"Life-preserver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nevertheless, because a great deal of merchandise finds its way to the interior from there. The white and green flag of Mexico floats from a red steam-tug (the navy of Mexico, by the way, consists of two tugs, a disabled raft, and a basswood life-preserver), and the Captain of the Port comes off to us in his small boat, climbs up the side of the St. Louis, and folds the healthy form of Captain Hudson to his breast. There is no wharf here, and we have to anchor off ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... billows of bed-clothes; about him floated the scattered volumes of a complete set of Thoreau; he was preparing an essay on that worthy, and he looked at the moment like a half-drowned man, yet he was not cast down. His work, an endless task, was better than a straw to him. It was to become his life-preserver and to prolong his years. I feel convinced that without it he must have surrendered long since. I found Stevenson a man of the frailest physique, though most unaccountably tenacious of life; a man ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... put that thing on me!" exclaimed Sylvia, eyeing with scorn the life-preserver he had picked up. "I thought that was something to sit on." She pinioned her elbows to her side. "Oh, I'd much rather drown than wear anything ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... her with a cord to the box, having first placed beneath her arms the life-preserver. Placing another life-preserver around himself, he stood by Mary's side with watchful anxiety. Suddenly a heavy sea threw the boat forcibly to one side, and Albert mechanically stretching forth his hand to save himself, accidentally ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... and whispered, and fluttered her hands on my head and back. She made me begin once more, but before I was half through we heard the watchman run along the roof close over us and cry: 'Fire!' She lifted me to my feet, whispering, 'Now! Now!' and began to put a life-preserver on me, still saying over and over nothing but 'Now! Now! Now!' until the sounds of alarm were everywhere, and just as she sprang into the next stateroom to rouse the other children my mother came into it from the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... made out that it was something round, with something white raised above it, and then I discovered that it was a life-preserver, which supported a little stick, to which a white flag, probably a handkerchief, was attached. Then I saw that on the life-preserver lay a ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... 31st.—Only think of my writing again from Marseilles! I was breakfasting yesterday, when there was a cry of 'A man overboard!' We went on deck. After a while, the man—who had enormous water-boots on, but who was fortunately a good swimmer—appeared on the surface, caught hold of a life-preserver which had been thrown out to him, was picked up by a boat, and hoisted on board. After a bumper of brandy, he seemed none the worse. But in the meantime we had sprung our rudder-head (the same sort of accident as befell ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... past the cabin window, and there is reflected the yellow, wooden, ribby thing which he knows to be a life-preserver. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... to write, in his fifty-seventh year, his second Inaugural, which is the greatest utterance of man, and yet all of his days in school added together are less than one year. His pioneer life had given him a vein of humor which became his "Life-preserver" in times of stress; it had also given him a love for human liberty that was unaffected. He felt that the enslavement of some men was but the advance guard, the miner and sapper, of the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... the little bracket-lamp on the wall of his stateroom and lit it. By its light he dragged a life-preserver from the rack overhead and slipped the tapes about his shoulders, reflecting that Alaskan waters are disagreeably cold. Then he opened his traveling-bags and dumped their contents upon the white counterpane of his berth, selecting out of the confusion ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... boo-hooed louder than ever at the joking question. A present! A little present, that was all! She thought it would ease her mind. So she had taken what money she had saved—a few pennies it was—and had bought something for him. A life-preserver! A neighbor of hers had gotten it from an engineer on an English steamer! And she produced the huge vest of padded cork, which folded up so easily along the seams! The Rector looked at the strange ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... bottom of the sea, turned over three times, and came to the surface again. A shriek arose from one of the ladies, Cleopatra's waiting-maid: 'I have lost my knitting overboard.' 'Man the pumps!' cried Cicero, and then tied his sandals around his neck for a life-preserver. Henry Clay drew a Henry Clay from his pocket and began to smoke vigorously. Hannibal said he would turn cannibal if the boat went down again. Cleopatra said she would die happy if only they would start up the phonograph, and Homer did so, with that beautiful ode entitled, ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... at once. He caught at a life-preserver of a most delightful description. "That will be a very enjoyable trip," he said. "I should like ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... recover the engine and patch the boat. We had provided three life-preservers, but one had been stolen; so I had fancied what a bully fight one might have if he should be thrown out into the mad waters without a life-preserver. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... sounded from one end of the vessel to the other, and the crews rushed to the boat-drill; each passenger had his number, and unless he was ill in his berth he had to take his specified place, with his life-preserver strapped ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... an old tin life-preserver hanging on a hook by the door; the surgeon climbed up to get it, and began buckling it about the old man in spite of his remonstrances. The timbers groaned and strained, the boat trembled like some great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... up. He hasn't spoken yet. It looks as if he were getting ready to do some outside cleaning, for he had on a life-preserver. Funny thing about it, though, that's not his work. He's not even on duty during the starboard watch. The man in the lookout saw him climb out on the bow, shout something up to him, then fall backward into the water. I'll be hanged if I can make it out. Tsang Foo is one of ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... realized now, almost with a conviction that the fact forced him to suicide for the sake of consistency, that his death under these circumstances would surely be attributed to accident. He even began to fumble with the buckles of his life-preserver; then with a smile of bitter scorn he looked down at his hands, of which the fingers were trembling with ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the water five big fellows approached, all dressed in red flannel. These bathing men each proceeded to tie an empty gourd, like a water-bottle, a sort of life-preserver, round the waist of a lady, and then, first politely bowing, he lifted the lady in his arms, as a nurse catches up a little child, and so with his fair burden he marched into ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... department store on Fulton Street and had returned to the basin laden each time with mysterious packages, many of which rattled or clinked when deposited in the galley. Perry had purchased an inexpensive talking machine and a dozen records. Neil had contributed a patent life-preserver that looked like a waistcoat to be used by an Arctic explorer and was guaranteed to keep Barnum and Bailey's fat man afloat. Phil had supplied the cabin with magazines, few of them, to Perry's chagrin, of the sort anyone but a "highbrow" would care to ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... I shall kill you, if you do. The only reason why I have not laid violent hands on you heretofore is that your vapid talk has operated as a wire to conduct my electricity to the receptive and kindly earth; but if you intrude upon my magnetisms without any such life-preserver, your future in this world is not worth a crossed sixpence. Your silence would break the reed that your talk but bruised. The only people with whom it is a joy to sit silent are the people with whom it is a joy ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... ends he obtained leave of absence a few days before the time appointed for the payment of the money; secured his passage across the Atlantic in a steamer advertised to start on the twenty-third; provided himself with a heavily loaded "life-preserver," and went down to Blackwater to await the arrival of his victim. How he met him on the platform with a pretended message from the board; how he offered to conduct him by a short cut across the fields to Mallingford; ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... fast as motor-boat, watch her in Southampton. Am well and will no more time throw away on fake life-preserver." ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... than one feared. If such things interest you, I don't mind admitting I carry a life-preserver of my own. But what of that? Is one eager to go shooting at this time of night, for the sheer fun of explaining to sergents de ville that one has been attacked by Apaches? ... Providing always one lives ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... I betray my desperate plight to those lynx-eyed guardians of the public welfare of Winnipeg? Not I. I met that aged sailorman glad-eyed and beaming, with all the simulated relief at deliverance that a drowning man would display on finding a life-preserver in his last despairing clutch. Here was a man who understood and who would verify my true story to the faces of those sleuth-hounds who did not understand, or, at least, such was what I endeavored to play-act. I seized upon him; I volleyed him with questions about himself. Before ...
— The Road • Jack London
... happiness. They engaged in many amusements, of which I was incapable, and could only look on and laugh at—such as catching crabs, and speering flounders by torchlight. They bathed and swam, too, (the latter with a life-preserver), but they were afraid to venture out too far, on account of sharks, which were occasionally seen near the shore. At a certain season of the year there was frequently heard, near the bath-houses, a strain of music, like the Aeolian harp, which ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... so that the starving little creature might have some nourishment. As she sat on her stool, and the little one eagerly sipped the milk, while his tiny little hand tightly clasped his grandmother's forefinger like a life-preserver, she said, greatly touched: ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... probably what it was. I reckon it saved your life, too, for though you were on a pretty big piece of wreckage, you looked as though the waves had washed up over you a number of times. Yes, that home-made cork life-preserver ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... manufacturers had come to realize that their process was worthless and that their great fortune was only a mirage, and just before these facts became generally known, that Charles Goodyear made his entrance on the scene. He appeared first as a customer in the company's store in New York and bought a rubber life-preserver. When he returned some weeks later with a plan for improving the tube, the manager confided to him the sad tragedy of rubber, pointing out that no improvement in the manufactured articles would meet the difficulty, but that fame and fortune awaited the inventor ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... and, I would add, possibly called The Whale, as some craft are nowadays christened the Shark, the Gull, the Eagle. Nor have there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver —an inflated bag of wind —which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But he had still another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... in the drowning man, and he fully realized that the person's situation was desperate, if he was not already hopelessly lost. He had struggled and twisted himself in his involuntary efforts, till his life-preserver had worked its way down to his hips, and then it overthrew him; for he turned a somerset, and disappeared under a coming wave. He had utterly "lost his head," and was like an infant in the fury ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... "Take that life-preserver," he said, with swift quietness to Little Miss Grouch. "As soon as you see me get her, throw it as far beyond us as you can. You understand? Beyond. There she ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... stood before her with a cork life-preserver in his hands, and buckled it around her securely, under the arms. He was panting and almost exhausted, yet he strove to make his voice firm, and even cheerful, as ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... enough for the purpose. Couldn't you put on a life-preserver, Mr. Miller, and go