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More "Faltering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... killed," was all Sanguszko heard him say. Sanguszko only saved his general's life by gripping him by the arm and forcing him within the turnpike of a village hard by, where the shattered Polish ranks had taken refuge. This was, however, but a momentary faltering of Kosciuszko's soul. On the morrow of the battle he was once more sending his country summonses to a renewed courage and calling up a ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... disorder that pervaded this magnificent but severely furnished chamber, which was only lighted by the lamp which M. Bourigeau, the concierge, carried. A sudden dread seized her; she shuddered, and in a faltering voice she added: "Why are you all here? Speak, tell ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... anything but good, His few brief years in holiest labors spent, Earth lost too soon the treasure heaven had lent. Kindest of teachers, studious to divine Some hint of promise in my earliest line, These faint and faltering words thou canst not hear Throb from a heart that holds thy memory dear. As to the traveller's eye the varied plain Shows through the window of the flying train, A mingled landscape, rather felt than seen, A gravelly ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the utmost exertion, yet in a faltering voice, that she was able, after an ineffectual effort, to utter ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... he said, with a voice faltering with emotion, "do you recollect the morning, when, on our return from school, we found our young holiday joy changed into heart-breaking and mourning by the sight of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... strangled cry that was torn from the flyer's throat—the name of this girl who was going to the doom she had failed to avoid. Her life, she had said, was hers to keep only if she willed, but her plans had failed, and she went faltering and stumbling after ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... party were seen entering the square; but they were a body of the royal guards with a magistrate at their head. He boldly approached the mob, and, halting the soldiers at no great distance from them, began to read the Riot Act. He finished it without faltering, the mob continuing as before their work of destruction. "Men," he shouted, "I have warned you. I am going to give the order to the troops to fire if you do not desist. Once again I warn you—your blood be on your ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... presence, peace and joy and power; O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour, Thou Love that guards the nestling's faltering flight! Keep Thou my child ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... his body grow tense in a familiar way. For a moment the prospect frightened her. She felt, vaguely, that she was playing with that which was infinitely delicate—which might break in her very hands, and leave her desolate. "You know, dear," she continued, faltering, "we used to be very rich. But we're not, any more." It was a poor lie—she realized that: and was half ashamed. "We're very poor, now," she went on, hurriedly. "A man broke into the bank and stole all your mother's gold and diamonds and ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... faltering voice, and saw those quivering lips and tear-filled eyes, I forgot everything else in the world. I felt so ill and miserable that I would gladly have run away rather than bid her farewell. I felt, too, that when she was ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... irresistibly persuaded to regard as the contriver of that ill of which I had been forewarned. This persuasion did not extenuate my fears or my danger. Why then did I again approach the closet and withdraw the bolt? My resolution was instantly conceived, and executed without faltering. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... as you organize. Stand with your party. See that that improves the working class, especially this year when the forces will clash as they have never clashed before. Take your place in the ranks. Help to inspire the weak and strengthen the faltering. Then, when we vote together we will develop the supreme power of the one class that can bring peace in the world. We will transfer the title deeds of the railroads, of the telegraphs, the mines and ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... and especially with those who were taught to do it with pleasure, never faltering nor complaining, simply accomplishing their daily task in a systematic manner ...
— Plain Facts • G. A. Bauman
... dark, how dismal, how dreary. Descending some thirty feet down rather rude steps of stone, you are fairly under the arch of this "nether world"—before you, in looking outwards, is seen a small stream of water falling from the face of the crowning rock, with a wild faltering sound, upon the ruins below, and disappearing in a deep pit,—behind you, ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... modest signal, and he was unannounced. My sister colored to the very temples on seeing the young pastor, and her hands trembled in the vain endeavor to fold Lord Treherne's letter, which at length she impatiently crushed together. I heard a half-smothered hysterical sob, as, with a faltering voice, she bade our guest "Good-evening." Ah! when the heart is aching and throbbing with agony, concealed and suppressed, it requires heroic self-command to descend to the commonplaces of this workaday world; but women early learn to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... starting difficult even in daylight. Purely by instinct and his recollection of the aspect of things the night before, he had to clear telegraph wires and a railway bridge, neither of which he could possibly see at that hour. His engine, too, was faltering, and it was obvious to those who witnessed his start that its note was far ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... Pantheon. I offer up to you, therefore, my favorite idea. For your dear sake, my Pantheon shall become a ruin. Let this be a proof of the strong love I bear you, Jordan. I will not contend with the priests in my church, but I will pursue them without faltering into their own; and I say to you, this will be a long and stiff-necked war, which will last while my life endures. I will not have my people blinded and stupefied by priests. I will suffer no other king in Prussia. I alone will be king. These proud priests ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... growth. She frequented the churches early in the mornings, and one fine day presented herself in the vestry of one of them. Upon her knees, but with unbent head and eyes fixed steadily to the grille, she rehearsed her tale from the beginning, neither faltering nor losing countenance. What followed upon that was not communicated to her protectress, nor do I care to pry. I imagine that she had always said her prayers, but that now she was ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Sumner would not have dallied with a man of Bassett's ilk. He had believed when he left college that Sumner's teaching and example would be a buckler and shield to him all the days of his life; and here he was, faltering before a man to whom the great teacher would have given scarce a moment's contemptuous thought. He could even hear the professor's voice as he ironically pronounced upon sordid little despots of Bassett's ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... which were slightly inflamed, yet they seemed to serve their purpose better than her half-dulled ear, for, after a swift glance at Ledscha, she stammered in her faltering speech: "What has happened? Nothing good, certainly. It is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Maryland, however, by his great speech, of April 5th, in the Senate, did much to clear the tangle in the minds of some faltering Union statesmen ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... and shot Mern through with a stare from hard gray eyes. There was no longer any of the faltering uncertainty that he had displayed. Grim determination ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... fire had divided. Two guns pounded away at Taylor's feint, while two shelled the main column. The latter was struck repeatedly; more than twenty men dropped silent or groaning out of the hurrying files; but the survivors pushed on without faltering and without even caring for the wounded. At last a broad belt of green branches rose between the regiments and the ridge; and the rebel gunners, unable to see their foe, dropped suddenly ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... of the institution where he was nurtured seemed standing by his side in weeds of mourning, with a countenance of sorrow. With suffused eyes, and faltering voice, he broke into an unpremeditated strain of emotion, so strong and so deep, that all who heard him were borne along with it. Heart answered to heart as he spoke, and, when he ceased, the silence and tears of the impassive bench, as well as ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... "When Sakra had gone to his proper place, Vibhatsu together with his brothers and Krishna, paid homage unto the son of Dharma. Then smelling the crown of the head of that Pandava, who was thus paying homage, (Yudhishthira) in accents faltering on account of you, addressed Arjuna, saying 'O Arjuna, how didst thou pass this period in heaven? And how has thou obtained the weapons, and how also hast thou gratified the lord of the celestials? And, O Pandava, has thou adequately secured the weapons? Have the lord of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... more good-bye! and bless thee! My faltering lips caress thee. When shall I feel thy hand again Go kindly o'er my hair? Let the dear arms that fold me One last sweet moment hold me: In life or death our love shall be No weaker ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... intolerably. His intelligence might be twentieth century or beyond. It might acquiesce in, or even enthusiastically advocate, a relation between men and women that hadn't existed, anyway since the beginning of the Christian Era; it might accept without faltering, all the corollaries pendent to that relation. But his actuating instincts, his psychical reflexes, stretched their roots away back to the Middle Ages. Under the dominance of those instincts, a man lost caste—became an object of contemptuous derision, if he couldn't keep ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... by all the working words, By all the tears and sighs that lovers know, Or what or thoughts or faltering tongue affords, I crave for mine in ripping up my woe. Sweet Rosalynde, my love (would God, my love) My life (would God, my life) aye, pity me! Thy lips are kind, and humble like the dove, And but with beauty, pity will not be. Look on mine eyes, made red with rueful tears, From whence the ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Better, though each man's life-blood were a river, That it should flow, and overflow, than creep 150 Through thousand lazy channels in our veins, Dammed like the dull canal with locks and chains, And moving, as a sick man in his sleep, Three paces, and then faltering:—better be Where the extinguished Spartans still are free, In their proud charnel of Thermopylae, Than stagnate in our marsh,—or o'er the deep Fly, and one current to the ocean add, One spirit to the souls our fathers ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... woman, who moved with faltering feet, and always kept one hand upon the iron fence enclosing the small yard, as a support. Each step was taken slowly, and with trepidation, and I wished for the moment that I was beside her, to lend her my arm. Some errand of mercy or dire necessity called ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... Winged with that shaft, from Love An angel flew, cried, "Love, nay Burn! Who dies, Hath but Love's plumes whereby to soar above! Lo, I am He who from thine earliest years Toward, heaven-born Beauty raised thy faltering eyes. Beauty alone lifts ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Americans and their own partisans abated much of the esteem they had borne them. They were more than half disposed to pronounce the Colonists unworthy to defend that liberty which they gloried in with so much complacency. But it deserves to be noted here especially that there was no sign of faltering on the part of the people, no disposition to submit to the invading force. The success of the enemy did but nerve our fathers to more vigorous resolves to maintain the cause of liberty ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... make any answer such as I desired, such as I strove to make, my mother spoke again, and by her tone, which had grown faltering and tearful—as was her wont in the old days when she ruled my father—she riveted anew the fetters I was endeavouring with all the strength of my poor young ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... White and faltering, the girl came up to the wall whence the beautiful lady had just been removed, and leant her head against it. She raised her hand to her eyes. "Good-bye," said the inner sense—"Good-bye!" And the strange link which from ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... suffragists can render their country and through it the whole world at this time, is to teach it that there is no sex in love of individual liberty and to stand without faltering by their demand for justice and equality of political rights ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... the hours Snatch, as they pass, the linden flow'rs; And children leap to pluck a spray Bent earthward, and then run away. Park-keeper! catch me those grave thieves About whose frocks the fragrant leaves, Sticking and fluttering here and there, No false nor faltering witness bear. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... immovable. At last, breaking silence with a faltering voice: "O generous lady! pardon a stranger, an unfortunate man, for presuming to ask thee by what surprising adventure I here find the name of Zadig traced ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Baron, in a faltering tone, as he observed the sudden change in Edward's voice and countenance; "can the blooming, vigorous ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... And as in faltering tone and slow, The last few names were said, Across the field some missing horse Toiled up with weary tread, It caught the sergeant's eye, and quick Bay ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... ivory inlaid with gold, together with a sword in a jewelled sheath, were placed in an upright position against the head of the sarcophagus, from whence all the spectral and mysterious light seemed to emerge. With thickly beating heart and faltering pulses Gervase still advanced, gazing half entranced, half terrified at the extraordinary and sumptuous splendor surrounding him, muttering almost unconsciously as ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... at the piano, broke into spirited strains. The first faltering steps in the social career of Gunner Moran and ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... I see," he said musingly, "Abby and Ben have taken the little one home. It must be Edith is dead. She was such a puny thing." Then turning his face to the woman who was guiding his faltering footsteps, he asked: ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... Superintendent, was, "are you going to teach me to see?" How well he performed this task, how wisely he guided my childish feet, how carefully he developed my eager mind, stimulated my ambition, and renewed my faltering courage, I did not realize until I was called upon to face life, with its trials and opportunities. And here, where his work is so well known, I wish to pay my tribute of love and gratitude to Dr. Warring Wilkinson. He was my great-hearted, ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... paper in his hand, was walking up and down in an agitated manner, struggling to suppress his feelings—his usually unmoved countenance being one moment flushed and the next perfectly pale. He came forward as I entered, and, in a faltering voice, requested a private conversation with me. The path by which he requested me to follow him led to an open spot in the garden, where the sun was shining. I sat down. A long silence ensued, which even ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... very well as an exhibition of spirit on Mother Carey's part, but it had been a very hard week. Gilbert was sulky; Peter had had a touch of tonsillitis; Nancy was faltering at the dishwashing and wishing she were a boy; Julia was a perfect barnacle; Kathleen had an aching tooth, and there being no dentist in the village, Was applying Popham remedies,—clove-chewing, roasted raisins, and disfiguring bread poultices; Bill ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... oh! if you should happen to be dry, for such is the nature of sorrow, take this shilling, and spend it in the sugared ale, or the wind-expelling dram: with sweet reluctance he put forth his milk-white hand, cold with clammy sweat, and with a faltering voice, feebly thanked me. Oh! I shall never forget my emotions when he drove from me, and the chaise lessened in my view; now it whirled sublime along the mountain's edge; now, I scarcely saw the head of George nodding in the vale. Thus, on the summit of a craggy ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... entrance. His wife and his brother-in-law, with whom he had appointed this place of meeting, had just appeared there and were looking in every direction. Rudolf glanced once more at the kneeling supplicant, then with a slow, noiseless, faltering step he left the circle of flowers. He passed down the wide avenue as though walking in a dream. When he had nearly reached the gate he stopped and turned for the last time. The western sky was steeped in the glow of sunset. ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... prevent Rogers and Rockefeller from unloading. I bought and bought to steady the market when no one else apparently would buy; and when I found others whom I could induce to venture, I had them relieve those who were faltering and who must sell. When Mr. Rogers took me to task, I invented all manner of excuses to account for my tardiness in creating a market on which he could unload his holdings. He listened impatiently and incredulously, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... afternoons on horseback riding high above the camps, and now some small part of his love of the upper air came back to lead him towards his grave. With face turned to the solitudes of the snows, with ever-faltering steps, he commenced ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... in bloom, and all the invitation of spring was in the air. That he saw all the glorious prospect reflected in her mobile face I do not doubt—all the nobility and tenderness of it. If I knew the faltering talk in that hour of growing confidence and expectation, I would not repeat it. Henderson lunched at the Forsythe's, and after lunch he had some talk with Miss Forsythe. It must have been of an exciting nature to her, for, immediately after, that good woman came over in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and Morris had told her all, the kind and gentle wife who was so good to him, who understood and could even smile as he explained, in faltering, shame-heavy words. And he had sworn for her sake and his children's sake, that he would put away this awful traffic, and ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... of a common, but to her fatal, humanity, I rested the butt of my rifle and reloaded. With a faltering hand I again ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... as strong and stern, To teach a lesson conquerors will not learn!— Whose icy wing flapped o'er the faltering foe, Till fell a hero with each flake of snow; How did thy numbing beak and silent fang, Pierce, till hosts perished with a single pang! 190 In vain shall Seine look up along his banks For the gay thousands of his dashing ranks! In vain shall France ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... and saw women, some with cheap shawls about their heads, some with the costliest of fur cloaks, ascending the ship's side. And such joy as the first sight of our ship may have given them had disappeared from their faces, and there were tears and signs of faltering as the women were helped up the ladders or hoisted aboard in swings. For lack of room to put them, several of the Titanic's boats, after ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... again, in that impoverished home of his boyhood to which he had been summoned from his studies abroad. As he urged his laboring horse forward, in the eagerness and anxiety of his love for Sibyl Andres, he lived again that hour when his dying mother told her faltering story of his father's dishonor; when he knew, for the first time, her life of devotion to him, and learned of her sacrifice—even unto poverty—that he might, unhampered, be fitted for his life work; and when, receiving his inheritance, he had made his solemn ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... God forbid a fate so dread — ALONE to travel down The dreary road we all must tread, With faltering steps and whitening head, The ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... though very popular, are, I think, not so good as his more personal poems. I suppose no narrative of what others have done or felt or suffered can move one like a flash from 'that little infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls oneself.' Even in my bare prose translation, this poem will, I think, be found to have as distinct a quality as that of Villon or ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... mortal blow for Andrew, who assumed that the stranger could carry so large a sum about him for no other purpose than to purchase possession of the beloved object. With a faltering tongue he replied, "That is a good lump of money; you have only to discover yourself, and go to work: the girl is no fool, and will see what a good thing it will be for her to ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... occasion, and Jefferson Briley felt that he was in for something more than he had bargained. He hurried the faltering sorrel horse, and began to talk of the weather. It certainly did look like snow, and he was tired of bumping over ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... his friend Poll Sweedlepipe (M.C.) 'came in at the door with a lunge, to get as much sound out of the bell as possible,' while Bob Sawyer gives a pull as if he would bring it up by the roots. Mr. Clennam pulls the rope with a hasty jerk, and Mr. Watkins Tottle with a faltering jerk, while Tom Pinch gives a gentle pull. And how angry Mr. Mantalini is with Newman ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... direction, as if presuming she would be pleased to direct me. Something, I told her, I had to say, by the advice of Mrs. Delany, which I begged her permission to communicate. She assented in silence, but with a look of the utmost softness, and yet mixed with strong surprise. I felt my voice faltering, and I was with difficulty able to go on,-so new to me was it to beg to be heard, who, hitherto, have always been begged to speak. There is no absolutely accounting for the forcible emotions which every totally new situation and new effort will excite in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... (She quick replied); thy sister, brother, these."— "O! 'tis too much (he said); too soon to part, Ere well we meet! But this new flood of day O'erpowers me, and I feel a death-like damp Chill all my frame, and stop my faltering tongue." Now Lydia, so they call'd his gentle friend, Who, with averted eye, but in her soul Had felt the lancing steel, her aid applied, "And stay, dear youth (she said), or with thee take Thy Lydia, thine alike in life or death!" At Lydia's name, at Lydia's well known voice, He strove ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Consols, or at least hesitated to advance on them. The moment this was reported in the City and telegraphed to the country, it made the panic indefinitely worse. In fact, to make large advances in this faltering way is to incur the evil of making them without obtaining the advantage. What is wanted and what is necessary to stop a panic is to diffuse the impression, that though money may be dear, still money is to be had. If people could be really convinced ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... tell lost tales of savage wars; And you have known the desert sands, The camp beneath the silver stars, The rush at dawn of Arab bands, The fruitless toil, the hopeless dream, The fainting feet, the faltering breath, While Gordon by the ancient stream ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... pool reply, Faltering an answer far and sweet, Three swans as white as mountain snow Swim mantling ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... could I say or do now? But strangely and suddenly, under the influence of this thought, my anger died away. I saw with his eyes and felt with his heart; I saw how he stood, and I knew that I had brought him to that pass. Was it strange that he fired at me without faltering, although I might be ten times a king? It seemed to me almost just that he should kill me. Varvilliers would not give him a revolver. Did Varvilliers also suspect? I think his fear was rather of our extreme rage against one another. It occurred to me that I would not aim at my opponent. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... winced at my mistake, which I attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my pocket. "Is he ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... shall know it where I am. No mounded earth can keep my spirit down when John Poindexter feels his doom. I shall be conscious of his anguish and shall rejoice; and when in the depths of darkness to which I go he comes faltering along my way—— ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... solemn responsibility, was at great cost bringing all her influence to bear upon the young girl whom her son loved. She drearily said to herself, after many days, that her influence was weak, that it accomplished nothing. The strength of it pushed Susannah, who stood faltering at the parting of the ways, and the impetus of that push was felt in her rapid and unsteady step for many and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... lock'd the furious parsons stand; Each grasps the whip with unrelenting might— The whip, the cause and guerdon of the fight— But either warrior spends his strength in vain, And panting draws his lengthen'd breath with pain, Till now the Dean, with throat extended wide, And faltering shout, for speedy succour cried [40]To them who in yon grateful cell repose, Where Greenland odours feast the stranger's nose— "Scouts, porters, shoe-blacks, whatsoe'er your trade, All, all, attend, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... bailiffs was kindly supporting the faltering steps of the released prisoner, in taking him from the dock, and while the crowd in the court-room were pouring out of the front doors, the presiding judge, Baron Stairs, came down to the place where the young Duke of Hereward still sat. He had known the duke's ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... minute we could have had the illusion that he had stolen away, unheard, on the thick mats. But I don't think that either of us was deceived. The voice returned, stammering words without connection, pausing and faltering, till suddenly steadied it soared into impassioned entreaty, sank to low, harsh tones, voluble, lofty sometimes and sometimes abject. When it paused it left us looking profoundly ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... song, sudden, loud, sweet, yet faltering, as if half ashamed? Is it the willow wren or the garden warbler? The two birds, though very remotely allied to each other, are so alike in voice, that it is often difficult to distinguish them, unless we attend carefully to the expression. For the garden warbler, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... joyful. The thought of Piers was still with her continually. She had heard so little of him—merely that he had followed his grandfather to the grave supported by the old family solicitor from Wardenhurst, Lennox Tudor, and a miscellaneous throng of neighbours; that he had borne himself without faltering, and had gone back to his solitude with no visible sign of suffering. Only indirectly had she heard this, and she ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... take leave of the poor schoolmaster, and wander forth once more. With a trembling and reluctant hand, the child held out to their kind host the money which the lady had given her at the races for her flowers, faltering in her thanks, and blushing as she offered it. But he bade her put it up, and kissing her cheek, wished her good fortune and happiness, adding, "If you ever pass this way again, you will not forget the ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... with his hideous feelings against James. But as the long hours slipped away he slowly calmed. His hatred remained for the man, but he kept it out of his silent struggle with himself. In spite of his first heated decision he was torn by a guiding instinct that left him faltering. He realized that his hatred of the man, and nothing else, was really responsible for his negative attitude. And this was surely wrong. What he must really consider was the welfare of Vada, and—Jessie. The whole thing was so difficult, so utterly ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... his, gazing out of the open window, ever and anon swallowing a great lump that came in his throat. Meantime the sun dropped slowly to the west, till all the sky was ablaze with a red glory. Then Robin Hood, in a weak, faltering voice, bade Little John raise him that he might look out once more upon the woodlands; so the yeoman lifted him in his arms, as he bade, and Robin Hood's head lay on his friend's shoulder. Long he gazed, with a wide, lingering look, while the ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... her advice about—accepting Lord Everscourt!" she said, faltering; and there was a moment's ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... pass this test, the second comes when the bridegroom's eyes are uncovered. They are then to converse with each other, and they must not for a moment relax the talk. Neither has any knowledge of the time that this test must continue. There must be no faltering, or hesitancy. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... strength and power of man have sunk to the lowest ebb, when his mind is overwhelmed by the dark waters of despair. She, like the tender ivy plant bent yet unbroken by the storms of life, not only upholds her own hopeful courage, but clings around the tempest-fallen oak, to speak hope to his faltering spirit, and shelter him from the returning blast of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Graeco-Roman world of whose exterior life we know so much. Not to have read it is not to know the deepest mind of the ancients. Two things in it are prevailingly prominent: first, a noble nature; secondly, an extreme civilization, already faltering, turned to decline, expecting its fall. On every page lies the shadow of impending doom; on every page shines forth the great, heroic soul equal to every fate. The work—if work it can be called—is entirely aphoristic, with no apparent plan; in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... his head, turned over the violin, turned it back again, raised it up in the air, lowered it, held it straight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and picked it up again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agile creatures. He seemed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacity and in his gestures there was something marvelous as well as infantile. At last he undertook with grotesque gestures to place the violin under his chin, while in one hand he held the neck; but like a spoiled child he soon wearied ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... commencement of a better period of public taste and feeling, as marked not only in Art, but in letters, the study of Nature became more manifest in the English school. In different directions, and with different degrees of success, many artists, but generally with more or less faltering, broke away from the old system. Wilkie, Etty, Constable, Collins, and others, often painted simple and sincere pictures, pictures that showed careful study and real love of Nature. All these artists may be seen to advantage ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of a flock fired into toward nightfall, they came straggling on with faltering steps, many of them without bag or baggage, beast or barrow, all asking shelter or burial, and forcing a fresh repartition of the already divided rations of their friends. It was plain now that every energy must be taxed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... laughter—that faltering, ingenuous reason of hers—and Barbara hastened to explain that the phrase was a relic of her own childhood, which she had once coined in extenuation of conduct to which her mother had objected. She still employed it, she explained, in particularly ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... Alice, faltering. "Think what I, the cause of all, should feel when your father frowns, your mother weeps, your noble friends stand aloof, and you—even you—shall have made the painful discovery that you have incurred the resentment of all to satisfy a boyish passion. Farewell, then, Julian; but ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... a cry through the camp, with its word upon rousing word; There was never a faltering foot in the ranks of those that heard. Lads from the Hampshire hills and the rich Connecticut vales, Sons of the old Bay Colony, from its shores and its inland dales; Swiftly they fell in line; no fear could their valor chill; Ah, ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... thing," continued Titmouse, in a faltering tone, and with a depressed look—"That was what I wanted to know myself; for they said I'd better go back!! So I said, 'Gents,' said I, 'I'll be—— if I'll go back to the shop any more;' and I snapped my fingers at ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... out upon the river we saw a low-laden vessel, all sail spread to the soft, faltering breeze, coming slowly up stream on the last of the tide. How she fitted into the old-time setting! She was one of Colonel Byrd's freighting ships just in from overseas. After a tempestuous voyage, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... lost poet he had "gone with the wind." Now it was for him to be true in his fashion. A man may falter for weeks and weeks, consciously, subconsciously, even in his dreams, till there comes that moment when the only thing impossible is to go on faltering. The black cap, the little driven grey man looking up at it with a sort of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the least intelligence of what had become of our brave young men. This contributed, not a little, to increase our uneasiness, and to sadden our thoughts, for we felt in our hearts that they would never return. Our forebodings proved too well founded," said my grandmother, with faltering voice, "we have never ascertained their fate. We knew, however, that the war was still progressing, and that the French were losing ground every day. The English directed all their efforts against Canada, ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... intently. "Strange thing they don't break!" But they didn't. There was no waiting, no coaxing; it was drive and devilry all through. He brought his sheep along at a terrific rate, never missing a turn, never faltering, never running out. And the crowd applauded, for the crowd loves a dashing display. While little M'Adam, hopping agilely about, his face ablaze with excitement, handled dog and sheep with a masterly precision that compelled the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... a faltering voice, as from his cheerful bearing I anticipated unfavorable tidings; "what is the character of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the danger that lay before them, but there was no sign of faltering upon their faces. Rather, there was an eagerness for instant action that was not ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... could not raise ten thousand dollars. Only ten, and he was sure of a fortune. Without it he was a beggar. Mr. Bolton had already Small's notes for a large amount in his safe, labeled "doubtful;" he had helped him again and again, and always with the same result. But Mr. Small spoke with a faltering voice of his family, his daughter in school, his wife ignorant of his calamity, and drew such a picture of their agony, that Mr. Bolton put by his own more pressing necessity, and devoted the day to scraping together, here and there, ten thousand dollars for this brazen beggar, who ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... her voice in a minute. "What! and will you shake them in for me?" she asked, in what, for a defiant girl, was a faltering way; though, for a timid girl, it would have seemed ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... another hoary man, and said, In faltering accents, to that weeping train: 'Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead? Ye are not sad ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... 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 on with a jerk, more faltering to a halt, more whistling and pip-pip-pipping, as the engine stood jingling with impatience: after which another creak and splash, and another choking off. So on till they landed in Prato station: and there they sat. A fellow passenger told them, there was ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... ran to the door when we halted and called to someone within. The fiddle played on with no faltering, but a woman came out—a gaunt and tattered woman who was yet curiously cheerful. The children lurked in her wake as she came to us and peered from beyond her while we ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... enchanter chides Lucilia for following him, is obviously imitated from "Midsummer Night's Dream," and in single lines of other scenes we catch Shakespearean echoes. But the writer's power is shown at its highest in the scene (iii. 6) where Lucilia's faltering recollection strives to pierce the veil of her spell-bound senses, gains the light for an instant, and then is lost again in the tumult of contending emotions. The beauty of that scene is beyond the reach of any ordinary poet. And what shall be said of that exquisite description ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... loved one leaves me, and my heart Is heavy with its grief: the streams of sorrow, Choked at the source, repress my faltering voice. I have no words to speak; mine eyes are dimmed By the dark shadows of the thoughts that rise Within my soul. If such the force of grief In an old hermit parted from his nursling, What anguish must the stricken parent feel Bereft forever of ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... consecrated to Balder's service, Frithiof stood by the altar to await the coming of his expected bride. But Halfdan first crossed the threshold, his faltering gait showing plainly that he feared an unfriendly reception. Seeing this, Frithiof unbuckled his sword and strode frankly to Halfdan with hand outstretched, whereupon the king, blushing deeply, grasped heartily the proffered hand, and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the story runs, Rich for his time, bequeathed to his two sons Two good-sized farms, and calling to his bed The hopeful youths, in faltering accents said: 'E'er since I saw you, Aulus, give away Your nuts and taws, or squander them at play, While you, Tiberius, careful and morose, Would count them over, hide them, keep them close, I've feared lest both should ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... while the President yet hovered between life and death. At last the light was stilled in the kindly eyes and the breath went from the lips that even in mortal agony uttered no words save of forgiveness to his murderer, of love for his friends, and of faltering trust in the will of the Most High. Such a death, crowning the glory of such a life, leaves us with infinite sorrow, but with such pride in what he had accomplished and in his own personal character, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Accordingly, the discourses of Gotama, and the sacred books of the Buddhists, are filled with vivid accounts of every thing disgusting and horrible connected with existence, and with vivid descriptions, consciously faltering with inadequacy, of every thing supremely fascinating in connection with Nirwana. "The three reflections on the impermanency, suffering, and unreality of the body are three gates leading to the city of Nirwana." The constant ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... now I've thrown him away," I sobbed to myself. Then, as I sat listening, I heard the faltering steps come out into the hall above, descend the steps one by one, go through the dark dining room groping pitifully, and down the side steps out into the beloved garden. Silently I watched the tall figure with the white hair silvered radiantly by the moonlight go slowly down the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... judge glides by, Who views with scornful glance the strumpet's fate, And thanks the stars that made her keeper great: Near her the swain, about to bear for life One certain evil, doubts 'twixt war and wife; But, while the faltering damsel takes her oath, Consents to wed, and so secures them both. Yet why, you ask, these humble crimes relate, Why make the Poor as guilty as the Great? To show the great, those mightier sons of pride, How near in vice the lowest ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... body in her arms, she carried it to the hollow and laid it gently down, then tearfully shovelled back the sand till it was hidden. So Gregorio found a tomb. Nor did it remain unconsecrated, for beside it Madam Marx knelt and spoke with faltering lips the remnants of the prayers she had learned when a child. As she prayed she watched vaguely a steamer ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... him with her hood on in the hall. She asked him, with a faltering sort of carelessness, looking very hard at the clock, and nearly with her ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... he guarded. As he did so, a chilly blast of air blew upon the faces of those in the hall. The curtains in the window of the room were flapping and whipping in the wind. Mrs. Wrandall caught her breath. For the briefest instant, it seemed as though she was on the point of faltering. She dropped farther behind the sheriff, her limbs suddenly stiff, her hand going out to the wall as if for support. The next moment she was moving forward resolutely into the icy, dimly ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... that's left me now! Tears will unbidden start,— With faltering lip and throbbing brow, I press it to my heart. For many generations past, Here is our family tree; My mother's hand this Bible clasped; She, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... it, but as she picked it up, the red leaves scattered themselves on the carpet, and the stalk alone remained in her hand. The poor girl, who had been depressed in spirits before, was evidently affected by this incident, and said, in a slightly faltering voice, 'I trust I am not to consider this as an evil omen!' But soon rallying, she expressed to Mr. Lewis, in a cheerful tone, her hope that they would meet again after the theatre—a hope, alas! which it was decreed should not be realised." According to a German belief, one who throws ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... her that she had never needed to put her foot to the ground. If courage consists, for a being so tender, in toiling and enduring without faltering and plaint,—even to the very limit of physical power,—then she was the most courageous woman in the world, as she was the most charming, most faithful, most generous, and the most worthy of love. I tried not to think of her racked limbs, for the very pain and pity of it. We retraced ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... either support or oppress their infancy and weakness; and the dying emperor demanded the head of the Persian prince. With savage delight he recognized the familiar features of his brother: "Thou art no longer Theophobus," he said; and, sinking on his couch, he added, with a faltering voice, "Soon, too soon, I ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... thee. Ah! my child! Thy father's realm—my heaped-up wealth—all this By lawful right was thine inheritance, And now thou liest slain! Ah me! the tears Rise to my eyes in blinding force: thy form, In grace and beauty like the lotus flower, Fades from my sight." He spoke, and faltering With grief embraced his son. The queen exclaimed: "This is indeed my lord—I know his voice! I know his form! this is the mighty king. The wisest of all beings. But how changed! What fate is this? ...
— Mârkandeya Purâna, Books VII., VIII. • Rev. B. Hale Wortham
... the latter to batter down the part of the Tuileries where his enemies were sitting hesitated and disobeyed; at once all resistance to the decrees of the Convention died out. The dictator would have been his own executioner, but his faltering terrors stopped him midway in his half-committed suicide. He and his brother, with their friends, were seized, and beheaded on the morrow. With the downfall of Robespierre went the last vestige of social or political authority; for the Convention was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... we know, is a poor blind boy, bereft of speech and hearing as well, and with no other guide than prescience, divination, the nervous faculties of the invalid. Really, it is pitiful to see him wander about, feeling his way, faltering at every step, tapping with his fingers the projections upon which he depends for guidance, with the distrustful awkwardness of an infirm old man. At the very moment when he was mentally casting a doubt ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on Cosby's Manor, for my final word—they choosing still to regard my ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... four-wheeled cab overtook us. Pasquale stopped it, squeezed the bundle inside, and held the door open for the faltering and bewildered woman, as if she had been the authentic ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... murmured forth his sad complaint: Her brimming eyes with tears ran o'er, As spouts the new fallen water pour; His suppliant hands, with fear dismayed She gently clasped in hers, and laid, Like a fair lotus, on her head, And faltering in her trouble said: "Forgive me; at thy feet I lie, With low bent head to thee I cry. By thee besought, thy guilty dame Pardon from thee can scarcely claim. She merits not the name of wife Who cherishes ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... January introduces to amateurdom a new bard, Mr. J. Morris Widdows, Hoosier exponent of rural simplicity. Mr. Widdows has enjoyed considerable success in the professional world as a poet, song-writer, and musical composer; hence it is no untried or faltering quill which he brings within our midst. "Stringtown on the Pike," which adorns the first page of the magazine, is a very pleasing bit of dialect verse whose accent and cadences suggest the work of the late James ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... mid-stream: a long procession of black and ragged specks. He could swim out and drift away on one of these trees. Anything to escape! Anything! Any risk! He could fasten himself up between the dead branches. He was torn by desire, by fear; his heart was wrung by the faltering of his courage. He turned over, face downwards, his head on his arms. He had a terrible vision of shadowless horizons where the blue sky and the blue sea met; or a circular and blazing emptiness where a dead tree and a dead man drifted together, endlessly, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... shot Mern through with a stare from hard gray eyes. There was no longer any of the faltering uncertainty that he had displayed. Grim ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... look left her no choice. She felt his will, and yielded. In very simple words, faltering yet restrained, she told the whole story. Manisty followed every word with ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the beautiful young face, her father bid her good-night, and with faltering steps quitted the little sitting-room and sought his own apartment. A little later, Bernardine was startled to hear him moaning and sobbing as though ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... not be repeated here. The manager listened to her faltering tale with a few stereotyped expressions of sympathy, and, when she had done, "regretted" that speculative loans were contrary to the custom of the bank, and ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... your hand, fellow laborer!" said Margrave, joyfully. "Ah, there is no faltering terror in this pulse! I was not mistaken in the man. What rests, but the place and the hour?—I shall ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... with a faltering and indecisive look, until she looked back upon him, with a look of unutterable anguish, as she was ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... get the right man and woman, you know, sir, I shall be willing to pay them almost any amount of money. But I don't want them to know this beforehand. I must have a father and mother for my little family. It would be just as well," he added in faltering tones, "if they had lost a little one of their own. And I should like them to be some good Christian man and his wife, who would undertake the work without asking about salary at all, and would leave it ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... young man did not lose his self-possession in the conflict, while the agitated expression of his countenance evidently showed what was passing in his mind. He was sufficiently master of himself to reply to the Emperor in a calm though rather faltering voice: "Sire, permit me to hope that posterity will judge of my grandfather more favourably than your Majesty does. During his administration he was ranked by the side of Sully and Colbert; and let me repeat again that I trust posterity will render him justice."—"Posterity will, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... really struck him, he turned the head upstream, and struggled in a way that was fearful to look at. I could have pitied him even had he been a Mingo. For a few moments his efforts were so frantic that he actually prevailed over the power of the cataract; but natur' has its limits, and one faltering stroke of the paddle set him back, and then he lost ground, foot by foot, inch by inch, until he got near the spot where the river looked even and green, and as if it were made of millions of threads of water, all bent over some huge rock, when he shot backwards ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... came—without saddles and with blind bridles or rope halters—the rest slopping along through the yellow mud on foot—literally—for few of them had shoes; they were on their way to protect Davis and join Johnston, now that Lee was no more. There was no murmuring, no faltering, and it touched Richard Hunt to observe that they were now more prompt to obedience, when it was optional with them whether they should go or stay, than they had ever been in the proudest days of ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... the great loom rooms of the mill with but one fact clear in his cloudy, faltering perception,—that above him the man lay quietly sleeping who would bring worse than death on him to-morrow. Up and down, aimlessly, with his stoker's torch in hand, going over the years gone and the years to come, with the dead hatred through all of the pitiless man above him,—with now ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the maids with faltering footsteps On the borders of the cloudlets, And their full breasts were o'erflowing, And their nipples pained them sorely. 50 Down on earth their milk ran over, From their breasts' overflowing fulness, Milk on land, and milk on marshes, Milk upon ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... coming to life?" I cried, and a great pang of hope shot through me. Alas, no! it was the edge of a moon peering up keen and sharp over a level horizon! She brought me light—but no guidance! SHE would not hover over me, would not wait on my faltering steps! She could but offer me an ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... a beggar. Mr. Bolton had already Small's notes for a large amount in his safe, labeled "doubtful;" he had helped him again and again, and always with the same result. But Mr. Small spoke with a faltering voice of his family, his daughter in school, his wife ignorant of his calamity, and drew such a picture of their agony, that Mr. Bolton put by his own more pressing necessity, and devoted the day to scraping together, here and there, ten thousand dollars for this brazen ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... provings of the leaves and juice in toxic quantities, have been sick headache, with giddiness, feeble, faltering pulse, coldness of the extremities, diarrhoea, and general prostration. So that for this combination of symptoms, as in severe biliousness, or as in the auditory vertigo of Meniere's disease, small doses of the diluted tincture are found to give prompt and effectual relief. The leaves contain a ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the judge ascended the bench. The hubbub of voices ceased, the case was called, the rear door opened, and, led in by the sheriff, handcuffed and guarded, with calm, white face, yet never faltering in step or look, Job Malden walked across the floor to the prisoner's seat, while the crowd gazed in curiosity, that soon changed to awe and reverence, at that grave face, so deeply ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... of her companion and by the weak restlessness of fever, she tried to walk herself into such a state of bodily fatigue as would induce sleep. So she went out, and with weary steps would traverse the Boulevards and the streets, sometimes for hours together; faltering and resting occasionally on some of the many benches placed for the repose of happy groups, or for solitary wanderers like herself. Then up again—anywhere but to the pensionnat—out to the cemetery where Martha lay—out beyond it, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... or dew! One fled to heaven, of earth afraid; And one to earth, with eyes untrue And lips of faltering passion, strayed: Nor shall the strenuous years renew On any bough these leaves ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... pencil to facilitate our conversation, on that our first acquaintance; and I well remember how awkward and constrained I was in writing down my share of the dialogue, and how easily he guessed my meaning before I had written half of what I had to say. He told me in a faltering voice that he had not been accustomed to be alone on that day - that it had always been a little festival with him; and seeing that I glanced at his dress in the expectation that he wore mourning, he added hastily that it was ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... in the stuff of a material dark, Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; Working through wicked airs and deadly dews That make the laden robber grin askance At the good places in his black romance, And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose Go pinched and pined ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... news circulated to aid the Insurgent cause was by no means limited to such matters. Every time their troops made a stand they were promptly defeated and driven back, but their faltering courage was bolstered up by glorious tidings of wonderful, but wholly imaginary, victories won elsewhere. It was often reported that many times more Americans had fallen in some insignificant skirmish than were actually killed in the whole war, while generals perished ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... with a written paper in his hand, was walking up and down in an agitated manner, struggling to suppress his feelings—his usually unmoved countenance being one moment flushed and the next perfectly pale. He came forward as I entered, and, in a faltering voice, requested a private conversation with me. The path by which he requested me to follow him led to an open spot in the garden, where the sun was shining. I sat down. A long silence ensued, which even the good woman herself did not venture to break. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... bright, on a fine June day, to a healthy boy of seventeen. He is not particularly anxious to exchange it for another, least of all by way of minie balls, when he has no chance to send back any in return. To do our work without faltering, it was necessary to count on a hurried burial down there between the lines that night. Whatever reckoning others made, this is how it seemed to me, and we might just as well look the probabilities square ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... my heart, my dear boy; nothing could be better. Let Amos be chaplain to-night, and not to-night only. I am getting old, and his younger voice and more experience in such matters will make it a good thing for us all if he will take the family prayers whenever he is at home." As he concluded with faltering voice, Amos began to remonstrate in words of earnest deprecation; but his father stopped him, and, laying his hand on his shoulder, kindly said, "Do it to please me, and to please us all, dear boy." Then, turning to Walter, with every shade removed ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... me too closely," she said, in low, faltering accents; "you allow me too scanty room to draw my breath. Do you know what will be the end of this?" "I know well what must be the end," ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 on with a jerk, more faltering to a halt, more whistling and pip-pip-pipping, as the engine stood jingling with impatience: after which another creak and splash, and another choking off. So on till they landed in Prato station: and there they sat. A fellow passenger told them, there ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... of Aron round Iceland are all but as thrilling as those of the outlaw Gisli or Grettir, whose adventures and difficulties are so like his own. It is not easy to specify any element in the one that is not in the other, while the handling of the more authentic stories is not weak or faltering in comparison with the others. No single incident in any of the Sagas is much better in its way, and few are more humane than the scene in which Eyjolf Karsson gets Aron to save himself, while he, Eyjolf, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... sect, he addressed himself to prayer. The grave and awe-struck but deeply confiding congregation imitated his example, and the lips of the Puritan had parted in the act of utterance, when a low, faltering note, like that produced by a wind instrument, rose on the outer air, and penetrated to the place where the family was assembled. A conch was suspended at the postern, in readiness to be used by any of the family whom ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... private. Napoleon had retired for the night, and had gone to his bed in silence and sadness, when the private door opened, and Josephine appeared. Her hair fell in wild disorder, and her countenance bore the impress of an incurable grief. She advanced with a faltering step; then paused; and bursting into an agony of tears, threw herself on Napoleon's neck, and sobbed as if her heart were breaking. He tried to console her, but his own tears fell fast with hers. A few broken words—a last embrace—and they ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... The faltering words did not sound as if either man had aught to do with them. They were an expression by the tragic muse herself. Coleman's jaw fell and he looked glassily at the professor. He said: "Yes!" But already his blood was leaping as his mind ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... lost tales of savage wars; And you have known the desert sands, The camp beneath the silver stars, The rush at dawn of Arab bands, The fruitless toil, the hopeless dream, The fainting feet, the faltering breath, While Gordon by the ancient stream Waited at ease ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... to view the project of bursting from the closet, and trusting to the energy of truth and of an artless tale, with more complacency. More than once my hand was placed upon the bolt, but withdrawn by a sudden faltering of resolution. When one attempt failed, I recurred once more to such reflections as were adapted ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... sale of his effects. Let us see the papers," said the girl, opening the secretary and several drawers. "Ah, it is probably this. Here is a large envelope. Oh, my gracious! look here, M. Rudolph, how sad it is what's written on this." And she read, in a faltering tone: ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... interrupted by sighs and groans: with difficulty they found speech to assent to those protestations of innocence which he frequently repeated: "We believe you, my lord! God bless you, my lord!" These expressions with a faltering accent flowed from them. The executioner himself was touched with sympathy. Twice he lifted up the axe, with an intent to strike the fatal blow; and as often felt his resolution to fail him. A deep sigh was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... words laid hold upon as he read and he turned page after page, following the cycle of that other woman's love—a love which waited for years to be claimed by the master hand, never faltering to the end. Then impulsively he reached for a fair sheet of paper to begin a letter to Kitty, a letter which should breathe the old gentleness and love, yet "for love's sake only." But while he sat dreaming, thinking with what words to begin, his partner lounged in, and Hardy put aside his ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... their own partisans abated much of the esteem they had borne them. They were more than half disposed to pronounce the Colonists unworthy to defend that liberty which they gloried in with so much complacency. But it deserves to be noted here especially that there was no sign of faltering on the part of the people, no disposition to submit to the invading force. The success of the enemy did but nerve our fathers to more vigorous resolves to maintain the cause ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns Landfall and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one moment of supreme and final attention. Certainly I do not remember observing any sign of faltering in the set expression of his wasted face, no hint of the nervous anxiety of a young commander about to make land on an uncharted shore. He had had too much experience of Departures and Landfalls! And had he not "served his time" in the famous ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... mighty party for the Presidency of the United States. The Senator from Illinois faltered. He got the prize for which he faltered; but lo! the grand prize of his ambition to-day slips from his grasp because of his faltering in his former contest, and his success in the canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble price, has cost him the loss of the Presidency of the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... worried!" As the automobile drew up at the curb she sprang from it and rushed into the house, straight into her mother's arms—Mrs. Westley had heard the car stop and had walked with faltering steps to ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... throbbed his brain and parched his lips, and made him long to drink up Ocean; the eyes that felt like burning lead; the powerless hands that trembled like a weak old man's; the voice that came in faltering tones that jarred the brain at every word! How he despised himself; how he loathed the very idea of wine; how he resolved never, never to transgress so again! But perhaps Mr. Verdant Green was not the only Oxford freshman ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... will know, you will remember,' she said faltering, reddening, her womanliness forcing the words out of her, 'that you have friends: Robert—my sister—all ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... later. The Senator had listened in silence while his young English guest had expressed in faltering, but seemingly very sincere, tones, her gratitude for his projected visit to the American Embassy. Nay, she had done more. Very earnestly Mrs. Dampier had begged Senator Burton and his daughter not to give themselves ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... without adornment, that William III ordered the extirpation of a Catholic clan, and scouts the faltering excuse of his defenders. But when he comes to the death and character of the international deliverer, Glencoe is forgotten, the imputation of murder drops, like a thing unworthy of notice 96. Johannes Mueller, a great Swiss celebrity, writes ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Kramer, Dr. Scholz and Professor Crampton speak with a human raciness and native truth not surpassed by the weavers or peasants of Silesia. Hauptmann has heard the inflections of the human voice, the faltering and fugitive eloquence of the living word not only with his ear ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the economy and introduced some tax reforms to that end. Unemployment fell steadily under the AZNAR administration but remains high at 10.4%. Growth of 2.5% in 2003 and 2.6% in 2004 was satisfactory given the background of a faltering European economy. The socialist president, RODRIGUEZ ZAPATERO, has initiated economic and social reforms that are generally popular among the masses of people but that are anathema to religious and other conservative elements. Adjusting to the monetary and other economic policies ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Ossipon cut the tirade dead short in a sudden faltering of the tongue and a bewildered unsteadiness of the apostle's mildly exalted eyes. He closed them slowly for a moment, as if to collect his routed thoughts. A silence fell; but what with the two gas-jets over the table and the glowing grate the little parlour behind Mr Verloc's ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... and Armine, for we have been unsettled, and I could not go on so steadily with them as before," she said eagerly, but faltering a little. "Armine told me he blundered in Phaedrus, but I hope he did fairly ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dusky library and stood before them. Her eyes, dazzled by the sudden glare of light, had a strained, frightened expression; but there was no suggestion of faltering in her bearing and in the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... the youth, in a faltering voice. "Forgive my late intemperate conduct; it was influenced by despair. From this moment I will love and respect you ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of life, ever tender and true! Ye babes of my love, that await me afar!" His faltering tongue scarce could murmur adieu, When he sank in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... weighed upon the President during those long days; as looking across the river, he could trace by the smoke the picket lines of the Virginia troops. He must have thought of the possibility that he was to be the last President of the United States, that the torch handed over to him by the faltering hands of his predecessor was to expire while he was responsible for the flame. The immediate tension was finally broken by the appearance of the weary and battered companies of the Massachusetts troops and the arrival ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... of Christians is the stronghold of unbelief. The lack of vital joy in the Church is the chief cause of indifference in the world. The feeble energy, the faltering and reluctant spirit, the weariness in well-doing with which too many believers impoverish and sadden their own hearts, make other men question the reality and value of religion and turn away from ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... as they hastened o'er the deathly waste, Aiming for Meru, having thoughts at soul Infinite, eager,—lo! Draupadi reeled, With faltering heart and feet; and Bhima turned, Gazing upon her; and that hero spake To Yudhi-sthira: "Master, Brother, King! Why doth she fail? For never all her life Wrought our sweet lady one thing wrong, I think. Thou knowest; make us know, why hath ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... with lanthorn light Shall guide thy groping pace aright With faltering feet and slow; No! let him rear the torch on high And every maze shall meet thine eye, And every snare and every foe; Then with steady step and strong, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... by enabling Acts or otherwise. I believe on the contrary, that they will eventually uphold all those who have patriotism and courage to stand by the Constitution and who place their confidence in the people. There should be no faltering on the part of those who are honest in a determination to sustain the several co-ordinate Departments of the Government in accordance with the original design." It was evident from this disclosure that Johnson's hand was busy throughout the South, secretly ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... spirit, played the buffoon, went wherever danger was greatest, and by an almost unmatched display of bravery, tact, and firmness, won the redoubled admiration of his suffering followers and held them together. Murmurs arose among the creoles, but the Americans showed no signs of faltering. For more than a week the party floundered through the freezing water, picked its way from one outcropping bit of earth to another, and seldom found opportunity to eat or sleep. Rifles and powder-horns had to be borne by the hour above the soldiers' ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... leading and clearing away the branches which might have injured Arthur as we passed between them. Of course we now required a broader passage than when we came through ourselves. We took exactly the same route; our guide never faltering for a moment, though in many places I should have had difficulty, where the marks of our axes were not to be seen, in finding the road. Several times he offered to take my place, observing that I might be tired; but John and I begged him to allow us to carry our young friend, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... decisions of past judges, until he was able to study the Year-Books and read Littleton in the original. To acquire this singular language—a dead tongue that cannot be said to have ever lived—was the first object of the law-student. He worked at it in his chamber, and with faltering and uncertain accents essayed to speak it at the periodic mootings in which he was required to take part before he could be called to the bar, and also after he had become an utter-barrister. In his 'Autobiography,' Sir Simonds D'Ewes makes ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... bowest sky and star, Bow down our towering thoughts to thee, And grant us in a faltering war ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... [9]the fair plain of[9] Emain. It was then Lebarcham, [10]the watch in Emain Macha,[10] [11]came forth and[11] discerned them, she, the daughter of Aue ('Ear') and of Adarc ('Horn') [12]and she hastened to Conchobar's house, her eye restless in her head and her tongue faltering in her jaw.[12] "A single chariot-fighter is here, [13]coming towards Emain Macha,"[13] cried Lebarcham, "and his coming is fearful. The heads of his foes all red in his chariot with him. Beautiful, all-white birds he has hovering around ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... woe, With beating heart and throbbing breast, Whose step is faltering, weak, and slow, As though ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... best o' joys maun hae an end, The best o' friends maun part, I trow; The langest day will wear away, And I maun bid fareweel to you. The tear will tell when hearts are fu', For words, gin they hae sense ava, They 're broken, faltering, and few: Gude nicht, and joy be ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... he seemed very sleepy, and he had advanced only a very little way before his words began to grow incoherent and faltering, and very soon Rollo perceived that he was going to sleep. Indeed, Rollo himself was beginning to feel ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... amid the great numbers of man. It is in this disordered confusion of feelings and ideas that one feels the presence of Utopia. Mutual solidarity is of the intellect—common-sense, logic, methodical precision, order without faltering, the ruthless inevitable perfection ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... crown his wretchedness, it was necessary to descend a steep precipice, at the bottom of which a torrent was breaking noisily over the rocks. Graceful took his dagger and cut a branch from a tree to support his faltering steps. Fido, with his tail between his legs, barked feebly; and Pensive, her ruffled feathers covered with icicles, clung to her master's shoulder. The poor bird was half dead, but she encouraged Graceful and did ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... Was she faltering? He watched her eagerly, narrowly, almost wonderingly. Not a trace of confusion, not a sign of fear; and yet had he not seen her, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... so by very fixed stages each twelvemonth. I have known her for over a dozen years. At the time when I first knew her she was scarcely fifty-eight, she was already bent and walked with an uncertain, almost faltering tread. The dominant note of her personality was then as now, but more so now, fear for the present, fear for the future, a dwelling continually on her ills, her misfortunes, her symptoms, her approaching ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... that creative task, to go as far on that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering, weariness or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who in the fulness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... deal more consciously and earnestly, and use a great deal more diligently and honestly, that divine Spirit who is given to us all. I fear me that over very large tracts of professing Christendom to-day men stand up with very faltering lips and confess, 'I believe in the Holy Ghost.' Hence comes much of the weakness of our modern Christianity, of the worldliness of professing Christians, 'and when for the time they ought to be teachers, they have need that one teach them again which be the first principles of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... from Lucknow to Khartum. Beholding them there, draped above the tombs, some faded but still intact, some mere clotted wisps of ragged silk clinging to blackened standards, gives one an uplifting conception of the spirit that has sent the British soldier forth to girth the globe, never faltering, never slackening pace, never giving back a step to-day but that he took two steps forward to-morrow; never stopping—except ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... pulled so strongly in opposite directions, Mr. Port heard with a lively alarm this declaration of a plan of campaign which, if carried out, would wreck hopelessly his own comfort of body and peace of mind. Obviously, this was no time for faltering. If the catastrophe was to be averted, he must speak out at once ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... her throat, and her faltering gaze passed from him to the hotel attendant, who responded to her unspoken appeal as readily as if it were a part of his regular business. Pushing her gently inside, he placed her bag and umbrella on an empty ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... in a faltering tone, as he observed the sudden change in Edward's voice and countenance; "can the blooming, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... jealous wall, are niches where the faltering replies of the accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought out of the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same stone passage. We had trodden in their ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... respect at home. To Master Ohl it was immensely impressive that I soon knew better than he himself all that the true Christian believes, and my mother was almost moved to tears when for the first time I read the evening blessing aloud by lamp-light, without faltering or stammering. Indeed she felt so edified that she gave over to me forever the office of reader, the duties of which I hereafter performed for a considerable length of time with much ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... manner, and accompanied it with so piercing and terrible a look, that Juancho was embarrassed, reddened, turned pale, and the ferocity of his countenance was exchanged for an expression of uneasiness. After a pause, he spoke in a choked and faltering voice. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... turning up; blebberd lipped [thick-lipped], turning outward, especially the upper lip, upward toward the Nose. Curious in speech, if he do continue his custom, and in his speech he flewreth [Note 2] and smiles much, and a faltering, lisping, or doubling of his tongue in his speech." [Note 3.] What a picture of a Jesuit! This is the type of man who practises an art which I never saw to such perfection as once in the Principal ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... erect in her straight black clothes. She had her black veil tied over her bonnet to protect it from dust, and the black frame around her strong-featured face gave her a rigid, relentless look, like a female Jesuit. Lois came faltering behind her mother. She had a bewildered air, and she looked from her mother to Amanda with appealing significance, but ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... terribly thereby. Willingly, thankfully would they have taken all her duties upon them; they burned to be up and doing. But—seeing how weak she was—they dare not cross her; they had to sit still and endure to see her labour for their comfort with faltering and death-cold hands. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... away, but, bare-headed, calm and resolute, he strode about among his men, handling his forces like the veteran that he had become, strengthening the weak points, applauding the daring and encouraging the faltering. Willet, who was crouched behind the logs, firing his rifle with deadly effect, glanced at him more ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure—these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much as that—or had inherited it in that race memory ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon his mind, and with it a conviction that good was, after all, stronger than evil, and that good was possible to men. He seemed to discover that there was a kind of rapture in which he could love forever without faltering and without sin. He looked across the heads of the people at Frank Shabata with calmness. That rapture was for those who could feel it; for people who could not, it was non-existent. He coveted nothing that was Frank Shabata's. ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... Philemon began a faltering explanation and self-exculpation, but he was cut short by his superior saying sharply: "Tush, sir, such language will not make us deal the more gently with your cribs; so if you 'd save ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... came and rocked my cradle, I got alarmingly lively and entered into the sport with spirit. If she, with weary eyes and faltering voice, attempted to sing me to sleep, I lent my shrill treble to aid my own lullaby; or else I lay quiet with my eyes wide open, and defied every effort to coax ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... man's natural energy! Again and again, as consciousness still fought against the last surrender, it seemed to him that he heard voices and hammerings in the mine. And while he painfully listened, from the eternal darkness about him, dim tragic forms would break in a faltering procession—men or young boys, burnt and marred and slain like himself—turning to him faces he remembered. It was as though the scorn for pity he had once flung at Marcella Maxwell had been but the fruit of some obscure and shrinking foresight that ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... door opened, and Molly came forth, the darkness hid the pallor of her face, but it could not hide the faltering of her steps. Captain Jack sprang forward and gave her his arm, and she leant upon it without speaking, heavily. For one moment she stopped as if she could not tear her feet from the beloved planks, but Curwen caught her by the other arm; and then she was on the swinging ladder. And ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... window of his darkened room. And the man had come, now, to answer the call. Cautiously, he went down the bank toward the edge of the dark, swirling water. His purpose was unmistakable. Nor was there any hint of faltering, now, in his manner. He had reached his decision. He knew what ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... such time he heard Helen's light foot and faint and gray in the mist Descried her slim veiled outline, saw her twist And slip between the sleepers on the ground, Atiptoe coming, swift, with scarce a sound, Not faltering in fear. No fear she had. From head to foot a sea-blue mantle clad Her lovely shape, from which her pale keen face Shone like the moon in frosty sky. No case Was his to waver, for her eyes spake true As Heaven upon the world. ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... tiny wax hands across her two glass eyes. "You have guessed rightly," she said in a little faltering voice. ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... period of public taste and feeling, as marked not only in Art, but in letters, the study of Nature became more manifest in the English school. In different directions, and with different degrees of success, many artists, but generally with more or less faltering, broke away from the old system. Wilkie, Etty, Constable, Collins, and others, often painted simple and sincere pictures, pictures that showed careful study and real love of Nature. All these artists may be seen to advantage ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... around the room was for the use of the executioner and attendants. The vaulted roof condensed the voice of the tortured man, and an aperture on one side gave it freedom to ascend into the room above, where the judicial listeners waited for the faltering words which succeeded the agonising screams of their victim. So much we know and still see, but worse horrors were dreamily spoken of by the old Nuernbergers; there was a tradition of a certain something that ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... to a dreary winter view—if the trees had lost all their leaves, and the green fields had turned white with snow in an instant—his face could hardly have expressed greater amazement than it displayed when his daughter's faltering voice spoke those four last words. He tried to look at her—but she steadily refused him the opportunity: she kept her face hidden over his shoulder. Was she in earnest? His cheek, still wet with her tears, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... open it, and place his finger at random upon a line, and by that line you shall live or die!" This was a strange proposal, made in full faith of a wild and dark superstition of the olden time. For a moment, the Tory, kneeling there, livid as ashes, was wrapt in thought. Then, in a faltering voice, he ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... cast down to a lower depth of wretchedness and misery than that out of which he had arisen. In this painful struggle he stood not alone. Good spirits clustered around him, anxiously interested in his fate, and endeavouring to sustain his faltering purposes; and evil spirits were also nigh, infusing into his mind reasons for the abandonment of his useless pledge. It was a period in his history full of painful interest. Heaven was moving forward ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... Greece. He travelled not as a student of life or as a romantic sentimentalist. He saw exactly, and saw all things in colour; the world was for him so much booty for the eye. Endowed with a marvellous memory, an unwearied searcher of the vocabulary, he could transfer the visual impression, without a faltering outline or a hue grown dim, into words as exact and vivid as the objects which he beheld. If his imagination recomposed things, it was in the manner of some admired painter; he looked on nature through the medium of a Zurbaran or a Watteau. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... were but poor faltering, half-developed things; yet he knew what she meant to say, though she, herself, had divined it only through some pathetic, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... leapt with new enthusiasm. From the fainter shadowings of his own life, he sensed instinctively the vaster tragedy of theirs. His soul yearned to give voice and being to this human thing. He early turned to the sorrow songs. He sat at the faltering feet of Paul Laurence Dunbar and he asked (as we sadly shook our heads) for some masterpiece of this world-tragedy that his soul could set to music. And then, so characteristically, he rushed back to England, composed ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... a day the ape-man had been either carrying or supporting Smith-Oldwick and now, to his chagrin, he saw that the girl was faltering. He had realized well how much she had undergone and how greatly the hardships and dangers and the fatigue of the past weeks must have told upon her vitality. He saw how bravely she attempted to keep up, yet how often she ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... even more than the writer's ideas. That faith is a stimulant and a moral tonic. It awakens us and sets us free. Those of kindred spirit group themselves round him because, in the dark places of the earth where they wander chilled and with faltering steps, he is a focus of joy and fervid optimism. This prisoner, this man under sentence, smiles as he contemplates the force which thinks it has conquered him, the force of reaction let loose, and of unreason, overthrowing that which ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... away, and returned to Harry. Together we carried Desiree to its edge. The blood was stubborn, and for a long time refused to move, but the cold water at length revived her; her eyes slowly opened, and she raised her hand to her head with a faltering gesture. ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... at her, and asked in a faltering voice, "Are you an angel?" still not knowing what ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... strong and terrible that he shook the sacred edifice to its foundation. In spite of all the precautions taken, the big fiend burst into the church, went straight to the witch's coffin, and commanded her to follow him. With faltering tongue the dead woman said she could not stir, as she was chained down. A slight twist of his hand broke the chain into two pieces. Slowly the corpse rose; and the devil dragged his prey to the door, where stood a horse breathing ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... could have had the illusion that he had stolen away, unheard, on the thick mats. But I don't think that either of us was deceived. The voice returned, stammering words without connection, pausing and faltering, till suddenly steadied it soared into impassioned entreaty, sank to low, harsh tones, voluble, lofty sometimes and sometimes abject. When it paused it left us looking ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... With faltering footsteps she approaches the fatal door, whilst the others disperse and return once more to the drawing-room,—all, that is, except Lady Stafford, who seeks her own chamber, and Mr. Potts, who, in an agony of doubt and fear, lingers about the corridor, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... in the spring hang about on the wing in a toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the wind- hover; and the green-finch in particular exhibits such languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird; the king-fisher darts along like an arrow; fern-owls, or goat- suckers, glance in the dusk over the tops of trees like a meteor; starlings as it were swim ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... on the point of asserting with some perplexity and much amazement, that his health was perfect, and he required neither change nor medicine, when the real object of these faltering words suddenly flashed on him. His heart seemed to leap into his mouth, then to retreat to its place, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... as they were trudging together through the sand of the roadway to the custom-house—another mud hovel—to pay the fine, Morrison broke into a cold sweat, stopped short, and exclaimed in faltering accents: ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... He called me Inza. His words were strange and somewhat faltering. He spoke with a growl that I am certain he assumed to disguise his voice. There is something familiar about him—something familiar in his movements and his walk. Frank, I know him! Is there no way to find out who ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... Whilst regretting deeply the casualties necessarily incurred in the attainment of our object, the series of stinging blows dealt to the enemy, his severe losses which are out of all proportion to the size of his force and his obviously faltering spirit afford ample proof to all ranks that their sacrifices have not been made in vain. My thanks too are due to Major-General MacMunn, to the Director and their assistants and to all ranks of the Administrative Services and Departments, ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... surrounded the public approaches, we heard her advancing steps. Pitiable was the humiliation expressed by her carriage, as she entered the witness box. Pitiable was the change, the world of distance, between this faltering and dejected accuser, and that wild leopardess that had once worked her pleasure amongst the sheepfolds of Christianity, and had cuffed my poor guardian so unrelentingly, right and left, front and rear, when he attempted the feeblest of defences. However, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... to his heart, with a cry of joy and a sudden rush of tears. He babbled incoherently, and gasped for breath. Dick supported the faltering steps to the chair by the desk. Then, he closed the window silently, and flinging his cap upon the table, slowly divested ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... that which should have been done at first, and fixed rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together. These ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind. Even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed, and several times old Peter turned, with ashy face and faltering limbs, and said, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... think so meanly of us, my lord," said Edith, with the generous burst of feeling which woman so often evinces, and which becomes her so well, her voice faltering through eagerness, and her brow colouring with the noble warmth which dictated her language—"Can you think so meanly of your friends, as that they would permit such considerations to interfere with their ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... influence to bear upon the young girl whom her son loved. She drearily said to herself, after many days, that her influence was weak, that it accomplished nothing. The strength of it pushed Susannah, who stood faltering at the parting of the ways, and the impetus of that push was felt in her rapid and unsteady step for ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... humble stone which told of a young man who had died at twenty-three years old, fifty-five years ago, when she heard a faltering step approaching, and looking round saw a feeble woman bent with the weight of years, who tottered to the foot of that same grave and asked her to read the writing on the stone. The old woman thanked her when she had done, saying ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... President was brought in a sedan chair through the hall. Not a hat moved as he passed; and many voices cried out "Popish dog." He came into Court pale and trembling, with eyes fixed on the ground, and gave his evidence in a faltering voice. He swore that the Bishops had informed him of their intention to present a petition to the King, and that they had been admitted into the royal closet for that purpose. This circumstance, coupled with the circumstance that, after they left the closet, there was in the King's ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... name instantly, and the crimson colour rushed into those fair cheeks as she made a very low reverence, and murmured some faltering civility. ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mental level of intercourse was raised as they grew in intelligence and knowledge, but it was always as equals that he addressed them. He was always their playmate and boon companion, whether they were toddling infants taking their first faltering steps, or growing schoolboys, or youths standing at the threshold of life. Their games were his games, their joys those of his own heart. He was ready to romp with them in the old barn at Sagamore Hill, play "tickley" at bedtime, ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... my simple gospel creed That "God is Love" so plain I read, Shall dreams of heathen birth affright My pathway through the coming night? Ah, Lord of life, though spectres pale Fill with their threats the shadowy vale, With Thee my faltering steps to aid, How can ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his hunger partially stayed, Dick Larrabee locked the parsonage door and took the well-trodden path across the church common. It was his father's feet, he knew, that had worn the shoveled path so smooth; his kind, faithful feet that had sped to and fro on errands of mercy, never faltering in all the years. ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Marion about it," began Countess Betty, and she narrated in a low, faltering voice, with something queerly helpless in it. "The poor child," she finished, "all alone in the night, what she suffered, the wicked fellow! What do you ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... of the mountains there had never been, since reconstruction days, any survival of the Ku-Klux in a true sense, but now and then, as in all wild and violent countries, sporadic "regulations" occurred in which masked men took a faltering law into their own less faltering hands. Sometimes it was a bastard Ku-Klux in the original meaning of the term, a Vigilance Committee operating against abuses which the law failed to check. Oftener it was ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... reach'd That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturb'd ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... pledge myself to our land. When I am dead, if my successor shows signs of faltering, make my skin into a drumhead for the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Aunt Mary, you know father has lost all his property and Uncle Cradd assured us that—that there was plenty for us all at Elmnest," I said in a faltering tone of voice as a feeling of descending ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that he had found a clump of mesquite after a faltering progress of perhaps fifty yards. Their progress was checked, then, and she knew he was at the hitching straps, and that he was tethering the animals to the trees. The powdered dust and sand were stinging her face, and the cold wind ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... bought a suit, too, a marvel of tailoring and cheapness, and a willow plume that would have cost treble its price in New York. Oh, yes, gala days, indeed, to offset the butter and the rainy winter and the faltering technic and the anxiety about money. For that they all had always, the old tragedy of the American music student abroad—the expensive lessons, the delays in getting to the Master himself, the contention against German greed or Austrian whim. And always back in one's mind the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... This faltering is studied in ancient combat. It is seen that of nations apt in war, the strongest have been those who, not only best have understood the general conduct of war, but who have taken human weakness into greatest account and taken the best guarantees against it. It is notable that the ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... every foot of the way, and driving the enemy before them, is unsurpassed even in the brilliant naval history of this war. Many commanders would have faltered after losing two of their vessels; but there was no faltering in Macomb. It was not until all hope of land co-operation was exhausted, and until it was demonstrated that without a land support he could go no further, that he consented to retire. Throughout the whole ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... said in a faltering voice, "I should never have had the boldness to think of rising above my condition if I had not been encouraged by promises; my only claim was that of an affection without bounds; but now they have found the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... home of thy fathers, Thy fervent petition shall rise For the loved who are circling around thee, The joy and delight of thine eyes, Oh, then, for the weak and the faltering, Should a prayer, as sweet incense, ascend To the God we have worshipped together, Remember thy ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... instant's faltering: "Because we shall be interrupted. We don't want a pack of women howling round. Also, there are no weapons. You haven't even a sjambok." His eyes gleamed suddenly. "And there isn't space enough to use it if ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... said she, in a faltering tone, opening a little slide which was so protected by bars and cross-bars as to prevent the intrusion of a dagger or even the muzzle of a pistol; 'who ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the violence of the assault, seemed for a moment to hesitate; but Gonsalvo had now time to bring up his men-at-arms, who sustained the faltering columns, and renewed the combat on more equal terms. He himself was in the hottest of the melee; and at one time was exposed to imminent hazard by his horse's losing his footing on the slippery soil, and coming with him to the ground. The general fortunately experienced no injury, and, quickly ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... from her sex; there such women are found to have a certain vague similitude to man; they have neither the suppleness nor the soft abandonment of those whom Nature destines for maternity; their gait is not broken by faltering motions. This observation may be called bi-lateral; it has its counterpart in men, whose thighs are those of women when they are sly, cunning, false, and cowardly. Camille's neck, instead of curving inward at the nape, curves out in a line that unites the head to the shoulders without sinuosity, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... asked with a little faltering, asked for his sake; for evidently some knowledge he had, and had to communicate, that embarrassed him almost to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... talking about India. She remembers my dear mamma; and, do you know"—her bright expression fading to sadness—"I can scarcely remember her! I should have stayed with Decima—may I call her Decima?" broke off Lucy, with a faltering tongue, as ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... exclaimed Captain Miles in a voice faltering with emotion; while several of the men, quite ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... great loom rooms of the mill with but one fact clear in his cloudy, faltering perception,—that above him the man lay quietly sleeping who would bring worse than death on him to-morrow. Up and down, aimlessly, with his stoker's torch in hand, going over the years gone and the years to ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Atom Smasher," Jim repeated. "In these wings I'll be taken for Atlantean. I'll—bring it back." He spoke with faltering conviction. And yet there was nothing else to do. Everything depended upon his being able to bring back the Atom Smasher and take Lucille and her ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... echo of it—which, alas, proves that it still lasts without hope of change for the future. It is especially at the initial stages of revolutions that these sorts of people abound. It is then, indeed, that the abnormal and unhealthy spirits predominate over the faltering and the weak and drag them on to excesses by an actual epidemic ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... women—I have been, to-day; and, my child, you must bear it patiently, because they will be partly true. Never get confused, by your love for me, into thinking that what I did was right.—Where was I?" said she, suddenly faltering, and forgetting all she had said and all she had got to say; and then, seeing Leonard's face of wonder, and burning shame and indignation, she went on more rapidly, as fearing lest her strength should fail before ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... lay Where love's fond eyes, and bright stars gleamed, How long and toilsome grew the way O'er which those brilliant orbs had beamed; How oft the faltering step drew back In terror of the path, When giddy steep, and wildering track Seemed fraught ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Croom, with a sense of solemn responsibility, was at great cost bringing all her influence to bear upon the young girl whom her son loved. She drearily said to herself, after many days, that her influence was weak, that it accomplished nothing. The strength of it pushed Susannah, who stood faltering at the parting of the ways, and the impetus of that push was felt in her rapid and unsteady step for many and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... face, leaving only his mouth visible. It was a singularly kindly mouth. Some critics called it weak, though there was no sign of nervousness about it. The clean lips made their statement without faltering, and without apparent effort, and, having spoken, relaxed into a faint smile that ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... death. Mountains of difficulties, and months of suffering and privations by land and water, in the woods, and swamps of North Carolina and Virginia, were before him, as his experience in traveling proved. But the hope of final victory and his daily sufferings before he started, kept him from faltering, even when starvation and death seemed to be staring him in the face. For several months he was living in dens and caves of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... evidence wanting to prove the accuracy of my calculations. Look here, Marguerite," and he rose from the table with weak and faltering steps, and drew back a curtain which was drawn across a corner of the small room. There she saw a small clock of exquisite manufacture, a complicated mass of machinery—so complicated that it would have looked like fabled labor to have even put it into motion, or regulated ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... nods," and pulpits, colleges, and Parliament succumb. The poem closes with the magnificent description of the descent of Dullness and her final conquest of art, philosophy, and religion. It is said that Pope himself admired these lines so much that he could not repeat them without his voice faltering with emotion. "And well it might, sir," said Dr. Johnson when this anecdote was repeated to him, "for they are noble lines." And Thackeray in his lecture on Pope in 'The ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... reached the foot of the throne, he stopped, and his heart misgave him. And he prayed for some minutes in silent devotion, and, without daring to look up, he mounted the first step of the throne, and the second, and the third, and so on, with slow and faltering feet, until he reached ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... and I fear your foot and leg garments have been drawn in." Then rising and bidding the old man follow him, he began the morning's hunt, frequently turning to see how Mishosha kept up. He saw him faltering at every step, and almost benumbed with cold, but encouraged him to follow, saying, we shall soon get through and reach the shore; although he took pains, at the same time, to lead him in roundabout ways, so as to let the frost take complete effect. At length the old man ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... with a purer heart, but for the narrow eyes that witnessed it and gleamed. One of her ladies, Magdalene Coucy, put an arm about her; so Countess Jehane stiffened and jerked up her head, and after that walked with no more faltering. If she had seen, as Milo saw, Gilles de Gurdun glowering at her from a corner, it might have gone hard with her. But ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... hard for me. You might guess. But I'll tell you. Liosha again was right. . . . If you want me still, I will marry you. Not quite yet; but, say, in six months' time. You are a great-hearted, loyal man"—she continued bravely, faltering under his gaze—"and I will learn to love you and will devote my life to making ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... regretting deeply the casualties necessarily incurred in the attainment of our object, the series of stinging blows dealt to the enemy, his severe losses which are out of all proportion to the size of his force and his obviously faltering spirit afford ample proof to all ranks that their sacrifices have not been made in vain. My thanks too are due to Major-General MacMunn, to the Director and their assistants and to all ranks of the Administrative Services and Departments, ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless eat continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or features. A tun of Tokay vin de succession would not have caused any faltering in that piercing glance that read men's inmost thoughts, nor dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go to the bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquil majesty ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Rafael, that you will ever love me more than you do now. It is sweet for me to know that you cannot love me more. Now!" she continued with faltering voice—"now we are about to part. I do not know—when one loves one always has fear. Take one of these tresses. I have been so happy while decking it with flowers for you. Take it! Keep it as a token—a souvenir. It will remind you, that you should never cease to love a poor girl, who ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... multiply, her heart beat already with the exquisite bliss of an immortal achievement. In her vocabulary at that instant it would have been impossible to discover under B the aggressive But, or under I the faltering If. She was ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... masterly treatment of the case against the Templars. They were condemned without mercy, by Church and State, by priest and jurist, and down to the present day cautious examiners of evidence, like Prutz and Lavocat, give a faltering verdict. In the face of many credulous forerunners and of much concurrent testimony Mr. Lea pronounces positively that the monster trial was a conspiracy to murder, and every adverse proof a lie. His immediate predecessor, Schottmueller, the first writer ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... his tread faltering and uncertain; he made his way straight up to them as a group first, then turned sharply and peered close into the face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... inclined to believe that he was the only son of an aged, and possibly invalid, mother. She sketched lightly, upon the blank vista down which they walked, the little white house and the tremulous old lady rising from behind her tea-table to greet her with faltering words about "my son's friends," and was on the point of asking Ralph to tell her what she might expect, when he jerked open one of the infinite number of identical wooden doors, and led her up a tiled path to a porch in the Alpine style of architecture. As they listened to the shaking of the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... so spry as he had once been. There were only a few black hairs left among the many gray ones. His limbs were shaky and his steps faltering. He was "no good for work any more," he said; but there were two things that he kept on doing right along: he seemed to be always smiling and he seemed to be always praising the Lord. "Happy John," people called him, and he certainly deserved the name. He did not seem to have much of this world's ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... kind, good, Henry," he said, with a voice faltering with emotion, "do you recollect the morning, when, on our return from school, we found our young holiday joy changed into heart-breaking and mourning by the sight of our ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the stranger looked at her, and asked in a faltering voice, "Are you an angel?" still not knowing what ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... reached his limit. His pace was faltering. Little by little he began to lag behind. He was nearly spent. Only an expert rider could have done what The Kid did then. Without slackening Blizzard's speed, he slipped his saddle. With the reins in his teeth, ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... Then Hattie, not faltering, mind you, waited. It was better that Marcia should know. Now, too, while her heart was ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... younger men laughed, and it is possible that had their leader shown any sign of faltering, the Colonel's sarcastic disapproval would even then have induced them to abandon the scheme. Most of the men of Carrington had, however, made up their minds, and several in succession explained in deferent ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... replied, 'and we have brought these few books with us as a solatium in the new Jerusalem.' 'And you, when on earth, practised the good they teach?' sternly demanded the saint, who read their characters at a glance. Their faltering reply was sufficient, and the blessed saint at once passed judgment as follows:—'Insomuch as, seduced by a foolish vanity, and against your vows of poverty, you have amassed this multitude of books and thereby ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... good of the king," said Colbert, in a faltering voice; "it is hard to be so treated by one of your majesty's officers, and that without vengeance, on account of the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... so!" he protested, his voice faltering pitifully; "I saw her, Monsieur,—nor was she once this day in my thought until ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... she should have developed the qualities of a general, of a gunner, every gift of war—than that in her humiliation and distress she should thus hold head against all the most subtle intellects in France, and bear, with but one moment of faltering, a continued cross-examination of three months, without losing her patience, her heart, or ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... sense of nearness to thee when I may be faltering from weariness in well doing. May I hold to my determinations. Help me to know what is useless, that I may not give unnecessary energy, and to know what is worth while, that I may acquire strength through the power of ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... to a healthy boy of seventeen. He is not particularly anxious to exchange it for another, least of all by way of minie balls, when he has no chance to send back any in return. To do our work without faltering, it was necessary to count on a hurried burial down there between the lines that night. Whatever reckoning others made, this is how it seemed to me, and we might just as well look the probabilities square ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... of mirth and social ease, Pleased with thyself, whom all the world can please, How often have I led thy sportive choir, With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire, Where shading elms along the margin grew, And freshened from the wave the zephyr flew! And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still, But mocked all tune and marred the dancer's skill, Yet would the village praise my wondrous power, And dance forgetful of the noontide hour. Alike all ages: dames of ancient days Have led their children through the mirthful maze; And the gay grandsire, skilled in gestic lore, Has frisked ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... hath flown, Many a summer's sun hath shone; Yet ne'er found I a friend again Like Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine." The lady fell, and clasped his knees, Her face upraised, her eyes o'erflowing, And Bracy replied, with faltering voice, His gracious hail on all bestowing:— Thy words, thou sire of Christabel, Are sweeter than my harp can tell. Yet might I gain a boon of thee, This day my journey should not be, So strange ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... selfish soul; Let Freedom perish, if, to Freedom true, In the same ruin Wilkes may perish too. With all the symptoms of assured decay, With age and sickness pinch'd and worn away, 420 Pale quivering lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue, The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung, Thy body shrivell'd up, thy dim eyes sunk Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk, The body's weight unable to sustain, The stream of life scarce trembling through the vein, More than half kill'd by honest truths ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... dear, yes," she replied low, her voice not faltering though indistinct. "But for me it was too—too ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... not call myself, as though Thy friendship I to mere good fortune owe. No chance it was secured me thy regards, But Virgil first, that best of men and bards, And then kind Varius mentioned what I was. Before you brought, with many a faltering pause, Dropping some few brief words (for bashfulness Robbed me of utterance) I did not profess That I was sprung of lineage old and great, Or used to canter round my own estate On Satureian barb, but what and who I was as plainly told. As usual, you Brief ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Poynsett. Good morning, Mr. Charnock, I hope I see you well?" the words faltering a little, as neither sailor nor clergyman took notice of his proffered hand; but he continued his inquiries after the convalescents, though neither inquired in return after Mrs. Moy, feeling, perhaps, that they would rather not hear a very sad account ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stage Where well-dressed hundreds strolled at ease, With faltering steps, and bowed with age, They vanished slowly 'neath the trees; But neither scanned the other's face, For fear a ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... student of life or as a romantic sentimentalist. He saw exactly, and saw all things in colour; the world was for him so much booty for the eye. Endowed with a marvellous memory, an unwearied searcher of the vocabulary, he could transfer the visual impression, without a faltering outline or a hue grown dim, into words as exact and vivid as the objects which he beheld. If his imagination recomposed things, it was in the manner of some admired painter; he looked on nature through the medium of a Zurbaran or a Watteau. The dictionary for Gautier ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... tier on tier, the myriads waiting there The bow of grace without one pitying eye— He was a slave—a captive hired to die— Sam was born free as Caesar; and he might The hopeless issue have refused to try; No! with true leap, but soon with faltering flight— "Deep in the roaring gulf, he plunged ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the boat, heard the question. "I have a prayer-book, sir," he said. "If I may be hoisted on deck, I will read the funeral service." The captain accepted his offer. He was taken out of the boat and propped up on a mattress. He read the Church of England burial service with a faltering voice (he himself looking like death itself) over the bodies of those whom it appeared too probable that ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... or truce, without cessation or faltering, the struggle for the honor of the nation and the reparation of violated right ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... that your boy shall meet you there, if there be a blessing on our tender and prayerful guidance of him. Thither, I trust, my own children have gone before me, for I also have been a mother. I am no longer so," she added, in a faltering tone, "and your son will ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... light-waving in the breeze, Her tender limbs embrace; Her lovely form, her native ease, All harmony and grace; Tumultuous tides his pulses roll, A faltering, ardent kiss he stole; He gaz'd, he wish'd, He fear'd, he blush'd, And sigh'd his ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... that there is goodness, virtue, essence in it, past all fellowship with ephemeral things. There is a true, not a laconic, logical, and prophetic inference in it that is apropriately styled, "time"; the finest embodiment of musical equipoise; felt to a "tick"; no faltering, barbaric, or false quantities, but a sustained and equable, uniform tone of chromatic measure, meted out as by a mind imbued by but sacrificing the scale of colour to its own actual, achieved end. One misses the heated passion of Watts's best pictures, ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... the stranger; and who was me but Harry, who had thus metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a faltering voice, which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that he was not going to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... "gone with the wind." Now it was for him to be true in his fashion. A man may falter for weeks and weeks, consciously, subconsciously, even in his dreams, till there comes that moment when the only thing impossible is to go on faltering. The black cap, the little driven grey man looking up at it with a sort of wonder—faltering ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... know, Harrington, my son, that, if I could but convince you on this one subject, I would consent to be confuted by you on every other every day in the year?—nay, to be trampled under your feet?" I added, with a faltering voice. "And, besides that, do you not know that there can be no rivalry between father and son; that it is the only human affection which forbids it; that pride, and not envy, swells a father's heart, when he ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... friends,—your uncle and our dear Anselme,—two indulgent creditors, the Ragons: all these kind hearts will pour balm upon your wounds daily, and will help you to bear your cross. Promise me to have the firmness of a martyr, and to face the blow without faltering." ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... unlike a march to the front, when couriers arrived post-haste with the news that Lucilius Bassus had surrendered the Ravenna fleet.[104] If he had hurried forward on his march he might have been in time to save Caecina's faltering loyalty, or to have joined the legions before the critical engagement was fought. Many, indeed, advised him to avoid Ravenna and to make his way by obscure by-roads to Hostilia or Cremona. Others wanted ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... end the dear lullaby song, So dear to them both for the years long agone, And straight from their hearts doth the melody flow, Tho' the tremulous notes are so faltering and slow. ...
— Grandma's Memories • Mary D. Brine
... drove, shouting back that he would send the money the next day, and my protest, if, indeed, I entered one, was weak and faltering, for of all men in that neighborhood I thought that I stood most in need of ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... priests pretend to be inspir'd: But are not our wrangling pleaders possest with the same frenzy? who cant it? These wounds I receiv'd in defence of your liberty; this eye was lost in your service; lend me a hand to hand me to my children, for my faltering hams are not ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... heaths but I must never among my fellow creatures, either by word or look give allowance to the smallest conjecture of the dread reality: I must shrink before the eye of man lest he should read my father's guilt in my glazed eyes: I must be silent lest my faltering voice should betray unimagined horrors. Over the deep grave of my secret I must heap an impenetrable heap of false smiles and words: cunning frauds, treacherous laughter and a mixture of all light deceits ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... town, she had to lean again and again on Raphael's arm. Her shoes, unfitted for so rough a journey, bad been long since torn off, and her tender feet were marking every step with blood. Raphael knew it by her faltering gait; and remarked, too, that neither sigh nor murmur passed her lips. But as for helping her, he could not; and began to curse the fancy which had led to eschew even sandals as unworthy the ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... door behind her and fumbled through the gloom of the hallway, her hand faltering as she ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... barrow; now simply stop to look at him, with a countenance which says, "that is a heavy load; I should not think that boy could wheel it;" and how quick will your look give fresh strength and vigor to his efforts. On the other hand, when, in such a case, the boy is faltering under his load, try the effect of telling him, "Why, that is not heavy; you can wheel it easily enough; trundle it along." The poor boy will drop his load, disheartened and discouraged, and sit down upon it, in despair. No, even if the work you are assigning to a class is easy, do not tell ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... kindness to him my poor Harry wrote. And I am the brother whom you have heard of, sir; and who was left for dead in Mr. Braddock's action; and came to life again after eighteen months amongst the French; and live to thank God and thank you for your kindness to my Harry," continued the lad with a faltering voice. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... twiddle—vigorous crescendo—TUM. This is unusual! A stranger? A new piece for La Belle Dame Sans Merci? Her wonted reckless dash deserts her. She is, as it were, exploring a new region, and advances with mischievous coyness, with an affectation of a faltering heart, with hesitating steps. My imagination is stimulated by these dripping notes. I see her, as it were, on an uneven pavement; here the flags are set on end, there fungi have tilted them, a sharp turning of the page may reveal heaven knows what horrors; presently comes a black gap ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... Larrabee locked the parsonage door and took the well-trodden path across the church common. It was his father's feet, he knew, that had worn the shoveled path so smooth; his kind, faithful feet that had sped to and fro on errands of mercy, never faltering in all the years. ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... has done with none of the hard, consistent strength and intelligence of your make-believe heroine in a book, so disheartening an example to our faltering impulses for good. She has been infinitely human and pathetically fallible; she has cried out and hesitated and complained and done the wrong thing and wept and failed and still fought on, till to think of her is, for the weakest of us, like a bugle call to high endeavor. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... folded his son to his heart, with a cry of joy and a sudden rush of tears. He babbled incoherently, and gasped for breath. Dick supported the faltering steps to the chair by the desk. Then, he closed the window silently, and flinging his cap upon the table, slowly divested himself of the ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... girl, in faltering accents, as she presented the flower, "my plant is bloomed at last; will you accept this first blossom as a token of affection from your ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... years, one of the glorious Third Alabama, and he begged so hard to be allowed to see "the boys" that I had his bunk drawn up to an open window, supporting him in my arms so that he could see. When his own regiment passed, he tried with faltering breath to cheer, but, failing, waved his feeble hand, gasping out, "God knows, I wish I could be with you, boys, but 'pears like ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... he admits us to his intimacy; but, once admitted, it is for life, and we find ourselves in his debt, not for what he has been to us in our hours of relaxation, but for what he has done for us as a reinforcement of faltering purpose and personal independence of character. His system of a Nature-cure, first professed by Dr. Jean Jacques and continued by Cowper, certainly breaks down as a whole. The Solitary of The Excursion, who has not been cured of his scepticism by living ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Gerald, "who nothing could dismay, raised the faltering hopes of his abject minions by saying that he was jolly well going on, and they could do as ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... write," said Maggie, faltering again. "I have to go to St. Ogg's sometimes, and I can put ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... one of each during our lives, if we reach old age. Springtime is our childhood, summer is our young manhood and young womanhood, autumn is our middle age and winter comes when the hair is white and the footsteps faltering. The first part of a full life is the seedtime, and the latter half is the harvest-time. Some of us may think that we may, while we are young, form habits that are bad and expect to get rid of them before the harvest-time. ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... abated much of the esteem they had borne them. They were more than half disposed to pronounce the Colonists unworthy to defend that liberty which they gloried in with so much complacency. But it deserves to be noted here especially that there was no sign of faltering on the part of the people, no disposition to submit to the invading force. The success of the enemy did but nerve our fathers to more vigorous resolves to maintain the cause ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... that the fair Julia is the daughter of a favourite college friend of the squire; who, after leaving Oxford, had entered the army, and served for many years in India, where he was mortally wounded in a skirmish with the natives. In his last moments he had, with a faltering pen, recommended his wife and daughter to the kindness of his ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... another storm of laughter—that faltering, ingenuous reason of hers—and Barbara hastened to explain that the phrase was a relic of her own childhood, which she had once coined in extenuation of conduct to which her mother had objected. She still employed it, she ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... swift, and easy. When we undertake anything, we seek to do exactly that thing, reach precisely that end, and not merely to hit something in the neighborhood. Occasions, too, run fast, and should be seized on the minute. Action is excellent only when it meets the urgent and evasive demands of life. Faltering and hesitation are fatal. Nor must action unduly weary. Good conduct effects its results with the least necessary expenditure of effort. When there are so many demands pressing upon us, we should not allow ourselves to ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw such faltering, such confusion, such amazement ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... seemed so cruelly incomprehensible—there lay always the inscrutable and splendid purposes of God, and the Ultimate Light beyond. Lord St. John had taught her that. It had been his own courageous, unshakable belief. But now he had gone from her she found her faith faltering. It was too difficult—well-nigh impossible—to hold fast to the big uplift of such thought and faith as ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... of his prisoner, for the reckless, devil-may-care expression had shifted, and as if by some good influence within. "Well, you sent for me, and I have come; what do you want?" said the Superintendent. Then in a faltering voice, and with tears in his eyes, the prisoner said, "I only want to say, sir, before I go to sleep, that you are the first man that has ever overcome me, for you spoke to me of my 'mother'; and now, sir, you can do anything you like with me, and I'll carry out my ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... Mr Farrance to help you to become a midshipman, and some day you may perhaps be made a lieutenant. I am indeed glad!" exclaimed Mary, though her faltering voice and the tears which filled her eyes belied her words, as she remembered that Ned must go away, and perhaps not come ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... you again to-morrow, when I shall be able to give you the secretary's answer, authorising you to present yourself to him at some given time. But before you go,"—here the old man, in spite of himself, fell into a more faltering tone—"you will perhaps permit me to touch your hand? It is long since I touched the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... other hand, spoke of it in a faltering, tearful voice, adding a little pitifully that it made it harder for her that Ethel was ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... stooped at the bidding of Duty,—she had told her story, from first to last, omitting nothing; with head erect, pale lips, and flashing eyes,—with a passing flush, perhaps, at the more shameful passages, but with no faltering, no dodging, no self-excusing, no beseeching,—scornfully when she spoke of home, and the beginning of the end,—redly, hatefully, wickedly dangerous, when Philip Withers came on the scene,—with tremulous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... have made off into the desert but for the promise of more money. Hamet was torn by conflicting emotions, in which a desire to retreat was uppermost. Eaton was, as ever, indefatigable and indomitable. When his forces were faltering at the crucial moment, he boldly ordered an assault and carried the defenses of the city. The guns of the ships in the harbor completed the discomfiture of the enemy, and the international army took possession of the citadel. Derne won, however, had to be resolutely defended. Twice within the next ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... footfall without; rap, rap, rap, on the door; no timid, faltering knock, but a firm application of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... False-Faces, she had answered their appeal. Using every symbol, every ceremony, every art taught her as a child, she had swayed them, vanquishing with mystery, conquering, triumphing, as an Oneida, where a single false step, a single slip, a moment's faltering in her sweet and serene authority might have brought out the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Tio Batiste, his faltering lament sounding faintly through the storm, began to protest despairingly. God, could it not soon be over! Why torment honest sailors so? They had done no harm! "Let her go, Pascualo, let her go, for God's sake! Our time has come! Why fight and make us suffer so ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sometimes faltering and going around in a circle, the escort waiting patiently until he once more found his own tracks. They were still a mile away from the entrance of the mountain pass when Anita, looking up into the clear dark blue sky where the palpitating stars were coming out, saw ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... have been loved so well by the two women whom he loved. And for the rest, dearest friend, as one draws near to the edge of the great shadow, which we call death, one begins to trust more and fuss less; looking to the next step only, so that one may take it neither with faltering nor with presumptuous haste." ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... would impress him as much as I desired; but, to my surprise, he only stared at me. "Eh!" he exclaimed at last, in a faltering tone, "M. ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... birthdays real American ice cream at a fabulous price and worth it. Harmony had bought a suit, too, a marvel of tailoring and cheapness, and a willow plume that would have cost treble its price in New York. Oh, yes, gala days, indeed, to offset the butter and the rainy winter and the faltering technic and the anxiety about money. For that they all had always, the old tragedy of the American music student abroad—the expensive lessons, the delays in getting to the Master himself, the contention against German greed or ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the advanced public sentiment in favor of a full equality of rights, accomplished by so small a number of workers and under such adverse conditions. Perhaps this will continue to be said even unto the end, but their labors will know neither faltering nor cessation until the original object, as announced over fifty years ago, has been attained, viz.: the full ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... stride to the old man's faltering step, and they walked behind the dog-cart, and in silence. It was not the mere personal disappointment which weighed upon Durrance's spirit. But he could not see with Ethne's eyes, and as his gaze took in that quiet corner of Donegal, he was filled with a great sadness ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... days later that Dinah began at last the long and weary pilgrimage back again. Almost against her will she turned her faltering steps up the steep ascent; for she was too tired for any sustained effort. Only that something seemed to be perpetually drawing her she would not have been moved to make the effort at all. For she was so piteously ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... remorse. I knelt down and prayed to God to make me good. But some unknown force urged me to the crime. I started again—ten times I turned back, but the more I hesitated the stronger was the desire to go on." At length the faltering assassin arrived at the house, and in his painful anxiety of mind shot a servant instead ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... without a secret flash at once of indignation at perceiving how his first love had been wasted, yet of exultation in finding that no one but herself had known how to love him; but poor Lucy, completely and helplessly overcome, could only exclaim in a faltering voice: 'Oh, grandmamma, don't—' and Albinia was forced to disengage her, support her out of the room, and leaving her to her sister, hasten back to soothe the old lady, who had been terrified by her emotion. It ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... good boy," old Van Quintem had said to him, in faltering accents; "go among the gambling houses, and other dens of infamy, and you will surely hear of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... gossip that would be sweeping in a day or two through the village and the neighborhood, could not command herself to speak. Her questions—her indignation—choked her. At the end of the conversation, when Diana had described such plans as she had, and the elder lady rose to go, she said, faltering: ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enviable of men. I had recovered rapidly from an uncongenial start in political life; I had become a considerable force through the BLUE WEEKLY, and was shaping an increasingly influential body of opinion; I had re-entered Parliament with quite dramatic distinction, and in spite of a certain faltering on the part of the orthodox Conservatives towards the bolder elements in our propaganda, I had loyal and unenvious associates who were making me a power in the party. People were coming to our group, understandings were developing. It was clear we should play a prominent ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the cliff, I saw the guide conducting two adventurers behind the falls. It was pleasant, from that high seat in the sunshine, to observe them struggling against the eternal storm of the lower regions, with heads bent down, now faltering, now pressing forward, and finally swallowed up in their victory. After their disappearance, a blast rushed out with an old hat, which it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to which they were directing ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before;—do me justice, sir," catching the gleam of indignation on Mr Benson's face; "I offered to marry her, and provide for the boy as if he had been legitimate. It's of no use recurring to that time," said he, his voice faltering; "what is done cannot be undone. But I came now to say, that I should be glad to leave the boy still under your charge, and that every expense you think it right to incur in his education I will defray;—and place a sum of money in trust for him—say, two thousand pounds—or ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... quit the room, but with so faltering and weak a step, that Nina, touched and affected, sprung up, and with her own hand guided the old woman across the room, whispering comfort and soothing to her; while, as they reached the door, the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... charmer of life, ever tender and true! Ye babes of my love, that await me afar!" His faltering tongue scarce could murmur adieu, When he sank in her arms—the poor ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was located. It was here that we learned to know and love him. His hopeful, helpful spirit shone above the dark gloom of the time like a beacon light. How often, when we wistfully sought to help those patient sufferers, while we were so weak our faltering steps failed us ofttimes, did we hear the calm voice of Lieutenant Hanley filling us with hope and inspiring us ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... preponderance of reasons in favor of their adhering to their oaths that prevents the members of the Committee of Annihilation from faltering. ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... shaken by the violence of the assault, seemed for a moment to hesitate; but Gonsalvo had now time to bring up his men-at-arms, who sustained the faltering columns, and renewed the combat on more equal terms. He himself was in the hottest of the melee; and at one time was exposed to imminent hazard by his horse's losing his footing on the slippery soil, and ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... brought in a sedan chair through the hall. Not a hat moved as he passed; and many voices cried out "Popish dog." He came into Court pale and trembling, with eyes fixed on the ground, and gave his evidence in a faltering voice. He swore that the Bishops had informed him of their intention to present a petition to the King, and that they had been admitted into the royal closet for that purpose. This circumstance, coupled with the circumstance that, after ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a quarrel which is the torment and curse of weak minds. It is, no doubt, very horrible to see a man trample upon opinions and feelings as easily and carelessly as he would upon the grass, and go on his way undisturbed, but it is more painful to see faltering, trembling incapacity for self-assertion, especially before subordinates. Mr. Furze could not have suffered more than two or three days' inconvenience if Orkid Jim had been discharged, but a vague terror haunted him of something which might possibly happen. Partly this distressing ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... returned. His eyes rolled wildly round. His heart beat high against his side. His words were faltering, broken, slow. 'Arise, son of ocean! arise, chief of the dark brown shields! I see the dark, the mountain stream of battle. Fly, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... heights of Uam-Var, 75 And roused the cavern, where, 'tis told, A giant made his den of old; For ere that steep ascent was won, High in his pathway hung the sun, And many a gallant, stayed perforce, 80 Was fain to breathe his faltering horse, And of the trackers of the deer, Scarce half the lessening pack was near; So shrewdly on the mountain side, Had the bold burst their mettle ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... away. After a moment's pause, Father Mathias followed him, and seized him by the arm saying, in a faltering voice, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... invariably carried. By a rule of the Board, a reconsideration carries a measure over to a future meeting—to any future meeting which may afford a prospect of its passage. The member who is engineering it watches his chance, labors with faltering members out of doors, and, as often as he thinks he can carry it, calls it up again—until, at last, the requisite eighteen are obtained. It has frequently happened, that a member has kept a measure in a state of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... Christian teaching: "Be ye holy in all manner of conversation: Consider that the holy God is your Father, and let this oblige you to live like the children of God, that you may look your Father in the face with comfort another day." "There is," writes Dean Stanley, "no compromise in his words, no faltering in his convictions; but his love and admiration are reserved on the whole for that which all good men love, and his detestation on the whole is reserved for that which all good men detest." By the catholic spirit which breathes through his writings, especially through "The Pilgrim's Progress," ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... signature. It was his wife's without doubt. Then he studied the rest of the writing and compared it with that of the note which had been thrust into his hands earlier in the day. There was no difference between them except that there were evidences of faltering in the latter, not noticeable in the earlier communication. As he noted these tokens of weakness or suffering, he caught up the telephone receiver in good earnest and called out Gerridge's number. When the detective answered, he ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... esteem they had borne them. They were more than half disposed to pronounce the Colonists unworthy to defend that liberty which they gloried in with so much complacency. But it deserves to be noted here especially that there was no sign of faltering on the part of the people, no disposition to submit to the invading force. The success of the enemy did but nerve our fathers to more vigorous resolves to maintain the cause of liberty even ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... alone,—"oh, be satisfied, I can understand my father." D'Avrigny took the young man's arm, and led him out of the room. A more than deathlike silence then reigned in the house. At the end of a quarter of an hour a faltering footstep was heard, and Villefort appeared at the door of the apartment where d'Avrigny and Morrel had been staying, one absorbed in meditation, the other in grief. "You can come," he said, and led them back to Noirtier. Morrel looked attentively ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... how is the patient, nurse?' braced my faltering nerves in a moment, and enabled me to answer him without embarrassment. He had his grave professional air, and looked hard and impenetrable. I had reason afterwards to think that this sternness of manner was assumed ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his speeches hobble vilely How "Hear him" bursts from brother Hiley! When his faltering periods lag Hark to the cheers of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... nothing from outside to inform him as to his conduct and its results. At the bottom of his heart and in the depths of his conscience he knew that he had made a dreadful mistake. He did not flinch. He went on in his new path without apparent faltering. His speech on the compromise measures went farther than that of the 7th of March. But if we study his speeches and letters between 1850 and the day of his death, we can detect changes in them, which show plainly enough that the writer was not at ease, that he was not master of that real conscience ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... leading figure. The Chorus Lady, in Mr. James Forbes's amusing study of that name, is drawn chiefly through her way of saying things; but though this method of delineation is sometimes very effective for an act or two, it can seldom be sustained without a faltering of interest through a full-grown four-act play. The novelist's expedient of delineating character through mental analysis is of course denied the dramatist, especially in this modern age when the soliloquy (for reasons which will be noted in a subsequent ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... little girl, in faltering accents, as she presented the flower, "my plant is bloomed at last; will you accept this first blossom as a token of affection from ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... a husky voice, and after a moment of faltering he gave her the letter. It was from Grayson, and it was to the effect that he had seen Sterne, and that Sterne had agreed to a proposition he had made him, to take Maxwell's play on the road, if it succeeded, and in view of this had agreed ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... covered at the time with two feet of water. The other column led by Butler and Murfree crossed an apology for a bridge. During the advance both columns were discovered by the British sentinels and the rocky defense literally blazed with musketry. In stern silence, however, without faltering, the American columns moved forward, entered the abatis, until the advance guard under Anthony Wayne was within the enemy's works. A bullet at this moment struck Wayne in the forehead grazing his skull. Quickly recovering from the shock, he rose to his ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... With the same ghastly mildness in his look, He said, "My trust is in the God of Heaven, And in the eye of him who passes me!" The cottage door was speedily unbarred, And now the soldier touched his hat once more With his lean hand, and in a faltering voice, Whose tone bespake reviving interests Till then unfelt, he thanked me; I returned The farewell blessing of the patient man, And so we parted. Back I cast a look, And lingered near the door a little space, Then sought with ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... see thee, maiden dear, and make The most I can Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache, While still we scan Round our frail faltering progress for ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... head, and swept the horizon with a glance; then in a low, faltering voice, as if speaking to himself, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of a second Jenkins hesitated, as one might do who was loath to bring trouble upon another. Then he replied, in faltering tones: ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... matters, public opinion has of late undergone a rapid modification. Committees of both Houses of the Legislature have agreed that something must be done in this direction, and have even thrown out timid and faltering suggestions as to what should be done; while at the opposite pole of society, committees of working-men have expressed their conviction that scientific training is the one thing needful for their advancement, whether as men, or as workmen. Only the other ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... she with unwilling tread. "But don't mistake me; I beg this because you may have been led to do so in noticing—if you did notice it—how your sudden appearance unnerved me down there. It was but a momentary faltering; and considering what you have been to me, it was natural enough. But will helped me through it—though perhaps you think me a humbug for saying it—and immediately afterwards I felt that of all persons ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of a few minutes before oozed away as every street corner brought him nearer his destination, and when at last the stately front of Saint Nathaniel's loomed before him, he wished his journey could never end. He gazed with faltering heart up at the ward windows, as if he could read his fate there. The place seemed deserted. A few street boys were playing on the pavement, and at the door of the in-patients' ward a little cluster of visitors were collected round a flower stall buying sweet mementoes of the country to ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... seat in the arbor. Sighing].—Alas! how many are the obstacles to the accomplishment of our wishes! Albeit she did coyly turn away Her glowing cheek, and with her fingers guard Her pouting lips, that murmured a denial In faltering accents, she did yield herself A sweet reluctant captive to my will, As eagerly I raised her lovely face: But ere with gentle force I stole the kiss, Too envious Fate did mar my daring purpose. Whither now shall I betake myself? I will tarry for a brief space in this bower ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... can note down each word, each ejaculation, but phraseology is powerless to portray the repressed animation, the impassioned movements, the studied reticence, the varied tones of voice, the now bold, now faltering glances, full of hatred and suspicion, which follow each other in rapid succession, mostly on the prisoner's side, but not entirely so, for although the magistrate may be an adept in the art of concealing his feelings, at times ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... He tried to soothe and comfort her, but in struggling not to cry she only sobbed the worse. At last, however, she succeeded in faltering out ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal choirs, Unwearied voices, wordless strains; My mind with fonder welcome owns One dear ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... value of Rickworth, and declared that it would be so tied up that Mark would gain nothing but a dull, plain little wife. Not thus deterred, Mark only asked of him discretion; and when, trying to cloak his earnest under faltering jest, he declared that he had a regard for the Brandons, and should get into a scrape with his father, his friend held out the allurement of freedom from his difficulties, but was obliged to touch on this lightly, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spake, her looks, her air Such gentle thankfulness declare, That (so it seemed) her girded vests Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts. 380 'Sure I have sinn'd!' said Christabel, 'Now heaven be praised if all be well!' And in low faltering tones, yet sweet, Did she the lofty lady greet With such perplexity of mind 385 As ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... see before me the gladiator lie," And tier on tier, the myriads waiting there The bow of grace without one pitying eye— He was a slave—a captive hired to die— Sam was born free as Caesar; and he might The hopeless issue have refused to try; No! with true leap, but soon with faltering flight— "Deep in the roaring gulf, he plunged ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... seemed to bring John Jay back to his common every-day self. He sat up, grinning as if he had never heard of such things as tears; but those he had shed must have made his eyesight clearer. As he slid down from the hay and walked along beside George, he noticed for the first time how slow and faltering the steps beside his had grown. As they climbed up the hill to the church, it seemed to him that the beloved face looked unusually thin and haggard in the strong ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... returned more gently still. And she went on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back. Isabel, however, allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had immediately taken place between the Countess and Mr. Rosier. He had removed his hat and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced himself, while the Countess's ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... his knees in trepidation. "I do declare to your highness, by the camel of the Holy Prophet," said he, in a faltering voice, "that I neither meant treason, nor ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... back that he would send the money the next day, and my protest, if, indeed, I entered one, was weak and faltering, for of all men in that neighborhood I thought that I stood most in ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... singular dialogue, in which he had assumed a tone to which his daughter was a stranger, and before which she trembled, he passed on through more than one strictly fastened door, while his daughter, with a faltering step, illuminated him on the obscure road. At length he found admittance by another passage into the cell in which Ursel was confined, and found him reclining in hopeless misery,—all those expectations having ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Mr. Notary." And he signed it rapidly, after having first run his eye over that part of the deed in which were specified the situation of the house and the names of the proprietors. "Bertuccio," said he, "give fifty-five thousand francs to monsieur." The steward left the room with a faltering step, and returned with a bundle of bank-notes, which the notary counted like a man who never gives a receipt for money until after he is sure it is all there. "And now," demanded the count, "are all ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wits this age hath shown Great, dear, sweet Bartas thou art matchless known; My ravished eyes and heart with faltering tongue, In humble wise have vowed their service long But knowing th' task so great & strength but small, Gave o're the work before begun withal, My dazled sight of late reviewed thy lines, Where Art, and more than Art in nature ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... to the dead silence that fell with his appearing. His mother was first to break it. With a faltering voice she spoke, but with the authority of maternal love and faith,—through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... had divided. Two guns pounded away at Taylor's feint, while two shelled the main column. The latter was struck repeatedly; more than twenty men dropped silent or groaning out of the hurrying files; but the survivors pushed on without faltering and without even caring for the wounded. At last a broad belt of green branches rose between the regiments and the ridge; and the rebel gunners, unable to see their foe, dropped ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... an hour, without reference to a note, and without faltering for a word. Preserved throughout that studious assumption of having accidentally looked in which marked his appearance at table. Evidently desired to minimise as much as possible importance of occasion. Subject broached, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... human soul." No wonder, then, that I should be solitary among the festive few on board the Jane Moseley—no wonder I felt myself darkly, deeply, desperately blue. I thought I would go on deck. I clung to my companion with an ardor which would have been flattering had it been voluntary. My faltering steps were guided to a seat just within the guards. I sat there thinking that I had never nursed a dear gazelle, so I could not be quite sure whether it would have died or not, but I thought it would. I mused on the changing fortunes of this unsteady world, and the ingratitude of man. I thought ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... No faltering. You have learned and know Too much to spare you from my sight, good Oran. With ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... kept the lead; but the judges of the gondolier's skill began to detect signs of exhaustion in his faltering stroke. The waterman of the Lido pressed him hard, and the Calabrian was drawing more into a line with them both. At this moment, too, the masked competitor exhibited a force and skill that none had expected to see in one of his ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Johannes Vockerat and Michael Kramer, Dr. Scholz and Professor Crampton speak with a human raciness and native truth not surpassed by the weavers or peasants of Silesia. Hauptmann has heard the inflections of the human voice, the faltering and fugitive eloquence of the living word not only with his ear ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... autumn and a winter of life every year. No, we have but one of each during our lives, if we reach old age. Springtime is our childhood, summer is our young manhood and young womanhood, autumn is our middle age and winter comes when the hair is white and the footsteps faltering. The first part of a full life is the seedtime, and the latter half is the harvest-time. Some of us may think that we may, while we are young, form habits that are bad and expect to get rid of them before ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... no sound, no answer. He sank forward in his chains, his head upon his breast, convulsive shudders alone proclaiming faltering life. Hell had no terror like to this which ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... so," I said at length in a faltering voice, and colouring at the thought that at last the moment had come when I could show him that I was clever. "I think that EVERYBODY is egotistic, and that everything we do ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... question. "I have a prayer-book, sir," he said. "If I may be hoisted on deck, I will read the funeral service." The captain accepted his offer. He was taken out of the boat and propped up on a mattress. He read the Church of England burial service with a faltering voice (he himself looking like death itself) over the bodies of those whom it appeared too probable that he ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... with passionate delight. Faltering tender words, he drew her head to his breast, then raised it to press his mouth to her pure lips. But her intoxication of joy passed away—and before he could prevent it, she had escaped from his arms, saying sternly: "Not that, not that. . . . Many a crime lies between ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... self-possession of the noble Venetian heiress. Nerissa, a handkerchief folded squarely over her head, short petticoats, scarlet lambswool worked into her stockings, and a black apron trimmed with bright ribbon, made a complete little Italian waiting-maid; her quick, pert reply to her lady's first faltering speech, seemed wonderfully to restore Portia to herself, and they got on well and with spirit through the description of the suitors, and the choice of the two first caskets. Portia looked excessively dignified, and Nerissa's by-play was capital. Whether it was owing to Bassanio's ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in age and grief Thy name Does still my languid heart inflame, And bow my faltering knee. Oh, yet this bosom feels the fire, This trembling hand and drooping lyre Have yet a ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... immense sums demanded for carrying on the war; and when at last the hearts of the soldiers were fainting under long-protracted sufferings, she appeared among them, like some celestial visitant, to cheer their faltering spirits, and inspire them with her own energy. The attachment to Isabella seemed to be a pervading principle, which animated the whole nation by one common impulse, impressing a unity of design on all its movements. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... Where the wealth of earth is not, These bright jewels will be found, Shedding love and light around! Say, shall gems and rubies rare With these heart-shrined gems compare? Constancy, that will not perish, But the thing it loveth cherish, Clinging to it fondly ever, Fainting, faltering, wavering, never! Trust, that will not harbor doubt; Putting fear and shame to rout, Making known how, free from harm, Love may rest upon its arm. Hope, that makes the future bright, Though there come a darksome ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... cab overtook us. Pasquale stopped it, squeezed the bundle inside, and held the door open for the faltering and bewildered woman, as if she had been the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... parents, sustaining them when they were ready to sink beneath the avalanche of their woe. And when at last, though life was spared, it was evident that the invalid must remain an invalid for a long time, perhaps forever, Sarah's sublime courage stood steadfast. There was no sign of faltering. With a resignation almost cheerful, she took up her fresh burden, and, intent only on cheering her dear patient and comforting the sorrow of her sister and brother, she forgot her seventy-one years and every grief of the past. "I try," she writes, "to accept this, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Slipping, faltering, gasping from the exhausting toil in the rarefied air, with throbbing hearts and panting lungs, we reached the top of the gorge and squeezed ourselves between two gigantic fragments of rock by a passage ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... to the lady's cheek as she gave Waverley a reception, in which courtesy was mingled with kindness, while her trembling hand and faltering voice showed how much she was startled and discomposed. Dinner was hastily replaced, and while Waverley was engaged in refreshing himself, the Colonel proceeded—'I wonder you have come here, Frank; the doctors tell me the air of London is very bad for your complaints. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... train would bear him away in the morning. Azalia came tripping down the path, holding out both hands to meet him at the gate. She greeted him with a sad smile. "You are not going away to the war, are you?" she asked with faltering voice. ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... across a waste not much beset with trees, he silent, she never wearying or slacking her pace or faltering as to the way, till they came into the thick wood again, and ever when he would have spoken she hushed him, with "Not yet! Not yet!" Until at last when the sun had been up for some three hours, she led ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... classics, could write Latin correctly and French tolerably well; in the sciences, if he could, without help, accurately and promptly solve a problem; if, again unaided, he could readily and accurately to the end, state a long series of theorems and equations without divergence or faltering; in sum, the object of the test was to verify in him the presence and degree of the mathematical or literary faculty.—But, since the beginning of the century, the old subdivided sciences and the new consolidated sciences have multiplied their discoveries ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to the old man's faltering step, and they walked behind the dog-cart, and in silence. It was not the mere personal disappointment which weighed upon Durrance's spirit. But he could not see with Ethne's eyes, and as his gaze took in ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... paused, confused and faltering in the doorway, in her dismay at seeing me engaged in this inspection instead of in replacing the rug as I had proposed, now advanced a step, so that our glances met as I looked ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... tears have power to flow For hours for ever past away; While yet these swelling sighs allow My faltering voice to breathe a lay; While yet my hand can touch the chords, My tender lute, to wake thy tone; While yet my mind no thought affords, But one remembered dream alone, I ask not death, whate'er my state: But when my eyes can weep ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Must not jealousy awaken the greatest talent, if the plastic artist ever compares the effect of his productions with that of Wagnerian music, in which there is so much pure and sunny happiness that he who hears it feels as though all previous music had been but an alien, faltering, and constrained language; as though in the past it had been but a thing to sport with in the presence of those who were not deserving of serious treatment, or a thing with which to train and instruct those who were not even deserving of play? In the case of this earlier ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... He trembling, swift returned. His eyes rolled wildly round. His heart beat high against his side. His words were faltering, broken, slow. 'Arise, son of ocean! arise, chief of the dark brown shields! I see the dark, the mountain stream of battle. Fly, King of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... for the evil. In 1852 he could hardly find a seconder for his motion in favour of representation by population; in the election just closed, he claimed fifty-three members from Upper Canada, elected to stand or fall by that measure. He had fought a ten years' battle without faltering. He advocated opposition to any ministry of either party that would refuse to ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... safe conscience I can assure you that, in my judgment, your verses are animated with the poetic spirit, as they are evidently the product of strong feeling. The sixth and seventh stanzas affected me much, even to the dimming of my eyes and faltering of my voice while I was reading them aloud. Having said this, I have said enough. Now for the per contra. You will not, I am sure, be hurt when I tell you that the workmanship (what else could be expected from so young ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... staff," was the low-voiced reply. "Truth, the rod, uncovers and smites the error; then Love, the staff, supports our faltering steps—'meets every human need.'" [Footnote: ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... cried she, in faltering accents; "let me at least convince you of the mistake with regard to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... speech he tries, But words the faltering tongue denies, Scarce heard the low unmeaning tone, Then ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... said the lady, with a faltering voice. "He was killed at Leipsic, at the head of a band of his friends and fellow-students. O, Mr. Grey! this is a fair work of art, but if you had but seen the prototype you would have gazed on this as on a dim and washed-out drawing. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Book is all that's left me now; Tears will unbidden start; With faltering lip and throbbing brow I press it to my heart. For many generations past Here is our family tree, My mother's hand this Bible clasped, She dying gave ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... light-minded; giddy; fast and loose. weak, feeble-minded, frail; timid, wimpish, wimpy &c. 860; cowardly &c. 862; dough-faced [U.S.]; facile; pliant &c. (soft) 324; unable to say "no", easy-going, revocable, reversible. Adv. irresolutely &c. adj.; irresolved[obs3], irresolvedly[obs3]; in faltering accents; off and on; from pillar to post; seesaw &c. 314. Int. "how happy could I be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... reading the same thought. They had but one more chance and that was almost futile; for the plans indicated that the side drift extended but a score or so of yards and had then been abandoned. They felt their feet faltering when they turned into it, dreading the end, dreading the revelation that must tell them they were to die in this limited burrow in the hills. But courageously they tried to assume an air of confidence. They did not speak as they ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... has been made to save a friend. A dying Saviour gathers up His expiring breath to plead for His foes! At the climax of His own woe, and of human ingratitude—man-forsaken, and God-deserted—His faltering voice mingles with the shout of His murderers,—"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do!" Had the faithless Peter been there, could he have wondered at the reply to a former question,—"Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him,—till seven times?" Jesus ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... even him, and he was not readily touched by anything; it made him loth to say the word that would drive all that sweet expression so quickly and completely away. It must be said, however; the increasing light warned him he must not tarry, but it was with a hesitating and almost faltering voice that ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... further preliminary, substituting a blank phrasing for uncomprehended words; but the melody swept without faltering to its conclusion. Janin answered irritably, disturbed by his ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... reality amid that brotherhood of souls. His tenderest thoughts perhaps dwelt on the young men's prayer-meetings of Sunday afternoons at the college. There they drew nearest to the Eternal Strength which was behind their weakness, and closest to each other as student after student lifted a faltering, stumbling petition for a common blessing on their work. The Immortal seemed to be in that bare room, filling their hearts with holy flame, drawing around them the isolation of a devoted band. They were one in One. Then had followed the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... beauty is no more: And die, dull heart, for she whose mournful words Made you a living spirit has passed away And left you but a ball of passionate dust. And you, proud earth and plumy sea, fade out! For you may hear no more her faltering feet, But are left lonely amid the clamorous ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... in her throat, and her faltering gaze passed from him to the hotel attendant, who responded to her unspoken appeal as readily as if it were a part of his regular business. Pushing her gently inside, he placed her bag and umbrella on an empty chair, took up the breakfast tray from the table, and inquired, with a kindness which ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... when, in the home of thy fathers, Thy fervent petition shall rise For the loved who are circling around thee, The joy and delight of thine eyes, Oh, then, for the weak and the faltering, Should a prayer, as sweet incense, ascend To the God we have worshipped together, Remember ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... seaman as she would from death; She promised she would, with a faltering breath; Yet, nevertheless, the truth you shall hear, She found out a way for to ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... faintness follows closing-in, When, faltering headlong down, they spin Like leaves. But those pay ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the company, both maintaining a strict silence. At last Horatio made a full stop, and taking Leonora, who stood pale and trembling, gently by the hand, he fetched a deep sigh, and then, looking on her eyes with all the tenderness imaginable, he cried out in a faltering accent, "O Leonora! is it necessary for me to declare to you on what the future happiness of my life must be founded? Must I say there is something belonging to you which is a bar to my happiness, and which unless you will part with, I must be miserable!"—"What ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... place, One prick with the steel, one thrust with the heel, And where was the man to outride him? A grip of his knees, a toss of his rein, He was settling her down to her gallop again, When he stopped, for he heard just one faltering word From the ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no more, sir,' the landlord continued, faltering, 'than enough for themselves and a little ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the chair, reaching toward her. She turned her face away, but their hands trembled toward each other, faltering fearfully, tremulously, into a clasp that became at once firm and knowing when it felt itself—as if it opened their blind eyes to a world of life and light without end, a world in which they two were the first ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... way better than he had anticipated—better than was desirable, perhaps. He had been on the descent of the path for some little time now, and could not be far from the more level ground which marked the approach to Long Bridge. Determined not to stop or to cast one faltering look to right or left, he hurried on with his eyes fixed upon the ground and every nerve braced to resist the influence of the place and its undying memories. But with the striking of his foot against the boards of the bridge, nature was too much for him, and his resolve vanished. Instead of ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... in the midst of tribulations. The Spirit of God and of glory rests upon the devoted Christian in affliction's furnace, and a bright, blessed hope of great eternal reward ever cheers and nerves his faltering soul. He, who, in this dark world will suffer with the Savior shall share a blissful eternity ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... her thoughts were but poor faltering, half-developed things; yet he knew what she meant to say, though she, herself, had divined it only through some ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... the way, I remember that a gang of house-breakers had forced their way through the premises in order to reach Kant's next neighbor, who was a goldsmith. As I drew near to his bed-side, I said, 'Good morning.' He returned my salutation by saying, 'Good morning,' but in so feeble and faltering a voice that it was hardly articulate. I was rejoiced to find him sensible, and I asked him if he knew me:—'Yes,' he replied; and, stretching out his hand, touched me gently upon the cheek. Through the rest of the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... trains and passenger trains were speeding over the network of rails without a hitch, soldiers and officers were crowding station platforms, and if there was any faltering of victory hopes among these men—as the atmosphere of the outside world may have at that time led one to believe—I utterly failed to detect it in their faces. They were either doggedly and determinedly moving in the direction of duty, or going happily home for a brief holiday respite, as an ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... moments when I closely confronted my situation the glory of the western sky came back to me, and it must have been during one of these dreary storms that I began to write a poor faltering little story which told of the adventures of a cattleman in the city. No doubt it was the expression of the homesickness at my own heart but only one or two of the chapters ever took shape, for I was tortured by the feeling that no matter how great the intellectual advancement caused ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... low moan, wrung from her unaware. Father Johannes caught the small hands which she had flung out before her clenched, in her passionate struggle for control, and with faltering motions of unaccustomed gentleness, he soothed her until she had grown quieter and he could unclasp them. Then he spoke strange words, out ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that shivering circle of light the two men saw the king kneeling up in the cart and Peter on the barn floor beside him. The old fox looked at them sideways—snared, a white-faced evil thing. And then, as with a faltering suicidal heroism, he leant forward over the bomb before him, they fired together and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... said the parson, watching intently. "Strange thing they don't break!" But they didn't. There was no waiting, no coaxing; it was drive and devilry all through. He brought his sheep along at a terrific rate, never missing a turn, never faltering, never running out. And the crowd applauded, for the crowd loves a dashing display. While little M'Adam, hopping agilely about, his face ablaze with excitement, handled dog and sheep with a masterly precision that compelled the admiration ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... their leader and, pausing, those who were armed with breech loaders fired after the flying horseman; totally disregarding Lisle, who had the satisfaction of finding that his sacrifice had been effectual, for the horse pursued its way without faltering. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... like shadows between the faltering eyelids and the shut were real and magic. Then all the difficulties were swept away, no cold chill ran up his back to stay the words that rushed to his lips. Conversations to defy the novelist were spun out and, having periodically saved her from a hundred malignant deaths, he ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... and he was sure of a fortune. Without it he was a beggar. Mr. Bolton had already Small's notes for a large amount in his safe, labeled "doubtful;" he had helped him again and again, and always with the same result. But Mr. Small spoke with a faltering voice of his family, his daughter in school, his wife ignorant of his calamity, and drew such a picture of their agony, that Mr. Bolton put by his own more pressing necessity, and devoted the day to scraping together, here and there, ten thousand dollars for this brazen ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... next to real things care nothing one way or the other for theoretical rightness; they want the real article. And a right man will not be satisfied to have even the Most High think of him as being perfectly right when he knows he falls far short of it. He would rather be the faltering pursuer of actual rightness than the possessor of a ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... one of the rear doors, seldom used, was never fastened, and toward this she bent her faltering footsteps. It yielded to her touch, and like a ghost she glided through it and up the wide, familiar corridors, her tears falling like rain at ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... each other's eyes went far beyond the faltering words they spoke. She asked him in a low voice, "Couldn't you do more for me than for yourself? One never knows, but . . . what else is love for, but to give greater strength than ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... months old, and Denmark enfranchised its women before the year was out. And when America went forth to fight for democracy abroad, Arkansas, Michigan, Vermont, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, began to lay the foundations of freedom at home, and New York in no faltering voice proclaimed full liberty for all its people. Lastly Great Britain has enfranchised its women, and surely the Congress of the United States will not lag ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... reasons," she said, faltering. A certain embarrassment swept her, and the ivory of her cheeks bloomed rosily. "I—I can't have you rob this house, this particular house of all the world." Her eyes leaped from the still obdurate face of the forger ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... could that be his little son? Yes, it was; he would have known him anywhere by his likeness to Emily. Their boy had her curly brown hair, her sensitive mouth, above all, her clear-gazing, truthful grey eyes, eyes in which there was never a shadow of falsehood or faltering. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... an answer; then, as though endeavoring to drive away unpleasant thoughts, he said, in a faltering voice: "No, no, it is not that. I witnessed just now near the Dominican Convent something which touched me deeply, and I have not yet recovered from the shock. Have you not heard of a Florentine merchant named ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... Psyche, gave her beauty I know not what of divine and noble; tears were rolling down her eyes. I guessed at once that she was also of Athenian lineage; and that in my prayer for Athens her heart had responded to mine. I spoke to her, though with a faltering voice—"Art thou not, too, Athenian?" said I, "O beautiful virgin!" At the sound of my voice she blushed, and half drew her veil across her face.—"My forefathers' ashes," said she, "repose by the waters of Ilissus: my birth is of Neapolis; but my heart, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... as Don Antonio withdrew, Monteblanco requested to speak with his daughter in his apartment. The trembling girl obeyed with a faltering step, looking like a criminal about to receive the sentence that is to seal her fate. The duenna remained somewhat surprised at this mysterious transaction, in which her family counsel and approbation had been ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... to you, therefore, my favorite idea. For your dear sake, my Pantheon shall become a ruin. Let this be a proof of the strong love I bear you, Jordan. I will not contend with the priests in my church, but I will pursue them without faltering into their own; and I say to you, this will be a long and stiff-necked war, which will last while my life endures. I will not have my people blinded and stupefied by priests. I will suffer no other king in Prussia. I alone will be ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... on to give his vote for the death of his King and relation, walked with a faltering step, and a face paler than death itself, to the appointed place, and there read these words: "Exclusively governed by my duty, and convinced that all those who have resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is for death!" Important as the accession of the first ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... intelligence of what had become of our brave young men. This contributed, not a little, to increase our uneasiness, and to sadden our thoughts, for we felt in our hearts that they would never return. Our forebodings proved too well founded," said my grandmother, with faltering voice, "we have never ascertained their fate. We knew, however, that the war was still progressing, and that the French were losing ground every day. The English directed all their efforts against Canada, and seemed to have lost sight of Acadia in the turmoil and fury of ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... ten minutes of the two hours left when the mother-subs broke water and started crawling inland, swiftly, surely, without faltering in the slightest as they changed their element ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... support or oppress their infancy and weakness; and the dying emperor demanded the head of the Persian prince. With savage delight he recognized the familiar features of his brother: "Thou art no longer Theophobus," he said; and, sinking on his couch, he added, with a faltering voice, "Soon, too soon, I shall ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... our calling everything about us by home names, I yet shrunk from giving the name of our beloved home to the hut in which we now seemed doomed to pass our days. Several times I attempted to begin upon the subject, but it was too painful and I dared not trust my voice, lest its faltering should show my companions that this Christmas-day was not one of unmixed pleasure, and I was the more anxious to restrain my feelings as I could easily perceive that a little was only wanting to turn our day of feasting into one of mourning. It was not, therefore, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... a sense of solemn responsibility, was at great cost bringing all her influence to bear upon the young girl whom her son loved. She drearily said to herself, after many days, that her influence was weak, that it accomplished nothing. The strength of it pushed Susannah, who stood faltering at the parting of the ways, and the impetus of that push was felt in her rapid and unsteady step for many and many ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... little wife and more than half a dozen children. The frail little woman carried a large basket filled with eatables. The basket was more than a load and the little woman struggled to keep near her muscular husband. Glancing back and noticing the wife faltering, he relieved her of the basket and started forward at ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... ended three years after the new company was launched. There was a momentary faltering of the economy, and then the work of reconstruction was crying hungrily for all the labor and capital that had been idled by the end of destruction, and more. There was a new flood-tide of prosperity, and Evri-Flave rode the ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... so narrow and there were so many people about that he had to follow pretty closely in order to avoid losing her. He noted with some surprise that she walked straight ahead, as though with studied purpose, never faltering and never so much as glancing to the right ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
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