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More "Stumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the decline was at times terrific. There were moments of impact with trees which left him bruised and beaten. There were moments when projecting roots threatened to hurl him headlong to invisible depths. Each buffet, each stumble, however, only hardened his resolve. These things were powerless ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... memoirs, legal documents, and popular narratives and books of anecdote, and you will find that there never was a time when these things were not reported just as abundantly as now. We college-bred gentry, who follow the stream of cosmopolitan culture exclusively, not infrequently stumble upon some old-established journal, or some voluminous native author, whose names are never heard of in our circle, but who number their readers by the quarter-million. It always gives us a little shock to find this ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... feet, and made for the door. The Japanese immediately set up a loud and threatening cry, but did not attempt to seize us, contenting themselves with throwing oars and blocks of wood in our way, in order that in running we might stumble over them and fall. When we had almost reached the entrance of the fort, they fired a volley at us, but fortunately hit no one, although the balls whistled most unpleasantly near to our heads. We were lucky enough to get out of the fort, and had almost reached our boat, when I saw ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... light of God's revelation. Where there is no vision the people perish intellectually. He who turns away his ears from the truth must be turned unto fables. "Hear ye and give ear, be not proud, for the Lord hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... stumble as they came down, and his movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said Isbister, "and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. If ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... is for the most part swallowed up and made as though it had not been. The child who leaves school at the age of fourteen will have attended some 2,000 or 3,000 reading lessons in the course of his school life. From these, in far too many cases, he will have carried nothing away but the ability to stumble with tolerable correctness through printed matter of moderate difficulty. He will not have carried away from them either the power ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... by the spirit to the mind. Ever present as its art is, it is an art infinitely removed from that to which all the world at once responds and surrenders. It is not at first seen to be art at all. The verse which in truth dances so cunningly appears to the uninitiated to stumble and halt. The music, which the common ear is so slow to catch, makes us think of those Platonic mysteries of abstract number seen only in their perfection by some godlike mathematician who lives rapt above ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... tired of hearing you, I dare say," was the retort. "It seems to me you always stumble when you play to the doctor, and ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... and death struggle, with bloodshot eyes, with foaming, gnashing mouths. They attack and kill one another and try to mangle each other. I leap to my feet. I race out into the night and tread on quaking flesh, step on hard heads, and stumble over weapons and helmets. Something is clutching at my feet like hands, so that I race away like a hunted deer with the hounds at his heels—and ever over more bodies—breathless... out of one field into another. Horror is crooning over my head. Horror is crooning ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... upon three things, simple enough but essential. I must keep in touch with Him so He has an open ear to talk into. I must delight to do His will, because it is His. The third thing needs special emphasis. Many who are right on the first two stumble here, and sometimes measure their length on the ground. His Word must be allowed to discipline my judgment as to Himself and His will. Many of us stumble on number one and on number two. And very many willing earnest men sprawl badly when it comes to number three. The ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death—the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it's the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own sake that I wished to find some shadow ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... game. I smelled your smoke and out of curiosity hunted you up to see who our neighbors were. That's all there is to it. If you can get anything out of that you are welcome to it. I wish you luck in finding Taku Pass. If I should stumble on it, I'll look you up and let you know. We aren't looking ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... on some slippery weed as he advanced, and the chance stumble saved his life. For otherwise Hatteraick's second bullet, aimed coolly and steadily, would certainly have crashed through his skull. Before he could draw a third, Dandie Dinmont was upon him. Yet such was the giant ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the youths who are led out, and carried home, or who stumble through the "German," this is a sober matter. My friend told us we should see the "best society." But he is a prodigious wag. Who make this country? From whom is its character of unparalleled enterprise, heroism and success derived? Who have given it its place ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... lie bathed in the weltering blood And the living are blent in the slippery flood, And the feet, as they reeling and sliding go, Stumble still on the corpses that sleep below. "What, Francis!" "Give Charlotte my last farewell." As the dying man murmurs, the thunders swell— "I'll give—Oh God! are their guns so near? Ho! comrades!—yon volley!—look sharp to the rear!— I'll give thy Charlotte thy last ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... invariably out of place. Open the door suddenly, and Mathew Mizzle is almost knocked down. Throw out a bucket of water at night, and Mathew Mizzle is there to receive its contents. Pass a stick through the key-hole, and it's Mizzle's eye that suffers the detriment. You stumble over him in dark entries—you find him lying perdu in the closet. Go where you will, there is Mizzle, if it be in the wrong place for ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... Our experience never gets into our blood and bones. It always remains outside of us. That's why we look with wonder at the past. And this persists even when from practice and through growing callousness of fibre we come to the point when nothing that we meet in that rapid blinking stumble across a flick of sunshine—which our life is—nothing, I say, which we run against surprises us any more. Not at the time, I mean. If, later on, we recover the faculty with some such exclamation: 'Well! Well! I'll be hanged if I ever, . . . ' it is probably because this very ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... unarmed," he objected. "And we might, just might, you know, stumble into a situation where we would need to ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... introduce to you, Guru," she said without a stumble, "a great friend of mine. This is Mr Pillson, Guru; Guru, Mr Pillson. The Guru is coming to tiffin with me, Georgie. Cannot ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... David, Isaiah, failed to realize a doctrine (imperfectly it may be) which, as you truly affirm, has, in some shape or other, animated all forms of religion! that these brightest specimens of 'spiritual religion' in the ancient world somehow missed what many of the lowest savages have managed to stumble upon!" ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... warily and probing cautiously at every step, and earnestly peering about me, for after such a sight as that dead man I was never to know what new wonder I might stumble upon. About a quarter of a mile on my left—that is, on my left whilst I kept my face to the slope—there was the appearance of a ravine not discernible from where the boat lay. When I was within twenty feet of the summit of the cliff, the acclivity ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Aurelia's private assistance, Eugene knew his lessons well enough for his excitement not to make him stumble so often as to prevent Betty's pronouncing him a good boy, and dispensing with his copy, sum, piece, and reading, until the evening. These last were very tough affairs, the recitation being from Shakespeare, and the reading from the Spectator. There were ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first few rods of this frightful journey that a brakeman might appear on top of the train, whose attention he might attract before the speed became so great he could no longer maintain it, or a lurch or a stumble in the ditch at the trackside might throw him ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... journey of life, as we travel along To the mystical goal that is hidden from sight, You may stumble at times into Roadways of Wrong, Not seeing the sign-board that points to the right. Through caverns of sorrow your feet may be led, Where the noon of the day will like midnight appear. But no matter whither you wander or tread, Keep out of the ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... with the canteen and he seemed to recover from the blows quicker than I could get the swing to strike again. But I beat him down at last, though I saw that he had lots more life in him than I, with that devil of madness filling him. So, when I saw him stumble, then recover and begin that running again, I picked up the knife and leaped over the wall to settle the matter once and for all. It was an ugly thing to do, but it had to be done and done quickly. At the root of things ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... blow. It hit harder, as Jerome meant it should, than any verbal rallying. It sent the man back over his own life to the first stumble in it. ...
— Different Girls • Various
... lot are camped right now in our back yard!" said Toby, filled with such a sense of importance that he neglected to stumble over a single ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... so as not to trip, or to stumble over the sleeping soldiers, they went on, and Taffy, stopping and looking up beheld before him a great round table. Many warriors were sitting at it. Their splendid gold inlaid armor, glittering helmets and noble faces showed that they were no common men. Yet Taffy could see only a few ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... lifetime had gone since the day before, when he had first seen what he called to himself "the captive maid." He had never been so happy in his life; and yet he knew that he had not the faintest right to be happy. The girl who had so upset his self-control as to make him stumble on her doorstep was the wife of another man. It was, of course, silly to call him "another man," because he seemed a million miles away from any sphere in which Orlando lived. Yet he was another man; and he was also the husband of the girl who had made Orlando ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... A Policeman with a bull's-eye prevents my driver's energetic endeavours to drive through the Palace wall. I stumble into the large hall known as the Library. "Here," said I to myself, "is taking place the historic trial of the Bishop of LINCOLN." The weird scene strongly resembles the Dream Trial in The Bells, where the judges, counsel, and all concerned, are ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... round, set his heels into her sides and, before anyone could move, the horse and its rider sprang for the window, dashed clear through it on to the roadway and away at a gallop, without so much as a stop or a stumble; leaving a shower of broken glass and splintered wood ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... mule never slips off! It is contrary to a mule's religion and politics, and all his traditions and precedents, to slip off. He may slide a little and stumble once in a while, and he may, with malice aforethought, try to scrape you off against the outjutting shoulders of the trail; but he positively will not slip off. It is not because he is interested in you. A tourist on the canyon's ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... think even in this mist we could hardly go over the rift, for I fancy that we could at least discover when we were getting close to it; but there are three or four old mines; we don't knew in the least where they lie exactly, and one might stumble over one of the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... But we won't smash it yet awhile. I'm going to look up the subject of secret drawers—perhaps I'll stumble upon something ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... fighting at close range; but in the case of their opponents, who were in dread and employed cavalry and archers for the most part, it made it out of the question to see which way to shoot their arrows and caused them to stumble over one another, like men in the dark. Nevertheless Antiochus developed sufficient power, by means of his armored cavalry, to rout the antagonists directly confronting him and to advance in pursuit of them as far as their camp. Indeed, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... and more than once has given annoyance, especially last year, when he robbed a damson-tree of a brood of Baltimore orioles. This winter and spring his friendly interest in my birds has increased, and several times I have caught him skulking among the pines. Last night what should I stumble on but a trap, baited and sprung, under the cedar-tree in which the cardinal roosts. I was up before daybreak this morning. Awhile after the waking of the birds here comes my young bird-thief, creeping ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... the method in which I was compelled to spell the English language. It was severe, no doubt. We stood in a class of forty, and lost our places for the misfit of a syllable, a letter, a definition, or even a stumble in elocution. I remember once losing the head of the class for saying: L-u-ux—Lux. It was a terrible blow, and I think of it yet with burning mortification on ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... possibility of their being so, as they were ignorant of Christ and His commandments, and placed their hope of salvation on outward forms and superstitious observances, which were the invention of Satan, who wished to keep them in darkness that at last they might stumble into the pit which he had dug for them. I said repeatedly that the Pope, whom they revered, was an arch deceiver, and the head minister of Satan here on earth, and that the monks and friars, whose absence they ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to identify it with him. I went on to the door of my room, and still a muffled step seemed to follow me,—first it had come from below, then it was much like some one going up stairs,—but where? In my own room I still heard steps, light, slow, but distinct. Again there was a stumble and a hurried recovery,—ghosts, I reflected, do ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... the woods and on the banks of streams in the country, it is not an uncommon thing to stumble against a contrivance resembling in general appearance our next illustration. Throughout New England, the "dead-fall," as this is called, has always been a most popular favorite among trappers, young ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... strange delusion that I was a wonderful child. I don't know why, unless it was because I did n't know anything of life, and I could repeat a little Latin, stumble through a sentence of Greek, and, after having solved a problem seventy-six thousand times to show my wonderful precociousness, could do it again when called upon. Perhaps I'm extravagant. It was n't more than half ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... allowing another youth in gray uniform to stumble inside. One of the guards in the corridor beyond shoved the newcomer forward, and Phillips' eyebrows twitched as he had a closer look. This last ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... totally different sort, I assure you. Captain Glossop, allow me to make you acquainted with a great friend of mine, Mr. George Headland. Mr. Headland is an amateur investigator of criminal matters, and he has taken a fancy to look into the details of this one. It may be that he will stumble upon something of importance—who knows? And in such an affair as this I deem it best to leave no stone ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... ragged flutter of the room, then from the coloured and composite clothing of a footballer, clown or jockey grinned the round face and owlish eyes of little Duval, who flew to her at once to whisper compliments and stumble on the swelling fortress of her white skirt. She realised dimly from him that her dress was as beautiful as she had hoped it might be, but what was the use of its beauty if Julien should be missing? And, looking over Duval's head, she tried ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... 21:21; Exo 24:10). All the visions were rich, but this the richest, that the floor of the house should be covered or overlaid with gold. The floor and street are walking-places, and how rich will our steps be then! Alas! here we sometimes fall into the mire, and then again stumble upon blocks and stones. Here we sometimes fall into holes, and have our heel oft catched in a snare; but there will be none of these. Gold! gold! all will be gold, and golden perfections, when we come into the holy place! Job at best took but his steps in butter, but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Stratford," it is true; he knows it and confesses it; but nothing shows better how truly he belongs to the England of times gone, the half-French England of former days: he excuses himself and persists. "And if I stumble in my French, forgive me my mistakes; English I am; and beg on ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... bedroom was a counterpart of her own she knew where the light button would be. She might stumble over a chair or two, but in the end she would find the light. The fingers of one hand spread out before her and the other clutching the impossible automatic, she succeeded in navigating the uncharted ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... thy book, The witty ancient you enrobe, You make the graceful Horace look As pitiful as Tom M'Lobe.[1] Ye Muses, guard your sacred mount, And Helicon, for if this log Should stumble once into the fount, He'll make it ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... not laugh because we hear such pretty expressions, though it is indeed true that every one is disposed to laugh on seeing anybody stumble or on hearing any one utter an unfitting word, as often happens. The tongue will trip and cause one word to be used for another, even by the discreetest and most excellent speakers. But when you men talk viciously, not from ignorance, but by reason of your own wickedness, I know ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... are men of wrath and battle, according to theirs, I will not take it upon me to censure them,—nay, not even if they should feel themselves called upon by hard necessity to shed the blood of their Injun fellow-creatures,—who, it must be confessed, if we should stumble on the same, will do their best to make that necessity as strong as possible. But now let us away, and see what help there is for us; though whither to go, and what to do, there being Injuns ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the sacrifice of generation to generation—of the perpetual immolation of age on the flowery altars of youth. Like most customs in which we are nurtured, it had seemed natural and pleasant enough until she had watched the hollows deepen in her mother's temples and the tireless knotted hands stumble at their work. Then a pang had seized her and she had pleaded earnestly to ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... anywhere and not find richness. To prove that this is true, I will open it at random and copy the page I happen to stumble upon. Here ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his feet in a safe place. Not taught this as from pulpit and platform, but by earnest, self-denying, sympathizing Christian men and women standing face to face with the poor repentant brother, and holding him tightly by the hand lest he stumble and fall in his first weak efforts to walk in a better way. And this is just the work that is now being done in our city by a Heaven-inspired institution not a year old, but with accomplished results that are a matter of wonder to all who ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... John to form from them a conclusion concerning him who did them. One aid he offered to the imprisoned prophet,—a word from the Book of Isaiah (xxxv. 5f., lxi. 1f.),—and added a blessing for such as "should find nothing to stumble at in him." Here Jesus emphasized his works, and allowed his message to speak for itself; but he frankly indicated that he expected people to pass from wonder at his ministry to an opinion about himself. At Caesarea Philippi he showed to his disciples ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... her, she had resolved to let her chance of riches go. She came back to find an unexpected deliverer come to her. A strong, brave, practical man had appeared. This man was her own uncle—her beloved mother's brother. He knew how to act. While she alone must stumble in the dark, he would know what to do. He would—he could get her back her own. It seemed hard to reject such help; and yet her resolve was scarcely shaken, and the temptation, though severe, was not allowed to ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... home. Come!' and stooping low over the prostrate form he lifted her very carefully and holding her in a position the least painful for her, began again to battle with the storm, walking more carefully now and groping his way through the stony field lest he should stumble and fall and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... or you will stumble against your vanity." Her glance roved toward the door. There was something of madness in the Chevalier's eyes. In his hands her mask had become a shapeless mass of silken cloth. "I did not come to Quebec because you were here, Monsieur; though I was perfectly aware of your presence here. That ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... scarcely a mile when I noticed that my thoat was commencing to stumble and stagger in a most pitiful manner, although we had not attempted to force them out of a walk since about noon of the preceding day. Suddenly he lurched wildly to one side and pitched violently to the ground. Dejah Thoris and I were thrown clear of him and fell upon the soft moss with scarcely ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... success. They had to accept peace at my hands as a favor. Ah, if they had guessed how much I needed it myself! But these men are obtuse; they cannot see any thing. They have no aim; they only live from minute to minute, and whenever they find a precipice on their route, they stumble over it, and are lost beyond redemption. My God, how scarce real men are! There are eighteen millions in Italy, and I have scarcely found two men among them. I want to save these two men, but the rest may fulfil their destiny. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... though to slaughter. Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water, What have they given your children in return? A heritage of servitude and woes, A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. What! do not yet the red-hot plowshares burn, O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal, And deem this proof of loyalty the real; Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars, And glorying as you tread the glowing bars? All that your sires have left you, all that Time Bequeaths ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... What for?" returned the post commander, obviously nettled. "I fancy he'll not thank you for even searching his quarters. You may stumble over his big museum in the dark and smash things. No, let him alone. If he isn't here for dinner, I'll 'tend to ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... a vow, and he does not fulfil it in good time, he will stumble through three grave sins, idolatry, unchastity, and bloodshed. Jacob had been guilty of not accomplishing promptly the vow he had taken upon himself at Beth-el, and therefore punishment overtook him—his daughter ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... won their forbearance. We listened to her statements more than half disposed to credit them, yet we adhered to our original determination, nevertheless, of joining the first gypsy camp on which, during the course of our tour, we might stumble. ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... speaking through the facts of Christ's death and Resurrection and Ascension, has given to us the sure and certain hope of immortality, and has declared to us plainly the conditions upon which that immortality may be ours, and the woful loss and eclipse into the shadow of which we shall stumble darkling if it is not ours, then surely that is a reason for prizing and laying to heart, and living by the revelation so mercifully made. People do not usually kick over their telescopes, and neglect to look through them, because they are so powerful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... you will be ruled by me, I'll tell you what you shall do. Mark what I say; for I'll teach you the way to come to heaven, if you stumble not—give all you have to the poor but one single penny, and with that penny buy you a good strong halter; and when you ha' done so, come to me, and I'll tell you what you ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... from one of the rearmost individuals talking to his bolder neighbour in front, when finding his own courage on the wane. Following for some time what appeared to be the traces of recent footsteps, I hoped, yet almost feared, that every moment I might stumble on the bleeding corpse. An attendant in the rear now gave the alarm,—something he saw moving on our left causing him to make a desperate struggle to get before his companions. This produced a universal uproar—each fighting ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... it was announced that a gentleman was asking for Mr. Winslow. Churlishness bade us despatch him to the office, but humanity prevailed to invite him previously to share our luncheon. Yet we doubted whether it had not been a cruel mercy when he entered, evidently unprepared to stumble on a young lady and a deformed man, and stammering piteously as he hoped there ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... roughly upturned crop-land, and every few hundred yards roll under a line of barbed wire about a foot from the ground, at the risk of reefing one's clothes and the certainty of dishevelment. To walk out on the main roads and stumble over the loose stones ankle-deep in the dust was torture. Some averred they had known no repairs for ten years, and that they were as good as they were, because to have been worse was impossible. Walking in ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Alexyei Sergyeitch, she was very fond of praying; but as, according to her own words, she had not learned to recite prayers well, she kept for that purpose the widow of a deacon, who prayed so tastily! She would never stumble to all eternity! And, in fact, that deacon's widow understood how to utter prayerful words in an irrepressible sort of way, without a break even when she inhaled or exhaled her breath—and Malanya Pavlovna listened and melted with emotion. She had another widow also attached ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... to a very clever woman making a blunder and not retrieving it. Men are licensed to stumble, but a clever woman's mistake is outside the regular course of Nature and Providence; since all good people know that a woman is the only infallible thing in this world, except Government Paper of the '70 issue, bearing interest at four ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... cross the rivulet. Seguin was some paces in advance as we rode forward to it. I saw his horse suddenly baulk, stumble over the bank, and roll ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... nodding. "I called at the police station before I came here, on leaving the train. The detective is Al Howard, and he's a nice fellow but rather stupid. You mustn't expect any results from that source. To be sure, the department might stumble on a clew, but the chances are they ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... into the spurs with which she punished the side of the bay, and the tall horse responded with a high-tossed head and a burst of whirlwind speed. The result was finally a stumble over a loose rock that almost flung Mary over the pommel of the saddle and forced her ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... us its treasures, seeking to win our poor love. It is sometimes said that this is a state of probation. But that phrase suggests far too cold an idea. God does not set us here as on a knife edge, with abysses on either side ready to swallow us if we stumble, while He stands apart watching for our halting, and unhelpful to our tottering feebleness. He compasses us with His love and its gifts, He draws us to Himself, and desires that we should stand. He offers all the help of His angels to hold us up. 