering little man drops in on me here to know if I can paint his wife. Why, of course, were she as wrinkled as Mother Earth! Next day at ten prompt the doors fly open, and the fat-belly drives this little beauty in before him. I can feel even now how my knees shook. Then comes a sap-green ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind

... cabin—his young, foolish, flirting wife clinging to him—to answer that despairing cry of his imprisoned men. There was one exit that he alone knew which might be yet held open, among falling walls and tottering timbers, long enough to set them free. For one moment only the strong man hesitated between her entreating arms and his brothers' despairing cry. But she rose suddenly with a pale face, and said, "Go, John; I will wait for you here." He went, the men were freed—but ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... their equilibrium, as rope-dancers are assisted by long poles at fairs. Their progression was not by placing one foot before the other, but by simultaneously using both, as in jumping." Dr. Salomon Muller also states that the Gibbons progress along the ground by a short series of tottering jumps, effected only by the hind limbs, the body being ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... We have once had half of France, and hurl'd our battles Into the heart of Spain; but England now Is but a ball chuck'd between France and Spain, His in whose hand she drops; Harry of Bolingbroke Had holpen Richard's tottering throne to stand, Could Harry have foreseen that all our nobles Would perish on the civil slaughter-field, And leave the people naked to the crown, And the crown naked to the people; the crown Female, too! Sir, no woman's regimen Can ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... that of mine, it seems, for withholding it so long," sobbed the other, as, tottering, she turned to ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... He paused, tottering, and presently sank upon the ground, his hands drooped before him, his head bent down. Old Fatima touched him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... tottering days, And guides our giddy youth; Holy and just are all his ways, And all his ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... prevents him from seeing what he does not wish to see. In his metaphysic, will is placed above intelligence, and in his personality the character is superior to the understanding, as one might logically expect. And the consequence is, that he may prop up what is tottering, but he makes no conquests; he may help to preserve existing truths and beliefs, but he is destitute of initiative or vivifying power. He is a moralizing but not a suggestive or stimulating influence. A popularizer, apologist and orator of the greatest ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... find expression for the beauty that was in her against the inefficacy of the dull, half-informed body. Though her footing was uneven, and her gestures often ludicrously helpless, still the spectacle was not merely amusing; and though subtle inspirations of movement miscarried in tottering travesty, you could still see that they had been inspirations; you could still see that she had set her heart on realising something just and beautiful, and that, by the discipline of these abortive efforts, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... silence, for her approach. And now she comes—she is here! She is caught in the eager grasp of the brave youth; and, the next instant, by the giant effort of the strong man above them, they are together drawn up within a few feet of the bending and tottering bridge. But with all his desperate exertions, he can raise them no higher, and there they hang suspended over the dark abyss of whirling waters that had opened in the disrupturing mass beneath, at the instant, as if to receive them; while a mountain ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... the slack hands, and confirm ye the tottering knees." The words are addressed to all the members of the people of God; they are to strengthen and confirm one another by pointing to the future revelation of the glory of ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... all touch with the outer world. De Wet had commandeered all food supplies worth having. Houses had been looted and speeches were made in the marketplace. His followers had assured the people that the Empire was tottering, Germany had defeated Britain on land and sea, a hundred thousand were marching on Pretoria, and that Botha and his Government were defeated and disgraced. And these statements were ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie

... The tottering Ministry attempted to strengthen its position by a junction with some of the leaders of the 'French' party; but the attempt ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... had flooded the swamps, turned the roads to mud, and converted the Chickahominy Creek into a broad river. Johnston seized the opportunity to fall with tremendous force upon the exposed wing. At first, the Confederates swept all before them, but General Sumner throwing his men across the tottering bridges over the Chickahominy, checked the column which was trying to seize the bridges and thus separate the two portions of the army. General Johnston was severely wounded. Night put an end to the contest. ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... raised the simultaneous shout, "God is with us," and rushing over the debris, of ruin and blood, penetrated the city. The Tartars met them with the fury of despair, appealing, in their turn, to Allah and Mohammed. Soon the Russian banner floated over tottering towers and blackened walls, though for many hours the battle raged with fierceness, which human energies can ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... put on his wide awake, and, leaving the precincts of St. Edward Confessor, struck across Park Lane and along the Row. He passed several people he knew, both men and women: Mrs. Marland was there, attended by two young men, and, a little farther on, he saw old Lord Thrapston tottering along on his stick. Lord Thrapston hated a parson, and scowled at poor Mr. Taylor as he went by. Mr. Taylor shrank from meeting his eye, and hurried along till he reached the Serpentine, where he stood still for a few minutes, drinking in the fresh ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... speculation, and the utter impossibility of training men with no personal hopes to labor for the benefit of distant generations, there was one political argument against that course, which Mr. Gordon justly considers unanswerable. It is this: Turkey in Europe has been long tottering on its basis. Now, were the attempt delayed until Russia had displaced her and occupied her seat, Greece would then have received her liberty as a boon from the conqueror; and the construction would have been that she held it by sufferance, and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... demoralization of the victims, the effects upon public and private debts and credit are the same. But a whole continent populated by four hundred millions of people is concerned. The commercial and moral fabric of European civilization is tottering. Three years have passed since the war ended; but the currencies and exchanges of Europe are in a much worse condition than ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst

... their master's hand. There was a brightening paleness in his face, Such as Diana rising o'er the rocks Showered on the lonely Latmian; on his brow Sorrow there was, yet nought was there severe. But when the royal damsel first he saw, Faint, hanging on her handmaids, and her knees Tottering, as from the motion of the car, His eyes looked earnest on her, and those eyes Showed, if they had not, that they might have loved, For there was pity in them at that hour. With gentle speech, and more with gentle looks He ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... took chairs, but nothing short of a broken leg or tottering age would have justified me in accepting the ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... inconsistencies in life that at times one is appalled. Take marriage, for instance:—A young woman marries a man who is tottering on the brink of the grave; old, blaze, a worn-out roue; but with money enough to gild and gloss the antiquated ruin. She goes before a clergyman and promises to love, honour and obey. Yes; she loves ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt

... Poppy, when the obvious end had been reached. But at that moment the train drew up, and Esther's eyes, wandering idly over the little station to see what place they had reached, read 'Dorsham' on the signboard, and sprang to her feet with such energy as to send Angela and Poppy tottering across ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... and captivated by this delightful romance of Italian history. It is replete with exciting episodes, hair-breath escapes, magnificent sword-play, and deals with the agitating times in Italian history when Alexander II was Pope and the famous and infamous Borgias were tottering to ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... thing that struggled to keep in the dark out of the glare of that pitiless white pain.—One watched its struggles from a long way off—like God.—But the ball whirled drunkenly and it made one sick to look.—And then a supervening chaos—no longer a ball but still whirling, reeling, tottering. Rectangles of light, which, had they kept still, would have been ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... joke is this champagne," he growled as he was lifted to his tottering legs. "We had a glorious time this afternoon before I left Paris. Hurrah! You're to be my son-in-law. And, my boy, I don't envy you—that's the truth. With such a little demon for a wife—I pity you, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... extreme pressure in currency markets. Italy in early 1997 faces the problem of restructuring its economy to meet Maastricht criteria for inclusion in the EMU, together with other problems of refurbishing a tottering communications system, curbing industrial pollution, and adjusting to new EU ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... out a word," said she, "but it isn't like him to let an old man go tottering over fields to see him. He would have come ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... regions of the South, of the civilization of long ago, the historic chateaux still standing are very few. At rare intervals some old abbey rears its tottering and dismantled facade on a hillside, pierced with holes which once were windows, which see naught now but the sky,—monuments of dust, baked by the sun, dating from the days of the Crusades or of ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... aided and abetted him in another scheme, if it would but have cheered him. Even Miss Frost was nice with him. But to no purpose. In the year after Klondyke he became an old man, he seemed to have lost all his feathers, he acquired a plucked, tottering look. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... whirled and fled. He ran blindly and at high-pressure speed as if he fled before an actual enemy. All his sense of balance was thrown out of gear, the fitness of things upset, and he felt his reason tottering. For his ear, attuned to receive the meaning of all animal sounds, could detect the least tremor of menace in any animal note; when a range bull bellowed Breed knew whether the tones held invitation to his cows or husked a warning to some intruder that had strayed over into his chosen ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... penetrative mind—one that has power to read the masses as they pass before her mental vision. Her's is the heart that opens wide to the one crushed and broken by the uncharitable sect called "the world." Her's is the hand ready to help the suffering and support the tottering. The shoddyisms of modern every-day life have no charms for Mrs. Montgomery. Woe be to the victim who comes under her censure. She has no mercy upon those who are under a daily strain to cater to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... away, and he was tottering and groggy. He staggered away and started to whirl the swing. I saw it coming. I made believe I didn't and started after him in a rush. Biff! It caught me on the jaw, and I went down. I was young and strong. I could eat punishment. I could have got up the first second. But I lay there and let them ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... so many people looked at Duncan's pale heavy face and tottering steps that the gentleman, after a a few minutes, took him up and carried him. They went some little distance, till they came to a small shop, the window of which was full of all kinds of papers and pictures. The gentleman had some conversation with ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... help; but the majority were making brave efforts to get on some clothes, and one man was shouting for the nurse to go to the armoury and bring as many rifles and bayonets as she could carry. But there was no answer to their appeals, as Bracy, tottering at first, but growing stronger as he passed between the two rows of beds, struggled for the door at the end, and passed through into a little lobby, from which another door led at once into the court, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... two customers, one in a dress suit and an eyeglass, and the other in a large violet hat, a diamond necklace and a yellow satin skirt. The which customers, seemingly well used to the sight of drunken waiters tottering to and fro with towers of plates, sat down at a table and waited calmly for attention. The popular audience, with that quick mental grasp for which popular audiences are so renowned, soon perceived ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... far from remaining a mere puppet in his hands, Manco soon showed that his lot was not to be cast with that of his conquerors. With the ancient institutions of his country lying a wreck around him, he yet struggled bravely, like Guatemozin, the last of the Aztecs, to uphold her tottering fortunes, or to bury his oppressors under her ruins. By the assault on his own capital of Cuzco, in which so large a portion of it was demolished, he gave a check to the arms of Pizarro, and, for a season, the fate of the Conquerors trembled in the balance. Though foiled, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... that sleep was death. This was their second sleepless night, and the men were feverish with fatigue. Some babbled in strange tongues, and talked with sisters and sweethearts and people who were not there—reason was tottering. ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard

... they climb the watery hills, And plunge in deeps again; Each like a tottering drunkard reels, And finds his ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... the plant, than it does the last remnant of hostile feelings and the recollections of bitter wrongs; while the snuff-box of the diplomat contains the precious dust that has soothed the fierce hatred of rival houses and cemented the divided factions of a tottering throne. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the iron ropes hummed as they cut the air; and the people at the shaft's mouth waited, breathless with suspense, to see what the blackness would yield up to them. The carriage rose swiftly to the surface. On it four men, tottering and exhausted, were supporting an insensible body in their midst. The body was taken into strong arms, and borne hurriedly to the office of the breaker, a little distance away. Then a boy staggered off the carriage and fell fainting into the outstretched ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... merchandise and spoils everything that water can spoil, while the fire itself roars behind the wainscot, climbs to the rafters and rages among the old papers, cobwebs and heirlooms in the attic till the roof falls in, the floors go down with a crash and an upward shower of sparks, and only the tottering walls, with their eyeless window sockets, or the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... feast each person brings from his own hut a piece of meat, raw preferred. This meat is eaten in the solemn silence of a communion, each person thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, and wishing for good. The oldest member of the tribe, a white-haired man or tottering dame, takes up a sealskin cup, kept for this annual ceremony, dips up some of the water and drinks it, all the time thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, while the others close their ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... beauty of the foliage on the hill side, tottering stone walls lined each side of the road, and the crowing of cocks, and the lowing of cattle, together with a pastoral view obtained through the scraggy trees, betokened our near approach to a farm house. "Let us forget politics and go in for a bit of trade with this ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... the morning he went to release his prisoner. But he was a minute too late. For scuttling down the slope and away was a little black-begrimed, tottering figure with white hair blowing in the wind. The little man had broken away a wooden hatchment which covered a manhole in the wall of his prison-house, squeezed his small body ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant



Words linked to "Tottering" :   unsteady, tottery, unstable



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