|
|
|
More "Foothold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Prussian sergeant-majors we shall want! Donnerwetter! Do you think we Germans will long be satisfied with this miserable section of East Africa that was all the English left to us on this coast? We use this for a foothold, that is all! We use this to gain time and get ready! You think perhaps I do not know, eh? I am only feldwebel—non-commissioned officer, you call it. Well and good. I tell you our officers talk all the time of nothing else! And they don't care who ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... passed since then; the strong Greek knew every corner of the house of the Agnus Dei, and every foothold under Arisa's windows, from the water to the stone sill, by which he could help himself a little as he went up hand over hand by the knotted silk rope that would have cut to the bone any hands but his. She kept it hidden in a cushioned ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... the home of Mrs. Brent and Jonas, who, under false representations, have gained a foothold in the home of ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... anything, the flood poured down savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water, and look at it. When I saw how much of it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Drexel, seized by inspiration or desperation, with a quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and, looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers, ran along the sand and dropped the skirt for a foothold for the slowly revolving wheels. Almost, but not quite, did the car stop, then, gathering way, with the others running alongside and shoving, it ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who desired to obtain half the state of Lombardy by his intervention. I will not blame the course taken by the king, because, wishing to get a foothold in Italy, and having no friends there—seeing rather that every door was shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles—he was forced to accept those friendships which he could get, and he would have succeeded very quickly ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... two weeks now. His real work, his essential labor in that untilled field, was no farther advanced. He made about the same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook. In so far as Lone Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage. He had the intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to any message he could deliver. His power to deliver a message was vitiated by this utter absence ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Eleanor and then urged Noddy along the foothold cleft from the cliff. Above, the rock-wall rose to the mountain-top; beneath, Polly could not gauge the depth—it was too dreadful and was now blurred by ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... and like a squirrel he sped up the great beech, its every foothold as familiar to him as the ground ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... wrapped his heliographing apparatus. Knotting the lengths together, he had fastened one end round a horn of shattered adobe, and tied the other in a slip-noose under his arms. Now, he was thankful for this precaution. Instead of picking his way, from foothold to foothold, at the sound of the cry he lowered himself rapidly, like a man who goes down a well on the chain of a bucket, and dropped on a pile of bricks which blocked the corkscrew steps. In a second he was free of the stretched ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... upon Albert de Luynes. "He was a mediocre and timid creature," he said, "faithless, ungenerous, too weak to remain steady against the assault of so great a fortune as that which ruined him incontinently; allowing himself to be borne away by it as by a torrent, without any foothold, unable to set bounds to his ambition, incapable of arresting it, and not knowing what he was about, like a man on the top of a tower, whose head goes round and who has no longer any power of discernment. He would fain have been ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dispiriting landscape—nothing but white and gray, No shadows—merely half-obliterated forms melting into the fog and slush. Everything is in a state of disintegration, and one's foothold gives way at every step. It is hard work for the poor snow-shoer who stamps along through the slush and fog after bear-tracks that wind in and out among the hummocks, or over them. The snow-shoes sink deep in, and the water often reaches up to the ankles, so that it is hard work ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... burning eyes. She tried to force herself not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for. They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. There had been hours too many in which she would have been glad—even ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... one hand, slipped over the high bow of the boat and struck out for shore. He was a strong swimmer, and managed to change the course of the boat so that it swung in toward the shallow water, and in a few minutes Amos got a foothold on the sand, and pulled strongly on the rope until the boat was well out of the outward sweep ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... waves, and as the spray dashed in his face he recalled with a smile how he had attempted to write the tempest music for the actor-manager Kurz. A long interval separated him from those days of keen want and fierce struggle, when he strove, almost against hope, to establish a foothold for himself in the music-loving city of Vienna! Now he was travelling to a greater city, not as an unknown, struggling student, but with the assurance of a welcome befitting one whom fame had already claimed ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... on the mizzen-top yard of the Hermione that night, determined to escape the threatened flogging. They made a desperate spring to get over their comrades crowding into the ratlines, missed their foothold, fell on the quarter-deck beside their furious captain, and were instantly killed. The captain's epitaph on the unfortunate sailors ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... he thought, "like the Chinese were at the bottom of the trouble. I guess China would like to get a foothold here!" ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... just steadied my foothold on the uneven ground behind the tree, when the stillness of the twilight hour was suddenly broken by the ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... Bismarck, the details of which are not fully known. Nothing, however, came of it at the time, owing to Bismarck's preoccupation in European affairs. Early in the "eighties," the German colonial party, then beginning its campaign, called attention repeatedly to the advantages of gaining a foothold in or near Delagoa Bay; but the rise of colonial feeling in Germany led to a similar development in the public sentiment of Portugal, and indeed of all lands; so that, by the time that Bismarck was won over to the cause of Teutonic Expansion, the Portuguese ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... disembarkation at Daiquiri and Siboney. It was almost immediately attacked by a superior force of Spanish regulars, and was so harassed, night and day, by the fire of the latter that some of its officers slept only two hours out of one hundred and fifteen. As soon as it had obtained a foothold it went into camp on a slight elevation in the midst of an almost impenetrable jungle, surrounded itself with defensive trenches, and there lived, for a period of ten weeks, exposed to the same sun, rain, and malaria that played havoc with the troops of General Shafter. On the sixth day of ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... gallant Englishmen, overpowered by numbers, had been put to shameful deaths. One by one our strongholds had been surprised and captured; and, carrying all before them, the traitors bade fair to leave England not so much as a foothold in India. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... glistening ledge and dropped his height to a broad foothold. "It's a' vera guid," he grinned up; "but dinna ye think a've suffeecient discreemeenation to judge for mysel'? Why should I no sing my ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... that I thought you were jesting. [He gets up and speaks confidentially and half-humorously.] Now, you don't mean to say you're really capable of undermining the ground here where a friend of yours has been fortunate enough to get a firm foothold? ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... proposed by some, while one proposes to glaze the bottoms so that barnacles and grass would find a slippery foothold. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... youth and unfair competition, I kept steadily at work increasing the strength of my position where it was already established, and striving to the utmost to get a foothold where I had not yet ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... comrades. But the Algonquins, running through the woods, reached the landing before them, and, as one of them rose to fire, they shot him. In his fall he overset the canoe. The water was shallow, and the submerged warriors, presently finding foothold, waded towards the shore, and made desperate fight. The Algonquins had the advantage of position, and used it so well, that they killed all but three of their enemies, and captured two of the survivors. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... down on one of the stone benches and fell into a deep study. There was the bell but where was the mysterious ringer? The bell rope had long ago rotted away. The walls had once been plastered and were still too smooth to offer a foothold to the most expert climber. How then to account for the regular nightly tolling? The mystery had in reality ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... appear a matter of the most difficulty. It would seem necessary and requisite for the [preservation of the] Japanese trade to transport some or the greater part of those people [of Macao] to the province of Nueva Segovia, or to the island of Hermosa, getting a foothold there whence we might better continue and carry on the navigation from China to that place and from there to Xapon, and not from here; for silks are already as high in this city as in Nangasaqui, on account of the danger from enemies which the Chinese risk in coming here. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... movement of hers might distract his attention and so add illimitably to his danger, she forced herself by an almost superhuman effort to remain where she was. Motionless, with straining eyes, she watched while he slowly edged himself up. That his foothold was precarious was evident from the careful precision of his movements, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... to keep a foothold in the country, had to seek markets for their stock over the sea. The first to export cattle was James McFarlane of Heyfield. He chartered the schooner 'Waterwitch' for 100 pounds a month for six ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... from some imaginary bonds, and, dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door. Col. Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady foothold, and rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last he succumbed ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... substantial to go to pieces of her own account. The nearest island was little more than a barren rock. A few birds wheeled about over it, or sat perched upon its rugged points, but with that exception I doubt if it furnished a foothold for a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... came bounding and thundering down, ploughing its way through the centre of their host. The foot-soldiers, faint with weariness and hunger or crippled by wounds, held by the tails and manes of the horses to aid them in their ascent, while the horses, losing their foothold among the loose stones or receiving some sudden wound, tumbled down the steep declivity, steed, rider, and soldier rolling from crag to crag until they were dashed to pieces in the valley. In this desperate struggle the alferez or standard-bearer of the master, with ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... for science a foothold in the workshop, to assist with the light of reasoned theory the progress of arts and industry, till then fettered by many a prejudice and hindered through lack of knowledge; on the other hand, they ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... India is still free from British authority; and there are certain ferocious rajahs in the interior who are absolutely independent. The celebrated East India Company was all-powerful from 1756, when the English first gained a foothold on the spot where now stands the city of Madras, down to the time of the great Sepoy insurrection. It gradually annexed province after province, purchasing them of the native chiefs, whom it seldom paid, and appointed the governor-general and his subordinates, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... discovery that he had been mistaken in Corbario that most directly helped him to regain his foothold in life and his free will. There was more in the Spartan method than we are always ready to admit, for it is easier to disgust most men by the sight of human degradation than to strengthen them against temptation by preaching, or by the lessons of example which are so very ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... it was almost impossible to land. They had arrived at the Rocky Mountain Portage, as it was afterwards called. It was clear that the current could not be stemmed by pole or paddle; the canoe must be towed or carried. When Mackenzie tried to get foothold or handhold on the shore, huge boulders and land-slides of loose earth slithered down, threatening to smash canoe and canoemen. Mackenzie got out a tow-line eighty feet long. This he tied to the port thwart of the ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... the water, to see that it was nearly a foot higher, and then I joined the doctor in searching the rock with my eyes for a place where we might find foothold and clamber beyond the reach of the rushing torrent; but no, there seemed no spot where even a bird could climb, and in despair I too began to strip off some ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... from rock to rock with the greatest ease and rapidity. Even Cato and Ferdinand, barefooted as they were, seemed to be a long way from enjoying themselves, and for us wretched Europeans, with our thick boots, that obtained scarcely any foothold, we slipped about from the rounded shoulders of the rocks, in a way that ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... toward its old assurance, but there was wonder in it, as though he was incredulous of this foothold he had stumbled upon. He repeated, "That kid was ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... existed in Christ's time, all the more service is waiting for that man for whom life has no ambitions, death no terrors. I thank God I am in a great measure dead to these things.... I will fulfil my promise to look after Glory. My constant prayer is against Agag. It is so easy for him to get a foothold in a girl's heart here. This great new world, with its fashions, its gaieties, its beauty, and its brightness—no wonder if a beautiful young girl, tingling with life and ruddy health, should burn with impatience to fling herself into the arms of it. Agag is in London, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... afforded no notch or foothold for a Bushman's naked foot. They rose nine or ten feet above the willow, so that the total height of the palisade was about twelve feet, and the tops of the stakes were sharpened. The construction of such palisades ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... expected, Puss on saying good-bye tried to appear as though something along the order of gratitude might be striving to gain a foothold ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... CHEVALIER, I have not yet decided. The admirable Cameronian tract - perhaps you will think this a cheat - is to be boned into DAVID BALFOUR, where it will fit better, and really furnishes me with a desired foothold over ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the base of the cliffs seemed to conceal no opening. I crept cautiously along the cliff-top, as near to the edge as I dared, till I was some twenty feet from the spot where I had heard the voice. Then I looked down again carefully, searching every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get down, there seemed ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... religious rule of Queen Mary we might suppose that ecclesiastical embroidery would have somewhat regained a foothold. But the landmarks had been entirely swept away, and we have little to record of the reign, except that Mary herself was a clever needlewoman and worked much of her heartache, at the neglect of her Spanish ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... cut off New England from the other colonies and overcome a divided enemy. To foil this policy Washington planned to hold New York and to capture Canada. With Canada in line the union of the colonies would be indeed continental, and, if the British were driven from Boston, they would have no secure foothold in North America. ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... covered with smooth coarse grass that gave the horses very little foothold. Trembling and snorting, the animals just managed to support the weight of the gun, while, straining forwards and pawing the ground, they tried to get a firmer footing. The gunners had got down, and grasping the spokes of the wheels did ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... of Le Mesnil: It was to the north of Le Mesnil that the French encountered the greatest German resistance. In the course of the engagements of the preceding winter the French had succeeded in securing a foothold on top of the hill numbered 196. The Germans remained a little to the east, in the "Ravin des Cuisines" (Ravine of the Kitchens). This the French now took by assault, but could get no farther. The German trenches, constructed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... cool heads to keep the trail of cattle moving into the water and the passageway clear on the opposite landing. While they were crossing, the herd represented a large letter "U," caused by the force of the current drifting the cattle downstream, or until a foothold was secured on the farther side. Those of us fortunate enough to have good swimming horses swam the river a dozen times, and then after the herd was safely over, swam back to get our clothing. It was a thrilling experience to ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... accompanied by strong wind. This terrible precipice takes one entirely by surprise. Kaluna, who rode first, disappeared so suddenly that I thought he had gone over. It is merely a dangerous broken ledge, and besides that it looks as if there were only foothold for a goat, one is dizzied by the sight of the foaming ocean immediately below, and, when we actually reached the bottom, there was only a narrow strip of shingle between the stupendous cliff and the resounding ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... ground of the Exhibition is a huge arena. It is faced by a mighty grandstand, seating ten thousand people. Ten thousand people were sitting: the imagination boggles at the computation of the number of those standing; they filled every foothold and clung to every step and projection. There were some—men in khaki, of course—who were risking their necks high up on the iron roof ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... Allison caught his breath with a start and dug his thumb-nail into the palm of his hand to make sure he was awake. For the illusion of a moment ago was not an illusion at all; she was a flesh and blood girl; she had left her shadowy foothold in the far end of the car and was coming down the aisle toward him. Spellbound, he waited as she approached, slim as a fawn, erect as an arrow, moving as lightly as the ripples that danced upon the surface of the river along ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... however, that the flower does possess some "secret virtue," for if the plant be immersed in glycerine the preservative takes the hue of the flower. Nature having ordained that the plants should be elusive, they appear in remote spots and unlikely situations with foothold among loose and gritty fragments of rock, and with cessation of the sustaining rains disappear, each having borne but a single leaf and produced but a solitary flower. The leaf does not seem to be attractive to insects, nor is the flower ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... civilisation with, or if he had been the kind of Abraham that expected that angels would come hurrying and scurrying after one in a spectacle like this. "What has a man," says Blank in his Angels of the Nineteenth Century,—"What has a man who consents to be a knee-bumping, elbow-jamming, foothold-struggling strap-hanger—an abject commuter all his days (for no better reason than that he is not well enough to keep still and that there is not enough of him to be alone)—to do with angels—or to ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Dewey did not make any promises he could not fulfill to Aguinaldo; did not assume to speak for the President or the army of the United States, but gave guns and ammunition to the insurgents, who aided him in maintaining a foothold on the shore. The insurgents did not win Dewey's victory, but aided to improve it. Without the aid of the American army Manila might have been destroyed, but could not have been captured intact. General Merritt settled the question of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... has not as yet invaded the village, but it is rapidly gaining a foothold in the smaller cities and village merchants may as well prepare for its competition, for there seems no good reason why its greater buying power and superior organization should not enable it to undersell the local merchant if the customer is willing ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... study of alcoholism, after two years' work, said: "The claim that alcohol is a food in any proper sense of the term is not sufficiently proved." In the St. Paul convention spoken of, politics obtained a foothold, and some weak resolutions in favor of the army canteen were adopted but not even the champions of the canteen were willing to subscribe to the statement that alcohol is ever a ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... again the dismal groans and wailing, but much louder than before, and coming to the door, saw it opened on a steep declivity of rock wherein were rough steps or rather notches that yet gave good foothold; so I began to descend this narrow way, my candle before me, and taking vast heed to my feet, but as I got lower the rock grew moist and slimy so that I was half-minded to turn back; but having come this far, determined to see where it might bring me, for now, from ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the very edge of the hill which here fell almost sheer to the level of the lake, and the old McConachans had no doubt chosen their site for its unscalable position. Indeed, the place must always have been impregnable from that side, the rock offering no foothold to a goat till within twenty feet of the base of the tower, where the surface was broken and uneven, and had, in places, been built up with solid masonry. In the crevices up there, seeds had germinated and grown to tall plants and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... we should ever stop again. But the ropes which we threw over the angles of the rocks, or salient points of ice, letting ourselves down by their help and drawing them after us when we reached the next foothold, saved us from disaster. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Doctor," Professor Maxon had said. "It will be but a matter of a day or so when I can introduce him to Virginia, but we must be careful that she has no inkling of his origin until mutual affection has gained a sure foothold between them." ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the great forest which was two or three miles away on our right; in all other directions the view was bounded by ranges, some grassed to their tops, others with forests climbing up their steep sides, excepting where white cliffs gave no foothold for the trees. We passed several grass-thatched huts inhabited by half-clad Indians or Mestizos, who generally possess a few cows, and, away on the edge of the forest, small clearings of maize. These ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... cities that may continue after him. The route to India has not yet been located. The fields of gold and silver have not been discovered. The lilies of France have not been planted over there," nodding his head. "We must go before the Spaniard gets a foothold. Yet there are delights I must confess that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... stick, then turned and swam toward the other shore. Here, so precipitous were the banks, he could not get a foothold. He turned once more and struck out diagonally across the pond. Swygert met him ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... of the country passed over, trusting themselves without apparent concern to walk at that tremendous height along the rough surface of the primitive bridge, which afforded so uncertain and precarious a foothold. The captain, having the nerves and nimbleness of a sailor, followed them fearlessly and safely. But for the Caliph the adventure was extremely perilous. However, seeing the others cross, with his wonted intrepidity and hardihood he ventured to follow them. ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... he grasped his own pole, and sprang from tussock to tussock, till he had reached the bank of the ditch or water- course in which the unfortunate sportsman was floundering. He was a large, powerful man, but this was of no avail, for the slough afforded no foothold. The further side was a steep bank built up of sods, the nearer sloped down gradually, and though it was not apparently very deep, the efforts of the victim to struggle out had done nothing but churn up a mass of black muddy water in which he ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... studies for the bar. Scott was an excellent friend to him at that time; and so strong and prophetic was Wilson's admiration of his patron, that he publicly gave him the name of "The Great Magician" before the first "Waverley Novel" was published. Within ten years from his getting a foothold on Windermere banks, he had raised periodical literature to a height unknown before in our time, by his contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine"; and he seemed to step naturally into the Moral Philosophy Chair in Edinburgh in 1820. Christopher North has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... and even reached the territories, its chief strength always remained in New England and the Middle States. During the last period of its existence a national organ was published at Washington, but the Order does not appear to have gained a foothold in any of the more ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... seeking expression through the printed page, and yearning to behold their thoughts and ideals permanently crystallized in the magic medium of type. But while a few persons of exceptional talent manage eventually to gain a foothold in the professional world of letters rising to celebrity through the wide diffusion of their art, ideals, or opinions; the vast majority, unless aided in their education by certain especial advantages, are doomed to confine their expression to the necessarily restricted ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... history of the fighting monks would be tedious. They have had a foothold for many centuries and even to the present time, in every province except that of Satsuma. There, because they treacherously aided the great Hideyoshi to subdue the province, the fiery clansmen, never during Tokugawa days, permitted ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... ports, inspects all ships that enter American harbors, and holds them in quarantine until they and their passengers are given a clean bill of health. Cholera and other dangerous diseases have thus been prevented from gaining a foothold on American soil. ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... the eye of the American shall behold it, may he have reason to bless it! On whatsoever spot it is planted, there may freedom have a foothold, humanity a brave champion, and religion an altar. Though stained with blood in a righteous cause, may it never, in any cause, be stained ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... things, while the younger blood demanded the necessary changes to keep abreast of the times. At one time it did look as though the conservatives would succeed; but gradually one industry after another got a foothold. Then the panic of 1872 demonstrated that a man who has money must invest it where he can watch it, instead of trusting to luck in some wild-cat railroad scheme out West. By the concentration and investment at home of some of the money saved from the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... and movement began; Chris had to look to his foothold, and when he raised his head again a solemn low roar was rising up and swelling, of pity and excitement, for, silhouetted against the sunlit Tower behind, stood the man for whose sake all ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... the hands of one of the natives. Snatching up this weapon, I rushed to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. It was almost a sheer precipice, broken only by narrow shelves and clefts, on some of which grass grew, while on others a slight mountain-ash or a young birch just managed to find foothold. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... were any other road," answered Hake, smiling, "but truly I know of none. The canoes are light, and might be carried by land to the still water above the rapids, but, as you see, the banks here are sheer up and down without foothold for a crow, and if we try to go round by the woods on either side, we shall have a march of ten miles through such a country that the canoes will be torn to pieces before ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... foundations due mainly to individual liberality, set down at the risk of omitting others with equal claim for mention. Not all of these are to be referred to a religious spirit in the founders, but none of them can fail of a Christian influence and result. They prepare a foothold for such a forward stride of Christian civilization as our continent has ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... discovery of the passage to the East Indies around the Cape of Good Hope, by De Gama, who landed on the Malabar Coast in 1498, the Portuguese continued to navigate these seas, and were allowed by the Chinese a shelter on this point. In the year 1550, having obtained a foothold, by degrees they built themselves stone houses and forts, and commenced ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... clear in the matter of the presidency of Magdalen College. One of the steps in James's plan to change the religion of England was to get a foothold for teachers of his faith at the universities. He intended to capture Oxford and Cambridge. He had so far succeeded at Oxford as to get possession of Christ Church and University College, and, the presidency of Magdalen falling vacant, he ordered the fellows ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... wayfaring. In dealing with the ignoble wrangle with old Pheres the critic is hard set; but Balaustion, speaking as interpreter for Browning, explains that for a little the king lapses back from the firmer foothold which he had attained. Perhaps it would have been wiser to admit that Euripides has marred his own work by this grim tragic-comic encounter of crabbed age and youth. But it is true that one who has much to give, like Alkestis, gives freely; and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... means by which they could mount to the decks of the Boldero, but none was visible. It was like trying to scale a fifty-foot smooth steel wall. There was no place for a foothold. Again the sailor made some peculiar motions, and the lad puzzled over them. They had gone nearly around the wreck now, and as yet had seen no way in which to get at the gold. As they passed around the bow, which was in a deep shadow ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... were buried, and it seemed an open question whether she would ever come up or not. It was at this time that Tip O'Neill, a daring young buck of Freekirk Head, performed the highly dangerous feat of walking from her main to her forerigging along the weather run, which fact shows there was foothold on her uppermost side for a man crazy ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... a foothold it has steadily advanced in the esteem of those charged with public administrative duties, while the people who desire good government have constantly been confirmed in their high estimate of its value ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... think they will not!" Mrs. Salisbury agreed with a short laugh, "inasmuch as they CANNOT, if they ever hope to get any foothold ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... safe climbing is to maintain always three points of suspension: that it to say, one should keep either both footholds and one handhold, or both handholds and one foothold. Failing that, one is taking long chances. With this firmly in mind, I spidered out across the wall, testing every projection and cranny before I trusted any weight to it. One apparently solid projection ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... way, up the winding staircase of the turret. The high, dark silhouette of Manette headed the procession; then followed the justice, carefully choosing his foothold on the well-worn stairs, the asthmatic old bailiff, breathing short and hard, the notary, beating his foot impatiently every time that Seurrot stopped to take breath, and finally the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... crown." It was the last relic of the French possessions of the Plantagenets. It was the Gibraltar of the sixteenth century. It helped to make of the narrow seas an English channel. It was a mart for English goods. It afforded a foothold for Continental enterprises. To some extent it linked England with her traditional allies, the old Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands. By us, looking back over the chequered story of the last ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Torode slipped deftly out of the saddle. He still held the reins and endeavoured to drag the poor beast up. But Black Boy's heels were kicking frantically, now on thin air, now for a second against an impossible slope of rock which offered no foothold. For a moment he hung by his forelegs curved in rigid agony, his nostrils wide and red, his eyes full of frantic appeal, his ears flat to his head, his poor face pitiful in its desperation. Torode shouted to him, dragged at the ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... may now and then stir up a Melius or a Manlius, which, if the Commonwealth be not provided with some kind of dictatorian power, may be dangerous, though it has been seldom or never successful; because to property producing empire, it is required that it should have some certain root or foothold, which, except in land, it cannot have, being otherwise as it were upon ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... outpost of Rome. While Carthage had been advancing from the south Rome had been pressing forward from the east along the shores of the Mediterranean, and had planted herself firmly at Marseilles, a port which gave her a foothold in Gaul, and formed a base whence she could act in Spain. In order to check the rising power of the Carthaginians there she had entered into a firm alliance with the Saguntines, whose country occupied ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... monarch, made up of a lot of unintelligible or preposterous 'attributes'; but, so long as it held strongly by the argument from design, it kept some touch with concrete realities. Since, however, darwinism has once for all displaced design from the minds of the 'scientific,' theism has lost that foothold; and some kind of an immanent or pantheistic deity working IN things rather than above them is, if any, the kind recommended to our contemporary imagination. Aspirants to a philosophic religion turn, as a rule, more hopefully nowadays towards idealistic pantheism than towards ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... of her sisters' room, did she? For nothing is so much prized by most girls as a room of their very own, and a middle daughter, particularly such a middle daughter as Grace Wainwright, has a claim to a foothold—a wee bit place, as the Scotch say—where she can shut herself in, and read her Bible, and say her prayers, and write her letters, and dream her dreams, with nobody by to see. Mrs. Wainwright had been a good deal disturbed ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... the right to appear at once at the Theatre Francais,—a right rarely claimed, as most young actors prefer to go through a novitiate elsewhere to braving the most critical audience in the world before they have acquired the confidence that comes only with habit and success. After he has gained a foothold at this classic theatre, an actor still sees prizes held out to stimulate his ambition. If he keeps the promise of his youth, he may hope to be chosen a stockholder (societaire), and thus obtain a share both in the direction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... States the movement has not found a firm foothold because there has been no dominant, enslaving tradition to protest against. Not a few of the ideas, not a little of the spirit of the movement may be recognized in the work of individual architects and decorative artists in the United States, executed years before the movement took recognizable ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... was space and foothold, people swarmed, little people, small and minutely clear, except where the sunset touched them to indistinguishable gold. They clambered up the tottering walls, they clung in wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. They swarmed along the edges of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... languages was much more likely to be regarded as mere pedantry. In both these countries, though, Latin was still the language of the Church, of the universities, of all learned writing, and the means of international intercourse, and after the new humanism had once obtained a foothold it was welcomed by scholars as a great addition to existing knowledge. Erasmus, the foremost scholar of his day, not only labored hard to introduce the new learning in the schools, but welcomed the restored Roman tongue ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... certainly aroused attention had anyone been at hand, I succeeded in fixing one of the iron hooks attached to the rope to the ledge of the window. Then, after a strain to test the rope, I let myself swing across the chasm, and found foothold on the opposite ledge. Once there matters were easy, and in a trice I ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... important to England and France as it is to us. It is hardly to be doubted that they will postpone all international questions, and secure what has never before been offered to them—a controlling foothold here. How many times I have spoken to you in the old Executive Chamber of the importance to the whole world of the possession of Mexico—and of the power it would infallibly give to this continent, as in Europe ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... almost perpendicular stream of lava and stone, which forms the only practicable route to the top. Our poor beasts were only able to go a few paces at a time without stopping to regain their breath. The loose ashes and lava fortunately gave them a good foothold, or it would have been quite impossible for them to get along at all. One was only encouraged to proceed by the sight of one's friends above, looking like flies clinging to the face of a wall. The road, if such it can be called, ran in zigzags, each of which was about the length of two ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... agriculture most in the northern part of the deciduous forest was the grass. Any one who has cultivated a garden knows how rapidly the weeds grow. He also knows that there is no weed so hard to exterminate as grass. When once it gets a foothold mere hoeing seems only to make it grow the faster. The only way to get rid of grass when once it has become well established is to plow the field and start over again, but this the Indians could not do. When first a clearing was made ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... lukewarm, and self-interest so strong. A further consideration is, that serious harm to the conversion of those people may result from delay; for those people are very indifferent, and the accursed sect of Mahoma is gaining a foothold among them. This sect is spreading throughout this archipelago like a pest, and once established, as it is so contagious, it will be, in order to eradicate it, more difficult to convert ten Moros than to reduce a thousand ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... preparation necessary properly to repel them. With such experience on our part, after two years of constant efforts to invade our territories successfully met and more than merely repelled, it would be evidence of gross inefficiency and weakness in us, to permit the enemy to gain even a temporary foothold in any one of the loyal States, or even to attempt it, without the complete overthrow and destruction of the invading force. Our manifest policy is to attack them in their own country, and to hold them there, until ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have scaled the side of the steamer in that weather. Her ladder was in place, but nothing much except an exaggerated icicle. But it was on the lee side of her, and his dory was fairly well protected from the rush of the seas. With his hatchet he hacked foothold on the ladder, left his men in the dory, and notched his perilous way to the deck. The fore-hatch was open, just as the hastily departing salvagers had left it. He went below, down the frosted iron ladder. He was fronted with a cheerless aspect. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... some token, which he, it seemed, could better appreciate than any one beside the parties concerned. When some such glimpse was obtained, some such token received, Bondo Emmins would retire within himself to a most gloomy seclusion; there was a world which had been conquered, and therein he had no foothold. If Clarice wore the pearl in her bosom, on Luke's head was a crown, and Bondo Emmins ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... now grated on the rocky bottom. Grant, who had been following the same course now obtained a precarious foothold and at once advanced to the aid of the helpless girl. He was still breathing heavily from his own exertions and his strength had not fully returned. Stumbling, slipping on the rocks, twice nearly falling into the river he managed to draw the girl up ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... of the germs. Probably the decrease in the number of cases of consumption in the last quarter of a century has been due quite as much to the improved sanitary conditions of living, whereby the germs have been unable to secure a foothold in the individual, as to any precautionary measures taken ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... intelligence than force of character, who have missed their first steps in life and are stumbling irresolute amidst vague aims and changing purposes, hold out their hands, imploring to be led into, or at least pointed towards, some path where they can find a firm foothold. Young women born into a chilling atmosphere of circumstance which keeps all the buds of their nature unopened and always striving to get to a ray of sunshine, if one finds its way to their neighborhood, tell ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... way down the lagoon, and a rustle told Norah that they were near one of the reedy islands dotted here and there in the shallows. There was very little foothold on them, but they made excellent nesting places for the ducks that came to the station each year. The boat grounded its nose in the soft mud, and Norah jumped up to push it off. Planting the blade of the oar among the reeds, she leant her weight upon ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... property, the unfortunate victims of a shipwreck struggling to reach the shore? The very idea of such cruelty sickens the imagination. The proprietor, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, wards off with pike and musket the proletaire washed overboard by the wave of civilization, and seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. "Give me work!" cries he with all his might to the proprietor: "don't drive me away, I will work for you at any price." "I do not need your services," replies the proprietor, showing the end of his pike ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... element of evil in this Turner person. Which in his case the trouble swings an' rattles on the way he's built. His crownin' deefect, mighty likely, is that he's got one of them sidehill minds, an' what idees he does evolve can't find no foothold, but is robbed at the start of everything reesemblin' perm'nancy. I watches his comin's in an' goin's out for months on eend, an' I'm yere to say—at the same time ascribin' to him no ill intentions—that ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was in confusion, but one thing shone clear through the confusion, and it was the iniquity of the Khedive. It gave her a foothold. She was deeply grateful for it. She could not have moved without it. So shameful was the Khedive in her eyes that the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Highland