'He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; He that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... desp'rit agerny to git home that night I got onto Leony's father's old white mar', 't was feedin' along by the road, an' puttin' of 'er deown the hill, I'm dumed ef she didn't stumble and hove me ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... made a resolution to avoid the kitchen in future: I might at any moment stumble upon Mr. Hamilton. I had forgotten that he gave Nathaniel lessons sometimes in the evening. What a ubiquitous mortal this man appeared, here, there, and everywhere! It had given me rather a shock to see him so comfortably domiciled in Mrs. Barton's cosy kitchen; he looked as much at ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... see that Mr Horne's variations are all for the worse. How flat and tame "sweet April showers," in comparison with "April with his shoures sote." In Chaucer the month comes boldly on, in his own person—in Mr Horne he is diluted into his own showers. 'Tis ominous thus to stumble on the threshold. "Downward shoot" is very bad indeed in itself, and all unlike the natural strength of Chaucer. "Liquid power" is even worse and more unlike; and most tautological the "virtue of power." In Chaucer the virtue is in the "licour." "Rare" is poorly dropped in to fill up. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... pavilion of love! And for one thing is my earnest wish directed to Him, that, unable as I am to direct my own steps aright, He would provide a leader for me, and a willing heart within me, and grant me enough of His guidance to keep me in the way, and enough of a willingness to walk therein and not stumble. ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... of the house. The colonel's son had seen her run that way, and as he sounded the final challenge his voice had a victorious ring. He began a second mock hunt. But it was a short one, for, fearful that he might stumble upon one of the Dutchman's younger brood, he first penetrated the outer darkness to find a boy, and then ran round the house in the direction taken by ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... the short outline is soon given. Promptly at 4 p.m. the creeping barrage started. In a dazed way or lighting cigarettes the men, who had lost during the long wait all sense of their whereabouts, began to stumble forward up the hill. Our shrapnel barrage was not good. One of the earliest shells burst just behind the hole from which I stepped. It wounded Rowbotham and Baxter (my two signallers) and destroyed the basket of carrier pigeons. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... dread, and He shall be to you for a sanctuary, but for a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and many among them shall stumble against that stone, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and perish. Hide my words, and cover ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... through which we retire is swept continually with fire. I climb up to the ridge. Now nothing further matters. Only not to fall alive in the hands of those over there! To die! I stumble over a ridge in the field. A few moments of unconsciousness. Then again the tacktack-tacktack of the machine guns. God, our Lord, Thou art our refuge forever and aye! I pray Thee, I pray Thee, let me die an honest soldier's death. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... they had acquired sufficient confidence in her good will, they pressed up to the window. "There," cried Townsend, as he chanced to stumble over the carpenter's mitre box, which stood in the way, "there's a good omen for me. I've stumbled on the mitre box; I shall ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... concerning which opinions differed in Octavius. That it typified progress, and helped more than any other feature of the village to bring it up to date, no one indeed disputed. One might move about a great deal, in truth, and hear no other view expressed. But then again one might stumble into conversation with one small storekeeper after another, and learn that they united in resenting the existence of "Thurston's," as rival farmers might join to curse a protracted drought. Each had his special flaming grievance. The little dry-goods dealers asked mournfully how they could be expected ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... stain in a sheet of paper, and a half-finished signature, that the will by which Mr Lockhart intended to despoil Colonel Brentwood was a curiously-contrived forgery. As men in search of the true and beautiful frequently stumble by accident on truths for which they did not search, and beauties of which they had formed no conception, so our detective unearthed a considerable number of smaller crimes of which the lawyer had been guilty—to the satisfaction of all concerned ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... this creed, Hans not only never told his wife of the project of becoming Buergermeister of Rapps, but he did not even give her reason to suppose that he laid up a shilling; and that she might not happen to stumble upon his money, he took care to carry it always about him. It was his delight, when he got into a quiet corner, or as he came along a retired lane, from his errands, to take it out and count it; and calculate when it would amount to this and that sum, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... grabbed his gun and sprang out into sight again—and there, off to the right, was another deer. It was a huge buck, with wide-spreading antlers, rising out of the bushes where it stood. It saw Thyrsis, and started away; and in a flash he raised his gun and fired. He saw the deer stumble, and he fired the other barrel; and then he started in ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... as he expected it would, and this gave him confidence. On, on; the dull pounding of Pirate's feet, the flying sod, the wind in his face: and when he saw the barb-wire fence, fear entered into him. An inch too low, a stumble, and serious injuries might result. He ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... and without thanking you for your delightful letter. Oh! why don't you squeeze yourself sometimes into that funny little house opposite Miss Bailey's, and let me take a cup of tea off the cushions, or some other place where the books would allow it to be put? And why don't you allow me to stumble over my German? And why doesn't Rex, Esq. (for Rex is too familiar even for a Bishop) correct my musical efforts? How terrible this word past is! The past is at all events real, but the future is so shadowy, and like the ghosts of Ulysses ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... I didn't have no business hirin' a man thet can't ride," he said. "Why thet there Brazos pony never did stumble, an' if he'd of stumbled he'd a-stood aroun' a year waitin' to be caught up agin. I jest cain't figger it out no ways how thet there tenderfoot bookkeeper lost him. He must a-shooed him away with a stick. An' saddle an' bridle an' all gone too. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he, "an obstacle against which all stupid people stumble; it is the act of reasoning under the influence ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... were absolutely necessary or not it would be hard to say, for just as the boys discharged their various weapons the huge bear was seen to stumble and fall. He gave several convulsive shudders, and ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... were goin' westward, and travelled far with them. But they quarrelled and separated, I goin' with these that I liked best. One night though, I took my horse and left; for I knew there was evil in the heart of a man who sought me continually, and the thing drove me mad. I rode until my horse could stumble no farther, and then I took the saddle for a pillow and slept on the bare ground. And in the morning I got up and rode on, seein' no house nor human being for manny and manny a mile. When everything seemed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... another every week in the year. And yet with all the hard work that men can do, they can not boost the world's supply of bread so as to increase our two weeks' lead on the wolf of famine. The wolf is ever behind us only two weeks away. And if we stumble for a ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... her cry "Henry!" with the fierceness of a call for help, and saw her rush forward and stumble into the arms of the prisoner, and their two heads were bent ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdroeckh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the Brittische Journalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... its power the sea will stretch itself out dead, the white foam on the lip, in its crystal sarcophagus, and the mountains will stagger and reel and stumble, and fall into the valleys never to rise. Under one puff of that last cyclone all the candles of the sky will be blown out. The trumpet! ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... this serious subject, we began to wonder what Mr. Haines' dream might portend this time, and prepare our minds for the verse from the prophecies over which dear Uncle Pennyman had made his latest stumble. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... teacher's presence was both stimulating and reassuring. After he turned back, however, with a final look at the bandages, reaction set in. The sufferer's cheerfulness relapsed into a wincing silence, broken occasionally by faint groans, when a stumble on the part of his bearers set loose all the various aches that ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... murder, (as they supposed,) and to rout out the smugglers; and the rascals were even talking about the prizes, having heard the place was full of riches; and they said they were sure that more than one thing brought his Highness such a journey. At every stumble their horses made, the psalm-singing scoundrels offered up an ejaculation. May I never reef a sail, captain, if they didn't pray more, going that length of road, than you, and I, and all the crew of the Fire-fly put together, have prayed during the last twelve, ay, twice twelve ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... "You can stumble along, working at your trade of farming, and only half knowing it all your life; that's what most farmers do, in fact. They are too lazy to take up the scientific side of ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... young maples, and ferny groups—it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things—then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far up in the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... thy lot! Two paths are offered; that, in velvet-flower, Slopes easily to every earthly prize. Follow the multitude and bind thine eyes, Thou and thy sons' sons shall have peace with power. This narrow track skirts the abysmal verge, Here shalt thou stumble, totter, weep and bleed, All men shall hate and hound thee and thy seed, Thy portion be the wound, the stripe, the scourge. But in thy hand I place my lamp for light, Thy blood shall be the witness of my Law, Choose now for all the ages!" Then I saw The ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... saw her very seldom, but when he was with her she reminded him of a catch in the voice. It was as if her life had reached breaking point and for one moment she would give him as divine gift a little poignant stumble before she regained the sure foothold of her calm courage. It was these precious moments that gave a burning spirit to his image of her. The legend ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... am active, cheerful, communicative, a natural talker and story-teller. I am not noisy, like the ocean, except occasionally when I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get a fall. When I am silent you can still have pleasure in watching my changing features. My idlest babble, when I am toying with the trifles that fall in my way, if not very full of meaning, is at least musical. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... jump up and make for me and I make for the door! It was dark, all 'cepting the light from the chimney, and I fumble all up and down the door jamb before I find de latch pin. The old man shorely git me if he hadn't stumble over the eating table and whop his hand right down in de dish of fresh made butter. That make him so mad he jest stand ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... of Homer and Virgil. The speech of Jupiter is, on the other hand, majestic, and in form and style bears a complete resemblance to Shakspeare's sonnets. Nothing but incapacity to appreciate the views of the poet, and the perspective observed by him, could lead them to stumble at this passage. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... cross. After allowing the animal to quench its thirst, I applied spurs and urged it into the stream; it being averse from some cause to take the water. The stream was, however, deeper than I anticipated, and the horse immediately began to stumble and flounder in an alarming manner, showing that the river bed was uneven and rocky. About half-way across was a small island, that divided the stream, which after much difficulty he reached; resting here about a minute, I again urged him forward, but the animal seemed very reluctant ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the town like a dog with your tongue hanging out, running and running and cursing life. From the clothier's to the chemist's, from the chemist's to the modiste's, from the modiste's to the pork butcher's, and then back again to the chemist's. In one place you stumble, in a second you lose your money, in a third you forget to pay and they raise a hue and cry after you, in a fourth you tread on the train of a lady's dress.... Tfoo! You get so shaken up from all this that your bones ache all night and you dream of crocodiles. ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... earth and air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the truth—against which all seekers sooner or later stumble—that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... I renew Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found Long since to be but just one other mound Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew. And once again, and wiser in no wise, I chase your colored phantom on the air, And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise And stumble pitifully on to where, Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes, Once more I clasp,—and there ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... his heels follows a motley crowd, cheering and shouting. One bearer relieves another as each wearies of his burden. The first to shoulder the Clavie, which is esteemed an honour, is usually a man who has been lately married. Should the bearer stumble or fall, it is deemed a very ill omen for him and for the village. In bygone times it was thought necessary that one man should carry it all round the village; hence the strongest man was chosen for the purpose. Moreover it was customary to carry the burning Clavie ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... he was being whirled along. As the moon went down we had the additional effect of torchlight to the scene, three bearers having the special duty of running along to show the pathway to the rest. This seemed a service of some danger, and our torch-bearers at times verged upon places where a stumble would have apparently extinguished both themselves and their torches for ever. About half way we stopped for about an hour for the bearers to partake of a light entertainment of "ghee and chupatties" — otherwise, rancid butter ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... in the road of life until you stumble against a battery; nerved with the shock you are frantic, and rush along wildly until the current received is exhausted, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... for shore! Haply a Ghoul Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon, A thighbone in his fist, and glared At supper with a Lady: she who took Her rice with tweezers grain by grain. Or you might stumble—there by the iron gates Of the Pump Room—underneath the limes - Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers, Just as the civil Genie laid him down. Or those red-curtained panes, Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily Of beer-pots ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... introduction to the next week's lesson. I stood and watched. The master called upon first one, then another, to read aloud a sentence or two out of the textbook with which each was provided; and one after another the boys stood up, shamefaced or dogged, to stumble through sentences which seemed to convey absolutely no meaning to them. If it had been only the hard words that floored them—such as "cotyledon" and "dicotyledon"—I should not have been surprised; but ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... English: "Good morning, my darling wife! I hope that you slept well, that you were undisturbed, that you will not rise too early, that you will not catch cold, nor stoop too much, nor overstrain yourself, nor scold your servants, nor stumble over the threshold of the adjoining room. Spare yourself all household worries till I come back. May no evil befall you! I shall be home ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and all the troublous times which had ended at her death. And a leaden weight was falling on my heart, as I wondered if I was never again to hold my friend's hand in mine; when one day I chanced to stumble on news of him ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... the advance on Metammeh was continued, with the Hussars still in the van. On the following night there was a scene of wild disorder. It was very dark and camels began to stumble and lose their places in ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... digging the house, the doctor happened to stumble upon a small stove which had not been injured by the explosion, and with a piece of chimney that could be easily repaired: the doctor carried it away in triumph. At the end of three hours the house was inhabitable; the stove was set in and filled with pieces ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... trustful, waiting quiet oppressed, taunted him. It sent him back more mad against Destiny, his heart more bitter in its great pity. Let him go back into the great city, with its stifling gambling-hells, its negro-pens, its foul cellars. It is his place and work. If he stumble blindly against unconquerable ills, and die, others have so stumbled and so died. Do you think their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... And so here, in this forest, a knowledge of its greatness is for much in the effect produced. You reckon up the miles that lie between you and intrusion. You may walk before you all day long, and not fear to touch the barrier of your Eden, or stumble out of fairyland into the land of gin and steam-hammers. And there is an old tale enhances for the imagination the grandeur of the woods of France, and secures you in the thought of your seclusion. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... webbed like those of walkers in wet and soft places; they had tails, long or short, as they were old or young. Men crouched when they walked, or crawled along the ground like lizards. They feared to walk straight, but crouched as before time they had in their cave worlds, that they might not stumble or fall in ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... "When burro stumble I feel ouch and see desert and then I drift away up to sky again," answered Firio. "All right now, eh? Pretty soon you so strong I have to broil five—six—seven quail a ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... still further into that past, I would stumble into American nights—nights with old friends, established there or passing through and run across by chance—nights of joy in being with my own people again, of hearing not English, but my native tongue and having life readjusted to the American ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... top he had the good fortune to stumble on a trail that was evidently used by Indians or other dwellers in the wilderness, probably by men portaging the length of bad water down the river. It was a rough enough path, yet it made his task immeasurably easier. But even with its unexpected aid, the journey ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... The women must cook and scatter popcorn on the verandah every morning; so will the men be agile in their movements. The rooms must be kept very tidy, all boxes being placed near the walls; for if any one were to stumble over them, the absent husbands would fall and be at the mercy of the foe. At every meal a little rice must be left in the pot and put aside; so will the men far away always have something to eat and need never go hungry. On no account may the women sit at the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... crupper, and then let that twig fall; and after that to take another twig, and do in like manner to every one of the horses, as he should overtake them, enjoining the horseman strictly to watch when his own horse should stumble, and to throw down his cap on the spot. All these things did the youth fulfil, giving a blow to every one of the king's horses, and throwing down his cap on the spot where his horse stumbled. And to this spot Taliesin brought his master after his ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... got up with a stumble, His rider went sideways, but knew how to tumble, And got up and remounted, though the pain made him humble, And he rode fifty yards and ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... her steadily at it. Fortunately, she was a first-rate fencer, and knew her work capitally, as she proved in the present instance, by rising to the leap, clearing the fence in beautiful style, and dropping lightly into the lane beyond, without so much as a stumble, just as Clara and her attendant turned the corner of the road and came in sight. My sudden appearance frightened Clara's pony to a degree which justified me in riding up and assisting her to reduce it to order. Having accomplished this not very difficult task, I waited for a moment, hoping she would ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the Egyptians "dismayed and turned away back—their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back, since fear is round about them."[14215] He sees the "swift flee away," and the "mighty men" attempting to "escape;" but they "stumble and fall toward the north by the river Euphrates."[14216] "For this is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance, that He may avenge Him of His adversaries; and the sword devours, and it is satiate and made drunk with ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.(658) His disciple Beza relied mainly on 1 Pet. II, 7 sq.: "But to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set,"(659) i.e., according to Beza, predestined not to believe.(660) But this interpretation is obviously wrong. For we know from Is. VIII, 14(661) and Matth. XXI, 44,(662) that those who fall on this stone are ground to powder as a punishment ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... are," whispered the guide; "pass the word back for 'em to look out they don't stumble, for things are ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... or not, it would neither be safe for him to raise an alarm, nor start to rush back to the bivouac—though this was not twenty yards from the spot. By making an attempt to retreat, he might draw the animal after him, or stumble upon it—not knowing its direction. It was to ascertain its whereabouts that he had stopped and stood listening. That once known, he might keep his place, or lake ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... in his being, and has grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... proposed the out-of-door club, and had started a tennis-court, and devoted much time to it; but nobody knew how to play very well yet, except Harry Foster and Julia Picknell, and they were the most difficult ones to catch for an idle afternoon. George Max could play, and one or two others could stumble through a game and like it pretty well; but as for Mary Beck, her shoes were too small for much agility, and she liked to wear her clothes so tight that she was very clumsy with a racket. Betty's light little gowns looked prim and plain to the ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... down its length, the street of new brick and tin, and old wooden houses that made Tweipans, belonged to Lady Hannah then. Accompanied by Trudi, whose quality of being what I have heard called "deaf-nosed" with regard to noisy smells, she arrived at the pitch of envying, she would stumble up and down amongst the rubbish, or wade through the slush if it had been wet, and stop at favourable points to search with her night-glass for the greenish-blue glow-worm twinkles of distant Gueldersdorp, and wonder whether anybody there was thinking of her under the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... come to Him, and meet Him, secretly and really as did the penitent Apostle, whom the message, that proclaimed the love of his Lord, emboldened to meet the Lord who loved, and by His own lips to be assured of forgiveness and friendship. It is possible to stumble at noontide, as in the dark. A man may starve, outside of barns filled with plenty, and his lips may be parched with thirst, though he is within sight of a broad river flowing in the sunshine. So a soul may stiffen into ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... to stumble out of bed. Deputy lights a candle, draws back a bolt or two, and appears at the door. Deputy is a shivering shirt and trousers by no means clean, a yawning face, a shock head much confused externally ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... with me, and I'll take care of you," she said. "There is the step. Don't stumble. Here, steady yourself with the umbrella. We are almost there now." Her voice was cold and hard; but the words were those she might have used to Archibald had she been leading him ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... throw the book into the fire. Though I should weep from night till morn, would that prevent Destiny from having, in a fit of ill-humour, taken me out hunting, sent me astray in the woods, and made me stumble across a Mauprat, who led me to his den, where I escaped dishonour and perhaps death only by binding my life forever to that of a savage who had none of my principles, and who probably (and who undoubtedly, I should say) never will have them? All this ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... nothing more than a great, gaping grave, on the brink of which we walk with wild courage," said the king, softly. "There is no moment that some one does not stumble at our side and fall into the abyss, and we have the courage to continue in the path until our strength fails and we sink, making room for another. Almost all of those who formerly occupied these rooms have vanished. How long will it be ere ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... sails; a todo —— all sails set. tras prep. behind, after; —— de behind. traslado m. likeness, imitation. trasmontar sink beyond, set. trasparente adj. transparent, clear. traspasar pierce. traspi m. slip, stumble; dar ——s stumble, reel. trastornar disorder, confuse, upset. trastorno m. disorder, confusion, disturbance. trasunto m. likeness, copy. trato m. agreement, bargain, treatment. trecho m. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... soft and sure as her own Hugh took Clara into his arms. A few minutes later they went up stairs and twice Hugh stumbled on the stairway. It did not matter. His long awkward body was a thing outside himself. It might stumble and fall many times but the new thing he had found, the thing inside himself that responded to the thing inside the shell that was Clara his wife, did not stumble. It flew like a bird out of darkness into the light. At ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... surprise he found the man had his back to them, and was retiring; but as he watched, Ramsden made an angry gesticulation, turned sharply and came on again, but seemed to catch his foot against a projecting piece of rock, stumble and fall forward, his cutlass flying two or three yards on before him ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... at all from where you are, Don Martin," advised the Capataz, earnestly. "You might stumble or displace something which would make a noise. The sweeps and the punting poles are lying about. Move not for your life. Por Dios, Don Martin," he went on in a keen but friendly whisper, "I am so desperate that if I didn't know your worship to be a man of courage, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... those we have, still the load is all such poor weak fellows ought to bear. Old Crump was not thus favored by a gradually lightened load. He bore the same four children every day, faithfully, carefully, with never a stumble nor fall, as though fully aware of the precious nature ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Sleep Prolonger, the Alarm Clock, which automatically closed the window and opened the hot air register at the designated hour. And out of the world, out of the whole human race, present and past, he, John C. Bedelle, was the first to stumble upon this revolutionary fact! An accident? Perhaps—but so was Galileo's discovery of the telescope an accident. When the gnawing appetite had been placated (somewhat placated, but not convinced), the Skippy Bedelle who descended Laloo's steps, with grave and thoughtful face, had emerged from the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the giant's fist coming down upon him, he darted to one side and the blow only struck the air, making the coachman stumble from the force of his impetuosity. Lambernier profited by this position to gather all his strength, and threw himself upon his adversary, whom he seized by the flank and gave such a severe blow as to bring him down upon his knees. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... manners than any of you," cried Hervey, laughing; but remember, though I've lost this bet, I don't give up my pedestrian fame.—Sir Philip, there are no women to throw golden apples in my way now, and no children for me to stumble over: I dare you to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... think that women will fail (even if for a time they stumble a little) in finding the way. The vital germinal spot of each forward step in women's position must be sought with the women who are the conscious mothers of the race. The great women reformers are not those who would have women act just like men in all ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... to the steps, and watched him go down them, uneasy lest he should stumble and fall, so weak did he seem to be. "What a hot wind!" he exclaimed. "You will have a dusty walk home. Go ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... fourth chapter of the said book: "The path of the Just," that is, of the worthy men, "is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day; the way of the wicked is as darkness, and they know not at what they stumble." ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... themselves. He had evidently been trained to the part he had to perform, for nothing could be more expert than the manner in which he went through his various tricks. Sometimes he chased them and pretended difficulty in overtaking them; then he would affect to stumble, and so fall and roll upon the ground; then springing quickly upon his feet, he would surprise some one or other lurking near him, and seizing him with his trunk would hold him fast, or first whirling him in the air, then seat him upon his back, and march ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... was simply an achievement of memory and not of the understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon subdued every question and answer in it. As much as possible, the doctor was kept aloof on such occasions. His grave questions were not to edification, and often they caused Rose to stumble, and brought down sorely the exultation with which she rolled forth, "They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... grizzled old soldier who was an officer in the Civil War tell of a raw recruit who came into his regiment. This recruit was awkward and uncouth and unattractive. He seemed to be little more than an incarnate blunder. He would stumble and fall down over his own musket. Naturally he was the butt of many jokes. He was the laughing stock of all his comrades. But this officer said that he tried to befriend him. But if the uncouth fellow appreciated his efforts to help him he never said so. He seemed as awkward ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... called His own, armed them, equipped them, and furnished them defenses impregnable. Their [10] God will not let them be lost; and if they fall they shall rise again, stronger than before the stumble. The good cannot lose their God, their help in times of trouble. If they mistake the divine command, they will recover it, countermand their order, retrace their steps, and [15] reinstate His orders, more assured to press on safely. The best lesson ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... thine own glad life: the plea Were like a wrangling babe's that fain would be Free from the help its hardy heart contemns, Free from the hand that guides and guards it, free To take its way and sprawl and stumble. See! Have we not here enough of diadems Hung high round portals pillared smooth with ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... me, for I at once saw that I had been made the dupe of the malign wills that beset me, and the laughing-stock of Those for whom I care not a fig. From a little mahogany table there I had knocked sideways to the ground, in my stumble, a small phonograph with a great 25-inch japanned-tin horn, which, the moment that I now noticed it, I took and flung with a great racket down the stairs: for that this it was which had addressed me I did not doubt; it being indeed evident that its clock-work mechanism ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... practicable precaution against being rebuffed. You want to assure yourself of a welcome. Having gained this chance to start the sale of your capabilities, it is of vital importance not to take the next step in the selling process blindly, lest you stumble. Hence you should size up the other man before you announce your purpose in calling. What you may learn from reading his character correctly will help you to gain admittance into his mind for your ideas. It should ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... legitimately developed by the novelist who is the chronicler of the adventures of mankind amongst the dangers of the kingdom of the earth. And the kingdom of this earth itself, the ground upon which his individualities stand, stumble, or die, must enter into his scheme of faithful record. To encompass all this in one harmonious conception is a great feat; and even to attempt it deliberately with serious intention, not from the senseless prompting of an ignorant heart, is an honourable ambition. For it requires some courage ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... is, at the best, unsatisfactory, but to abandon the cruise is the only alternative. However, considering I had but a few hours to look about me, I have been more fortunate than might have been expected. I have had the luck to stumble on a young fellow, very highly recommended by the Captain of the Port. He returned just a fortnight ago from a trip to Australia, and having since married a wife, is naturally anxious not to lose this opportunity of going to sea again for ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... bell rang at the end of the hour, we were awfully enthusiastic about reading character. The first thing Robbie Belle did was to stumble over the threshold. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... was a gentleman, sir, not a blitherin' loon like Jock McCleggan, to stumble at spelling his own name." Then, with a great ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... life you were, in death you shall be mine. When this clogged blood has stopped the wheels of life, I'll put my arms around your neck, I'll lay my face against your frozen one, and thus I'll die. When this foul place has crumbled to the sunlight, some relic-hunting lunatic will stumble o'er our bones, and pitiless will weave a tale for eyes more pitiless to read. Back, Stygian ghoul! Death's on me now. I feel his rattle in my throat! My limbs are blocks of ice! My heart has tuned it with the muffled dead-march ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... chiefly from the ninth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.(658) His disciple Beza relied mainly on 1 Pet. II, 7 sq.: "But to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set,"(659) i.e., according to Beza, predestined not to believe.(660) But this interpretation is obviously wrong. For we know from Is. VIII, 14(661) and Matth. ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... suddenly stumble, and push the door Open, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet, before I can ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... we stumble we hear them shouting; every time we blunder against their limits or stretch out ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... the Great Lakes. The boys run across some Canadian smugglers and stumble on the secret of a ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... to his fopperies of orthodoxy, Asirvadam is continually dying of Pariah roses in aromatic pains of caste. If in his goings and comings one of the "lilies of Nilufar" should chance to stumble upon a bit of bone or rag, a fragment of a dish, or a leaf from which some one has eaten,—should his sacred raiment be polluted by the touch of a dog or a Pariah,—he is ready to faint, and only a bath can revive him. He may not touch his sandals with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... hard winter in San Francisco; the rains were heavy, and the mud fearful. I have seen mules stumble in the street, and drown in the liquid mud! Montgomery Street had been filled up with brush and clay, and I always dreaded to ride on horseback along it, because the mud was so deep that a horse's legs would become entangled in the bushes below, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... we can," said Droop. "That's what I brought ye here fer. Take holt o' my hand an' lift yer feet, or you'll stumble." ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... which they spurned, abandoned and disappeared from an island that held him tight, made Hazel feel very small. His thoughts took the form of satire. "Lords of the creation, are we? We sink in water; in air we tumble; on earth we stumble." ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... vividly present to Hindu thought, which, amid countless errors and degradations, has never ceased to grasp the central fact of Eternity. The impalpable air teems with Divinity. Watchful eyes and clutching hands surround the pilgrim's path, and unseen spirits dog faltering footsteps as they stumble through the snares and pitfalls of earthly life. In the rude tribes of the Tengger, hereditary faith reflects the uncompromising features of local environment. The lotus-eating races of the tropical lowlands, with their feeble grasp on the sterner aspects of creed ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... night. It was more than three miles to camp, and Dick saw, when he passed that way three days before, that the road was blocked with wagons, artillery trains and stable-lines, and to these obstructions were now added sleeping men, who would not be over civil to any one who chanced to stumble against them in the dark. So Dick drew his squad off into the woods out of the way and went into camp; that is to say, he ate the little piece of hard tack he found in his haversack, washed it down with a ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... a thicket. The horses stumble frequently, for the stones are loose, and the footing consequently uncertain. Crouch has a fall, and ere he can remount the lady is gone. It is useless to hurry after her, and he is proceeding slowly, when Grip, who is a little in advance, growls fiercely, and looks back at his master, as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and importance: if ye should, contrary to our expectation and trust which we have in you, and against your duty and allegiance towards us, neglect, or omit to do with all your diligence, whatsoever shall be in your power for the due performance of our pleasure to you declared, or halt or stumble at any part or specialty of the same; Be ye assured that we, like a prince of justice, will so extremely punish you for the same, that all the world beside shall take by you example, and beware contrary to their allegiance to disobey the lawful ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... creatures, Davie, for all that. We grow weary with our marching; turned aside from our chosen paths, we stumble and are dismayed, as though defeat had overtaken us; we sit athirst beside our broken cisterns, and sicken in prisons of our own making, believing ourselves forgotten. And all the time, our Leader, looking on, has patience with us—loves us even, holds us up, and ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... of something to do, and fast. The crowd had seen him stumble—and that just didn't happen to a God. It wouldn't have happened to him, either ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of the lot are camped right now in our back yard!" said Toby, filled with such a sense of importance that he neglected to stumble over a single ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death—the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it's the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own sake that I wished to find some ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... strange conglomeration of products belonging to very different periods. The enquirer who undertakes the study of it will sometimes be scarcely less surprised than would be the naturalist who should unexpectedly stumble upon antediluvian megatheria grazing tranquilly in the same field with prize Southdowns. He will discover the most primitive institutions side by side with the latest products of French doctrinairism, and the most childish superstitions ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... let Him be your only dread, and He shall be to you for a sanctuary, but for a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and many among them shall stumble against that stone, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and perish. Hide my words, and cover my law for ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... ascending, and as the hills grew to be mountains, we had taken two additional horses, making six in all, with a man and boy running beside them, to keep them in motion. The boy had two club feet, so inconveniently disposed that it seemed almost inevitable for him to stumble over them at every step; besides which, he seemed to tread upon his ankles, and moved with a disjointed gait, as if each of his legs and thighs had been twisted round together with his feet. Nevertheless, he had a bright, cheerful, intelligent ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nerves sooner or later and either makes you bolt it or else go. At the end of two weeks I actually found myself considering the fool thing seriously. Of course, I didn't want to discover a lost gold-mine, that is, unless I just happened to stumble over it; I wanted to keep away from such things; they're bad; they get into a man's blood like drugs; but I've always had a hankering for a new country, and those hills, shining in the heat, were compelling—very ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... They hate the burden it imposes; the blind aspect is only touching enough to remind them of the burden, and they hate if for that, and for the enormous presumption of the belief that they are everlastingly bound to such an imbecile. She walks about with her eyes shut, expecting not to stumble, and when she does, am I to blame? The injured man asks it in the course of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... testimony. We, for ourselves, offer the remark as new; but, in an age teeming with so much agility of thought, it is rare that any remark can have absolutely evaded all partial glimpses or stray notices of others, even when aliud agentes, men stumble upon truths, to which they are not entitled by any meritorious or direct studies. However, whether absolutely original or not, the remark is this—Did it ever strike you, reader, as a most memorable phenomenon about Christianity, as one of those contradictory functions which, to a thing ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths, And he would stumble after, Bewildered by my laughter. I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and the buckles on his shoes. I would choose To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, A bright and laughing maze for ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... snapper and stoyte on her way, [stumble, stagger] Be't to me, be't frae me, e'en let the jad gae: Come ease or come travail, come pleasure or pain, My warst word ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... unfortunate passengers immersed. The fatal machine was drifted by currents far behind the wreck of the Frigate; without cable, anchor, mast, sail, oars; in a word, without the smallest means of enabling them to save themselves. Each wave that struck it, made them stumble in heaps on one another. Their feet getting entangled among the cordage, and between the planks, bereaved them of the faculty of moving. Maddened by these misfortunes, suspended, and adrift upon a merciless ocean, they were soon tortured between the pieces of wood which ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... pretend to direct their thoughts in all these different ways. What right have I to curse them, I who stumble in my own path? When they have disappeared, I shall, perhaps, learn more. This one rushed away too quickly; I had not time to reply to him. Just now it is as if I had in my intellect more space and more light. I am ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... which Paul is thinking of when he tells the elders that by 'labouring' they 'ought to support the weak'; for by weak he means not the poor, but those imperfect disciples who might be repelled or made to stumble by the sight of greed in an elder. Shepherds who obviously cared more for wool than for the sheep have done as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... brother's keeper, In all that I can do To save him from temptation, To help him to be true; To stay him if he stumble, To lift him if he fall; To stand beside him though his sin Has severed ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... little of the delicate colour she had brought out from England with her faded from her lovely face. "It seems so dreadful to go rushing down those steep, narrow lanes, on the edge of a precipice, in little rickety two-wheeled chairs that would turn over in a minute if one of the men were to stumble and fall; and then one would roll all down I don't know how many feet, down those steep precipices: some of them have no railings or protection of any kind, and in the evening the roads are quite dark under the overhanging trees. And people ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the soft element: how I joyed in the country where there is no harshness: in the element which upholds and gives way; which caresses and lets go, and will not let you fall. For man may stumble in a furrow; the stag tumble from a cliff; the hawk, wing-weary and beaten, with darkness around him and the storm behind, may dash his brains against a tree. But the home of the salmon is his delight, and the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... the paramount idea of beneficence becomes a national conviction, we may stumble and err, we may at times sin, or be betrayed by unworthy representatives; but we shall advance unfailingly. I have been asked to contribute to the discussion of this matter something from my own usual point of view; which is, of course, the bearing of sea power upon ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... a blind man who sat by the wayside with a lantern near him. When he was asked what he had a lantern for, as he could not see the light, he said it was that people should not stumble ever him. I believe more people stumble over the inconsistencies of professed Christians than from any other cause. What is doing more harm to the cause of Christ than all the scepticism in the world is this cold, dead formalism, this conformity to the world, this professing what we ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... about Chinatown, we must next visit an opium-joint. This mysterious place was situated in a long, rambling building through which we had to move cautiously so as not to stumble into some pit or dangerous hole or trap-door. Here were no electric lights to drive away the gloom, here no gas-jets to show us where we were treading, nothing but an occasional lamp dimly burning. Yet ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... groups and sit on the top of the bank in the growing dusk. We can just see a suggestion of their gay colours and the gleam of their cheroots. G. and I go ashore and stumble along a deep, sandy road; on either side are little and big trees with open cottages behind them, made of neatly woven bamboo matting, lit with oil crusies. We come to a pagoda, and tall white griffins at its ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... still standing a pace within her door, and thinking such thoughts when a foot stumbled heavily on the stairs. She recognised it for James's footstep—she had heard him stumble on those stairs before—and she laid her hand on the latch. She had never had a real quarrel with him until now, and, bitterly as he had disappointed her, ruthlessly as he had destroyed her illusions about him, outrageously as he had treated her, she could not bear to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... wife's pass-key still in the lock. She had evidently forgotten it. Here was a chance to mischievously banter that habitually careful little woman! He slipped it into his pocket and quietly entered the dark but perfectly familiar hall. He reached the staircase without a stumble and began to ascend softly. Halfway up he heard the sound of his wife's hurried voice and another that startled him. He ascended hastily two steps, which brought him to the level of the half-opened transom ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... in the firs quite suddenly, as though he had thrown reserve to the four winds, a bluebird repeated her "May—May—May" on three notes, high, low, and high again, a little musical stumble of delight. It had begun again—that whistling-away of ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... two," he added, addressing the brothers, "I will say that when you are riding a trail, and especially a mountain trail, always let your pony have plenty of rein. It's easier for him. He won't be so likely to stumble and fall, and a pony can generally keep a ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... with his story from the very beginning, and told of the downfall of Pokopokowo, and his escape, and of his all-night ride into the west, to accidentally stumble, ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... In this position I recited Yung Ki's stimulating address to his troops when in sight of an overwhelming foe, and, in spite of the continually back-thrust foot of the undiscriminating one before me, I successfully accomplished the seventy-five lines of the poem without a stumble. Then entering fully, with many deprecatory bows and expressions of self-abasement at taking part in so seemingly detestable an action, I treacherously, yet with inoffensive tact, struck the one wearing an all-round collar delicately upon the back. Not recognising the movement, ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... sheer will, regained his mental balance. "I am tired and nervous, or I would never imagine such foolish things," he said. "Of course it is as you say, produced by natural causes, and I will likely laugh at my fears as soon as we stumble on the key to the mystery. And now I am going to insist upon your going back inside, Charley. It won't do for us to have you down with the fever again. For our sakes, as well as your own, you ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... "If—as is likely enough—we stumble against some of them, we will say we are wounded, and are making our way to the rear. They cannot see us in the dark, and my Afghan will pass muster; and Yossouf will certainly not be suspected. If I am discovered and killed, he will go forward ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... life and its possibilities, as he had just beheld them; moral tumult, pity, remorse, a stinging self-reproach—all these things wrestled within him. What, preach to others, and stumble himself into such mire as this? Talk loudly of love and faith, and make it possible all the time that a fellow human creature should think you capable at a pinch of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but were strewn over acres. More horrible than the sight of the dead, though, were the other pictures brought up by the glasses. Squirming, tossing, writhing figures everywhere! The wounded! All who could stumble or crawl were working their way back toward their own lines or back to the friendly cover of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... raising his hand as if to enjoin moderation. "Your mode of action does not please me, even now that I know its purpose, but I will gladly aid you to attain your object. Your crooked paths also lead to the goal, and perhaps one is less likely to stumble in them; but straight ways suit me better, and I think I have already found the right one. A friend will invite Barine to an estate far away from here, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and thus grace and truth are come by Jesus Christ. Indeed, you must suffer the mortification of your flesh, you must endure the pain of the death of your lusts, the cutting off your right hand and plucking out your right eye, which would make you offend and stumble in the way, but let the remembrance of the life to come sweeten it all. When men undergo the hazard of losing life for a little pleasure, when, for a poor petty advantage, men will endure so much pains and trouble. O what should "eternal life," and such a life as the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... frequented the streets of the noble city of Lancia was always of the scantiest, but in the depth of winter, when our story opens, with a bitter north-east wind and drenching rain, one would find it difficult to stumble upon a living soul. Not that all had surrendered themselves into the arms of Morpheus, for Lancia as capital of a province, albeit not one of the most important, had learnt to sit up late. But the people used to resort at an early hour to parties, whence they only sallied forth to supper and ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... literature are established in the great universities, and it is literature, no doubt, that the professor discourses; but it ceases to be literature before it reaches the student's ear; though, again, when the same students stumble across it in the recesses of their memory ten or twenty years later, it may have become literature once more. Finally, literature may, upon occasion, avail a man more than the most thorough technical information; ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. 28 Besides those things that are without, there is that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is caused to stumble, and I burn not? 30 If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things that concern my weakness. 31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed for evermore knoweth that I lie not. 32 In Damascus the governor under Aretas ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... effected by the locomotive that a short hour can transport us from the midst of the busiest centres of manufactures to a solitude as complete as is to be found in the prairies of America or Australia, unless we by chance stumble upon a prying gamekeeper or an idle rustic seeking ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... famished wolf he seized his enemy by the throat, throttling him, and, dropping his cane, with his clenched fist he dealt him several fearful blows on forehead and mouth, winding up with a tattoo that sounded like the beating of a drum on the man's skull. A violent push made Roth stumble and ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... here beginneth the game! Crito, in my chamber above that was hidden, I think lay not easily, and began to rumble; Sempronio heard that, and asked who was within, Above in the chamber that so did tumble. Who? quoth she; a lover of mine! may-hap, ye stumble, Quoth he, on the truth, as many one doth. So up, quoth she, and look, whether it be sooth. Well, quoth he, I go. Nay, thought I, not so, I said, come, Sempronio, let this fool alone; For of thy long absence she is in such woe, And half beside herself, and her wit nigh gone. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... of the crusades slide and stumble over this humiliating step. Yet, since the heroes knelt to salute the emperor, as he sat motionless on his throne, it is clear that they must have kissed either his feet or knees. It is only singular, that Anna should not have amply supplied the silence or ambiguity of the Latins. The abasement ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... For ever to be falling, yet to rise again and stumble forward with eyes turned to heaven—this was the best which would ever come of man. It was accepted in its imperfection by the infinite grace of God, who pities mortal weakness, and accepts the intention for the deed—who, when there is a sincere desire to serve ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... humming of the bees, stupidly staring after the flying child. Then he stirred himself into pursuit, crying, "Stay, fool, stay!" but desisted instantly, for the girl was as fleet as a fawn, and could run surely where his feet would stumble. Already she was out of sight in the thick of ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... meets me in the face—that some at least,—who knows if not all?—of the purest of men have counted themselves the greatest sinners! Neither can I forget that other saying of our Lord, a stumbling-block to many—our Lord was not so careful as perhaps some would have had him, lest men should stumble at the truth—The first shall be last and the last first. While our Lord spoke the words: The time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service, even then was Saul of Tarsus ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... And must we here remain? To sleep was impossible. Must we rise and grapple with the dead; trample on their limbs, and stumble over their unearthed bones, in endeavouring ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... she is!' says the foremost man, and in they all went. I heard them stumble as they stepped down, and one began to blame the others for crowdin' after him when they ought to stopped at the mouth to ketch me if I slipped ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... rubbing his hands. "Not that I need cheering up, boys," he added quickly; "but hot coffee, the smell alone is enough to—to—whoever invented hot coffee was a genius! The chord of the ninth and the diminished seventh were ordinary discoveries; any musician was bound to stumble across them sooner or later. But this," and he poured the ground coffee into the pot, "is a positive ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... widespread desire for greater independence and responsibility, backed up by many of the laity, and unless it can be rightly met in some way, it might easily become a serious danger. If people are ever to learn to run alone, they must be given the opportunity of doing so. If some stumble in the attempt, that is only what must be expected at first. Amongst a few failures, there are other instances in which the experiment of leaving the management of affairs to Indians has been all that could be wished. Indian priests have been put in charge of wide ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... only result from the free exercise and interplay of will with will. We may well imagine God's mode of action to {105} resemble that of a human parent who entrusts a growing child with a growing measure of liberty and responsibility, well knowing that in the use of it he will have many a slip and stumble, and occasionally hurt himself; such a parent will carefully refrain from interference, preferring that the child should learn his own lessons from his own mistakes, well knowing that we profit only by the experience for which we ourselves have paid. No one will, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... that Jesus stands alone in refusing to despair of the greater part of mankind. Contempt was in his eyes the unpardonable sin (Matt. 5:22). How swift and decisive is his anger with those who make others stumble! (Luke 17:2). The parable of the lost sheep reveals what he held to be God's feeling for the hopeless man; and, as we have seen, his constant aim is to lead men to "think like God." The lost soul ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... furiously down the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches as they drove in among the birches. Then the team stopped, and Hawtrey, who sprang down, floundered noisily among the undergrowth, while another ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... far land, regretting my own; In many a language groaned many a groan; And have often had reason to curse those wild fellows Who built the high house at which Heaven turn'd jealous, Making human audacity stumble and stammer When seized by the throat in the hard gripe of Grammar. But the language of languages dearest to me Is that in which once, O ma toute cherie, When, together, we bent o'er your nosegay for hours, You explain'd what was silently said by the flowers, And, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... a clew; one thread to follow! One ray of light would be enough! Then I could see my way out of this hopeless tangle; I should know how to strike. But to stumble blindly onward in the dark—that might do more ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... found me a pretty good listener, for I had learned that the best way of getting at what was worth having from him was to wind him up with a question and let him run down all of himself. It is easy to turn a good talker into an insufferable bore by contradicting him, and putting questions for him to stumble over,—that is, if he is not a bore already, as "good talkers" are apt to be, except now ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wet through and through. The recrudescence of Robert's strength was a mere flare-up. His vitality ebbed again, and not even the fierce gnawing hunger that refused to depart could stimulate it. By-and-by he began to stumble, but Tayoga and Willet, who noticed it, said nothing—they staggered at times themselves. They toiled on for hours in silence, but, late in the afternoon, Robert ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is not included in the circuit. Close at his heels follows a motley crowd, cheering and shouting. One bearer relieves another as each wearies of his burden. The first to shoulder the Clavie, which is esteemed an honour, is usually a man who has been lately married. Should the bearer stumble or fall, it is deemed a very ill omen for him and for the village. In bygone times it was thought necessary that one man should carry it all round the village; hence the strongest man was chosen for the purpose. ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... horseman chooses his horse's ground and his pace for him. "To avoid a falling leaf a horse will put his foot over a precipice. When a horse has made a stumble, or is in difficulties at a fence, you cannot leave him too much at liberty, or be too quiet with him." Don't believe the nonsense people talk about holding a horse up after he ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... Brain the Lords of Lamentation and Wailing proceed through those rigid locks and depend (from them). Concerning whom it is written, Prov. iv. 19, "The path of the wicked is as darkness; they know not wherein they stumble." ...
— Hebrew Literature
... critical epochs of a close relation, patience and justice are not qualities on which we can rely. But the look or the gesture explains things in a breath; they tell their message without ambiguity; unlike speech, they cannot stumble, by the way, on a reproach or an allusion that should steel your friend against the truth; and then they have a higher authority, for they are the direct expression of the heart, not yet transmitted through the unfaithful and sophisticating brain. Not long ago I wrote a letter ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disdainfully. "A while ago she was dodging the perfectly careless compliments of old Tommy and trying not to see that his toupee was on crooked; and now she's down toward the ravine some place, watching young Cecil stumble. You could make yourself a very solid Johnny by trotting right down there and breaking ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... thing but satisfactory. I wrote accordingly to entreat his forbearance for six months longer, and, as I received no reply, concluded that all was satisfactorily arranged. Unluckily, however, as I was strolling, about a month afterwards, along the Strand, I chanced to stumble up against him. The shock seemed equally unexpected on both sides; but my tailor (as being a dun) was the first to recover self-possession; and, with a long preliminary hem!—a mute, but expressive compound of remonstrance, apology, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... moment there was an interruption. Godfrey had been listening at the keyhole, but finding that difficult, had opened the door slightly, but in his interest managed to stumble against it. The door flew open, and he fell forward upon his knees on ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... took pity on him, and gave him the coffin. The prince had it borne away by his servants. They happened to stumble over a bush, and the shock forced the bit of poisoned apple which Snowdrop had tasted out of her throat. Immediately she opened her eyes, raised the coffin-lid, and sat up alive once more. "Oh, heaven!" ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... By muttered threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Mr. Oakhurst, also, was quite in contrast with her husband's frank welcome. Mr. Oakhurst instantly detected it. "Her husband has told her all, and she dislikes me," he said to himself, with that fatal appreciation of the half-truths of a woman's motives that causes the wisest masculine critic to stumble. He lingered only long enough to take the business address of the husband, and then lifting his hat gravely, without looking at the lady, went his way. It struck the honest master-carpenter as one of the charming anomalies ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... reader will not stumble at a few historical inaccuracies in a narrative where a speaker in Helena's time is a brother of ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... about the need of stopping it," said the Vicar-General, continuing his own train of thought aloud, "but how are we to do it? The feeling is a perfect dynamite factory now, and the least stumble on our part will bring an explosion. If we tried to give them the money back—and you know women have a tight grip on money —we shouldn't know where to give it. Positively we're like the family of the poor fellow who had the fit—one doctor said it would ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... further without the help of someone else's eyes. Sahib's eyes are his enemies. Let the Sahib ride on my cow. She cannot stumble." ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... but a negative goodness. The practice of the latter is essential to the healthful condition of the soul. It is important that we seek earnestly to be "cleansed from secret faults." Without this, our progress in excellence will at best be slow. While "the way of the wicked is as darkness, and they stumble at they know not what," it is nevertheless true that "the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... most persons stumble over the pronunciation of names in the Bible and in classic authors. They are equally nonplussed when called upon to write words with which they are no more familiar. They cannot even pronounce simple English names like Cody, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... in the editing way. Even the humble satisfaction of adding a glossary and index has been denied to me, as there are already very good ones. I have merely added some half-dozen words to the glossary, at which I thought that English readers might perhaps stumble. When the proposal was first made to me, indeed, I thought of trying my hand at a sketch of American politics of thirteen years ago, the date of the Mexican war and of the first appearance of the "Biglow Papers." But I soon found out, first, that I was not, and had no ready means of making myself, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... saw him rush by the wretch who was trying to mislead him, to conceal his own crime. But she saw, also, the next moment, with a dismay that transfixed her to the spot, the murderous rifle raised, and the retreating, unconscious object of its aim stumble forward to the ground; then the monster, as if uncertain of the execution of his bullet, rush forward, with gleaming knife, apparently to finish his work; and then disappear in the direction of the concealed canoes, now less than a half-mile beyond. All this she had witnessed, with an ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... would light a match for his cigarette, casually as he would stumble over something, casually as he would pick up a book, he met La Mielleuse ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... possibly I could, and then taking my short Staff in my Pocket, I went t'other Night abroad, to see what Discoveries I could make: And as I went along the Strand, I met with a young Woman by the New Exchange, who pretending to stumble, catch'd hold of my Coat, to save her self from falling, and begg'd my Pardon for her Rudeness: I soon understood her meaning, and looking upon her to be one of those Cattle I was in quest of, I ask'd her whither she was going? She told me as far as Sheer-Lane, to an ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... tired and hungry. They drag and stumble along in a most tiresome manner. There is moonlight, that ought to add poetry to the scenery—but in Persia there is no poetry about anything. There are a great many caravans on the road—they all travel ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the enheritaunce gyuen that it might come of grace / that the promise mighte be certaine and sure: for if the certayntie of saluacion did hange on our merytes and worthines of our worckes / it should alwaies stumble / and be in daungier of ouerthrowe. Thus the papistes do spoile men of healthfull hope / and make men doubt / if not despaire / which is not to be done: for that nature of hope maie not ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... village street I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet. The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet And guide our Company in.... I watched them stumble. Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble; Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs Rifles, ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... system of robbery had been carried on by one and the same person—evidently a member of the Luttrell household. The spoil was concealed with great care in a locked box on a shelf, and but for an accidental stumble by which Luttrell had brought down the whole shelf and broken the box itself, it would probably have remained there undisturbed. No one would ever have dreamt of seeking for Luttrell's pocket-book in ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... in the situation of a man who has been riding a blood horse at an even, elastic gallop, and of a sudden feels him stumble and balk. As yet, he reflected, he had seen nothing but the sunshine of genius; he had forgotten that it has its storms. Of course it had! And he felt a flood of comradeship rise in his heart which would float ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... little used, extremely rough at first until we finally came out upon what was seemingly a well-built road descending to a lower level in the general direction of the river. The girl, however, was sufficiently familiar with her surroundings to advance rapidly even in the dark, and I managed to stumble blindly along after her at a pace which kept her in sight, comprehending the urgent need of haste. We crossed the front of the house, but at a distance enabling us to gain no glimpse of the two men who guarded the porch, or to even hear their voices. The only ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... assistance, Eugene knew his lessons well enough for his excitement not to make him stumble so often as to prevent Betty's pronouncing him a good boy, and dispensing with his copy, sum, piece, and reading, until the evening. These last were very tough affairs, the recitation being from Shakespeare, and the reading from the Spectator. There were no children's books, properly so called, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the wild cheer and onward dash, the race over blood-stained snow-patches, the stumble over falling forms (some friend, some foe), the ripping and slashing at fire-spitting lodges, in which some of the band had sought refuge, the agonized screaming of children, the appalling shrieks of the squaws—of ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... not so much to be wondered at, considering all things. For some of the "trees" looked to be little other than "crooked sticks" to their eyes; and of some of the "stones" it might well be said, that they "caused many to stumble." And since it was halting, and shortcoming, and inconsistency that some of their critical neighbours were looking for among "folk that set themselves up to be better than their neebors," it is not surprising that it was these that they ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... McLean assured them, "but, as I said, nothing will come of it.... It's been fifteen years. One more grain lost in the desert of sand.... By luck, you know, you might just stumble on something, some native who knew the story, but if fever carried them off and the Arabs rifled their camp, as I fancy, they'll jolly well keep their mouths shut. No white man will know.... I don't advise your people to spend much ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... foot and leg. Matchless was her presence of mind; having previously been humming an air, she continued to do so. But now came the trial; her sister was bending her steps to the same closet. If she suffered her to do so, Lottchen would stumble on the same discovery, and expire of fright. On the other hand, if she gave her a hint, Lottchen would either fail to understand her, or, gaining but a glimpse of her meaning, would shriek aloud, or by some equally decisive expression ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... hard did she work, that in a few days she was able to make the horse-shoes. Early one morning she set out for the hill of poison. On her hands and feet she went, but even with the horse-shoes on she had to be very careful not to stumble, lest some poisoned thorns should enter into her flesh, and she should die. But when at last she was over, it was only to hear that her husband was to be married that day to the daughter of a ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... upward very steady, save that I did stumble oft, and did go through six great hours. And truly it did seem that I went in an utter dark, because that I had been awhile ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... broke through into pretty deep and very cold water, and shortly afterwards Birdie put her foot into a prairie dog's hole which was concealed by the snow, and on recovering herself fell three times on her nose. I thought of Bishop Wilberforce's fatal accident from a smaller stumble, and felt sure that he would have kept his seat had he been mounted, as I was, on a Mexican saddle. It was too threatening for a long ride, and on returning I passed into a region of vivacious descriptions ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... insolent, and amused themselves by playing on their fears. "They are coming! They are coming!" they would cry whenever the weary fugitives lay down to rest. Then they would laugh to see the white men leap up again, fling away their knapsacks and their rifles, so as to make the greater haste, and stumble onward. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... strain of the day. Yet another hour remained before the afternoon session would draw to a close. How was she ever to hear the stupid geography recitation, or listen to the halting, singsong voices stumble through pages of a Reader too old for ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... are to cast your crown at His feet will make you watch that no man takes your crown from you. The hope that you are to drink wine with Him in His Father's kingdom will reconcile you meanwhile to water, lest with your wine you stumble any of His little ones. The hope of hearing Him say, Well done!—how that will make you labour and endure and not faint! And the hope that you shall one day enter in through the gates into the city, and have a right to the tree of life,—how scrupulous that will make you to keep all His commandments! ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... the way he and Chunk compared notes, and thus Scoville more truly understood Miss Lou's position. "We must be back to-morrow afternoon," he said, "in time to prevent this marriage. So, Chunk, be careful. You must not get sleepy or let your horse stumble." ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... by till sun-up," says Walt; "an' then, if we see any sign o' pursoot, kin stay hyar till the sun goes down agin. These shin oaks will gie us kiver enuf. Squatted, there'll be no chance o' thar diskiverin' us, unless they stumble right atop o' us." His companion is not in the mood to make objection, and the two lay themselves along the earth. The miniature forest not only gives them the protection of a screen but a soft bed, as the tiny trunks and leaf-laden branches ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the sergeant-at-arms—who was our man too—start down the middle aisle and saw him trip over a hostile leg and stumble and fall, and I saw a big mountaineer drop right on top of him, pinning him flat to the floor. I saw the musicians inside the orchestra rail, almost under my feet, scuttling away in two directions like a divided covey of gorgeous blue and red birds. I saw the snare drummer, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... strange what those men said about him," went on Joe. "To think that we would stumble on the wreckers right at work. We can lead the police to the very place where they have set up their ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... day. Paid sixpence to stumble about through a crowd of easels, when he might have come in next day for nothing and found the floor clear! Quite ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... "And we might, just might, you know, stumble into a situation where we would need to ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... borne the fatigue of the ascent. In a few days his agony became alarmingly acute. He grew stupid, and had frequent convulsions, his only conscious act being to get up often from his bed (which was in my wife's room, as he was usually under her care) and stumble as far as my writing-table, where he sank down again in exhaustion. The veterinary surgeon said he could do no more, and as the convulsions gradually became terribly acute, I was advised to shorten the poor animal's cruel agony and free him from his pain by a little prussic acid. We ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... a man, you will be said to have killed him; if he reappears on the scene, it will be positive that you have secured the present at the cost of the future. If he is not dead, he will die. Stumble, and you fall! Invent anything of any kind and claim your rights, you will be crotchety, cunning, ill-disposed ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... over the country, that her lips were observed to be always in motion, and that there was not a switch about her house which her neighbours did not believe had carried her several hundreds of miles. If she chanced to stumble, they always found sticks or straws that lay in the figure of a cross before her. If she made any mistake at church, and cried Amen in a wrong place, they never failed to conclude that she was saying ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... as the entomologist knew, were pitch-black places which no ray of light ever entered. He had been afraid he would be forced to stumble blindly in unlit depths, able to see nothing at all, on a par with the blind creatures among whom he moved. Yet he and Jim could see ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... Luther expressed himself in very strong terms: "They," says he, "who would defend the Patriarch in this, wantonly reject the consolation which the Holy Ghost considered to be necessary to the Church—the consolation, namely, that even the greatest saints may, at times, stumble ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... welfare, was the same thing; since, to expose her to the snares and dangers inevitably encircling a house of which the master is dissipated and unprincipled, without the guidance of a mother, or any prudent and sensible female, seemed to me no less than suffering her to stumble into some dreadful pit, when the sun is in its meridian. My plan, therefore, was not merely to educate and to cherish her as my own, but to adopt her the heiress of my small fortune, and to bestow her upon some worthy man, with whom she might spend her days in tranquility, cheerfulness, and ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... my horse a steady pace. Because, if he should stumble Upon a rough or stony place, We ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... every one of us knows that, and yet too few of us act as if it were really true. We seem to think that salvation is something that we are going to stumble upon by accident. We seem to think it is something that we are going to receive with absolutely no effort on our own part. We act as if we thought it might be slipped into our pockets while we sleep or dropped into our coffins when we die. Ask the question intelligently, heart,—"What must I ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... to sit indoors when there was nothing to do, and roamed about. His rambles frequently ended in a visit to the schoolmaster; out of curiosity he examined the books, and as he knew some of the letters, the schoolmaster's daughter amused herself by teaching him to spell. The boy would purposely stumble over his words so that she should correct him and touch his shoulder to point ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the other of retiring. So also do the Greek words for the same, which are orme and aphorme. For nature it selfe does often presse upon men those truths, which afterwards, when they look for somewhat beyond Nature, they stumble at. For the Schooles find in meere Appetite to go, or move, no actuall Motion at all: but because some Motion they must acknowledge, they call it Metaphoricall Motion; which is but an absurd speech; for though Words may be called ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... terror. How he longed for someone to comfort and speak kindly to him. Soon, he knew, his mother would be in from market; there would be a blazing fire at home, and supper, and a warm corner. Should he venture back? But then, morning would come again, and the hard work, and he would have to stumble along the sticky furrows all day, and there would be blows and threatenings to end with. No, he could not go back; it would be better even, he said to himself, to beg for his bread like the tramps he had ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... Dear, no, Wren! What for?" returned the post commander, obviously nettled. "I fancy he'll not thank you for even searching his quarters. You may stumble over his big museum in the dark and smash things. No, let him alone. If he isn't here for dinner, I'll 'tend ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... clear. In the novel itself we wander, bewildered, baffled and distracted through labyrinthine mazes. No Ariadne awaits on the threshold with the magic ball of twine to guide us through the complicated windings. We stumble along blind alleys desperately retracing our weary steps, and, after stumbling alone and unaided to the very end, reach the darkly concealed clue when it has ceased to be either of use or of interest to us. Many an adventurer must have ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... stream with the canteens to fill, chanced upon a small pool where there was a spread of smooth yellow sand. Knowing well the many weird booby traps one might stumble into on a strange world, the Terran prospected carefully, stirring up the stand with a stick. Sighting not so much as a water insect or a curious fish, he pulled off his boots, rolled up his breeches and waded in. The water ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... it is to be found in an inability to hang together in our play, and an incapacity for comprehending the said fact. Set either instrumentalist by himself, and he will manage to stumble through a tune; but put the whole orchestra together, and the result usually falls short of what should be harmony. The hornist is our feeblest musician. He has not yet succeeded in eliciting more than two notes and a half out of his instrument, and these he lets off in spasmodic ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... steady, save that I did stumble oft, and did go through six great hours. And truly it did seem that I went in an utter dark, because that I had been awhile in so constant ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... in autumn; a wild activity of thoughts, imaginations, feelings, and impulses of motion rises up from within me; a sort of bottom wind, that blows to no point of the compass, comes from I know not whence, but agitates the whole of me; my whole being is filled with waves that roll and stumble, one this way, and one that way, like things that have no common master. I think that my soul must have pre-existed in the body of a chamois chaser. The simple image of the old object has been obliterated, but the feelings, and impulsive habits, and incipient ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... yes. That every gravel bar made a better showing; the last trip had taken him above the tree line, and this time he expected to prospect along the glacier at the source of the stream. Sometimes erosions laid veins open, and any hour 'he might stumble on riches.' She smiled again, though her lip trembled, then said it was his limited outfit that troubled her most. He had taken only a light blanket and a small ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... yourself no less than others—is not that reward? Not that Castile shall deny you reward, no! Trust me that if you bring us the key of India you shall not find us niggardly! But we and they who advise us stumble at your prescribing wealth, honors and gifts that they say truly are better fitting a great prince! Trust us for enrichment and for honor do you come back with the great thing done! Leave it all now to Time that brings to pass. So you will be clearer to go forth to the blessed ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... the company and plan the rehearsals. While there I will want the history of the town and the chamber of commerce will give it to me. In that history, your affair in all its details will be recited. Later on, you can stumble in as a laborer, seeking work. I will be quartered at the leading hotel, and you at a boarding house out by the junction. But we will meet at the picture show or at a local poolroom and I will hire you ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... ferret out the truth if possible. Yet, thus far there was nothing to build upon, no clue, no motive, no suspicion as to who had perpetrated the deed. He simply faced a blank wall, in which no entrance was apparent, yet there must be one, if he was only fortunate enough to stumble upon it. Deep down in his heart West was conscious that he possessed a motive in this search far more worthy than mere curiosity. That motive was Natalie Coolidge. He smiled at the thought, yet confessed it true. In spite of her curt dismissal, his memory of the girl centred about those earlier ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... was locked and she was a prisoner. It was inky black and at every step she seemed to knock over something or stumble against cold iron. Gradually her eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, and she made out the outlines ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... never heard of their names before. They were very uninteresting, almost without exception, and yet some of the pictures were done cleverly enough. There is very little talent in this world, and what there is, it seems to me, is pretty well known and acknowledged. We don't often stumble upon geniuses in ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... where a few mounted men have taken up their station, we would join them. But before we did that, it would be necessary to find out whether they came from Kordofan, or from some of the villages on the White Nile. It would never do to stumble into a party from ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... tooke liking of one till Monday, about 60. laste, for a greater we cannot gett, excepte it be tow great; but a fine ship it is. And seeing our neer freinds ther are so streite lased, we hope to assure her without troubling them any further; and if ye ship fale too small, it fitteth well yt such as stumble at strawes already, may rest them ther a while, least worse blocks come in ye way ere 7. years be ended. If you had beaten this bussines so throuly a month agoe, and write to us as now you doe, we ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... takes to learn things! I think I was thirty-four years learning one sentence, "You can't get something for nothing." I have not yet learned it. Every few days I stumble ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... the stranger. "For instance, this 'notion,' as you call it, will never do. It isn't the thing at all; but see here, Judge, examine this hub. There's a 'notion' in that worth something. I tell you what it is, any boy who can stumble on such an idea, even by accident, has got good ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Through the bare, high-ceilinged rooms she went, opening and closing the heavy doors; on through the cold, empty hall, up the stairs, into the South bedroom. While she was closing the blinds she heard Old Chris stumble up the back stairs and into the chamber he had occupied ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... must we here remain? To sleep was impossible. Must we rise and grapple with the dead; trample on their limbs, and stumble over their unearthed bones, in endeavouring to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Jason, "your business can hardly be so important as the pulling down a king from his throne. Besides, as you may see for yourself, the river is very boisterous; and if I should chance to stumble, it would sweep both of us away more easily than it has carried off yonder uprooted tree. I would gladly help you if I could; but I doubt whether I am strong ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... opportunity offered. But the journey proved much more difficult than it had been in the ascent, as the declivity of the Alps being generally shorter on the side of Italy is consequently steeper; for nearly all the road was precipitous, narrow, and slippery, so that neither those who made the least stumble could prevent themselves from falling, nor, when fallen, remain in the same place, but rolled, both men and beasts ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... would eat and ask no question, hastily came to warn us that this had been offered to idols before being presented to us. Under these circumstances we had no option but to crave leave to refuse a present whereby a brother might have been caused to stumble. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... the young spirit with the bread of life, or they will gorge themselves with poison. Telling them that they ought not to be hungry, will not stop their hunger; shutting our eyes to facts, will only make us stumble over them the sooner; hiding our eyes in the sand, like the hunted ostrich, will not hide us from the iron necessity of circumstances, or from the Almighty will of Him, who is saying in these days to society, in language unmistakable: "Educate, or fall to pieces! Speak the whole ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... pet cat, startled from sleep on the kitchen hearth, at the same instant ran wildly up stairs; there was a start—a stumble—and then down came the candle, the ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... gained on us, for in the gloom, which to them was nothing, we did not dare to ride full speed, fearing lest our horses should stumble and lame themselves, or fall. Then it was for the second time since we had dwelt in this land of Kaloon that of a sudden the fire flamed upon the Peak. When we had seen it before, it had appeared to flash across ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... your aunt is a very brief one, and she is an extraordinary character; hard to understand. You may easily stumble on a prejudice ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he congratulated himself, "it will go hard with me if I do not either stumble on the youngling himself, or someone who can ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... hands as a favor. Ah, if they had guessed how much I needed it myself! But these men are obtuse; they cannot see any thing. They have no aim; they only live from minute to minute, and whenever they find a precipice on their route, they stumble over it, and are lost beyond redemption. My God, how scarce real men are! There are eighteen millions in Italy, and I have scarcely found two men among them. I want to save these two men, but the rest may fulfil their destiny. The Republic of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... flowery altars of youth. Like most customs in which we are nurtured, it had seemed natural and pleasant enough until she had watched the hollows deepen in her mother's temples and the tireless knotted hands stumble at their work. Then a pang had seized her and she had pleaded earnestly ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... clear, musical voice. He spoke the guttural, Nez Perce dialect, which is one of the most difficult in the world, and One-eye seemed almost to understand him—and yet there are white boys of fifteen who stumble dreadfully over such easy ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths in ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... trapo m. rag, sails; a todo —— all sails set. tras prep. behind, after; —— de behind. traslado m. likeness, imitation. trasmontar sink beyond, set. trasparente adj. transparent, clear. traspasar pierce. traspi m. slip, stumble; dar ——s stumble, reel. trastornar disorder, confuse, upset. trastorno m. disorder, confusion, disturbance. trasunto m. likeness, copy. trato m. agreement, bargain, treatment. trecho m. distance. tregua f. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... I had been postponed to that era, so much have I suffered through speaking French to Frenchmen in the presence of Englishmen. Left alone with a Frenchman, I can stumble along, slowly indeed, but still along, and without acute sense of ignominy. Especially is this so if I am in France. There is in the atmosphere something that braces one for the language. I don't say ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the Archbishop beheld him swoon, Rollant, Never before such bitter grief he'd had; Stretching his hand, he took that olifant. Through Rencesvals a little river ran; He would go there, fetch water for Rollant. Went step by step, to stumble soon began, So feeble he is, no further fare he can, For too much blood he's lost, and no strength has; Ere he has crossed an acre of the land, His heart grows faint, he falls down forwards and Death comes to him ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... shall stumble and dance, who liked to kill little children, and can hurt even the daisies ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... considered, and may exist separately, and have no Deed of tiny thing to support their existence. After what manner, therefore, do they belong to self; and how are they connected with it? For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... cities and ramparts, and moles and monuments? Segments of a fragment, which one man puts together and another throws down. Here we stumble upon thy great ones at their work. Show me now, if thou canst, in history, three great warriors, or three great statesmen, who have acted ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... his leader walks, Lest he should err, or stumble unawares On what might harm him, or perhaps destroy, I journey'd through that bitter air and foul, Still list'ning to my escort's warning voice, "Look that from me thou part not." Straight I heard Voices, and each one seem'd to pray for peace, And for compassion, to the Lamb of God ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... morning of the fifth day, seeing the old man stumble on the level flagstones of the garden, Hilary finished dressing hastily, and followed. He overtook him walking forward feebly beneath the candelabra of flowering chestnut-trees, with a hail-shower striking white on his high shoulders; and, placing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... judgments. One sole hindrance could have power to shake our good intentions, and that might happen should we feel too keen an interest in your fortunes. Therefore are we armed beforehand against our love, and therefore have we prayed to God beforehand that we stumble not because of you; for in the path of favouritism a pope cannot slip without a fall, and cannot fall without injury and dishonour to the Holy See. Even to the end of our life we shall deplore the faults which have brought this experience home to us; and may it please Gad that ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Company, and of the bank, and the extinction of all confidence by the sad discovery that there was no longer any money wherewith to pay the bank notes, they being so prodigiously in excess of the coin. After this, each step had been but a stumble: each operation a very feeble palliation. Days and weeks had been gained, obscurity had been allowed to give more chance, solely from fear of disclosing the true and terrible state of affairs, and the extent of the public ruin. Law could not wash his hands of all this before the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... mixed with some harm to others; and it is his best play in this game to strike off and lie in the place: Successful commonly in these undertakings, because he passes smoothly those rubs which others stumble at, as conscience and the like; and gratulates himself much in this advantage. Oaths and falshood he counts the nearest way, and loves not by any means to go about. He has many fine quips at this folly of plain dealing, but his "tush!" is greatest at religion; yet he uses this too, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... gave chase at once; out of the rickety old back door of the feed store we sped, nearly breaking our necks in our stumble down the uneven steps that led to a weedy yard. There was a gate in the picket fence surrounding the yard, and through this we dashed madly after the swiftly retreating Demetrius, who led us down a narrow lane back of the stores fronting on the main ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... chase," said Obed. "Those fellows want scalps and they don't care whether we're Texans or Mexicans. Besides, they may have better horses than the Mexican ponies. But it's a long chase that has no turning, and if our horses don't stumble we'll beat them. Look out for potholes and ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... enforce the regulations. But don't you suppose, fellows, that officer was hazed, and did some hazing on his own account, when he was a cadet midshipman here years ago? Of course! And that's why the officer didn't question us any more closely than he did. He was afraid he might stumble on something that would oblige him to report the whole crowd for hazing. He didn't want to do it. That officer, I'm certain, knew that, if he questioned us too closely, he'd find a lot more beneath the surface that he simply didn't want to ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... lay down, and slept again. When I woke it was past noon. I stumble in to the telephone again and ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... colleges, will freely wade, by their writings, in the deepest mysteries of monarchy and politick government. Whereupon it cannot otherwise fall out but that when men go out of their element and meddle with things above their capacity, themselves shall not only go astray and stumble in darkness, but will mislead also divers others with themselves into many mistakings and errors; the proof whereof we have lately had by a book written by Dr. Cowel, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... lustre on it." Observing in this poem a misuse of the exclamation "Oh!" Landor remarked, "'Oh!' properly is an expression of grief or pain. 'O!' without the aspirate may express pleasure or hope." Current literature rarely makes any distinction between the two, and even good writers stumble through carelessness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... savagery into my culinary instructions to the nobleman. This despotism should not prevail against me. When the free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and totter. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Sch.). It is well named; the very name evokes a mental picture of the insect. It is a living caricature, this beetle with the prodigious snout. The latter is no thicker than a horsehair, reddish in colour, almost rectilinear, and of such length that in order not to stumble the insect is forced to carry it stiffly outstretched like a lance in rest. What is the use of this embarrassing ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Indians, the tinselled, sequined, beaded, ragged flutter of the room, then from the coloured and composite clothing of a footballer, clown or jockey grinned the round face and owlish eyes of little Duval, who flew to her at once to whisper compliments and stumble on the swelling fortress of her white skirt. She realised dimly from him that her dress was as beautiful as she had hoped it might be, but what was the use of its beauty if Julien should be missing? And, looking over Duval's ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... walking with her. You don't know how happy it makes me to be here where I first knew you, to live over every event of those days. Your movable shack is almost as it used to be, though there is no absurd steel boat outside for me to stumble into. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... object in the world to him. {41} And in a sense it is natural that he should aim at this. For he knows very well that even if he becomes master of all the rest of the world, he can retain nothing securely, so long as you are a democracy; and that if he chances to stumble anywhere, as may often happen to a man, all the elements which are now forced into union with him will come and take refuge with you. {42} For though you are not yourselves naturally adapted for aggrandizement or the usurpation of empire, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... in the courtyard of the Kasbah he should stumble upon Ayoub, who indeed had by his mistress's commands been set to watch for the wazeer. The fat fellow rolled forward, his hands supporting his paunch, his little ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... sleek, crafty. Slidd'ry, slippery. Sloken, to slake. Slypet, slipped. Sma', small. Smeddum, a powder. Smeek, smoke. Smiddy, smithy. Smoor'd, smothered. Smoutie, smutty. Smytrie, a small collection; a litter. Snakin, sneering. Snap smart. Snapper, to stumble. Snash, abuse. Snaw, snow. Snaw-broo, snow-brew (melted snow). Sned, to lop, to prune. Sneeshin mill, a snuff-box. Snell, bitter, biting. Snick, a latch; snick-drawing scheming; he weel a snick can draw he is good at cheating. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... stepping warily and probing cautiously at every step, and earnestly peering about me, for after such a sight as that dead man I was never to know what new wonder I might stumble upon. About a quarter of a mile on my left—that is, on my left whilst I kept my face to the slope—there was the appearance of a ravine not discernible from where the boat lay. When I was within twenty feet of the summit of the cliff, the acclivity continuing gentle to the very brow, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the drill-field, with its open drainage trenches yawning for our feet and its scattered mounds to stumble on. Gay work, this learning to walk in the right place, stand in the right way, toss your nine pound rifle about as if it were a straw, and all with but a moment or two for thought between the first order and the second. Even Pickle was silent this morning, intent like ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... worrying about Westy, because something is always delaying that fellow, and I even hoped that he wouldn't stumble over any more good turns, until this day's work was over. If Westy fell out of a ten-story building, he'd do a good turn on the way down—that's the way ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... constantly keeping his eye on the reward he aims at is very likely to stumble and fall, and never to reach it. He, on the contrary, who thinks only how he can best perform his duty will be upheld and encouraged, and very probably obtain a higher reward than any at which he might have aspired. Pearce Ripley found this to be true in his case. Duty was his leading star. It ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Poli was the exception to this rule. Whatever had attacked him originally had done an efficient job. Most of the lower part of his face was gone. His left arm was curled and useless. The damage to his body and legs had left him with the bare capability to stumble from one spot ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... said, "We looked for the shortest way"; his ears said, "We listened for the breathing of the hounds"; and his legs said, "We ran away with you." Then he asked his tail what it had done, and it said, "Why, I got caught in the bushes or made your leg stumble; that is all I could do." So, as a punishment, the Fox stuck his tail out of his den, and the hounds saw it and caught hold of it, and dragged the Fox out of his den by it and ate him all up. So that was the end ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... Fate Hid from our eyes, in many and devious tracks Are cleft apart, in wandering mazes lost. Along them men by Fortune's dooming drift Like unto leaves that drive before the wind. Oft on an evil path the good man's feet Stumble, the brave finds not a prosperous path; And none of earth-born men can shun the Fates, And of his own will none can choose his way. So then doth it behove the wise of heart Though on a troublous track the winds of fate Sweep him away to suffer ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... was why I would take no wages, for I was already well paid; besides, it was thought that thou wouldst then certainly engage my services. I was to accidentally shoot thee while hunting. What more easy than to stumble and for my gun to explode? But when I knew thee, then I could not kill thee thus. I tried to provoke thee that night, knowing thee to be a violent-tempered man; I provoked thee into insulting me. I hoped thou wouldst have struck ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Soffarides, in one of his expeditions broke into the royal palace and having collected a large quantity of plunder, was on the point of carrying it off when his foot struck against something which made him stumble. Supposing it not to be an article of value, he put it to his mouth, the better to distinguish it. From the taste he found it was a lump of salt, the symbol and pledge of hospitality, on which he was so touched that he retired immediately ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... in from the west just in time to stumble on that gang of rats," he flared. "That's how your men came to see me. The chase happened to come in my direction, ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... Those who stumble at the prodigality and licence of his style, and the unchartered daring of his imagination, will find a most curious and brilliant discussion of the whole subject in his Essay on Shelley, which may be summed up in the injunction that "in poetry, as in the Kingdom of God, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... so as to overtake the last of the ironed slaves, and lashed at him sharply, making the poor wretch wince and take a quick step or two which brought him into collision with his fellow-sufferer in front, causing him to stumble and driving him against the next, so that fully half of the ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... nearly always did. She said that sometimes she longed for a little American summer; that it was never quite warm in Ansbach; and when they had got out into the rain, March said: "It was very nice to stumble on Chicago in an Ansbach book- store. You ought to have told her you had a married daughter in Chicago. Don't miss another ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to be found only when you seek for them; and not from rich prose only like Coleridge's own or Jeremy Taylor's, but from the poorest, like Dr Blair's or Gerald's of Aberdeen. Dryden says he cannot "but admire how some men should perpetually stumble in a way so easy"—that is, as blank verse—"into which the English tongue so naturally glides," and should strive to attain it by inverting the order of the words, to make the "blanks" sound more heroically—as, for example, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... with him. I went on to the door of my room, and still a muffled step seemed to follow me,—first it had come from below, then it was much like some one going up stairs,—but where? In my own room I still heard steps, light, slow, but distinct. Again there was a stumble and a hurried recovery,—ghosts, I reflected, ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... not very far to go, and, though it entailed an occasional stumble, he endeavoured to look about him. He was progressing along the side of the wonderful Fraser gorge, which is the great channel clearly provided by Nature for the commerce of the mountain province, and he was impressed by the spectacle upon which he gazed. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock, States climb to power by; slippery those with gold Down which they stumble to eternal mock: No chafferer's hand shall long the sceptre hold, Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... Auditor of the Treasury, was the messenger, and was Cook's firm friend till the day of his death. Cook had been a short time at school under the instruction of Smothers and Prout, but when he entered the Land Office his education was at most only the ability to stumble along a little in a primary reading-book. He, however, now gave himself in all his leisure moments, early and late, to study. Mr. Wilson remembers his indefatigable application, and affirms that it was a matter ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... had translated these words to us, we sprang to our feet, and made for the door. The Japanese immediately set up a loud and threatening cry, but did not attempt to seize us, contenting themselves with throwing oars and blocks of wood in our way, in order that in running we might stumble over them and fall. When we had almost reached the entrance of the fort, they fired a volley at us, but fortunately hit no one, although the balls whistled most unpleasantly near to our heads. We were lucky enough to get out of the ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... sceptical, and said so until I shut him up with some rather peremptory sarcasm. The bearers, who had to stumble in the dark under heavy burdens, were good-natured and joking. This we appreciated. One can never tell whether or not he is popular with a native until he and the native are caught in a ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... then, after a pause: 'Herr Greisengesang, you are an old man, and you served my father before you served me,' he added. 'It consists neither with your dignity nor mine that you should babble excuses and stumble possibly upon untruths. Collect your thoughts; and then categorically inform me of all you have been ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we retire is swept continually with fire. I climb up to the ridge. Now nothing further matters. Only not to fall alive in the hands of those over there! To die! I stumble over a ridge in the field. A few moments of unconsciousness. Then again the tacktack-tacktack of the machine guns. God, our Lord, Thou art our refuge forever and aye! I pray Thee, I pray Thee, let me die an honest soldier's death. And not suffer long. Now, dear Lord, please; now! ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... killed two buffaloes each, losing other head by reason of delivering their fire too high up in the body, a common fault with the beginner on bison. Curly ran alongside a good cow, and at the third shot was able to see the great creature stumble and fall. Yet another he killed before his revolver was empty. The butchery was sudden and all too complete. As they turned back from the chase they saw that even Sam, back at the wagon, where he had been unable to get saddle upon one of the wagon horses in time ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... not to look to the right or the left, for the path of the iron rails led them directly on. Now and again clods of new-broken earth caused them to stumble as they hobbled loosely along. If the foot of either struck against the rail, its owner sprang aside, as though in fear, toward the middle of the track. Slowly and unevenly, with all the zigzags permissible within the confining inches of the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... she stumble upon the very weapon wherewith to make an utter rout of all Caron's resolutions. For knowing nothing of the fountain from which those tears were springing, and deeming them the expression of a grief pure and unalloyed—saving, perhaps, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... of the plateau, and before returning to the gorge he thought it best to venture upon a little exploration of his own. Possibly he might stumble upon some narrower pass, one unfit for horses, which would afford him a chance of getting out of the mountains without the great risk of meeting his ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... my face, she turned to Madeleine with these angelic words, 'The happiness of others is the joy of those who cannot themselves be happy,'—and the tone with which she said them brought tears to my eyes. She falls, it is true, but each time that her feet stumble she rises higher ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... would light the print-shop lamp, make out the papers, take the money, and stumble back to bed. A sign, "CLOSED," or "NEVER CLOSED," would have been equally ineffective in stopping the night movement on the Strip. Homesteaders living miles away came after the long day's work to put in their proving-up notices. They must be in the paper the following day to go through the five ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... feet stumble by, their calcimined faces streaked with tears and fright. Gray-haired old men shiver with terror and try to hide in any small corner. Lost children and deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot. And through ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... the press, are startling novelties to him. Surrounded on every side by new machines and new tactics, he is as much bewildered as Hannibal would have been at Waterloo, or Themistocles at Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very vigour causes him to stumble. The more correct his maxims, when applied to the state of society to which he is accustomed, the more certain they are to lead him astray. This was strikingly the case with Hastings. In India he had a bad hand; but he was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... you, is thinking at the very moment he is speaking. You have the sense of watching the visible working of his inner mind; and you are far more deeply impressed than by the glib facility which does not pause, does not stumble, does not hesitate, because he does not stop to think. Many people, reading so much about Mr. Sexton's oratory, will be under the impression that he is a very rapid and fluent speaker. He is nothing of the kind. He speaks with a great slowness, grave deliberation, and there are often ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... as against friends. And possibly the Roman centurion might have turned his name to the same account, had he possessed the great Dictator's presence of mind; for he, when landing in Africa, having happened to stumble—an omen of the worst character, in Roman estimation—took out its sting by following up his own oversight, as if it had been intentional, falling to the ground, kissing it, and ejaculating that in this ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of life with more circumspection, and make no step till they think themselves secure from the hazard of a precipice, when neither pleasure nor profit can tempt them from the beaten path; who refuse to climb lest they should fall, or to run lest they should stumble, and move slowly forward without any compliance with those passions by which the heady and vehement are seduced ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... alone. She hated Gaga for his inescapable possessiveness and gentle persecution. It was a horror to Sally in her abnormal condition. She began to run up the next flight of stairs, and tripped upon her skirt. The stumble brought some little sense to her. She rose, holding the balustrade. Shot through and through with bitterness as she was, she yet clutched at sanity. When Gaga came abreast of her Sally took his arm; and they completed ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... comes to be ridden he will have flexible legs, since the quality of suppleness invariably increases with age. (15) Supple knees are highly esteemed and with good reason, rendering as they do the horse less liable to stumble or break down from fatigue ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... profitable occupation enough, if you stumble on the little churchyard covered over with silence, and folded among the hills. If you go to the churchyard with intent to procure thought, as you go into the woods to gather anemones, you are wasting your time. Thoughts must ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Kent, "we've got to hunt up Leslie. He can't be far off, and I'm in hopes we'll stumble upon him afore day. Just squat and make yourself miserable while I take a run up and ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... feet the moonlit night of their first meeting. Remembering the experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith. But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those few words which have lifted such as she above the level of the older, the wiser, and the more prudent—if she learned something of a faith that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her eyes, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... to believe the burglar had stolen the letters he told Birchill to force open the desk, as he would probably find money or papers of value there. But in order to prevent Birchill getting the letters if he should happen to stumble across the secret drawer, Hill removed them the day before. His plan was to go to Riversbrook in the morning after the burglary, and after leaving open the secret drawer which had contained the letters, to report the burglary ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the foot soldiers was far less than for the horsemen. The latter clambered up on foot, dragging their horses after them. The descent was very dangerous. The dragoon, in the steep and narrow path, was compelled to walk before his horse. At the least stumble he was exposed to being plunged headlong into the abysses yawning before him. In this way many horses and several riders perished. To transport the heavy cannon and howitzers pine logs were split in the centre, the parts hollowed ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... underbrush, here trying to evade the thorns which entangled his habit of guingon as if to detain him; there trying to step over the roots of the trees which stuck up through the ground and made the inexperienced traveler stumble again and again. Suddenly he stopped. Mirthful laughter and the sound of young voices reached his ears. The voices and the laughter seemed to come from the direction of the brook and each time seemed to ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... within me kindling into a flame, and wavering up heavenward. I am superstitious, Thomas, I am superstitious, when left alone in such a scene as this. I can walk through a country churchyard at midnight, and stumble amongst the rank grass that covers the graves of those I have lived with and loved, even if they be 'green in death, and festering in their shrouds,' with the wind moaning amongst the stunted yew—trees, and the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... to see them as they staggered with many a lurch and stumble toward each other once again, for they moved like drunken men, and the scales of their neck-armor and joints were as red as fishes' gills when they raised them They left foul wet footprints behind them on the green grass as they ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my God, I have a warning from the wise man, that when a rich man speaketh every man holdeth his tongue, and, look, what he saith, they extol it to the clouds; but if a poor man speak, they say, What fellow is this? And if he stumble, they will help to overthrow him.[122] Therefore may my words be undervalued and my errors aggravated, if I offer to speak of kings; but not by thee, O my God, because I speak of them as they are in thee, and of thee as thou art in them. Certainly ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... struggle. For ever to be falling, yet to rise again and stumble forward with eyes turned to heaven—this was the best which would ever come of man. It was accepted in its imperfection by the infinite grace of God, who pities mortal weakness, and accepts the intention for the deed—who, when there ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Caroline's evil state to that attention which it merited from her. His difficulty seemed to have been similar to that experienced by the calling ladies. He could observe no opening that promised anything but an ungracious plunge or an awkward stumble, and the ladies had been wrong in suspecting that his authority as a cleric would nerve him to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... threshold force her in. The custom of lifting the bride over the threshold, probably to avert an ill-omened stumble, has prevailed among the most diverse races. For the anointing of the doorposts Brand quotes Langley's translation of Polydore Vergil: "The bryde anoynted the poostes of the doores with swynes' grease, because she thought by that meanes to dryve awaye all misfortune, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... his best to keep out of the way of the purser and succeeded until nightfall. But then, when he was carrying an extra heavy trunk, Peter Polk got in his way and made him stumble and drop the piece of baggage. The trunk was split open at one end and some of the contents fell on the deck. It was a lady's trunk, filled with feminine wearing apparel, and a ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... shivering along, till the snow, gathering in balls on the soles of their shoes, or a fragment of some broken article, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their comrades, encountered in the way, caused them to stumble and fall. There their groans were unheeded; the snow soon covered them; slight hillocks marked the spots where they lay: there was their only grave. The road, like a cemetery, was thickly studded with these elevations; the most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected; they ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Something seemed to crack, and she saw the off horse stumble and plunge. The other horse flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches as they drove in among the birches. The team stopped, and Hawtrey, who sprang ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... distorted unnaturally, in a life and death struggle, with bloodshot eyes, with foaming, gnashing mouths. They attack and kill one another and try to mangle each other. I leap to my feet. I race out into the night and tread on quaking flesh, step on hard heads, and stumble over weapons and helmets. Something is clutching at my feet like hands, so that I race away like a hunted deer with the hounds at his heels—and ever over more bodies—breathless... out of one field into another. Horror is crooning over my head. Horror is crooning beneath my ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... was building with the money that he had won on the day of his lucky jump. He wandered on, his eyes fixed on the sands, so that he did not see the bailiff drive his boat behind a rock, while he changed himself into a heap of wreckage which floated in on the waves. A stumble over a stone recalled Andras to himself, and looking up he beheld the mass of wreckage. 'Dear me! I may find some use for that,' he said; and hastened down to the sea, waiting till he could lay hold of some stray rope which might float towards him. Suddenly—he ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... not fear!" quickly. "You!" a bitter smile crossed his face. "One may see a star and long to draw nearer it, though one knows it is always beyond reach, unattainable! May even stumble forward, led by its light—bright, beautiful! Whither?" He laughed abruptly. "One has ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard him out—or as nearly out as he can stumble. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... rises from his chair, after a couple of hours, he has only enough strength left to stumble across the room. He sinks down on his bed and lies there as if Death held him in his clutches. It is not invigorating sleep which has closed his eyes, but a stupor, a long fainting fit during which he remains ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... country school, had had visions of the girl riding a thoroughbred in Central Park, with a groom in attendance; whereas the reality was the old man who served both as coachman and butler, in carefully kept livery, guiding two horses apt to stumble from extreme age through the shopping district, and the pretty face of the girl looking out of the window of an ancient coupe which, nevertheless, had a coat of arms upon its door. Miss Farrel imagined Rose in a brilliant ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... count. We live in a revolutionary period and nothing is so important as to be aware of it. The measure of our self-consciousness will more or less determine whether we are to be the victims or the masters of change. Without philosophy we stumble along. The old routines and the old taboos are breaking up anyway, social forces are emerging which seek autonomy and struggle against slavery to non-human purposes. We seem to be moving towards some such statecraft as I have tried to suggest. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Shivering graybeards shuffle and stumble, Righting themselves with a frozen frown, Grumbling at every snowy tumble; But young folks know why the snow ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... and looked with admiration at the little man. He saw the hopelessness of the situation. If he attempted to search for the key in the long grass, the chances were ten to one that Stoliker would stumble on the pistol before Yates found the key, in which case the reporter would be once more at the mercy ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... them, and delighted when he did find them. "Here are the signs," he would say, "we are on the right trail." But we were not on the right trail. The right trail—the Nascaupee route—was miles to the northward. We eventually did stumble upon a trail to Michikamau, but it was another one—a very old one—and we found it only ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Golden-Beard. But what had she done on earth to be tortured like this by Providence? It was the crowning blow—to stumble against Goujet, and be seen by her blacksmith friend, pale and begging, like a common street walker. And it happened just under a gas-lamp; she could see her deformed shadow swaying on the snow like a real caricature. You would have said she was drunk. Mon Dieu! not to have a crust of bread, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... It is not very far to your home. Come!' and stooping low over the prostrate form he lifted her very carefully and holding her in a position the least painful for her, began again to battle with the storm, walking more carefully now and groping his way through the stony field lest he should stumble and fall and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... blind man behind his leader walks, Lest he should err, or stumble unawares On what might harm him, or perhaps destroy, I journey'd through that bitter air and foul, Still list'ning to my escort's warning voice, "Look that from me thou part not." Straight I heard ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... much," said Christie, gravely. "I am not wise about such things. I know there are some who make this a stone to stumble over—that we can do nothing, and we must just wait. But don't you remember how it is said, 'Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him when He is near.' 'They that seek Me early shall find Me.' And in the New Testament, 'Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... his life. His hair has whitened; all passion ought long ago to have died out of him; thousands of events of infinitely greater consequence have happened; he has read much in philosophy and religion, and has forgotten it all, and a slip on the ice when skating together, or a stumble on the stair, or the pressure of a hand prolonged just for a second in parting, is felt with its original intensity, and the thought of it drives warm blood once more through ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... perfectly natural; and the cropped head was so suspicious, that it was no wonder that at the first station, the old gentleman gathered up his umbrella, with intense courtesy squeezed gingerly to the door, carefully avoiding any stumble over perilous toes, and made his escape—entering another carriage, whence he no doubt signed cautions against the lunatic and his keeper, since no ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conception of her beauty. But Don Quixote was determined that they were intolerant blasphemers who simply had to be thrashed. So he suddenly charged with such vehemence and fury that, if luck had not interfered and made his gentle steed stumble, the trader might have been killed. As Rocinante went down, our gallant hero went over his head, and after he had struck the ground he rolled for some distance. But when he tried to rise he could not: he was so weighted down with armor, helmet, spurs, buckler and lance. To make matters worse, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... produce you the necessary informations; which I desire you will enter in your little book, Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions will therefore be more necessary. Pleasing in company is the only way of being pleased in it yourself. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... death (viii. 27-ix. 1). Transfiguration, lunatic boy cured, journey through Galilee, second prediction of death, arrival at Capernaum, the value of a child's example, the danger of causing one to stumble (ix. 2-50). ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... degraded," and speaks to young men with something of the passion of the true Man—"It were better for you that a millstone were hanged about your neck and you cast into the depths of the sea, than that you should cause one of these little ones to stumble"; when the fact that a foolish, giddy girl's feet have slipped and fallen is no longer the signal for every man to look upon her as fair game, and to trample her deeper into the mire, but the signal to every man ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... escaped from the whole three had not certain guests who were in the house, hearing the noise, rushed in, and helped to secure him. The boy was true to his word, assisting him to the best of his ability, flinging himself between the legs of his father's assailants, causing several of them to stumble and fall. At length, the fellow was secured, and led before a magistrate; the boy, to whom he was heard to say something which nobody understood, and to whom, after the man's capture, no one paid much attention, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... head and laughed under her breath. 'You do really stumble on such delicious compliments. And yet, do you know, I think my brother would be immensely pleased to think you were an outcast from decent society if only he could be thought one too. He has been ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... experience to be true. I warn you that you will find it true one day; that all spite, passion, prejudice, suspicion, hard judgments, contempt, self-conceit, blind a man's reason, and heart, and soul, and make him stumble and fall into mistakes, even in worldly matters, just as surely as shutting our eyes makes us stumble in broad daylight. He who gives way to such passions is asleep, while he fancies himself broad awake. His life is a dream; and like a ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... all the Hawaiian words used in the prose text, is appended. Let no one imagine, however, that by the use of this little crutch alone he will be enabled to walk or stumble through the foreign ways of the simplest Hawaiian mele. Notes, often copious, have been appended to many of the mele, designed to exhaust neither the subject nor the reader, but to answer some of the questions of the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... there was a living presence in that spooky dungeon struck terror to Pee-wee's very soul. He could not bring himself to move, much less to speak. But he could not stand idly where he was, and if he should stumble over a human form in that unknown blackness.... What could be more appalling than that? Was this uncanny place a prison for poor, injured captives? Was there, lying just a few feet from him, some suffering victim of those scoundrels? What did it ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a moralist," said I, not a little astonished in my turn by such an address from such a person. "I could not have expected to stumble upon a philosopher so easily. Have you any wares in your box likely to suit me? if so, I should like to purchase of so moralizing ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down some way farther off from the fire than usual, and Fenton, pretending to stumble as he passed, threw himself down by his side. Their guards, taking no notice of this, allowed them to remain where they were, while they set themselves to cooking part of a deer they had shot during the day. The Indians, who had been ranging ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... misapprehension of the conditions in which they were placed, of the atmosphere in which they lived. Certain details, which seem to us inexplicable in some of these buildings, were, no doubt, imperatively required by the position and needs of the surroundings. In fact, we stumble, we feel ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... was asking himself. "Two hours ago, Fandor telephones me that he must see me on a matter of the utmost urgency ... he telephones me that he cannot go out, that he is waiting for me.... And now, not only is he not here, but I stumble on an agent from the Second Bureau.... I encounter a Vagualame disguised, who runs as if all the devils of hell were after him ... who makes off with extraordinary agility, whose presence of mind in burking pursuit is marvellous!... Who is this fellow?... What was ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... little, but dines on the champagne, feels an unaccountable depression of spirits later on in the evening, and takes more brandy, without soda this time; and so on, and so on; till, after a period of sleeplessness, he begins to have ugly dreams, then to see waking visions, hear imaginary voices, stumble upon the edge of an imaginary precipice. If he is an elderly man he gets shaky in the lower limbs, then his hands become habitually tremulous, especially in the early morning, when he is like a figure hung on wires—and so on, and so on; and unless he pulls himself up by a great moral effort, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... short-sighted he had managed to stumble backwards, somehow or other, into a large receptacle of lime which was being slaked for patching up a wall. Lime, in that condition, is boiling hot. Mr. Keith's trousers were rather badly scalded. He was sensitive on that ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... as to his fopperies of orthodoxy, Asirvadam is continually dying of Pariah roses in aromatic pains of caste. If in his goings and comings one of the "lilies of Nilufar" should chance to stumble upon a bit of bone or rag, a fragment of a dish, or a leaf from which some one has eaten,—should his sacred raiment be polluted by the touch of a dog or a Pariah,—he is ready to faint, and only a bath can revive him. He may not touch his sandals with his hand, nor repose in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Girl, El Nido, and not much of a place!" her husband told her. "That's the Hotel McKinley, over there where the lights are! We stay there to-night, and drive out to the mine to-morrow. I'll manage the bags, but don't you stumble!" ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... dead. Others of us mortals, more reserved, are content to keep such distance as we may from even the shadow of a shade. But there's no getting away from ghosts nowadays, for even if you shut your eyes to them in actual life, you stumble over them in the books you read, you see them on the stage and on the screen, and you hear them on the lecture platform. Even a Lodge in any vast wilderness would have the company of spirits. Man's love ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... strenuously I strove to do so. I was outcast and forgotten! I had gone through the "vale of misery;" but I could not "use it as a well;" for my pools were empty! Instead of my Creator directing my "going in the way," He had left me to stumble forward blindly, until I had fallen into the Slough of Despond,—the ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... still, stupidly conscious of the humming of the bees, stupidly staring after the flying child. Then he stirred himself into pursuit, crying, "Stay, fool, stay!" but desisted instantly, for the girl was as fleet as a fawn, and could run surely where his feet would stumble. Already she was out of sight in the thick ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of them cared much for this man. He was not a man to make close friends. But death had given him a new dignity among them, and the rough hands lifted him, and bore him to the boat as tenderly as though a jar or a stumble might ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... do not stumble, Though thy path be dark as night; There's a star to guide the humble— Trust in God and do the right. Though the road be long and dreary, And the end be out of sight; Foot it bravely, strong or weary— Trust in God and do ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... softly, sweet Quiet-foot, Stumble not, whisper not, smile not: By this dark ivy stoop cheek and brow. Still even thy heart! What ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... thet's goin' to receive it: Ef you've a son in th' army, wy, it's comfortin' to hear He'll hev no gretter resk to run than seein' th' in'my's rear, Coz, ef an F.F. looks at 'em, they ollers break an' run, Or wilt right down ez debtors will thet stumble on a dun (An' this, ef an'thin', proves the wuth o' proper fem'ly pride, Fer sech mean shucks ez creditors are all on Lincoln's side); Ef I hev scrip thet wun't go off no more 'n a Belgin rifle, An' read thet it's at par on 'Change, it makes me feel deli'fle; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... cave up there. Don't you know the difference yet in the openings? Now, be a good fellow. It doesn't follow that because we have drawn all the rest blank, you won't stumble across a good ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... my finding a brown thrasher's nest; it is not a nest you are likely to stumble upon in your walk; it is hidden as a miser hides his gold, and watched as jealously. The male pours out his rich and triumphant song from the tallest tree he can find, and fairly challenges you to come and look for his treasures in his vicinity. But ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... up in the firs quite suddenly, as though he had thrown reserve to the four winds, a bluebird repeated her "May—May—May" on three notes, high, low, and high again, a little musical stumble of delight. It had begun again—that whistling-away of winter ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... open, allowing another youth in gray uniform to stumble inside. One of the guards in the corridor beyond shoved the newcomer forward, and Phillips' eyebrows twitched as he had a closer look. This ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... inevitably breaks down. Every art which had its absolute technique is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who pats his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... captain was right, made no farther sign, and now began the most interesting part of the journey. With the exception of having to be careful not to stumble over the blocks of coral limestone which lay here and there in their road, it was easy walking in spite of the darkness, while this latter was modified by the brilliant stars overhead, the dazzling ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... startling novelties to him. Surrounded on every side by new machines and new tactics, he is as much bewildered as Hannibal would have been at Waterloo, or Themistocles at Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very vigor causes him to stumble. The more correct his maxims, when applied to the state of society to which he is accustomed, the more certain they are to lead him astray. This was strikingly the case with Hastings. In India he had a bad hand; but he was master of the game, and he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the neighboring village, strict instructions being given him to ride carefully in the middle of the track, as, treading in the deep snow, the horse might "ball,"—an expression applied to taking up snow in the hollow of the hoof, which causes the animal to stumble. An unusually long time elapsed before the messenger made his appearance from his mission, and then he was seen making his way painfully through the snow, leading the horse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... name, it is a sign he has a plot on you. Never more active in his businesses, than when they are mixed with some harm to others; and it is his best play in this game to strike off and lie in the place: Successful commonly in these undertakings, because he passes smoothly those rubs which others stumble at, as conscience and the like; and gratulates himself much in this advantage. Oaths and falshood he counts the nearest way, and loves not by any means to go about. He has many fine quips at this folly of plain dealing, but his "tush!" ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... early summer, which puts forth the fragrant bud and blossom of sin e'er its bitter fruits ripen and turn to ashes on the lips of age. It is the happy transition period, when long legs, and loose joints, and verdant awkwardness, first stumble on the vestibule of manhood. Did you never observe him shaving and scraping his pimpled face till it resembled a featherless goose, reaping nothing but lather, and dirt, and a little intangible fuzz? That is the first symptom of ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... Still, though Dryden's dirty plays would have encountered no objection before such a tribunal, the same facilities were not likely to be accorded to anything which bore the name of John Milton, ex-secretary to Oliver, and himself an austere republican. Tomkyns—that was the young chaplain's name—did stumble at a phrase in ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... tendency of the insidious cup. For the unerring word declares, "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." "They are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment." ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... and for me, I stood beside him and my tears dripped like a summer shower. Like the first of the shower, as somebody says; the pressure at my heart was too great to let them flow. O life, and death! O message of mercy, and deaf ears! O open door of salvation, and feet that stumble at the threshold! After ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... pair of feet in Boston, nor a pair of hands, either, that I'd rather have serve me than yours, no matter if they stumble and blunder all day! I shall love stumbles and blunders—if you make them. Now run home, and don't ever let me hear ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... and genuine. But the answer and explanation is very simple. The medium (particularly the young medium) may become panic-stricken by the thought that "perhaps this is merely the result of my own imagination or fancy, instead of spirit power," and the result will be that he will begin to halt and stumble, stammer and stutter, instead of allowing the message to flow through him uninterrupted. This is particularly true when the message is of the nature of a test of identity, and where the vocal organs of the medium are being ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... with myself. I haven't done what I ought not and then tried to persuade myself that it was right. I always knew it was wrong, and I did it anyhow. And the hope I have is that, like the man in Browning's poem, I believe I always try to get up again, no matter how often I stumble. I sha'n't give up hope until I am willing to lie still. And I guess, after all—" he lifted his head suddenly—"I ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... to rub in the salt. I was going to chase you through all the inquiry courts for this. Instead, you got a lucky break, so I can't do a thing. You ought to be tarred and feathered through every city of the Federation, but because a destroyer happened to stumble in here at the right time you'll end up a hero." Her voice caught in ...
