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More "Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the inhabitants of Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kirjathjearim, under the Israelites, is quoted in triumph by the advocates of slavery; and truly they are right welcome to all the crumbs that can be gleaned from it. Milton's devils made desperate snatches at fruit that turned to ashes on their lips. The spirit of slavery raves under tormenting gnawings, and casts about in blind phrenzy for something to ease, or even to mock them. But for this, it would never have ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the gauntlet thrown down by Wade. It was not unexpected, and acceptance seemed a relief. Folsom's eyeballs became living fire with the desperate gleam of the reckless chances of life. Cutthroat he might have been, but he was brave, and he proved ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... revolution, is for the time simply impossible. So long as many old leaves linger on the November trees, you know that there has been little frost and no wind; just so while the House of Lords retains much power, you may know that there is no desperate discontent in the country, no wild agency likely to ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... apartment as I went to mine. Wrapped in his blanket, and stretched at full length on the ground, Jim lay there, fast asleep. I passed on, thinking of the wisdom of placing a tired negro on guard over an acute and desperate Yankee. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... soon interrupted by the arrival of her belongings, in charge of her mother's maid, and the immediate necessity of dressing more carefully than had been possible when she had been so rudely roused by the Baroness. She was surprised to find herself so little tired by the desperate adventure, and without even a cold as the result of the never-to-be-forgotten chill she had ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... it, for real life may come on you in a dozen ways when you once leave the safety of the schoolroom, but you will probably get several years of tolerable quiet, and, if I were you, I would not spend my first year in a desperate effort to fill up all the gaps in my education, and to go on with school-work in the school spirit. I should take my first year of freedom as the arbour on the Hill Difficulty, where Christian rested; the lord ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... ceiling. "They have taken fright for some reason. They may have an inkling of the awful truth. She is nineteen. Next year she will be twenty—the year after that twenty-one. Then it would be too late. A desperate experiment is better than inaction. I have much to gain and nothing to lose. I must exhibit Kalora. I shall bring the young men to her. Some of them may take a fancy to her. I have seen people eat sugar on tomatoes and pepper on ice-cream. There may be in Morovenia one—one would ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... civilian dress before the Greek onrush, gave terrible accounts of the mass of struggling refugees in their flight across the mountains; the dead and dying children en route; the aged falling by the wayside; the jam of desperate creatures in a pass; the hideous cruelties of the advancing Greeks. It had been impossible, said the Dutch officers, to hold Koritza with irregular troops against an army with artillery. The Greeks burned as they advanced, and burnt Tepelcni and all the ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... this, at the sack of Troy, he had shown a want of self-control, and yielded to a mad passion of desperate fighting that is not to be found in the Aeneas of the last ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... next instant, they saw Russell's head emerge, and then another wave foaming madly by, made them run backwards for their lives, and hid him from their view. When it had passed, they saw him clinging with both hands, in the desperate instinct of self-preservation, to a projecting bit of rock, by the aid of which he gradually dragged himself out of the water, and grasping at crevices or bits of seaweed, slowly and painfully reached the ledge on which they had stood before they took ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Barney. "We're a pretty hard combination to beat, aren't we, Margaret? There will be a man to take the service at Bull Crossing if I have to take it myself—a desperate resort, indeed." ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... less happily, though I noticed that whenever a camel changed its walk for a trot, each one of the ladies reached back a desperate hand to clutch the saddle and save her spine from the bruising bump! bump! which smote the bone with every step. As for me, that feeling of middle age began to creep on while my coast-guard camel and I were getting acquainted. I tried to distract my thoughts from the end of my spine, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... you think. You may be at rest, my dear madam. I will never approach you again; one has no desire to hear such words a second time. You stand so proud and firm upon your watch tower of virtue and judge so severely. You have no conception what a wild, desperate life can make of a man who goes through the world without home or family. You are right. I believed in nothing in the heavens above or on the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, Bare-headed, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate: Bushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... certainly picked up that ring in that passage, close by this man who was lying there. But I didn't know he was dead; I didn't know he'd been murdered. All I know is that I was absolutely famishing, desperate, in no condition to think clearly about anything. I guess I should do the same thing again, under the circumstances. ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... anything like the same bewildering extent as it had in September, and that the intervening course of events—however disappointing in itself—certainly helped to make his plan suit the occasion far better late than soon. Moreover, in a note to Saunders in August, he had spoken about a 'desperate' plan which he could not trust his brigadiers to carry out, and which he was then too sick to ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... ghost entered his mind, he was far too sensible for that, and had no fear of spirits. If they were good spirits, he argued, of course they would not hurt, if they were bad, he might hurt them. He was for advancing at once to investigate, but his little charge clung to him in desperate terror. ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... fragrance of the hay aggravated the evil effects of the rolling, and three days passed like an interminable nightmare. Sometimes the bales and bags slid about the place with the rolling of the ship, occasionally he made weak though desperate attempts to help Joe and Jock who struggled on nobly; but eventually Mac managed to drag himself and two blankets to the top of the horse-boxes high on the boat-deck. There lay rows of men like corpses in their blankets, with pinched ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... by this time at Versailles in what a desperate condition was the Commune, by the information of persons devoted to order, but who remained amongst the insurgents to keep watch over and restrain them as ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... long word," admitted Nan. "I didn't quite mean that; but the weather's been so mild up to now that I was getting desperate." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... and had not been with Sir Julian for a whole day, fearing he would find out by looking at her. Nay, he knew nothing,—beside, if he did, he would shield her from Cedric's anger by keeping so great a secret. And yet it almost seemed as if the young lord knew of her desperate act; 'twas written on his face, she saw the pain upon it; and yet, how could it be? These thoughts flashed through Katherine's brain, and she tried to move from him, but an inscrutable presence held ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... a dreadful state of affairs for a small girl at the beginning of her first visit? Katie shut her mouth tight, and clenched her small, hot hands, in a desperate effort to look just ordinary. It was very hard to be brave. She would have liked to run away, but she knew that would be cowardly. Her cheeks kept growing hotter and hotter. It was mean, she had always heard, to listen to things that were ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... with feeling he told of the fight for the bridge; how Dick, and Mathews, who had saved him, reached the Americans; of the desperate hand-to-hand fighting; how the groom had guarded his young master; the impending disaster; ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... day, the genial major sat in his cool veranda, and thought of Jack Walthall and the boys in Virginia. Sometimes between dozes he would make his way to Perdue's Corner, and discuss the various campaigns. How many desperate campaigns were fought on that Corner! All the older citizens, who found it convenient or necessary to stay at home, had in them the instinct and emotions of great commanders. They knew how victory could be ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... General Gibbon opened fire with his heavy artillery, which was responded to, but without much effect, owing to the fog, which, however, disappeared about eleven o'clock. The engagement now became general, and the fighting was of a character more desperate and determined than ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... subdued a great part of the world, they came vnto the sayd olde man, and tooke from him the custody of his paradise: who being incensed thereat, sent abroad diuers desperate and resolute persons out of his forenamed paradise, and caused many of the Tartarian nobles to be slaine. The Tartars seeing this, went and besieged the city wherein the said olde man was, tooke ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... guests were there. She never went out alone, and in every place where I was likely to meet her I was sure to find a triple rampart of women erected between us, through which it was impossible to address one word to her. In short, I was encountering a desperate resistance; and, yet, she loved me! I could see her cheeks gradually grow pale; her brilliant eyes often had dark rings beneath them, as if sleep had deserted her. Sometimes, when she thought she was not observed, I surprised ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... fortunes. That they have been led to believe by their agents and partisans among us that we are a divided people, that the latter are opposed to their own government, and that the show of a small force would occasion a revolt, I have no doubt; and how far these men (grown desperate) will further attempt to deceive, and may succeed in keeping up the deception, is problematical. Without that, the folly of the Directory in such an attempt would, I conceive, be more conspicuous, if possible, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... visiting the neighbouring stations in succession, and pillaging each; intending eventually, to make their way across Bass's Straits to Victoria. Dalton was a very formidable fellow; strong, active, and resolute, reckless of human life, and now rendered desperate by despair. He was, too, a first-rate marksman, and could "stick ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... departed. He was gay, desperate, and free of all hampering doubts. In such a mood Nella-Rose lost all fear of him and walked by his side as complacently as if the one minister in her sordid little world had with all his strange authority said his ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... much of this," he began to say, but at the second word the bobsled struck a huge root, the riders were pitched forward, and for one desperate moment they clung to the scrubby undergrowth that bordered what they supposed was ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... the time Carl had to be on the road selling bonds, and we almost grieved our hearts out over that. In fact, we got desperate, and when Carl was offered an assistant cashiership in a bank in Ellensburg, Washington, we were just about to accept it, when the panic came, and it was all for retrenchment in banks. Then we planned farming, planned it with determination. It was too awful, those good-byes. ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... sober more and more. He fancied himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned an inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not guess the cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an expression of friendliness, which they answered by a smile that made him desperate. ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... towns, cultivated their gardens and fields, and reared domestic animals. They lived in prosperity and peace, until 1696, when the Portuguese prepared an expedition against them. The Palmarisians defended themselves with desperate valor, but were overcome by superior numbers. Some rushed upon death, that they might not survive their liberty; others were sold and dispersed by the conquerors. Thus ended this interesting republic. Had it continued to the present time, it might have produced a very material ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... of the leopardess was the arena of what seemed a desperate although silent struggle. Two vastly differing forms, human and bestial, with entangled confusion of mingling bodies and limbs, writhed and wrestled in closest embrace. It had lasted but an instant when I saw the leopardess out of the cage, walking ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... wild reckless man, though his wife was a most estimable and virtuous lady, and that one day he went into a fit of insane jealousy, or pretended to do so, over the then Vavasour of Weston. Money lenders, too, were pressing him hard, and he had become desperate. Rushing madly into the house, he plunged a dagger into one and then into another of his children, and afterwards tried to take the life of their mother, a steel corset which she wore luckily saving her life. Leaving her for dead, he mounted his horse with the intention of killing the only other ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... petition was presented to Whitelocke from two mariners in hold for speaking desperate words,—that they would blow up the ship and all her company, and would cut the throat of the Protector, and of ten thousand of his party. One of them confessed, in his petition, that he was drunk when he ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... the effect of a man whose heart is in his business, and who intends to thrive. He that cares not whether his books are kept well or no, is in my opinion one that does not much care whether he thrives or no; or else, being in desperate circumstances, knows it, and that he cannot, or does not thrive, and so matters not ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... but if a person has any heart trouble I would not advise their use except under a physician's care. (Sometimes a patient with neuralgia gets desperate, and he will even resort to morphine). Antipyrine is one of the simplest coal tar remedies, and most persons can safely take it. Persons who are subject to neuralgia or headaches need to take good care of themselves. Get plenty of rest and sleep. Neuralgia at first can be cured, but ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... present recovery. Aguilar, the Spanish commander, was admitted to terms; Baltimore and Castlehaven were surrendered. Thus abortively collapsed the last effort of Philip III. The Irish rebellion was broken. Many of the chiefs after vain and desperate resistance escaped to Spain; others surrendered to the Queen's mercy. O'Donnell was of the former; he died soon after reaching Spain. But Tyrone the diplomatic succeeded in making terms. It seemed that once more the English ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... gaming-club,[64] of which Mr. Beauclerk had given me an account, where the members played to a desperate extent. JOHNSON. 'Depend upon it, Sir, this is mere talk. Who is ruined by gaming? You will not find six instances in an age. There is a strange rout made about deep play: whereas you have many more people ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... meowing anxiously. There was no other bough near which they could gain by a leap. And as Pike, looking back and gasping with fright, crawled straight on toward them, the cat that was farthest out on the end of the limb launched itself through the air in a desperate leap for the ground. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... bounding merrily away at full speed, to be restrained or urged on at the will of their driver, but this is a pure fallacy, for a sled-dog's gallop is like a donkey's, short and sweet. The average gait is a shuffling trot, covering from five to seven miles an hour over easy ground; and even then desperate fights frequently necessitate a stoppage and readjustment of the traces. There are no reins, the dogs being fastened two abreast on either side of a long rope. To start off you seize the sled with both hands, give it a violent wrench to one side, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... broader than the fact of the wish of some stood the need of all! Populous cities without one witness to the grace of God! Wide regions untraversed by the feet of His messengers! Hubert had thought New Laodicea a place of desperate need; and so it was in the matter of vital, fruit-bearing piety. But as he thought of the inky darkness in which China's millions dwelt this seemed ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... thinke) could be betwixt two ships, of which we were full spectators Dureing the whole engagement: and in my Judgment Capt. Passenger behaved himself with much Courage and good Conduct, haveing to Deal with an Enemy under a Desperate choice of killing or hanging, and I believe few men in their circumstances but would elect the first. the Conflict briskly maintained from soon after sunrise untill about 4 afternoon. on thursday May the second Fletcher gott in here and gave the inclosed accot.,[5] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... phenomenon which they could not understand. Her advice seemed to set aside all human prudence. Nothing seemed more rash or unreasonable than to undertake the conquest of so many fortified cities with such feeble means. It was one thing to animate starving troops to a desperate effort for their deliverance; it was another to assault fortified cities held by the powerful forces which had nearly ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... the assurance he sought, her desperate, passionate voice grown gentle and quiet again. But she was too tired and spent to be comforted. For a long time she lay so still that he became alarmed, thinking she must have fainted again, and ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... the seventh century, ceased entirely in the ninth or tenth. Not many books were written during this period, but there was then, and for at least three centuries afterwards, an unsatisfied demand for something to write upon. Parchment was so scarce that reckless copyists frequently resorted to the desperate expedient of effacing the writing on old and lightly esteemed manuscripts. It was not a difficult task. The writing ink then used was usually made of lamp-black, gum and vinegar; it it had but a feeble encaustic property, and it did not bite in ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... main the numerous forts and garrison of Valdivia, a fortress previously deemed impregnable, and thus to counteract the disappointment which would ensue in Chili from our want of success before Callao. The enterprise was a desperate one; nevertheless, I was not about to do anything desperate, having resolved that, unless fully satisfied as to its practicability, I would not attempt it. Rashness, though often imputed to me, forms no part of my composition. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... interesting articles in 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' October 1852, and November 1855.) The males are said to be polygamists (4. Noel Humphreys, 'River Gardens,' 1857.); they are extraordinarily bold and pugnacious, whilst "the females are quite pacific." Their battles are at times desperate; "for these puny combatants fasten tight on each other for several seconds, tumbling over and over again until their strength appears completely exhausted." With the rough- tailed stickleback (G. trachurus) the males whilst fighting swim round and round each other, biting and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... what they did against me Buzzing close to their souls, stinging their hearts, And they like scampering beasts when clegs are fierce, Or flinging themselves low as the ground to writhe, Their arms hugging their desperate heads. And then You'll see what 'tis to be an upright man, Who keeps a patient anger for his wrongs Thinking of judgment coming—you will see that When you mark how my looks hunt these wretches, And smile upon their groans and posturing anguish. O watch how calm I'll be, when the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... insane. His principles conquer his desire for children, and his decision is communicated to the fiery Elizma, who, fierce maternalist that she is and coming of a wild stock that never stuck at anything, undertakes a desperate flirtation by way of solving the difficulty in her own heroic way—at least you will certainly make this kind of a guess, but on investigation you may find that you've been wrong! Happily in the end a deathbed confession proves the second ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... unwilling to take a young fellow of whom he knew so little under his roof; but this was his nephew, and anything that seemed like to amuse or please Elsie was agreeable to him. He had grown almost desperate, and felt as if any change in the current of her life and feelings might save her from some strange paroxysm of dangerous mental exaltation or sullen perversion of disposition, from which some fearful calamity might come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... that floated over the level sea, and excited the sympathy of the men who were compelled to inflict the suffering in order to preserve their own safety. They felt an instinctive desire to launch a boat and go to the succour of their victims. Curly, who knew the desperate character of these fearful men, advised his shipmates to have neither remorse nor pity. He assured them that the lesson given to the miscreants would not prevent those who might recover or those who had received no injury from taking to their trade with the same thievish and murderous zeal ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Barbarossa's power, when Charles V., hoisting the crucifix at his masthead, led his crusading Spaniards against Goletta, and it fell, after a month's desperate siege, without pause or rest the troops, half dead with heat and thirst, pressed on to Tunis to liberate twenty thousand Christian captives. It was a splendid achievement, for the campaign was fought in the fierce heat of an African summer. Every barrel of biscuit, every butt of water, had ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... premeditated lie before. Now matters were so difficult, and there seemed such a certainty of there being no other way out, that she resolved to brave the consequences and add to her former sin by a desperate, downright black lie. Accordingly, just before dinner she ran into ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... here, a light, airy dinner, that is seasoned and made interesting by the unanimous worrying of the entire population. Once I make a desperate effort to silence their clamorous importunities, and obtain a little quiet, by attempting to ride over impossible ground, and reap the well-merited reward of permitting my equanimity to be thus disturbed in the shape of a header and a slightly-bent handle-bar. While I am eating, the gazing-stock ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... John Morley's wife. This morning he has risen and gone out in a desperate mood. "No use to try," he says. "Didn't I go a whole year and never touch a drop? And now just because I fell once I'm kicked out! No use to try. When a fellow once trips, everybody gives him a kick. Talk about ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... however, brings loss to the owners of the herds. Despite the stringent law, there is always a certain number of desperate men who take perilous chances in stealing cattle and running them off beyond recovery by their owners. This practice is not so prevalent as formerly, for since the brands are registered, and the agents well known at Cheyenne, Helena, and other shipping-points, ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... Barchester, Mr Snapper protested that Mr Thumble would have to answer for it in this world and in the next if there were no services at Hogglestock on that Sunday. On the Saturday evening Mr Thumble made a desperate attempt to see the bishop, but was told by Mrs Draper that the bishop had positively declined to see him. The bishop himself probably felt unwilling to interfere with his wife's doings so soon after her death! So Mr Thumble, with a heavy heart, went across to the "Dragon of Wantly", ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... laughing, in order that he might seem to comprehend the quotation, "your majesty may be perfectly right in relying on the good feeling of France, but I fear I am not altogether wrong in dreading some desperate attempt." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... spoken after the coming of Frank Jones, but something has to be said of the manner of his coming, and of the reasons which brought him, and something also which occurred before he came. It could not be that Mr. Moss should be wounded after so desperate a fashion and that not a word should ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... he cried between his sobs, "it's not true! I did all I could to stop them—I did not know that they would do things—not really—until now, this morning, when it was too late. It is the others, Sergius, Paslov, Odinsky—zey were always wild, desperate. But we, the rest of us, with us ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... up immediately in front of Cardillac's door. There De Scuderi observed Desgrais, and at his feet a young girl, as beautiful as the day, with dishevelled hair, only half dressed, and her countenance stamped with desperate anxiety and wild with despair. She was clasping his knees and crying in a tone of the most terrible, the most heart-rending anguish, "Oh! he is innocent! he is innocent." In vain were Desgrais' efforts, as well as those ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... or strychnin and the application of mustard or hot cloths over the chest. The head at the same time should be lowered to prevent syncope. Attempts to withdraw the air by suction, and the employment of artificial respiration, have proved futile, and are, by some, considered dangerous. In a desperate case massage of the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... through the small town, although the latter had no amenities to boast of, and the fact of a battle having been fought there between the Russians and Prussians in 1759 would hardly fire their enthusiasm. Matters, however, became desperate when on their return there was still neither sign nor sound of horses. Dr. Jarocki comforted himself with meat and drink, but Chopin began to look uneasily about him for something to while away the weariness of waiting. His search was not in vain, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... by—Perkins dead; Margaret still unconscious; Dorothy lying in her seat, her thoughts a formless prayer, buoyed up only by her faith in God and in her lover; DuQuesne self-possessed, smoking innumerable cigarettes, his keen mind grappling with its most desperate problem, grimly fighting until the very last instant of life—while the powerless space-car fell with an appalling velocity, faster and faster; falling toward that cold and desolate monster ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... of pay and honour did not much allure us; but the vision of that silent night ride, that perilous entrance into the enemy's camp, that swift dash for the person of our greatest foe, that gallop homeward with a roused rebel cavalry, desperate with consternation, at our heels, quite supplanted all feelings of slight in not having been invited earlier. Such an enterprise, for young fellows like us, there ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of his supposed wealth, sat amongst peers and was idolised. Then was the harvest-time of scheming lawyers, parliamentary agents, engineers, surveyors, and traffic-takers, who were ready to take up any railway scheme however desperate, and to prove any amount of traffic even where none existed. The traffic in the credulity of their dupes was, however, the great fact that mainly concerned them, and of the profitable character of which there ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... advanced. Despite his muscles, because of his forty pounds' handicap, he could not cling as did Carson. A third of the way up, where the pitch was steeper and the ice less eroded, he felt the strain on the rope decreasing. He moved slower and slower. Here was no place to stop and remain. His most desperate effort could not prevent the stop, and he ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... was desperate. The hole was still as dry as punk, and boarding the Reeds was nothing less than ruinous; besides, he was nauseated with cooking for three persons whom he detested. They could not be insulted, he discovered, and were determined to make him ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... useless. The boat refused to rise. The oxygen became rapidly exhausted and the lights grew dim. Even the valve supplying fresh air for the nostrils of the occupants of the boat would not work and the situation grew more desperate with the flight of every second. As the atmosphere became oppressively heavy, Boyton wanted to knock the valve off with a hammer; but the engineer showed him if that were ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... commit suicide, as a passionate man will stab another.' He added, 'I have often thought, that after a man has taken the resolution to kill himself, it is not courage in him to do any thing, however desperate, because he has nothing to fear.' GOLDSMITH. 