ashore and get ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... Brothers are here, and sing on the water by moonlight. You can blister your bands at an oar, or bale out the boat, just as your taste inclines. As the life-preserver is a little out of repair, I stay ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... that gallant sorter to a still suburban square; He watched his opportunity and seized him unaware; He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head, And Mrs. Brown dissected him ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... household soundly sleeps. Come, friends, who plough the sea, Truce to navigation; Take another station; Let's vary piracee With a little burglaree! POLICE: (softly) Tarantara, tarantara! SAMUEL: (distributing implements to various members of the gang) Here's your crowbar and your centrebit, Your life-preserver—you may want to hit! Your silent matches, your dark lantern seize, Take your file and your skeletonic keys. POLICE: Tarantara! PIRATES: With cat-like tread POLICE: ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... accomplishments. In the rough hold where he was shut up, our pirate, peering about, anxious and earnest, discovered two large, earthen jars in which wine had been brought from Spain, and with these he determined to make a sort of life-preserver. He found some pieces of oiled cloth, which he tied tightly over the open mouths of the jars and fastened them with cords. He was satisfied that this unwieldy contrivance would support him ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... beings, officers and men returning from a brief glimpse of home. There was nothing of the glory of war in the embarkation, and, to add to the sad and sinister effect of it, each man as he came aboard mounted the ladder and chose, from a pile on the hatch combing, a sodden life-preserver, which he flung around his shoulders as he went in search of a shelter. The saloon below, where we had our tea, was lighted indeed, but sealed so tight as to be insupportable; and the cabin above, stifling too, was dark as a pocket. One stumbled over unseen passengers on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... we have no sense to perceive it; these are the solar, and lunar, and terrestrial gravitation, in which also all things are immersed; the electric aura, which pervades us, and is perpetually varying, See Class IV. 1. 4. 5; the magnetic fluid, Class IV. 1. 4. 5; and lastly, the great life-preserver oxygen gas, and the aqueous vapour of the atmosphere, see Class IV. 1. 4. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... a life-preserver that looks like an ordinary cane—had it specially made. It's quite famous. Men tell me that the knob is a rich, deep, polished vermilion. He'll take on any number of Boches with it single-handed. If there's any sign of wire-cutting, he'll ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... pump suddenly stopped; and then the captain turned pale as death and demanded to know who stopped that pump, while Bradley buckled a life-preserver around him, corked up a note to his wife in a bottle, and said that now that the pump had ceased he would give that steamer just ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the true Christian spirit, sought to impart to his humble companion in peril some of his own confidence in God's mercy and goodness; but in vain. An intelligent, sustaining faith cannot be snatched like a life-preserver in the moment of danger; and the man appeared scarcely ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... policy, his resemblance to Jackson. Princes mix cocktails. Principle, exposure spoils it. Principles, bad, when less harmful, when useless. Professor, Latin, in College, Scaliger. Prophecies, fulfilment of. Prophecy, a notable one. Prospect Hill. Providence has a natural life-preserver. Proviso, bitterly spoken of. Prudence, sister, her idiosyncratic teapot. Psammeticus, an experiment of. Psyche, poor. Public opinion, a blind and drunken guide, nudges Mr. Wilbur's elbow, ticklers of. Punkin Falls 'Weekly Parallel.' Putnam, General Israel, his lines. Pythagoras a bean-hater, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... in.' He's a nice boy that young Kent.... But—but some of these days I'm goin' to hit that Thad Black—hit him with somethin' soft like—like an anvil. If that critter fell overboard I wouldn't heave him no life-preserver. No, sir, by Henry, I'd heave him the sheet anchor. The longer he hung on to that the ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... looked at Faith. At first she didn't comprehend, and then something swam all over her face as if the very blood in her veins had grown darker, and there was such danger in her eye that before we stepped into the boat again I wished to goodness I had a life-preserver. But in the beginning the religious impression lasted and gave him great resolutions; and then strolling off and along the beach, he fell in with some men there and did as he always did, scraped acquaintance. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... city of New York, his eye was attracted by the words "INDIA RUBBER FOR SALE." Having heard much of this new article of late, he purchased a life-preserver which he carried home and so materially improved, in conception, that he was induced to return to the store for the purpose of explaining his ideas. At the store he was now told of the great discouragements with which the rubber trade was contending, the merchants giving ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... danger, Tom flew across the deck to where there was a life-preserver, attached to a hundred feet of small, but strong, rope. Once at the stern again, he threw the life-preserver ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... proceeded at this moment, had not the acquittal of Tooke and his associates, and the triumph it diffused through the country, given a lesson to Power such as England is alone capable of giving, and which will long be remembered, to the honor of that great political safeguard,—that Life-preserver in stormy times,—the Trial ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... me like a life-preserver to a drowning man," said Morgan, with a glimmer of his every-day facetiousness. He drained the glass; the judge motioned for him to sit down. Morgan did so, and stretched his wet feet ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... menacingly at Charon. Hitherto he had managed to keep it a secret that the Queen had rescued him from drowning upon that occasion by swimming ashore herself first and throwing Sir Walter her ruff as soon as she landed, which he had used as a life-preserver. ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs |
