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More "Falter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the news of Mistress Alison's death reached him. Mark told him very carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul—for the end had come very suddenly—Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it were, day by day, with earnest effort, the steep ladder of song. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... violence can such a one plead, how can he purge his crime, when it was he himself who rather used force that he might perish? When they came voluntarily to the capitol—when they freely approached to the obedience of the terrible wickedness—did not their tread falter, did not their sight darken, their hearts tremble, their arms fall helplessly down, their senses become dull, their tongues cleave to their mouths, their speech fail? Could the servant of God stand there, he who had already renounced the devil and the world, and speak and renounce ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... demeaned well, both as my assistant and as thy partner, and thou mayest see that her comeliness is in no degree changed—And did the babe falter in this weary passage, or did she retard thy movements by her fretfulness? But I know thy nature, man; she hath been borne over many long miles of mountain-side and treacherous swamp, in thine own vigorous arms. Thou answerest not, Dudley!" exclaimed Ruth, taking the alarm, and laying ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out doubtfully: ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in a flutter of nervous excitement as she hastened about the room, donning her few requirements of masquerade, yet Keith noted with appreciation that she became perceptibly cooler as the moment of departure approached. With cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, yet speaking with a voice revealing no falter, she pressed his arm and declared herself prepared for the ordeal. The face under the shadow of the mantilla was so arch and piquant, Keith could ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... of sense, Prince," he said after a while. "You are absolutely correct. This matter has caused me a great deal of anxious thought. To falter at this moment is to lose, politically, all that I have worked for all my life. It is to lose the confidence of the people who have trusted me. It is a betrayal, the thought of which is a constant shame to me. But, on ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... help her! Her soul recoiled in horror from the hideous prospect. Only two days more, she thought, pressing her lips tightly together. Oh, the horror of it! She dared not think of it, or she would go mad! But she would not falter. She had told herself that she was now resigned. She was going ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... all at once a sense of his utter unworthiness overwhelmed him. Who was he to stand and judge this unselfish woman? Who was he to falter when she called? A sense of his smallness and narrowness, of his priggish blindness, rose like a mockery in his soul. One thing alone held him back: he was not unwilling to be simply human, a learner ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... my poor child, I have shown you your painful duty. See that you do not falter in it," said the rector, as he rose to ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... but neither had they expected any such rudeness as this, so Sindri determined to give Loki a lesson. Going to one corner of the smithy he picked up a pig-skin and taking the hammer in his hands, told his brother to blow steadily, neither to falter nor to fail until he passed the word that the work was done. Then with strength and gentleness he wrought with his tools, having cast nothing into the heat but the pig-skin; with mighty blows and delicate touches he brought thickness and substance ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... now first heard with any sense of pain, As it had taken life away before, Choked all the syllables that in my throat Strove to uprise, laden with mournful thanks, From my full heart: and ever since that hour, My voice hath somewhat falter'd—and what wonder That when hope died, part of her eloquence Died with her? He, the blissful lover, too, From his great hoard of happiness distill'd Some drops of solace; like a vain rich man, That, having always prosper'd in the world, Folding his hands deals comfortable words To ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... looked at him for a moment with a look of honest inquiry in her eyes. His own did not falter. Their expression combined confidence ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... full into those starry grey eyes bent upon him, and his own did not falter. His mild voice took on a shade of sternness as befitted the solemn ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... sure?' said her uncle, in a tone of disappointment that made her falter, as she added, 'I think so.' At the same time the stranger turned the paper round, and she knew it for the cheque that had so long resided in her desk, but with dilated eyes, she exclaimed, 'But—but— that was ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fares with a steady hand. The temptation was over. Six more strokes—then nine without a falter. He even imagined the bell rang more distinctly than usual, even encouragingly. The car stopped. Jim flung the door open with a triumphant sweep of his arm. He felt ready to face the world. But the baby—his arm ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... mother as to the existence of his man. The man was there, for he had been told so, and he was there to wait for "naughty boys," said the child, with cheerful self-condemnation. The little boy's voice was somewhat hushed, because of the four ears of the listener, but it did not falter, except when his mother's arguments against the existence of the man seemed to him cogent and likely to gain the day. Then for the first time the boy was a little downcast, and the light of mystery became dimmer in his ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... women of Ireland today? Shall they come short of the high ideal of the past, falter and fail, if devotion and sacrifice are required of them? Never: whilst they keep in memory and honor the illustrious ones of whom I have written. The name of Irishwoman today stands for steadfast virtue, for hospitality, for simple piety, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... heart and brain of Sordello become the field of conflict between fierce, contending forces. All that is egoistic in his nature cries out for a life of pride and power and joy. At best it is but little that he could ever do to serve the suffering multitude. And yet should he falter because he cannot gain for them the results of time? Is it not his part to take the single step in their service, though it can be no more than a step? In the excitement of this supreme hour of inward strife Sordello dies; but he dies a victor; like Paracelsus ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... very encouraging; but I was at an adventurous age and in an enterprising mood, and the creole's warnings had rather the effect of increasing my desire to go forward with the undertaking in which I had engaged than causing me to falter in my resolve. Like Napoleon, I believed in my star, and I had faced death too often on the field of battle to fear the rather remote dangers Morena had foreshadowed, and in whose existence ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... troops falter under fire; nor did the Germans, for that matter. Never was there greater bravery, loyalty and devotion. Called upon for tasks that seemed well nigh impossible, the men did not hesitate. They met death in such numbers as death was ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... Lord, dear Lord, I plead: Lead me aright. Though strength should falter and though heart should bleed, Through ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... after the quake messages were stacked yards high in all the telegraph offices waiting to be sent throughout the world. Conditions warranted utter despair and panic, but through it all the people were trying to be brave and falter not. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... you may thereby be ignorant of much which others know, and may appear to disadvantage when they are talking together; though you appear behind the rest of the world; though you be called a coward, or a child, or narrow-minded, or superstitious; whatever insulting words be applied to you, fear not, falter not, fail not; stand firm, quit you like men; be strong. They think that in the devil's service there are secrets worthy our inquiry, which you share not: yes, there are secrets, and such that it is a shame even to speak of them; and in like manner you have a secret which they have ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination to falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the attempt to restore ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... I kneel to-night, Lord, by Thine altar! Oh, in to-morrow's fight, Let me not falter! Bless my dark arms for me, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... surplus to be devoted to carrying forward the work on a still larger scale; in regions less promising and more remote, even within the borders of the arid lands. With this lesson before us, how can we hesitate or falter in our efforts to successfully carry forward this ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... to this one supreme, sublime encounter? His heart was high, his voice rang clear and exultant, his eyes flashed joy and fire and defiance in the face of a thousand deaths two weeks ago. But here in the presence of a slender girl he can do naught but falter and ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... conditions are granted to it. 'I should commend to them that will successfully philosophise the belief and endeavour after a certain principle more noble and inward than reason itself, and without which reason will falter, or at least reach but to mean and frivolous things. I have a sense of something in me while I thus speak, which I must confess is of so retruse a nature that I want a name for it, unless I should adventure to term it Divine sagacity, which is the first rise of successful reason.... All pretenders ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... is right, as God is God; And right the day will win. To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... the clashing of his fall, Suddenly came, and at his side all pale Dismounting, loosed the fastenings of his arms, Nor let her true hand falter, nor blue eye Moisten, till she had lighted on his wound, And tearing off her veil of faded silk Had bared her forehead to the blistering sun, And swathed the hurt that drain'd her dear lord's life. Then after all was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... females, he answered with downcast eyes and blushing cheeks, and was demure and shy as young ladies new to the world are in most civilised countries, except England and America) was evidently much charmed by the tall Gy, and ready to falter a bashful "Yes" if she had actually proposed. Fervently hoping that she would, and more and more averse to the idea of reduction to a cinder after I had seen the rapidity with which a human body can be hurried into a pinch of ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... amid the hurry of public affairs, his truant thoughts return to the home of his affection, surrounded by doubtful, if not dangerous, subjects to precarious authority? Perhaps when deeply engaged in his legislative duties his heart may quail and his tongue falter with irresistible apprehension for the peace and safety of objects dearer ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... we are at the brave corner column which unconcernedly assumes a responsibility that can hardly be surpassed in the world. For if it were to falter all would go. Down would topple two of the loveliest facades that man ever constructed or the centuries ever caressed into greater beauty. This corner of the palace has an ever-increasing fascination for ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Bob spied the "fried holes" the dispenser of them gave a start as a bullet or a piece of shell flew close to his head. He was in grave danger now, and realized it. But he did not falter. He gave one backward glance, not with an idea of retreating, that is sure, but to see if there were any near him in that direction whom he might serve. Then he saw the prone ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... now. I must put away my dolls and air-castles. The time had come, it appeared, for me to assume a woman's burdens, among which often is an expedient marriage. I could no longer offer my tender years as an excuse for side-stepping a big opportunity. I musn't falter. The moment had arrived. I accepted Breck, and down underneath a pile of stockings in the back of my lowest bureau drawer I hid a little velvet-lined jewel-box, inside of which there lay an enormous diamond solitaire—promise of my brilliant return ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... them. I shrunk from them as it were like a cold lover who fears the too ardent caresses of his mistress. I could not believe that the supreme happiness I had so long pined for was at last so near. Might not M. le Duc d'Orleans falter at the last moment? Might not all our preparations, so carefully conducted, so cleverly planned, weigh upon his feebleness until they fell to the ground? It was not improbable. He was often firm in promises. How often was he firm in carrying ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... not," replied the other, "as long as I have a prospect of large profits; why should I falter or hesitate at so slight ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... on the hill Is dowie now and sad; The breezes whisper round me still, I 've lost my Highland lad. Upon Culloden's fatal heath, He spake o' me, they said, And falter'd, wi' his dying breath, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to lips, that fondly falter, Presses his without reproof; Leads her to the village altar, And ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... of her own achievements full upon her face, which was pretty, although untutored, regarded her visitor with an expression which almost made Margaret falter. It was probably the absurd dressing of the girl's hair which restored Margaret's confidence in her scheme. Martha Wallingford actually wore a frizzled bang, very finely frizzled too, and her hair was strained from the nape of her ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... elsewhere: if it finds but a faint analogy of form or substance, its decision is embarrassed. But this other instinct seems to become subtler, and more rapid, and more absolute in conviction, at the line where reason begins to falter. Take the case of Shakespeare. His surpassing greatness was never acknowledged by the learned until the nation had ascertained and settled it as a foregone and questionless conclusion. Even now, to the most sagacious mind of this time, the real ground and evidence of its own assurance of Shakespeare's ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... carbines; and at the same time the batteries of horse-artillery, under Captain Robinson, joining in the contest, belched forth shot and shell with fatal effect. The galling fire caused the enemy to falter, and while still wavering Wilson rallied his men, and turning some of them against the right flank of the Confederates, broke their line, and compelled them to withdraw for security behind the heavy works thrown up for the defense of the city ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... did not falter. Her humble and faithful admirer, Ned, appeared at the attic door, when summoned by Goody Pearse, to help her downstairs. Ned made short work of it; he lifted Mary in his arms, and trudged down the creaking steps with her without a single halt, and placed ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... night of great disquiet. His mind was agitated, his purposes indefinite; his confidence in himself seemed to falter. Where was that strong will that had always sustained him? that faculty of instant decision which had given such vigour to his imaginary deeds? A shadowy haze had suffused his heroic idol, duty, and he could not clearly distinguish either its form or its proportions. Did he wish to go to the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... he returns the cup to Gibich's daughter, rest upon her, it is, as Hagen had foretold, as if he had never before beheld a woman. The inflammable heart which suffocated him of old at sight of Bruennhilde asleep, now makes his voice falter with instantaneous passion as he exclaims: "You, whose beauty dazzles like lightning, wherefore do you drop your eyes before me?" And when shyly she looks up: "Ha, fairest woman, hide your glance! Its beam scorches the heart within my breast—Gunther, what is your sister's name?... Gutrune!... Are ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... line of endeavour we resort to the distinctly obvious, and then announce that he brushed away the tears and laughed as gaily as any of them over the surprises that followed the one which momentarily caused him to falter. He was not given to looking upon the dark side of things. Even as he sat there at the head of the long table, he jocosely remarked to Diggs that he would have to borrow a saw from the janitor the next day and reduce the size of his board by five feet at least. Moreover, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... soon," she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the battle, and always showed at his best when the danger was greatest. The vein of fanaticism that ran through his character helped to render him a terrible opponent. He knew no such word as falter, and when he had once put his hand to a piece of work, he did it thoroughly and with all his heart. It was quite in keeping with his character that this gentle, high-minded, and religious man should, early in the contest, have proposed to hoist the black flag, neither ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... falter; no great deed is done By falterers who ask for certainty. No good is certain but the steadfast mind, The undivided will to seek the good: 'T is that compels the elements and wrings A human music from the indifferent ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... sensible of the dangerous battle we are about to engage upon in defending the Lacedaemonians? Courage, my soul, we must plunge into the midst of it. Dost thou hesitate and art thou fully steeped in Euripides? That's right! do not falter, my poor heart, and let us risk our head to say what we hold for truth. Courage and boldly to the front. I wonder ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... tailor gown she had bought ready-made at a sale a year ago. She was on her way to the law offices of Calvin Trent, a rare errand indeed and one which, if observed by acquaintances, she knew would even now "make talk;" but she did not falter, nor look to the right or left as she at last entered the dingy doorway and ascended ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... unprepared the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe,—one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy courage falter?" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pause, and then a slightly adverse change, which soon became decidedly ominous. It was as if the flood tide of invasion had already passed the full and the ebb was setting in. Far off, down-stream, at Fort Niagara, the American fire began to falter and gradually grow dumb. But at the British Fort George opposite the guns were served as well as ever, till they had silenced the enemy completely. While this was happening, the main garrison, now free ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... finish. On the morning of his execution, it seemed incredible that Charles I should be beheaded; but he mounted the scaffold, laid his head upon the block, and the masked man lifted his sword and cut it off. All that is left for you is not to falter—to keep down that tremor and sickening of the heart; when Danton of the French Revolution reached the guillotine, he was heard to mutter, "Danton, no weakness!" And many an unrecorded Danton, on the night before his appointed death, has lain down and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... early years, his national hero, Wallace, came to mind, and his struggles against fearful odds, not for selfish ends, but for his country's independence. Did Wallace give up the fight, or ever think of giving up? Never! It was death or victory. Bruce and the spider! Did Bruce falter? Never! Neither would he. "Scots wa hae," "Let us do or die," implanted before his teens, has pulled many a Scottish boy through the crises of life when all was dark, as it will pull others yet to come. Altho Burns and Scott had yet to appear, to crystallise Scotland's characteristics ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... self-sacrifice until our sacred cause is won. Yet think twice, Sidney, before you bind yourself to me. I fear I am not so brave as other women appear to be in these times. My heart shrinks unspeakably from war and bloodshed. Although I shall not falter, I shall suffer agonies of dread. I cannot let you go to danger with stern words and dry eyes. I fear you'll find me too weak to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... alone your base station can alter, Let Beauty, let Liberty, spirit you on, And while fetters and stripes are their portion who falter, Remember that Freedom's the stake ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... the signal cannon, France calls her sons their aid to lend; "Let us go," the soldier cries, "to battle! 'Tis our mother we defend!" To die on Freedom's Altar—to die on Freedom's Altar! 'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter! ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why does she falter in this manner and look at ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... fatal weakness. No one, looking upon his pale, scholarly face, and noting his faultlessly neat apparel, and easy, graceful manners, would have thought of such a thing. Yet he was a—I falter in writing it—a drunkard. At times he drank deeply and madly. When half intoxicated he was almost as brilliant as Hamlet, and as rollicking as Falstaff. It was said that even when fully drunk his splendid intellect ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... my shepherd, and I shall not want. If only we can look into that divine life which has been given as our model, if only we can ponder it, and read in it the lessons, the hopes, the inspirations it contains for us, we shall not be weary of our burdens and cares, we shall not falter in any of life's battles. Rather, rejoicing at our opportunities, eternal as they are, and with feelings of exultant gratitude over our condition, as heirs with Christ to the kingdom of Heaven,(11) we shall bravely welcome all the conflicts of life, being assured with St. Paul that "that which ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... "declare, From whom I sprang and breathe the vital air. Since, from my childhood I have ever been, Amidst my play-mates of superior mien; Should friend or foe demand my father's name, Let not my silence testify my shame! If still concealed, you falter, still delay, A mother's blood shall wash ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... there they prayed, and when the prayer was wrought He charged the young men to uplift and bind her, As ye lift a wild kid, high above the altar, Fierce-huddling forward, fallen, clinging sore To the robe that wrapt her; yea, he bids them hinder The sweet mouth's utterance, the cries that falter, —His curse ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... not falter, but her color changed swiftly, a rosy tide swept over her cheeks, and died away, leaving her pale. Her lips trembled. A palpable, radiant content settled ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... recently, a black man was examined for two days on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and on all that is required by our Book of Government for ordination, and he did not falter once. ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... tunnels, which fortunately no longer stank. So down and down, till the plain appears in sight once more, the Arno valley. But then began the inevitable hitch that always happens in Italian travel. The train began to hesitate—to falter to a halt, whistling shrilly as if in protest: whistling pip-pip-pip in expostulation as it stood forlorn among the fields: then stealing forward again and stealthily making pace, gathering speed, till it had got up a regular spurt: then suddenly the brakes came ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... It were only by mere chance yon varlet could escape coming over some of them. Add this to the fact that yon varlet has got the king's navy after us, and marry! methinks we have full work cut out for us. Not that stout heart should falter, good ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... Death should claim me for her own to-day, And softly I should falter from your side, Oh, tell me, loved one, would my memory stay, And would my image in your heart abide? Or should I be as some forgotten dream, That lives its little space, then fades entire? Should Time send o'er you its relentless stream, To cool your ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... There must be no woman in the camp. Come, monsieur, let us not talk of this longer. Are you ready?" And not waiting for assent, I led the way back to camp without word or look; I even kept myself from putting out a helping hand when I heard the steps behind me falter and almost fall. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... ever, that eloquence and inspiration were his to employ in the healing of the man who has raised himself almost from the dead. But he can only falter something about the inscrutable designs of Providence, and not a sparrow falling to the ground unnoticed. And he expresses, somewhat tritely, the hope that Saxham's friend was prepared to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... And so she bewailed them, as women will even when their hearts are brave and when their devotion is untarnished and undimmed. She yearned for the dawning of the Day of Peace, of the Reign of Love, but her courage did not falter. Still amid her tears she clung to the idea that those whom the Cause calls ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the day, the effect of this last blow was dreadful. The young girl felt her strength give way. Her hands fell powerless, her face became fearfully pale, all her limbs trembled, and sinking upon her knees, and casting a terrified glance at the strait waistcoat she was just able to falter in a feeble voice, "Oh, no:—not that—for pity's sake, madame. I will do—whatever you wish." And, her strength quite failing, she would have fallen upon the ground if the two women had not run towards her, and received her fainting into ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sprang forward to despatch him. But Pizarro was on his feet in an instant, and, striking down two of the foremost with his strong arm, held the rest at bay till his soldiers could come to the rescue. The barbarians, struck with admiration at his valor, began to falter, when Montenegro luckily coming on the ground at the moment, and falling on their rear, completed their confusion; and, abandoning the field, they made the best of their way into the recesses of the mountains. The ground was covered with their slain; but ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... soldier directs her toward a place of safety. But now the rebel lines are within rifle range. Volley after volley is poured into them, and their ranks melt before the terrible fire. In our front they falter; but toward the right they see a chance for victory. They will swing around our flank, and crush us as they did but an hour before. With exultant yells, their left comes sweeping on, wheeling to envelop our right. But now there bursts from the underbrush a blast as if from the pit, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... and swaying and swinging, like blossoms that bend to the breezes or showers, Now wantonly winding, they flash, now they falter, and, lingering, languish in radiant choir; Their jewel-girt arms and warm, wavering, lily-long fingers enchant through melodious hours, Eyes ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... thoughts, and never disturbed her perception or accurate remembrance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own convictions began to falter. A doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures; and after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... afterthoughts shall tempt you to falter; that happen what may in the changing years, you will not hesitate; that though your interests and affections should intervene, you will not suffer them to retard you in your purpose; that no effort, no sacrifice, no privation, no suffering of mind or body shall be spared, if needful, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... tangled undergrowth that lay between us and the sunlight of the field. Here the difficulties of fast travelling increased a hundredfold. There were brambles to dodge, low boughs to dive under, and countless tree trunks closing up to make a direct path impossible. Yet Dr. Silence never seemed to falter or hesitate. He went, diving, jumping, dodging, ducking, but ever in the same main direction, following a clean trail. Twice I tripped and fell, and both times, when I picked myself up again, I saw him ahead ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... at the lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and these thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. "No!" I said to myself. "Neither relations nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and fail in my husband's cause. The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... energetically. Life is a battle to be fought valiantly. Inspired by high and honourable resolve, a man must stand to his post, and die there, if need be. Like the old Danish hero, his determination should be, "to dare nobly, to will strongly, and never to falter in the path of duty." The power of will, be it great or small, which God has given us, is a Divine gift; and we ought neither to let it perish for want of using on the one hand, nor profane it by employing it for ignoble purposes on the other. Robertson, of Brighton, has truly said, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... hundred yards when the pavement began to move unsteadily under them, as the deck of a plunging ship feels to one who runs its length, and the houses they were swiftly passing began visibly to decrease in size. The Very Young Man felt the girl falter in her stride. He dropped her hand and slipped his arm about her waist, holding her other hand against it. She smiled up into his eyes, and thus they ran on, ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... chase the roe, Whose footsteps never falter, Who bring with them, where'er they go, A smack of old SIR WALTER. Of such as he, the men sublime Who lead their troops victorious, Whose deeds go down to after-time, Enshrined in ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... advantage of being ineligible to the Presidential chair, and he did not consequently feel hampered by what he might add in debate to his "record." He was a stalwart, farmer-like looking man, with that overcharged brain which made his tongue at times falter because he could not utter what his furious, fiery eloquence prompted. Entirely different in personal appearance and manner was Senator Pendleton, of Ohio, whose courteous deportment had won him the appellation of "Gentleman George," and who adorned every subject on which he ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... perhaps a quick, almost gasping, "God forgive him!" or a "Lord have mercy!" But as the talk went on he became slowly quieter, his face grew firmer, he sat up in his chair, and at the last he came to bend upon the speaker a look that made him falter confusedly ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... The falter in the words spoke to the tenseness of his suspense. The doctor answered instantly, with more of kindliness than judgment. "Faith, no! It's not so bad as that. But ye'll have to pretend ye are for the present, or, egad, ye will be before ye've done. We brought ye to the Musgraves' shanty. Mrs. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... you must believe; There is one language never can deceive The lover knew it when the maiden smiled; The mother knows it when she clasps her child; Voices may falter, trembling lips turn pale, Words grope and stumble; this will tell their tale Shorn of all rhetoric, bare of all pretence, But radiant, warm, with Nature's eloquence. Look in our eyes! Your welcome waits you there,— North, South, East, West, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... she whispered. "Stumble not nor falter on the way. Thou carriest the Light of all the world, the Hope of every heart ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... them to revolt, when the solemn farce of trying them for a crime which posterity will account a virtue had terminated, and when the verdict of "guilty" had gladdened the hearts of their accusers. The circumstances under which they spoke might well cause a bold man to falter. They were about parting for ever from all that makes life dear to man; and, for some of them, the sentence; which was to cut short the thread of their existence, to consign them to a bloody and ignominious death, to leave their bodies mutilated corpses, from which the rights of Christian ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the multitudinous years Bring forth, and shadow from us all we know. Falter alike great oath and steeled resolve; And none shall say of aught, 'This may not be.' Lo! I myself, but yesterday so strong, As new-dipt steel am weak and all unsexed By yonder woman: yea I mourn for them, Widow and orphan, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... her, Charlie, She must not grieve too much, Our country claims our young lives, For she has need of such. And where is he would falter, Or turn ignobly back, When Duty's voice cries 'Forward,' And ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... have great sons!" we cry. "Just look at the Pitts, the Adamses, the Walpoles, the Beechers, the Booths, the Bellinis, the Disraelis!" and here we begin to falter. And then the opposition takes it up and rattles off a list of great men whose sons were spendthrifts, gamblers, ne'er-do-wells ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... here this evening to tell you something that will alter your opinion of me so effectually that nothing hereafter can reinstate me in your mind." He spoke slowly and deliberately, without tremor or falter. Whatever of struggle lay behind his words, it lay with the past. It was evident as he stood there in the pretty, luxurious room, that he possessed a purpose, and that he held to it without thought ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... ensued the hardest and most stubborn engagement, which had ever been upon the earth. When the sword of the Spirit began to be waved, Belial and his infernal legions began to retreat, and the Pope to falter. The king of France, it is true, held out; yet even he nearly lost heart, for he saw the queen and her subjects united and prosperous, whilst his own ships were sunk, his soldiers slaughtered, and thousands ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... cross that brook. But she kept halting. "Come on!" Neale called. And she moved again. Every time this happened she seemed to be compelled to go on. When she got into the swift water, nearly to her knees, then she might well have faltered. Yet she did not falter. All at once Neale discovered that she was weak. She did not have the strength to come on. It was that which made her slip and halt. What then made her try so bravely? How strange that she tried at all! Stranger than all was her peculiar attitude toward the task —earnest, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... churls, have stript him to the skin, And naked, cold, and shivering plunge him in. Soon he emerges, with scarce breath to say, "I'm to be dip—dip—dipt—." "We know it," they Reply; expostulation seemed in vain, And over ears they souse him in again, And up again he rises, his words trip, And falter as before. Still "dip—dip—dip"— And in again he goes with furious plunge, Once more to rise; when, with a desperate lunge, At length he bolts these words out, "Only once!" The villains crave his pardon. Had the dunce But aimed at ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wonderful. You don't realize all that she has undergone for you; I, myself even, was deceived by her; she was her own accuser, yet all the time was innocent. Only one moment did she falter; but darting a rapid glance at Jules, she suddenly rallied, a blush took the place of pallor on her countenance, and we felt that she had saved her lover; in spite of the risk she was running, she repeated once more before all those people the story of her own disgrace, and then ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... memory—he had been false to the very principles to which he had appealed at their farewell interview. She had set him the right example, the example which he was determined to follow, in leaving the place. Before he could falter in his resolution, he gave notice of his departure. The one hope for him now was to find a refuge from himself in acts of mercy. Consolation was perhaps waiting for ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... to defy what Lord Rosebery once called 'the body-snatchers of history, who dig up dead reputations for malignant dissection.' If only that he imparted, in a black time, when it appeared but too likely that the Alliance might falter and succumb from mere sick-headache, his own defying, ardent, and invincible spirit to a tired, puzzled, distracted and distrustful nation; if only that he dispelled the vapours, inspired a new hope and resolution, brought ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... battle, he began the march. The division numbered about 3,000, a portion of it being still at Wilson's Landing, Fort Powhatan, City Point and Bermuda Hundreds. This was a march that veterans might falter in, without criticism or censure. The steady black line advanced a few rods at a time, when coming within range of the confederate guns they were obliged to lie down and wait for another opportunity. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... had left Cherry Court School, having given all possible directions for his little girl's comfort and well-being, and had gone away sorely broken down, crushed to the earth himself, but leaving Kitty with a courage which did not falter during the days which were to come. For the Major knew that, strong as he was, he was going to a part of India where brave men as strong as he are stricken down year after year by the unhealthy climate, and three years even at the best was a long time to ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... were just breathed, but they did not falter. Mutely, with parted lips, she seemed to search ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fainted? She recommended hard study—thinks me idle, worthless; she has a grave intelligence, a serious estimation of life; she thinks me intrinsically of the value of a summer fly. But why did she say, 'We change countries,' and immediately flush, break and falter, lose command of her English, grow pale and swoon; why? With this question my disastrous big heart came thundering up to the closed doors of-comprehension. It was unanswerable. 'We change countries.' That is, she and Miss Sibley change countries, because the English woman marries ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... something has happened—something, my child, that will affect your whole life." With a falter in her voice the woman continued, "You are to leave me, Evelyne, and go out to New Zealand. You are needed in ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... these, it was obvious that Nan should pursue but one course—that is, leave Port Agnew unannounced and endeavor to hide herself where Donald McKaye would never find her. In this high resolve, once taken, she did not falter; she even declined to risk rousing the suspicions of the townspeople by appearing at the general store to purchase badly needed articles of clothing for herself and her child. She resolved to leave Port Agnew in ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... still stretches and nods beyond the turn. It is so dark here on a winter's morning when the nursery door is shut that even an adventuring sunlight, if it chanced to clamber through the window, would blink and falter in the hazard of these turns. But the sun has sent a substitute better than himself: for is there not a shaft of light along the floor? It can hardly fall from the window or anywhere ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... If her horse should hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged straight into the blinding blast that swept ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... the lack of fine array Best fits a sacrificial altar; Her man to-morrow joins the fray, And yet she does not falter; Simple her gown, but still we see The bride ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... raising his fist threateningly at Phyllis. Mollie cried out at the thought of possible hurt to her friend, but Phyllis did not falter. She gazed up at the burly sailor with a look of such intense scorn, mingled with defiance, that he dropped his hand to his side and said sneeringly: "Come back to my shanty boat, then. I will settle with ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... Therefore I sat gently by her, leaving nature, as it were, to her own good time and will. And presently the glance that watched me, as at distance and in doubt, began to flutter and to brighten, and to deepen into kindness, then to beam with trust and love, and then with gathering tears to falter, and in shame to turn away. But the small entreating hands found their way, as if by instinct, to my great projecting palms; and trembled there, and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... hand to depend upon, to look to. It is true that in case of real danger none such could be a real protection,—and yet not so neither, for strength and decision can live and make live where a moment's faltering will kill, and weakness must often falter of necessity. "All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth" to his people; she thought of that, and yet she feared, for his ways are often what we do not like. A few moments of sick-heartedness and trembling,—and then Fleda ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... charming to hear great names mentioned familiarly by one personally acquainted with them; to learn that Palmerston and Lord John can breakfast like ordinary mortals. By and by, with a blush and a falter (for the mere matter of his personal provision for life seemed so paltry among these world-famed characters and their great deeds, that he was almost ashamed to allude to it), Robert Wynn ventured to make his request, that the hon. member for C—— ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... sometimes they fall— The words that burn and falter; And is it true they too must fade Upon Love's ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... reading his face, would momentarily falter in her gay talk, only to begin again with renewed vivacity. On one topic, however, she had no difficulty in holding Barry's attention. It was when she told of the organising and despatching of the American Red Cross units to France, and more especially ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... my own mind, I could be no longer at any loss for an explanation of her behavior in the meadow by the stream, or of that unnaturally gloomy, downcast look which overspread her face when her father's pursuits were the subject of conversation. Did I falter in my resolution to marry her, now that I had discovered what the obstacle was which had made mystery and wretchedness between us? Certainly not. I was above all prejudices. I was the least particular of mankind. I had no family affection in my way—and, greatest fact of all, I was in love. ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... returning late from a lodge meeting which had wound up with a little supper in the banquet hall, felt a queer stir through his members to see the Higgins place alter its usually placid countenance, falter, turn half round, and get down on its knees with an apparently disastrous collapse of its four walls and of everything within them. The short wide windows narrowed and lengthened with an effect of bodily agony as the ribs of the place were snapped off short all round ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... began. He knew why she suffered, what made her young strength falter and tremble, what made her life seem nigh about to be quenched in death. Yet he could not take his sorrow and care in the natural manner. He was obliged to think how every word and deed would be construed. ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... before I could overcome my surprise enough to falter out, "You know my language? How? Who ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... little falter in his voice. Could he have pleaded better in a thousand fine speeches, he who had seen his men wither about him on the Somme, than by that little timorous quaver in his voice? "Joan, I have something to ask of you to-night. I meant to ask it during a dance, when ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... such an one as in any sense a commonplace being! Imagine him rather, as he must have been, the most notable courtier of the Court—the most perfect gentleman who stood in the Elizabethan throng—the man in whose presence divines would falter and hesitate lest their knowledge of the Book should seem poor by the side of his, and at whom even queenly royalty would look askance, with an oppressive sense that here was one to whose omnipotent and true imagination the hearts of kings and queens and peoples had ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... work was rectified, and Rose Anstey blew her nose and looked disagreeable, and some of them talked; so that presently all became more animated, and the sky lightened, and the day was less trying. Only Sally's head continued to ache, and her spirits to falter. But she no longer sighed for Toby. A curious dread of him came into her consciousness, which she could not understand. She was afraid. She felt defensive towards him, and explanatory. Under her attention all sorts of impulses were at work. Pictures of Toby in different circumstances ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... and shiny snap-shot journals with a surfeit of pictures in them; or the Real Lady, or the Ladylike Lady, or the Titled Lady, the portraits of whom—one or other of them—sweep in curves about their folio pages; and, while they fascinate you, make you feel that you would falter on the threshold of matrimony if only because they couldn't possibly take nourishment. Would not the discomfort of meals eaten with a companion who could swallow nothing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... in silence, his face grim and sardonic; and when from very weariness the flow of her inspired oratory began to falter, he would ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... fellow-creatures, who, like themselves, are accountable beings, and with the same capacity for enjoyment or suffering. Indeed, none of us are always happy. We all have our hours of trial, when even the strongest-hearted will falter, and the dreamless slumber of the grave seem so sweet to our world-weary spirits. When it seems so hard to say, "Thy will be done," perhaps Death enters and robs us of some earthly idol. We see the dear one droop and die. It may be some dear, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... the Indians maneuvered their long canoes down close to the opposite shore with venturous tourists, but it was only a film of water that wound, bubbling, near the land. With the deep-throated rumble only half a mile away, Belding felt his pulse falter for a second, then pound viciously on. And in that second, with the bravado of early manhood, he threw discretion overboard, and set the slim bow of his Peterboro' for the middle span. Twenty seconds, later he knew that he was about to ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... not turn to answer, neither did she falter in going. Departure was the one thing of which she was capable,—and what could have hindered her going? What checks Vesuvius, when the flood says, "Lo, I come!"? Or shall the little bird that perches and sings on a post in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the River! Cold snow upon the mountains, The Lotus leaves turned yellow And the water very grey. Our kisses faint and falter, The clinging hands unfasten, The golden time is over And our ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... she put hers into them. Slowly I backed between the two big trees, our eyes held as two charmed beings. Everything about me called to her, everything in her urged compliance; and I knew, as did she, that something strange was happening. Yet when I halted she did not falter, but came on, bravely, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... disputes was submitted so unexpectedly to the fierce test of Right versus Expediency. And how splendidly did President, Senator, Congress and the People respond to the test! Never for one instant did America's clear judgment falter. The Hun was guilty, and must be punished. The only issue to be solved was whether France, Britain, Italy and Russia should convict and brand the felon unaided, or the mighty power of the Western World should join hands with the avengers of outraged law. Well, a purblind Germany settled that ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... to the end upon remorse. I must falter alone in my self-made course. I must stagger alone with my self-made cross. For I bartered my graces for silks and laces My heart I sold for a pot ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... murmurs at no misfortune. From every blow of evil she recovers with a gentle patience that is infinitely pathetic. Passionate and acutely sensitive, she yet seems never to think of antagonising her affliction or to falter in her unconscious fortitude. She has no reproach—but only a grieved submission—for the husband who has wronged her by his suspicions and has doomed her to death. She thinks only of him, not of herself, when she beholds him, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... friend," said he "are you sure not to falter, but to go vigorously to work, to serve the queen bravely, and give her such joys in her castle of Gallardin that she may hold on for ever to this master staff, like a drowning ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... told him, he argued that the inventor must have left his instrument with some of his subordinates, probably Black and Stanton, and relied upon them to protect it; and it stung him to think that the American should believe a German officer would falter at such odds—a couple of electricians, mere ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... for the pill, and to let the marriage go on as if there was no such person as Mr. Podgers in the world. His better nature, however, soon asserted itself, and even when Sybil flung herself weeping into his arms, he did not falter. The beauty that stirred his senses had touched his conscience also. He felt that to wreck so fair a life for the sake of a few months' pleasure would be ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... burden high in the air, holding it in his strong talons; and he did not falter once in his steady flight, although the load weighed nearly as much as he did, and he carried it two miles ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... an empire for liberty, and I can look onward," he cried in a burst of inspired eloquence, sweeping his arm to the northward toward the forests on the far side of the Ohio, "I can look onward to the day when these lands will be filled with the cities of a Great Republic. And who among you will falter at such ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had identified himself so thoroughly with the League that he couldn't easily withdraw, and Mirabelle still held his note. Of course, if the League could furnish him with a stepping-stone to the Mayoralty, or the presidency of Council, Mr. Mix didn't care to withdraw from it anyway; nor would he falter in his allegiance as long as he had a chance at an heiress. He wished that Henry would show fight, but Henry hadn't even joined the Exhibitors Association. It was so much easier to fight when the other fellow offered resistance. Henry merely smiled; ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... is all over." And then she said a little wildly, "I have done my duty, Raby; I have broken his heart and my own;" but even as she spoke, Raby took her in his arms and low words of blessings seemed to falter on his lips. "My brave sister, but I never doubted for a moment that you would do the right thing. And now be comforted; the same Divine Providence that has exacted this ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Came to the gates of sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter yes, Shaken with happiness: The gates of ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... and I knew that he was good for an hour. I hesitated. The vista of the street ahead brought more attraction to my eye than the indication of the perfume-factory to my nose. But there would still be time for the street, and in the acquisition of knowledge one must not falter. I knew only that perfumes were made from flowers. But so was honey! What was the difference in the process? Visiting perfumeries is evidently "the thing to do" in Grasse. For I was greeted cordially, and given immediately a guide, who assured ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... This was what had occurred to him at school, and he had liked it immensely. Warrender had been a word to conjure withal, named by lower boys with awe, fondly cherished in the records of Sixth Form. But the glimmer in the Head Master's eye as he said good-bye, the little falter in his tutor's voice,—did these mean no more than an appreciation of his progress, and an anticipation of the honour and glory he was to bring them at the university, a name to fling in the teeth of the newspaper ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... prayer deep in his heart, though he may not realize to whom he prays. There was never more occasion for one than to-night, Rose. I know that the Great Healer is nearer to you than to me. Ask Him that my hand may not falter." ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Confederate works through a long black spy-glass. A great laugh went up and down the lines as this cool procedure was observed, and then a cheer of applause ran from group to group. For a moment it was doubtful that the balloon would float in either direction; it seemed to falter, like an irresolute being, and moved reluctantly southeastward, towards Fortress Monroe. A huzza, half uttered, quivered on every lip. All eyes glistened, and some were dim with tears of joy. But the wayward ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... nature, and though no one could imagine the means he might be endowed with for protection against the arms of man—Henry, as we said, strode firmly forward with unflinching resolution. His heart was set on recovering the happiness of his sister, and he would not falter. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... masterful climb. But at last he halted; and then, a moment later, he climbed desperately. The girl on the ground saw him falter, and knew that he was becoming faint-hearted. To encourage him, she lifted a voice broken ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... establish them as an Affiliated Species ... and that would settle everything the way they would want it settled, without trouble. Some of them believed me. They decided to wait until I could talk to you. If it works out, fine! If it doesn't"—she felt her voice falter for an instant—"they're going to cut ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... wanting some one at hand to depend upon, to look to. It is true that in case of real danger none such could be a real protection,—and yet not so neither, for strength and decision can live and make live where a moment's faltering will kill, and weakness must often falter of necessity. "All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth" to his people; she thought of that, and yet she feared, for his ways are often what we do not like. A few moments of sick-heartedness and trembling,—and then Fleda mentally folded her arms about ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... uncle, in a tone of disappointment that made her falter, as she added, 'I think so.' At the same time the stranger turned the paper round, and she knew it for the cheque that had so long resided in her desk, but with dilated eyes, she exclaimed, 'But—but— that ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dare I, ask the question Which my heart has asked before? Then I falter, "Can you love me, Darling?" I can ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... he waits upon me like a maid, Silent with watchful eyes. Oh, would to Heaven, He used me like a slave bought in the market! Yes, used me roughly! So, I were his own; And words of tenderness would falter in, Relenting from the sternness of command. But I am not enough for him: he needs Some high-entranced maiden, ever pure, And thronged with burning thoughts of God and him. So, as he loves me not, his deeds for me Lie on me like a sepulchre ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... little pause Jane West came out from the opposite wing, walking slowly, dressed in her green gown, jewels on her neck and in her hair. She did not look toward the audience at all, nor bow, nor smile, and for some reason the applause began to falter as though the sensitive mind of the crowd was already aware that here something must be wrong. She came very slowly, her arms hanging, her head bent, her eyes looking up from under her brows, and she stood beside Prosper ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... breath was coming more and more laboured. It seemed to Dan's dim consciousness that some of the spring was gone from that glorious stride which swept on and on with the slightest undulation, like a swallow skimming before the wind; but so long as strength remained he knew that Satan would never falter in his pace. As the delirium swept once more shadow-like on his brain, he allowed himself to fall forward, and wound his fingers as closely as possible in the thick mane. His left arm jerked horribly against the bonds. Black night ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... he ran; that he was merely demented. But, in fact, he headed straight for the ridge, not turning his head. Twice Glass called after him; then, in a sudden fury, whipped out a pistol and fired. For the moment I supposed that he had missed, for the man ran for another six strides without seeming to falter, then his knees weakened, and he pitched ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... reached the edge of the tracks, thought of Emily and a terrible consciousness of the sorrow she would feel if anything were to happen to him compressed his heart. But he did not falter. He was aware of the jangle of a fiercely rung bell, the hiss of steam, and a blinding glare; he could feel on his cheek the breath of the iron monster. With set teeth he threw himself forward, stooped, and reached out over the rail: in another instant he had tossed the child ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... the magnificence of his train. At the siege of Illora, 1486, he obtained permission to lead the storming party. As his followers pressed onwards to the breach, they were received with such a shower of missiles as made them falter for a moment. "What, my men," cried he, "do you fail me at this hour? Shall we be taunted with bearing more finery on our backs than courage in our hearts? Let us not, in God's name, be laughed at as mere holyday soldiers!" ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... him freedom and a chance for life. The Duke also heard the sound, and instantly guessed its meaning. "Dog!" he exclaimed to Ewan as he landed, "where is your prisoner?" and, without waiting to hear the apology which the terrified vassal began to falter forth, he fired a pistol at his head, whether fatally I know not, and exclaimed, "Gentlemen, disperse and pursue the villain—An hundred guineas for him ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the still small voice, that said "beware and forbear." Her principles were good, but they were not strong enough to hold their own. O pride of the Tresilyans! that had tempted to sin so many of that haughty house, when you might have saved its fairest descendant, was it the time to falter and fail? She looked up piteously in her great extremity; there was a prayer for help in her eyes, but between them and heaven was interposed a stern bronze face, not a ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the flakes of snow The last moments falter and go; The time-angel sent this way Sweeps them like a drift away: O, for ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... did the French troops falter under fire; nor did the Germans, for that matter. Never was there greater bravery, loyalty and devotion. Called upon for tasks that seemed well nigh impossible, the men did not hesitate. They met death in such numbers as ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... verse was a reproduction of Mrs. Abel's rendering, spoken in a voice not unlike hers, and with scarcely the falter of a syllable. It was followed by a few seconds of incoherent babble, at the end of which tremors again broke out over Snarley's body; he swayed to and fro, and his head fell forward on his chest. "Catch hold of him, or he'll fall," cried somebody. Then a medley of voices—"Give ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... rapidly. The Tory Party, largely, I believe, through political considerations, had unalterably taken sides with Ulster. The Liberal Party were irresolute, wavering, pusillanimous. Mr Redmond's followers began to be uneasy—they commenced to falter in their blind faith that they had only to trust Asquith and ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... soldierly leave-taking, and then Marcus was hurrying forward with his guide, who began at once to falter out hurriedly his apologies for his ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... cost of developing infrastructure. Agriculture provides a subsistence livelihood for 85% of the population. Mineral deposits, including oil, copper, and gold, account for 72% of export earnings. The economy has declined over the past two years and will probably continue to falter in 2002. Prime Minister Mekere MORAUTA has tried to restore integrity to state institutions, stabilize the kina, restore stability to the national budget, privatize public enterprises where appropriate, and ensure ongoing peace on Bougainville. The government has had considerable ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... third revolt against her authority; and it remains to be seen how the Church of Rome will deal with it. Will she now adopt half measures? Will she now falter and draw back,—she that never before feared enemy or spared foe? Will that Church that quenched in blood the Protestantism of the Waldenses,—that put down the Reformation in France by one terrible blow,—that by the help of dungeons and racks banished the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... had made up her mind to confront Thane with this official communication. It was an ordeal she dreaded. Her true reason for refusing to see him was clear to her if to no one else: she hated the thought of hurting him! Moreover, she was strangely oppressed by the fear that she would falter at the crucial moment and that her half-guarded defences would go down before the assault. She knew his strength far better than she knew his weakness. She had had an illuminating example of his power. Was she any stronger now ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... and alone before the assembled powers of the earth, with only the grace of God and his cause on which to lean, had demand made of him whether or not he would retract his books or any part of them, Yes or No. But he did not shrink, neither did he falter. "Since Your Imperial Majesty and Your Excellencies require of me a direct and simple answer, I will give it. To the pope or councils I cannot submit my faith, for it is clear that they have erred and contradicted one another. Therefore, unless I am convinced by proofs from Holy Scripture ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day. This court was not created by the Constitution for such purposes. Higher and graver trusts have been confided to it, and it must not falter in ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... noise of our footsteps should drown any portion of the delightful sound: He was almost angry with me because I did not experience the impressions he did. So powerful was the effect produced upon him by the sound of these bells that his voice would falter as he said, "Ah! that reminds me of the first years I spent at Brienne! I was then happy!" When the bells ceased he would resume the course of his speculations, carry himself into futurity, place a crown on his head; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... how Her fate I have fixed? Far from your side Shall the faithless sister be sundered; Her horse no more In your midst through the breezes shall haste her; Her flower of maidenhood Will falter and fade; A husband will win Her womanly heart, She meekly will bend To the mastering man The hearth she'll heed, as she spins, And to laughers is left ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... witness that I have died without a falter, grasping a burning spear, to tilt at the malpractice which has sent me mad!' And I saw that he held in his fast-consuming hand a long roll of journals sharpened to a point ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... did not even falter when he reached Schroeder's corner. He marched straight on, looking steadily ahead, the heavy bags swinging from either hand. Even if he had stopped—though she knew he wouldn't—Terry Platt would not have seen him. She remained seated at the disordered ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... detecting him in the midst of his fancied security. Do you know this, Sir, this pocket-book?'—'Yes, Sir,' returned he, with a face of impenetrable assurance, 'that pocket-book is mine, and I am glad you have found it.'—'And do you know,' cried I, 'this letter? Nay, never falter man; but look me full in the face: I say, do you know this letter?'—'That letter,' returned he, 'yes, it was I that wrote that letter.'—'And how could you,' said I, 'so basely, so ungratefully presume to write this letter?'—'And how came you,' replied he, with looks of unparallelled ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... threatened peril; and, as he bore her away from the scene of conflict, Jyanough again closed on the villain, and the deadly struggle was resumed. It was brief, but awful. The strength of Coubitant was becoming exhausted—his grasp began to loosen, and his foot to falter. ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... lucky chance her senses came back to her so that she could grasp one of the wires. Hand over hand she was able to pull herself slowly to the nearest pole, where she rested before again making the trial. This time she did not falter, but when she was picked up by the rescuers at the farthest pole toward safety she was limp from nervous ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... neither demand nor expect any sort of gratitude," I said; "you shall repay the money when convenient, and . . ." "Awfully good of you," he muttered without looking up. I watched him narrowly: the future must have appeared horribly uncertain to him; but he did not falter, as though indeed there had been nothing wrong with his heart. I felt angry—not for the first time that night. "The whole wretched business," I said, "is bitter enough, I should think, for a man of your kind . . ." "It is, it is," he whispered twice, with his eyes fixed on the floor. It was ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... expressed some doubts as to the truth of his own teaching and intimated the possibility of some life beyond the grave. This was the only public occasion of which I have any knowledge in which Robert G. Ingersoll seemed to falter ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... the door will be shut; I concede nothing. But I say that I will maintain for them, as I will maintain for you, to the utmost of my power, and in the face of all danger, their rights under the Constitution, and your rights under the Constitution. And I shall never be found to falter in one or the other. It is obvious to every one, and we all know it, that the origin of the great disturbance which agitates the country is the existence of slavery in some of the States; but we must meet the subject; we must consider ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... she repeated; "I need no witnesses—there will be enough of them soon. Mr. Glasscott," she continued, closing the door, "hear me, while I am able to bear testimony, lest weakness—woman's weakness—overcome me, and I falter in the truth. In the broom-sellers' cottage, across the common, on the left side of the chimney, concealed by a large flat stone, is a hole—a den; there much of the property taken from Sir Thomas Purcel's last night ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... reinforcements had made their presence felt, was watching the progress of the action on the left. Suddenly, to his astonishment and wrath, he saw the lines of his old brigade falter and fall back. Galloping to the spot he imperatively ordered Garnett to hold his ground, and then turned to restore the fight. Seizing a drummer by the shoulder, he dragged him to a rise of ground, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... code, and justifying all the trouble she gave to others by a reference to the impalpable, elusive and possible non-existent immortal and inner self she had held so dear. She was ashamed. Ah, now at last she would give ungrudgingly. Her feet should not falter, nor her eyes be dimmed by any shadow of fear or of regret, though she went by perilous ways ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... oppressors. Here, without contemplating consequences, before high heaven and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... to the gleaming Waste of the water without, waste of the water within, Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward Heaven, as eastward quicken ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... voice rang confidently. None of the halting weakness remained that had made it falter once when Mardonius asked him, "Will your Hellenes fight?" He spoke as might one returned crowned with ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... forward; nor did he pause or falter at the thought of the dangers he would encounter in the burning building, but ran rapidly up the steps and plunged into the dense cloud of smoke and the ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... modestly Angus repeated the above story, not once did he falter or trip. He showed me the letter from his uncle, he pointed out the condition of his eyes and the scars on his face; with some demur he accepted my half-crown, saying that he did not ask for anything, and that all he wanted was to get ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... lack of fine array Best fits a sacrificial altar; Her man to-morrow joins the fray, And yet she does not falter; Simple her gown, but still we see The bride in ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... was particularly appalled by his consciousness that he was not going to falter. "What, you who have been duke and prince and king and emperor and pope! and do such dignities content a Jurgen? Why, not at ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... I would say—take the worst sinks of intemperance in the city, give them the sanction of the Law, and let them run to overflowing. But shut up the gilded apartments where youth takes its first draught, and respectability just begins to falter from its level. Close the ample doors through which enters the long train of those who stumble to destruction and reel into quick graves, and let the flood overwhelm only the maimed and battered conscripts that remain. Besides, it is better to see vice as it really is, than ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... have once known plenteousness. To them the wind of adversity blows with tenfold keenness, and the crust of want seems peculiarly unpalatable. They are reluctant, not to say "ashamed, to beg." The blushes of an instinctive sensibility suffuse their countenances, and petitions for assistance falter on their tongues. They have to contend not only with the afflictions of poverty, but with all the timidity which a consciousness of degradation superinduces. In many cases of this description, persons of eminent worth have ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... positively determined to keep his eyes and heart as close shut as his pocket, without bringing back something to remember to the end of his days—something to make his eyes grow dim when he meditates on it, his lips tremble when he speaks of it, his hand falter when he writes of it. For in this system of traveling he is forced, while in a mood of mind highly susceptible of impressions, into contact with all sorts of characters and incidents; and if he has a spark of nature in him, it must ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... George sent the whole pile flying. Let him wander blindly in the dust of imaginings rather than be tortured by the grim austerity of ordered facts. More than this, there was one most comfortable memory to which he desperately clung—that falter in her voice when she had said "You understand?" Whenever, during that evening, doubt stirred and bade him recognise himself for a fool, George flattened the ugly spectre with the arm he contrived ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... never stopped. It did not seem steep. His feet might have had eyes. He surmounted the wall, and, looking down into the ebony gulf pierced by one point of light, he lifted a menacing arm and shook it. Then he strode on and did not falter till he reached the huge shelving cliffs. Here he lost the trail; there was none; but he remembered the shapes, the points, the notches of rock above. Before he reached the ruins of splintered ramparts and jumbles of broken walls the moon topped the eastern slope of the mountain, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... happens, they hesitate for a moment, look at her and then decide to disobey her command, she should follow them up, still calling on them to come to her, but now in a severer tone, and the disobedient ones will generally falter and take refuge in any available place. Then is the time to punish them with a few sharp cuts of whip or cane. There will be no howling, as the pups know very well that they have transgressed, and will show it on the way ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... pulses' measure Keeps its even tenor still; Eye and hand nor fail nor falter, And the brain obeys the will; Only by the whitening tresses, And the deepening wrinkles told, Youth has passed away like vapor; Prime is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... Does any falter? Let him turn To some brave maiden's eyes, And catch the holy fires that burn In those sublunar skies. Oh, could you like your women feel, And in their spirit march, A day might see your lines of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the chervil. Art thou sensible of the dangerous battle we are about to engage upon in defending the Lacedaemonians? Courage, my soul, we must plunge into the midst of it. Dost thou hesitate and art thou fully steeped in Euripides? That's right! do not falter, my poor heart, and let us risk our head to say what we hold for truth. Courage and boldly to the front. I wonder ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... that disgrace our cities, and its low tone on all questions affecting good order and morals. In my view the choice is as plain as the sunlight of heaven in favor of the Republican party. It may falter for a time in meeting new questions, it may be disturbed by passing clouds, and, like all human agents, may yield to expediency or be tarnished with the corruption and faults of individuals, yet it is ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... rolled over into the ditch, and Siegfried was covered by the folds of his huge body. He did not fear or falter. He thrust Balmung, his wonderful sword, deep into the monster's body. The blood poured forth in such torrents that the ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... Stoddard, a young man of North Brookfield, went down, the very last of June, last year, and purchased three calves of Mr. Chenery, of Belmont. He brought these calves up in the cars to Brookfield. On their way from the depot to his house, about five miles, one of the calves was observed to falter, and when he got to his house, it seemed to be sick, and in two or three days exhibited very great illness; so much so, that his father came along, and, thinking he could take better care of it, took the calf home. He took it to his own barn, in which there were about forty head of cattle; ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... his packs ready and Kintuck saddled when Mrs. Reynolds called him to breakfast. Cora's pale face and piteous eyes moved him more deeply than her sobbing the night before, but there was a certain inexorable fixedness in his resolution, and he did not falter. At bottom the deciding cause was Mary. She had passed out of his life, but no other woman could take her place—therefore he was ready to cut ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the Historical Society. I felt so much misgiving about reading it before the large assemblage at the State House, that I had arranged with a literary and legal friend to put it in his hands the moment I began to falter. For this purpose he occupied the secretary's desk; but I found myself sufficiently collected to go on and read it through, not quite loud enough for all, but in a manner, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... boat were full of nerve. Not once did they falter while shells and shot whistled and burst over their heads, beyond them and ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... thought, "thou art too weak To try the Kills and drown, or falter, The while from shore their marksmen seek My heart. (Once o'er the Chesapeake I paddled oarless.) Lest the halter Be mine, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the heart of his force. Christophe had fits of despair, transports rather. He would be quite calm, trying to read, or walking: suddenly he would see Olivier's smile, his tired, gentle face.... It would tug at his heart.... He would falter, lay his hand on his breast, and moan. One day he was at the piano playing a passage from Beethoven with his old zest.... Suddenly he stopped, flung himself on the ground, buried his face in the cushions ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... that dear voice so musically low, And now first heard with any sense of pain, As it had taken life away before, Choked all the syllables that in my throat Strove to uprise, laden with mournful thanks, From my full heart: and ever since that hour, My voice hath somewhat falter'd—and what wonder That when hope died, part of her eloquence Died with her? He, the blissful lover, too, From his great hoard of happiness distill'd Some drops of solace; like a vain rich man, That, having always prosper'd in the world, Folding his hands deals comfortable words To hearts ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... destruction might not be delayed! What violence can such a one plead, how can he purge his crime, when it was he himself who rather used force that he might perish? When they came voluntarily to the capitol—when they freely approached to the obedience of the terrible wickedness—did not their tread falter, did not their sight darken, their hearts tremble, their arms fall helplessly down, their senses become dull, their tongues cleave to their mouths, their speech fail? Could the servant of God stand there, he who had already renounced the devil and the world, and speak and renounce Christ? Was ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... of the party which they befriend, but they add enormously to its moral strength, that is, to its confidence and courage. Men have a sort of instinctive respect and fear for constituted authorities of any kind, and, though often willing to plot against them, are still very apt to falter and fall back when the time comes for the actual collision. The feeling that, after all, they are in the wrong in fighting against the government of their country, weakens them extremely, and makes them ready ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... learn to draw the statue with increasing accuracy. In taking this Divine Man as your example, you pledge yourself to imitate One whom you can ever approach but never reach. And yet there is no occasion for the weakest to falter before this infinite requirement, for God himself in spirit is present everywhere to aid all in regaining the lost image of himself. It is to no lonely unguided effort that I urge you, Egbert, but to a patient co-working with your Maker, that you may attain a character that will fit you to dwell ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... brutish man. Sickness fell upon him at the image thus called up; and when he compared it with the scene in which himself was acting, and considered the doom that seemed to brood upon the schooner, a horror that was almost superstitious fell upon him. And yet the strange thing was, he did not falter. He who had proved his incapacity in so many fields, being now falsely placed amid duties which he did not understand, without help, and it might be said without countenance, had hitherto surpassed expectation; and even the shameful misconduct and shocking disclosures ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement had lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their idea-content no ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... few minutes; but it seemed like an hour to the watchers, for Peggy's face grew more and more agonised, she seemed on the verge of suffocation, and could neither speak nor endure anyone to approach within yards of her mad career. Presently, however, she began to falter, to draw her breath in longer gasps, and as she did so there emerged from her lips a series of loud whooping sounds, like the crowing of a cock, or the noise made by a child in the convulsions of whooping-cough. The air was making ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... looking up at him fearfully, but her voice did not falter. "I came to tell you that Derry loves you. He doesn't want your money, oh, you know that he doesn't want it. But he is going away to the—war, and he may be killed, so many ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... and mother, The maid with sweetheart dear, Lest those they love should falter Hold back the ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... destructive fire with repeating carbines; and at the same time the batteries of horse-artillery, under Captain Robinson, joining in the contest, belched forth shot and shell with fatal effect. The galling fire caused the enemy to falter, and while still wavering Wilson rallied his men, and turning some of them against the right flank of the Confederates, broke their line, and compelled them to withdraw for security behind the heavy works thrown up for the defense of the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... the rest of it? Suppose I, with nothing but such sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine and those papers which you have about you, and which I want and mean to have: suppose I, with the prize within my grasp, were to falter and sneak away with my hands empty; or, what would be worse, cover up my weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and sparing you the violence I dared not use, would you not despise me from the depths of your woman's soul? Would any woman be such a fool? Well, Bonaparte ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... his seat with a faint cry of joy, and taking her hand bent over it with old-fashioned grace and kissed it. His fingers were as cold as ice, and his lips burned like fire, but Virginia did not falter, as he led her across the dusky room. On the faded green tapestry were broidered little huntsmen. They blew their tasselled horns and with their tiny hands waved to her to go back. "Go back! little Virginia," they cried, "go back!" ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... clothing. Many of the bravest warriors had found death at the foot of the ramparts: most of those who had mounted on the rolling towers were hors de combat; the remainder, covered with sweat and dust, overwhelmed with heat and the weight of their armour, began to falter. The Saracens who perceived this raised cries of joy. In their blasphemies they reproached the Christians for adoring a God who was unable to defend them. The assailants deplored their loss, and believing themselves abandoned by Jesus ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... lost nothing, Bernard, compared to the love I have gained. Only never let that swerve or falter, and I shall be the happiest wife that ever God ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... the moving years; Youth's colour dies, the fervid morning glow Is gone from off the foreland; slow, slow, Even slower than the fount of human tears To empty, the consuming shadow nears That Time is casting on the worldly show Of pomp and glory. But falter not;—below That thought is based ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... detachments, and he wondered why War Department Circular 105, which provided for the assignment of men to critically needed specialties, explicitly excluded Negroes.[7-5] He wanted the circular revised. Above all, Petersen feared the new policy might falter from a lack of aggressive leadership. He estimated that at first it would require at least the full attention of several officers under the leadership of an "aggressive officer who knows the Army and has its confidence and will take an ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... to humanity it is a wrong; to say that such and such an one was sent by the All Wise, and must therefore be not merely permitted, but elaborately coaxed and forced, to live, is to utter a blasphemy against Man at which even the ribald tongue of a priest might falter; and as a matter of fact, society, in just contempt for this species of argument, never hesitates to hang, for its own imagined good, its heaven-sent catholics, protestants, sheep, sheep-stealers, etc. What then, you ask, would I do with these unholy ones? To ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... Callender's, and saw by the light that the family were sitting together in the front basement, his heart failed him, and he walked past the house and as far as the next corner, where his Fate, his Daemon, his blind impulsion, turned him back, and he did not falter again until he had rung the door-bell; and then it was too ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... pained to see the revengeful trend of the Indian's thought. The hints of the evil intention of the Potlatch troubled him, but his faith in the old chief and the influence of his own integrity did not falter. ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not faltered then.) "I did not falter then. I will not do so now, though this time is harder than the first." (It certainly was.) "You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others have gone come back through the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... feel a tide "Of strong Eternity set towards my soul; "And tho' she loves me, yet am I content "To know she loves me by the hour—the year— "Perchance the second—as all women love." The bright axe falter'd in the air, and ripp'd Down the rough bark, and bit the drifted snow, For Max's arm fell, wither'd in its strength, 'Long by his side. "Your Kate," he said; "your Kate!" "Yes, mine, while holds ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... burn, they close and nestle yet, Ere, with faint breath, they falter out good-night, Her hand in his upon the coverlet Lies in the silver pathway ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave Hangs heavy round ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... eve in dewy spring A bard became her father's guest: He struck his harp, and every string To love vibrated in her breast. With that true faith which can not falter, Her hand was given at the alter, And faithful was the heart he brought her To wedlock and ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... motions of the mind: neither are tears, affections, but actions (as Scaliger holds) [2675]"the voice of such as are afraid, trembles, because the heart is shaken" (Conimb. prob. 6. sec. 3. de som.) why they stutter or falter in their speech, Mercurialis and Montaltus, cap. 17. give like reasons out of Hippocrates, [2676]"dryness, which makes the nerves of the tongue torpid." Fast speaking (which is a symptom of some ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Daumon, concealed behind the window curtain, had watched his approach, and it was with the same air of deference that he had welcomed the Marquis, as he took care to call him; but he affected to be so overcome by the honor of this visit that he could only falter out,— ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... alarmed me for your health. In one of your pleasantest stories, while you were acting the narrative with a liveliness evidently unconscious, and giving me and mine a treat which we have not had for a long time, I observed your voice falter, as if some spasm of soul had shot across you; and I unquestionably saw, that rare sight in the eyes of man, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... master of oneself it is enough to think that one is becoming so. . . . Your hands tremble, your steps falter, tell yourself that all that is going to cease, and little by little it will disappear. It is not in me but in yourself that you must have confidence, for it is in yourself alone that dwells the force which can ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... his voice I saw the determination of their resistance begin to falter and relax. President Woodruff called on me to speak, and I felt that it was my duty to represent the needs, the hopes, and the opportunities of the hundreds of thousands of the undistinguished mass who would make no decision for themselves, but whose fate was trembling ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... of this hearts' blood of Lombardy, (If I should falter now)—for he is thine! Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine! A herald-star I know thou didst absorb Relentless into the consummate orb That scared it from its right to roll along A sempiternal path with ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... genius, but a fighter of iron will and temper, who joyed in the battle, and always showed at his best when the danger was greatest. The vein of fanaticism that ran through his character helped to render him a terrible opponent. He knew no such word as falter, and when he had once put his hand to a piece of work, he did it thoroughly and with all his heart. It was quite in keeping with his character that this gentle, high-minded, and religious man should, early in the contest, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... they protected themselves as much as possible from the fearful fire of the Spaniards, the troopers, some of them stripped to the waist, watching the base of the hill, and when any part of a Spaniard became visible, they fired. Never for an instant did they falter. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; toddle, waddle, wabble^, slug, traipse, slouch, shuffle, halt, hobble, limp, caludicate^, shamble; flag, falter, trotter, stagger; mince, step short; march in slow time, march in funeral procession; take one's time; hang fire &c (be late) 133. retard, relax; slacken, check, moderate, rein in, curb; reef; strike sail, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... only Biddy, looking over her shoulder for Monny, who even saw that they were followed. She cried out to her friend to hurry, that some one was coming, that they must get to the gate or all would be ended; then feeling Mabel falter, she held her more tightly and ran ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Night completed tells her tale Of rest and dissolution: gathering round Her mist in such persuasion that the ground Of Home consents to falter and grow pale. And the stars are put out and the trees fail. Nor anything remains but that which drones Enormous through ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... moved nor spoke during his recital; her features still retained their deadly paleness, and her brother almost involuntarily felt alarmed. A few words she said, as he ceased, in commentary on his tale, and her voice was calm. Nor did her step falter as she quitted the library, and returned to her own room, when, carefully closing the door, she sunk on the nearest seat, and covering her eyes with her hands, as if to shut out all outward objects, gave unchecked dominion to the incongruous thoughts occasioned ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... where she had just renounced her last hope of earthly happiness. Her eyes followed Philip in his frenzied flight, and, when he disappeared, she stretched out her hands with a gesture of mingled longing and despair. But the weakness that had made this courageous soul falter for an instant soon vanished. She lifted her eyes toward Heaven as if imploring strength from on high and then walked slowly in the direction of the chateau. Suddenly, at a turn in the path, she met Coursegol. She had not ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... Maroon-and-Grey supporters leaping to their feet, for Roberts caught the long pass high in the air, dodged a frantic Claflin end and raced straight toward the goal line. Only the fact that he slipped near the ten-yard line prevented a score then and there. That instant's falter brought the enemy down on him and, although he managed to squirm forward another yard, he was stopped. But it looked a short distance from the nine yards to the final white line, and Brimfield ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Africa, land of despot and victim; farewell, Asia, land of satrap and slave; farewell, Europe, land of monarch and subject: welcome, broad, varied, exhaustless New World, spreading inviting fields before longing eyes that falter while they gaze. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... were set in a fixed and awful stare as though she were trying to see for herself outside the walls of the little room where she stood into the larger chamber from which the voice—that awful voice—came! Her own words were hysterical and uncertain, but she managed to falter them ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... discouraged because you weren't making the progress you had anticipated. You dropped the idea and landed back where you started. Make up your mind, consciously, that you will work with untiring sincerity and a perseverance that will not falter because your chosen goal is not achieved immediately. I know of no therapy that leads straight to positive results without obstacles and intermittent failure. Success comes in spite of intervening failures because the ultimate ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... as his father flayed him with his abuse. But there was something unusual, surely, in the non-resistance with which he allowed the storm to beat about his head. Something in his steady, unruffled gaze caused the other man to falter a little in his tirade, and finally to stop, almost apprehensively. He had paid no heed to Ma Werner's attempts at pacification. "Now, Pa!" she had said, over and over, her hand on his arm, though he shook it off again and again. "Now, Pa!—" But he stopped now, fist raised in a last profane ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... afterward crowds of votaries will daily frequent her shrine. The Brahmans compliment her on her heroism. (Sometimes drugs are administered to stifle her fears.) She knows, too, that it is useless to falter at the last moment, as a change of heart would be an eternal disgrace, not only to herself but to her relatives, who, therefore, stand around with sabres and rifles to intimidate her. In short, with satanic ingenuity, every possible ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... lapped leaves sifting, sifting, Came to the gates of sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter yes, Shaken with happiness: The ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... cover a Socialist meeting in New York. I tip-toed down the stairs, although I might have fallen down and landed with a thud without having been heard. The din came from the direction of the dining room. Well, come what might, I would not falter. After all, it could not be worse than that awful time when I had helped cover the teamsters' strike. I peered ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... "Dear sister, think not of me. Do not fear or falter; I shall not. I would rather die a hundred deaths than see you the wife of such a ruffian. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... with a faint cry of joy, and taking her hand bent over it with old-fashioned grace and kissed it. His fingers were as cold as ice, and his lips burned like fire, but Virginia did not falter, as he led her across the dusky room. On the faded green tapestry were broidered little huntsmen. They blew their tasselled horns and with their tiny hands waved to her to go back. "Go back! little Virginia," they cried, ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... time," said I to myself. And, reviewing all that had happened, I let a wild hope thrust tenacious roots deep into me—the hope that she did not quite understand her own mind as to me. How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge would make the step falter and the heart quail. Who would have the courage, not to speak of the desire, to live his life, if he ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... celestial weapons, proceeded towards his tent, mounted on that victorious car of his. And as he was proceeding, he asked Govinda, with voice choked with tears, "Why is my heart afraid, O Kesava, and why both my speech falter? Evil omens encounter me, and my limbs are weak. Thoughts of disaster possess my mind without living it. On earth, on all sides, various omens strike me with fear. Of many kinds are those omens and indications, and seen everywhere, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it death to falter, not to die.' It was under to-day's date, and it was the first thing I saw when I went to the desk where Father used to sit, and it was his voice that read it to me. It was very wonderful and queer. It sort of made me ashamed of the way I was taking it, and I went out to begin again,—that's ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... dangerous view. Lord Wodehouse received clear instructions as to what he was to do. But, at the same time, what was the conduct of the Secretary of State? While Lord Wodehouse was repairing to his post, did the Secretary of State in the least falter in his tone? It was about this time that the great diplomatic reprimand was sent to Sir Alexander Malet for having talked of the 'protocol' of 1852 instead of the 'treaty'. This was the time that instructions ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... such a thing as a well-groomed combatant; and until to-day she had never thought of Peter as a combatant. The sight of his lean face summoned, all undesired, the vague vision of an ideal, and perhaps it was this that caused her voice to falter a little as she came forward and called his name. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd.... Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... grow lumpy, and some who love her dearly can hardly restrain a flood of tears, for never for an instant, from the first word to the last, do her eyes, glorious in their trust and faith, exquisite in hope and love and tenderness, falter from their fond, loyal gaze up into his. There is uncontrollable recourse to handkerchiefs, a rustle, and sensation throughout the crowded ranks of society as the last solemn word of her troth is spoken, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... always, she smiled cheerfully, confidently. He had never heard her whine, had never seen her falter save ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... her eyes and his did not falter in their steady gaze. "Please do not excite yourself," he said very gently, "and—I think I will go in now. It must ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... an easy explanation for every confusing statement, and did not falter even when Miss Brock wanted to start the 1018 herself. He objected that she would soil her gloves, but she held them up in derision; plainly, they had already suffered. Some difficulty then arose because ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... Platt did not even falter when he reached Schroeder's corner. He marched straight on, looking steadily ahead, the heavy bags swinging from either hand. Even if he had stopped—though she knew he wouldn't—Terry Platt would not have seen him. She remained seated at the disordered breakfast ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... of pictures in them; or the Real Lady, or the Ladylike Lady, or the Titled Lady, the portraits of whom—one or other of them—sweep in curves about their folio pages; and, while they fascinate you, make you feel that you would falter on the threshold of matrimony if only because they couldn't possibly take nourishment. Would not the discomfort of meals eaten with a companion who could swallow nothing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Empire! Ha! do you start? and does some touch of shame redden the sallow cheeks that courage had left bloodless? and do ye grasp your daggers, and rear your drooping heads? are ye men, once again? Why should ye not? what do ye see, what hear, whereat to falter? What oracle, what portent? Now, by the Gods! methought they spoke of victory and glory. Once more, what do ye fear, or wish? What, in the name of Hecate and Hades! What ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... was waiting here and keenly watching everything, the light began to falter, and the latest gleam of sunset trembled with the breath of Spring among the buds and catkins. But the tall man continued his long, firm stride, as if the watch in his pocket were the only thing worth heeding. Until, as the shadows ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of the signal cannon, France calls her sons their aid to lend; "Let us go," the soldier cries, "to battle! 'Tis our mother we defend!" To die on Freedom's Altar—to die on Freedom's Altar! 'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter! ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... encounter? His heart was high, his voice rang clear and exultant, his eyes flashed joy and fire and defiance in the face of a thousand deaths two weeks ago. But here in the presence of a slender girl he can do naught but falter and stammer and tremble. ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... republic. After near half a century of earnest, continued pleading we see light breaking in different parts of the political horizon. If it takes half a century more, nay, even longer than that, to establish this truth let us never falter. For we know our cause is just and, as God is just, the eternal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... I, ask the question Which my heart has asked before? Then I falter, "Can you love me, Darling?" I can say ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... gold, You ne'er shall dedicate your heart anew. Oh, what can I, poor devil, say to comfort? Go to the Maiden's Chapter on the Main, I counsel you, go to your cousin Thurn. Seek in the hills a boy, light-curled as I, Buy him with gold and silver, to your breast Press him, and teach his lips to falter: Mother. And when he grows to manhood, show him well How men draw shut the eyelids of the dead. That is the only ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... however, had duly arrived. And as he turned its pages Padre Ignazio was quick to seize at once upon the music that could be taken into his church. Some of it was ready fitted. By that afternoon Felipe and his choir could have rendered "Ah! se l'error t' ingombra" without slip or falter. ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... with snow, The light flakes falter and fall slow; Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale, Silently drops a silvery veil; And all the valley is shut in By flickering curtains ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... over, The tutor turn'd a mortal lover! So tender of the young and fair! It show'd a true paternal care— Five thousand guineas in her purse! The doctor might have fancied worse.— Hardly at length he silence broke, And falter'd every word he spoke; Interpreting her complaisance, Just as a man sans consequence. She rallied well, he always knew: Her manner now was something new; And what she spoke was in an air As serious as a tragic player. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... dare it all again, Its direst agonies and meanest fears, For that one kiss. Away with fond remorse! Here, on the brink of ruin, we two stand; Lock hands with me, and brave the fearful plunge! Thou canst not name a terror so profound That I will look or falter from. Be bold! I know thy love—I knew it long ago— Trembled and fled from it. But now I clasp The peril to my breast, and ask of ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... epitaph, this, for Thomas Sandys," says the paper that quotes it, "if we could not find a better. Mr. Sandys was from first to last a man of character, but why when others falter was he always so sure-footed? It is in the answer to this question that we find the key to the books, and to the man who was greater than the books. He was the Perfect Lover. As he died seeking flowers for her who had the ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... I Such riches lose, and still not die? Shall I not hang?—as I, in fact, Might justly do if cord I lack'd; But now, without expense, I can; This cord here only lacks a man.' The saving was no saving clause; It suffer'd not his heart to falter, Until it reach'd his final pause As full possessor of the halter,— 'Tis thus the miser often grieves: Whoe'er the benefit receives Of what he owns, he never must— Mere treasurer for thieves, Or relatives, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... warm thing she had waked there with her magic breathed, moved, sprang into complete life. I could not see her die! I must get into that place that I saw was doomed, even as I now saw two of the great ships above falter in flight, turn and slide downward at increasing speed. The concussion had broken them, perhaps destroyed the life within them. I realized that in a short time the same thing was going to happen to the ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... see and interpret Charley's action, and their guns were quickly turned upon his frail craft. As he drew nearer the drifting dugout and came within range, a perfect hail of bullets splashed the water into foam around him. He did not falter or hesitate, but with long clean strokes of the paddle, sent his light little craft flying towards his goal. Perhaps it was this very speed that saved his life. Bullet after bullet pierced the thin canvas sides and one struck a corner of his ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Might turn from Jove's bird unto very Jove, So did she raise her grey eyes to her love, But to her brow the blood rose therewithal, And she must tremble, such a look did fall Upon her faithful eyes, that none the less Would falter aught, for all her shamefastness, But rather to her lover's hungry eyes Gave back a tender look of glad surprise, Wherein love's flame began to flicker now. Withal, her father kissed her on the brow, And said, "O daughter, take this royal ring, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... experimental knowledge of what life really is to thousands of their fellow-creatures, who, like themselves, are accountable beings, and with the same capacity for enjoyment or suffering. Indeed, none of us are always happy. We all have our hours of trial, when even the strongest-hearted will falter, and the dreamless slumber of the grave seem so sweet to our world-weary spirits. When it seems so hard to say, "Thy will be done," perhaps Death enters and robs us of some earthly idol. We see the dear one droop and ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... been taken. Trim carefully, taking off the blackened, shrivelled ends. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoonfuls of fine bone meal immediately about the plant after setting, and then water it. If the weather is warm, soak the ground and keep it moist until there is rain. Never let a plant falter or go back from ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... our glances meet, And falter; falls your golden hair Against my cheek; your bosom sweet Is heaving. Down the field, your Queen Rides slow, her soldiery all between, And checks ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... peered into her father's gate. With the first sound of his voice, she had entered in, had knelt before a shrine whereon, wrapped in fire, a Secret lay. Ever since she had needed to guard that shrine, not, indeed, for fear that the light would falter, but rather that it might not leap up, and lay waste her being. As one guards a flame, so Ume-ko, with silence and prayer and self-enforced tranquillity, guarded the sacred spark from winds of passion. Each day ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... front of the Confederate, and, pulling out a revolver, pointed it at Lightfoot's head. "Unless you promise not to have us followed, you shan't leave this room alive!" he cried with the tone of a man daring everything for liberty. George fully expected to see the officer falter, for he had seen ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... were slowly but surely gaining on them. Barbara saw it too, and she redoubled her prayers to the Virgin, and both she and her lover with words and caresses strove to keep up the courage in their horse's heart. The good steed was of the sort whose spirit does not falter until strength is gone, and he seemed to understand that these people on his back were under some mighty need. For with unwavering pace he kept up his long, swift gallop, notwithstanding his double burden and the distance he had ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... anxious waiting, and the fixed gaze of the watchman on the city walls. We strained in the long strain of the runners. We fainted with the fears of a father's heart. We saw Ahimaaz outrun his rival yet falter in his message. And we heard the blow upon David's heart of Cushi's stroke. "And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... his hand now, and the round, white ray shot down the corridor—seemed suddenly to falter unsteadily—swept in through an open door that was almost beside him—and then, as though a nerveless hand held it, the ray dropped and played shakily on the toe of his boot before it ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... greater happiness can the Christian experience on earth than the continued consciousness of co-working with his Saviour in diffusing through the world these richest enjoyments of our being, and kindling anthems whose enrapturing notes shall never falter? ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... Gabrielle's quick intelligence the method of a deep, patiently pursued course of crime. Her father's claims, to which her deaf ears had been turned in the ardor of youth, came now with terrible force to win instant conviction. She would not falter in the crisis. The man should be given a hearing—brief, to be sure—but he ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... last—gone forever from his life. The honest blue eyes looking out over the sea did not falter; bravely he ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that before actual illumination, the student may get repeated "flashes of light" from a higher world. These he should receive gratefully. Even these can make him a witness of the spiritual realms. Yet he must not falter should this never be vouchsafed him during his entire period of preparation, and should its consequent duration seem all too long to him. Indeed, those who yield to impatience "because they can as yet see nothing," have not yet acquired the right attitude toward the ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... Heaven, Glory! To our Lord[2] on this earth, Glory! May our Lord never grow old, Glory! May his bright robes never be spoiled, Glory! May his good steeds never be worn out, Glory! May his trusty servants never falter, Glory! May the right throughout Russia, Glory! Be fairer than the bright sun, Glory! May the Tzar's golden treasury, Glory! Be forever full to the brim, Glory! May the great rivers, Glory! Bear their renown to the sea, Glory! The little streams to ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... any portion of the delightful sound: He was almost angry with me because I did not experience the impressions he did. So powerful was the effect produced upon him by the sound of these bells that his voice would falter as he said, "Ah! that reminds me of the first years I spent at Brienne! I was then happy!" When the bells ceased he would resume the course of his speculations, carry himself into futurity, place a crown on his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... visitors, and their bloody heads and blankets, now fully revealed by the blaze of the fire, seemed of such evil omen, that the good woman was evidently startled. Her step, at first quick and confident, began to falter, and with an involuntary shudder she approached her husband, who had resumed his seat. A minute passed in gloomy silence. Then the Indian again raised his head, but without looking up, and spoke in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... but I know not any tone So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow: Dost think men would go mad without a moan, If they knew any way to borrow A pathos ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... women—he the greatest of artists. It was an opportunity sent from the gods! Instantly she half-ran, seeking the painter. She found him standing apart, alone. She spoke eagerly and hotly, fearing her courage would falter before she could make known her wish: "Ecco, Messer Sandro," she whispered, casting a furtive look about—"who is there in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... see the revengeful trend of the Indian's thought. The hints of the evil intention of the Potlatch troubled him, but his faith in the old chief and the influence of his own integrity did not falter. ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... and abstracted as she was, and went on with his glances, till he once found her, poor thing, looking at him to see if he was looking at her; and then he knew his prey was safe, and asked her, with his eyes, "Do you forgive me?" and saw her stop dead in her talk to her next neighbor, and falter, and drop her eyes, and raise them again after a minute in search of his, that he might repeat the pleasant question. And then what could she do but answer with all her face and every bend of her pretty neck, "And do you forgive ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in an instant. He did not falter, but he felt, for the moment, as though he had been stabbed to the heart. Hal Hastings gave a little, barely perceptible gasp. Eph Somers, with a snort of wrath, turned and stepped through into the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... did just the same thing with me," rejoined Darrin. "You just keep your eye on me, Dan! Do you see me shaking? Do you hear my voice falter? See me burning ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... instead of her usual sixpence, to be devoted to the organist and choir fund. The Padre, it is true, had changed the hour of services to suit the heresy of the majority, and this for a moment made her hand falter. But the hope, after this convincing sermon, that next year morning service would be at the hour falsely called twelve decided her not to withdraw ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... stammered John Alden, but the captain still gazing upon Hither Manomet, where now the purple bloom of twilight was replacing the glory of the sunset, marked not the pallor stealing the red from beneath the brown of the young fellow's cheek, nor heard the discordant falter of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... ours, believing that our feet are planted on an eternal foundation, that our position is sublime and glorious, that our faith in God is rational and steadfast, that we have exceeding great and precious promises on which to rely, THAT WE ARE IN THE RIGHT, we shall not falter nor be dismayed, "though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea,"—though our ranks be thinned to the number of "three hundred men." Freemen! are you ready for the conflict? Come what may, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... so manly and straightforward in his tone and manner that she could not choose but allow him to sit down beside her, although she did falter out something about the propriety of talking on her uncle's business ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... for himself. He need never return. And by that thrill in his own bosom he guessed the feeling of his friend. He could not put what he guessed into words. Nevertheless, he felt sure that the old man would not falter ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... moving years; Youth's colour dies, the fervid morning glow Is gone from off the foreland; slow, slow, Even slower than the fount of human tears To empty, the consuming shadow nears That Time is casting on the worldly show Of pomp and glory. But falter not;—below That thought is based a deeper thought ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... delay. Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming Waste of the water without, waste of the water within, Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. Faintly ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... began to falter and to get self-conscious. And when he came to the verse, "A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow because her hour is come", he missed it out. Miriam had felt him growing uncomfortable. She shrank when the well-known ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... resolution of yours to give up your whole career,—make ducks and drakes of it, in obedience to my whim—was nothing more than one of those pious lies that invalids are fed upon. I knew you meant it, my dear. I knew you'd have done it—then—without a falter or a regret." ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Curled within their minds, like an endless scroll, are the marvellous scriptures of millenniums, and yet their brain-surfaces are fresh for earth's newest concept.... What are they whispering? Their voices falter with emotion over vague bits of dreaming. They ask no greater stimulus to fly to the uttermost bounds of their limitations—than each other and the night. Reason dawns upon their stammered expressions, and farther they fly—thrilling ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... but tempered interest in Bertie Patterson had risen to a higher pitch in view of the insensate safeguards thrown around her by her friends; besides, he felt himself at a juncture where he must not permit himself to falter in the maintenance of his own dignity. "I shall not be balked so easily ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... glanced at the ring; the gates were opened; they were without the fortress, they hurried on. "Cheer up, noble lady; you are safe, you shall be avenged!" said Marmaduke, as he felt the steps of his companion falter. But the reaction had come. The effort Anne had hitherto made was for escape, for liberty; the strength ceased, the object gained; her head drooped, she muttered a few incoherent words, and then sense and life left her. Marmaduke paused in great perplexity ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... alive—I know it is my lover—he will be dead before you can return. Dear Guides! Blessed friends of travellers! Look at me. Watch my hands. If they falter or go wrong, make me your prisoner by force. If they are steady and go right, ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... he should be wandering about with a girl's frock in his hands. It was old, but he did not remember that he had ever touched it before or noticed its material or pattern. He looked at it fondly now, as he held it ready to renew the dog's memory if his purpose should falter. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... voice did not falter nor did his gaze, and Mitchell, handcuffs in evidence, looked perplexedly at Chief Connor. The latter was watching Miller like a lynx, and the Secret Service operatives closed up in the entranceway—there was no chance to escape, ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... never," he falter'd, "I know, Reach'd the heart of Matilda." "Matilda? oh no! But reflect! when such thoughts do not come of themselves To the heart of a woman neglected, like elves That seek lonely places,—there rarely is wanting Some voice at her side, with an evil enchanting To conjure ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... of men? The death 'for me' is only for me when I understand that it is 'instead of' me. And practically you will find that wherever the full-orbed faith in Christ Jesus as the death for all the sins of the whole world, bearing the penalty and bearing it away, has begun to falter and grow pale, men do not know what to do with Christ's death at all, and stop talking about it to a very ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... are dead, they are out of the way? And the ghost is a whim of an ailing mind? Then why did ye whiten with fear to-day When ye heard a voice in the calling wind? Why did ye falter and look behind? At the creeping mists when the hour grew late? Ye would see my face were ye stricken blind! And here in the ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... banish'd: but he has a merit To choke it in the utterance. So our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the time: And power, unto itself most commendable, Hath not a tomb so evident as a cheer To extol what it hath done. One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail; Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail. Come, let's away. When, Caius, Rome is thine, Thou art poor'st of all; ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... efficacy, I would say—take the worst sinks of intemperance in the city, give them the sanction of the Law, and let them run to overflowing. But shut up the gilded apartments where youth takes its first draught, and respectability just begins to falter from its level. Close the ample doors through which enters the long train of those who stumble to destruction and reel into quick graves, and let the flood overwhelm only the maimed and battered conscripts that remain. Besides, it is better to see vice as it really is, than as it sometimes ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter but at once resolved, at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the Union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the first little limp when she began to falter. He was watching backward constantly, his whole nature eager to protect her—save her from hurt, from this merciless toil across the desert. He longed to take her in his arms and carry her thus, securely. He was torn between the wish to hasten her along, for her own greater ease of mind, and ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... was only five hundred yards away. At six o'clock it opened fire and ploughed up the whole area of the fort with terrible effect. Hardly a spot was left which the French shells did not search out. The British reply, fired uphill, soon began to falter. The French fire was redoubled. Colonel Mercer was killed by a cannon ball, and this, of course, weakened the British defence, The second-in-command kept up the unequal fight for another couple of hours. Then, finding that he could not induce ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... so winning in his grace, in his dignity, in his tenderness, that Evander felt his heart in his mouth and he tried not to falter in his words. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... uncle and aunt would never believe that aught but compulsion had bound her to the rude outlaw, and her habit of submission was so strong that, only when her aunt was actually rising to go and consult her gossip, she found breath to falter, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we had an addition to the company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor's brother. He had a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is a combination which gives immortality to conversation. Capt. John never suffered the talk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of the journey. In addition to his conversational powers, he had one or two other endowments of a marked character. One was a singular "handiness" about doing anything and everything, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... at him for a moment with a look of honest inquiry in her eyes. His own did not falter. Their expression combined confidence ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and driven out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step passionately forward, when, seized by fresh compunction, he ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... her strength and her virgin daughters Should find not whither alive to flee. And we know not yet of the word unwritten, [Ant. 1. The doom of the Pythian we have not heard; From the navel of earth and the veiled mid altar We wait for a token with hopes that falter, 160 With fears that hang on our hearts thought-smitten Lest her tongue be kindled with no good word. O thou not born of the womb, nor bred [Str. 2. In the bride-night's warmth of a changed God's bed, But thy life as a lightning ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... her father by her caresses, till he mounted his mule to return to the castle at dinner-time, and she promised to come early in the afternoon to follow up the stroke he was to give. She had never seen him falter before,—he had followed out his policy with a clear head and unsparing hand,—but now that Berenger's character was better known to him, and the crisis long delayed had come so suddenly before his eyes, his whole powers seemed to reel under ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is over! After all the years of strife There's a joy for every sorrow and a crown for every life; And the songs of Heaven's angels on the straining soul arise As the weary foot-steps falter on the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... many a rough soldier with tenderest care closed the eyes of a brother in arms amidst the tempest and the stir of battle; and above it all, Cronje, the Boer general, must have smiled grimly, for well he knew that where the Highland Brigade had failed all the world might falter. All day long the battle raged; scarcely could we see the foe—all that met our eyes was the rocky heights that spoke with tongues of flame whenever our troops drew near. We could not reach their lines; ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... of drunkenness, Strong is thy breath, thy limbes falter aye, And thou betrayest alle secretness; Thy mind is lorn,* thou janglest as a jay; *lost Thy face is turned in a new array;* *aspect Where drunkenness reigneth in any rout,* *company There is no ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... coppery tint, these white dots descended more thickly; a gauze seemed to be floating in the air, falling to earth thread by thread. Not a breath stirred as the dream-like shower sleepily and rhythmically descended from the atmosphere. As they neared the roofs the flakes seemed to falter in their flight; in myriads they ceaselessly pillowed themselves on one another, in such intense silence that even blossoms shedding their petals make more noise; and from this moving mass, whose descent through space was inaudible, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... I Been bound to Theseus by the marriage yoke, And happiness and peace seem'd well secured, When Athens show'd me my proud enemy. I look'd, alternately turn'd pale and blush'd To see him, and my soul grew all distraught; A mist obscured my vision, and my voice Falter'd, my blood ran cold, then burn'd like fire; Venus I felt in all my fever'd frame, Whose fury had so many of my race Pursued. With fervent vows I sought to shun Her torments, built and deck'd for her a shrine, And there, 'mid countless victims did I seek ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... compared it with the scene in which himself was acting, and considered the doom that seemed to brood upon the schooner, a horror that was almost superstitious fell upon him. And yet the strange thing was, he did not falter. He who had proved his incapacity in so many fields, being now falsely placed amid duties which he did not understand, without help, and it might be said without countenance, had hitherto surpassed expectation; and even the shameful misconduct and ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of the greatest of men; sometimes our voices falter, and sentences are not finished. We have found many things alike about the Great Ones. First they had mothers who dreamed, and then they had poverty to acquaint them with sorrow. They came up hard, and they were always different from other children. They ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... I shouldn't." Caroline Paine was setting her feet to a rocky path, but she did not falter. "You shouldn't mind ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... and what was beyond, and even as he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the avenging fleet a vivid light leaped out of the white distance, followed by the thunder of a cannon. He saw the head of the Mormon line falter. In an instant it had been thrown into confusion. A second shot from the sea—a storm of cheering voices from out of that white chaos of mist—and the Mormons fell back from the shore in a panic-stricken, fleeing mob. Were those frightened cowards the fierce fighters of whom he had ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... interest too—the old story was a quaint one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had he disposed of—everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his word ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... gentleman remark, that it was this jealousy, which first convinced him that he was in love. You cannot open your lips to speak against him, who has impressed your heart. You will inwardly, although not probably in words, defend him from the attacks of others. To blush and falter under such circumstances would indicate love, much more ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... land of despot and victim; farewell, Asia, land of satrap and slave; farewell, Europe, land of monarch and subject: welcome, broad, varied, exhaustless New World, spreading inviting fields before longing eyes that falter while they gaze. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the great lakes, that would cause them to tremble in their strong holds. Said he, "I will stand my ground. Somebody must die in this cause. I may be doomed to the stake and the fire, or to the scaffold tree, but it is not in me to falter if I can promote the work of emancipation." He did not leave the country, but was soon laid in the grave. It was the opinion of many that he was hurried out of life by the means of poison, but whether this was the case or not, the writer is ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... critical year in the defense effort of the whole free world. If we falter we can lose all the gains we have made. If we drive ahead, with courage and vigor and determination, we can by the end of 1952 be in a position of much greater security. The way will be dangerous ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... nothing the situation in the hall was clear. Confident escape was impossible in any other direction the determined girl had taken up her position opposite the door, prepared for a long vigil. All feeling of anger, even of irritation, had by this time left me. The slight falter, the womanly softness of her voice, had robbed me of all resentment, and I was conscious merely of admiration for her courage and loyalty. But I desired intently to stand equally high in her memory, and in order to do ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... would listen now in silence, his face grim and sardonic; and when from very weariness the flow of her inspired oratory began to falter, he would deliver ever the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... turned its pages Padre Ignacio was quick to seize at once upon the music that could be taken into his church. Some of it was ready fitted. By that afternoon Felipe and his choir could have rendered "Ah! se l' error t' ingombra" without slip or falter. ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... completed tells her tale Of rest and dissolution: gathering round Her mist in such persuasion that the ground Of Home consents to falter and grow pale. And the stars are put out and the trees fail. Nor anything remains but that which drones Enormous through ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Lady Clementina for the pill, and to let the marriage go on as if there was no such person as Mr. Podgers in the world. His better nature, however, soon asserted itself, and even when Sybil flung herself weeping into his arms, he did not falter. The beauty that stirred his senses had touched his conscience also. He felt that to wreck so fair a life for the sake of a few months' pleasure would be ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now?—now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... revolt, when the solemn farce of trying them for a crime which posterity will account a virtue had terminated, and when the verdict of "guilty" had gladdened the hearts of their accusers. The circumstances under which they spoke might well cause a bold man to falter. They were about parting for ever from all that makes life dear to man; and, for some of them, the sentence; which was to cut short the thread of their existence, to consign them to a bloody and ignominious death, to leave their bodies mutilated corpses, from which the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... almost unconsciously; and as she spoke the man's senses began to return. In a few minutes more he had sufficiently recovered to falter forth his thanks to the stranger. But the last took his hand, and said, in a voice at once tremulous and soothing, "Is it possible that I see once more an old brother in arms? Algernon Digby, I do not forget you; but it seems ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... right! So speaks the spirit of our fathers, and we must show ourselves their true sons. Send round the war-arrow, and death to the man who does not pass it on! Better die bravely together than falter and part company, to be hunted down one by one by men who will never forgive us as long as we have an acre of land for them to seize. Perry, son of Surturbrand, you are the lawman. Put ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... probably not. Well, my poor child, I have shown you your painful duty. See that you do not falter in it," said the rector, as ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... befriend, but they add enormously to its moral strength, that is, to its confidence and courage. Men have a sort of instinctive respect and fear for constituted authorities of any kind, and, though often willing to plot against them, are still very apt to falter and fall back when the time comes for the actual collision. The feeling that, after all, they are in the wrong in fighting against the government of their country, weakens them extremely, and makes them ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... delight of her own achievements full upon her face, which was pretty, although untutored, regarded her visitor with an expression which almost made Margaret falter. It was probably the absurd dressing of the girl's hair which restored Margaret's confidence in her scheme. Martha Wallingford actually wore a frizzled bang, very finely frizzled too, and her hair was strained from the nape of her neck, and it seemed impossible that a young ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... food;—with senses bleared and deadened, she had heard them piteously wailing but for a morsel of that bread of life without which even the footsteps of the self-reliant, the strong and brave of heart, faint and falter by the way, and she had cruelly denied them that precious nutriment; she had given them life, but had robbed them of all that makes life endurable. Life's duties unfulfilled, life's high and holy aims trampled under the foot of sensual indulgence, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... themselves heard. She knew, had known at once, that she had outraged all she held most dear, in engaging herself to one man when she loved another, and she had begun to wonder—in irresistible flashes—before the news had come which sent her to the mountains, if she should falter at the last moment. But breeding has carried many a woman over the ploughshares of life, and her mind was probably strong enough to go on to the inevitable without theatric climax. At the same time the idea of marriage with one man when she loved another ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... up to Peter Ruff. He took hold of the lapel of the other's coat with his left hand, and his right hand was clenched. But Peter Ruff did not falter. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... leave the land—the lion's claws are shorn— The sovereign People, roused and bold, await the Future's morn! Now, till the wakening hour shall strike, we keep our scorn and wrath For you, ye Living! who have dared to falter on your path! Up, and prepare—keep watch in arms! Oh, make the German sod, Above our stiffened forms, all free, and blest by Freedom's God; That this one bitter thought no more disturb us in our graves: "They once were free—they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... an infuriated tiger. Again and again Frank's fist cracked on his face, and still he did not falter, but continued to stand up and "take ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... milk for days, and many a night Anna and Phil and I have gone out, after dark, to hunt for dead branches in the woods for my kitchen stove!" And Mrs. Carroll, unexpectedly stirred by the pitiful memory, broke suddenly into tears, the more terrible to Susan because she had never seen her falter before. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the kingly, is pictured there, throned on the sun at midsummer, Which pours from the firmament riches untold,— personified goodness; For lights are the good, radiant, resplendent, but the evil are darkness. Constantly rising the sun groweth weary; the good also falter, Giddy with walking precipitous heights; sighing they downward Sink to the land of the shades,—down to Hel. That is of Balder The funeral pile. Glitner, the castle of Peace, is there; seated Within it was Forse'te',* scales in hand, meting ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... he, with a melancholy smile, "do not tempt me. Leave me to struggle with temptations by myself, and do not seek to make me falter in my duty. Yes, Atam-or, you behold in me a melancholy example of the folly of ambition; for I often think, as I look down from my lofty eminence, that after all it is as well to remain content in the humble sphere in which we are placed at birth; for perhaps, if the ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... grace or the wisdom to falter. I regret it now. I regret that she did not go on and reveal her whole soul to me in one fell burst of feeling. As it was, I trembled with jealousy and passion, but I did not cast her ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... Richard. At length Paul found himself in violent storms beating off the rugged southeastern coast of Scotland, with only two accompanying ships. But neither the mutiny of his fleet, nor the chaos of the elements, made him falter in his purpose. Nay, at this crisis, he projected the most daring of all ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor, turning abruptly, fixed on her a look ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Suzanne de Bellecour, but, alas! woefully pale and anguished of expression. She advanced a step towards Caron, and then stood still, encountering his steadfast, wonder-struck gaze, and seeming to falter. With a sob, at last she turned to Maximilien, who had remained a pace or ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd.... Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... lifted, Then he spoke the words which follow: "O thou ale, thou drink delicious, Let the drinkers not be moody! Urge the people on to singing, Let them shout, with mouth all golden, Till our lords shall wonder at it, And our ladies ponder o'er it, For the songs already falter, And the joyous tongues are silenced. 270 When the ale is ill-concocted, And bad drink is set before us, Then the minstrels fail in singing, And the best of songs they sing not, And our cherished guests are silent, And the cuckoos call ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... the main room four men barred progress. Frank's revolvers spoke sharply twice as he ran forward and two men dropped. Jack felt a twinge of pain in his left side as he advanced and realized that he had been hit. He did not falter, however. His own revolvers spoke and the door to the ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... Her objective point was a hill covered so thickly with rocks that scarcely a spear of grass grew upon it. The climb left her short of breath, she wiped the perspiration from her face with her blanket, but she did not falter. Stepping softly, listening, she crept over the rocks with the utmost caution, peering here and there as if in search of something which she did not wish to alarm. A long, sibilant sound stopped her. She located ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and maidens—howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may his heart, the gentler, falter at the siege. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... grace characteristic of him, swept off his hat, and made a low, deferential bow; but when he straightened himself up, and began to say the complimentary things and poetical phrases he had put together for the occasion at the cafe the night before, the lurid look of the Russian made his tongue falter; and Tenise, who had never seen a woman of this sort before, laughed a nervous, half-frightened little laugh, and clung closer to her lover than before. The wife was even more forbidding than she had imagined. Valdoreme ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... at her innermost fastnesses could hardly have been made. Robbed of breath and senses by the suddenness of it, and with dry lips, Harriet could only falter ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... among scenes which kept her in his memory—he had been false to the very principles to which he had appealed at their farewell interview. She had set him the right example, the example which he was determined to follow, in leaving the place. Before he could falter in his resolution, he gave notice of his departure. The one hope for him now was to find a refuge from himself in acts of mercy. Consolation was perhaps waiting for him ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... out my garden, No nook is left in shade, No mist nor mold nor mildew Endures on any blade, Sweet rain slants under every bough: Ye falter, and ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... drapes with duty. Sometimes he waits upon me like a maid, Silent with watchful eyes. Oh, would to Heaven, He used me like a slave bought in the market! Yes, used me roughly! So, I were his own; And words of tenderness would falter in, Relenting from the sternness of command. But I am not enough for him: he needs Some high-entranced maiden, ever pure, And thronged with burning thoughts of God and him. So, as he loves me not, his deeds ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... I toyed with them instead of allowing myself to embrace them. I shrunk from them as it were like a cold lover who fears the too ardent caresses of his mistress. I could not believe that the supreme happiness I had so long pined for was at last so near. Might not M. le Duc d'Orleans falter at the last moment? Might not all our preparations, so carefully conducted, so cleverly planned, weigh upon his feebleness until they fell to the ground? It was not improbable. He was often firm in promises. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... wayside of the Present. Lo, Even as a child I hide my face and moan— A little girl that may no farther go; The path above me only seems to grow More rugged, climbing still, and ever briered With keener thorns of pain than these below; And O the bleeding feet that falter so ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... him falter, to feel his hand on her shoulder, anything for a closer touch with him. For half a minute, perhaps, they remained motionless, and then the color began to come back ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... the other, "as long as I have a prospect of large profits; why should I falter or hesitate at so slight a ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... could have regained the ridge he could not tell. Would any one of the party live to return to Courmayeur and tell the tale? But Garratt Skinner knew the risk he took, had counted it up long before ever he brought Walter Hine to Chamonix, and thought it worth while. He did not falter now. All through the morning, indeed, he had been taking risks, risks of which Walter Hine did not dream; with so firm and yet so delicate a step he had moved from crack to crack, from ice-step up to ice-step; with so obedient a response ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... in the face of the universe, Never to falter and never to swerve; Toil for it!—bleed for it!—if there be need for it, Stretch every sinew and ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... flames enveloped their arms and clothing. Many of the bravest warriors had found death at the foot of the ramparts: most of those who had mounted on the rolling towers were hors de combat; the remainder, covered with sweat and dust, overwhelmed with heat and the weight of their armour, began to falter. The Saracens who perceived this raised cries of joy. In their blasphemies they reproached the Christians for adoring a God who was unable to defend them. The assailants deplored their loss, and believing themselves abandoned by ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... abrogate the judicial character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day. This court was not created by the Constitution for such purposes. Higher and graver trusts have been confided to it, and it must not falter in the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... certainly the part is not an insignificant one. And happy the youth who is able to look into the future and see himself approximating some worthy ideal. He has caught a vision which will never allow him to lag or falter in the pursuit of the flying goal which points the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... he writes is not more remarkable than the exultant pleasure which accompanies the ease. He has, as an artist, a hundred tools in hand, and he uses them with certainty of execution. The wing of his invention does not falter through these twelve books, nor droop below the level at which he began them; and the epilogue is written with as much vigour as the prologue. The various books demand various powers. In each book the powers are proportionate to the subject; but the mental force behind each exercise of power is ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... on with quickening pace, And those who falter fall behind, Then enter for the mental race, Where ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... thy beauty far outshineth them; The tinsel they are, thou the living gem. Great gift of Gods! Shall flowers of earth despise Those flowers of heaven—thy tresses, and thine eyes? Away with gloom I let no ill-boding make My heart to falter, or my hand to shake. One hour is all I crave. If that be long, Sweet lips beguile it with my ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... higher or more indisputable degree. Temperate, wise, and frugal, yet munificent in rewarding merit—a friend to letters and the muses, but a severe discourager of the misuse of such gifts—a worthy gentleman—a kind master—the best friend, the best father, the best Christian"—Her voice began to falter, and her father's handkerchief was already at ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... I say for myself in all sooth, that indeed I would die for the kindred and its good days, nor falter therein; but if I am to die, might I but die ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... God! the morn awaits thee, And while such a hope elates thee, Wilt thou fold thy hands in ease? No, the golden moments seize! Lay thy gift upon the altar, Thou hast duties—do not falter! ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... unburied, and cut off From all his race, even as I cut this curl. There, hold him, child, and guard him; let no hand Stir thee, but lean to the calm breast and cling. (To CHORUS) And ye, be not like women in this scene, Nor let your manhoods falter; stand true men To this defence, till I return prepared, Though all cry No, to give him ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... of the splendor of the part he was being called upon to play flowed through him like some elixir; he felt that he was transcending himself, that his inspiration was drawn from the hidden springs of the spirit, and that he could neither falter nor go astray. "You don't know what you are meddling with! This man has plotted to lay the South in ruins—he has been arming the negroes—it—it is incredible that you should all know this—to such I say, go home and thank God for your escape! For the others"—his shaggy brows met in a menacing ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... are about to be escorted forth where the elusive cigar-butt lurks in the gutter and scraps of paper litter the pavement. As an exponent of this particular brand of discipline you will see that no small item escapes you. Should you be so remiss, or should you falter in doing your full duty, you will be returned at once to this room, where retribution waits with heavy hands. Ho, Worthy Buddies! Invest the candidate with the sacred insignia of the empty ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... weakness. She knew her uncle and aunt would never believe that aught but compulsion had bound her to the rude outlaw, and her habit of submission was so strong that, only when her aunt was actually rising to go and consult her gossip, she found breath to falter, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... content to stay there forever, and feed his eyes and ears with all its wonders—and then started sighing from his dream, as he recollected that a few days must bring the foe upon them, and force him to decide upon some scheme at which the bravest heart might falter without shame. So there he sat (for he often took the scout's place himself), looking out over the fantastic tropic forest at his feet, and the flat mangrove-swamps below, and the white sheet of foam-flecked blue; and yet no sail appeared; and the men, as their fear of fever subsided, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... watchers, for Peggy's face grew more and more agonised, she seemed on the verge of suffocation, and could neither speak nor endure anyone to approach within yards of her mad career. Presently, however, she began to falter, to draw her breath in longer gasps, and as she did so there emerged from her lips a series of loud whooping sounds, like the crowing of a cock, or the noise made by a child in the convulsions of whooping-cough. The air was making its way to the lungs after the temporary stoppage, and the ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... that you will not fail. You could not speak as you did last night and yet allow yourself to falter in purpose when the task was once begun. What success may await you we cannot say; the work will certainly be very difficult. Will ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... halted, her arms behind her, looking him fixedly in the face. He had made a movement to advance, and offer his hand in greeting, but her posture checked the impulse. His courage began to falter under her inspection. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... thee! So I do. I pity the dumb victim at the altar; But does the robed priest for his pity falter? I'd rack thee though I knew A thousand lives were perishing in thine! What were ten thousand to a ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the point of the bayonet. The bastion once reached, the men, almost reeling with fatigue, paused for a moment to regain breath. The enemy taking advantage of the halt, returned and poured out such numbers of fresh assailants that the Christians from sheer exhaustion began to falter, and were about to be driven back, when Prince Eugene, seeing their danger, sprang forward to General Sereni, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... had a plan, one that had been in her mind ever since the day that she had talked with Ben Barton. What she had really lacked was courage to put it into execution. Yet now, as she drew the cloak about her and pulled down her hood, her hands did not even tremble, nor did her determination falter. The house was absolutely still as she stole noiselessly down the stairs and slipped ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... trill'd the notes, and curb'd them to a sigh, And when they falter'd most, I made them leap Fierce from my bow, as from a summer sleep A young she-devil. I was fired thereby To bolder efforts—and a muffled cry Came from the strings as if a saint ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... on, my knights, and smite the foe! And falter not, I pray; For by the grace of God, I trow, The town ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... no scorn to meet reproof, No arrogance to keep aloof; Her air absorb'd, her sadden'd mien, Combin'd the mourning, captive queen, With her who at the altar stands To raise aloft her spotless hands, In meek and persevering prayer, For such as falter in despair. All that was smiling, bright, and gay, Youth's show of triumph during May, Its roseate crown, was snatch'd away! Yet sorrows, which had come so soon, Like tender morning dew repos'd, O'er hope and joy as softly clos'd As moist clouds ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... is this life ye bear: Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly. Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, But onward, upward, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... changed. It danced elfishly, and trippingly—for very joy it made one laugh. The tear rolled down Joyce's face, as the smile replaced it, and dropped upon the thin cheek of the baby. He did not flinch, and the staring eyes did not falter, but something drew the mother's attention. As the final tripping notes died away, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Ichi. Although the comforting touch of the lifeline was not for him, his nerves were steady, and he did not falter on the glassy, inclined way. Ichi minced his steps, compelling Martin to shorten his stride. Martin saw that Ichi was trembling, and gazing fearfully into the abyss. He had an impulse to throw himself upon Ichi, and roll with him over the edge. But then, he thought, this blow would ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... to prove a natural contempt for the Negro and repugnance to his leadership, then taunt us with incapacity for self-government. These flambeaus and rockets directed with unerring precision, taking effect in the very centre of our magazine, did not cause, in those for whom it was intended, a falter nor a wince in their course, but steadily and determinedly they pressed their way to the completion of their object under prosecution. In this design the enemy ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... the name he is living under here. He explained Russia's position. Poor Roche was only able to falter a few words, but what he said was enough to give us the key-note to the whole thing. The long and short of it all is that Russia turned her face westward so long as Constantinople was possible. Now that this war has come about and ended ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... girl. She seemed to falter, as she walked, and it was apparently with great effort that she neared the door of the big department store. Baxter ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... him, he argued that the inventor must have left his instrument with some of his subordinates, probably Black and Stanton, and relied upon them to protect it; and it stung him to think that the American should believe a German officer would falter at such odds—a couple of electricians, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... and encouraged her father by her caresses, till he mounted his mule to return to the castle at dinner-time, and she promised to come early in the afternoon to follow up the stroke he was to give. She had never seen him falter before,—he had followed out his policy with a clear head and unsparing hand,—but now that Berenger's character was better known to him, and the crisis long delayed had come so suddenly before his eyes, his whole powers seemed to ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... going to the morning service on the day which, happily still, lies 'tween Saturday and Monday, and I don't know anything more conducive to the preparation of impromptus than a good sermon read out for space of twenty minutes; not more, or your wit begins to falter and you repeat yourself; just twenty minutes. A moderately comfortable pew, a voice not too loud in the pulpit, a fairly full congregation, and a general sense that you're doing the right thing and setting an example to your neighbours. Such circumstances preceding by some twenty-four hours my rising ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... the legislature, I delivered the annual discourse before the Historical Society. I felt so much misgiving about reading it before the large assemblage at the State House, that I had arranged with a literary and legal friend to put it in his hands the moment I began to falter. For this purpose he occupied the secretary's desk; but I found myself sufficiently collected to go on and read it through, not quite loud enough for all, but in a manner, I ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... can't speak in public. So says WALTER. They mumble, stumble, hammer, stammer, falter! BESANT, why grumble at fate's distribution? To writers, sense; to speakers, elocution! Some books are bosh, but all experience teaches ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... the thing came as a miracle—it was an answer to his prayer. And it found him ready. The chance was offered him, and he would not fail—not he! He did not falter for a second. He knew just what he had to do, and he was ready—resolute, and ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This like thy glory, Titan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... high in the air, holding it in his strong talons; and he did not falter once in his steady flight, although the load weighed nearly as much as he did, and he carried it two ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... to falter and hesitate. The pilot cut off his motor, but too soon. Dick rushed his craft on, passed the other, and then, seeing that he had the advantage, he turned off his power, and volplaned to the landing spot just about fifteen seconds in advance of his rival. He had beaten ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... fills my heart with that courage which is based on faith in Him. Oh, forgive my timidity and despondency; I pledge you my word I will meet the future with a strong heart. Only remain with me, my dearest Louisa; look at me with your cheering eyes, and inspire my heart with hope. Whenever I falter, remind me of this hour in which I vowed to you to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the cause he had espoused led Jesus to the cross. Great characters do not ask what road is easy, but what way is right. Where duty leads, the strong do not falter nor fail, cost what it may. They see their task through to the end, though ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... man's thought that the power and the vengeance both of the government and the prelacy would soon be set in array against us. I therefore bethought myself, in that peril of our lives and cause, of two things which seemed most needful; first, Not to falter in our enterprise until we had proved the utmost of the Lord's pleasure in our behalf; and second, To use the means under Him which, in all human undertakings, are required to bring ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... of mountain ranges, in the intricacies of its intervening valleys, in the glittering coils of its water-courses. Basil would sometimes sink into deep silences, overpowered by the majesty of nature in this place. After a long hiatus the bow would tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a time; presently the theme would strengthen, expand, resound with large meaning, and then he would send forth melodies that he had never before played or heard, his own dream, the reflection of that mighty ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... never forget. The shrieks of the drivers to encourage the horses, the loud cries of Ave Mara! the uncertainty as to whether our heavy carriage could be dragged across, the horses struggling and splashing in the boiling torrent, and the horrible fate that awaited us should one of them fall or falter!... The Seora ——- and I shut our eyes and held each other's hands, and certainly no one breathed till we were safe on the other side. We were then told that we had crossed within a few feet of a precipice over which a coach had been dashed into fifty pieces during one of these swells, and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the barge-like open cars close up into well-warmed saloons, and falter to hourly intervals in their course. But we are still far from the falling leaf; we are hardly come to the blushing or fading leaf. Here and there an impassioned maple confesses the autumn; the ancient Pepperrell elms ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... followers made a heroic defense. The Spanish chroniclers say that when this hero, whose exploits recall the half-mythical legends of the early Roman Republic, when men were as demi-gods, saw one of his men falter, he {101} stabbed him and threw his body upon the Spaniards. At last he stood alone upon the last tower. The assailants offered him quarter, which he disdained. Shouting his war-cry of defiance, he dashed his sole remaining weapon in the faces of the escaladers and then hurled himself ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... saying before he said anything else: "May I smoke?" She met it, for encouragement, with her "My dear!" again, and then, while he struck his match, she had just another minute to be nervous—a minute that she made use of, however, not in the least to falter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all she cared, reach the pair ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... escape, not to take note of the pursuers; and it was only Biddy, looking over her shoulder for Monny, who even saw that they were followed. She cried out to her friend to hurry, that some one was coming, that they must get to the gate or all would be ended; then feeling Mabel falter, she held her more ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... senses came back to her so that she could grasp one of the wires. Hand over hand she was able to pull herself slowly to the nearest pole, where she rested before again making the trial. This time she did not falter, but when she was picked up by the rescuers at the farthest pole toward safety she was limp from ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... it rang far off like a mermaid's singing, on high like an angel's; it called with the same deep appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter, hearing herself alone. Then Staniford struck in again wildly, and the sea-voices lent their powerful discord, while the girl's contralto ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Court School, having given all possible directions for his little girl's comfort and well-being, and had gone away sorely broken down, crushed to the earth himself, but leaving Kitty with a courage which did not falter during the days which were to come. For the Major knew that, strong as he was, he was going to a part of India where brave men as strong as he are stricken down year after year by the unhealthy climate, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... story, but a tragedy. I am so sorry for Mrs. MacDonald that I can't think of anything else. But I think the explanation is that the Scotch are essentially such a devout people and live so closely within the shadow of death itself that they may without irreverence or pain jest where our lips would falter. Or else, perhaps they don't care a cuss whether Sandy MacDonald died or not. Take it ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... country, happily for you and me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter but at once resolved, at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the Union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... scald, the impatience is not despairing, the love is not—as it certainly is in the first act—that passion which is but one remove from deadly hate. Almost at the beginning of the first act Isolda, devoured by a longing for revenge, schemed to murder Tristan, and she does not falter in her purpose until he has taken the drink; the reaction has all the violence of a cataclysm; all is delirium; there is not a moment of happy lingering over the joy of a possible; new life; there is no time for that, no thought of it. All is burning wrath and hate and equally burning ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... dread confederacy, I do not allow the witnesses to hear each other. The laws of evidence, in a free country, prohibit any leading questions being put to witnesses: here, for the purposes of justice, it is indispensable; for the people, being ruled by fear, and apprehensive of consequences, often falter before the face of the accused, and their testimony has to be wrung from them. To decide also according to the technicalities of construction would be here ridiculous, and defeat the ends of justice. The people are rude and uncivilized; their oppressors ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... souls, he proved not only a commander of genius, but a fighter of iron will and temper, who joyed in the battle, and always showed at his best when the danger was greatest. The vein of fanaticism that ran through his character helped to render him a terrible opponent. He knew no such word as falter, and when he had once put his hand to a piece of work, he did it thoroughly and with all his heart. It was quite in keeping with his character that this gentle, high-minded, and religious man should, early in the contest, have proposed to hoist the black flag, neither ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... when the scanty food that is found is eaten ravenously, and blanching fear comes when a heavy tread and fumbling at the lock are heard in the hall—these things challenge language for fit expression and cause words to falter. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... he was always calm, cool, and self-possessed. Those who have had experience in the ranks know that the bravest and best soldiers will falter and hesitate when they are without confidence in the ability, judgment, and foresight of their leader. The soldiers who were ranged under the standard of Lee, believing that their noble commander was equal to all emergencies, followed ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... After my experience, if I should see any misguided person making friendly advances to one of these horned demons, I should cry, "Whoa!" as Cassandra did to the wood horse of the Greeks, and probably with the same result. They would not falter until they had gathered bitter experience ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... was already gray to the lips, but his nerve did not falter. "It had to come some time. And it was Luck ought to have done it too." He waved aside Sweeney, who was holding a flask to his lips. "What's the ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... to the vanquished! Falter not, seeker of universal happiness! Cry but once with us: 'Woe to the oppressors of the people!' and stand preeminent o'er all, the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I'm thine wi' a passion sincerest, And thou hast plighted me love o' the dearest! And thou'rt the angel that never can alter— Sooner the sun in his motion would falter. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... escape had taught her that much, but she refused to be dismayed. Moreover, she was aware that it would probably be necessary for her to ride astride, as all women seemed to ride nowadays: yet she did not falter. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... moment. It was as if she must cross that brook. But she kept halting. "Come on!" Neale called. And she moved again. Every time this happened she seemed to be compelled to go on. When she got into the swift water, nearly to her knees, then she might well have faltered. Yet she did not falter. All at once Neale discovered that she was weak. She did not have the strength to come on. It was that which made her slip and halt. What then made her try so bravely? How strange that she tried at all! Stranger than all ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Unconsciously you have fully explained your mood and feeling. It's in truth your nature, your sensitive, delicate organism, that shrinks from this wild tumult that is coming. In the higher moral tests of courage, when the strongest man might falter and fail, you would ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... us not talk of this longer. Are you ready?" And not waiting for assent, I led the way back to camp without word or look; I even kept myself from putting out a helping hand when I heard the steps behind me falter and ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... slowly came back. His face was stamped with quivering resolution. He did not falter. He had made up his mind to take his punishment. And mark you, the punishment was not for the original offence, but for the offence of running away. And in this, that tribal chieftain but behaved as behaves the exalted society in which he lived. We punish our criminals, and when they escape and ...
— The Road • Jack London
... and comedian, or true man and no pretender, his eyes did not falter. They were absorbed, as if in eager study ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... maiden, thou hast said, And I doubt not truly too, A farmer thou would wed, If he would sincerely woo Thy heart's best affection, And at the holy altar Vow, that kind protection He'd give thee, and never falter, But sacred keep the vow Thus solemn made, and never, So long as life lasts, bow Down, and let this ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... know, or entirely believe, that any such thing was really said. But, however that may be, no representation can be more opposed to the facts. Never for an instant did I falter in my purpose of republishing most of the papers which I had written. Neither, if I myself had been inclined to forget them, should I have been allowed to do so by strangers. For it happens that, during the fourteen last years, I have received from many quarters in England, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Some fifty men, women, and children were cooped together in that narrow space.... And yet Hypatia's countenance did not falter. Why should it? What were their numbers, beside the thousands who had perished year by year for centuries, by that and far worse deaths, in the amphitheatres of that empire, for that faith which she was vowed to re-establish. It was ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... me. On one very steep pitch, for instance, I saw before me two logs across the path, two feet and more in diameter, and what was worse, not two feet apart. How the brown cob meant to get over I could not guess; but as he seemed not to falter or turn tail, as an English horse would have done, I laid the reins on his neck and watched his legs. To my astonishment, he lifted a fore-leg out of the abyss of mud, put it between the logs, where I expected to hear it snap; clawed ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... meet, And falter; falls your golden hair Against my cheek; your bosom sweet Is heaving. Down the field, your Queen Rides slow, her soldiery all between, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... quick to see and interpret Charley's action, and their guns were quickly turned upon his frail craft. As he drew nearer the drifting dugout and came within range, a perfect hail of bullets splashed the water into foam around him. He did not falter or hesitate, but with long clean strokes of the paddle, sent his light little craft flying towards his goal. Perhaps it was this very speed that saved his life. Bullet after bullet pierced the thin canvas sides ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... never been dearer to her than at that moment, when his brilliant eyes seemed to search her soul and magnetize her; yet she did not falter and the aching of her heart was a goad ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... material needs never seemed to suggest themselves to the Dean. Blessed with absolute self-reliance from his boyhood, he had educated and made a success of himself, and he could not understand how any one could falter or repine in the race. Particularly, if Nature had granted them any ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... surgeon begins an operation like this one, he has an unformed prayer deep in his heart, though he may not realize to whom he prays. There was never more occasion for one than to-night, Rose. I know that the Great Healer is nearer to you than to me. Ask Him that my hand may not falter." ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... and processions and spectacles, not only upon such a cause as this, but for any slighter reason. If but one of the horses which drew the chariots called Tensae, upon which the images of their gods were placed, happened to fail and falter, or if the driver took hold of the reins with his left hand, they would decree that the whole operation should commence anew; and, in latter ages, one and the same sacrifice was performed thirty times over, because of the occurrence of some defect or mistake or accident in the service. Such was ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... repeated the above story, not once did he falter or trip. He showed me the letter from his uncle, he pointed out the condition of his eyes and the scars on his face; with some demur he accepted my half-crown, saying that he did not ask for anything, and that all he wanted was to get ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... dear Master, Though the road be rough and steep, Thou wilt hold me lest I falter, Thy strong ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... darkness brought me back to my natural consciousness, without afflicting me much, but astonishing me. Why was I away from him? I could repeat my lessons in the midst of these dreams quite fairly; it was the awakening among the circle of the boys that made me falter during a recital and ask myself why I was there and he absent? They had given over speculating on another holiday and treat from my father; yet he had produced such an impression in the school that even when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... special spiritual powers which under such conditions are granted to it. 'I should commend to them that will successfully philosophise the belief and endeavour after a certain principle more noble and inward than reason itself, and without which reason will falter, or at least reach but to mean and frivolous things. I have a sense of something in me while I thus speak, which I must confess is of so retruse a nature that I want a name for it, unless I should adventure to term ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the strongest characters will at times falter and fall, and so it was with Mrs. Upton and her resolution finally. There came a time when the pressure was too strong ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... to hold you back?" (Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not faltered then.) "I did not falter then. I will not do so now, though this time is harder than the first." (It certainly was.) "You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others have gone come back through ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... our lips ring it out determines whether we shall be blessings or curses to our generation. There is a Babel of voices now preaching other messages which promise good tidings of good. Let us cleave with all our hearts to Christ alone, and let our tongues not falter in proclaiming, 'Neither is there salvation in any other.' The gospel of the Christ who died for our sins, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... march or battle flame, In fortress and in field, Our war-cry is thy holy name, Thy love our joy and shield! And if we falter, let thy power Thy stern avenger be, And God forget us in the hour We cease to ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... in the old pew, and hear the familiar tones of her pastor's voice in that far-away, pleasant village that used to be her home; now she had no home, a wanderer from house to house, and yet she was not a murmurer, her faith and love did not falter. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... thoughtful and generous in their hospitality. Ahead of us lay merely thirty-six hours by steamer to Manaos. Such a trip as that we had taken tries men as if by fire. Cherrie had more than stood every test; and in him Kermit and I had come to recognize a friend with whom our friendship would never falter or ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... reached forward with a lunge. This time he got his wrist on the window-ledge. Thus leaning, he finally secured a hold on the fragment of glass with his fingers, and pulled on it. A crackle caused him to falter. Munson's breathing continued undisturbed. At the next pull the piece came free. The next moment Alex was sitting on the cot-end, sawing at the rope with the sharp edge of the ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... father's bitterest enemy. Daumon, concealed behind the window curtain, had watched his approach, and it was with the same air of deference that he had welcomed the Marquis, as he took care to call him; but he affected to be so overcome by the honor of this visit that he could only falter out,— ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... soldiers would be backward? As the Russians followed Skobeleff's grey up the bloody slopes of Plevna, so the Federals followed the bright chestnut of this unknown hero, and not till the colours waved within thirty paces of the parapet did the charge falter. But, despite the supports that came thronging up, Jackson's soldiers, covered by the earthwork, opposed a resistance which no mere frontal attack could break. Three times, as the lines in rear merged ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... and watched her pretty bright movements with gentle interest, maintaining a silence meanwhile only surpassed in completeness by Dot's. Hannah rattled on, but there was a hollowness in the rattle that made Catherine's hostess heart falter. She was never fluent, herself. Her gentle art consisted in making her guests entertain themselves ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... Lord falter in doing His work?" Mrs. Stoddard's voice intoned reverently, while she looked at Agatha with her sincere eyes. "No. He gives strength to perform His commands. But sickness and sorrow and death are on every hand; to some it is appointed for a moment's trial, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... as the fox sprang up the slight embankment on which, as is usual, the line of fence was placed. For an instant he seemed to falter, then leaped the top rail, and ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on dunghill and on jewel, though it be true that in the one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the queen, whose anxiety grew greater every moment. "On your brow I read despair—your lips falter ere you announce some terrible tidings—your hands tremble. Oh, my God! my ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... into the jungle Kirby pushed, and never for a moment did his companions falter. But the way was not so easy now, for nerves were jaded, muscles sore, and no human will could have been powerful enough to cast aside the growing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... three hundred In all this Great Lone Land, Which stretches from Superior's shore To where the Rockies stand; But not one heart doth falter, No coward voice complains, Tho' all too few in numbers are The Riders ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... regimentals, but with a look of savage dignity upon him that keeps every one from laughing. The murmur of admiration that passed along the thronged gallery leaped up into a shout in the bosom of Palmyre. Oh, Bras-Coupe—heroic soul! She would not falter. She would let the silly priest say his say—then her cunning should help her not to be his wife, yet to show his mighty arm how and when ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... voice of the signal cannon, France calls her sons their aid to lend; "Let us go," the soldier cries, "to battle! 'Tis our mother we defend!" To die on Freedom's Altar—to die on Freedom's Altar! 'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter! ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... expected gratitude, but neither had they expected any such rudeness as this, so Sindri determined to give Loki a lesson. Going to one corner of the smithy he picked up a pig-skin and taking the hammer in his hands, told his brother to blow steadily, neither to falter nor to fail until he passed the word that the work was done. Then with strength and gentleness he wrought with his tools, having cast nothing into the heat but the pig-skin; with mighty blows and delicate touches he brought thickness and substance into it, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... proportion as the king should falter, the Commons would grow bold. The House immediately began to attack Laud and Strafford in their speeches. It is the theory of the British Constitution that the king can do no wrong; whatever criminality ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... nature, as it were, to her own good time and will. And presently the glance that watched me, as at distance and in doubt, began to flutter and to brighten, and to deepen into kindness, then to beam with trust and love, and then with gathering tears to falter, and in shame to turn away. But the small entreating hands found their way, as if by instinct, to my great projecting palms; and trembled ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... keep her word with you," she declared with great earnestness, a sad, rather than scornful earnestness, putting out her hand as if to touch his shoulder. Half way her intention seemed to falter; her hand fell in eloquent expression ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... had come, it appeared, for me to assume a woman's burdens, among which often is an expedient marriage. I could no longer offer my tender years as an excuse for side-stepping a big opportunity. I musn't falter. The moment had arrived. I accepted Breck, and down underneath a pile of stockings in the back of my lowest bureau drawer I hid a little velvet-lined jewel-box, inside of which there lay an enormous diamond solitaire—promise of my ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... other irregular force before a determined onslaught, made a feeble effort to get off, and then ran their boats ashore and fired them. They had but one chance, and that a desperate one, to bear down with reckless speed on the oncoming ships and ram them. Failing to do this, and beginning to falter, the ships came among them like dogs among a flock of sheep, willing enough to spare, had they understood the weakness of their foes, but thinking themselves to be in conflict with formidable iron-clad rams, an impression the ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... faded, and sorrows may encompass us about;—yet above us the voice of Hope crieth aloud, "Press on!"—through tears and the cross must thou win the crown; be patient, trustful, in every duty and grief; "press on," and falter not; and its words linger like the music of a remembered dream in our ear, until, at the borders of the grave, we lay down the burden of our sinfulness and care, and, through the open gate of death, pass onward to that world where hope shall be exchanged for sight, and we, with unveiled ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... all the night through, the slightest moan from me found him alert to give me drink or shift me to an easier posture. Our total solitude seemed from the first to breed a certain good-fellowship between us: neither next day nor for many days did he remit or falter in his care for me. But his manner, though not ungentle, was taciturn. He seemed to carry about a weight on his mind; his brow wore a constant frown, vexed and unhappy. Once or twice I caught ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... fail, fall, give out, sink, surrender, break down, droop, faint, falter, give up, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... piece the flying fingers began to falter. No doubt the intense gaze he was bending on the top of her head confused her. At any rate she broke off abruptly ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... other, "as long as I have a prospect of large profits; why should I falter or hesitate at so slight a ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Jimmy Wallace himself. He released, too, a little sigh of relief when he saw her off in her stride again after that momentary falter. But he hardly looked at the stage after that; stared absently at his program instead, and, presently, availed himself of the dramatic critic's license and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... by His self-assertion because they recognised not His divine origin, and said 'This man blasphemeth'; 'This deceiver said,' have more to say in defence of their conclusion than those who bow before Him with reverence, and declare Him to be the pattern of all human perfectness, and yet falter when they are asked to join in the great confession, 'Thou are the Christ, the Son of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... power punish me," said he, solemnly, "if ever I halt or falter in what I believe to be my duty! I place no bounds to the future of this republic—based, as I firmly believe it to be, upon the enduring principle of the just ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... Alison's death reached him. Mark told him very carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul—for the end had come very suddenly—Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it were, day by ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... vengeance both of the government and the prelacy would soon be set in array against us. I therefore bethought myself, in that peril of our lives and cause, of two things which seemed most needful; first, Not to falter in our enterprise until we had proved the utmost of the Lord's pleasure in our behalf; and second, To use the means under Him which, in all human undertakings, are required to bring whatsoever ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on dunghill and on jewel, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... hand now, and the round, white ray shot down the corridor—seemed suddenly to falter unsteadily—swept in through an open door that was almost beside him—and then, as though a nerveless hand held it, the ray dropped and played shakily on the toe of his ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... clashing of his fall, Suddenly came, and at his side all pale Dismounting, loosed the fastenings of his arms, Nor let her true hand falter, nor blue eye Moisten, till she had lighted on his wound, And tearing off her veil of faded silk Had bared her forehead to the blistering sun, And swathed the hurt that drain'd her dear lord's life. Then after all was done that hand could do, She rested, and her desolation ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... and croak As he ever caws and caws, Till the starry dance he broke, Till the sphery paean pause, And the universal chime Falter out ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... evening fireside meetings with the doctor's lovely daughter, once such unalloyed delight, were now only a keenly pleasing pain? Why did his face burn and his heart beat and his voice falter when obliged to speak to her? Why could he no longer talk of her to his mother, or write of her to his friend, Herbert Greyson? Above all, why had his favorite day dream of having his dear friends, Herbert and Clara married together, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the edge of the tracks, thought of Emily and a terrible consciousness of the sorrow she would feel if anything were to happen to him compressed his heart. But he did not falter. He was aware of the jangle of a fiercely rung bell, the hiss of steam, and a blinding glare; he could feel on his cheek the breath of the iron monster. With set teeth he threw himself forward, stooped, and reached out over the rail: in another instant he had tossed the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... for your health. In one of your pleasantest stories, while you were acting the narrative with a liveliness evidently unconscious, and giving me and mine a treat which we have not had for a long time, I observed your voice falter, as if some spasm of soul had shot across you; and I unquestionably saw, that rare sight in the eyes of man, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... could never falter in my goal to belong to the Swami Order like your revered self." I smiled at ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... mankind can only be satisfied when they acknowledge the sway of a common father. Tell them that they are the children of God. Announce the sublime and solacing doctrine of theocratic equality. Fear not, falter not. Obey the impulse of thine own spirit, and find a ready instrument ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... since the night I was sent to cover a Socialist meeting in New York. I tip-toed down the stairs, although I might have fallen down and landed with a thud without having been heard. The din came from the direction of the dining room. Well, come what might, I would not falter. After all, it could not be worse than that awful time when I had helped cover the teamsters' strike. I peered ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... stifling these antic misgivings as he might, and without allowing himself time to falter from his intent, he set out to find Mrs. Vervain's house. He knew the street and the number, for she had often given him the address in her invitations against the time when he should return to America. As he drew near the house a tender trepidation filled him ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... she had passed the door of the shop, waiting for a dull moment in its traffic. Now but two women were left, and they seemed to be waiting only for change. Her resolution did not falter; she was merely practising a trained discretion. She was going to buy a pair of satin dancing slippers though the whole world should look upon her as lost. Too long, she felt, had she dwelt among the untrodden ways. As she had confided to her ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; 175 For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— Ah! do not we, wanderer! await ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... we are trying for something higher and better than man has ever known—and we need the help that you can give. We need your money—bills cannot be paid without it. We need your names—a body cannot exist and labor without members. We need your love—our hearts must falter if we have it not. To all who hear these words I speak, to all who read them when they are printed, to all whom rumor may inform and question, I cry out, Come! To go on alone, were not so hard. I can do ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... in the garden of our joy, and palled with empire, how often hast thou sighed for some sweet isle unknown to man, where thou mightst pass thy days with no companion but my faithful self, and no adventures but our constant loves? O my beloved, that life may still be thine! And dost thou falter? Dost call thyself forlorn with such fidelity, and deem thyself a wretch, when Paradise with all its beauteous gates but woos thy entrance? Oh! no, no, no, no! thou hast forgot Schirene: I fear me much, thy over-fond Schirene, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... a lodge meeting which had wound up with a little supper in the banquet hall, felt a queer stir through his members to see the Higgins place alter its usually placid countenance, falter, turn half round, and get down on its knees with an apparently disastrous collapse of its four walls and of everything within them. The short wide windows narrowed and lengthened with an effect of bodily agony as the ribs of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny, You not a reminiscence of the land alone, You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith, Consort to every ship that sails, sail you! Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it here in every ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... cause them to tremble in their strong holds. Said he, "I will stand my ground. Somebody must die in this cause. I may be doomed to the stake and the fire, or to the scaffold tree, but it is not in me to falter if I can promote the work of emancipation." He did not leave the country, but was soon laid in the grave. It was the opinion of many that he was hurried out of life by the means of poison, but whether this was the case or not, the writer is ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... even two dogs had been killed. The plague propagated itself; for the only hope for those cried out upon was to confess their guilt and turn informers. Thus no one was safe. Mr. Willard, pastor of the Old South, who began to falter, was threatened; the wife of Mr. Hale, pastor of Beverly, who had been one of the great leaders of the prosecutions, was denounced; Lady Phips herself was named. But the race who peopled New England had a mental vigor which ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... dark, to hunt for dead branches in the woods for my kitchen stove!" And Mrs. Carroll, unexpectedly stirred by the pitiful memory, broke suddenly into tears, the more terrible to Susan because she had never seen her falter before. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... blue regimentals, but with a look of savage dignity upon him that keeps every one from laughing. The murmur of admiration that passed along the thronged gallery leaped up into a shout in the bosom of Palmyre. Oh, Bras-Coupe—heroic soul! She would not falter. She would let the silly priest say his say—then her cunning should help her not to be his wife, yet to show his mighty arm ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... led [-them-] {him} to the pyre. They had torn out the tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer. The Transgressor were young and tall. They had hair of gold and eyes blue as morning. They walked to the pyre, and their step did not falter. And of all the faces on that square, of all the faces which shrieked and screamed and spat curses upon them, [-their-] {theirs} was the ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... fixed my eyes upon those of my uncle, but he was too old in the world's ways to falter beneath the gaze of more searching eyes than ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... obtained. Nor was it an easy task to pass through so wily an enemy or the danger and difficulty much lessened, when even beyond the besiegers; owing to the obscure and mountainous way, it was necessary to pass, through a foe scattered in almost every direction. But Captain Logan was not a man to falter where duty called, because encompassed with danger. With two companions he left the fort in the night and with the sagacity of a hunter, and the hardihood of a soldier, avoided the trodden way of Cumberland Gap, which was most likely ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... softer effort soothed thy laboring breath, Gave grace to anguish, beauty to decay. "Thy friends, thy children, claim'd thy latest care; Theirs was the last that to thy bosom clung; For them to heaven thou sent'st the expiring prayer, The last that falter'd on thy trembling tongue."] was made the day before she expired, to draw up a solemn promise for both of us to sign, to ensure the strict performance of this last awful injunction: so anxious was she to commit this dear treasure to my care, well knowing ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... understand each other, at once and forever, or even I some day might be tempted to make a fool of myself. Your excellent counsels, my dearest cousin, will be invaluable to me, should my lagging footsteps falter by the way. Edith! where have you learned to be so hard, so worldly, so—if ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... truth. Self must mean only self-sacrifice until our sacred cause is won. Yet think twice, Sidney, before you bind yourself to me. I fear I am not so brave as other women appear to be in these times. My heart shrinks unspeakably from war and bloodshed. Although I shall not falter, I shall suffer agonies of dread. I cannot let you go to danger with stern words and dry eyes. I fear you'll find me too weak to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... horses, the loud cries of Ave Maria! the uncertainty as to whether our heavy carriage could be dragged across, the horses struggling and splashing in the boiling torrent, and the horrible fate that awaited us should one of them fall or falter!... The Senora ——- and I shut our eyes and held each other's hands, and certainly no one breathed till we were safe on the other side. We were then told that we had crossed within a few feet of a precipice over which a coach had been dashed into fifty pieces during ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... steady regard held, nothing moved about the man, not even the hand into which the poor disfigured chin had fallen. Ransom suppressed a sigh. His task was likely to prove a blind one. He had a sense of stumbling in the dark, but the gaze he had hoped to see falter compelled him to proceed, and he told his ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... highest order of genius, it may be truly asserted, that to gain the reputation of superior power, it must partially disguise itself; it must come down, and then it will be applauded for soaring.' And furthermore, that there are those who falter in the common tongue, because they think in another; and these are ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Godlike love. Let us go forth, brethren, sisters, a feeble band though we may seem to the eye of man, yet strong in the assurance that the hosts of heaven are encamped round about us, and that "more are they that are with us, than they that are" on the side of the oppressor; and let us not falter until in God's own good time the word shall be spoken, not as, we would hope, in the whirlwind or the earthquake, but in the "still small voice" of the oppressor's own conviction, saying to the slaves, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... calmly and steadily, "for thou knowest the charge laid upon me by my spiritual Father. 'Fear not, be not dismayed. A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.' Such was the burden of his charge; and shall I shrink or falter when the hour I have waited and watched for all these years has come like a thief in the night? Good John, thou wast the first to teach me that there was a truer, deeper chivalry than that of the tourney or the battlefield. Thou wast the first to understand, and ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to all they have cast away, and on imitating everything which they came into existence to insult. And when we have established all these nonsensical analogies with a nonexistent nation, we wait until there is a crisis in which we really are at one with America, and then we falter and threaten to fail her. In a battle where we really are of one blood, the blood of the great white race throughout the world, when we really have one language, the fundamental alphabet of Cadmus and the script of Rome, when we really do represent the same reign of law, the common conscience ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... fellows did not demur, but handed him the oars, and waited to see the two boys glide away. But, alas! though the Jolly Pioneer moved a little, it was not with the freedom and confidence which was to be expected of her in her native element. She seemed to shrink and falter, "as if afraid of getting ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... is launched without effect, a horrible blankness faces the passionate one. The men seeing Colina falter breathed more freely. They ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... accosted the friend, feeling instinctively that she was framed of softer stuff, and asked her if the path were a private one. It was a question that had never met her ear before, and she was too dull or too discreet to deal with it on the instant. To our amazement, she did not even manage to falter, ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with the mighty pretty little foot—lives there for the time as the guest of Lady Catharine. They are rated thick as peas in a pod. True, we are strangers, yet I venture we have made a beginning, and if we venture more we may better that beginning. Should I falter, when luck gave me the run of trente et le va but yesterday? Nay, ever follow fortune hard, and she ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... prospect to us poor travelers worn out with the fatigue of the journey." The cold was beginning to be severe, and many of the men were suffering from scurvy and unfit for service, which increased the hardship for all; yet they did not falter but pressed bravely on, and on the 26th emerged from the mountains by the Arroyo Seco, which they named the Canada del Palo Caido[24] (Valley of the Fallen Tree), and camped on the Salinas river, which they christened Rio de ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... cut her short here, and Hazel, whose loving heart she had almost torn out of his body, could only falter out in a broken voice, that he would obey her. "I'll work no more for you at present," said he, "sweet as it has been. I will think instead. I will go this moment beneath the stars ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... world says does not exist. We shall find a whole new world of those who despise the honours and prizes of the commercial machine, and who care not for the shows, diversions, pleasures, and gambles provided for commercial slaves. But it will not cause those of that world to falter if the great multitude of their fellow-men scoff at them or ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... a conviction that the cause could never prosper, he was the last man that should have been the general of an army whose ardour, when not engaged in action, he invariably restrained. All contending opinions seem to hesitate and to falter when they relate to the retreat from Derby, the grand error of the enterprise; the fatal step, when the tide served, and the wind was propitious, and an opportunity never to be regained, was for ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... 105, which provided for the assignment of men to critically needed specialties, explicitly excluded Negroes.[7-5] He wanted the circular revised. Above all, Petersen feared the new policy might falter from a lack of aggressive leadership. He estimated that at first it would require at least the full attention of several officers under the leadership of an "aggressive officer who knows the Army and has its confidence and will take an active interest in vigorous ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... thus drove up; the thought was momentous and overwhelming; it might have been sufficient to have destroyed all courage and all presence of mind had her nerves been, by the slightest degree, less strong. But as it was, her nerve sustained her, and her courage did not falter for one single instant. With a calm face and firm step she advanced to the window. With a steady hand she drew the curtains aside and looked out. Little could lie seen amidst the gloom at first; but at length, as she gazed, she was able to distinguish the dim outline ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Never to falter, not to shun the driving attacks of the pursuing horse or grappling foot, to watch his battle-flag glittering in the van, to lead, cheer, hope, inspire, and madly head his men, is the second nature of Valois. He has sworn not to see ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... remark, that it was this jealousy, which first convinced him that he was in love. You cannot open your lips to speak against him, who has impressed your heart. You will inwardly, although not probably in words, defend him from the attacks of others. To blush and falter under such circumstances would indicate love, much more surely than ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... herself. On the other hand, her bearing was certainly calculated to check familiarity. Even stockbrokers' clerks—young men as a class with the bump of reverence but poorly developed—would in her presence falter and grow hesitating. She had cultivated the art of not noticing to something approaching perfection. She could draw the noisiest customer a glass of beer, which he had never ordered; exchange it for three of whiskey, which he had; take his money and return him his change without ever seeing ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Edgington, noting a tendency to falter. "And now for the names and addresses of a few witnesses, and we'll go ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... young lady, he grew pale; and if this was sudden, started. If his eyes accidentally met hers, the blood rushed into his cheeks, and his countenance became all over scarlet. If common civility ever obliged him to speak to her, as to drink her health at table, his tongue was sure to falter. If he touched her, his hand, nay his whole frame, trembled. And if any discourse tended, however remotely, to raise the idea of love, an involuntary sigh seldom failed to steal from his bosom. Most of which ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Temple rent; By the forc'd tears her captive Martyrs shed; By each pale Orphan's feeble cry for bread; 30 By ravag'd Belgium's corse-impeded Flood, And Vendee steaming still with brothers' blood!' And if amid the strong impassion'd Tale, Thy Tongue should falter and thy Lips turn pale; If transient Darkness film thy aweful Eye, 35 And thy tir'd Bosom struggle with a sigh: Science and Freedom shall demand to hear Who practis'd on a Life so doubly dear; Infus'd the unwholesome anguish ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... are many of these, even the most purely and highly intellectual, in which it is essential to success—essential simply as a means, material, but none the less imperative, to enable the mind to do its work. Year by year, almost day by day, we see men (and women) falter and fail in the midst of their labors; ... and all for want of a little bodily stamina—a little bodily power and bodily capacity for the endurance of fatigue, or protracted unrest, or anxiety, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... Rae, our leader, we should all have perished by now. He is at times severe and stern with those who falter, but only for their good. He is all along the line, helping the women, who well-nigh worship him, and urging on the men. He cheers us by prophesying that we shall soon prevail over all conditions and all our enemies. I think he must never sleep and never eat. At ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... is said, owe more to their perseverance than to their natural powers, their friends, or the favorable circumstances around them. Genius will falter by the side of labor, great powers will yield to great industry. Talent is desirable, but perseverance is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a slight cast in them; nor the grim suavity of his manner, and the harsh threatening voice that permitted of no disguise. It was the sum of these things, the great brutal presence of the man—that was overpowering—that made the great falter and the poor crouch. And then his reputation! Though we knew little of the world's wickedness, all we did know had come to us linked with his name. We had heard of him as a duellist, as a bully, an employer of bravos. At Jarnac he had ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... whose faith was in their religion rather than in God felt their spirit falter, and believed that the universe grew dark. This is ever the weakness of disciples, and thus it is that while many flocking to the new standard see all things made plain, others whose hopes are entwined about the displaced creeds suffer an eclipse ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... answered my question,' I insisted, for I was still filled with wonder at the great throng surging past us, whose purpose never seemed to change or falter. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... yet 'tis not for us Our courage to relax. Arouse ye then! A brave man's spirit its vigour soon regains. That ye, the best and bravest of the host, Should stand aloof thus idly, 'tis not well; If meaner men should from the battle shrink, I might not blame them; but that such as ye Should falter, indignation fills my soul. Dear friends, from this remissness must accrue Yet greater evils; but with gen'rous shame And keen remorse let each man's breast be fill'd; Fierce is the struggle; in his pride of strength ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... men or women, were carried off and flung into dungeons and tortured till they yielded up their wealth. No ghastlier picture of a nation's misery has ever been painted than that which closes the English Chronicle whose last accents falter out amidst the horrors of the time. "They hanged up men by their feet and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings about men's heads, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe,—one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy courage falter?" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... left Cherry Court School, having given all possible directions for his little girl's comfort and well-being, and had gone away sorely broken down, crushed to the earth himself, but leaving Kitty with a courage which did not falter during the days which were to come. For the Major knew that, strong as he was, he was going to a part of India where brave men as strong as he are stricken down year after year by the unhealthy climate, and three years even at the best was ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... give the field the slip, So never draw the rein, But keep him moving with the whip, And if he falter — set your lip And rouse him ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... sex, your beauty, your heroism and all the rest of it? Suppose I, with nothing but such sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine and those papers which you have about you, and which I want and mean to have: suppose I, with the prize within my grasp, were to falter and sneak away with my hands empty; or, what would be worse, cover up my weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and sparing you the violence I dared not use, would you not despise me from the depths of your woman's soul? Would any woman be such a fool? Well, Bonaparte can rise to the situation ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... show its efficacy, I would say—take the worst sinks of intemperance in the city, give them the sanction of the Law, and let them run to overflowing. But shut up the gilded apartments where youth takes its first draught, and respectability just begins to falter from its level. Close the ample doors through which enters the long train of those who stumble to destruction and reel into quick graves, and let the flood overwhelm only the maimed and battered conscripts that ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... was drill, plain, simple drill. I must not falter in saying that I think the management of the traffic—as the phrase goes— to be distinctly illuminating and wonderful. The police were not ruffled and exasperated. They were as peaceful as two ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... repugnance to his leadership, then taunt us with incapacity for self-government. These flambeaus and rockets directed with unerring precision, taking effect in the very centre of our magazine, did not cause, in those for whom it was intended, a falter nor a wince in their course, but steadily and determinedly they pressed their way to the completion of their object under prosecution. In this design the enemy ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... free grace doth cover, My sins He doth wash away; These feet which shrink and falter Shall enter the Gates ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... unnecessary, and they arose to part. They stood up, looking each other squarely in the face, and shook hands in silence. Tears were in the eyes of both men. But each felt that he was heeding the call of duty, and neither had ever been known to falter. Belton returned to his room and retired to rest. Bernard called his messenger and sent him for every man of prominence in ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... want to talk to you about." A fiery blush burned through her deep tan, but her low, clear voice did not falter and her eyes held his unflinchingly. "I know you better than you know yourself, as I've said before. You are killing yourself, but it isn't the work, frightfully hard and disheartening as it is, that is doing it—it's your anxiety for ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... not to lower Our standards in the dust; To meet a savage enemy Whose words the world can't trust. To guard our foolish tempers— Or keep them out of sight! To never falter, doubt, or fear ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... building falter Can thy God thy griefs despise? 'Mid the ruins dark, an altar Fashion'd by His hands, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... in the king's word was greater than his fear. "Falter not, oh, feet! Fear not, oh, heart! There is safety in the path. The king himself has said it," he cried as he ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... trees which ever I beheld for straitness and beauty: I can compare you only to that. A stupor past admiration strikes me, joined with fear, which keeps me back from approaching you, to embrace your knees. Nor is it strange; for one of freshest and firmest spirit would falter, approaching near to so bright an object: but I am one whom a cruel habit of calamity has prepared to receive strong impressions. Twenty days the unrelenting seas have tossed me up and down coming from Ogygia, and at length cast me ship-wrecked last night upon your coast. I have seen no man ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of weeping, He falter'd in his walk; Tom never shed a tear, But onwards he did stalk, As pompous, black, and solemn ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... scorn to meet reproof, No arrogance to keep aloof; Her air absorb'd, her sadden'd mien, Combin'd the mourning, captive queen, With her who at the altar stands To raise aloft her spotless hands, In meek and persevering prayer, For such as falter in despair. All that was smiling, bright, and gay, Youth's show of triumph during May, Its roseate crown, was snatch'd away! Yet sorrows, which had come so soon, Like tender morning dew repos'd, O'er hope and joy as softly clos'd As moist clouds ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... that town over yonder is not taken; if my brave captains fall, and my brave soldiers falter at that stone wall; and if our flag shall not soon wave over those ramparts, France may yet ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... has marched on and on, and its step has exalted freedom and humanity. We are undergoing the same ordeal as did our predecessors nearly a century ago. We are following the course they blazed. They triumphed. Will their successors falter and plead organic impotency in the nation? Surely after 125 years of achievement for mankind we will not now surrender our equality with other powers on matters fundamental and essential to nationality. With no such purpose was the nation created. In no such spirit has it developed its full and ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... thou soon," she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave Hangs ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "den of thieves," and gaining the street below, Elwood's first thought was of home and his shamefully neglected family, and he turned his steps in that direction. But, before proceeding far, he began to hesitate and falter in his course. He became oppressed with the feelings of a criminal. He was ashamed to meet his family; for, fully conscious that his looks must be haggard, his eyes red and bloodshot, and his whole appearance ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... and his followers made a heroic defense. The Spanish chroniclers say that when this hero, whose exploits recall the half-mythical legends of the early Roman Republic, when men were as demi-gods, saw one of his men falter, he {101} stabbed him and threw his body upon the Spaniards. At last he stood alone upon the last tower. The assailants offered him quarter, which he disdained. Shouting his war-cry of defiance, he dashed his ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... breast— I have fought as I might—I have gained you, beloved ... to God's mercy the rest! Tho' the heavens darken above me and the sky be shrunk as a scroll, In the wreck and ruin of riven worlds, should I falter, O Soul of my soul? Tho' the demon Despair, where he vanquished lies, still utter his shibboleth— I fling my glove in the face of Fate and smile ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... a woman of wonderful resource—she tried hard to keep her dignity, not to fail or falter before him, the cold emissary of that cruel mother; but unutterable woe looked out of her eyes at him, her white face had on it the passion of despair, her voice the ring of anguish, the small white hands on which the wedding-ring shone, trembled like ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... pluck a flower, Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies. Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords. This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king Shall falter under ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... speak to the other on the occurrences of the past day, and yet each thought of nothing else. They knelt down, side by side, as they had done from infancy, repeating the usual prayers as they had been accustomed to do. Helen's voice did not falter, but continued its unvaried tone to the end: Rose (Helen thought) delivered the petition of "lead us not into temptation" with deeper feeling than usual; and instead of rising when Helen rose, and exchanging with her the kiss of sisterly affection, Rose buried her face ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... that this could last, and as we galloped into Montgeron I felt Lizette falter under me, and an oath broke from De Lorgnac, for Cartouche had lost ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... trembled, their knees shook, their voices failed, they stopped in the very middle of questions, answers halted for their conclusion, and were never more remembered by either party; the very music began to falter, the lights seemed to wane and sicken; for the fact was new too evident that The Masque had kept his appointment, and was at this moment in the room "to meet the Landgrave ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... little rotunda. Naylor examined it with interest too—the old story was a quaint one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had he disposed of—everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... the latter. Nor is this all; you must visit your patient very often if the disease is serious in its nature and rapid in its course. New symptoms succeed each other in infancy and childhood with great rapidity; complications occur that call for some change in your treatment, or the vital powers falter suddenly when you least expect it. The issues of life and death often hang on the immediate adoption of a certain plan of treatment, or on its timely discontinuance. Do not wait, therefore, for symptoms of great urgency before ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... and with her cheeks on fire began to falter out, "I did look on Gerard as my husband—we being betrothed-and he was in so sore danger, and I thought I had killed him, and I-oh, if you were but my mother I might find courage: you would question me. But ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the beginning is made; watch for and utilize all such opportunities, as they come, and the main road of the task is marked out; shock is minimized, if not eliminated, mutual confidence is engendered, and a priceless reward may be won. But if at that first question we falter, quibble, blush, lie, jest, or repel, we have entered the wrong road which leads eternally astray. Let no question ever be either ignored or neglected, least of all repelled. It is the golden opportunity for parent, teacher, ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... purpose of giving him a fair start along a new line of endeavour we resort to the distinctly obvious, and then announce that he brushed away the tears and laughed as gaily as any of them over the surprises that followed the one which momentarily caused him to falter. He was not given to looking upon the dark side of things. Even as he sat there at the head of the long table, he jocosely remarked to Diggs that he would have to borrow a saw from the janitor the next day and reduce the size of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... her beautiful eyes! they have smitten mine own As a glory glanced down from the glare of The Throne; And I reel, and I falter and fall, as afar Fell the shepherds that looked on the mystical Star, And yet dazed in the tidings that bade them arise— So I grope through the night of her ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... and labor required to produce them; leaving a handsome surplus to be devoted to carrying forward the work on a still larger scale; in regions less promising and more remote, even within the borders of the arid lands. With this lesson before us, how can we hesitate or falter in our efforts to successfully ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Marie, sweet Marie, come to me! Not because your face is fair, love, to see; But your soul, so pure and sweet, Makes my happiness complete, Makes me falter at your ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... let the trial come! and witness thou, If terror be upon me; if I shrink To meet the storm, or falter in my strength 610 When hardest it besets me. Do not think That I am fearful and infirm of soul, As late thy eyes beheld: for thou hast changed My nature; thy commanding voice has waked My languid powers to bear me boldly on, Where'er the will ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... the supplications of his young wife from going in person to destroy them.[1074] At length, when the alternative of death or the Bastile was the only one presented, the courage of the Bourbons began to falter. Navarre was the first to yield, and his sister, the excellent Catharine de Bourbon, followed his example. On the thirteenth of September the ambassador Walsingham wrote: "They prepare Bastile for some ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... blow was dreadful. The young girl felt her strength give way. Her hands fell powerless, her face became fearfully pale, all her limbs trembled, and sinking upon her knees, and casting a terrified glance at the strait waistcoat she was just able to falter in a feeble voice, "Oh, no:—not that—for pity's sake, madame. I will do—whatever you wish." And, her strength quite failing, she would have fallen upon the ground if the two women had not run towards her, and received ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the high and special spiritual powers which under such conditions are granted to it. 'I should commend to them that will successfully philosophise the belief and endeavour after a certain principle more noble and inward than reason itself, and without which reason will falter, or at least reach but to mean and frivolous things. I have a sense of something in me while I thus speak, which I must confess is of so retruse a nature that I want a name for it, unless I should adventure to term it Divine sagacity, which is the first rise of successful ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... always an achievement, even though the steps falter. To be the first is also a distinction that cannot be taken away, because whoever comes after must be a follower; and to follow is tame. It occasionally happens that the first, no matter how many imitate him, is also the best; but this cannot be said of Baboo Ramkinoo Dutt, retired medical officer ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... the Traveling Salesman's hand shook slightly with the memory, and his joggled mind drove him with unwonted carelessness to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft, flimsy mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not altogether falter. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Blood had an easy explanation for every confusing statement, and did not falter even when Miss Brock wanted to start the 1018 herself. He objected that she would soil her gloves, but she held them up in derision; plainly, they had already suffered. Some difficulty then arose because she could not begin to reach the throttle. Again, with much chaffing, the ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... rejoicing that you are fellow sufferers with Christ, a pledge that when his glory is revealed you shall partake of it with him. See to it that you are free from crime, free from sins for which you ought to suffer; then, if persecuted and slain for your Christian profession and virtues, falter not. The terrible time preceding the second advent of your Master is at hand. The sufferings of that time will begin with the Christian household; but how much more dreadful will be the sufferings of the close of that time among the disobedient ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... bore the ordeal through which she had just passed with much firmness. Once only, whilst sentence was being passed, her high-strung resolution appeared to falter and give way. I was watching her intently, and I observed that she suddenly directed a piercing look towards a distant part of the crowded court. In a moment her eye lightened, the expression of extreme horror which had momently ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... are tokens, sir, you must believe; There is one language never can deceive The lover knew it when the maiden smiled; The mother knows it when she clasps her child; Voices may falter, trembling lips turn pale, Words grope and stumble; this will tell their tale Shorn of all rhetoric, bare of all pretence, But radiant, warm, with Nature's eloquence. Look in our eyes! Your welcome waits you there,— North, South, East, West, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Canton, Ling put aside his books, and passed the time in visiting all the most celebrated tombs in the neighbourhood of the city. Lightened in mind by this charitable and agreeable occupation, he returned to his studies with a fixed resolution, nor did he again falter in his purpose. On the evening of the examination, when he was sitting alone, reading by the aid of a single light, as his custom was, a person arrived to see him, at the same time manifesting a considerable appearance of secrecy and reserve. Inwardly sighing at the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Ahimaaz swift on his track. We marked the king's anxious waiting, and the fixed gaze of the watchman on the city walls. We strained in the long strain of the runners. We fainted with the fears of a father's heart. We saw Ahimaaz outrun his rival yet falter in his message. And we heard the blow upon David's heart of Cushi's stroke. "And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... and loiter, O most sweet? Why do you falter and delay, Now that the insolent, high-blooded May Comes greeting and to greet? Comes with her instant summonings to stray Down the green, antient way— The leafy, still, rose-haunted, eye-proof street!— Where true lovers each other may entreat, Ere ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... ever mistake that," he declared. "Sometimes one may lose one's way, and one may even falter if the path is ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... make answer to my haughty dead, Who made me, heart and head, "Even the sunbeams falter, flicker and bend — ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... alertness of action that matched her quick intelligence. She had before this weaned the expatriated from traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but the creature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories, to falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion, that there was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies. "There are times when to give them their ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... lips. St. Vincent, Collingwood, Howe, Duncan, the noble list proceeds, each name illuminated with its only splendid story of desperate enterprise and deathless honor, till the proudest name of all is reached, {337} and praise itself seems to falter and fall off before the lonely grandeur of Nelson. Never was a little life filled with greater achievements; never was a little body more compact of the virtues that make great captains and brave men. The life that began in the September of 1758 and that ended in the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... thee! So I do! I pity the dumb victim at the altar— But does the robed priest for his pity falter? I'd rack thee, though I knew A thousand lives were perishing in thine— What were ten thousand to ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... deeds of this war are mentioned. The Prussian guards gave them a name which tells us of the respect and fear they inspired. They were "The Black Devils." The guards were seasoned veterans who had participated in the fiercest fighting of the war, yet these Negro heroes of the West did not falter before them. They were brigaded with the choicest troops of France and fought by their side through the final stages of the war. By them they were given a name indicative of the respect and confidence, their soldierly bearing and actions inspired. To the French they were the "Partridges," ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... anew. Oh, what can I, poor devil, say to comfort? Go to the Maiden's Chapter on the Main, I counsel you, go to your cousin Thurn. Seek in the hills a boy, light-curled as I, Buy him with gold and silver, to your breast Press him, and teach his lips to falter: Mother. And when he grows to manhood, show him well How men draw shut the eyelids of the dead. That is the only joy that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... read him the famous "Gettysburg Address." Simple, haunting melodies like "The Lost Chord" took hold of him. Marie Doro was frequently summoned to play it for him on the piano. Although his courage did not falter, he looked upon men and events with a ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... my experience, if I should see any misguided person making friendly advances to one of these horned demons, I should cry, "Whoa!" as Cassandra did to the wood horse of the Greeks, and probably with the same result. They would not falter until they had gathered bitter experience with ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... but conceive it to be mistaken," I replied, with something of a falter, for I saw we were come to grips at last. "I am here to lay before you certain information, by which I shall convince you Alan had no hand whatever in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together, he would repeat these words to himself when he sometimes felt his resolution falter. For the sailor, who never until then had known a modest woman, who had starved his whole life long for what his money could never buy, whose heart at thirty was as virgin as a boy's, now found himself moved by a sublime passion for the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... intervals, perhaps a quick, almost gasping, "God forgive him!" or a "Lord have mercy!" But as the talk went on he became slowly quieter, his face grew firmer, he sat up in his chair, and at the last he came to bend upon the speaker a look that made him falter confusedly and stop. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... sir, you must believe; There is one language never can deceive The lover knew it when the maiden smiled; The mother knows it when she clasps her child; Voices may falter, trembling lips turn pale, Words grope and stumble; this will tell their tale Shorn of all rhetoric, bare of all pretence, But radiant, warm, with Nature's eloquence. Look in our eyes! Your welcome waits you there,— North, South, East, West, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... my message to you is the same as to the student body—Noblesse Oblige! Freely have you received, freely must you give. Tho the state does not, nor ever can, adequately pay you for your best services, still you must not falter. You must continue to live up to your own high ideals of your noble profession. The very acceptance of such positions in such an institution carries with it the ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... thou art loathed, full well; Loathed and cursed by the lords of power. Ever they name thee the flag of hell, And rage in the fear of thy triumph hour. But their grasp grows week on the wills of men; Their armies falter; their guns are rust; As from prison, and labor of poverty's den Thy hosts speak ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... Spirits in this great sea, with none to help or guide me? Yet it is my last task, and for Lily-Bell's sake I must not fear or falter now," said Thistle. So he flew hither and thither over the sea, looking through the waves. Soon he saw, far below, the branches ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... forward by her husband's side. But the menacing stillness of her visitors, and their bloody heads and blankets, now fully revealed by the blaze of the fire, seemed of such evil omen, that the good woman was evidently startled. Her step, at first quick and confident, began to falter, and with an involuntary shudder she approached her husband, who had resumed his seat. A minute passed in gloomy silence. Then the Indian again raised his head, but without looking up, and spoke ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... write to him or talk to him on this subject. My tongue, my pen, will be sure to falter. I know that he will boldly justify his conduct, and I feel that he ought to justify; yet the attempt to justify would awaken—indignation, selfishness. In spite of the suggestions of my better reason, I ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... was that as Bob spied the "fried holes" the dispenser of them gave a start as a bullet or a piece of shell flew close to his head. He was in grave danger now, and realized it. But he did not falter. He gave one backward glance, not with an idea of retreating, that is sure, but to see if there were any near him in that direction whom he might serve. Then he saw the ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... At least, it seemed to her that they must. And so she bewailed them, as women will even when their hearts are brave and when their devotion is untarnished and undimmed. She yearned for the dawning of the Day of Peace, of the Reign of Love, but her courage did not falter. Still amid her tears she clung to the idea that those whom the ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... saw resemblance to no one she remembered, so she concluded she must be like the father, physically, whom they must all ignore absolutely. Try as she valiantly did, the old lady felt her quick-beating heart falter before Joan's earnest, searching gaze. It was a relief to turn to Nancy and permit her ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... leaves sometimes they fall— The words that burn and falter; And is it true they too must fade Upon ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... which consisted of a comfortable bed, a table with some books on it, three chairs, a small looking-glass on the wall, a guitar and some articles of men's clothing hanging here and there. A heap of dull embers smouldered in the fireplace. Alice did not falter at the threshold, but promptly ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... vital air. Since, from my childhood I have ever been, Amidst my play-mates of superior mien; Should friend or foe demand my father's name, Let not my silence testify my shame! If still concealed, you falter, still delay, A mother's blood shall wash ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... MacDonald that I can't think of anything else. But I think the explanation is that the Scotch are essentially such a devout people and live so closely within the shadow of death itself that they may without irreverence or pain jest where our lips would falter. Or else, perhaps they don't care a cuss whether Sandy MacDonald died or ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... of the room, and by way of that memorable side door issued forth into a morning as rarely beautiful as ever that blessed Island knew. It made renunciation doubly difficult. Yet Sally did not falter or once look back. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... every line of his ugly face. Beside him stood the slovenly servant. She was crying—the more human second thought of a heart not altogether corrupted by the sordid hardness of her lot. How can faith in the human race falter when one considers how much heart it has in spite of all it suffers in the struggle upward through the dense fogs of ignorance upward, toward the truth, toward the light of which it never ceases to ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... spoke of "de majority of Sous Carolina," "de interests of de state," "de honor of ole Ba'nwell district," and these phrases he connected by various expletives, and sounds of which we could make nothing. A length he began to falter, when the captain with admirable presence of mind came to his relief, and interrupted and closed the harangue with an hurrah from the company. Toby was allowed by all the spectators, black and white, to have made ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and these thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. "No!" I said to myself. "Neither relations nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and fail in my husband's cause. The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; I will begin ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... chill has been taken. Trim carefully, taking off the blackened, shrivelled ends. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoonfuls of fine bone meal immediately about the plant after setting, and then water it. If the weather is warm, soak the ground and keep it moist until there is rain. Never let a plant falter or go back from lack ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... unconsciously made the short cut across the fields, which he had noticed and decided not to attempt when examining the map. He had saved five miles in distance, equal to fully an hour in time. The thought inspired him anew, and gave him further strength. With such divine encouragement, he could falter and ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... may thereby be ignorant of much which others know, and may appear to disadvantage when they are talking together; though you appear behind the rest of the world; though you be called a coward, or a child, or narrow-minded, or superstitious; whatever insulting words be applied to you, fear not, falter not, fail not; stand firm, quit you like men; be strong. They think that in the devil's service there are secrets worthy our inquiry, which you share not: yes, there are secrets, and such that it is a shame even to speak of them; and in ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... first discharge a pistol-ball split his jack and lodged in his buff-coat over his heart, while another came between his arm and his side, drawing blood a little from both; while a third and worse went into his horse between the fore shoulders. Brian felt the poor beast falter shudderingly, and pause; then the O'Donnells shouted greatly and closed about him, thinking to slay him before his men ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... who chase the roe, Whose footsteps never falter, Who bring with them, where'er they go, A smack of old SIR WALTER. Of such as he, the men sublime Who lead their troops victorious, Whose deeds go down to after-time, Enshrined in ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Simon was breathless with excitement, and her father hardly knew where he was. In his haste, he turned two leaves of the music-book at once. What a dreadful disaster! It was all over now. She would break down at once, if the accompaniment should falter. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... middle of the piece the flying fingers began to falter. No doubt the intense gaze he was bending on the top of her head confused her. At any rate she broke off ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... day, the hour, the minute, Each life quickens in the womb; Thence its march, no falter in it, Goes straight ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... them, especially when they are under warm convictions that the day of judgment is at hand, or when they feel in themselves as if death was coming as a tempest, to steal them away from their enjoyments, and lusts, and delights; then the bed shakes on which they lie, then the proud tongue doth falter in their mouth, and their knees knock one against another; then their conscience stares, and roars, and tears, and arraigns them before God's judgment-seat, or threatens to follow them down to hell, and there to wreck its fury on them, for all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... press thee Close to my yearning heart, Ah! once more softly bless thee Ere we for ever part! I adjure thee not to falter In the trial now so nigh, But, as victim on the ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... brightness, in the center of which two supple figures swayed and heaved. The red light smiting the faces of the two showed great drops of sweat, the swell of toil-hardened muscles on the corded arms, and the rise of each straining chest. There was not a clash nor a falter, but, flash after flash, the blades came down chunking into the ever-widening notch. Summers had seen sword play in Montreal armories, and had heard the ax clang often on the side of Western firs, but—for Thurston was fighting to stave off ruin—this grim ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... at Caruthers. He put his hand to his forehead as if a troublesome thought were passing through his mind. "Now that I am here I don't know what to do," said he. "I know that you ought to be punished, but my old weakness comes upon me and I falter." Caruthers brightened and Lyman looked like an ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... to answer, neither did she falter in going. Departure was the one thing of which she was capable,—and what could have hindered her going? What checks Vesuvius, when the flood says, "Lo, I come!"? Or shall the little bird that perches and sings on a post in the Dismal Swamp prevent the message that sweeps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... happy lot. The women run up to her to receive her blessing, and she knows that afterward crowds of votaries will daily frequent her shrine. The Brahmans compliment her on her heroism. (Sometimes drugs are administered to stifle her fears.) She knows, too, that it is useless to falter at the last moment, as a change of heart would be an eternal disgrace, not only to herself but to her relatives, who, therefore, stand around with sabres and rifles to intimidate her. In short, with satanic ingenuity, every possible appeal is made to her family pride, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... wonder if your muse's bantlings halt. Again, those rags and cloak right tragical, The very garb for sketching beggars in! But sweet Euripides, a boon, I pray thee. Give me the moving rags of some old play; I've a long speech to make before the Chorus, And if I falter, why the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... They finally came in hand- in-hand. Then they made use of their war clubs. At this time the Squawkihows summoned to their aid their reserved company, which they kept in the rear. The young women came on the flank of the Senecas' ranks, and beat them with clubs, which made the Senecas falter for a while. Finally they called on their reserved warriors, who made a desperate charge on the enemy and made them retreat. The Senecas began taking prisoners. They tied their hands behind them to trees. In this way ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... were quick to see and interpret Charley's action, and their guns were quickly turned upon his frail craft. As he drew nearer the drifting dugout and came within range, a perfect hail of bullets splashed the water into foam around him. He did not falter or hesitate, but with long clean strokes of the paddle, sent his light little craft flying towards his goal. Perhaps it was this very speed that saved his life. Bullet after bullet pierced the thin canvas sides and one struck a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... brotherhood, but with the ancient spirit it clouds over. To this spirit we must speak heart to heart as we know how. I would not willingly recognize aught in anyone but the divine. Often indeed the form or surface far removed from beauty makes us falter, and we speak to that form and so the soul is not stirred; it will not respond. But an equal temper arouses it. To whoever hails in it the lover, the hero, the magician, it will answer, but not to him who accosts it as Mr. So-and-So. Every ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... upon the harmony and the praise, then I thought and felt very differently. Sorrow and compassion for these gay multitudes were at my heart; prophetic forebodings of disaster, danger, and ruin to those, to whose sacred cause I had linked myself, made my tongue to falter in its speech, and my limbs to tremble. I thought that the superstition, that was upheld by the wealth and the power, whose manifestations were before me, had its roots in the very centre of the earth—far too deep down for ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... chapter in it. The British were caught asleep and unprepared. They were a few thousands, swallowed up in an ocean of hostile populations. It would take months to inform England and get help, but they did not falter or stop to count the odds, but with English resolution and English devotion they took up their task, and went stubbornly on with it, through good fortune and bad, and fought the most unpromising fight that one may read of in fiction or out of it, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but three hundred In all this Great Lone Land, Which stretches from Superior's shore To where the Rockies stand; But not one heart doth falter, No coward voice complains, Tho' all too few in numbers are The ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... the women of Ireland today? Shall they come short of the high ideal of the past, falter and fail, if devotion and sacrifice are required of them? Never: whilst they keep in memory and honor the illustrious ones of whom I have written. The name of Irishwoman today stands for steadfast virtue, for hospitality, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... should have been more good-humoured than usual with Lord Alfred in discussing those empty seats. But for spilt milk there is no remedy. The blow had come upon him too suddenly, and he had faltered. But he would not falter again. Nothing should cow him,—no touch from a policeman, no warrant from a magistrate, no defalcation of friends, no scorn in the City, no solitude in the West End. He would go down among the electors to-morrow and would stand his ground, as though ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... fired just as the fox sprang up the slight embankment on which, as is usual, the line of fence was placed. For an instant he seemed to falter, then leaped the top rail, and disappeared beyond ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... predict the future greatness of our beloved state, in those historical qualities that outlast the ages, from the fact that she is not tempted by her extent of territory, salubrity of climate, fertility of soil, or by the presence and promise of any natural source of wealth, to falter in her devotion to learning and liberty. And I anticipate for Massachusetts a career of influence beneficial to all, whether disputed or accepted, when I reflect that, with less good fortune in the presence and combination of learning ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... my question,' I insisted, for I was still filled with wonder at the great throng surging past us, whose purpose never seemed to change or falter. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... the lives of all who were in the town, and as I went I thought also that we rode to the death of the brave, honest jarl who was beside me, saying nothing, but never letting his horse falter. ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... wondered why War Department Circular 105, which provided for the assignment of men to critically needed specialties, explicitly excluded Negroes.[7-5] He wanted the circular revised. Above all, Petersen feared the new policy might falter from a lack of aggressive leadership. He estimated that at first it would require at least the full attention of several officers under the leadership of an "aggressive officer who knows the Army and has its confidence and will take an active interest in vigorous enforcement ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... direst agonies and meanest fears, For that one kiss. Away with fond remorse! Here, on the brink of ruin, we two stand; Lock hands with me, and brave the fearful plunge! Thou canst not name a terror so profound That I will look or falter from. Be bold! I know thy love—I knew it long ago— Trembled and fled from it. But now I clasp The peril to my breast, and ask of thee A ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... why sometimes I think I hate him. But, oh! my dear, if you'd seen my Father's face; seen the dawning of a wonderful hope. . . . I just couldn't think of anything except him—and so I went on lying, and I didn't falter. Gradually he straightened up; twenty years seemed to slip from ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... we don't or if we do. Fate to our deserts is true; If we fail, or falter not, Every life deserves his lot; Every human, small or great, Buys with current coin his fate; What's the odds to me and you, If we ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... of even crowned it, By nature nursed, and watched, and from its bounty fed Bear up, bear up! O, never yield nor falter! God reigneth ever, merciful and just; If thou despairest, go thou to his altar, Rest on his arm, and in his ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... hear that Anthony, though he did shirk the welcome on the quay, behaved admirably, with the simplicity of a man who has no small meannesses and makes no mean reservations. His eyes did not flinch and his tongue did not falter. He was, I have it on the best authority, admirable in his earnestness, in his sincerity and also in his restraint. He was perfect. Nevertheless the vital force of his unknown individuality addressing him so familiarly was enough to fluster Mr Smith. Flora saw her ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... and started again, although he felt that he was growing weaker. Such intense exertion, under such conditions, was bound to tell even upon a frame like his, but he would not let himself falter, passing from island to island, resting a little at every one, bearing toward the southeast, and intending to enter the forest about a mile from the fire on that side. Meanwhile, the chill of the deadly cold and elation over his escape fought for the mastery of him. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... tiger. Again and again Frank's fist cracked on his face, and still he did not falter, but continued to stand up and ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... successfully, for they fought for their country and their faith. The battle raged for several hours; the field was strown with slain, and the Moors, overcome by the multitude and fury of their foes, began to falter. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... was pained to see the revengeful trend of the Indian's thought. The hints of the evil intention of the Potlatch troubled him, but his faith in the old chief and the influence of his own integrity did not falter. ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Callender saw the brave men in gray who for one moment of horror fled from their own guns in water-battery and fort; but all at once they beheld the Tecumseh heave, stagger, and lurch like a drunkard, men spring from her turret into the sea, the Brooklyn falter, slacken fire and draw back, the Hartford and the whole huddled fleet come to a stand, and the rallied fort cheer and belch havoc into the ships while the Tecumseh sunk her head, lifted her screw into air and vanished beneath the wave. They saw Mobile Point a semicircle of darting fire, and the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... yet aslope to the gleaming Waste of the water without, waste of the water within, Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... In any event, there is a venerable adage concerning the buttering of parsnips. So I content myself with asking you to remember that I have not ever faltered. I shall not falter now. You loathe me. Who forbids it? I have known from the first that you detested me, and I have always considered your verdict to err upon the side of charity. Believe me, you will never loathe Ahasuerus as I do. And yet I ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... Jim in the direction of the river, but toward the forest beyond Kedsty's bungalow. Not for an instant did she falter in that drenched and impenetrable darkness. There was something imperative in the clasp of her fingers, even though they tightened perceptibly when the thunder crashed. They gave Kent the conviction that there was no doubt in her mind as to the point she was striving for. He took advantage ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... they needed no urging to carry the wounded up the terrace steps; and men who had knocked down and trampled on the wounded were gentle with them now, under the guidance of better impulses. How could they falter directed by a woman unmindful of occasional shells and bullet whistles? They begged her to go back to the house; this was no ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of Hanover, And Protestant succession, To these I do allegiance swear, While they can keep possession; For in my faith and loyalty I never more will falter, And George my lawful King shall be, Until the times ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... courage which is based on faith in Him. Oh, forgive my timidity and despondency; I pledge you my word I will meet the future with a strong heart. Only remain with me, my dearest Louisa; look at me with your cheering eyes, and inspire my heart with hope. Whenever I falter, remind me of this hour in which I vowed to you to struggle to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... children, resolute children, By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter, Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... like these they go That scale the heights of immortality, Unreached by those that falter ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... detected the barest falter in her voice, and something glistened on her eyelashes. . . . Ah! why could not the veil have remained before my eyes and let me gone in darkness? Suddenly I was looking across the chasm of years. There was a young girl in white, a table upon which stood a pitcher. It was a garden scene, and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... said he, with a melancholy smile, "do not tempt me. Leave me to struggle with temptations by myself, and do not seek to make me falter in my duty. Yes, Atam-or, you behold in me a melancholy example of the folly of ambition; for I often think, as I look down from my lofty eminence, that after all it is as well to remain content in the humble sphere in which we ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... Mantalini, looking at Ralph, and prudently abstaining from the slightest glance at her husband, lest his many graces should induce her to falter in her resolution, 'to put him upon a fixed allowance; and I say that if he has a hundred and twenty pounds a year for his clothes and pocket-money, he may consider himself a very ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... with interest too—the old story was a quaint one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had he disposed of—everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his word ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... and straightforward in his tone and manner that she could not choose but allow him to sit down beside her, although she did falter out something about the propriety of talking on her uncle's business ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... eyes looked deep into hers, which did not falter under his insistent gaze. "Am I to believe you?" ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the first is always an achievement, even though the steps falter. To be the first is also a distinction that cannot be taken away, because whoever comes after must be a follower; and to follow is tame. It occasionally happens that the first, no matter how many imitate him, is also ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... lies before me, thou wouldst in mercy change thy plans even now. Thou wouldst go the short way to the end of our journey. Think of the difference to me! A week or eight days of travel at most, instead of three weeks, or more if I falter by the way, and thou art forced ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... with her to the house. He was not baffled. He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—to stifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss. He was keenly read in woman's heart, this Knowles. He left ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... riches lose, and still not die? Shall I not hang?—as I, in fact, Might justly do if cord I lack'd; But now, without expense, I can; This cord here only lacks a man.' The saving was no saving clause; It suffer'd not his heart to falter, Until it reach'd his final pause As full possessor of the halter,— 'Tis thus the miser often grieves: Whoe'er the benefit receives Of what he owns, he never must— Mere treasurer for thieves, Or ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... rocks and splintered timbers, Peterkin and the judge's son and their comrades clambered. When they moved they were as a myriad-legged creature, brain numbed, without any sensation except that of rapids going over a fall. Those in front could not falter, being pushed on by the pressure of those in the rear. For a few steps they were under no fire. The scream of their own shells breaking in infernal pandemonium in front seemed to be a power as irresistible as the rear of the wedge in driving ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... selection. The ground of rejection was usually the youthfulness of the applicants; a sufficient reason, doubtless, in most cases, since the enthusiasm, mingled in some instances, perhaps, with romance, which had prompted the offer, would often falter before the extremely unpoetic realities of a nurse's duties, and the youth and often frail health of the applicants would soon cause them to give way under labors which required a mature strength, a firm will, and skill in all household duties. Yet "to err is human," and it need not surprise ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... purples of the King, and know them masters of their fate. Each wrinkled hag shall reassume the plumes and hues of paradise: Each brawler be enthroned in calm among the Children of the Wise. Yet in the council with the gods no one will falter to pursue His lofty purpose, but come forth the cyclic labours to renew; And take the burden of the world and dim his beauty in a shroud, And wrestle with the chaos till the anarch to the light be bowed. We cannot for forgetfulness forego the reverence due to them Who wear ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... measure of life, Is work on a lower plane? And this the finest, brightest— Further I cannot attain. Shall I grind its beauty to fragments Or shatter its symmetry?— For I have made it in secret And none has seen it but me. My hand would falter and fail— Oh! ... I could not forget. I still should see it in dreams With a passion of regret. Or ... Shall I wait till morning White-winged over the land, Ere the fishermen tramp the beach And drag their boats to the sand; And find at last ... oh! at last A boon denied ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... Boche planes were in sight now, I had been told, but there were many of ours. And sometimes one came swooping down, its occupants curious, no doubt, as to what might be going on, and the hum of its huge propeller would make me falter a bit in my song. And once or twice one flew so low and so close that I was almost afraid it would strike me, and I would dodge in what I think was mock alarm, much to the amusement ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... endeavoring to suppress her emotion, to another part of the room, he threw his arm around her slender form, and pressed a kiss upon her fair cheek. "Laura, my darling, do you remember your oath? Will you be true and firm? Will my mother's threats and commands find you strong and brave? You will not falter? You will not accept the hand of Count Voss? You will let no earthly power tear you from me? They can kill me, Laura, but I cannot be untrue to myself or to you!" Augustus laid his hand upon her beautiful head; the whole history of her pure and holy ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... count's body seemed rushing to his heart. He trembled. The ingenuous smile on his friend's countenance, and his features so sweetly marked with frankness, made his resolution falter. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... not of me. Do not fear or falter; I shall not. I would rather die a hundred deaths than see you the wife of such a ruffian. Let me ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... down, the very last of June, last year, and purchased three calves of Mr. Chenery, of Belmont. He brought these calves up in the cars to Brookfield. On their way from the depot to his house, about five miles, one of the calves was observed to falter, and when he got to his house, it seemed to be sick, and in two or three days exhibited very great illness; so much so, that his father came along, and, thinking he could take better care of it, took the calf home. He took it to his own barn, in which there were about forty head ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... with Brandelaar's suggestion, Edith glanced at the man whom he had indicated with a movement of his head. Externally this robust old sea-dog was certainly not attractive, but his alarming appearance did not make Edith falter in her ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... squalor of the neighborhood in which she finally found herself. Disgusted and revolted at the filth of Old Meg's abode, still not for an instant did she falter or hesitate. She ran down the steps to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... the hood of a Beguine, And mine was the foot to falter; Three cowled monks, rat-eyed, were seen; The Cross was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it is said, owe more to their perseverance than to their natural powers, their friends, or the favorable circumstances around them. Genius will falter by the side of labor, great powers will yield to great industry. Talent is desirable, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... fingers to put the sheet back within its envelope, and so thrust it, a crumpled mass, into his pocket. It was as if her hand was at his shoulder, her voice in his ear, but he did not falter. To go back now would be but a renewal of his torture. There could not come a better time to go—to go and leave no suspicion of his purpose ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... to man, accompanied with certain mutinous looks and discontented murmurs. For once in his life, and only for once, did the great Peter turn pale; for he verily thought his warriors were going to falter in this hour of perilous trial, and thus to tarnish forever the fame of the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
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