'I don't see that.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, but my dear Sir, why should not you see what every one else sees?' GOLDSMITH. 'It is for fear of something that he has resolved to kill ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... through all the vast region of South Africa; a similar shift in much-troubled Ireland; Socialism reaching out toward power through all central Europe; Woman Suffrage taking possession of northern Europe and western America and striding on from country to country, from state to state; a bloody and desperate people's revolution in Mexico; and a similar one of the Balkan peoples against Turkey! Individuals may possibly feel that some one or other of these steps was reckless, even perhaps that some may ultimately have to be retraced in the world's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... To exalt again the sun's child and the sea's; For as wild mares in Thessaly grow great With child of ravishing winds, that violate Their leaping length of limb with manes like fire And eyes outburning heaven's With fires more violent than the lightning levin's And breath drained out and desperate of desire, Even so the spirit in him, when winds grew strong, Grew great with child of song. Nor less than when his veins first leapt for joy To draw delight in such as burns a boy, Now too the soul of all his senses felt The passionate pride of deep sea-pulses dealt Through nerve and jubilant vein ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... indeed a very strictly dramatic array of the forces of wrong—weakness, blind passion, and pitiless egoism; but there is already a full suggestion of the overwhelming energy of the element of evil; and in LEAR the conception is worked out with a desperate insistence which carries us far indeed from the sunny cynicism and prudent scepticism of Montaigne. Nowhere in the essays do we find such a note of gloom as is struck ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... his dupe. He had formerly been a crafty shoemaker; was known to the police as a notorious character, who, instead of having been engaged in the political struggles of his countrymen, had fled the country to escape the penalty of being the confederate of a desperate gang of coiners and counterfeiters. We had only been two days in Vienna when I found he had disappeared, and left me destitute of money or friends. My connection with him only rendered my condition more deplorable, for the police would not credit my story; and while he eluded ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... grenade into the muzzle of one of the guns, but was blown to bits in the try. Still, over and over it they swarmed, like bees searching for a nook in a flower, the difference being that instead of getting honey they got hell. Then the poor desperate devils, in the frenzy of despair, flung themselves from the top and sides of the titan down into the crater and tried to scamper up the sides to the top, only to be met with a hail of bullets when ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... triple administrative charges, triple pumping and storage costs, and a triple army of turncocks—the whole affording a less effective supply than would have resulted from a single well-ordered service. In this desperate struggle vast sums of money were sunk. The recently-established companies worked at a ruinous loss; and such as kept up a show of prosperity were, in fact, like the East London Company, paying dividends out of capital. The New ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... as himself to make the best time possible. His own impatience increased as the morning lengthened. Jean's assurance that the mysterious enemies who had twice attempted his life were only a short distance behind them, or a short distance ahead, set a new and desperate idea at work in his brain. He was confident that these men from the Wekusko were his chief menace, and that with them once out of the way, and with the Frenchman in his power, the fight which he was carrying into the enemy's country would be half won. There would then be no one ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... upon himself as doomed. "How would you like to go out?" Ichi had queried; and his manner had made the question a promise. Well, he would try not to go out alone. His work was cut out for him, and it was desperate work. There was slim chance, he knew, of surviving the execution of his plan, but he contemplated his probable death with the high ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... nephew, that these four villains spoke in Warr's hearing of the master who was behind them, and who was paying them for their infamy? Did you not understand that they were hired to cripple my man? Who, then, could have hired them? Who had an interest unless it was—I know Sir Lothian Hume to be a desperate man. I know that he has had heavy card losses at Watier's and White's. I know also that he has much at stake upon this event, and that he has plunged upon it with a rashness which made his friends think that he had some private reason for being ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... away by my talent, and if I must say so, most captivated by my beauty, was the Duke of Palma, minister of police. I received the minister kindly, and without yielding to his persuasions, conferred trifling favors on him. His confidence in me was immense. When I was stern to him he became desperate, but he professed there was such a charm in my company that he sought constantly to see me. Minister as he was, he became not my sicisbeo, for that I would consent to at no price, but my cavaliero sirviente, thus occupying the second grand hierarchy of love. I learned from the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... And so if you had it you needed not many signs to know it by, at least you would not doubt of it, more than he that sees the light can question it. But, I say, to believe in Christ is simply this: I,—whatsoever I be,—ungodly, wretched, polluted, desperate, am willing to have Jesus Christ for my Saviour, I have no other help, or hope, if it be not in him. It is, I say, to lean the weight of thy soul on this foundation stone laid in Zion, to embrace the promises of the gospel, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... peace until you have given us some kind of a hold on you. You know too much, you see, and as long as you have a clean sheet you are a standing menace to us. That is the position. You know it, and Jezzard knows it, and he is a desperate man, and as ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... severely wounded, and was carried off the deck. At three quarters past nine, the arm-chest, filled with musket-cartridges, blew up, and set fire to several places in the poop and quarter-deck, but was fortunately extinguished. Her situation, however, was still very desperate; surrounded by enemies, and only eighty fathoms to windward of L'Orient entirely on fire, there could not be any other expectation, than falling a prey either to the enemy or the flames. At ten o'clock, the main and mizen ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... and to Lieutenant Langford, the officers and crew of the same ship, who nobly seconded us in the barge until all her crew were killed or wounded: and to the Honourable William Cathcart, who commanded the Medusa's cutter, and sustained the attack with the greatest intrepidity, until the desperate situation I was left in obliged me to call him to the assistance of the sufferers in my boat. The boats were no sooner alongside, than we attempted to board: but a very strong netting, traced up to her lower yards, baffled all our endeavours; and an instantaneous discharge of her guns, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... putting something into my head which I never thought of before. You are tempting me with a new prospect, when all my other prospects are closed before me. I tell you again, I am miserable enough and desperate enough, if you say another word, to marry you on your own terms. Take the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... something about the fellow's actions that told Ted he was desperate, yet at the same time afraid of the act ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... their enemy. The fortress poured out regiment after regiment. Chafing so long upon the defense Southern youth was now at its best. Attacking, not attacked, the farmer lads felt the spirit of battle blaze high in their breasts. The long, terrible rebel yell, destined to be heard upon so many a desperate field, fierce upon its lower note, fierce upon its higher note, as fierce as ever upon its dying note, and coming back in echoes still as fierce, swelled over forest and fort, marsh ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the first, when, I had time to at all think of it," Damaris answered with rather desperate bravery, "I couldn't see there was anything for me to forgive. It was the other way about. For haven't I so much which he might very well feel belonged, or should have ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... time our opponents were within an ace of the match. Miss Wilson served to me in the left court—a good service out on the side line. I played a straight back-hand shot down the line, passing Mr. Gore's forehand—rather a desperate stroke, as if it failed to pass him it meant certain death from one of his straight-arm volleys. Perhaps he was not guarding his line so well as usual, under the impression that I would not have the courage to try to pass him at such a critical moment—anyway, ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... by no means belonged to him. He waited upon Miss Kennedy for the rest of that evening with a devotion which everybody saw except herself. No such trifles as a man's devotion got even a passing notice from her. For the girl was feeling desperate. How many times that night had she been betrayed into what she disliked and despised and had said she never would do? If Rollo had not been there, perhaps she would have felt only shame,—as it was, for the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... but Herbert's superior strength compelled him to yield the flag after a desperate struggle to retain his ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... not recognize for rubbish what is really rubbish; and under this head might be reckoned very many things one sees in the British Museum; and, as each generation leaves its fragments and potsherds behind it, such will finally be the desperate ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this reason that we conceive it to be our duty to make one strong effort to bring back the great apostle of the heresy to the wholesome creed of his instructors, and to stop the insurrection before it becomes desperate and senseless, by persuading the leader to return to his duty and allegiance. We admire Mr Scott's genius as much as any of those who may be misled by its perversion; and, like the curate and the barber in Don Quixote, lament the day when a gentleman of such endowments was corrupted by the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... brutal dominance which vibrated in his voice. Here was a desperate character, thought Burke, who was accustomed to command others; he was not the flabby weakling type, like Baxter ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... she stripped the cover off the first of the books the half-back had picked out for her, and really went to work. She bit down, angrily, the yawns that blinded her eyes with tears; she made desperate efforts to flog her mind into grappling with the endless succession of meaningless pages spread out before her, to find a germ of meaning somewhere in it that would bring the dead verbiage to life. She tried to recall the thrill in Rodney's voice ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... many boys are fortunate in their "aunts" and "uncles." Such a one was Martin with his "Uncle Abner." The experiences they had together down in the mountains of Virginia were very remarkable, and often most desperate, as in the case of the following story, but one of the many set down by Martin, grown to be a man, in the book from which this was taken. But, it's enough to make you boys wish you, too, lived with an "Uncle Abner" in a similar early ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... the beginning of April, which for sportsmen in England is of all seasons the most desperate. Hunting is over. There is literally nothing to shoot. And fishing,—even if there were fishing in England worth a man's time,—has not begun. A gentleman of enterprise driven very hard in this respect used to declare that there was no remedy ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... God," replied Montcalm; "but though all hope is not yet gone, our chance is but slender. We have kept the enemy at bay for nearly two months and a half, and on the last day of July we foiled a desperate attack which Wolfe made on the Montmorency redoubts yonder. If we could hold out till winter comes to our aid all would be well, but I have ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... was really frighten'd..." And that may very well be the end: solvuntur tabulae risu. Lord Granville Gower married in 1809, and the confidential correspondence died the death; but Sheridan lingered until 1816, and actually carried on his desperate pursuit within three days of the end. She visited him, and described what took place to Lord Broughton. He assured her, she said, that he should visit her after his death. She asked, "Why, having persecuted her all her life, would he now carry it into death?' ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... The desperate Colonel who had snatched up his cap when he heard Walters coming, grinned painfully, pulling his straggly red and white beard nervously. The strain was beginning to tell on his iron nerves. He removed the cap, and with a few muttered ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... hour. We watched, holding our breaths. The mate paused in her search; we could hear the wash beating along her sides; reared her neck as high as she could reach, blind and lonely in all that loneliness of the sea, and sent one desperate bellow booming across the swells as an oyster-shell skips across a pond. Then she made off to the westward, the sun shining on the white head and the wake behind it, till nothing was left to see but a little pin point of silver on the horizon. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... a fine saddle horse purchased for my special use, besides a horse and buggy that I could drive—but I was not in a physical condition to enjoy myself quite as well as on the former occasion. For six months before graduation I had had a desperate cough ("Tyler's grip" it was called), and I was very much reduced, weighing but one hundred and seventeen pounds, just my weight at entrance, though I had grown six inches in stature in the mean time. There was consumption ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... wait until morning? Perhaps, in the cold gray dawn, he would see more clearly his way through this preposterous tangle. Anyhow, it would be dangerous to give into any woman's keeping just then a package so earnestly sought by desperate men. Yes, he would wait until morning. That was ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... Above the throbbing stillness of the desert night, that came to her murmurously, like the imprisoned roar of the sea from a shell, she could hear the regular beat of horse's hoofs following up the steep mountain grade. She scrambled up with the desperate nimbleness of a hunted thing, but when she attempted to vault to the saddle her limbs failed and she sank clinging to the pommel. Twice she tried and twice the trembling of her limbs held her captive. With the loss of each moment the beat of the hoofs ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... and the second by striking against a rock." Here my master interposed, by asking me, "how I could persuade strangers, out of different countries, to venture with me, after the losses I had sustained, and the hazards I had run?" I said, "they were fellows of desperate fortunes, forced to fly from the places of their birth on account of their poverty or their crimes. Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... the Invalides, but the gospel which supported the paw that is now on a level with the other foot. The horses also are returned [A.D. 1815] to the ill-chosen spot whence they set out, and are, as before, half hidden under the porch window of St. Mark's Church. Their history, after a desperate struggle, has been satisfactorily explored. The decisions and doubts of Erizzo and Zanetti, and lastly, of the Count Leopold Cicognara, would have given them a Roman extraction, and a pedigree not more ancient than the reign of Nero. But M. de ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... tenacious threads of his web, but still more redoubtable to himself than to his enemies, soon caught in his own meshes,[4138] believing that France and the universe conspire against him, deducing with wonderful subtlety the proofs of this chimerical conspiracy, made desperate, at last, by his over-plausible romance, and strangling in the cunning toils which, by dint of his own logic and imagination, he has fashioned ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the single word "No" passed out. A faint, a quizzical smile flitted over her face; she shrugged her shoulders ever so gently. That gesture—he had seen it before! And in desperate desire to make her understand, he put his hand on her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ears. I remain sitting on the wall-top, trying to look as if I did not mind, while grave misgivings possess my soul as to the extent of strong boot and ankle that my unusual situation leaves visible. Once the desperate idea of jumping presents itself to my mind, but the ground looks so distant, and the height so great, that my ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... yourself, for their sakes who deserve it not, it will, nevertheless, be made appear, ere long, I fear, to your ruin. Surely, if I had the happiness to wait on you, I could move you to compassionate both yourself and me, who, desperate as my case is, am desirous to die with the honour of being known to have declared the truth. You have no reason to contend to hide what is already revealed—inconsiderately to throw away yourself, for the interest of others, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... saddle, her head drooping on her breast. A young cowboy darted from the crowd, and grabbed her as she fell. He started to lift and carry her away, but, with a desperate effort, she recovered, and stood erect, trying to thrust him from her. He held her nevertheless, supporting her with an arm under ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... male has a rival after the nuptials have been celebrated and the work of housekeeping fairly begun. Every season a pair of phbe-birds have built their nest on an elbow in the spouting beneath the eaves of my house. The past spring a belated male made desperate efforts to supplant the lawful mate and gain possession of the unfinished nest. There was a battle fought about the premises every hour in the day for at least a week. The antagonists would frequently grapple and fall to the ground, and keep their hold like two dogs. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a desperate effort he threw her into the next room. She fell onto the table which was laid for dinner, breaking the glasses, and then, getting up, she put it between her master and herself, and while he was pursuing her, in order to take hold ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... transposition of two evidently misplaced words, and the correction of a letter or two palpably misprinted in one of them, is the whole gentle violence that has been used in a passage which has been, as we see, considered desperate. But, as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... ages safe?" (A shake of the head from Livingstone.) "I began to be very unhappy; I had no one to tease; my aunts are too good-natured, and mamma is used to it. At last I had the greatest mind to do something desperate—to write to you, for instance—merely to see the household's horror when your answer came. You would have answered, would you not? I should not have opened it, you know, but given it to mamma, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... to rack my brains for answers to your perpetual question, "Why won't you marry me?" It was a desperate risk taking you down to the forest, but you loved me so much that you never questioned the reasons I gave you for my secrecy. I can tell you now, Karl, that in the early days when I used to disappear from Bruges, it was to the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... had seemed to enjoy saying needlessly cruel things to me, perhaps I would have been utterly discouraged when she pricked the bubble of my hope. She had made me realise that the plan I had was useless, perhaps worse than useless; but in my desperate mood I caught at another. I would try to see Ivor, and find out some other way of helping him. At all events he should know that I was for him, not against him, in this time ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... time that I ever saw him Methought he was a brother to your daughter: But, my good lord, this boy is forest-born, And hath been tutor'd in the rudiments Of many desperate studies by his uncle, Whom he reports to be a great magician, Obscured in the circle ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... on the 9th, fell in with St Jago. The 9th June we got sight of Brazil, in lat. 7 deg. S, not being able to double Cape St Augustine; for, being near the equator, we had very inconstant weather and bad winds; in which desperate case we shaped our course for the island of Fernando Noronho, in lat. 4 deg. S. where on the 15th June we anchored on the north side in eighteen fathoms. In this island we found twelve negroes, eight men and four women. It is a fertile island, having good water, and abounds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... her retreat, and shut the church-door after her, Master Potts, pale with rage, cried out to Richard, "You have aided the escape of a desperate and notorious offender—actually in custody, sir, and have rendered yourself liable to indictment for it, sir, with consequences of fine and imprisonment, sir:—heavy fine and long imprisonment, sir. Do you mark ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have given me a just pretence at any time to do so. But, Madam, as my uncles and my brother will keep no measures; as he has heard what the view is; and his regard for me from resenting their violent treatment of him and his family; what can I do? Would you have me, Madam, make him desperate? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... her desperate impatience with circumstances, she had fancied herself a martyr, with the fagot and stake of a conventional marriage on one hand, and the dreary desert of neglect and enforced seclusion on the other. She had tried to make her own wretched and passionate imaginings ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... desperate attempt. We went at it with a will. Every muscle was strained to the utmost—it was only the buoy we had to reach this time. But to our rage we now saw the buoy being hauled up. We rowed a little way on, to the windward of the Fram, and then tried again to sheer over. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... hands well out before his head, so that he ran no chance of knocking it against the wall. More than once Tom came head over heels down on the ground; but amid the shouts of laughter, in which he himself heartily joined, having stood on his head for a minute, he leaped up, and made a desperate dash at some of the players. At last he caught Buttar, who also made a very amusing blind man, and though he suffered several mishaps, never for ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... new facts? It was this part of Weisse's lectures, it was the protest of the historical conscience against the demands of the Idea, that interested me most. I see as clearly the formal truth as the material untruth of Hegel's philosophy. The thorough excellence of its method and the desperate baldness of its results, strike me with equal force. Though I did not yet know what kind of thing or person the Idea was really meant for, I knew myself enough of ancient Greek philosophy and of Oriental religions to venture to criticize Hegel's representation ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... combat is above seven thousand three hundred. The French own the loss of three thousand; I don't believe many more, for it was a most desperate and rash perseverance on our side. The Duke behaved very bravely and humanely;(1038) but this will not have ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Suwarrow was a great military genius. He gained battles without tactics, and in defiance of them. He had astonished the Austrian generals by the fierce rapidity of his movements; he had annihilated the French armies in Italy by the desperate daring of his attacks. Wherever Suwarrow came, he was conqueror. In his whole career he had never been beaten. The soldiery told numberless tales of his eccentricity—laughed at, mimicked, and adored him. The nation honoured him as the national warrior. But the failure of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... distress, I involuntarily thought of the old Joe Miller about the Tartar: "Why don't you let him go?" "Because he has caught me." It looked just like that. The furious splashing in the water below, and Mr. U—— grasping his line with desperate valour, but being gradually drawn nearer to the edge of the steep bank each instant. "Keep up a good light, but not too much," cried F—— to me, in a regular stage-whisper, as he rushed to the rescue. So I pulled up one tussock ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... one was at home. I met Mrs. St. John in her chair; she had heard it imperfectly. I took a chair to Mr. Harley, who was asleep, and they hope in no danger; but he has been out of order, and was so when he came abroad to-day, and it may put him in a fever: I am in mortal pain for him. That desperate French villain, Marquis de Guiscard,(22) stabbed Mr. Harley. Guiscard was taken up by Mr. Secretary St. John's warrant for high treason, and brought before the Lords to be examined; there he stabbed Mr. Harley. I have told all the particulars already to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... those illuminating pages, those vividly depicted scenes enacted on the crowded stages of the golden-lined bars of the famous Feather River! Bret Harte reads her graphic and pathetic account of the fallen woman and the desperate men being driven out of camp, and lo! we have the gripping tale of The Outcasts of Poker Flat; and from another of her recitals came the inspiration that set him to work on that entertaining story, The Luck of Roaring Camp. And her ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... them not to go on down the river, assuring them that a few miles more of such river as that now ahead of them would consume the last of the scant rations and then it would be too late to try to escape. In fact each party thought the other was taking the more desperate chance. By a mistake the duplicate records were wrongly divided, each party having portions of both sets. This afterwards made gaps in the river data below the Paria as far as Catastrophe Rapid. Powell entered the Maid of the Canyon and pulled away while the departing men stood on an ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the field. The decisive battle of the war was fought in the heart of Jungaria, and the star of Genghis rose in the ascendant. The Naimans fought long and well, but they were borne down by the heavier armed Mongols, and their desperate resistance only added to their loss. Their chief died of his wounds, and the triumph of Genghis was rendered complete by the capture of his old enemy, Chamuka. As Genghis had sworn the oath of friendship ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... week with father's brother in Hubbard. Then we went to Sharon, Pennsylvania, where father had a temporary job. A Welshman, knowing his desperate need of money, let him take his furnace for a few days and earn enough money to move on to Pittsburgh. There father found a job again, but mother was dissatisfied with the crowded conditions in Pittsburgh. She wanted to bring up her boys amid ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... through catclaw and ocatillo, the appearance swooped and fell, the blend disjoined and shaped to semblance of a very small red pony bearing a very small blue boy. The pony's small red head was quite innocent of bridle; the bit was against his red breast, held there by small hands desperate on the reins; the torn headstall flapped rakishly about the red legs. Making the curve at sickening speed, balanced over everlasting nothingness for a moment of breathless equipoise, they took ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... this Thrilling the wilderness to life As with the bodily shape of Fear? What but a desperate sense, A strong foreboding of those dim Interminable continents, forlorn And many-silenced, in a dusk Inviolable utterly, and dead As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... give one sigh. He waved his hat in a desperate hope of being seen. No, they were in the carriage. The ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been accepted by many generations of men as a picture of the world, with its temptations, its sins, its moral bankruptcy, and its illusionary and unsatisfying pleasures. Preachers have always been fond of allusions to the husks and swine, and the desperate hunger which there is nothing to satisfy in the Far Country. The story is true, God wot; it gives many a man a wholesome fright, and keeps him at home, and its note of forgiveness for a wasted life has proved the salvation of ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... against group, faith against faith, race against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred in men too despondent, too desperate to think for themselves, were used as rabble-rousing slogans on which dictators could ride to power. And once in power they could saddle their tyrannies on whole nations and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... provide the means for such enormous expenditure, Buckingham multiplied the grievances of monopolies; if he pillaged the treasury for his eighty thousand pounds' coat; if Rawleigh was at length driven to his last desperate enterprise to relieve himself of his creditors for a pair of six thousand pounds' shoes—in both these cases, as in that of the chivalric Sandricourt, the political economist may perhaps acknowledge ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... boats, which had been carried to the other side. A bridge is quickly constructed. But by the time the army crossed over, the Frenchmen are in full flight. Only a few shots from the field-pieces are sent after them. Conscious that the state of their affairs is desperate, deprived of the support of the Germans, knowing the enemy with whom they have to deal, believing themselves secure no where, they take refuge in Pavia and await the result. The boldest of the Confederate youth had cut off from them a considerable herd of cattle, on which the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... final rebellion. A Danish fleet sailed up the Humber under Edgar, Gospatric, and Waltheof. This last calamity is said to have killed Ealdred, the archbishop. He had endeavoured to make peace between conquerors and conquered, and he saw that now a desperate struggle was inevitable. The whole of Northumbria rose as the Danes made their way up the Ouse. The Norman garrisons in York set fire to the houses near them, and the whole city was burnt down. The minster was either wholly or partially destroyed. On the site of ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... that he would not comb or cut his hair until he had conquered the whole country. He led his men to victory after victory, and at length fought his last great battle at Hafrsfjord (to the south of Stavanger). The sea-fight was desperate and long, but Harald's fleet succeeded in overpowering that of the enemy, and Sulki, King of Rogaland, as well as Erik, King of Hardanger, were slain. Then Harald cut and dressed his hair, the skalds composed poems in honour of the event, and for ever after he was known as Fairhair. ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... submit and join them, was much more indefensible than that of shooting picquets, and that while they persisted in the one practice, he should certainly persevere in the other. As to the challenge of McIlraith, he said that he considered it that of a man whose condition was desperate; but concluded with saying that if he, McIlraith, wished to witness a combat between twenty picked soldiers on each side, he was not ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... made the other guy desperate, because he made a dive and let his needle ray burn out a slashing beam that zipped across over my head. My forty-five blazed twice. He missed but I didn't, just as the throb of the stun-gun rang the air again. I whirled to face my stun-gun coming out ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... poured in to relieve Boston of the sufferings inflicted upon her when the port was closed by the despotism of the British crown—we see the beginning of that which insured the cooeperation of the colonies throughout the desperate struggle of the Revolution. And we there see that which, if the present generation be true to the memory of their sires, to the memory of the noble men from whom they descended, will perpetuate for them that spirit of fraternity in which the Union began. But it is not ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... of Natural History,' October 1852, and November 1855.) The males are said to be polygamists (4. Noel Humphreys, 'River Gardens,' 1857.); they are extraordinarily bold and pugnacious, whilst "the females are quite pacific." Their battles are at times desperate; "for these puny combatants fasten tight on each other for several seconds, tumbling over and over again until their strength appears completely exhausted." With the rough- tailed stickleback (G. trachurus) ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Udaipur we passed the ruins of Ontala. Here, in the stormy time when Jehangir had seized Chitor, there happened a desperate deed. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... United States, and sometimes more, and they were always able to make up or nearly make up the deficiencies of western Europe. Russia and Roumania are now themselves on the verge of famine. Even before their own situation became so desperate, they could get little wheat to the western Allies, because the enemy territory and the battle-lines made a ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... probably needless to add that the specific object of the Act—the Puritanic observance of Sunday—was by no means attained. On Sunday, the 8th December, 1907, the police made a desperate attempt to enforce the law; every place of amusement was shut up; lectures, religious concerts, even the social meetings of the Young Men's Christian Association, were rigorously put a stop to. There was, of course, great popular ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the first usual civilities had passed, "glory be to God, gintlemen, this is desperate fine weather for ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... for his companion, whom it seemed impossible to help, despite the desperate effort he was making to do so. He saw the grizzly lumbering after Jack, giving no heed to the shots he sent after him, but steadily gaining upon the fugitive, whose fate hung in the passing of the seconds. Fred knew what it meant when his friend abruptly changed his ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... the two in the armory itself, which for a considerable time contained more patients than any other in that hospital. "Armory Square" being near the Potomac, usually received the most desperate cases, which could with difficulty be moved far. There could be no operating room connected with this ward, and the operations, however painful or dreadful, were of necessity performed in the ward itself. The scenes presented ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... made, in fact, such desperate efforts to learn all about poetry that her system got quite out of order. But although she did not in the course of the day hit upon anything, she quite casually succeeded in her dreams in devising eight lines; so concluding her toilette ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... strong and natural picture of the progress of anger. It is worth studying as a lesson in metaphysics. Whenever association suggests to the mind of Achilles the injury he has received, he loses his reason, and the orator works himself up from argument to declamation, and from declamation to desperate resolution, through a close linked connection of ideas ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... insulted in the streets by the crowd. He at once acquainted Sir Hugh Gough, who was at Hongkong, with the occurrence, and issued a notice, on May 21, 1841, advising all foreigners to leave Canton that day. This notice was not a day too soon, for, during the night, the Chinese made a desperate attempt to carry out their scheme. The batteries which they had secretly erected at various points in the city and along the river banks began to bombard the factories and the ships at the same time that fire- rafts were ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... misery, and, though Sunday was long and lonely, Monday stretched to an intolerable length. He became greatly disturbed, and could neither work nor sit still, so active was his imagination. He tried to sleep, but could not, even though his nerves were twitching for want of it; and at last, in desperate resolution, he set himself the task of walking to Grant's tomb and back, in the hope that physical weariness would benumb his restless brain. This good result followed. He was in deep slumber when the bell-boy rapped at ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... (my servant and I) were not left long alone in the Desert. The next day a party of natives surprised us, and, after some desperate fighting, we were taken prisoners, sold as slaves from tribe to tribe into the interior, and at length fell into the hands of some traders on the western coast, who gave us our freedom. Unwilling, however, to return home without some definite ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... with Jacob there was no thought in my mind that Sergeant Corney had the slightest idea of joining in what was a most desperate venture, and I even fancied he felt a certain sense of relief in having such a good excuse for not sticking his nose into the Indian encampment. But now I understood that all the while he held firm to the determination to do whatsoever ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... meant, what it would mean to the man before him. He was vaguely aware that in abler hands than his own, this knowledge which he possessed would have been molded into a terrible weapon, but he was impotent to use it; with every advantage his, he felt only the desperate pass in which he had placed himself. If Gilmore and Marshall Langham could juggle with John North's life, what of his own life when the judge ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... and unhappy about them; God only knows what the result of this state of things will be." After entering into further details, he concludes by observing, "At all events I stand relieved from reproach, having so repeatedly cautioned them against what appeared to me a desperate situation." ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... "English moneys, desperate Russian intrigues, Treaties made and Treaties broken—If instead of Pragmatic Sanction with eleven Potentates guaranteeing, Maria Theresa had at this time had 200,000 soldiers and a full treasury ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... serious kinds of charm practised by the female sex. But in the matter of the effect of movies on the young mind those reformers may be right. It seems to me you've gathered in some foolish notions about life, Mr. Phillips. Desperate villains dropping envelopes and generally scattering clues along their tracks would be interesting things, a darned sight more interesting than eminent reformers. Only there aren't any. They don't exist outside of novels and ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... situation of greater interest than this can be conceived. At one end of the hall, a fearful multitude of the most desperate and powerful men in existence, waiting for the assault; at the other, a little band of disciplined men, waiting with arms presented, and ready, upon the least motion or sign, to begin the carnage; and their tall and imposing commander, holding ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of which were two sufferers for whom the Saviour showed his sympathy as he perfected their faith and relieved their distress. They were strangely contrasted in circumstances, alike only in their desperate need. One was Jairus, a man of prominence in his community, "a ruler of the synagogue," a person of comparative wealth and power and social position, whose home for twelve years had been brightened by the presence of a little daughter, an only ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... this time regained much of her old confidence and buoyancy, declared that she must be first to cross the bridge. She gained the middle, when she felt a sickening sag. She turned and shouted to the others to go back. She made a desperate effort to reach the far end, but the bridge gave way, and she was hurled into the swirling rapids. She was stunned for a moment; but the instinct to live was strong. As she swung to and fro, whirled here, flung there, she ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... matter how mad and ungodly, have always a redundancy of vim and life to recommend them to the nether man that lies within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against the tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black flag. But it is not altogether courage and daring that endear ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... dancing on the bank for a few minutes after my embarkation—the kangaroo dog having a charcoal burner's antipathy to the bath—but at last becoming desperate, he had plunged in, and was rapidly approaching whilst I judiciously gauged the height of the root, and meanwhile balanced the unsteady bark under my feet. When the root was within six inches of the wire, Pup's chin and forepaws were on the gunwale; in three seconds more, I was ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... skies The shouts redoubling rise: Earth shudders at the dreadful sound, And all is listening, trembling round. Torrents, that from yon promontory's head Dash'd furious down in desperate cascade, Heard from afar amid the' lonely night, That oft have led the wanderer right, Are silent at the noise. The mighty ocean's more majestic voice, Drown'd in superior din, is heard no more; The surge in silence sweeps along ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... thought Would seem the sweeter, by delay of death Thus granted. But the band devoted stood, Proud of their promised end, and life forsworn, And careless of the battle: no debate Could shake their high resolve. (15) In numbers few 'Gainst foemen numberless by land and sea, They wage the desperate fight; then satiate Turn from the foe. And first demanding death Volteius bared his throat. "What youth," he cries, "Dares strike me down, and through his captain's wounds Attest his love for death?" Then through his side Plunge blades uncounted on the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... astounded and blinded with streams of gravy and wads of stuffing, he attempted to rise, but blow after blow from the fat pig fell upon his bewildered head. He seized a carving-knife and attempted to defend himself with blind but ineffectual fury, and at length, with a desperate effort, rose and took to his heels. Dick Hardy, whose wrath waxed hotter and hotter, followed, belaboring him unmercifully at every step, around the table, through the hall, and into the street, the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... jail. Were not this Prisoner at once got out, Schiller's honour and peace of conscience were at stake. And so, before his (properly Streicher's) Landlord, the Architect Hoelzel, could get together the required 300 gulden, and save this unlucky friend, the half-desperate Poet had written home, and begged from his Father that indispensable sum. And on the Father's clear refusal, had answered him with a very unfilial Letter. Not till after the lapse of seven weeks, did the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in desperation again rose, and killed every Spaniard in the district. Ovando then began a war of extermination and the Indians were killed off by thousands, Cotubanama resisted heroically but in vain, and after being beaten in a number of desperate battles he withdrew to the island of Saona, southeast of Santo Domingo. Here he was surprised and captured by the Spaniards, his remaining warriors mercilessly shot and he himself taken to the city of Santo Domingo ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... must have happened: in the final struggle with death the owner had attempted to resist his fate, when several soldiers had immediately pounced upon him, with the inevitable result that, in his desperate struggling, the spine had been broken; a strange, yet very natural accident, under the circumstances. The arms being tied together at the elbows behind, the spine had been at great tension, like a set bow, so that a violent assault could ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... from him, and went into the kitchen again, with her head held high to hide the fact that her cheeks were burning. He hadn't any right to do that to her. Why, any amount of men might be making desperate love to dream-Marjories—Mr. Logan, for instance,—only his love-making would probably be exceedingly full of quotations, and rather ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... serving one. The man who thinks he is serving God a little is deceived; he is not serving God. God will not have his service. The devil will monopolize him before he gets through. A divided heart loses both worlds. Saul tried it. Balaam tried it. Judas tried it, and they all made a desperate failure. Mary had but one choice. Paul said: "This one thing I do." "For me to live is Christ." Of such a life God says: "Because he hath set his love upon Me therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high because he hath known My name." ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... by actors. There was no fireplace in my bedroom, and if there had been I couldn't have afforded a fire. But that mattered little; what I had to do was to set forth and discover some way of making money. Don't suppose that I was in a desperate state of mind; how it was, I don't quite know, but I felt decidedly cheerful. It was pleasant to be in this new region of the earth, and I went about the town like a tourist who ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the most substantive motive, that can conduct him to virtue. It is thus, by its supernatural remedies, by its wretched panacea, superstition, far from curing those evils which render man decrepid, which bend him almost to the earth, has only increased them; made them more desperate; in the room of calming his passions, it gives them inveteracy; makes them more dangerous; renders them more venomous; turns that into a curse which nature has given him for his preservation; to be the means of his own happiness. It is not by extinguishing the passions ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... rebellious instrument, made me sometimes find the very word, expression, or cry that I required to give a voice to the unutterable. I had used no language, but I had cried forth the cry of my soul; and I was heard. When I rose from my chair, after this desperate but delightful struggle against words, pen, and paper, I remembered that, spite of the winter cold in my room, the perspiration stood upon my forehead, and I used to open the window to ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... dawns with its full day and unclouded brightness—and most of all that I can here and now pray for those whom He has taught me to love. I cannot conceive this world without prayer. It is {129} worth while making any efforts, however desperate, to learn to pray. When the Day dawns, how wonderful it will be to look back and trace the path through which He has ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority seemed to his colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been watching legal results without seeing their causes. As he scrambled up into the lofts, as he saw the poverty, as he studied the desperate necessities which gradually bring the poor to criminal acts, as he estimated their long struggles, compassion filled his soul. The judge then became the Saint Vincent de Paul of these grown-up children, these ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... of inspection to British H.Q. Found much to put right. Issued an Order of the Day to soldiers of all ranks. The Germans, hearing of my presence, made desperate attempts to bomb me, but failed. Food at the Front ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... was nothing further that could be done for Emil Crawford for hours and in the hazardous sally to Crawford's laboratory he knew that Ruth's cool courage and quick wits would at least double their chances for success in their desperate mission. He provided her with a reserve hood and tunic of lead cloth, then handed ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... they endeavour to keep their stripes concealed. When brought to bay, however, there is little to reproach them with on the score of cowardice, and it will be matter of rejoicing if you or your elephants do not come off second best in the encounter. Even in the last desperate case, a cunning old tiger will often make a feint, or sham rush, or pretended charge, when his whole object is flight. If he succeed in demoralising the line of elephants, roaring and dashing furiously about, he will then try in the confusion to double through, unless he is too badly wounded ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... be; but the landlord sees plainly that he may not have the power of the fishing; and if he has full power to rent the land as he pleases, and can lay on the land what should come from the fishing, then that would render our case more desperate still. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... also the safeguard of conduct in the soul,—Temperance, in the broadest sense; the Temperance which we have seen sitting on an equal throne with Justice amidst the Four Cardinal Virtues, and, wanting which, there is not any other virtue which may not lead us into desperate error. Now, observe: Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as in Love or in Faith; but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in any way but as it ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the start on matters of military organisation; for instance, it had early and long retained a superiority in cavalry which was not a mere result of good fortune. But here, too, there was an inherent advantage in the very fact that the South had started upon a desperate venture. There can hardly be a more difficult problem of detail for statesmen than the co-ordination of military and civil requirements in the raising of an army. But in the South all civil considerations merged themselves in the paramount necessity of a military ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... mind where no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor Hetty's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... back, shaking his head sadly. "No," he said, his voice breaking—"no, my Father, you must not embrace me now. I may have been a brave man once. But now I am a coward. Let me tell you everything. My wounds were bad, but not desperate. The brancardiers carried me down to Verdun, at night I suppose, but I was unconscious; and so to the hospital at Vaudelaincourt. There were days and nights of blankness mixed with pain. Then I came to my senses and had rest. It was wonderful. I thought that ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... circling well out in the middle of the field toward the Robinson goal, now some thirty yards distant measured by white lines, but far more than that by the course they were taking. Behind them streamed a handful of desperate runners; before them, rapidly getting between them and the goal, sped White, the Robinson captain and quarter. To the spectators a touch-down looked certain, for it was one man against two; the pursuit was not dangerous. ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... terror to the awful scene, the U.S. Frigate Mississippi, which had grounded, was set on fire to save her from capture. She was soon wrapped in flames and lighted up the sky for miles around. This good old gunboat which had been in so many battles went up with a terrific explosion. This desperate enterprise consisted of four ships, and three gunboats, the latter being lashed to the port side of the ships. But only the Hartford, which flew the Admiral's dauntless blue, and her consort, the little Albatross, succeeded in running past the batteries. ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... fair town nothing then, The coming of the wandering men With that long talked-of thing and strange. And news of how the kingdoms change, The pointed hands, and wondering At doers of a desperate thing? Push on, for surely this shall be Across ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... needful light. Otherwise the fight in the pass would in all probability be delayed till after sunrise, when the Amakoba would see how small was the number of their foes. Terror, doubt, darkness—these must be our allies if our desperate ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... fire, Chester sprang to his feet, and, leaning out, grasped the barrel of the weapon in both hands. With a desperate effort, he wrenched it from the soldier's hands, just as he was about to pull ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... prodigality of eloquent anger! Why now I see thou'rt weak—thy case is desperate! The cool ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... before us, externally, as the most desperate of bookselling speculations. The publisher, far from drinking his wine out of the skull of his author, is in danger of having neither wine nor ordinary cup, and is forced into the most reckless charlatanerie to save himself from utter ruin and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... compelled into a very narrow compass, and presenting such a formidable phalanx, that their antlers appeared at a distance, over the ridge of the steep pass, like a leafless grove. Their number was very great, and from a desperate stand which they made, with the tallest of the red-deer stags arranged in front, in a sort of battle array, gazing on the group which barred their passage down the glen, the more experienced sportsmen began to augur danger. The work of destruction, however, now commenced on all ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... fought, in command of the clan, at the disastrous battle of Flodden, from which both narrowly escaped but most of their followers were slain. Some time after his return home he successfully fought the desperate skirmish at Druim-a-chait, already referred to, pp. 114-118, with 140 men against 700 of the Munros, Dingwalls, MacCullochs, and other clans under the command of William Munro of Fowlis, on which ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... with a smashing blow that landed on Kazan's head, and once more the old battler fell limp upon the sand. McTrigger's breath was coming in quick gasps. He was almost winded. Not until the club slipped from his hand did he realize how desperate the fight had been. Before Kazan recovered from the blow that had stunned him Sandy examined the muzzle and strengthened it by adding another babiche thong. Then he dragged Kazan to a log that high water had thrown up on the shore a few yards away and made the end of the babiche ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... victualls failed them altogether at once: and they had nothing for their more assured refuge but their shooes and leather ierkins which they did eat. (M416) Touching their beuerage, some of them dranke the sea water, others did drinke their owne vrine: and they remained in such desperate necessitie a very long space, during the which part of them died for hunger. Beside this extreme famine, which did so grieuously oppresse them, they fell euery minute of an houre out of all hope euer to see France againe, insomuch that they were constrained ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... resided across the border. Hence Perk sometimes chose to call himself a Yankee; and yet for a period of several years he had been a valued member of the Northwestern Mounted Police, doing all manner of desperate stunts up in the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... duties and power. After the military operations which were carried on as far as the last town in Isabela, being tired and somewhat sick, I was put in charge of these military headquarters, which I found to be very much mixed up, the town, moreover, being desperate on account of the assaults committed by my predecessor, Rafael Perca, who was appointed by the Colonel, and who was formerly 2d Captain of the steamer Filipinas. After arriving and taking charge, having received numerous complaints against him, I had him arrested and I found that he had been ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... as the greatest wonder in history how a poor Man, who preached in Palestine for about two years, who scarcely had a hundred followers at the end of His mission, who was crucified and died a shameful death, whose cause seemed a quite desperate episode, scornfully rejected or fearfully abandoned by all those who knew it—how this poor Man replaced successively the mightiest gods the human imagination ever invented: Zeus in Olympus, Jupiter in the ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... was making heavy mechanical strokes that barely kept his lips above the water-line. He felt the current slacken perceptibly, but he was too much exhausted to take advantage of it, and drifted forward with it, splashing feebly like a dog, and holding his head back with a desperate effort. A huge, black shadow, only a shade blacker than the water around him, loomed up suddenly on his right, and he saw a man's face appear in the light of a hatchway and ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results. The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, a la Powderly, who will ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... Adrian's book before me, looking out at my Pleasant garden, and my mind went irresistibly back to the old days and then wandered on to the present. Tom was dead: I flourished, a comfortable cumberer of the earth; Jaffery was doing something idiotically desperate somewhere or the other—he was a war-correspondent by trade (as regular an employment as that of the maker of hot-cross buns), and a desperado by predilection—I had not heard from him for a year; and now Adrian—if ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... to me eligible. I thirsted after an acquaintance with new scenes; my present situation could not be changed for a worse; I trusted to the constancy of Ludloe's friendship; to this at least it was better to trust than to the success of my imposture on Dorothy, which was adopted merely as a desperate expedient: finally I determined to embark ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... had church-singing at last become that the clergymen arose in a body and demanded better performances; while a desperate and disgusted party was also formed which was opposed to all singing. Still another band of old fogies was strong in force who wished to cling to the same way of singing that they were accustomed to; and they gave many ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... McRae went down, he arose from his bed, ill as he was, and determined to rejoin her, as his own boat, the Mississippi, was not ready. When he reached the St. Charles, he fell so very ill that he had to be carried back to Brother's. Only his desperate illness saved him from being among the killed or wounded on that gallant little ship. A few days after, he learned the fate of the ship, and was told that Captain Huger was dead. No wonder he should cry so bitterly! For Captain Huger was as tender and as ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Talbot made desperate efforts for a foothold, and in succession interviewed all the big men. They were sorry but they were firm. Each had been hard hit by the fire; each had himself to cover; each was forced by circumstances to grasp every advantage. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... clothes, and studying books provided by her, and dislike her so heartily all the time. She felt instinctively that this was wrong and mean, and whenever the feeling of remorse was strong within her she made a desperate effort to please her grim and difficult relative. But how could she succeed when she was never herself in her aunt Miranda's presence? The searching look of the eyes, the sharp voice, the hard knotty fingers, the thin straight lips, the long silences, the "front-piece" ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... then, has the precious waistband or girdle, studded and buckled and placed for brave outward show, practically worked itself, and in spite of desperate remonstrance, or in other words essential counterplotting, to a point perilously near the knees—perilously I mean for the freedom of these parts. In several of my compositions this displacement has so succeeded, at the crisis, in defying and resisting ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... petition Herzl later submitted to the Kaiser, many of the pregnant passages were deleted by the Kaiser's advisers. All passages that referred specifically to the aims of the Zionist movement, to the desperate need of the Jewish people and asking for the Kaiser's protection of a projected Jewish land company for Syria and Palestine, had been removed. The audience with the Kaiser took place on Monday, November 2nd. The Kaiser ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... he heard the sound of a voice, speaking very low, and another voice answered it. At that Georgie's heart sank, for this proved that there must be at least two burglars, and the odds against him were desperate. After that came a low, cruel laugh, the unmistakable sound of the rattle of knives and forks, and the explosive uncorking of a bottle. At that his heart sank even lower yet, for he had read that cool ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... thought cross my mind that there was a shadow of blame—or wrong; I should have been far more on the alert had I thought so. I was always of a dreamy, sentimental, half-awake kind of mind; I thought of nothing more than a woman, desperate, perhaps, with an unhappy love, throwing the love-letters and presents of a faithless lover into the sea—nothing more. I repeat this most emphatically, as I should not like any suspicion of indolence or indifference to rest ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... is a very great villain; and it seems that Mr. Skelton and the wretched Flack creature are little less. As for Jack Dysart, it is all too sorrowful to think about. How must he feel! Surely, surely he could not have known what he was doing. He must have been desperate to go to Delancy Grandcourt. It was wrong; nothing on earth could have propped up the Algonquin, and why did he let his best friend ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... inference that followed seemed to be hardly less clear. But one intelligible object, in the opinion of Sir Patrick, could be at the end of her journey to the north. The deserted woman had rallied the last relics of her old energy—and had devoted herself to the desperate purpose of stopping the marriage ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... uncertain light Tom could see that he was pallid and panting, evidently exhausted in some desperate struggle: there was blood on his face, his clothes were torn, and by all odds he was the angriest man that ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... little body laid in its narrow grave, and thought how short a time ago life was strong within it, and that it was my hand that had sent her to her watery grave, my agony grew so intense that I wonder it did not kill me, or drive me to some desperate act of madness. It did not; and pity for myself soon hardened my heart against the sufferings of others. I ceased to weep for Julia; she was dead indeed; but was not death a blessing compared to such a life as mine would be? My aunt had lost her child; but was not her sorrow ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... brigadier-general at twenty-six. Though repeatedly wounded, he survived twelve years of constant fighting with no {21} more serious casualty than a broken arm which he carried away from the siege of Orbitello. By the time peace was signed at Muenster he had become a soldier well proved in the most desperate war which had been fought since Europe ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... then took up their stand in twelve different places, leaving considerable intervals between one and another, and Jacob, a sword in his right hand and a bow in his left, advanced to the combat. It was a desperate encounter for him. He had to ward off the enemy to the right and the left. Nevertheless he inflicted a severe blow, and when a band of two thousand men beset him, he leapt up in the air and over them and vanished from ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... underestimated his friend's powers. Mr. Stokes, rudely disturbed just as he had got into bed, was the incarnation of wrath. He was violent, bitter, and insulting in a breath, but Mr. Henshaw was desperate, and Mr. Stokes, after vowing over and over again that nothing should induce him to accompany him back to his house, was at last so moved by his entreaties that he went upstairs and ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... This desperate aspiring to paradise lost, this deformed dream of the beautiful, is not less tenacious on the part of the man. He turns towards the woman; and this preoccupation, become insensate, persists even when the dreadful shadow of the two red posts of the guillotine is thrown upon ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... chaffing us," Dick answered knowingly. "Stole the stuff, did they? That is, stole it in earnest? Nonsense! They're too nice girls for that! But I guess even nice girls, like some decent fellows, find enjoyment, once in a while, in making believe they are doing something desperate. Of course they ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... breast, and holding it in both hands, walked to the edge of the dais, whereon priests, disguised as fiends, began to leap at it, striving to reach it with their fingers and snatch it from her grasp. One by one they leapt with the most desperate energy, each man being allowed to make three attempts, and Alan noted that this novel jumping competition was watched with the deepest interest by all the audience, at the time ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... pass and disappear, Then closing, body and huge members heaved With energy and agony and fear. See how the thighs were strained, how tortured here. See, limb from limb sprung, pain too sore to bear. Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyes Have worn since—oh, with what desperate surprise! These arms, uplifted still, were raised in vain Against alien triumph and the inward pain. Unlock your arms, and be no more distressed, Let the wind glide over you easily again. It is a dream you fight, ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... ruin his reputation! To cause him to be sent away from Corinth! To wreck his career! To deprive him of a companion so fitly qualified to help him realize to the full his splendid ambition! Small wonder that the daughter of the church had determined upon a desperate measure. ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... risen to adjust the lamp-shade, and now stood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was obliged to turn his head backward to see her—"Mr. Henderson, do you know you are getting to be a desperate flirt?" The laughing eyes looking into his said that was not such a desperate thing to do if he chose ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mend his fences, build a barn, or get in a harvest, he considered it a great evil that entitled him to call in the assistance or his friend? He accordingly proclaimed a 'bee' or rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount of labor had been vanquished with so little sweating ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... work, and I doubt whether all the laborious prose written, in history and criticism, on the revival of learning, will ever express better than this short poem the inexhaustible thirst of the Renaissance in its pursuit of knowledge, or the enthusiasm of the pupils of a New Scholar for his desperate strife to know in a short life the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... for ten shillings, and a polite but urgent request that the amount should be paid without further delay. She crushed it angrily in her hand, then stuffed it into her pocket and stood thinking. What was she to do? What could she do? All sorts of desperate schemes came running through her mind, and she gave each its ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... had not done so. She had had time and opportunity to tell him frankly of her own feeling, but she had not done so. She did not know why. Now she could not. Philip had given her to understand his desperate determination to marry her, and, after all she had said and done, she had no right to refuse him. If she told him the truth he might kill Lawrence or her, or both of them. These tragic idealists, she exclaimed to herself, what a tangle they can make ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... confirmed my belief that he was, indeed, the celebrated foreigner the Count of Monte Cristo; whose name and history even YOU must be acquainted with, though you may not be what I have heard my friend Chevy Slime call himself, "the most literary man alive." A desperate follower of the star of Austerlitz from his youth, a martyr to the cause in the Chateau d'If, Monte Cristo has not deserted it now that he has come into his own—or ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... under the circumstances. He continued that automatic paddling, and, assisted by the current, was rapidly leaving his enemies in the rear when they called to him again, moving at the same time down the bank in a fashion which showed that they meant business. The hunter, not yet ready to make the desperate dash which he had reserved for the last final effort, if he should be driven to the wall, ceased work again ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... about a good many things," said David, speaking now after a desperate effort. "In the first place, there are two fellows here who say I ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... scruple—he wished so to leave what he had forfeited out of account. He wished not to do anything because he had missed something else, because he was sore or sorry or impoverished, because he was maltreated or desperate; he wished to do everything because he was lucid and quiet, just the same for himself on all essential points as he had ever been. Thus it was that while he virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting it: "You've been chucked, old ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... consequence of a proclamation (May 11) offering a thousand pounds for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was apprehended at the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin, but after a very desperate resistance. The leader of the arresting party, Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his energy, was wounded by Lord Edward; and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately, that he died within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for some time, and died in great agony ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... felt in a desperate hurry, yet he took time to glance into the most of the hundred and fifty tents, tearing along past the lines of them. He also took time, after our brief inspection was finished, to pause, get ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... not!" replied the Jew, rendered desperate by paternal affection; "my daughter is my flesh and blood, dearer to me a thousand times than those limbs thy cruelty threatens. No silver will I give thee unless I were to pour it molten down thy [v]avaricious throat—no, not a silver penny will I give thee, [v]Nazarene, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... their camp were pursued by the Romans. There the women, with loud cries, armed themselves, and made a desperate resistance, catching at the swords with their naked hands, and suffering themselves to be ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... the little, nervous, overworked, almost desperate creature, fighting like a little animal in her bay of life against the odds which would drive her from it, and he felt in a horrible perplexity. He felt also profane. Why could not he be left out of this? he inquired, with ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... paralysis; the difficulty of vivisection underground; the desperate coiling of the victim: all these things tell me that the Cetonia-grub, as regards its nervous system, must possess a structure peculiar to itself. The whole of the ganglia must be concentrated in a ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... for thee! 'Tis the last desperate resource of those Cheap souls to whom their honor, their good name Is their poor saving, their last worthless keep, Which, having staked and lost, they stake themselves In the mad rage of gaming. Thou art rich And glorious; with an unpolluted heart Thou canst make conquest of whate'er ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... sewing, this great idea weighed heavily upon her. It would be the very first step she had ever taken without her mother's approval, and away from the influence of Agnetta's decided opinion it seemed doubly alarming—a desperate and ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... child," exclaimed Miss Upton, prolonging her troubled stare, "perhaps Providence helped me nearly trip up that slab-sided gawk. Perhaps I set down here for a purpose. Desperate folks cling to straws. I'm the huskiest straw you ever saw, and I might be able to give you some advice. At least I've got an old head and you've got a young one, bless your poor little heart. Why don't we go somewheres where we can talk ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... Making a desperate effort to act like an experienced and trusted attendant of the prison, I roamed about and tried not to appear roaming. I successfully passed two guards, and reached the desired spot, which was by good luck ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... autumn of unusual mildness had set in with the New Year and had continued without a break for fifteen days. A heavy fall of snow with a blizzard blowing sixty miles an hour had made the trails almost impassable, indeed quite so to any but to those bent on desperate business or to Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police. To these gallant riders all trails stood open at all seasons of the year, no matter what snow might fall or blizzard blow, so long ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... again I found a fine saddle horse purchased for my special use, besides a horse and buggy that I could drive—but I was not in a physical condition to enjoy myself quite as well as on the former occasion. For six months before graduation I had had a desperate cough ("Tyler's grip" it was called), and I was very much reduced, weighing but one hundred and seventeen pounds, just my weight at entrance, though I had grown six inches in stature in the mean time. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... at four o'clock in the morning, Arsene Lupin, surprised in the middle of one of his most daring burglaries, runs away by the path leading to the ruins and drops down shot. He drags himself painfully along, falls again and picks himself up in the desperate hope of reaching the chapel. The chapel contains a crypt, the existence of which he has discovered by accident. If he can burrow there, he may be saved. By dint of an effort, he approaches it, he is but a few yards away, when a sound of footsteps approaches. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... felt sure of himself when she began, but the tenderness, the passion, the yearning appeal of her voice were more than he could resist. A wave of desperate longing convulsed his being. He seized her hand with ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... go against Germany, and in their desperate desire to escape the inevitable ultimate defeat, those who are in authority in Germany are using every possible instrumentality, are making use even of the influence of groups and parties among their own subjects to whom they have never been just ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... fulfilled. But even this brought no satisfaction to the gloomy prophet, for it was presently known that he had abandoned his terror-stricken flock to take the circuit as revivalist preacher and camp-meeting exhorter, in the rudest and most lawless of gatherings. Desperate ruffians writhed at his feet in impotent terror or more impotent rage; murderers and thieves listened to him with blanched faces and set teeth, restrained only by a more awful fear. Over and over again he took his life with his Bible into his own hands ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... moment she was desperate in her wondering how to tell it. And then it happened that from her frenzied wondering what to say of it she sank into the deeper wondering what it was. What it was—what in truth it had been all the ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... does not appear to be known, and of this I witnessed some very singular proofs. Though it is a curious fact, I was universally told that the character of the convict population is one of arrant cowardice: not unfrequently some become desperate, and quite indifferent as to life, yet a plan requiring cool or continued courage is seldom put into execution. The worst feature in the whole case is, that although there exists what may be called a legal reform, and comparatively ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... creation, that her voice had a strangely far off sound, as though it came from a distance. "I wish I could help you, dear Susan. If you ever want me, day or night, you know you have only to send for me. I'd let nothing except desperate illness stand in ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the siege of Keiserswaert, which was invested in the month of April by the prince of Nassau-Saarburgh, mareschal-du-camp to the emperor: under this officer the Dutch troops served as auxiliaries, because war had not yet been declared by the states-general. The French garrison made a desperate defence. They worsted the besiegers in divers sallies, and maintained the place until it was reduced to a heap of ashes. At length the allies made a general attack upon the counterscarp and ravelin, which they carried after a very obstinate engagement, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... issue. The great guns roared, the bullets rattled, and presently there came an uproar which showed that the assailants had gained the fort, and the shriek and cries of the combatants, and other sounds of a desperate struggle, approached their prison. Just at that juncture the warwhoops of apparently a fresh party burst forth within the fort. The count recognised the cry as that of the Tamoyos. On they came from the opposite side of the fort, ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... Before that time I had comparative peace. Now I am desperate, like a captive and tormented cat. It will end badly with me, father, that is certain. I foresee it, and can do nothing to prevent it. I can put out my eyes and chop off my hands, but I cannot control ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... and walks straight on; the figure quits the mouth of the passage, and follows with a long and noiseless stride. It has nearly gained Darrell. With what intent? A fierce one, perhaps,—for the man's face is sinister, and his state evidently desperate,—when there emerges unexpectedly from an ugly looking court or cul-de-sac, just between Darrell and his pursuer, a slim, long-backed, buttoned-up, weazel-faced policeman. The policeman eyes the tatterdemalion ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... held this paper in his hand and knew himself committed irrevocably to the greatest game of all, he felt a queer, inner glow, a quiet satisfaction such as must come to a man who succeeds in some high enterprise. Thompson felt this in spite of desperate facts. He had no illusions as to what he had set about. He knew very well that in the R.F.C. it was a short life and not always a merry one. Of course a man might be lucky. He might survive by superior skill. In any case it ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was being sacked, and atrocities of every kind perpetrated but, upon the other hand, I dared not undertake the responsibility of attempting to clear the streets. Such an attempt would probably end in desperate fighting. It might have resulted in heavy loss on both sides, and have caused such ill feeling between the British and Portuguese troops as to seriously interfere with the general dispositions for ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... columns were not far behind, he had reached Heilsberg. During the day the Russian rear-guard was driven in, and Bennigsen, marching all night, found himself next morning before the town of Eylau, or, more precisely, Preussisch-Eylau, the spot he had selected for a desperate stand in defense of Koenigsberg. The Russian rear-guard was again overtaken, this time at Landsberg, where Murat arrived with his cavalry on the morning of the seventh. All day the Russians slowly resisted him, fighting bravely under Prince Bagration, and receding steadily as far ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... stole up after his guide, and was presently locked in with the savage and desperate smuggler. At first Hatteraick would neither speak to Glossin nor listen to a ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... an hour. The waiting was agony for the girl, and she was at once relieved and desperate when at length she was summoned down to the study. Mrs. Middleton beckoned her to a place beside her on the couch, and Elsie dropped gratefully into it. She could not raise her eyes; she sat with her hands clasped tightly, very pale, yet aware somehow, at the ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... quite at liberty to take them home. You are married. Your wife keeps an account-book. She knows to a penny what you can and what you cannot afford. She has no "speculation" in her eyes. Plain figures make desperate work with airy "somehows." It is a matter of no small skill and experience to get your books home, and into their proper places, undiscovered. Perhaps the blundering express brings them to the door just at evening. "What is it, my dear?" ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... brows, and desperate scratchings, and such silence that Mr. Geoffrey and Uncle Titus stopped short on the Alabama question, and looked round to ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... sounds like a collar. I'm sick and tired of movin' pictures and that big salary stuff is as much bunk as the rest of it. I ain't goin' around rescuin' nutty dames, beatin' up supes which is supposed to be the desperate smugglers and divin' off bridges no more! I'm goin' to make a honest livin' and I've bought out the truckin' business I was workin' for when you come along and made a movie star and a simp outa me. I'll be takin' in money there long ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... late, for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had his niece had time to utter the startling exclamation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung by a strong blast of wind. Schalken and he both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to shake it. Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Schalken and Douw applied every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain. There was ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... your face, meet him in her stead. You may go privately by the back stairs, and, unperceived, there you may propose to reinstate him in his uncle's favour, if he'll comply with your desires—his case is desperate, and I believe he'll yield to any conditions. If not here, take this; you may employ it better than in the heart of one who is nothing when not ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... the reason which led him to such an act, or, if he was employed by others, to reveal their names; but he would reveal nothing. He was executed for his crime, leaving mankind to conjecture that his motive, or that of the persons who instigated him to the deed, was a desperate determination to save Scotland, at all hazards, from falling under the ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... youths Encountered, and amidst the rapid sphere Of fire their whirling weapons clashing wove Their persons vanished from the anxious eye. Still more and more incensed their combat grew, And life hung doubtful on the desperate conflict; With awe the crowd beheld the fierce encounter And amidst hope and fear suspended tossed, Like ocean ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... suffered to remain quiet. Ferguson employed all his powers of temptation. Grey, who knew not where to turn for a pistole, and was ready for any undertaking, however desperate, lent his aid. No art was spared which could draw Monmouth from retreat. To the first invitations which he received from his old associates he returned unfavourable answers. He pronounced the difficulties of a descent on England ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... part of his own creating. He knew that he was far from faultless. That poaching business—a very venial offence in a labourer's eyes—he knew had been a serious one, a matter of some two-score pheasants and a desperate fight with a gang. Looking at it as property, the squire had been merciful, pleading with the magistrates for a mitigated penalty. The drunkenness was habitual. In short, they were a bad lot—there was a name attached to the whole family for thieving, poaching, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Jamie had ceased to listen, for the negro was now in front of him, and there, among the rough band of slave-catchers, his desperate appearance hid by no uniform, a rough felt hat upon his dissolute face, a bowie-knife slung by his waist, there, doing this work in the world, old Jamie saw and recognized the husband of ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... there being no other name suggested. The legislature was required to meet an unexampled fraud at the recent election, practiced in Hamilton county, where, four Republican senators and eleven Republican members had been chosen. A lawless and desperate band of men got possession of the ballot boxes in two or three wards of the city of Cincinnati, broke open the boxes and changed the ballots and returns so as to reverse the result of the election of members of the legislature. These facts were ascertained ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... nose had ceased to bleed, the signal was given for the gates to be thrown open; and out rushed Proctor, Marshal, Bull-dogs, and undergraduates. The Town was in great force, and the fight became desperate. To the credit of the Town, be it said, they discarded bludgeons and stones, and fought, in John Bull fashion, with their fists. Scarcely a stick was to be seen. Singling out his man, Mr. Tozer made ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... province Artayctes was despot, as governor under Xerxes, a Persian, but a man of desperate and reckless character, who also had practised deception upon the king on his march against Athens, in taking away from Elaius the things belonging to Protesilaos the son of Iphiclos. For at Elaius in the Chersonese there is the tomb ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... director, Damrosch, had arranged a concert for me. I had made his acquaintance on my last visit to Weimar, and had also heard of him through Liszt. Unfortunately the conditions here struck me as extraordinarily dismal and desperate. The whole affair had been planned on the meanest scale, as indeed I might have expected. A perfectly horrible concert-room, which usually served as a beer- restaurant, had been engaged. At the rear of this, and separated from it by ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... an unfortunate feature of European settlement in America, that the border population, those most in contact with the natives, have been visually men of wild and desperate character, the tainted foam of the advancing tide of civilization. Those reckless adventurers were little scrupulous in their dealings with the simple savage; they utterly disregarded those rights which his weakness could not defend, and by intolerable provocation excited him to ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... them by daylight," he said when talking over the matter with Captain Crosbie and Stephen, "it would be altogether too desperate. Were this ship manned with English sailors I would do it without hesitation, and even with Chilians a good deal might be effected; but although the crew have gained greatly in discipline since we got rid of the ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... it, Mrs. Crashaw. When I reflect that there are two thousand elevators in Boston, and that the inspectors have just pronounced a hundred and seventy of them unsafe, I'm so desperate when I get into one that ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the bear's form stole over him, and he went forth a bear. She followed him, and saw that a great body of hunters had come over the mountain ridges, and had a number of dogs with them. The bear rushed away from the cavern, but the dogs and the king's men came upon him, and there was a desperate struggle. He wearied many men before he was brought to bay, and had slain all the dogs. But now they made a ring about him, and he ranged around it., but could see no means of escape, so he turned to ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but, at the same time, broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation in places in which we ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... these two traits I should not know what to think of this young man, who speaks of God and the world in the most ruthless manner. Curiously enough, your reproach hit him in this particular point, and when he showed me your letter there was a peculiar desperate question in his glance. With such experiences the boy will become quickly, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... once more to his rooms, he made a desperate effort to recover his senses. Taking out a picture of Tatyana, he placed it in front of him, and stared at it long and eagerly. Suddenly he pushed it gently away, and clutched his head in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the tent, and, as I did so, a man wiggled out like a snake from under the bottom of the canvas, scrambled to his feet, and ran into me like a locoed bronco. I gathered him by the neck and investigated him by the light of the stars. It is Professor Eduardo Collieri, in human habiliments, with a desperate look in one eye and impatience ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... of cards which had been so carefully erected. But the intrigue had gone so far, and the prizes to be won by the monarchical supporters were so great that nothing could induce them to retrace their footsteps. For a week and more a desperate struggle went on behind the scenes in the Presidential Palace, since Yuan Shih-kai was too astute a man not to understand that a most perilous situation was being rapidly created and that if things went wrong he would ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... "young Ryce," or Richard ap Griffyth, is one of the most obscure passages in the history of this reign. It was a Welsh plot, conducted at Islington. [Act of Attainder of Richard ap Griffyth, 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 24.] The particulars of it I am unable to discover further, than that it was a desperate undertaking, encouraged by the uncertainty of the succession, and by a faith in prophecies (Confession of Sir William Neville: Rolls House MS.), to murder the king. Ryce was tried in Michaelmas term, 1531, and ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the records of the Treasury I have been forcibly struck with the large amount of public money which appears to be outstanding. Of the sum thus due from individuals to the Government a considerable portion is undoubtedly desperate, and in many instances has probably been rendered so by remissness in the agents charged with its collection. By proper exertions a great part, however, may yet be recovered; and what ever may be the portions respectively belonging to these ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... we were all prepared for some sort of gun-play, for the crooks were desperate characters, and I myself was surprised to encounter nothing but physical ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... African veld, just soaking into it like water into dry ground. She had a vision of the wide rolling plain, black from sky's rim to sky's rim, and the moonlight pouring a futile splendour into its lap. She moved with a quick and almost desperate run to the door, opened it, and leaned over the balustrade of the staircase. The hall was empty and no sound of voices came from the library. She stepped cautiously down the stairs; as she reached the last step the door of the library opened and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... also family troubles at this period. His sister Emilia had conceived a desperate passion for Don Emmanuel, the pauper son of the forlorn pretender to Portugal, Don Antonio, who had at last departed this life. Maurice was indignant that a Catholic, an outcast, and, as it was supposed, a bastard, should dare to mate with the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with fighting, the first legion was relieved by the third, and the right wing of allied infantry by the left; while on the part of the enemy fresh troops took up the battle in place of those who were tired. A new and desperate conflict suddenly arose, instead of that which was so feebly maintained, their minds and bodies being unimpaired by fatigue; but night separated the combatants while the victory was undecided. The following day the Romans stood drawn up for battle from sun-rise till late in the day; ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... cat. 'I'll take my oath before any justice of the peace, that you have my two puppies.' Thereupon there was a desperate combat, which ended in the defeat of the spaniel; and then the cat walked off proudly with one of the puppies, which she took to ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... sudden desperate sinking, and he could not answer for a moment. The magistrate passed his shaking hand over his mouth and beard once or twice; but the thrust had gone home, and there was no parry or riposte. He followed ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the most violent and far-fetched theory of the mystery. Nothing but our desperate need of an elucidation could excuse its being put forward," said Captain Pendleton, drily. Then he spoke more earnestly: "Berners, whatever may be the true explanation of all that we have experienced here, one thing seems certain: that your retreat here is known to at least ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... frightening Olivier, her threat only helped to make up his mind to side with her. Christophe had no small difficulty in making the crazy pair have a little patience: before taking such desperate measures they might as well try others: let Jacqueline go home, and he would go and see M. Langeais and ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... huddle here, and under the arches, children skulk away like young rats, feeding on offal, lying close in dark corners for warmth, and hunted about also like rats. It is a poverty desperate and horrible beyond that that any other civilized city can show; and who shall say who is responsible, or what the ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... Breed of Insects well Known by the Name of Musketoes. These Creatures are well disciplined for they do Not Scout in private Places nor in Small Companies as tho Affraid to attack but Joining in as many Different Colloums as there are Openings to Your Dwellings they make a Desperate push and Seldom fail to Annoy their Enemy in Such a Manner that they leave their Adversary in a Scratching humor the Next Morning thro^o Vexation. It would be endless to mention the advantages & Disadvantages of the Place but this I ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... to be perfectly frank, I do—though I was in as desperate straits as a man could be, I lay before the hearth that Christmas Eve filled with gratitude to heaven—God knows such a gift must have come from heaven!—for the love with which I ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... municipal authorities by the known favor of the Queen and the frequent interference of the Privy Council. This state of affairs was not, of course, comfortable for the actors; but it was by no means desperate, and for several years after the passage of the ordinance of 1574 they continued without serious interruption to occupy ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... far into the stirrups and were cut, or they were jerked out; every corner was a new terror, for at each I was nearly pitched off on one side, and when at last Upa stopped, and my beast stopped without consulting my wishes, only a desperate grasp of mane and tethering rope saved me from going over his head. At this ridiculous moment we came upon a bevy of brown maidens swimming in a lakelet by the roadside, who increased my confusion by a chorus of laughter. How ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... doubted whether these merits were equally conspicuous during his second expedition. The parts of his conduct which have given occasion to this remark, are, his setting out from the Gambia almost at the eve of the rainy season, and his voyage down the Niger under circumstances so apparently desperate. On the motives by which he may have been influenced as to the former of these measures, something has been said in the course of the foregoing narrative. [Footnote: See p. lxvi.] With regard to his determination in the latter instance, justice must ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... twelve or thirteen these yearnings can no longer be suppressed; and, banded together, the youths of from twelve to sixteen years roam over the country; and some of the most cold-blooded atrocities, daring attacks, and desperate combats have been made by these children in pursuit ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... others to remember when it seemed too late. By fear and favour he had scraped together near upon a dozen men, principally tenants' sons; they were all pretty full when they set forth, and rode up the hill by the old abbey, roaring and singing, the white cockade in every hat. It was a desperate venture for so small a company to cross the most of Scotland unsupported; and (what made folk think so the more) even as that poor dozen was clattering up the hill, a great ship of the King's navy, that could have brought ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... summit of the mountain, she came even immediately below me and conversed on the most fastidious topics with the gardener; but to the top of that wall she would not dedicate a glance! At last she began to retrace her steps in the direction of the cottage; whereupon, becoming quite desperate, I broke off a piece of plaster, took a happy aim, and hit her with it in the nape of the neck. She clapped her hand to the place, turned about, looked on all sides for an explanation, and spying me (as indeed I was parting ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confident. After all, in the hands of a conductor less honourable than himself, of a common conductor, the purse might not have been so "all right" as all that! He would have preferred to witness the change on Mrs Vernon's features from desperate anxiety to glad relief. After all, L50, 10s. was ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... applied to the friendly friar, always her counsellor in distress, and he asking her if she had resolution to undertake a desperate remedy, and she answering that she would go into the grave alive rather than marry Paris, her own dear husband living; he directed her to go home, and appear merry, and give her consent to marry Paris, according to her father's desire, and on the next night, which was ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... aft and making fast the sheet of a mainsail or foresail. What ho! no nearer! is What ho! no higher now. But old salts remember no nearer! and it may be still extant. Seasickness seems to have been the same as ever—so was the desperate effort to pretend one was not really ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... roared Bull to Tom, "you're next!" The big man stuck out his hand. Tom gulped. For one desperate second he thought ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... situation was desperate. Their retreat was discovered. They could not oppose any obstacle to these missiles, nor protect the stone, which flew in splinters around them. There was nothing to be done but to take refuge in the upper passage ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... race, and keeping a fair place in it, too, with their legs tied together. All they do, they do at a disadvantage. It is as when a noble race-horse is beaten by a sorry hack; because the race-horse, as you might see, if you look at the list, is carrying twelve pounds additional. But such men, by a desperate effort, often made silently and sorrowfully, may (so to speak) run in the race, and do well in it, though you little think with how heavy a foot and how heavy a heart. There are others who have no chance at all. They are like a horse set to run a race, tied by a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... young robber in the life of the blessed Apostle St. John. A young man at Ephesus who had become a Christian, and of whom St. John was very fond, got into trouble while St. John was away, and had to flee for his life into the mountains. There he joined a band of robbers, and was so daring and desperate that they soon chose him as their captain. St. John came back, and found the poor lad gone. St. John had stood at the foot of the cross years before, and heard his Lord pardon the penitent thief; and he knew ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... in the grip of a powerful man, but he was a giant himself, and desperate. He flung himself with all his force upon his adversary, and both went to the floor together; Jones' hand on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... weight of rigging and wreck which hung to them, and which, like a powerful lever, pressed the labouring ship down on her side. To disengage this enormous top hamper, was to us an object more to be desired than expected. Yet the case was desperate, and a desperate effort was to be made, or in half an hour we should have been past praying for, except by a Roman Catholic priest. The danger of sending a man aloft was so imminent, that the captain would not order one on this ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... don't want no more loose shooting here!" and, by way of assisting his remark, he took down his double-barrelled shot-gun and jumped upon the counter. The fellow was well known for a desperate though not quarrelsome character, and his action had the effect of somewhat ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... strong-minded woman, the Baroness de Thaller. She had had so many adventures in her life, she had walked on the very edge of so many precipices, concealed so many anxieties, that danger was, as it were, her element, and that, at the decisive moment of an almost desperate game, she could remain smiling like those old gamblers whose face never betrays their terrible emotion at the moment when they risk their last stake. Not a muscle of her face moved; and it was with the most imperturbable ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... there happened a most desperate mutiny among the men, upon account of some deficiency in their allowance, which came to that height that they threatened the captain to set him on shore, and go back with the ship to Goa. I wished they would with all my heart, for I ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... through the group; and then, towering above them, and steadying himself by the hand-rail in a desperate effort at erectness, Mr. Royall stepped stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, he wore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of his black frock-coat. His head was covered by a new Panama hat, and his narrow black tie, half undone, dangled down on his rumpled shirt-front. His face, a ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... hand to touch the trigger, when he heard a voice call his name. It was a quick, desperate cry, and a figure tall and slender, enveloped in a dark storm cloak, rushed before him. The gun fell from his hands as he looked up to see Adelheid's face, white and despairing, looking into ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... tell you all I have suffered since September. Why didn't I die from it? That is what surprises me! No one was more desperate than I was. Why? I have had bad moments in my life, I have gone through great losses. I have wept a great deal. I have undergone much anguish. Well! all these pangs accumulated together, are nothing in comparison to ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... constant forms have perished, so that the lines of demarcation between allied species have grown more and more distinct, and it is usually only by going back to fossil ages that we can supply the missing links of continuity. In the desperate struggle for existence no peculiarity, physical or psychical, however slight, has been too insignificant for natural selection to seize and enhance; and the myriad fantastic forms and hues of animal and vegetal life illustrate the seeming capriciousness of its workings. Psychical variations have ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... restrained or urged on at the will of their driver, but this is a pure fallacy, for a sled-dog's gallop is like a donkey's, short and sweet. The average gait is a shuffling trot, covering from five to seven miles an hour over easy ground; and even then desperate fights frequently necessitate a stoppage and readjustment of the traces. There are no reins, the dogs being fastened two abreast on either side of a long rope. To start off you seize the sled with both hands, give it a violent wrench to one side, and cry "Petak!" when the team ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... endless rest. True to my oath, which time can never change, On thee, proud King! I hurl my just revenge. The blood of Zind inspires my burning hate, And dire resentment hurries on thy fate; Whom canst thou send to try the desperate strife? What valiant Chief, regardless of his life? Where now can Friburz, Tus, Giw, Gudarz, be, And the ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... was long and desperate, but Wallace killed Fenwick with his own hand, and after losing nigh a hundred of their number the English fled in confusion. The whole convoy fell into the hands of the victors, who became possessed of several wagons, 200 ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... the dark'ning heath, More desperate grew the strife of death, The English shafts in volleys hail'd, In headlong charge their horse assail'd; 1025 Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep To break the Scottish circle deep, That fought around their King. But yet, though ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... till she suddenly flung away the rope, cried out, and ran backwards, perfectly scared by a big grey snake, with red spots, much embarrassed by a large frog which he would not let go, though, like most of his kind, he was alarmed by human approach, and made desperate efforts to swallow his victim and wriggle into the bushes. After crawling for three hours we dismounted at the mountain farm of Kohiaku, on the edge of a rice valley, and the woman counted her packages to see that they were all right, and without waiting for a gratuity ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... twenty-four thousand men and ordered a navy to be built. Washington redoubled his efforts, confident that Boston was substantially at his mercy; but seeing as clearly that the capture or the evacuation of the city would introduce a more general and desperate struggle, and one that would try ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... disappeared rapidly, thanks to the impetuosity of the dragoons; but suddenly, when within thirty paces of the enemy, the royals found themselves on the edge of a deep ravine which separated them from the enemy like a moat. Some were able to check their horses in time, but others, despite desperate efforts, pressed upon by those behind, were pushed into the ravine, and rolled helplessly to the bottom. At the same moment the order to fire was given in a sonorous voice, there was a rattle of musketry, and several dragoons near M. ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... near, the savage cat of a tenor springs at it, misses its hold, and then takes after it with terrible earnestness. But the tenor has miscalculated the agility of the theme. All that it could do, with the most desperate effort, was to keep the theme from running back into its hole again; and so they ran up and down, around and around, dodging, eluding, whipping in and out of every corner and nook, till the whole organ was aroused, and the bass began to take ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... their service. Among the rest, Mamercus, the tyrant of Catana, an experienced warrior and a wealthy prince, made proposals of alliance with him, and, what was of greater importance still, Dionysius himself being now grown desperate, and wellnigh forced to surrender, despising Hicetes who had been thus shamefully baffled, and admiring the valor of Timoleon, found means to advertise him and his Corinthians that he should be content ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and inseparable, that it should endure now and forever, but the endorsement was written with the sword's point, and in letters of blood. The conflict raged, therefore, for thirty-five years, and some of the most desperate battles were fought not with guns and cannon, but with arguments, in the presence of assembled thousands, who listened to the intellectual attack and defense. In their famous debate, Lincoln and Douglas were over against one another like ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the splashing as of men in desperate struggle at the water's edge, the hoarse words of command, the scurrying lanterns, the gleam of a hundred tossing sabres—all these told their own tale to Gunner Sobey. He arose and ran again; nor ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this time the negroes belonging to a neighboring estate came flocking to our assistance, making together about one hundred in number, with the Spaniards. We then hauled on both ropes nearly all day before the fish became exhausted. On endeavoring to raise the monster it became most desperate, sweeping with its saw from side to side, so that we were compelled to get strong ropes to prevent it from cutting us to pieces. After that one of the Spaniards got on its back, and at great risk cut through the joint of the tail, when the great ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... for the possession of a bone drawn from the slush of the kennel. I have seen boys fight and bruise each other for a crust of bread dropped upon the pavement, and covered with wet mud, or even unsightlier filth. I have entered the abode of this desperate poverty, led thither by children, who have clamored at my side for alms, and found such misery as I am incompetent to express in words. I have seen the living unable to rise from sickness, in the same bed with the dying and the dead. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were the deeds of desperate men, who had been made desperate by cruel oppression, and insensible to cruelty by cruel wrongs, is evident from the dying declaration of five Whiteboys, who were executed, in 1762, at Waterford and who publicly ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the fields that evening instead of through the town. He was not quite up to any of his roles—editor, promoter, or reformer. In fact, he felt a desperate need of a brief respite from all histrionic duties. A reaction had set in from the excitement of the past week, and the complication involved in Mrs. Gusty's condition puzzled and distressed him. ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... out of the difficulty. If there is a God, the source of all truth and goodness, how else can we account for this desperate condition of his highest creation, except we admit man's fallen condition? It is thus that the doctrine of original sin is as clear to me as is the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... made a desperate effort to move, and taking his cane in his left hand, passed his right hand slowly down it, from the golden head that adorned it to the other extremity. 'Look you,' said he, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... people; and we may be sure that, though some may be against us, many will be for us. If we succeed in sweeping them all away, or absorbing them, we shall be at the mercy of our native army, and they will see it; and accidents may possibly occur to unite them, or a great portion of them, in some desperate act. The thing is possible, though improbable; and the best provision against it seems to me to be the maintenance of native rulers, whose confidence and affection can be engaged, and administrations ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... stood arrested and spell-bound, his hand on his bridle, his foot on his stirrup. A moment more and Darvil had clashed his antagonist on the ground; he stood at a little distance, his face reddened by the glare of the lanthorn and fronting his assailants—that fiercest of all beasts, a desperate man at bay! He had already succeeded in drawing forth his pistols, and he held one in each hand—his eyes flashing from beneath his bent brows and turning quickly from foe to foe! At last those terrible eyes rested on the late ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... then cried out, "Loose me, and I will confess whatsoe'er you will." Hereat Dom. Consul so greatly rejoiced, that while the constable unbound her, he fell on his knees, and thanked God for having spared him this anguish. But no sooner was my poor desperate child unbound, and had laid aside her crown of thorns (I mean my silken neckerchief), than she jumped off the ladder, and flung herself upon me, who lay for dead in the corner in a ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... retorted, growing desperate lest his mother, hearing their voices, should suddenly come out on to the verandah and learn what they were talking about before he had time to put his side of the story to her. "If you had you would have known I tried and tried to get Nellie ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... the office: whence Lord Brouncker, J. Minnes, and W. Pen, and I went to examine some men that are put in there for rescuing of men that were pressed into the service: and we do plainly see that the desperate condition that we put men into for want of their pay makes them mad, they being as good men as over were in the world, and would as readily serve the King again, were they but paid. Two men leapt overboard, among others, into the Thames ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... lawlessness for years. Some of the Union men and Union sympathizers, in the majority in the county during hostilities, assumed to the full the new power that came to them by the war's outcome. Conservative civic leaders sought to reestablish a condition of peace, but the lawless and desperate element prepared personally to profit ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... married in haste. I was then a headstrong, hot-tempered, unreasonable youth; she—well, she was Spanish, and with a temper and disposition that matched mine. After many quarrels, we parted in anger. I went my way, a wild, desperate way; needless to tell you whither such a way leads. Wrecked in character and prospects, I decided to be quit of the world. I had thought of suicide—but God held my hand. Suffice it that I disappeared, that I concocted a false report of my death, and so made room for my younger brother, Talbot, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... a native of Britain, but bred in the Irish Brigade. He was a man of the most dauntless courage, which he displayed in some uncommonly desperate adventures during the first years of the French Revolution, being repeatedly employed by the royal family in very dangerous commissions. After the King's death he came over to England, and it was then the following circumstance ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... main part of the mill, with their nerves all on edge, and their muscles set in readiness for a struggle. Whether they would meet the three tramps who were creating no end of excitement around the vicinity by their bold robbery of hen-roosts, and even houses; or some desperate boys ready to fight when caught in a trap, none of ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... objective, he felt sure that the members of the syndicate were desperate men. They were evidently too far committed to hesitate over fresh crime to keep their secret. If he wished to pursue his investigations, it was up to him to do so ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... hospital. It would make them sick to eat it, wouldn't it?" That there was no shadow of a smile on Marie's face showed how desperate, indeed, was her state of mind. "I only meant that I didn't want them myself, nor the shower bouquet, nor the rooms darkened, nor little Kate as the flower girl—and would you mind very much if I asked you not to ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... indulged in any hope. The poor fellow was beside himself to get her a bouquet of camellias. Countess Sotski and Sophia Bespalova, as everyone knew, were coming with white camellia bouquets. Anfisa wished for red ones, for effect. Well, her husband Platon was driven desperate to find some. And the day before the ball, Anfisa's rival snapped up the only red camellias to be had in the place, from under Platon's nose, and Platon—wretched man—was done for. Now if Peter had only been able to step in at this moment with a red bouquet, his ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the railing, waving to and fro, but holding on with a desperate grasp. She seemed struggling to lift herself to an upright position, but without sufficient strength. Chester advanced a step to help her, but drew back, for, without perceiving him, she was creeping feebly up the steps, with her face shrouded in darkness again. She reached the bell with difficulty, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... at first stupefied with astonishment and terror. Then, actuated by a sudden, desperate impulse, she ran to the door, and had got it partly open, when the nurse sprang forward, and seizing her by the ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of these favourite positions, of which it is surely not the smallest excellence, that they are of unbounded application, comprehending within their capacious limits, all the errors which have been believed, and many of the most desperate crimes which have been perpetrated among men. The former of them is founded altogether on that grossly fallacious assumption, that a man's opinions will not influence his practice. The latter proceeds on this groundless ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... fire was terrific between 4 and 5 when I woke up and came to the top of the ridge to see what was doing. Plainly something unusually desperate was on the move. "Asiatic Annie" was also busy and several shells came this way, one falling in the C.C.S. where no harm was done. Luckily it had chosen a clear spot in front of the store tent to pitch into. I had gone down to ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... up the bundle which the fugitive had deserted. "Something incriminating when Ali of Cairo dared not stay to face it out! He would never have deserted this place in the ordinary way. That fellow who was such a bad shot was left behind, when the news of our approach reached here, to make a desperate attempt to remove some piece of evidence! I'll swear to it. But we ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand miles from their country. In a period of two centuries after the council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land; but ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... not lose his head, and he did not waste his strength in desperate efforts to overtake the vessel. He calmly laid-to, kept his head above water, and waited for the helmsman to bring ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... over six feet in height. The rifle barrel was thrust down the bear's throat after the stock had been torn away, and upon the steel still are shown the marks of the brute's teeth. The same teeth were knocked out by the flailing blows of the desperate pioneer, who finally escaped when Bruin tired of the fight. Then Hamblin discovered himself badly hurt, one hand, especially, chewed by the bear. The animal later was killed by a neighbor and was identified by broken ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... occasioned, by the cowardice of Magny. He found means to communicate with her from his prison, and her Highness, who was not in open disgrace yet (for the Duke, out of regard to the family, persisted in charging Magny with only robbery), made the most desperate efforts to relieve him, and to bribe the gaolers to effect his escape. She was so wild that she lost all patience and prudence in the conduct of any schemes she may have had for Magny's liberation; ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comes before us, externally, as the most desperate of bookselling speculations. The publisher, far from drinking his wine out of the skull of his author, is in danger of having neither wine nor ordinary cup, and is forced into the most reckless charlatanerie to save himself from utter ruin and complete loss of the generous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Government buildings on the Marina.' Let us remember that, when it was enclosed within the walls that are now no more, it was the home of Mohammedan potentates—sometimes a scene of gorgeous festivity—sometimes a scene of desperate intrigue. In imagination we may people the front garden with the gaily-uniformed Body-Guard of the Carnatic sovereign, mounted on gaily-bridled steeds; and we may see the Nawab himself coming magnificently ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... feet the rocks were so glacially polished and water-worn that it seemed impossible to get any farther. To our right was a crack penetrating the rock perhaps a foot deep, widening at the surface to three or four inches, which proved to be the only possible ladder. As the chances seemed rather desperate, we concluded to tie ourselves together, in order to share a common fate; and with a slack of thirty feet between us, and our knapsacks upon our backs, we climbed into the crevice, and began descending with our faces to the cliff. This had to be done with unusual caution, for the foothold was about ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... a foot and a half long, through the hole of which a red ribbon is passed. The small canes are not carried in the hand, but stuck in the girdle on the left side. Nobody summoned before the judges by a messenger carrying a staff of red Brazil wood dares to disobey the command. The most desperate criminal meekly goes to his doom, following often a mere boy, if the latter has only a toy vara stuck in his belt with the red ribbons hanging down. It is the vara the Indians respect, not the man who ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... such desperate efforts to learn all about poetry that her system got quite out of order. But although she did not in the course of the day hit upon anything, she quite casually succeeded in her dreams in devising eight lines; so concluding her toilette and her ablutions, she hastily ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... cremation) were originally attempts to get rid of their dangerous qualities; later other motives came in. The body of a suicide was especially feared, and was staked down on a public way to prevent its reappearance; it was perhaps the abnormal and desperate character of the death that produced this special fear. The dread of a corpse is, however, not universal among savages—in many cases it is eaten, simply as food or to acquire the qualities of the deceased, or for other reasons. It is feared as having hurtful power, it is ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... from desertion and disease. The war with the natives was ignominiously ended by Charles V. in 1533, who found that the colony was growing too poor to pay for it. He despatched a letter to the cacique who had organized this desperate and prolonged resistance, flattered him by the designation of Dom Henri[19] and profuse expressions of admiration, sent a Spanish general to treat with him, and to assign him a district to inhabit with his followers. Dom Henri thankfully accepted this pacification, and soon after received ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of Summit we have not such a man, but we can and will have one if you will appoint the one whose name I now present and for whom I ask your favorable consideration. We had, as you know, a bitter and desperate struggle. It was the very time that we stood sadly in need of every man and of every vote. We lost the county that Summit is in by a small majority. If an active and aggressive man, such as the one whose name I now place before you, had been postmaster at Summit, the result ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... women, and children—there came scarcely a sound, save raucous whispers, a moan or a sigh quickly suppressed. A grim silence reigned in this thickly-peopled camp; only the crackling of the torches broke that silence now and then, or the flapping of canvas in the wintry gale. They worked on sullen, desperate, and starving, with no hope of payment save the miserable rations wrung from poor tradespeople or miserable farmers, as wretched, as oppressed as themselves; no hope of payment, only fear of punishment, for that ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... (Vol. vii., p. 617.).—This phrase is only some ten or twelve years old. Its origin was this:—Some desperate witty fellows, by way of giving a comic turn to the phrase "C'est une autre chose," used to translate it, "That is another cheese;" and after awhile these words became "household words," and when anything positive or specific was intended to be pointed out, "That's the cheese" became adopted, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... is no work in Berlin, and Hans must pursue his journey. He waits for hours at the police-office, as play-goers wait at the door of a London theatre. By and by, he gets into the small bureau with a desperate rush. That business is settled, and he is off again. Time runs on; and, after a further tramp of good two hundred miles, Hans gets settled at last in ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... hundred had just been massacred in cold blood, and in defiance of every law of warfare and humanity; and between the Anglo-Americans and a brutal, slaughtering army there was only Houston and a few hundred desperate men. The New Orleans Greys and a company of young Southern gentlemen from Mobile had just sailed. Every man's heart was on fire for this young republic of Texas. Her shield was scarcely one month old, and yet it had been bathed ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... with a choking sensation in his throat, and rushing madly out Phillip Lawson caught the peculiar glance in his eye which he many a time called to mind years afterwards when he could interpret it with all clearness—the look which seemed to plead for forgiveness—which seemed to say, "I was desperate and the devil tempted me, I was indeed brought up by a ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... 'One more desperate attempt, however, he made. After a silence of considerable duration, during which he struggled to be calm, and I to be grave—for I felt a strong propensity to laugh—which would have ruined all—he said, with the ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... in despair at their ruin and their annihilation breathed again and leaped for joy; and the Parliament and the robe destroyed by edicts and by revolutions, flattered themselves the first that they should figure, the other that they should find themselves free. The people ruined, overwhelmed, desperate, gave thanks to God, with a scandalous eclat, for a deliverance, their most ardent desires ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... as favorably as possible for the negroes, while at the same time he seems to have suspected that the reader would be a good deal impressed by the darker shades of his sketch, and the conclusion of the whole is: There is ground for hope, but the case is a pretty desperate one. A conclusion to which, I confess, my own observation and studies lead me, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... paid for it. After all, it was but a small price to pay for comparative security and the silence of a tongue which could work such ill. Accustomed to deal with men of all natures, honest and simple, clever and foolish, secretive and loquacious, there ran in his mind the desperate idea that he would temporize with Paul Boriskoff and ultimately destroy him. Let the Russian Government be informed of the activity of this Pole and of his intention to visit the Continent of Europe again, and what were Boriskoff's chances? Such were the treacherous ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... was joined, that is to say, there was a desperate combat, which ended in the defeat of the spaniel, and the cat walking proudly off with one of the puppies, which she took to her own bed. Having deposited this one, she returned, fought again, gained another victory, and redeemed another puppy. Now it is very singular that ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... stood her ground. She was desperate. Death was staring her in the face, and she was staring ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... pronounced their intention of taking the field for the overthrow of tyrants and impostors. But their success was short-lived. Conrad, bishop and prince of Munster, raised an army, laid siege to the city which he captured after a desperate struggle, and put to death the fanatical leaders who had deceived the people (1535-6). Other writers and preachers questioned the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation, and advocated many heresies condemned by the early Church, some of them going ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... most desirable method of procuring ushers is by advertisements. None will apply who are not in desperate circumstances, and these are your men. If they know little it is no great matter; they will be the more diligent: and should the children detect their ignorance, or the parents complain, you may easily dismiss them; others ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... then to go away. He is really in rather a dangerous position here. Jimmy Post has sworn that he will not be taken back to New York, and there are one or two others—a pretty desperate crew. We tried last ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... educated, instructed, and at length baptized him; but then remitting of his care, the young man thereupon got into ill company, and began by degrees first to revel and grow vitious, then to abuse and spoil those he met in the night; and at last grew so desperate, that his companions turning a band of high-way men, made him their Captain: and, saith [5] Chrysostom, he continued their Captain a long time. At length John returning to that city, and hearing what was done, rode to the thief; and, when he out of reverence ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... encroaching in Asia, and, after defeating the shah of Persia, their advance upon Syria and Egypt was only a matter of time. The victory was made easier by jealousies and treachery among the Mamluks. Kansuh fell at the head of his gallant troops in a battle near Aleppo in August 1516; a last desperate stand of the Mamluks under the Mukattam Hill at Cairo in January 1517, was overcome, and Sultan Selim made Egypt a province of the Turkish empire. Such it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the column was pressed may be shown from one incident. While he was preparing to evacuate Abu Klea, Buller received information to the effect that the enemy was advancing upon him with a force of eight thousand men. He determined upon a desperate measure. He left standing the forts which he had intended to demolish and filled up the ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... of the Sun (Bright cynosure of every darkling sign, Wherein all numbers consummate in One,) Poised on the bolt of an Un-finite line, As one whose spirit's state, Is unafraid but desperate, Through far unfathomed fears, Through Time to timeless years, I soar, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... night, and at last makes a clean breast. It would have been a bad business for him at any other time, but now he is a revealing angel, for he noted this and that in the course of his own little game, and gives justice the thread which leads to a wonderful romance, and brings home desperate crime to that quarter where, from rank, education, and profession, it was least likely to be found. Then comes the trial and the execution; and so, at a sitting, has been swallowed all that excitement which, at some time long ago, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... is no one there now, except Abby, and she is lame and very old. Father is not in town. He will not be back until night, and I can perfectly well go home alone!" I was beginning to feel desperate, as I thought I never should get out ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... noticeable for his long coal-black hair, lead a headlong and successful charge, which carried the Union troops higher up the hill. But another general was driven back, losing cannon, although he retook them in a second and desperate charge. Still no news from McClernand and his fifteen thousand! There was silence where his guns ought to have been thundering, and Grant burned ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of a fiction, which I then intimated would probably be my last; but bad habits are stronger than good intentions. When Fabricio, in his hospital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he was, in truth, recommencing his desperate career by a Farewell to the Muses,—I need ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... talker, Matthews by name, who grew very restive under the process. The great man had selected Dorchester as his theme, because he had unhappily discovered that I had recently visited it. My friend Matthews, who had been included in the audience, made desperate attempts to escape; and once, seeing that I was fairly grappled, began a conversation with his next neighbour. But the antiquary was not to be put off. He stopped, and looked at Matthews with a relentless eye. "Matthews," he said, "MATTHEWS!" raising his voice. Matthews ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a clear sacrifice of the western, to the maritime States, will with difficulty be obliterated. The proposition of my going to Madrid, to try to recover there the ground which has been lost at New York, by the concession of the vote of seven States, I should think desperate. With respect to myself, weighing the pleasure of the journey and bare possibility of success, in one scale, and the strong probability of failure and the public disappointment directed on me, in the other, the latter preponderates. Add to this, that jealousy might be excited ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... awake all Saturday night and all Sunday night, until four o'clock on Monday morning; always reviewing the situation, always going over the same patch of ground in the desperate hope of finding some place where her self-respect could rest, and discovering nothing but the traces of her guilty feet. A subtler woman would have flourished lightly over the territory, till she had ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... way to stumble on it if a mis-step chanced, his heart sprang to his throat. What if the dire explosive he had planned to use upon his enemies should prove to be the death of the one being whom he loved? He sprang toward her with the mighty impulse of desperate muscles spurred by a panic-stricken mind and caught her, roughly, just before her foot would have touched ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... fellow in Hartlepool. He used to do it with handbags he stole at railway stations, but he's in a monastery now. Oh, one gets to know, you know," he added, rubbing his head again with the same sort of desperate apology. "We can't help being priests. People come and tell us ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of passion and mortification passed, too, leaving him standing there, dumb, desperate, staring at the letter crushed in his ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... was" said he, "when this had been the very pastime I desired." The murderous animal attacked him with such impetuosity that his well-tried skill failed him, and he was the next moment thrown under its feet. The struggle now became desperate, for the animal had no common foe to contend with. Before it could wound him with its tusks, which seemed of unusual size, it required not an instant's thought in Rudolf to draw his dagger from his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... charge on the line of guards, snatch they guns away from them, and force our way through the gate The shouts were taken up by others, and, as if in obedience to the suggestion, we instinctively formed in line-of-battle facing the guards. A glance down the line showed me an array of desperate, tensely drawn faces, such as one sees who looks a men when they are summoning up all their resolution for some deed of great peril. The Rebel officers hastily retreated behind the line of guards, whose faces blanched, but ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... there is a measure of rugged consideration even among profligates and drunkards. But a storm had been brewing, and it fell at last when Ned Brierley had been gone from Langhurst about a month. A desperate effort was made to get Johnson back to join his old companions at the "George," and when this utterly failed, every spiteful thing that malice could suggest and ingenuity effect was practised on the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Kingdom, and were convened together for the sole special Purpose of creating and granting to themselves and their Heirs, the Estates and Inheritances of this your Kingdom of Ireland, upon a scandalous, false Hypothesis, imputing the traitorous Design of some desperate, indigent Persons to seize your Majesty's Castle of Dublin, on the 23rd of October, 1641, to an universal Conspiracy of your Catholick Subjects, and applying the Estates and Persons thereby presumed to have forfeited, to the Use and Benefit ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... combined, and the rout was complete. It was the moment of Canada's last efforts, and the echo of that glorious death-rattle reached even to Versailles. The Duke of Choiseul had, on the 19th of February, replied to a desperate appeal from Montcalm, "I am very sorry to have to send you word that you must not expect any re-enforcements. To say nothing of their increasing the dearth of provisions of which you have had only too much experience hitherto, there would be great ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... almost a law. There is nothing worse in the world than playing yourself out. Experienced people say it deprives a man even of his last shirt. It drives a man to desperate acts. And one cannot hope to rise at the Resurrection after that. So people say. And so it happened with our young man. He worked so long, shaking his cap, "odd or even," taking from one pocket and putting ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... looking at the ceiling. "They have taken fright for some reason. They may have an inkling of the awful truth. She is nineteen. Next year she will be twenty—the year after that twenty-one. Then it would be too late. A desperate experiment is better than inaction. I have much to gain and nothing to lose. I must exhibit Kalora. I shall bring the young men to her. Some of them may take a fancy to her. I have seen people eat sugar on tomatoes and pepper on ice-cream. ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... she exclaimed. "Besides, it isn't so desperate as all that. You certainly are not obliged to rent the house unless you ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with a great soul; or Pauline become a countess, and twice a millionaire, as Foedora had been. When he reached the worn threshold, and stood upon the broken step at the door, where in the old days he had had so many desperate thoughts, an old woman came out of the room within and spoke ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and flattened beds of flowers, and the breath of them in her face was like the rankest sweetness of love, when its delicacy, even for itself, is all gone. The pungent odor of box was like a shameless call from the street. Lucina went into the summer-house and sat down. It was stifling, and the desperate sweetnesses of the garden seemed to have collected there, as in ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and I hope I should not ask him for it, or think he was faithless to me. And I believe he has that trust in me also. I don't know. If he demands to know what it all means I shall tell him, because if you are asked anything in the name of love it is not possible to refuse. Heaven knows, this is a desperate measure! But show me any other that has a chance of success and will still keep Diana's secret. This may fail; one cannot be sure of any plan going right. But show me any other plan at all, and from the bottom of my heart I ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... these Grammar School lads, but in a desperate fight, Dexter and the driver would prove overwhelming odds. The pair of rascals could knock these youngsters senseless and whip up the horses ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... money,' says he, 'but I've got a claim over 'long side of the Yankee Doodle, and I'm ready to swap a half interest in it for all the liquor I can drink between now and morning.' There was a kind of a desperate look about the man that meant business. Rumsey stepped out among the boys and got a pointer or two on that claim, and ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Otho was melting! Patty sagaciously believed he was touched by her tears, so made no desperate ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... and defence, might, not seeing the expense or consequences of such a measure, be approved by our people, if nothing in the mean time, done on your part, should prevent it. But they will continue to grasp at their desperate sovereignty, till every benefit short of that is for ever out of their reach. I wish my domestic situation had rendered it possible for me to join you in the very honorable charge confided to you. Residence in a polite ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... pause—a longer one, for it required a desperate effort to get out the words. Then, so faintly as to be hardly heard, but with a strength in them which electrified the listeners, Mark Vandean, midshipman and mere boy, said to ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... come home by spring—I hope, I hope he will!—but if he does not, I will take desperate measures. I will try farming myself, Hugh. I have thought of it, and I certainly will. I will get Earl Douglass or somebody else to play second fiddle, but I will have but one head on the farm and I will try what ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... vaguely aware that in abler hands than his own, this knowledge which he possessed would have been molded into a terrible weapon, but he was impotent to use it; with every advantage his, he felt only the desperate pass in which he had placed himself. If Gilmore and Marshall Langham could juggle with John North's life, what of his own life when the judge ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... her voice was in itself a charm against ill-humour. A rush of bitter self-reproach told Robert that his dissatisfaction had been the inevitable result of too many blessings on a base nature. He tried to speak; he watched instead, with a desperate, eager gaze, the play of ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... an insect this term, and scarcely opened a case. If I had time I would have sent you the insects which I have so long promised; but really I have not spirits or time to do anything. Reading makes me quite desperate; the plague of getting up all my subjects is next thing to intolerable. Henslow is my tutor, and a most ADMIRABLE one he makes; the hour with him is the pleasantest in the whole day. I think he is quite the most perfect man I ever met with. I have been to some very pleasant parties ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the Beatific Vision in the Visio malefica, or presentation of absolute Evil, which was to be the chief torture of the damned, and which, like the Beatific Vision, had been made visible in life to certain desperate men. It visited Esau, as was said, when he found no place for repentance, and Judas, whom it drove to suicide. Cain saw it when he murdered his brother, and legend relates that in his case, and in that of ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... and made a desperate effort to regain his lost position. But he was excited, and did not use his strength ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... daughter! I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate an execution As that is desperate, which we would prevent And if thou darest, I'll give thee remedy! Hold, then! go home, be merry, give consent To ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... never mentioning that she too had been without tea, and not only that, but with small allowance of food of any kind, "and I'm desperate sorry I can't get a bit of something for Katey. The child never missed a little something in ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... possession of Navy Island in Niagara River, had hired a steamer, called the Caroline, to convey their provisions and war materials. On the night of December 29, 1837, a party of British troops attempted to seize this vessel at Schlosser. A desperate fight ensued; but the ship was, at last, set on fire and left to drift over the Falls. This event caused ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... do desperate things to show his love of me! King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the chance is wondrous fine; I'll drop my glove to prove his love; great glory ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... Bull Durham on a bed-bug race—and bed-bug racing was a great sport with the convicts; (b) I was the dog that had been given a bad name: (c) for his frame-up, Cecil Winwood needed the dogs with bad names, the lifetimers, the desperate ones, the incorrigibles. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... confidence. After prolonged delay a new ministry was made up, December 10, by Crispi, whose return to power was dictated by the conviction of the nation that no one else was qualified to deal with a situation so desperate. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... spring, as sudden and noiseless as a panther's, Whitcomb grappled with the man, knocking the revolver from his hand upon the bed. A quick, desperate, silent struggle followed. Whitcomb suddenly reached for the revolver; as he did so Darrell saw a flash of steel in the dim light, and the next instant his friend sank, limp and ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... already from the very beginning Pope was preparing for himself a dire necessity of falsehood. And he must have known it. Once launched upon such a course, he became pledged and committed to all the difficulties which it might impose. Desperate necessities would arise, from which nothing but desperate lying and hard swearing could extricate him. The impossibility of carrying through the parallel by means of genuine correspondences threw him for his sole resource upon such as were extravagantly spurious; and apparently he had made ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... occasion for a desperate movement that night. His basket weighed one hundred and seven, while Little Lizay's had fallen lower than ever before. Alston thought it was because she had missed her chance of transferring the usual quantity of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... name of Belief; and the absence of it, the inability to enter into it, is that Unbelief which he so bitterly vituperates, or, in another phrase, that Discontent, which he charges with holding the soul in such desperate and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... one, witless on whose side the gods were fighting that day, discharged yet other missiles, wavering and wide of the mark; for his wind had been taken with the first clod, and he shot wildly, as one already desperate and in flight. I got another clod in at short range; we clinched on the brow of the hill, and rolled down to the bottom together. When he had shaken himself free and regained his legs, he trotted smartly off in the direction of ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... we hoped against hope, but as day after day came and went, our hopes and spirits sank. Then there came a reaction that is not uncommon in the circumstances,—we grew desperate, and began to enjoy our misery. We got out our rifles, took up a sheltered position in the shed of an outhouse, and blazed away from dripping morn to pouring eve at empty bottles, amongst ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... papers . . . He is one of your lodgers . . . there they all are outside . . . Clear them away, for Christ's sake! The robbers! They disturb and annoy everyone in the street. One cannot live for them . . . And they are all desperate fellows . . . You had better take care, or else they ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... first to get over his fright, and, as soon as he could control his voice, gave a vivid account of their attempt to reach home before their father, their hearing the uncanny sound from the swamp, the sudden appearance of the wolf behind them and their desperate race to get to the house before the beast should ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... inmates. What sinister fears must have haunted them! for how could this extreme destitution in one part of the establishment be reconciled with the luxury noticeable in the other, except by the fact that a desperate struggle to keep up appearances was constantly going on? And this constant anxiety made out-door noise, excitement, and gayety a necessity of their existence, and caused them to welcome anything that took them from the home where they ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... The most desirable method of procuring ushers is by advertisements. None will apply who are not in desperate circumstances, and these are your men. If they know little it is no great matter; they will be the more diligent: and should the children detect their ignorance, or the parents complain, you may easily dismiss them; others such-like are to be had; and it will shew ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... North Korea, one of the world's most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and spare parts shortages. The nation faces its seventh year of food shortages because of ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... chest and arms the strength of Hercules and Samson rolled into one. So close was he to the Indian when the operation of priming was reached, that the man of the woods merely gave the stock of his gun a slap in the desperate hope that it ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... exactness all the technical airs and graces of a regular graduate of Salamanca.—"Cousin," cried he at length, with a sly look at Juana, "I pity your plight—from my soul I do; but your case is, I am grieved to say, desperate, unless I am informed of the cause of these monstrous weals, bruises, slashes, and chafings, in order that my prescription, may—"—"The cause of them," said Perez, almost frightened to death, "is, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... later he returned to New York, and opened a studio, but met with a reception so dismal and indifferent that, after a four years' desperate struggle, he was forced to abandon the fight and return to his father's farm. Anxious for any employment, he applied to Henry Plant, President of the Southern Express Company, for work. Mr. Plant was interested, and instead of offering him a job as messenger or teamster, gave him a ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... King's, made no improvement upon that, far the reverse. It is certain the Confederate chivalry were driven about, at a terrible rate,—over the Turk frontier for shelter; began to appeal to the Grand Turk, in desperate terms: "Brother of the Sun and Moon, saw you ever such a chance for finishing Russia? Polack chivalry is Orthodox Catholic, but also it is Anti-Russian!" The Turk beginning to give ear to it, made the matter pressing and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their determination to retain me a captive, I became desperate; and almost insensible to the pain which I suffered, I seized a spear which was leaning against the projecting eaves of the house, and supporting myself with it, resumed the path that swept by the dwelling. To my surprise, I was suffered to proceed ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... beneath the weight of numbers, yet struggled up again. His great head was torn and dripping; his eyes a gleam of rolling red and white; the little tail stern and stiff like the gallant stump of a flagstaff shot away. He was desperate, but indomitable; and he sobbed as he ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... travel. And these motives are neither good nor bad, they are simply sufficient. Some people travel to enlarge their minds, or to write a book; and the worst of travelling for such reasons is that it so often implants in the traveller, when he returns, a desperate desire to enlarge other people's minds too. Unhappily, it needs an extraordinary gift of vivid description and a tactful art of selection to make the reflections of one's travels interesting to other people. It is a great misfortune for biographers that there ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Iudgement to publish the same, for the benefit of my Countrie. That the example of these conuicted vpon their owne Examinations, Confessions, and Euidence at the Barre, may worke good in others, Rather by with-holding them from, then imboldening them to, the Atchieuing such desperate actes ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... reached Washington Square anxiety had the upper hand. The gang must have got the better of Charley he told himself, or he would have had some word. Evan had had experience of the desperate lengths to which they were prepared to go. Would they now put their final threat into execution upon his hapless friend? Evan blamed himself bitterly for having sent Charley into danger. "If I do not hear from him during the afternoon, ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... shall give up nothing. The world is at your feet, and you shall have everything,—youth, beauty, wealth, station, love,—love; friendship also, if you will accept it from one so poor, so broken, so secluded as I shall be." At each of the last words there had been a desperate sob; and as she was still crouching in the middle of the room, looking up into Dalrymple's face while he stood over her, the scene was one which had much in it that transcended the doings of everyday life, much that would be ever memorable, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... certain bark which grew upon the slopes of the Andes was a sovereign remedy for those terrible ague seizures. Indian remedies did not stand as high in popular esteem as they do now; but they were in desperate straits and jumped at the chance. To their delight, it proved a positive specific, and a Spanish lady of rank, the Countess Chincona, was so delighted with her own recovery that she carried back a package of the precious Peruvian bark on her return to Europe, and endeavored ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... its song is its most conspicuous mark, so to speak, for it is a loud, shrill, and very rapidly repeated run, which might be spelled out in this way: "Chippy, chippy, chippy, chippity-chippity-chippity." The whole song is emitted at a galloping pace, giving you the impression that the bird is in a desperate hurry. Important business on hand, no doubt! Yes, there is a worm or a nit on the under side of that leaf, and he must nab it now or never! With such pressing business matters on hand, he has no time for regaling you with ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... this will be the grief of all my life, Louise—of all my life," answered the artisan, weeping. "You in prison—in the dock—you, so proud-when you had the right to be so. No," continued he, in a new access of desperate grief, "no, I should prefer to seeing you under the winding-sheet, alongside your poor ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... a stern restraint upon himself. Their case looked desperate, but it must, at least, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... cases they bribed, and in others ill-treated the watchmen: one of whom was actually blown up by gunpowder in Coleman Street, that those he guarded might flee unmolested. Again, it chanced that strong men, rendered desperate when brought face to face with loathsome death, lowered themselves from windows of their houses in sight of the watch, whom they threatened with instant death if they cried out ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... with the report that an entire family had been murdered in the vicinity, and that the man, Maurice Doyle, who was suspected of the crime, had escaped and was on his way to the United States, his aim being to get to St. John and take shipping there. As Doyle was known to be a desperate character, no one seemed willing "to run him down." As soon as Mr. Avard knew the state of affairs he at once volunteered to undertake the work. In the meantime Doyle had got a good start. At Amherst Head he hired a farmer, George Glendenning, to take him to the Four Corners, Sackville. Mrs. Glendenning ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... came to advance. In a storm of shrapnel, bullets and flame, the British host swept down again upon the foe. The Germans gave desperate and deadly resistance. They fought hand to hand, with bayonets and clubbed muskets and grenades. It was a death grapple, with decisive victory on neither side. In the wild onrush and terrific clash, Pen lost touch with his comrade. Only once he saw him after the charge was launched. ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... and Nebraska agitation (1853-54), Mrs. Stowe, in common with the abolitionists of the North, was deeply impressed with a solemn sense that it was a desperate crisis in the nation's history. She was in constant correspondence with Charles Sumner and other distinguished statesmen of the time, and kept herself informed as to the minutest details of the struggle. At this time she wrote and ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... a rush at Martin, and, dealing him a successful blow on the forehead, knocked him down; at the same time he himself tripped over a molehill and fell upon his face. Both were on their legs in an instant. Martin grew desperate. The white kitten swimming for its life seemed to rise before him, and new energy was infused into his frame. He retreated a step or two, and then darted forward like an arrow from a bow. Uttering a loud cry, he sprang completely in the air and plunged—head ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... four Apaches had fallen, Coronado had less hope of making his arrangement. He considered the matter carefully and judiciously, but at last he decided that he could not trust the vindictive devils, and he turned his mind strenuously toward resistance. Although not pugnacious, he had plenty of the desperate courage of necessity, and his dusky black eyes were very resolute as he said to Thurstane, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... myself in the shroud of my nightshirt. But before burying myself in the iron bed which had been placed there because, on summer nights, I was too hot among the rep curtains of the four-poster, I was stirred to revolt, and attempted the desperate stratagem of a condemned prisoner. I wrote to my mother begging her to come upstairs for an important reason which I could not put in writing. My fear was that Francoise, my aunt's cook who used to be put in charge of me when I was at Combray, might refuse ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... continued Jack, "the master made a desperate effort to get into the cabin. The vessel couldn't miss, we saw, to break up and fill; and though there was little hope of any of us ever setting foot ashore, he wished to give the poor woman below a chance with the rest. All of us but himself, mistress, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... which was being threatened on the southeast by Rosete. Boves attacked again on the 20th of March and was once more repulsed. Being informed that Rosete had been defeated at Ocumare by the independents and that Mario was approaching to the relief of Bolvar, he decided to make a desperate effort to take San Mateo. On the 25th of March he made a third attempt, and that day marks the occurrence of one of the heroic ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... second volume, "The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip," will recall, among other things, the desperate efforts made by George Melville, the capitalist, aided by the latter's disagreeable son, Don, to acquire stealthy control of the submarine building company, and their efforts to oust Jack, Hal and Eph from their much-prized employment. These readers will remember how Jack and his ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... must be some new adventure, he called aloud to Sancho to come and bring him his helmet. Sancho, hearing himself called, quitted the shepherds, and, prodding Dapple vigorously, came up to his master, to whom there fell a terrific and desperate adventure. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... coral rocks, and in a day so overcast the keenest eye aloft would be at fault. And outside, what then? By God! it was working up to a hurricane. To run before it would be courting death. Hove to, he would be cramped for room, with three big islands on his lee. In his lawless and desperate past he had taken many a fall with fortune; he was accustomed to weigh the danger of perilous alternatives; he knew what it was to hazard everything on his own vigilance and skill, and to bear with a sailor's fatalism the throw of those dread dice on which his own life had been so ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... suspicions, fears, anger, and quarrels." This was passion with chorus and orchestra, a little theatrical, with its violences, its alternations between fury and ecstasy, such as an African, steeped in romantic literature, would conceive it. Deceived, he flung himself in desperate pursuit of the ever-flitting love. He had certainly more than one passion. Each one left him more hungry ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... civilization, which were solved, of course, so very remarkably by the ancient Greeks, though their solution is no help to us. Then the hook gave a great tug in his side as he lay in bed on Wednesday night; and he turned over with a desperate sort of tumble, remembering Sandra Wentworth Williams with whom he ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... a brutal dominance which vibrated in his voice. Here was a desperate character, thought Burke, who was accustomed to command others; he was not the flabby weakling type, like ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... MAINLAND. Las Casas became at one time a missionary to a tribe of the most desperate warriors located on the southern border of Mexico, in a region called by the Spaniards the "Land of War." Three times a Spanish army had invaded the country, and three times it had been driven back by the ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... something about a child dying in convulsions in her house, in the absence of its mother, just before a lodger left her house to go to Sydney with another child of the same sex and age. This, after a lapse of thirty-five years, was a desperate chance, but it was the only course open to Francis, and ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... number of negroes rushed suddenly out upon them. Will had just time to discharge his pistols before he was knocked senseless by a negro armed with a bludgeon. Tom and Dimchurch stood over him and made a desperate defence, and just before they were overpowered Dimchurch shouted at the top of his voice: "Put off, we are captured," for he saw that the number of their assailants was so great that it would only be sacrificing the crew to call them to their assistance. They were bound and ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... it ought to be something fat, because coiners are always a desperate gang; and the machinery they make the coins with is so heavy and handy for knocking ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... difficulties of serving the new khedive, Gordon longed for rest. The first year of his rule, during which he had done his own and other men's work, the long marches, the terrible climate, the perpetual anxieties, had all told upon him. Since then he had had three years of desperate labor, and had ridden some 8,500 miles. Who can wonder that he resented the impertinences of the pashas, whose interference was not for the good of his government or of his people, but solely ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... don't," said Lily. And there had been rather a bad half-hour, because he had felt that he had to stick to his thirty-nine guns, whatever they were. He had finished on a rather desperate note of appeal. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that they yield to it, and commit suicide, as a passionate man will stab another.' He added, 'I have often thought, that after a man has taken the resolution to kill himself, it is not courage in him to do any thing, however desperate, because he has nothing to fear.' GOLDSMITH. 'I don't see that.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, but my dear Sir, why should not you see what every one else sees?' GOLDSMITH. 