landlords might also read with advantage the exquisitely pathetic lines in which the poet pictures the desolation and ruin of the rural paradise, and perhaps conclude therefrom that, when glen and strath are depleted of their inhabitants, and these latter driven over the seas to seek a foothold in strange lands, it is the very heart's blood of Britain that is ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... could walk up it without often using his hands, and a man could go down it slowly without any direct fall, though here and there he would have to turn round at each dip or step and hold with his hands and feel a little for his foothold. I suppose the general slope, down, down, to where the green began was not sixty degrees, but have you ever tried looking down five thousand feet at sixty degrees? It drags the mind after it, and I could not bear ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... accompanying a lady anywhere at night, whether down the steps of a house, or from one building to another, or when walking a distance, a gentleman always offers his arm. The reason is that in her thin high-heeled slippers, and when it is too dark to see her foothold clearly, she is ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... grew more difficult. They had been following a ledge that narrowed till it ran out. Jutting knobs of feldspar and stunted shrubs growing from crevices offered toe-grips instead of the even foothold of the rock shelf. As Gordon looked down at the dizzy fall beneath them his judgment told him they had better go back. He said as much to ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... ford was about a foot deep, and even then the rapid incline of the ground sent the shallow water swirling along at such a pace that it made a horse's foothold on the sliding pebbles precarious. Now it was four feet deep at least, and to cross at present was as impossible as it had been half an hour before. But as I watched it became more and more evident that the stream had received its last impetus, and the very element ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... in command, followed by his men, sprang at the boarding nettings, and began hacking and slashing at them with their cutlasses, only to be thrust back, dead or dying, by our valiant crew, and the now blood-maddened natives. Nine or ten of them did succeed in gaining a foothold on the deck, by clambering up the bobstay on to the bowsprit, and led by a mere boy of sixteen, made a determined charge; a native armed with a club sprang at the youth and dashed out his brains, though at the same moment a Frenchman ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke
... ceremony of the slaughter, is open to the heavens, and is surrounded by a cloister lined with cell-like niches for solitary meditation and introspection. On the terrace, on every protruding bit of architecture, on every window ledge—wherever foothold may be gained—are monkeys, loathsomely fat, and made more disgusting from years of pampering than are the human freaks on the pavement. Great tamarind trees overhanging the temple are alive with monkeys. They drop to the ground, run between your legs, and dash before ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... with the period of infancy. The child is left pretty much to shift for itself as to regularity of eating and the evacuation of the contents of its bowels, wherein disease has already obtained a foothold. All kinds of foodstuffs, at all hours, with seeds, stones, etc., are poked into its stomach, followed by constipating remedies to quiet inevitable troubles, or brisk purgatives given with the hope of expelling the arrested contents of the bowels. Is it any wonder that ninety-eight persons ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... little guard. Cawker poked a head from a window and looked anxiously toward the gaping mouth of the ravine. The darkness of night was already settling in its gloomy depths. The homely shed looked black and forbidding. Aloft on each side were precipitous slopes affording but slight foothold. Little likelihood was there of rioters sliding down to attack them, but, suppose they pried loose, or blasted out, some of those huge rocks up the mountain and sent them rolling, bounding, crashing down? What ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... in his expression of good-will toward Italy. If we are to believe Crispi, the Chancellor was ready then to draw up a treaty with her, and went so far as to hint that he approved of Italy's aspirations. Among these were the possession of Tunis and a foothold on the east coast of the Adriatic. The next year, at the Berlin Congress, however, Italy's interests were ignored, and, instead, Austria was encouraged to extend her dominion south of the Balkans, and the French were at least not discouraged from ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... against them. I have seen men appear with their families, ten dollars in their pockets, or only five after the filing fee on the land was paid. I have seen them sleep on the prairie, get odd jobs here and there until they could throw up a shelter out of scrap lumber, and slowly get a foothold, often becoming substantial citizens of a ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... her seat, using the hub of her wheel for a foothold, and springing with surprising agility ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... favor of fortune, push a dog into the Hydraulic, or get him to jump in after a stick; and then have the excitement of following him from one culvert to another, till he found a foothold and scrambled out. Once my boy saw a chicken cock sailing serenely down the currant; he was told that he had been given brandy, and that brandy would enable a chicken to swim; but probably this was not true. Another time, a tremendous time, a boy was standing ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... the charter of 1670 was legally unassailable, the earl was now ready for his subsequent line of action. He had resolved to get a foothold in the company itself. To effect this object he brought his own capital into play, and sought at the same time the aid of his wife's relatives, the Wedderburn-Colviles, and of other personal friends. Shares in the company had depreciated in value, and the owners, in many {31} cases, were jubilant ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... Pa could send her a few hundreds, if she could get the children into Lydia's hands, in the old house in the sunken garden, if Teddy and Margar could grow up in the beloved fogs and sunshine, the soft climate of home, then how bravely she could work, how hopefully she could struggle to get a foothold in the world for them! She wrote simply, lovingly, penitently, to her father—She was convalescent after serious illness; there were two small children; her husband was out of work; could he forgive her and help her? In the cold, darkening days, she went about fed with a secret ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... indemnity for a war that began with the loss of 266 American sailors on the Maine, and had cost your Treasury during the year over $240,000,000? Would you have had them throw away a magnificent foothold for the trade of the farther East, which the fortune of war had placed in your hand, throw away a whole archipelago of boundless possibilities, economic and strategic, throw away the opportunity of centuries for your country? Would you ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... "the whole team were sinking—two by two we lost sight of them, each pair struggling for foothold. Osman the leader exerted all his strength and kept a foothold—it was wonderful to see him. The sledge stopped and we leapt aside. The situation was clear in another moment. We had been actually travelling along the bridge [or snow covering] of a crevasse, the sledge had stopped ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... long time, fearing that someone else might come and take his place. Coffee from the saucer, a good-sized sandwich with the carpenter: nothing wily or unnatural about that; this sheltered corner seemed to her like a tiny foothold in life. ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... broken Jets aside, that stream of Dogs came pouring down the path, in single file perforce, and Duskymane received them as they came. A feeble spring, a counter-lunge, a gash, and "Fango's down," has lost his foothold and is gone. Dander and Coalie close and try to clinch; a rush, a heave, and they are fallen from that narrow path. Blue-spot then, backed by mighty Oscar and fearless Tige—but the Wolf is next the rock and the flash of combat clears to show him there alone, the big Dogs gone; ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... tangible expression to the growth of the new movement in 1874; and four years later, with the opening of his laboratory of physiological psychology at the University of Leipzig, the new psychology may be said to have gained a permanent foothold and to have forced itself into official recognition. From then on its conquest of the world was but a matter ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and the Carolinas were mostly English of the better class, who had been landed proprietors with considerable retinues of servants. As soon as these original colonists secured a firm foothold, large estates were developed on which the manners and customs of old England were followed as closely as possible. Each plantation became a self-supporting community, since nearly all the actual necessities were produced or manufactured thereon. The ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... opened I might swing myself over and through it; but it was closed, and a curtain hid the unknown possibilities and dangers of the interior. A dozen feet above was the roof, with no projection or foothold by which it might be reached. Below, the light-well ended in a tinned floor, about four ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... In the sudden flare I saw to the concrete bottom of the well, and it looked no larger than the hollow of my hand. Raffles was laughing in my ear; he had the iron railing fast; it was between us, but his foothold was as secure as mine. Lord Ernest Belville, on the contrary, was the fifth of a second late for the light, and half a foot short in his spring. Something struck our plank bridge so hard as to set it quivering like a harp-string; there was half a ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... blind, not seeing the sun, and neither did eat nor drink.' There must be some soil beforehand in which delusions of such a sort can root themselves. But, if we take the story in the Acts of the Apostles, there is not the smallest foothold for the fashionable notion, which is entirely due to men's dislike of the supernatural, that there was any kind of misgiving in the young Pharisee, springing from the influence of Stephen's martyrdom, as he went forth breathing out threatenings and slaughter. The plain fact ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and parcel of our mental vision forever. She gives the reader the impression that she never declined a fancy, just as some gentlemen of the eighteenth century never declined a duel. When she fell it was always because she missed the foothold, never because she ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... pillow, too often driving sleep from a wearied frame, that needed its health-restoring influence. And often, deep and bitter were his self-reproaches. But for his fatal and half-insane abandonment of himself to the vain hope of gaining a foothold by which he might rapidly elevate his condition for the sake of Constance, he was now conscious that, slowly, but surely, he would have risen, by the power of an internal energy of character. And ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... black rat had to go to the wall. Thus at the present day there are practically no black rats in Great Britain. Here the struggle for existence is again directly competitive. It is difficult to separate the struggle for food and foothold from the struggle for mates, and it seems clearest to include here the battles of the stags and the capercailzies, or the extraordinary lek of the blackcock, showing off their beauty at sunrise on ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho. How far was its introduction into these States the result of advanced legislation in accord with true republicanism? Utah Territory was the first spot in the country in which the measure gained a foothold, and that was not believed by its introducers to be a part of the United States. The Mormons who founded Salt Lake City supposed themselves to be settling on Mexican territory, outside the jurisdiction of American law. Woman suffrage was almost coincident with its ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... uncomfortable. One lay against its sloping side, scrambling to get a foothold and peering over the edge into the dim regions beyond. It was a moonless night, but clear ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... to climb the elm, stimulated by memories of how I had entered Friar's Park. It afforded little foothold for the first six feet and proved an even tougher job than I had anticipated, but at last I reached a projecting limb, the bulk of which had been sawn off. Gatton's agility was not so great as mine, but at the moment ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... that such an idea of marriage should be gaining foothold in America. It has its root in an ignoble view of life,—an utter and pagan darkness as to all that man and woman are called to do in that highest relation where they act as one. It is a mean and low contrivance on both ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... covered with coarse grass and wild poppies. The snake is near her, and there is no one to whom she can call for help. But the sea is in front of her. She will escape down the rocks—there is still a chance! The descent is sheer, but somehow she retains foothold. Then the snake drops—she feels its weight upon her, and ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... they would have preferred to take their chance of mercy at the hands of the brigands. Moreover, these gentry themselves had driven the mules into the abyss whither those wise animals would never have gone unless there was some foothold for them. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... ground, just close enough together so they would not touch, and that each mountain was supported by a rocky column beneath its base which extended far down into the black pit below. From the land side it seemed impossible to get across the gulf or, succeeding in that, to gain a foothold on any of the ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... to see the giant ascend the stairway to the royal bedchambers, for the steps were too small for his feet, and it was with great difficulty that he managed to get a foothold with the toes ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... from the pirates, otherwise the Yankee would certainly have been lost. As it was, the surprise was so overwhelming that the pirates, who had been concealed in the large whaleboat that had come alongside, were not only able to gain a foothold upon the deck, but for a time it seemed as though they would drive the crew of the brig below ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... and that they would cause from there so great anxiety and danger to India, that they would oblige its citizens to spend on its defense a greater sum than is now spent on the conservation of the Filipinas. And now, when the Dutch have been unable to gain a foothold in any of the islands because the arms of your Majesty sustain that country with the same reputation as in Flandes, the enemy maintain themselves by aggressive measures against the Spaniards—usually keeping for that purpose in the seas of those ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... has no place in the future state excepting as she enters under the protection of her husband, so this last marriage or sealing for eternity was instituted to enable all unmarried women, or those who were only married for this world, to gain a foothold in the life to come. The motto of the Mormon church is, the greater the family, the greater the reward. Brigham Young with his nineteen families excelled in this respect, and he will be awarded the highest seat in Heaven. His sealed wives are said ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... serve as steps in which one can insert the toes and fingers; but as the guidebook truly says: 'It is as abrupt as the ascent of a ladder; and wide spaces of smooth rock often intervene without any notch or projection offering a foothold. To those who cannot look down a sheer precipice many hundred feet deep without a tendency to giddiness, there is danger in this escalade, as well as in passing over some smooth projecting shoulders of rocks.' The ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... you could see across the tops of the trees down to the plain below; but what Mowgli looked at was the sides of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran nearly straight up and down, while the vines and creepers that hung over them would give no foothold to a tiger who ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... man and woman were concerned, the game was played. They had lost handhold and foothold, and were falling into the pit. But what of the daughters? Living like swine, enfeebled by chronic innutrition, being sapped mentally, morally, and physically, what chance have they to crawl up and out of the Abyss into ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... on their side. After driving the Americans from Canada, they next determined to make themselves masters of Lake Champlain, recover the forts they had lost, and so gain a foothold for striking a blow at our ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... he saw these strange, winged shapes circling in the air some three miles away, just dimly visible in the moonlight and starlight. They were hovering about in middle air as though they were birds looking for a foothold. He ran back, switched the electric current off the aerograph machines at the base of the observatory, and turned it on to the searchlight which was on the top of the equatorial dome. A great fan of white light flashed out into the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... or five logs of birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the slighter ridges that sloped and clung along the narrow foothold of the window-pane frames. Presently Cornelia got up from the low stool on which she had been sitting, and, having slipped on the waist of her new dress, invited Sophie's criticism ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... at the figures that rose from the water. Many of the men fell back, hit, but, in turn, a large number managed to gain a foothold on the ledge. ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... and equip them, duly distributing arms and horses to each one; and only the Goths who were engaged in garrison duty in Gaul he was unable to summon, through fear of the Franks. These Franks were called "Germani" in ancient times. And the manner in which they first got a foothold in Gaul, and where they had lived before that, and how they became hostile to the Goths, I shall now ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... difficulty about the descent for the first eight or ten feet. Then the shrubs that had afforded foothold for his feet suddenly ceased, and the foot that he had thrust down for another perch touched nothing but the slippery side of the pit. Clinging firmly with his left hand to the network of vegetation ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... resistance, however desperate. As we surged up alongside they dropped their oars, allowing them to slide overboard and tow by the lanyards, and drawing pistol and cutlass, leapt to their feet and, with a wild cheer, sprang on to the boats' gunwales and thence to any foothold that they could find, snapping their pistols in the faces of any who dared to show their heads above the rail; while the marines thrust their bayonets through the open ports into the legs of any individual who happened to be within ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Clinton, aware at last of his danger, sailed with every vessel he could scrape together, and approached the bay on October 24 with twenty-five sail-of-the-line and 7,000 men; but it was too late. He could only retreat to New York, where he remained in the sole British foothold north ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... tucked into my shirt out of the way, and my legs as far apart as I could get them. I struck at him, and pushed him under; but the reacting force of the blow sent me backward, and then it was a mad scramble under water to get my foothold again. Macklin came up, saw me, and swam under water until he had reached my legs; then he hove me ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... had never before scouted so far in this direction, their first view of that desolate region. A gloomy-looking place it was. As far as their eyes could reach they could see nothing but sandhills, with stunted weeds and clumps of grass which seemed to be struggling hard to maintain a foothold ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... the natives were rather proud than otherwise of their pebbly paths, for, according to Bisset, when one returned from visiting the metropolis, he said he liked everything in London very much "except the pavement, for the stones were all so smooth, there was no foothold!" ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... and frankly admitted, as was the fact, that receding from the anti-slavery position was part of the conciliation policy of the hour, and that the Republicans did it the more readily because they had full faith that slavery never could secure a foothold in any of the Territories named, it must be likewise admitted that the Republican party took precisely the same ground held by Mr. Webster in 1850, and acted from precisely the same motives that inspired the 7th of March speech. Mr. Webster maintained ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... early London were fought for over and over again, as wolves wrangle round a carcass. On Cornhill there probably dwelt petty kings who warred with the kings of Ludgate; and in Southwark there lurked or burrowed other chiefs who, perhaps by intrigue or force, struggled for centuries to get a foothold in Thames Street. But of such infusoria History (glorying only in offenders, criminals, and robbers on the largest scale) justly pays no heed. This alone we know, that the early rulers of London ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... surpassed. He was swept into the Governor's chair on the crest of the Democratic tidal wave in 1874, and once there every effort was directed to the Presidential succession. He had the sagacity to perceive that in order to gain any solid foothold in the country the Democratic party needed to cut loose from its discredited past and secure a new rallying-cry. It was loaded down with its odious war record; it was divided on fiscal questions; it had fought a losing battle for twelve years on ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... fire dashed the foremost of the stormers into the ditch, killing Lieutenants Rogers and Smith and clearing the ladders. Fresh men instantly manned them, and, after a brief struggle, Captain Howard, of the voltigeurs, gained a foothold on the parapet. M'Kenzie, of the forlorn hope, followed; and a crowd of voltigeurs and infantry, shouting and cheering, pressed after him, and swept down upon the garrison with the bayonet. Almost ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... they would have been resolute to climb as far and as high, between earth and heaven, as they could find foothold, if Hannah's strength had not begun to fail, and with that, her courage also. Her breath grew short. She refused to burden her husband with her weight, but often tottered against his side, and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort. At last, she sank down on one of the rocky ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only the dawn of battle. All our lives will be a battle. Some of us will be killed in battle, some of us will be waylaid. There is no easy victory—no victory whatever that is not more than half defeat for us. Be sure of that. What of that? If only we keep a foothold, if only we leave behind us a growing host to ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Siboney. It was almost immediately attacked by a superior force of Spanish regulars, and was so harassed, night and day, by the fire of the latter that some of its officers slept only two hours out of one hundred and fifteen. As soon as it had obtained a foothold it went into camp on a slight elevation in the midst of an almost impenetrable jungle, surrounded itself with defensive trenches, and there lived, for a period of ten weeks, exposed to the same sun, rain, and malaria that played havoc with the troops ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... Indeed, she began to doubt if even her poor power of charming him, as at first she had been able to do, with the sparkle of her wit and the half- unconscious display of her natural grace, was not on the wane, and if she was not near to losing her precarious foothold in his esteem and affection. The thought that he might be tiring of her struck her like a freezing wind, and for a moment ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... been wondering where to bestow herself, noticed the envying glances they cast in its direction. She was not withheld by their restraining fear, so running to the opposite side of the lodge, she climbed its sides, finding foothold in its bark covering, and soon was curled up comfortably, her hands about her knees, where she would miss nothing of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... coincidences with that conflict of opinions and tendencies in which we are involved at the present day? But it is no part of our plan to follow these out. Momentary resemblances often mislead the politician who seeks a sure foothold in the past, as well as the historian who seeks it in the present. The Muse of history has the widest intellectual horizon and the full courage of her convictions; but in forming them she is thoroughly conscientious, and we might say jealously bent ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... anything about his family or how he lived before he came here. He's only a tramp, and you can't make anything else out of him. Some folks are never satisfied unless they are trying to make gentlemen out of gutter snipes. If we let such fellows get a foothold, there won't be any respectable society after a while; it will be all ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... the hill which here fell almost sheer to the level of the lake, and the old McConachans had no doubt chosen their site for its unscalable position. Indeed, the place must always have been impregnable from that side, the rock offering no foothold to a goat till within twenty feet of the base of the tower, where the surface was broken and uneven, and had, in places, been built up with solid masonry. In the crevices up there, seeds had germinated and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... nervously. "Something good up there," he thought, and began to climb. But the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped back half a dozen times without rising two feet. Then he went down stream to a point where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up till under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the clay bank. There he crept cautiously along till his nose found the nest, and slipped down till his fore paws rested on the threshold. A long hungry sniff of the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... fact the idea of an actual reunion seems never from the very outset to have had any real foothold in his mind. In 1779 he said: "We have long since settled all the account in our own minds. We know the worst you can do to us, if you have your wish, is to confiscate our estates and take our lives, to rob ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... is interesting to recall the fact that before slavery got a foothold in Rome, the masses in their struggle with the classes used what we think of to-day as the most modern weapon employed in industrial warfare. We can all remember the intense interest with which we watched the novel experience which St. Petersburg underwent some six years ago, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the influence of Spain, gave least support to the uprising, but in the east, where the Cubans and negroes raised and ground cane, or grazed their herds, discontent at the system of favoritism and race discrimination was an important political force. Here the insurgents soon gained a foothold in the provinces of Santiago, Puerto Principe, and Santa Clara. From the jungle or the mountains they sent bands of guerrillas against the sugar mills and plantations of the ruling class, and when pursued their troops hid their weapons and became, ostensibly, peaceful farmers. A revolutionary ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... location with small foothold on Musandam Peninsula adjacent to Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit point for world ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the army of 1798, he sought for men distinguished for their boldness of execution, not less than for their prudence in counsel, and contemplated a system of continued attack. "The enemy," said the General in his private letters, "must never be permitted to gain foothold on ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... among the beads of the rosary instead of the name of Mary. But the worst thing of all was that his religion, like the outer world, seemed to be slipping away from him as the days went by. To this last foothold he clung with feverish tenacity, spending several hours of each day in prayer and meditation; but his thoughts wandered more and more often to Bolla, and the ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... of bitter turmoil he came back again and again to that, the only solid foothold left him in the shifting desert-sand. So long as his heart should beat he would defend that one precious possession that yet remained,—the honour of the woman who loved him and whom he loved as only the few ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... absurdity it seems for a man about whom these two things are true, that, as I said, he began with a borrowed capital, and has only incurred greater debts in his transactions, there should be any foothold left in his own estimation on which he can stand and claim to be anything but the pauper that he is. Oh! brethren, of all the hallucinations that we put upon ourselves in trying to believe that things are as we wish, there is none ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... immediately after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. Very soon afterwards the nascent spirit of fanaticism began to obtain a foothold in England; and although large numbers of negro slaves were owned in Great Britain, and, as I said before, were daily sold on the public exchange in Lon-don, questions arose as to the right of the owners to retain property in their slaves; and the merchants of London, alarmed, submitted ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Dr. Atwater, the Russian Commission for the study of alcoholism, after two years' work, said: "The claim that alcohol is a food in any proper sense of the term is not sufficiently proved." In the St. Paul convention spoken of, politics obtained a foothold, and some weak resolutions in favor of the army canteen were adopted but not even the champions of the canteen were willing to subscribe to the statement that alcohol is ever ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... Many of them inclined to mercy or to compromises which found little favour with the populace. Accordingly, the procedure at the trial, as also the final verdict, turned largely on the desperate efforts of the Jacobins to discredit their rivals, who sought by all means to keep their foothold in the revolutionary torrent. One of the most obvious devices was to represent the Executive Council as the champion of ultra-democratic ideas as against envious and reactionary England. If this notion gained currency, Lebrun and his colleagues ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... soon turned off the wagon road to make his way directly down the side of the mountain. Bob possessed his full share of personal courage, but in this unaccustomed skirting of precipices, hopping down ledges, and sliding down inclines too steep to afford a foothold he found himself leaning inward, sitting very light in the saddle, or holding his breath until a passage perilous was safely passed. In the next few years he had occasion to drop down the mountainside a great many times. After the first few trips he became so thoroughly accustomed that ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... shocking sound of the impact Stent wheeled from the abyss, then staggered back under the powerful shove from Von Glahn's nervous arm. Swaying, fighting frantically for foothold, there on the chasm's awful edge, he balanced for an instant; fought for equilibrium. Von Glahn, rigid, watched him. Then, deathly white, his young eyes looking straight into the eyes of his old classmate—Stent lost the fight, fell outward, wider, dropping back into mid-air, down ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... had half raised itself to look at the heather, and continued to keep this position, until at length it stood upright. It scratched its head and set forth again, taking such a vigorous foothold that it seemed as though the mountain must feel it. "If you will not have me, then I will have you." The fir crooked its toes a little to find out whether they were whole, then lifted one foot, found it whole, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... man to the beggar's grave in Montparnasse cemetery. After having told some friends the short, but pitiful story of Z. Marcas, Charles Rabourdin, following the advice of the deceased, left the country, and sailed from Havre for the Malayan islands; for he had not been able to gain a foothold in France. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... It's meself never refused help to any man," said Paddy; and jumping down, he produced a chain. Fastening the tongue of the waggon to one end, and the horses to the other, he drove them up to the high-road, where, having firmer foothold, a few pulls drew us out of the mud-hole. We thanked the old man for his help, but saw him and his chain depart with regret. Having better horses and a lighter load, he soon left us ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... simply human, entirely endorsing old Darco's reproof of his work and his evasions; with a financial crevasse at his feet, and Annette chopping away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face—he was disposed alike to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... retained and become long, out-reaching, and spreading over the mountain slope for many feet; the upper limbs are irregularly disposed, not whorled; they strike downward from the start (so that it is almost impossible to climb one of the trees for want of foothold), then curving outward to the outline of the tree, they are terminated by short, hairy branchlets that decline gracefully, and are decorated with pendant cones which are glaucous purple until maturity, then leather ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... has no longer that immutable faith in the genius of the "master" Proudhon, which Tolain seems to have preserved intact. According to Bakounine "Proudhon, in spite of all his efforts to get a foothold upon the firm ground of reality, remained an idealist and metaphysician. His starting point is the abstract side of law; it is from this that he starts in order to arrive at economic facts, while Marx, on the contrary, has enunciated ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... opportunity to take a position as private secretary to one of the instructors in her college. They understood that it was a situation which would pay fairly well, and give her associates who gained an added glory in the minds of these humble folk by their distance. In short, it would be a foothold in the white people's world; and Grant Payson's mother trembled for her son, while the mother of Mary Jackson feared to lose, once for all, her daughter. The two Southern-bred black women could see in such things as the girl reported only the wiping out of all race barrier, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... and our Alsatian driver helped me to the platform, I looked around with dread at the throng, being too weak to battle for a foothold; but the brave Alsatian elbowed a path for me, and the Countess warded off the plunging human cattle, and at length I found myself beside the cars where line-soldiers stood guard at every ten paces and gendarmes stalked about, shoving the frantic ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the hope of your abolitionists, not our fear, that I am rehearsing. Should your armies obtain a foothold on our soil, we know that you will put knives and guns into the hands of our slaves, and incite them to emulate the deeds of their race in San Domingo. You will parcel out our lands and wealth to your victorious soldiery, not so much as a reward for their past services, but to seal the bond between ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... dismay of Brutus, two of his own sons were found among the number. With the unswerving virtue of a Roman or a Spartan, he condemned them to death, and they were executed before his eyes. The discovery of the plot of Tarquin put an end to his efforts to regain any foothold at Rome by peaceable methods, and he made the appeal to arms. These plots led to the banishment of the whole Tarquinian house, even the consul whose troubles had brought the result about being obliged to lay down his office and leave the city. Publius Valerius ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... The slope was in no way a danger. A man could walk up it without often using his hands, and a man could go down it slowly without any direct fall, though here and there he would have to turn round at each dip or step and hold with his hands and feel a little for his foothold. I suppose the general slope, down, down, to where the green began was not sixty degrees, but have you ever tried looking down five thousand feet at sixty degrees? It drags the mind after it, and I could not ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... life, this plaint ended with the same restless, unceasing question. But there was a difference. There was no longer the material, distant note of a pagan mind; there was the intimate, spiritual note of a mind finding a foothold on the submerged causeway of life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... immediate surroundings. The groping toe touched the edge of the narrow shelf, and I drew back startled at thought of another sheer drop into the black depths. My heart was still pounding when De Artigny found foothold beside me. As he swung free from the cord, his fingers ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... that legations were established in Peking. But while this gave foreign nations a solid foothold at the capital, it did not by any means give them the recognition that they demanded, for their intercourse with the court was still hedged about with innumerable exactions and indignities. The Hon. Thomas Francis Wade, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... without roads, and the difficulty of getting items of news, it does not seem strange that those early adventures were short-lived. But as time wore on, one after another succeeded in getting a foothold, and in finding its way into the home of the settler. They were invariably small, and printed on coarse paper. Sometimes even this gave out, and the printer had to resort to blue wrapping paper in order to enable him to present his ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... polygamy, yet it never in the history of man obtained a foothold. The system is more logical than polygamy, because the wife's dependence would be distributed between two or more husbands, in which case she would be better insured against poverty and her support would be ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... it, our suspicion of the creative memory of Smith, and the lack of all contemporary allusion to it? It is a pity to destroy any pleasing story of the past, and especially to discharge our hard struggle for a foothold on this continent of the few elements of romance. If we can find no evidence of its truth that stands the test of fair criticism, we may at least believe that it had some slight basis on which to rest. It is not at all improbable that Pocahontas, who was at that time a precocious ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cultivation, Idaho was a competitor at the World's Fair with the best of her sisters in the quality of her field products. The exhibit in the Palace of Agriculture was impartially chosen and fairly represented all parts of the State where agricultural interests have a foothold. In the exhibit were 47 varieties of wheat, 41 varieties of oats, 32 varieties of flax—the only specimen of white flaxseed known to exist, from the farm of Alonzo McWillis, of Rosetta, who received a ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... failed. Will Mr. Wells succeed any better? Is it not apparent in the foregoing discussion that, even if the word had no other demerits, it leads us into regions in which the mind can find no firm foothold? I have done my best to accept Mr. Wells's definitions, but I am sure he feels that I have constantly slipped from the strait and narrow path. Has he himself always kept to it? I think not. And, waiving ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... with Lydia Mott, who was now an active abolitionist, Susan heard a great deal about antislavery work. At this time, however, Canajoharie took little interest in this reform movement, but temperance was gaining a foothold. Throughout the country, Sons of Temperance were organizing and women wanted to help, but the men refused to admit them to their organizations, protesting that public reform was outside women's sphere. Unwilling to be put off when the need was so great, women formed their own secret temperance ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... somewhere back in the hills. The trail between these two dams lay almost wholly above the rocky river bed. It would have been difficult if not impossible to patrol the bed of the river itself, for close to the water's edge there were places where no foothold could have been obtained even now, low as the water was. Therefore it seemed most needful to watch the main wagon trail along the ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... from the borrowers. Bled dry at last, and unable to pay {116} such extortionate interest and the principal too, their goods are seized, and the members of the household become objects of charity. Whereever these chattel-mortgage companies gain any foothold, many of their victims are applicants for relief. The law usually furnishes ample protection, but the companies flourish through the poor man's ignorance of ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... of repelling the refugees. Still more, when the armed galleots of the Levant came crowding to Barbary, fired with the hope of rich gain, the ports were open, and the creeks afforded them shelter. A foothold once gained, the ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... She ground her teeth and kicked convulsively, but decorously, seeking a foothold that wasn't there on the smooth ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... dropped over her burning eyes. She tried to force herself not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for. They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. There had been hours too many in which ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pine were far above her head, and in order to get a foothold in them Mary had to climb a neighboring tree and swing herself across. The ground seemed terrifying far away even from this lowest branch; but this was only the beginning. She resolutely refrained from looking down and kept on steadily, branch above branch, ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... talking. Among the best speakers of the city was the orator De-mos'the-nes, a very clear-sighted man, who suspected Philip's designs. He therefore warmly advised the Athenians to do all they could to oppose the Macedonian king, so as to prevent his ever getting a foothold in Greece. Indeed, he spoke so eloquently and severely against Philip, and told the people so plainly that the king was already plotting to harm them, that violent speeches directed against any one have ever since been called ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... they. I should have helped and did not. What would I not give that I could unsay that now! Two of them died by their own hand, the third in Bloomingdale. I had been making several attempts to get a foothold on one of the metropolitan newspapers, but always without success. That fall I tried the Tribune, the city editor of which, Mr. Shanks, was one of my neighbors, but was told, with more frankness than flattery, that I was "too green." Very likely Mr. Shanks ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... not see him as his horse, striking out valiantly, swimming and finding precarious foothold by turns, bore down upon her; she saw only the yellow, dirty current when she saw anything at all. She could not know when, the first time, he leaned far out and snatched at her ... and missed. For at the moment a sucking maelstrom had caught her ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... great relief, something blacker than the starlight gathered into form over his head,—a slanting bulk, which gradually took on a familiar meaning. He chuckled, reached for it, and fingering the rough edge to avoid loose tiles, hauled himself up to a foothold on the beam, and so, flinging out his arms and hooking one knee, scrambled over and lay on a ribbed and mossy surface, under the friendly stars. The outcast and his strange brethren had played fair: this was the long roof, and close ahead rose the wall of some higher building, an upright blackness ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... "There is such a message, and it has fallen to me to be its mouthpiece; woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips." It is needless, therefore—nay, it is harmful—to be always breaking your heart against tasks beyond your strength. Work in some little province; get foothold and grow outwards from it; go on from weakness to strength, and then from strength to the stronger, doing the things you can do while you practise towards the things you hope to do, and illustrating impersonal themes until the time comes for you to try your own individual battle in the great world ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... Mowgli looked at was the sides of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran nearly straight up and down, while the vines and creepers that hung over them would give no foothold to a tiger ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... the successive failures of Spanish civilization and Christianity to get foothold on the domain now included in the United States. Not until more than forty years after the attempt of Ponce de Leon did the expedition of the ferocious Menendez effect a permanent establishment on the coast ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... scientifically or even intelligently, according to the demands made upon them. They impose as much as they can upon the credulity of their clients. I consider that their existence is absolutely the worst possible thing for us who are endeavouring to gain a foothold in the scientific world. Your friend Mr. Rochester, you know, called me ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... separate us. Though we were Catholics on the surface, we were pagans at bottom. I had fed my fill on the fairy tales of Ireland. Fortunately, these fairy tales were told to me, not read, and told in such a way that they led me to seek no individual foothold in a world at war with my heart: they helped to take away what the world calls personal ambition. They strengthened my natural quality as a dreamer, my tendency to care only for the welfare of the soul. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Tapolo, opened the gate of the town to the warriors of Walpi and Mishoninovi, who slaughtered the liberals, thus effectually rooting out the new faith from Tusayan, for after that time it never again obtained a foothold. ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... the rate of growth of these Coral Reefs? We cannot, perhaps, estimate it with absolute accuracy, since they are now so nearly completed; but Coral growth is constantly springing up wherever it can find a foothold, and it is not difficult to ascertain approximately the rate of growth of the different kinds. Even this, however, would give us far too high a standard; for the rise of the Coral Reef is not in proportion to the height of the living Corals, but to their solid parts which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Yankee would certainly have been lost. As it was, the surprise was so overwhelming that the pirates, who had been concealed in the large whaleboat that had come alongside, were not only able to gain a foothold upon the deck, but for a time it seemed as though they would drive the crew of the brig ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... who were jealous of any other nation than their own having a foothold in America, determined to get rid of these wild but hitherto harmless buccaneers. This they accomplished, and in time drove the cattle-hunters out of Hispaniola; and to make sure that the unwelcome visitors should not return, they exterminated all the wild ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... the expeditionary force, the unexampled heroism and determination of our troops enabled them to establish a foothold on the tip of the peninsula, but photographs confirm the reports of eye-witnesses that they were literally holding on by their eyelids to the positions they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... Tertiary and post-Tertiary periods, it does not suddenly make its appearance without premonition in those periods. Far back, in the Secondary, we find it under imperfect forms, struggling, as it were, to make good a foothold. At length it gains a predominance ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... little in fear of them it wasn't because they bullied me, because they had got an oppressive foothold, but because in their really pathetic decorum and mysteriously permanent newness they counted on me so intensely. I was therefore very glad when Jack Hawley came home: he was always of such good counsel. He painted badly himself, but there was no one like him for ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... he set his face to the task of climbing. Severe as this was upon his unaccustomed muscles, the firm rocks were still a welcome relief after the racking looseness of sand that interminably sank away from foothold. At midnight the wearied pursuers dropped down from a high plateau to a narrow arroyo. Here again was sand. Fortunately, this time, for in it footprints stood out clear, illuminated by the white moonlight. They led direct ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... movement was made, it was found that this was the principal influence operating to move the Negroes to the North. Former residents of some of the rural districts of the South who had gone North and secured a foothold wrote letters back to their friends and relatives telling them of their success in the new environment. They depicted in these missives wages which seemed fabulous sums when compared with those received in the South, told of the good conditions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... a ledge, high above a street which seemed to be vaguely familiar. He could not see very well, because of a silk mask tied upon his face, and the eyeholes of which were badly cut. From the ledge he stepped to another, perilously. He gained it, and crouching there, where there was scarce foothold for a cat, he managed fully to raise a window which already was raised some six inches. Then softly and silently—for he was bare-footed—he ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... serious, whooping-cough for its close relation to brain and spinal trouble; measles for their effect on the eyes and lungs; chicken-pox for its similarity to smallpox, and mumps for its general lowering of the tone of the system, allowing other diseases to gain a foothold. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... few minutes the train rolled into a small station, near the top of the range. There was a flare of yellow torches under the cars as the trainmen searched every possible foothold, while Jim stood a short distance back so that he could see on either side of the train if a short, dark figure should dart forth to seek escape in the wilds of the mountains; but their quarry was not flushed into the open, even by the flare ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... glance sufficed to show that on such waters the little red squares had already blocked a foothold for other owners. Thorpe surmised that he would undoubtedly discover fine unbought timber along their banks, but that the men already engaged in stealing it would hardly be likely ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... are harder to fight than those I have made mention of. We cannot be too careful in guarding against these trespassers which can be kept out much easier than they can be put to rout after they have secured a foothold. Therefore I would urge the substitution of a commercial fertilizer for barnyard manure in every instance. Scatter it liberally over the soil as soon as spaded, or ploughed, and work it in with the harrow or the hoe or rake, when you are doing the ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... strangers landed, and asked for trade And a permanent "Open Door," And we deemed it best to grant the West A foothold on our shore; Their slaves in truth we have not become, Yet who can fail to find That Japan obeys in a thousand ways The will ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... give him your daughter," he said. I accepted bravely that life of suffering that I might not lose you, and I suffered joyfully, seeing that we were called to bear the same yoke—My God! I have been firm, faithful to my husband; I have given you no foothold, Felix, in your kingdom. The grandeur of my passion has reacted on my character; I have regarded the tortures Monsieur de Mortsauf has inflicted on me as expiations; I bore them proudly in condemnation of my faulty desires. Formerly I was disposed to murmur ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... a building that domiciled more families and middle-aged married couples than sprightly young single gentlemen. Dick had fallen heir to the establishment of an elderly uncle, who had furnished the place some time in the nineties and when he grew too decrepit to keep his foothold in New York had retired to the country, leaving Dick in possession. Even if Dick had been a conspicuously rakish young gentleman, which he was not, the traditional dignity of his surroundings would have certainly protected him from ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... take everything. How foolish of Stephen Candy and his tribe not to be born of the class of landlords! The inconvenience of having no foothold on the earth's ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... remain non-partisan and with one exception did so, but thousands of women rallied to the standard of the new party. As most of them were disfranchised they brought little voting strength but the other parties were forced to admit them and for the first time they gained a foothold in politics. The division in Republican ranks resulted in putting into power the Democratic party, with an unfavorable record on woman suffrage and a President who was opposed to it, but "votes for women" was now a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care. The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and roared thunderously below him, lesser stone loosened by the men above him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and, turning halfway about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were in his blood. Cinders and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... pressed within the besieged city, and Hasdrubal would not surrender. An attack, led by Laelius, on the market-place, gave the Romans a foothold within the city, and a great quantity of spoil. One thousand talents were taken from the temple of Apollo. Preparations were then made for the attack of the citadel, and for six days there was a hand-to-hand fight between the combatants amid the narrow streets which led to the Byrsa. The ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... foot of the garden, covered with fragrant jessamine and myrtle. If she could only get over that wall, thought Sylvia, she would be safe. She ran swiftly forward and began to scramble up, grasping the sturdy vines, and finding a foothold on some bit of rough brick. She reached the top just as she heard Miss Rosalie's servant ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... safety. Let him begin by swerving from truth or fairness, in small particulars, he will find his character gone—whispered away, before he knows it. Such an one may not indeed be irrecoverably lost; but it will be years before he will be able to regain a firm foothold. There is no profession, in which moral character is so soon fixed, as in that of the law; there is none in which it is subjected to severer scrutiny by the public. It is well, that it is so. The things we hold dearest on earth,—our fortunes, reputations, domestic peace, the future ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... this over-greedy oblivion that gapes for all. No, it is not a satisfying arrangement, that I should teeter insecurely through the void on a gob of mud, and be expected by and by to relinquish even that crazy foothold. Even for Kit Marlowe death lies in wait! and it may be, not anything more after death, not even any lovely words to play with. Yes, and this Marlowe may amount to nothing, after all: and his one chance of amounting to ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... much better for you to come to me," she told Sanchia. "I'm an old woman, and an old tyrant, I daresay, but I'm somebody, you know. And I'm pretty lonely, and happen to want company just now. It will be good that you have a foothold to your name when your Nevile Ingram comes after you. I shall bring him to reason quicker than most people, I don't doubt. Your quarrel is absurd; you can't afford to quarrel with your bread and cheese. You've your father, you'll say; but my answer ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... followed down this artificial promontory, a wharf, and have seen the waves on three sides of us, we have taken the first step toward circumnavigating the globe. This is our last terra firma. One step farther, and there is no possible foothold but a deck, which tilts and totters beneath our feet. A wharf, therefore, is properly neutral ground for all. It is a silent hospitality, understood by all nations. It is in some sort a thing of universal ownership. Having once built it, you must grant its use to ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... six feet and with stentorian voices, were driving back the mixed multitude in order to afford foothold for the new arrivals on that marvellous landing place, which in those days served for all the trains which came in and all that went out, both north and south. One man tears open the door of a first with commanding gesture. "A' change and hurry up. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Wilkinson found a demand, too)—well, then, even the vagaries of the West African market are a simple matter compared with the vagaries of the Exchange. The mystery of the mark, for instance, is so utterly beyond that, in trying to understand it, I do not even know where to begin. I see no mental foothold anywhere. ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... leaves atop, which is plentiful in these dark, damp, northern slopes. Now we struggled and hopped, horse and man, down and round a corner, at the head of a glen, where a few flagstones fallen across a gully gave an uncertain foothold, and paused, under damp rocks covered with white and pink Begonias and ferns of innumerable forms, to drink the clear mountain water out of cups extemporised from a Calathea leaf; and then struggled up again over roots and ledges, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... within nineteen miles of Metz, But before the end of the month the French had been compelled to evacuate both their former provinces. They continued during September, however, to make frequent assaults on the German frontier positions, but without regaining a sure foothold on German soil, the bulk of their efforts being devoted to the defense of their ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... opened fire, notwithstanding which the enemy dashed alongside, and strove fiercely to gain the deck. But in this they were foiled by the gallantry of the defenders, who fought desperately, and cut down the few British who managed to gain a foothold. The conflict was short, and the discomfiture of the enemy complete. After but a few minutes' fighting, one boat was sunk, one captured, and the other three drifted helplessly away, filled with dead and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... encountered was a smooth, slippery surface offering no grip for the feet. Stepping out of the shelter of the Hut, one was apt to be immediately hurled at full length down wind. No amount of exertion was of any avail unless a firm foothold had been secured. The strongest man, stepping on to ice or hard snow in plain leather or fur boots, would start sliding away with gradually increasing velocity; in the space of a few seconds, or earlier, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... sometimes, under high favor of fortune, push a dog into the Hydraulic, or get him to jump in after a stick; and then have the excitement of following him from one culvert to another, till he found a foothold and scrambled out. Once my boy saw a chicken cock sailing serenely down the currant; he was told that he had been given brandy, and that brandy would enable a chicken to swim; but probably this was not true. Another ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Everglades. They had in front of them hills behind hills and an intrenched enemy whom they could not see generally and who could always see them. Behind them was only a strip of beach, the sea, and the more or less uncertain support of their ships. So narrow was their foothold that even if they had had more men, they could scarce find place to ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hovels of the poor, know how wretched and filthy they are, how even the healthy can scarcely bear the foulness of their atmosphere. How great must be the power of such pest-holes to extend the plague when once it finds a foothold there! Let us tear down those hovels. There are enough rich men among you to build new and better houses. You have heard that many have become ill through drinking the water from the wells. Water you must drink; but a German doctor tells us that heat will kill the germs ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... surely did not have to share a third part of her sisters' room, did she? For nothing is so much prized by most girls as a room of their very own, and a middle daughter, particularly such a middle daughter as Grace Wainwright, has a claim to a foothold—a wee bit place, as the Scotch say—where she can shut herself in, and read her Bible, and say her prayers, and write her letters, and dream her dreams, with nobody by to see. Mrs. Wainwright had been a good deal disturbed about there being no room ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... favor. Against this, the possibility of a scouting party stumbling over the remains of a colony the location of which is almost completely problematical, and which by analogy with all of the earlier colonial attempts has at best managed to survive as a marginal foothold, is so fantastically remote as ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... the one leading to the left, but had not proceeded more than a hundred feet when he stopped abruptly on the very brink of a chasm that spanned the entire width of the passage-way. There was no ledge however narrow to furnish a foothold along its sides. Once more they were ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... that night were the same as on the night before. Again there was the islet in mid-ocean. Again he was alone upon it. Again the squirming hydrophinnae were eating his foothold piece by piece. ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... young men went to church. Nothing in the way of heresy found foothold at Jefferson. It was wholly orthodox; although it was suspected that Wade and Ranney had notions of their own in religion; or rather the impression was that they had no religion of any kind. Not to have the one and true, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... architectural object in Rome. It is in perfect condition, just as little ruined or decayed as on the day when the builder put the last peak on the summit; and it ascends steeply from its base, with a point so sharp that it looks as if it would hardly afford foothold to a bird. The marble was once white, but is now covered with a gray coating like that which has gathered upon the statues of Castor and Pollux on Monte Cavallo. Not one of the great blocks is displaced, nor seems likely to be through all time to ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... people had been accustomed to obey and follow, and by whom they had been protected. It was equally important that the legislation should come from such sources, when we consider the effect upon the enemy, still having a foothold in the State. They might reasonably apprehend that the laws springing from such a body would be marked by a stern directness and decision of purpose which would leave nothing to be hoped by disaffection or hostility; ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... it pretty secure. But he did a cleverer thing even than this. There was a piece of steep rock, up which the besiegers would have to climb. This he covered with grease, so as to make it difficult to get a foothold, and planks with barbed hooks were placed ready to catch those who were rash enough to seek ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... pocket, before launching out up the hole. When I had cleaned up the mess of mortar, I started up the chimney, carefully replacing the bar behind me. Soon I was seven or eight feet above the room, trying to get at the upper bars. I was scrambling about for a foothold, when I noticed, to my left, an iron bar or handle, well concealed from below by projecting bricks. I seized hold of it with my left hand, very glad of the support it offered, when, with a dull grating noise, it slid downwards under my weight, drawing with it the iron panel ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... pampas grass gently swayed on their reed-like stems. Even the garden was not without splashes of color, where, between rows of vegetables, grew pale, pink-petaled poppies, seeming to have scarcely a foothold in the rich soil. But the daintiest, sweetest bed of all, and the one that Mary enjoyed most, was where the lilies of the valley grew in the shade near a large, white lilac bush. Here, on a rustic bench beneath an old apple ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... darkness, together with the blinding lights of the ship, that they permitted themselves to be caught and handled. When thrown into the air they immediately returned, to light on the bulwarks, shrouds, deck, or awnings, in fact, anywhere affording foothold. Scores of them roosted all night on the Kashgar; but with the first break of morning light they shook their feathers briskly for a moment, uttered a few harsh, croaking notes, as a sort of rough thanks for their night's lodging, and sailed ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... postponed the execution of his plans, in order first to conquer the Scythian countries north of Greece, thinking, probably, that this would make the subsequent conquest of Greece itself more easy. By getting a firm foothold in Scythia, he would, as it were, turn the flank of the Grecian territories, which would tend to make his final descent upon them more ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... The defeat of our common enemies imposes on us the sacred duty of feeding ourselves once more. 'There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to——Oh!" For in his desire to stir his audience, Mr. Lavender had reached out too far, and losing foothold on his polished bedroom floor, was slipping down into the lilac-bush. He was arrested by a jerk from behind; where Blink, moved by this sudden elopement of her master, had seized him by the nightshirt tails, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... black; the result would be that they would all be eliminated by selection, and that no mammals would be able to live there at all. But in most cases a certain percentage of animals resists these strong influences, and thus selection secures a foothold on which to work, eliminating the unfavourable variation, and establishing a useful colouring, consistent with what is required for the ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... and Austrian armies, marching and counter-marching across it. For years there was hardly a cow in the country, nor enough grass to feed a flock of geese. Such was the desperate plight of the family which, a generation later, was to have gained a foothold in half the reigning Houses of Europe. The Napoleonic harrow had indeed done its work, the seed was planted; and the crop would have surprised Napoleon. Prince Leopold, thrown upon his own resources ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... the Secretary of the Navy with Caesar-like conciseness: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours!" By land, too, the British had been met and beaten back at every point, till now they were without a foothold on the disputed ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... not as yet invaded the village, but it is rapidly gaining a foothold in the smaller cities and village merchants may as well prepare for its competition, for there seems no good reason why its greater buying power and superior organization should not enable it to undersell the local merchant if the customer is willing to pay cash. As yet all chain ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... no difficulty about the descent for the first eight or ten feet. Then the shrubs that had afforded foothold for his feet suddenly ceased, and the foot that he had thrust down for another perch touched nothing but the slippery side of the pit. Clinging firmly with his left hand to the network of vegetation which grew above his head, Colwyn flashed his electric torch into the blackness of the pit ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... imagination, which has for good or evil become part and parcel of our mental vision forever. She gives the reader the impression that she never declined a fancy, just as some gentlemen of the eighteenth century never declined a duel. When she fell it was always because she missed the foothold, never ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time. "Let me help you!" I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He kicked about, trying to get foothold somewhere. It was very like holding a ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... doctrine of the second prophet of Allah, and summoning all the warriors to rally around the chieftain commissioned by heaven to deliver the land from the threatened bondage to Russia. These missionaries in arms having friends and relatives in all the tribes, obtained everywhere a hearing and a foothold. The aouls which refused to join their party were threatened with destruction; and if they persisted in their refusal, their flocks and herds were driven off, their lands and vineyards laid waste, and their habitations razed to the ground. From others whose fidelity was ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... of a minute. Beads of perspiration appeared upon his brow and ran together; he bared his teeth in a snarl; his hat slipped over one eye. He groaned with rage. Then, using the starting handle as a club, he assailed the car. He smote the brazen Mercury from its foothold and sent it and a part of the radiator cap with it flying across the road. He beat at the wings of the bonnet, until they bent in under his blows. Finally, he hurled the starting-handle at the wind-screen and smashed it. The starting-handle rattled ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Leonard saw that they were at the commencement of a decline measuring four or five hundred yards in length, and so steep that, even had it offered a good foothold, human beings could scarcely have stood upon it. As yet the tongue of ice was fifty paces or more in width, but it narrowed rapidly as it fell, till at length near the opposite shore of the ravine, it fined away to a point ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... space and foothold, people swarmed, little people, small and minutely clear, except where the sunset touched them to indistinguishable gold. They clambered up the tottering walls, they clung in wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. They swarmed ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... a fence, took careful aim and, with the accuracy of the baseball pitcher that he was, hurled it at the swaying figure upon the barrel. The club caught Simmons fair in the mouth, who, being, none too firmly set upon his pedestal, itself affording a wobbling foothold, landed spatting and swearing in the arms of his friends below. With the mercurial temper characteristic of a crowd, they burst ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... appointed, in 1849, professor of esthetics and French literature at the Academy of Geneva, a post which he held for four years, exchanging it for the professorship of moral philosophy in 1854. Thus at twenty-eight, without any struggle to succeed, he had gained, it would have seemed, that safe foothold in life which should be all the philosopher or the critic wants to secure the full and fruitful development of his gifts. Unfortunately the appointment, instead of the foundation and support, was to be the stumbling block of his career. Geneva at the time was in a state of social ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... despite the doubts and objections I brought forward, always took it for granted that I shared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was still tossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But the confidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had an attraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfully prejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of a lifetime behind him, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... 27 we had also succeeded in throwing back upon the Meuse the enemy, who was endeavoring to gain a foothold on the left bank. Our successes continued on the 28th in the woods of Marfee and of Jaulnay. Thanks to them we were able, in accordance with the orders of the General in Chief, to fall back on ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in my youth I never astonished him in this way. But this morbid conscientiousness or delicacy as to being dependent did him no good, for he might just as well have been thoroughly comfortable, and my father would never have missed it. The feeling that he could get no foothold in life, which had long troubled me, became a haunting spectre which followed him to the grave. His work "Americans in Rome" is one of the cleverest, most sparkling, and brilliant works of humour, without ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... which is one of the most exalted among "the high traditions of the world." They opened the sluices and submerged the whole country under water. Still, their position was almost desperate, as the winter frosts were nearly certain to restore a firm foothold to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... vessel to pieces, and she was too substantial to go to pieces of her own account. The nearest island was little more than a barren rock. A few birds wheeled about over it, or sat perched upon its rugged points, but with that exception I doubt if it furnished a foothold for ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