'It is for fear of something that he has resolved to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... rush out, tomahawk in hand, towards the center; but they were repulsed by the cool intrepidity of the backwoods riflemen. Still they fought on, determined on the destruction of the destined victims who offered such desperate resistance. All at once an appalling sound greeted the ears of the women and children in the center; it was a cry from their defenders—a cry for powder! "Our powder is giving out!" they exclaimed. "Have you any? Bring us some, or we ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... said Rilla, too desperate to care for Olive's manner. "We've advertised the concert everywhere—and crowds are coming—there's even a big party coming out from town—and we were short enough of music as it was. We must get some one to sing in Mrs. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... exceed the mournfulness of this depopulated land: we might have been wandering over the wilds of Poland. We ran some twenty miles down the steel-grey Meuse to a village about four miles west of Les Eparges, the spot where, for weeks past, a desperate struggle had been going on. There must have been a lull in the fighting that day, for the cannon had ceased; but the scene at the point where we left the motor gave us the sense of being on the very edge of the conflict. The long straggling village lay on ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... was stronger than the mere strength of a human being. She knew that if Hap Smith clung tight to his reins he might be pulled ashore in due time, if all went well for him. She knew that Winifred Waverly had never been in such desperate straits. And finally she understood, and the knowledge was infinitely sweet to her in her moment of need, why the man yonder had been sitting his horse so idly in the rain, and just why he had ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... her heels,—for the animal looked at her, and stopped eating: that was enough to drive Miss Lucinda off the field. And now, quite desperate, she rushed through the house and out of the front-door, actually in search of a man! Just down the street she saw one. Had she been composed, she might have noticed the threadbare cleanliness of his dress, the odd cap that crowned his iron-gray locks, and the peculiar manner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... neutralise each other, an active policy might double the principality both in population and extent. Certainly at least the scheme is entertained in the court of Mittwalden; nor do I myself regard it as entirely desperate. The margravate of Brandenburg has grown from as small beginnings to a formidable power; and though it is late in the day to try adventurous policies, and the age of war seems ended, Fortune, we must not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... girl flushed, and he felt that he had been rude. But he was really feeling desperate, and, besides, there was something positively irritating in this ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... out of a gondola. There exists no written report of this sitting, and consequently we do not know exactly what it was worth. But on December 11[46] M. Bourget had another sitting, and this time Dr Hodgson accompanied him and took notes. The artist seemed to make desperate efforts to communicate and to write herself, but she could only produce two or three French words, amongst which apparently was the exclamation, "Mon Dieu!" Nevertheless her Christian name was given and the place where she had killed herself, Venice, and the syllable ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... Abdul," I exclaimed, "surely this situation is desperate? What can your nation subsist ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... this pass as if he did not hear it, and indeed he was somewhat deaf; but when one came up to him and reported that the horsemen were going away, Cato, fearing that the three hundred might do something desperate to the senatorial men, got up with his friends and set out walking; but observing that they had already advanced some distance, he seized a horse and rode to them. The horsemen were glad to see him approach, and received him and urged him to save himself with them. Then it is said that Cato even ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... move an inch from her purpose? I tell you she would resist, to the last breath in her body, the vile injustice which has struck at the helpless children, through the calamity of their father's death! I tell you she would shrink from no means which a desperate woman can employ to force that closed hand of yours open, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... for the moment as if a mountain had descended upon him. He struggled fiercely to free himself, and in his desperate effort worked his head and shoulders clear, but while trying to draw his revolver for his last defence, he succumbed. The sunlight faded from before his eyes, all became blank ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... strong enough to withstand it, only to pass from a weak and inefficient resistance, to a profound fall." And later he writes: "But the lower sensuality persisted, however much and however often I resisted it. My imagination continually produced the horrible pictures. And though in desperate rage I clenched my teeth to drive them away, they always left traces in my soul, and from time to time I fell. How I have struggled, how I have fought! How often with tears have I sought God's protection and help, praising God with holy zeal and faith. In my room ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... "The desperate creature who escaped from gaol three days ago, and who was in for life for the murder of the man she lived with, and whose convict clothes I am wearing—whose clothes, I mean, are at this moment drying before your kitchen fire—is not the ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... earth by the unspeakable mixture of squalidness and magnificence, simplicity of life yet fury of passion, savage ignorance of its religious notions yet fearful worship of evil powers, its homage to magic, and desperate belief in spells, incantations and the fetish. The configuration of the country, so far as it can be conjectured, assists this primeval barbarism. Divided by natural barriers of hill, chasm, or river, into isolated states, they act under a general impulse of hostility and disunion. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... pressed. Mrs. Dulany appealed to his pride, But unceremonious he thrust her aside. Many the terrors, the words and the fright, But he marched them and marched them till far in the night. Mrs. Dulany again essayed To urge him to cease his desperate raid, Then bending before her his handsome form, He declared no lovelier woman was born Than she, his own, his beautiful wife Then he vowed to love and cherish through life; And to prove to all how he loved her then, He'd ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... only sixteen years ago, and it is amusing to recall how cautiously even we out-and-out believers did our prophesying. I was quite a desperate fellow; I said outright that in my lifetime we should see men flying. But I qualified that by repeating that for many years to come it would be an enterprise only for quite fantastic daring and skill. We conjured up stupendous ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... they were out of it, and the order was Dennis, Early, Richards, and Lang. At the beginning of the second mile, Early, whose duty it was to have gone up and helped Dennis make the pace at the third half-mile, had manifestly had enough of it, and, after two or three desperate struggles to keep up, was passed by Richards. When, therefore, they came to the mile and a half, Dennis was leading Richards by some fifteen yards, and those who knew the game expected to see the Harvard man try to overtake ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... wild-fire. These fixed upon the heads of lances and set on fire when the troops charged in the night, so terrified the horses of the Turks that they fled in dismay. Meldritch was for a moment victorious, but when within three leagues of Rottenton he was overpowered by forty thousand Turks, and the last desperate fight followed, in which nearly all the friends of the Prince were slain, and Smith himself was left for dead ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... think a reference from Mr. Sellers would do me much good," she sighed. "But at the time I took the place I was quite desperate." ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... made of fine-cut Tobacco wet in hot water and crowded firmly up against the pile-tumors, secured by a T bandage, will relieve the most desperate cases for the time, and is attended with no danger or disagreeable symptoms except in rare cases, when it produces sickness at the stomach, which soon subsides on the poultice being removed. Oil of Arnica is an ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... sufficient to turn first one and then the other of them upon its hinges and work the various bolts and bars into their respective places. Two men could never have done the job, but being three and fairly desperate we managed it. Then we retreated to our archway and, as nothing happened, took the opportunity to eat and drink a few mouthfuls, Quick remarking sagely that we might as well die upon ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... will be sensible, I will pray to God. I will go to Rome. I am desperate, I will implore the Pope to pray for me. In my madness, ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... him and said nothing. And from her silence Pip drew the most desperate and harrowing conclusions. The silence lasted. The rain gurgled in the water-pipe and dripped on the ivy. The canary in the green cage that hung in the window put its head on one side and tweaked a seed husk ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... floated over the level sea, and excited the sympathy of the men who were compelled to inflict the suffering in order to preserve their own safety. They felt an instinctive desire to launch a boat and go to the succour of their victims. Curly, who knew the desperate character of these fearful men, advised his shipmates to have neither remorse nor pity. He assured them that the lesson given to the miscreants would not prevent those who might recover or those who had received no injury from taking to their trade with the same thievish ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... tour of inspection to British H.Q. Found much to put right. Issued an Order of the Day to soldiers of all ranks. The Germans, hearing of my presence, made desperate attempts to bomb me, but failed. Food at the Front ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... seventy-five thousand men under arms. The spirit of the whole nation was with them, and the Austrian troops were driven from almost every fortress in the kingdom. The affairs of Joseph seemed to be almost desperate, his armies struggling against overpowering foes all over Europe, from the remotest borders of Transylvania to the frontiers of Portugal. The vicissitudes of war are proverbial. An energetic, sagacious general, Herbeville, with great military sagacity, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... the consummate cruelty of those hours, the fact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared to see her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She made desperate efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent was atrocious. Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily would laugh in childish, unthinking mirth. She ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... went it was with a desperate resolution of laying his hand on the veil in which she had wrapped herself, but every time he found it impossible, for one reason or another, to make a single movement toward withdrawing it. Again and again he tried to write to her, but the haunting suspicion that she would lay his epistle before ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... sire, no pressure could make me reveal your name. I would sooner suffer death, since you will have it so. Yet, after all, I beg you not to return for my sake. I would not have you undertake a battle which will be so desperate. I thank you for your promised word that you would gladly undertake it, but consider yourself now released, for it is better that I should die alone than that I should see them rejoice over your death ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... contrary, An incurable sin seems to be most grievous, according to Jer. 30:12: "Thy bruise is incurable, thy wound is very grievous." Now the sin of despair is incurable, according to Jer. 15:18: "My wound is desperate so as to refuse to be healed." [*Vulg.: "Why is my wound," etc.] Therefore despair is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... about mistakes! The awful grammatical howlers! There's not a line that's not a personal insult to grammar! No stops nor commas—and the spelling . . . brrr! 'Earth' has an a in it!! And the writing! It's desperate! I'm not joking, Lida. . . . I'm surprised and appalled at your letter. . . . You mustn't be angry, darling, but, really, I had no idea you were such a duffer at grammar. . . . And yet you belong to a cultivated, well-educated circle: you are the wife of ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... subject: he asked me what reasons more than a mere wandering inclination I had for leaving my father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... best affidavit of the miner magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results. The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, a la Powderly, who will ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... which accompany the doing of a desperate deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's tempest was raging, whispers grave counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud, sublime in the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... saw the banking sector collapse, which helped precipitate an unprecedented default on external loans later that year. Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of the currency throughout 1999, which eventually forced a desperate government to "dollarize" the currency regime in 2000. The move stabilized the currency, but did not stave off the ouster of the government. The new president, Gustavo NOBOA has yet to complete negotiations for a long sought IMF accord. He will ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... endure any more. He turned with hardly a word, and fled in desperate haste. The Sisters gazed after him in surprise, and with a good deal of alarm, until Paul Colbert told them about him, who and what he was, of his meeting with Father Orin, and the whole story ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... No, no! in such a land dynamite and the dagger are the necessary and proper substitutes for Faneuil Hall. Anything that will make the madman quake in his bedchamber, and rouse his victims into reckless and desperate resistance. This is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can take of Nihilism. Any other unsettles and perplexes the ethics of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... was Holy Joe, the shanghaied parson, whose weak flesh scorned the torture, because of the strong, pure faith in the man's soul. There were Blackie and Boston, their rat-hearts steeled to courage by lust of gold, their rascally, seductive tongues welding into a dangerous unit the mob of desperate, broken stiffs who inhabited the foc'sle. There were Lynch and Fitzgibbon, the buckos, living up to their grim code; and the Knitting Swede, that prince of crimps, who put most of us into the ship. There was myself, with my childish vanity, and petty ambitions. There ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... She seemed to have taken a desperate step. Miss Jane Marston, Della's sister-in-law, had always been the superfluous member of her family. Such unenviable tasks as amusing or teaching the younger children, sewing, or making up whist ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... sprang forward, but had gone but a few yards, when as suddenly as if they had arisen out of the ground, a dozen men, with levelled guns, arose by the side of the road, and demanded their surrender. Desperate as the chance was, Calhoun wheeled his horse to flee, when before him stood a dozen more men; his retreat ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... the real merit of the patriotic martyr, it might be suspected that, besides her inflamed imagination, a pious and pardonable collusion was resorted to as a last desperate effort to rouse the energy of the troops or the hopes of the people—a collusion similar to that of the celebrated Constantinian Cross, or of the Holy Lance of Antioch. Every reader is acquainted with the fate of the great personages who in ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... the city. On May 25, two British columns of 2,000 men each, with sixteen pieces of artillery and fifty-two rockets, advanced to the attack across the sacred burial grounds. Three of the hill forts were carried with slight loss. At the fourth fort desperate resistance was encountered. After this fort had succumbed to a bayonet attack the Chinese rallied in an open camp one mile to the rear. Intrenchments were thrown up with remarkable rapidity. The British troops, led by the Royal Irish Fusiliers, streamed over the open ground ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... shawl, which he fastened to the bushes. On this he descended into that mouth of hell. The perilous attempt succeeded so far that, with one mad leap, he landed on the top of the uppermost car with its pile of stones, and then, with cat-like dexterity and desperate daring, he scrambled downward to the third carriage. Quickly he reached the spot, and the poor little gloved hands of his darling were thrown in ecstasy around his neck. Someone had drawn up the cord on which he had let himself down, fastened a stout iron rod to it, and suspended it carefully. Happily ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Horses and mules, in many cases hideous physical specimens of their breeds, furnished the motive power. The cars were little "bobtailed" receptacles, usually badly painted and more often than not in a desperate state of disrepair. In many cities the driver presided as a solitary autocrat; the passengers on entrance deposited their coins in a little fare box. At night tiny oil lamps made the darkness visible; in winter time shivering passengers warmed themselves by pulling ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... the Chivington massacre occurred lived the father-in-law of John Powers. He was known the plains over as a peaceable old Indian (Old One Eye), the chief of the Cheyennes, but his "light was put out" during this desperate fight with Chivington. ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... command," said he, "I am not at all anxious to pit myself against a town garrisoned by seven, or even ten times our number, if it can be avoided." Instead of attempting an open assault, which must have resulted in a desperate loss of life, Gordon gradually surrounded the city with his own and the Imperial troops, capturing all the smaller places around it, so that it might be completely invested. Here again he exhibited his quick perception of the weak points in his opponents' character. Even ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... low as he approached, the wretch soon reached my bedside, peered a moment into my face with his hideous white eyes, laid down the lamp, then grasped the bar of iron firmly in both hands, and raised himself up to his full height. I made a desperate effort to cry out for help. My voice was utterly gone. I could not even move my lips. But why prolong the dreadful scene? One more glance with the fierce white eyes, a deep grating malediction, and the ruffian braced himself for his deadly job. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... stunned by a blow. Presently he recovered consciousness, felt the weight of some one sitting on his shoulders and covering his neck, and the first sounds he heard was a dispute going on between two as to which of them had the right to cut off his head! He made a desperate effort, jostled the fellow off his back, sprang to his feet, and, with his head all safe in his own possession, soon settled the matter by leaving them ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... imperturbable temper, and on music-nights it was apparent that patience could never be an easy virtue to him; but this evening, as he glances over his spectacles at Bill Downes, the sawyer, who is turning his head on one side with a desperate sense of blankness before the letters d-r-y, his eyes shed their mildest ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... persistently abused. Pure physical sensation supplied a large part of the material for his poetry, and among the senses it was especially the one that has the remotest association with ideas that he drew upon most constantly—the sense of smell. In his desperate search for new and strange sensations he went the round of violent and exhausting dissipations, and as his senses flagged he spurred them with all sorts of stimulants. Meanwhile he observed himself curiously ; the ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... ... and she remained kneeling; and all that crowd of people stood silently looking on, startled and impressed by that sacred, solemn mourning. And the impressive hush, the silence of all those people, the desperate helplessness of those folk, she alone suffering and crying and unable to help her child and the people unwilling to help him: that impotence pierced her soul; and the patient suffering changed into a frenzied madness, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... for a rush which would be a fanatic's desperate attempt to do murder despite premature discovery. He was ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... rival after the nuptials have been celebrated and the work of housekeeping fairly begun. Every season a pair of phbe-birds have built their nest on an elbow in the spouting beneath the eaves of my house. The past spring a belated male made desperate efforts to supplant the lawful mate and gain possession of the unfinished nest. There was a battle fought about the premises every hour in the day for at least a week. The antagonists would frequently grapple and fall to the ground, and keep their hold like two dogs. On one such ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... plan. He had resolved to try to seize the Lower Town first and then to get his troops into the Upper Town by way of the steep Mountain Street, thus taking the defenders of the walls in the rear. It was a desperate venture, depending for its success largely upon the surprise of the garrison which Malcolm Fraser's thorough-going alarm had prevented. Montgomery himself, with a force of several hundred men, marched to the Lower Town from Wolfe's Cove along the narrow path under the cliffs, a distance ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... could be capriciously placed in another order. If this were so, they would be altogether heterogeneous and disconnected among themselves, and the attempt to examine and criticize them would seem altogether desperate, as also would be that of comparing one with the other, or of stating a new one, which should dominate them all. It is precisely thus that ordinary sceptics look upon various and contrasting scientific ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... which of the Sheikhs is his friend, or protector, to whom he is to send his little present of tribute. Of course I feel extremely annoyed and disheartened to have a quarrel of this sort with the man who has the greatest influence in the country. But I must hold out, since my situation is not yet desperate. As something agreeable, in counterpoise, I may mention that Haj Ibrahim, on visiting the Sultan, found His Highness reclining on the carpet-rug which I gave him. His Highness said to the merchant, smiling with satisfaction, "See, this is what The Christian gave me." ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly known as the "Duchess"; another, who had won the title of "Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... not uncommon for these young offenders to stop children, whom they may meet in the street unprotected, and either by artifice or violence, take from them their hats, necklaces, &c., thus initiating themselves, as it were, into the desperate crime ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... since we left Miraumont came back to assist me, for about another month. Great droves of German prisoners now began to pass us several times a day, a cheering sight in one way, but not a pleasant one in another. They were truly a desperate-looking collection of men, mostly of a ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... I've been telling you—and some men in the world would be mean enough to gloss all that over, saying that it's only right to look out for number one first of all. But I tell ye honestly, Mr. Parker, Gid would have to do something pretty desperate and open to have the prosecuting officers of this county take it up against him. Now you can understand the width of the swath he cuts in these parts. Where would the witnesses come from? He owns his ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... months desperate attempts were made by the Consolidated to make the new bonds attractive to the public, but less than one hundred thousand dollars was subscribed. Bobby was tabulating the known results of this subscription ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Nothing looks more neat and regular than a newspaper, with its parallel columns, its mechanical printing, its detailed facts and figures, its responsible, polysyllabic leading articles. Nothing, as a matter of fact, goes every night through more agonies of adventure, more hairbreadth escapes, desperate expedients, crucial councils, random compromises, or barely averted catastrophes. Seen from the outside, it seems to come round as automatically as the clock and as silently as the dawn. Seen from the inside, it gives all its organisers a gasp of relief every morning to see that it has come out ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... enveloped himself in a piece of drapery he wore across his breast, and of his own accord threw himself into the sea. The rebels rushed forward to avenge their comrades; a terrible conflict again commenced; both sides fought with desperate fury; and soon the fatal raft was strewed with dead bodies and blood, which should have been shed by other hands, and in another cause. In this tumult we heard them again demanding, with horrid rage, the head of Lieut. Danglas! In this assault the unfortunate sutler was ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... once! The Sioux have taken the war-path, and a party of their worst warriors from the Muddy Creek country have started out on a raid. They are sure to come this way, and I suppose the house will be burned, and everything on which they can lay hands destroyed. They are under the lead of the desperate Red Feather, and will spare nothing. A friendly Sioux stopped this morning before daylight and warned me. I gathered the animals together, and your mother and I set out for Barwell in all haste, driving the ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... the African buffalo and the lion. As to the antelopes of Africa and the deer of India, what can they do but make a desperate effort to escape, and fly like the wind whenever they succeed? Of course many of these defenseless animals make a gallant struggle for their lives, and not a few succeed in throwing off their assailants and escaping. Even domestic cattle sometimes return to the hill country ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... suppress all those promptings that seemed to isolate her from him. Romola was labouring, as a loving woman must, to subdue her nature to her husband's. The great need of her heart compelled her to strangle, with desperate resolution, every rising impulse of suspicion, pride, and resentment; she felt equal to any self-infliction that would save her from ceasing to love. That would have been like the hideous nightmare in which the world had seemed ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... acquaintances or favourite friends whom they had known all their lives. However, there was no doubt that their parties had got the name for being funny, and that was quite enough. London people in every set are so desperate for something out of the ordinary way, for variety and oddness, that the Mitchells were frequently asked for invitations by most distinguished persons who hoped, in their blase fatigue, to meet ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
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