— This One Problem • M. C. Pease
... few steps, Roscoe, after the first shock of surprise, following silently behind him. He saw Tom stumble, struggle to regain his balance, heard a crunching sound, and then, to his consternation, saw him sink down and ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in the bed was the one whom, to my cost, I had suffered myself to stumble on the night before, there could, of course, not be the faintest doubt. And yet, directly I saw him, I recognised that some astonishing alteration had taken place in his appearance. To begin with, he seemed younger,—the decrepitude of age had given ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... mistaken, child," he said, very calmly now. "I believe it is not God's will that you remain to be taken by Breault. You must go. There is no time to lose. If Breault does not stumble off the trail in this gloom he will be here in a ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... likewise, prone here as so often to make a literal and material interpretation of his statements, said one to another: "This is a hard saying; who can hear him?" Or according to our idiom—who can understand him? Jesus asked them squarely if what he had just said caused them to stumble, and in order to be sure that they might not miss his real meaning and therefore teaching, said: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... commissions had been attended to and we had waited for several passengers who were to come, we finally left the inn and went aboard. At first there was nothing but a confused mass of people and luggage, oars that caused us to stumble, sails that dropped on our heads, men falling over each other and not knowing where to go; then everything quieted down, each one found his nook, the luggage was put in the bottom of the boat, the sailors got on the benches, and the passengers ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... Making an effort to calm her, I try to approach, but a sudden jerk on the chain attached to my manacles causes intense pain in my arms, and a rough voice cries "Back." Back? Why? I do not want to abandon Nadine, and instinctively I grasp the bed behind me. Another and a stronger jerk, I stumble, and a piece of broken glass pierces my thin shoe, and cuts my foot, and I am pulled backwards. I am now against that part of the wall where, at the height of about three feet, there is an iron ring, and whilst one of the soldiers attaches my chain to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... O thou most proud, saith the Lord God of Hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee. And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... see them as they staggered with many a lurch and stumble toward each other once again, for they moved like drunken men, and the scales of their neck-armor and joints were as red as fishes' gills when they raised them They left foul wet footprints behind them ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a long sword, which rattled against the stairs. Next was seen a stout man, dressed in rich and courtly attire, but not of courtly demeanor; his gait had the swinging motion of a seaman's walk; and chancing to stumble on the staircase, he suddenly grew wrathful, and was heard to mutter an oath. He was followed by a noble-looking personage in a curled wig, such as are represented in the portraits of Queen Anne's time and earlier; and the breast of his coat was decorated with an embroidered ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... learned the inflections of his voice, the variations of his walk, the very language of his cane as it touched the pavement. Nothing escaped her. She knew the degree of drunkenness he had reached, she trembled as she heard him stumble on the stairs; one night she picked up some pieces of gold at the spot where he had fallen. When he had drunk and won, his voice was gruff and his cane dragged; but when he had lost, his step had something sharp, short and angry about it; he hummed in a clear voice, and carried his cane ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... allowed either O'Shea or Madame Le Maitre to suspect that in his stumble he had involuntarily seen his companion on the midnight journey. He did not think that the sea-maid herself knew that he had seen her there. He might have been tempted now to believe that the vision was some bright illusion, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... old scout," said Jolly Bill, as he flung a strong arm around Glen's broad shoulders. "I can walk as gracefully as you if not as powerfully. I'm all O. K., warranted not to slip or stumble, ready to give a Castle Cakewalk or an imitation of a Highland fling at a moment's notice. What do you think of your ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... with this explanation. Gringoire took her by the hand; his companion picked up the lantern and walked on in front. Fear stunned the young girl. She allowed herself to be led away. The goat followed them, frisking, so joyous at seeing Gringoire again that it made him stumble every moment by thrusting its horns between ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... forth thy hand; stretch forth thy hand to God; Nor falter thou, nor stumble at His word. And if in service thou shalt faithful be, His promise of salvation ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... stickler for full-blown loveliness. I may find a man who has become inoculated with western heresies and believes that a woman with intellect is desirable, even though under weight. I may find a fool, or an aristocrat who has gambled. I may stumble upon good fortune if I put her out among the young men. Yes, I must exhibit ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... discipline, vigorous wise subordination and co-ordination,—is so unspeakably important. Professions, "regimented human pursuits," how many of honorable and manful might be possible for men; and which should not, in their results to society, need to stumble along, in such an unwieldy futile manner, with legs swollen into such enormous elephantiasis and no go at all in them! Men will one day think of the force they squander in every generation, and the fatal damage they encounter, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... collection of early Christian mosaics. It is an interest simple, as who should say, almost to harshness, and leads one's attention along a straight and narrow way. There are older churches in Rome, and churches which, looked at as museums, are more variously and richly informing; but in Rome you stumble at every step on some curious pagan memorial, often beautiful enough to make your thoughts wander far from the strange stiff ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... proscribed as regicides, when the word Jacobin sent a thrill of horror down every respectable spinal chord, the daughter of Necker raised her voice to say that if, during the stormy years just passed, the people of France had done nothing but stumble from crime to folly and from folly to crime, the fault did not, after all, lie with them, but with the old regime. If Frenchmen had failed to show the virtues of freemen, it was because they had for so many centuries been ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... God, I have a warning from the wise man, that when a rich man speaketh every man holdeth his tongue, and, look, what he saith, they extol it to the clouds; but if a poor man speak, they say, What fellow is this? And if he stumble, they will help to overthrow him.[122] Therefore may my words be undervalued and my errors aggravated, if I offer to speak of kings; but not by thee, O my God, because I speak of them as they ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... The proud historians of the crusades slide and stumble over this humiliating step. Yet, since the heroes knelt to salute the emperor, as he sat motionless on his throne, it is clear that they must have kissed either his feet or knees. It is only singular, that Anna should not have amply supplied the silence or ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... words stumble in my throat, and my heart burns and bleeds. Here is the London Times! Read aloud from it what William Howard Russell has witnessed—I cannot read the words—I would be using my own words—listen, Rahal! Listen, Thora! and oh, may God ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to be real—it was so unlikely an adventure to tumble into such a well of sympathy. One might stray into the desert easily—that was on the cards and that was the law of life; but it was too rare an accident to stumble on a crystal well. Yet if her aspirations seemed at one moment too extravagant to be real they struck him at the next as too intelligent to be false. They were both high and lame, and, whims for whims, he preferred them to any he had met in a like ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... width of the town lay between our camp and the foot of the rugged path that led down from the promontory; but when we were fairly in the streets, and no longer had rough rocks to stumble over in the darkness, we went forward at a very slashing pace. And we were further helped now by the fact that day was breaking, so that we could see clearly where we were going; and we had also within us that feeling of cheer and encouragement that ever is given ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... Christ by their own evil lives, by their worldliness and profligacy, or by their bitterness and quarrelsomeness; who make religious profession a by-word and a mockery in the mouths of the ungodly, and cause Christ's little ones to stumble. Let them be afraid, if they will; for it were better for them that a millstone were hanged about their neck, and they were drowned in the midst of the sea. But those who hate their sins, and long to leave their sins ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... not a grain of fear that I might stumble and kill him. It was all I could do to insist on his being carried down in an arm-chair ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... in looking too high in thy journey heavenward. You know men that run a race do not use to stare and gaze this way and that, neither do they use to cast up their eyes too high, lest haply, through their too much gazing with their eyes after other things, they in the mean time stumble and catch a fall. The very same case is this: if thou gaze and stare after every opinion and way that comes into the world, also if thou be prying overmuch into God's secret decrees, or let thy heart too much entertain questions about some nice foolish curiosities, thou mayst ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... that ye walk circumspectly." Eph. 5:15. To walk circumspectly is to walk cautiously; to look where one is stepping; to be vigilant, watchful, diligent, attentive. Be our pathway ever so light, if we do not look where we are stepping, we may stumble. Conybeare and Howson render the above text in these words: "See then that ye walk without stumbling." We are to walk not as foolish people but as wise. We would say that the man acts foolishly who does not look at all in the way he is walking. ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... him alone, Gibbons; as long as he is forward he can do no harm; but if you see him working his way aft, after it gets dark, it will do him no harm if you manage to stumble against him and give him a clout ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... you expected to stumble over a mine with the men all at work. You expected to find a shaft and mules and men on every side. How about ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... middle of the second week, he came home tired after a long day's work. The lamp that usually stood all night in the hall had burned itself out, and he had to stumble upstairs in the dark. He made considerable noise in doing so, but nobody seemed to be disturbed. The whole house was utterly quiet, and probably everybody was asleep. There were no lights under any of the doors. All was in darkness. It was ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... like rather a blind trail to me, Major," he said kindly, "but I'm no spoil-sport in such an affair. You might have the luck to stumble onto your party, and I'd take the chance myself if I were in your shoes. You ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... if you please, and be as careful as possible of branches, and don't stumble." She uttered this as if she were giving Jim his evening lesson: and then with a sudden cry she laughed out: "Oh! but I haven't played you your tune, and you must have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it dodged one of the workers that sought to seize it. Gahan hoped that it would gain its liberty, why he did not know other than at closer range it had every appearance of being a creature of his own race. Then he saw it stumble and go down and instantly its pursuers were upon it. Then it was that Gahan's eyes chanced to return to the figure of the creature the ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fall, and that white surface would be broken by a black shapeless heap. A policeman would find it on his next round, or some drunken reveler would stumble over it, or the good people on their way to early mass—ah! The seamed countenance lit up suddenly with a ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... give up yet, Will. Of course if the canes are here they were not put where we'd be likely to stumble over them. We've just got to ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... See Platonius, in Aristoph. cur. Kster, p. xi.] As they were prohibited from bringing portraits of real persons on the stage they were, after the loss of their freedom, very careful lest they should accidentally stumble upon any resemblance, and especially to any of their Macedonian rulers; and in this way they endeavoured to secure themselves against the danger. Yet the exaggeration in question was hardly without its meaning. Accordingly we find it stated, that an unsymmetrical ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... short in his descent of the hill road as he saw a man walking unsteadily toward him. Moving to one side he watched the drunken fisherman stumble on, heard the low mumbling of his voice. Then the moonlight fell ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Mark Twain, while lacking the subtilty and pathos of the other, has more breadth, variety, and ease. His sketches of life are arabesque in their strange combinations. Bits of bright, serious description, both of landscape and society, carry us along till suddenly we stumble on some master-stroke of grotesque and irresistible fun. He understands the value of repose in art. One tires of a page where every sentence sparkles with points, and the author is constantly attitudinizing ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... in the house, for my own reasons, but told her that it were safer for herself to wait for some stirrup cup chance, as it were. That day I saw that it had come, and I cut a thorn from the nearest bush and was ready. I could not reach the girl to stumble against her." ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... attire,—a good enough Shaksperian device,—but how remarkable that a woman wandering crazily in the dark, and already sufficiently disguised, should borrow a tell-tale cloak and a worse than useless sword from a corpse that she happens to stumble upon! No wonder that Schiller in revising for the stage decided to let Leonora live rather than provide for her death by such a stagy tour de force. In the stage version, however, she does not reappear after the parting scene, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... speak it reproachfully, but rather sorrowfully, that a person so excellently gifted as yourself—I mean touching natural qualities—has not yet received that true light, which is a lamp to the paths, but are contented to stumble in darkness, and among the graves of dead men. It has been my prayer in the watches of the night, that your ladyship should cease from the doctrine which causeth to err; but I grieve to say, that our candlestick being about to be removed, the land will most likely be involved ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Nature's principles in order to lead the sufferers back to Nature's ways. Our minds are far enough beyond our bodies to lead us to help ourselves out of mistaken opinions; although often the sincere help of others takes us more rapidly over hard ground and prevents many a stumble. ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... Revolution; if, in one word, Louis XVI., KING, appeared to the nation a living conspiracy against her liberty; if the nation suspected him of regretting in his soul too much the loss of supreme power—of causing the new constitution to stumble, in order to profit by its fall—of conducting liberty into snares to rejoice in anarchy—of disarming the country because he secretly wished it to be defeated—then the nation had a right to make him descend from the throne, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... good dwarfs took pity on him, and gave him the coffin. The prince had it borne away by his servants. They happened to stumble over a bush, and the shock forced the bit of poisoned apple which Snowdrop had tasted out of her throat. Immediately she opened her eyes, raised the coffin-lid, and sat up alive once more. "Oh, heaven!" cried she, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... blessed Cid, if they left it where it was, which was in front of the door of the Sacristy, before the steps of the altar, it would neither be seemly for the service of the altar, because it was in the way thereof, nor for his dignity, by reason that they might stumble against it; ... moreover it was fallen somewhat to decay, and set badly upon the stone lions which supported it; and there were other knights placed above him. Whereupon the Abbot, Prior, Monks, and Convent, resolved that they would translate ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... been practically impossible for two men to have passed through the entire twenty-seven chambers without encountering an apt in nearly every one of them. Once a month they sleep for a full day, and it was our good fortune to stumble by accident upon one ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the yellow sand. The fisheries are gone, the papyrus has withered; for centuries no native prince has been seated on the throne. It is a land of the dead. The dead are everywhere. At every step you stumble over a mummy, the mummy of a dead cat, a dead dog, or a dead and shrivelled Pharaoh. Its greatest asset is its departed glory, and every grain of sand blown from the mighty desert, and every wave of reflected light flung back from the Lybian ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... they mean by "germs" primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions, and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip in attribution, and stumble ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... then the laugh seemed a good ways off. At any instant some one of the many passing to and fro might stumble into the hole and the game would be up. Or a flare from a star-shell might reveal him crouching beside his prisoner. His prisoner! What irony there was in ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... adorns this window, the sunset that. There is no hour from dawn to dark in which some gem of ancient painting does not look its best, while little noticed, if seen at all, at other hours. Some are seen by a reflected light; others, when the church is so dark that one may stumble against a person in the nave, gather to themselves the dim and scattered rays like an aureole, from which they look out with soft distinctness; and there are others, again, upon which a sun-ray, finding a narrow passage through arch after arch, alights with a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... success; the greatest office ever held by a Negro in America—greater than Douglass or Bruce or Lynch had held—a landmark, a living example and inspiration. A man owed the world success; there were plenty who could fail and stumble and give multiple excuses. Should he be one? He viewed the other side. What must he pay for success? Aye, face it boldly—what? Mechanically he searched for his mail and undid the latest number of the Colored American. He was sure the answer stood there in Teerswell's biting vulgar English. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... every nerve without being urged. But with all our speed we could not outstrip the wolves that grew every moment more numerous. If we could only keep up our pace we might escape, but should a horse stumble, the harness give way, or the sledge overturn, we were hopelessly lost. We threw away our furs and cloaks keeping only our arms and ammunition. The wolves hardly paused over these things but steadily adhered to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of directing sinners to Christ is one of vast responsibility. How distressing the consequences, when the weary traveller is directed in the wrong way! How deeply so, if his way lie through the forest, where he is exposed, if night overtake him, to stumble over precipices, sink in the mire, or be devoured by wild beasts! Yet, what is this, in comparison to leading astray the soul that is inquiring for the way of salvation? "He that winneth souls is wise." I cannot, however, pursue this subject here; but must refer you to a little work, entitled ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... at him in startled amazement, but he was walking along, shaking himself from his stumble, and looking up and down ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... I certainly stumble on my stories, as well as stumble through them perhaps. Some incident or unexpected impulse is the beginning of their existence. One October day I was walking on a country road, and a chestnut burr lay in my path. I said to myself, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... and I'll take care of you," she said. "There is the step. Don't stumble. Here, steady yourself with the umbrella. We are almost there now." Her voice was cold and hard; but the words were those she might have used to Archibald had she been leading him ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... again; but again he fell. When he came back to the village he told the old men what had happened to him. They remembered then that a long time before there had been buried there a medicine woman or conjurer. Doubtless it was her medicine that made him stumble. ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... himself from the struggle and plunged after Rachel, now in full sight of Kenkenes. He saw her retreat, warding off the fat courier with her hands; he saw her stumble and fall; he saw Anubis fly, with a chatter of rage, in the face of the courier, and struggling mightily, he threw off his captors, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... you all ready for me?" asked the young inventor, as he took up his curious weapon, and followed Ned out into the yard. It was so dark that they had fairly to stumble along. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... begins the study of his subject—the witness—before the trial. In subtle ways with which experience has made him familiar, he studies his man, his life, his character, his habits, his strength, his weakness, his foibles. He divines when he will hesitate, when he will stumble, and he is ready to pounce upon him and force his hesitation into an attempt at concealment, his stumble ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... maidens call out to him, and now one and now the other invites him to come to her. As he follows their voices one of them leads him to fall into the water, and the other makes him stumble on porcupine quills. Exhausted, Leux then goes to sleep, wearied out with his exertions, but when he awoke ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... open. At times I would turn and listen; and presently I had half persuaded myself that my pursuer had abandoned the chase, or was a mere creation of my disordered imagination. Then I heard the sound of the sea. I quickened my footsteps almost into a run, and immediately there was a stumble in my rear. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... And he would stumble along, so weak the sweat broke out on him and he scarce could lift a leg. But with the shroud over his arm, he went on and on and on as best he could; his long, ragged gray hair a-flying and a wild glare in his eyes and those eyes fast fixed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... following order: First, four surveyors marching with their heads over their shoulders, at imminent risk of an undignified stumble in the trail; next, Clare Starling, flanked on one side by Gaviller, on the other by Doc Giddings, with two more surveyors on the outlying wings, peering forward to get a glimpse of her; then Captain Stinson, Mathews, and Sergeant Stonor in a line, talking about the state of the crops, and making ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... an office like this, to make the way of the Lord clear through all the generations, reason is that we should see everything, and learn all that man is and can be. These things are too deep for us; we stumble on, and know not till after. But now to me ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... she shall be brought up, and her maids shall lead her as with the voice of doves tabring upon their breasts. I see a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcasses; and there is no end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses.(1085) Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding places of the young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion's whelp, and none made them afraid: ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... crowned and vine, Rides Bacchus, by two champing tigers driven: Around him on the sand deep-soaked with brine Satyrs and Bacchantes rush; the skies are riven With shouts and laughter; Fauns quaff bubbling wine From horns and cymbals; Nymphs, to madness driven, Trip, skip, and stumble; mixed in wild enlacements, Laughing they roll or ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... rushing to the scene, and flames were bursting from the front window of Doyle's quarters. Swift though Ferry ran, others were closer to the spot. Half a dozen active young soldiers, members of the infantry guard, had sprung to the rescue. When Ferry dashed up to the gallery he was just in time to stumble over a writhing and prostrate form, to help extinguish the blazing clothing of another, to seize his water-bucket and douse its contents over a third,—one yelling, the others stupefied by smoke—or something. In less time than it takes to tell ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... border the great plain of Biguglia, had rolled northward before a hot and oppressive breeze, and the sun was now hidden. The carriage descended at a rapid trot, and once the man got down and silently examined his brakes. The road was a sort of cornice cut on the bare mountain side, and a stumble or the slipping of a brake-block would inevitably send the carriage rolling into the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... both of them was that strange, New England shyness, masking in visible ice the underlying emotion. Not since his boyhood had their mutual affection found free, natural expression; and now, in this final hour, that bondage of habit caused the words of tenderness to stumble on their lips. The awful majesty of approaching death, prompting them to "catch up the whole of love and utter it" ere it be too late, wrought this ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... am my brother's keeper, In all that I can do To save him from temptation, To help him to be true; To stay him if he stumble, To lift him if he fall; To stand beside him though his sin Has severed ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... since thou art an eye to my blind steps, as the star to the mariners. Placing my steps hither on this level plain, proceed lest we stumble; thy father is feeble; and preserve carefully in thy virgin hand my calculations which I took, having learned the auguries of the birds, sitting in the sacred seats where I fortell the future. My child, Menoeceus, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... leaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes there an instant, and swings off. Our roaring bow sinks as though that light were lead—sinks and recovers to lurch and stumble again beneath the next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift-shunt strike chords of numbers—1:4:7:—2:4:6:—7:5:3, and so on; for he is running by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the uneasy air. All three engines are at work, for the sooner we have skated over this thin ice the better. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... and stumble-over-things age! Piano-stools, rugs, anything that comes in his way. And the impressions wouldn't do him a bit of good. They might, in fact, do him harm," and she laughed merrily and spread her fingers to the ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... under Maurice's racquet; she saw the flecks of sunshine on the moss—she heard him say he "hadn't played the game with Eleanor." Oh, he hadn't, he hadn't! Then she thought of the Dale woman. The accident on the river. The stumble at the gate and of Maurice's child in Lily's arms. "Oh, poor Eleanor! poor Eleanor! ... All the same, she is wicked, to be so cruel to him. She is taking her revenge. Jealousy has made her wicked. But, oh, I wish I hadn't hurt her in the garden! But how could Maurice—that little, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... neay carrion can kill a craw." "It's a good horse that duz never stumble, And a good wife that duz never grumble." "Neare is my sarke, but nearer is my skin." "It's an ill-made bargain whore beath parties rue." "A curst cow hes short horns." "Wilfull fowkes duz never want weay." "For change of pastures macks ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... streak in me also. But what I can't understand is why you return and put your head in the lion's mouth. The police will stumble on something. I tell you frankly that if you are arrested I could do little or nothing for you. The United States protects only harmless political outcasts. Yours is a crime such as nullifies your citizenship, and any government would be compelled, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... tin, and old wooden houses that made Tweipans, belonged to Lady Hannah then. Accompanied by Trudi, whose quality of being what I have heard called "deaf-nosed" with regard to noisy smells, she arrived at the pitch of envying, she would stumble up and down amongst the rubbish, or wade through the slush if it had been wet, and stop at favourable points to search with her night-glass for the greenish-blue glow-worm twinkles of distant Gueldersdorp, and wonder whether anybody there was thinking of her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... balourdise^; botch, botchery^; bad job, sad work. sprat sent out to catch a whale, much ado about nothing, wild- goose chase. bungler &c 701; fool &c 501. V. be unskillful &c adj.; not see an inch beyond one's nose; blunder, bungle, boggle, fumble, botch, bitch, flounder, stumble, trip; hobble &c 275; put one's foot in it; make a mess of, make hash of, make sad work of; overshoot the mark. play tricks with, play Puck, mismanage, misconduct, misdirect, misapply, missend. stultify oneself, make a fool of oneself, commit oneself; act foolishly; play the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to keep out of the way of the purser and succeeded until nightfall. But then, when he was carrying an extra heavy trunk, Peter Polk got in his way and made him stumble and drop the piece of baggage. The trunk was split open at one end and some of the contents fell on the deck. It was a lady's trunk, filled with feminine wearing apparel, and a good ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... insisted on completing the task by washing the dishes, putting all to rights in the camp; then mended a rent in his coat which he had got from a stumble in the dark the night before. He laughed, but her ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... translators. Pravriddha is not (as Mr. Davies renders it) "old" or "very old," but swelling or fully developed. Then again, Mr. Davies commits a ludicrous blunder in rendering Rite twam as "Except thee." This is one of those idioms at which a foreigner is sure to stumble who has only the lexicons for his guide. What Krishna says is not that all would perish save Arjuna, but that without Arjuna (i.e., even if he did not fight) all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... me. But so it is. I know it by experience to be true. I warn you that you will find it true one day; that all spite, passion, prejudice, suspicion, hard judgments, contempt, self-conceit, blind a man's reason, and heart, and soul, and make him stumble and fall into mistakes, even in worldly matters, just as surely as shutting our eyes makes us stumble in broad daylight. He who gives way to such passions is asleep, while he fancies himself broad awake. ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... heaven to visit us; but in this case the gods are departing from their usual practice, for hitherto they have made themselves perfectly clear to us when we have been offering them hecatombs. They come and sit at our feasts just like one of our selves, and if any solitary wayfarer happens to stumble upon some one or other of them, they affect no concealment, for we are as near of kin to the gods as the Cyclopes and the savage giants ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... time my wife could teach you. Her figure is squat, round, her nose is clumsy, and her eyes stumble over it; but her cooking, ah—(He blows a kiss) it is a thing to dream about. She cooks as naturally as the angels sing. The delicate flavors of her concoctions float over the palate like the perfumes of a thousand ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... buried in the bogs of Wolmer-forest is not yet all exhausted, for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log. I have just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oakhanger to a carpenter of this village, this was the butt-end of a small oak, about five feet long, and about five inches in diameter. It had apparently been severed ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... no light in the corridor except that which streamed through the reddish globes of the chandelier above the dining table. If only the man did not stumble on his way up, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... or whatever power it be that wills the nature of the end of man, turned aside the death with which he already seemed to grapple. At the very moment when the flash rose from the havoc-dealing gun, he chanced to stumble over the dead body of a soldier, and fell flat upon his face. Scarcely had he touched the ground when he was again upon his feet; but even in that short space of time he alone, of those who had entered the ditch, had been left unscathed. Before him came bellying ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... so, perhaps, than you yourself will believe, or than even I, or other partial friends, can fairly allow to your merit. You stand high,—do not rashly attempt to climb higher, and incur the risk of a fall; for, depend upon it, a favourite will not be permitted even to stumble with impunity." I replied to this affectionate expostulation in the words ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... mood, in short every phase of happiness and unhappiness, are endocrine episodes in the life history of the individual, the sphere of applications is as long and broad and deep as life itself. Not only do the internal secretions open up before us the great hope—that Life at last will cease to stumble and grope and blunder, manacled by the iron chains of inexorable cause and effect. They provide tools, concrete and measurable, that can be handled and moved, weighed and seen, for the management of the problems ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... sentimental scenes) Thus I begin: "All is not gold that glitters, "Pleasure seems sweet, but proves a glass of bitters. "When Ignorance enters, Folly is at hand: "Learning is better far than house and land. "Let not your virtue trip; who trips may stumble, "And virtue is not ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... pains—and His life, so full of sorrows; also, by rejoicing in the contemplation of His works, of His greatness, and of the love that He bears us. Many other considerations there are which he who really desires to make progress will often stumble on, though he may not be very much on the watch for them. If with this there be a little love, the soul is comforted, the heart is softened, and tears flow. Sometimes it seems that we do violence to ourselves and weep; at other times, our Lord seems to do so, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... was so narrow that two could seldom come up abreast, and so steep that the enemy had much ado to struggle and stumble upwards. The men seemed half unwilling to proceed, and hung back more than once; but Amyas could hear an authoritative voice behind, and presently there emerged to the front, sword in hand, a figure at which Amyas and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... sensibility to being laid hold of unexpectedly by prisoners who have run away from French soldiers. Men are born with antipathies; I myself can't abide the smell of mint. Tito was born with an antipathy to old prisoners who stumble and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... background of streaming furs and glistening feathers. The only time they are forbidden to enter the kasgi is when the shaman is performing certain secret rites. They also have secret meetings of their own when all men are banished.[3] I happened to stumble on to one of these one time when they were performing certain rites over a pregnant woman, but being a white man, and therefore unaccountable, I was greeted with a good-natured laugh and ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... the saying is, "Bernardus non vidit omnia". Had the learned Dr. Heylin (that is Hoelin, little Howell) had a little knowledge of his ancestors' Welsh, he would not have made such a stumble, and so forced these etymologies; but would easily have found that Cricklad comes from kerig, stones; and glad, a country; which two words give a true description of the nature of the country on that side of Cricklad, which is, ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... and devoted much time to it; but nobody knew how to play very well yet, except Harry Foster and Julia Picknell, and they were the most difficult ones to catch for an idle afternoon. George Max could play, and one or two others could stumble through a game and like it pretty well; but as for Mary Beck, her shoes were too small for much agility, and she liked to wear her clothes so tight that she was very clumsy with a racket. Betty's light little gowns looked prim and plain to the Tideshead girls, who thought their colors very strange, ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... distinguished the horns. They may have struck a soft track or level, or rounded the buttress of the hill higher up, but before they had time to reach or round the foot of the spur, blurs, whispers, stumble and clatter of hoofs, jingle of bridle rings, and the occasional clank together of stirrup irons, seemed shut off as suddenly and completely as though a great sound-proof door had ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... air. He shook himself presently, and set Mutineer at a sharp canter round the larger circle of the bridle path. But before they had half swung the circle, he was deep in thought again, and Mutineer was taking his own pace. Peter deserved to get a stumble and a broken neck or leg, but he didn't. He was saved from it by an incident which never won any credit for its good results to Peter, however ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... of the Treasury, was the messenger, and was Cook's firm friend till the day of his death. Cook had been a short time at school under the instruction of Smothers and Prout, but when he entered the Land Office his education was at most only the ability to stumble along a little in a primary reading-book. He, however, now gave himself in all his leisure moments, early and late, to study. Mr. Wilson remembers his indefatigable application, and affirms that it was a matter of astonishment at the time, and that ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... first: Under its power the sea will stretch itself out dead, the white foam on the lip, in its crystal sarcophagus, and the mountains will stagger and reel and stumble, and fall into the valleys never to rise. Under one puff of that last cyclone all the candles of the sky will be blown out. The ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the fustian of thy book, The witty ancient you enrobe, You make the graceful Horace look As pitiful as Tom M'Lobe.[1] Ye Muses, guard your sacred mount, And Helicon, for if this log Should stumble once into the fount, He'll make it muddy as ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... unfeeling people, ugliness. They were also deaf, as I have said, and they were scrofulous; one of them was disfigured by the small pox; they had glimmering eyes, red, like the eyes of ferrets, and scarcely half open; and they did not walk so much as stumble along. There, you have the worst of them. Now, hear something on the other side. What first won my pity was, their affection for each other, united to their constant sadness; secondly, a notion which had crept into my head, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... courage, in which one cannot fight unless clad in a strong armour of indifference impervious to the attacks of fools and the envious, in which one must not, if one would not stumble on the road, quit for a single moment that pride in oneself which serves as a leaning staff; a charming and a terrible life, which has conquerors and its martyrs, and on which one should not enter save in resigning oneself in advance ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... I became cautious again; I did n't want to risk a collision with the etagere. What must I do, however, but stumble against the topmost step and plunge head foremost right ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Gilbert lay down some way farther off from the fire than usual, and Fenton, pretending to stumble as he passed, threw himself down by his side. Their guards, taking no notice of this, allowed them to remain where they were, while they set themselves to cooking part of a deer they had shot during the day. ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... her in. The custom of lifting the bride over the threshold, probably to avert an ill-omened stumble, has prevailed among the most diverse races. For the anointing of the doorposts Brand quotes Langley's translation of Polydore Vergil: "The bryde anoynted the poostes of the doores with swynes' grease, because she thought ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... up and make for me and I make for the door! It was dark, all 'cepting the light from the chimney, and I fumble all up and down the door jamb before I find de latch pin. The old man shorely git me if he hadn't stumble over the eating table and whop his hand right down in de dish of fresh made butter. That make him so mad he jest stand and ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the truth—against which all seekers sooner or later stumble—that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... pass, then," said his second resignedly. "Gentlemen, are you read—Ods blood! my lord, I had not noticed the roses upon your lordship's shoes! They are so large and have such a fall that they sweep the ground on either side your foot; you might stumble in all that dangling ribbon and lace. Allow me to ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... death struggle, with bloodshot eyes, with foaming, gnashing mouths. They attack and kill one another and try to mangle each other. I leap to my feet. I race out into the night and tread on quaking flesh, step on hard heads, and stumble over weapons and helmets. Something is clutching at my feet like hands, so that I race away like a hunted deer with the hounds at his heels—and ever over more bodies—breathless... out of one field into another. Horror is crooning over my head. Horror is crooning beneath my feet. And nothing ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... two champing tigers driven: Around him on the sand deep-soaked with brine Satyrs and Bacchantes rush; the skies are riven With shouts and laughter; Fauns quaff bubbling wine From horns and cymbals; Nymphs, to madness driven, Trip, skip, and stumble; mixed in wild enlacements, Laughing they roll or meet ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... ever need. How could one man, or two or three in a team, hope to compete with them? For the independent miner, the only hope was the Big Strike, the single lode that could make him rich. He might work all his life without finding it, and then stumble upon ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... rambles frequently ended in a visit to the schoolmaster; out of curiosity he examined the books, and as he knew some of the letters, the schoolmaster's daughter amused herself by teaching him to spell. The boy would purposely stumble over his words so that she should correct him and touch his shoulder to point out ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... constantly stumble upon is a lame, totally inadmissible application of certain one-sided systems as of a formal code of laws. But it is never difficult to show the one-sidedness of such systems, and this only requires to be done once to throw discredit for ever on critical ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... bees, stupidly staring after the flying child. Then he stirred himself into pursuit, crying, "Stay, fool, stay!" but desisted instantly, for the girl was as fleet as a fawn, and could run surely where his feet would stumble. Already she was out of sight in the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "Perhaps. What do any of us know about it, one way or the other? Ticklish business! We poke a little too far beyond our ken and get a shock that withers our souls. Cosmic force! We stumble forward, bleating for comfort, and fall over a charged cable. It may have been put there to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... that the blind, thus led by the blind, should stumble. The transactions of the French Revolution, in some measure, took their character from these works. Without the assistance of these works, indeed, a revolution would have taken place,—a revolution productive of much good and much evil, tremendous ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and I sent for you immediately! Let us read it again—we'll make another attempt to decipher this incomprehensible name. Confound the fellow! why couldn't he write so that some one besides himself could read it! We must stumble through it," said he, as he again ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... form from them a conclusion concerning him who did them. One aid he offered to the imprisoned prophet,—a word from the Book of Isaiah (xxxv. 5f., lxi. 1f.),—and added a blessing for such as "should find nothing to stumble at in him." Here Jesus emphasized his works, and allowed his message to speak for itself; but he frankly indicated that he expected people to pass from wonder at his ministry to an opinion about ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... slave!— Up, work, look sharp about it!" Bounding a foot and fast retiring from her, I stoop for stones strewn thick about the sand, Aim them, fling them, And, as my idle arm resumes the knack, Score a hit and laugh To see her stumble hurt, behind the pine trunks. "Unless you work, I throw again, To it and steady at it. Mark me, drab, we Camilli Mean what we say." Stone after stone still flies, But aimed to knock chips from the pine-boles now; For she is busy gathering sticks, increasing Her distance as she ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... figures swung down High School Street together, talking and laughing in low voices. The smallest of the six appeared to stumble over her feet, and once tumbled in the road. Her friends gayly helped her up, when it was disclosed that she wore a pair of boy's shoes much too large ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... maples, and ferny groups—it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things—then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far up in the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... a kind of mystery about him; but, besides that, he learnt things in those bitter hours that are not taught in any school. He learnt to suffer with all the great company of those who bear heavy and unseen burdens, who move in the grip of fears and stumble under the load of dark necessities. He grew more tender and more strong. He found in his hand the key to many hearts. Before this he had cared little about the thoughts of other men; but now he found himself for ever wondering what the inner thoughts of the hearts of others were, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... never slips off! It is contrary to a mule's religion and politics, and all his traditions and precedents, to slip off. He may slide a little and stumble once in a while, and he may, with malice aforethought, try to scrape you off against the outjutting shoulders of the trail; but he positively will not slip off. It is not because he is interested ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... second point, he admitted that Anjou had gained little honor by his recent course; and that it would be a mistake on their part to stumble a second time over the same stone. He foresaw, nevertheless, that the Duke—irritated as he was by the loss of so many of his nobles, and by the downfall of all his hopes in the Netherlands—would be likely to inflict great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the bent form of the toiling Ottoman in front. Over the bridge they went, the carriers executing a double shuffle diagonally down the steep descent. The passenger opened her mouth and gave a scream that made the Turk in front stumble as he bent his head to see what was wrong. Then she screamed harder, frightening a flock of sea-gulls off the island and bringing a Columbian guard on a run from the north entrance of the Horticultural building to see what was the matter. Then she insisted on getting out, and she was ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... will cherish you there In the nest you will make so pure. I will hold you and guard you safe from the snares of the stony streets. Be at peace, little maid, and lie in trust; For though my feet may stumble, and I may fall, The corner that houses you ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... one of them yields, and is ruined; the other resists, and is raised and strengthened. As Jesus Christ, so all things have a double operation. They are 'either a savour of life unto life or a savour of death unto death.' There is the stone. You may build upon it, or you may stumble over it: you take your choice. Here is the adverse circumstance. You may rule it, or you may let it rule you. Circumstances and outward temptations are the fool's masters, and the wise man's servants. It all depends ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... heard him stumble as they came down, and his movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said Isbister, "and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... he has to enforce the regulations. But don't you suppose, fellows, that officer was hazed, and did some hazing on his own account, when he was a cadet midshipman here years ago? Of course! And that's why the officer didn't question us any more closely than he did. He was afraid he might stumble on something that would oblige him to report the whole crowd for hazing. He didn't want to do it. That officer, I'm certain, knew that, if he questioned us too closely, he'd find a lot more beneath the surface that he simply didn't ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... of science must necessarily precede the period of unanimity.—TORRENS, Essay on the Production of Wealth, 1821, p. xiii. Even the spread of an error is part of the wide-world process by which we stumble into mere approximations to truth.—L. STEPHEN, Apology of an Agnostic, 81. Errors, to be dangerous, must have a great deal of truth mingled with them; it is only from this alliance that they can ever obtain an extensive circulation.—S. SMITH, Moral Philosophy, ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... cases no writer would grumble, But give you his hearty permission, When two correspondents on one mark should stumble, To make ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... turning toward the men. They shook their heads and were silent, gazing curiously at the boy, of whom it was said that he had "bumped off" two T-Bar-T boys in a raid some years ago. Young Pete felt his ground firmer beneath him. The men had ceased laughing. If it had not been for that unfortunate stumble . ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... with wisdom has he done this, and chosen unto himself the kingdom of Egypt. For this is the manner of all the Hebrews, to deceive kings and their magnates, to do all things cunningly in order to make the kings of the earth and their men to stumble. ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... now leads through a thicket. The horses stumble frequently, for the stones are loose, and the footing consequently uncertain. Crouch has a fall, and ere he can remount the lady is gone. It is useless to hurry after her, and he is proceeding slowly, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of a horse's action, I compare him not with other horses, but with animals of a different species. Did you ever know a fox stumble, or a cat make a false step? I guess not; but haven't you seen a bear when chased and tired go head over heels? A dog in a general way is a sure-footed critter, but he trips now and then, and if he was as big as a horse, would throw his rider sometimes. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... person to see him alive was one Baptista Colonna, a page in the service of a Neapolitan captain. This lad, with an extra helmet swung over his shoulder, found himself close to the duke. He saw him surrounded by troops, noticed his horse stumble, was sure that the rider fell. The next moment, Colonna's attention was diverted to himself. He was taken prisoner and knew no more of the day's events. The figure of Charles of Burgundy disappears from the view of man. A curtain ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... had stipulated that the pocketbook should first be felt for, and, if not there, the matter should go no farther. So Edward made a stumble and fell against Mr. Hardie and felt his left breast: the pocket-book was there:—"Yes," he whispered: and Mr. Hardie, in the act of remonstrating at his clumsiness, was pinned behind, and his arms strapped with wonderful rapidity and dexterity. Then first he seemed to awake to his hunger, and uttered ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in groups and sit on the top of the bank in the growing dusk. We can just see a suggestion of their gay colours and the gleam of their cheroots. G. and I go ashore and stumble along a deep, sandy road; on either side are little and big trees with open cottages behind them, made of neatly woven bamboo matting, lit with oil crusies. We come to a pagoda, and tall white griffins at its entrance staring up into the sky, strange, grotesque beasts—the white-wash ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... inspired to do so by a false belief regarding the rightful transmission of such knowledge; or, by a false modesty, or prudery, they are kept from telling to anyone else what they have discovered or found to be the truth in these matters. And so the people stumble along in ignorance of these vital affairs in life, generation after generation, repeating the errors of their predecessors, and no positive progress being made as the years go by. Because of this state of affairs millions of human beings die every generation, and other millions suffer the ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... daughters of music," the tongue that expresses and the ears that are charmed with it, are "brought low;" they are "afraid of that which is high, and fears are in the way," alarmed at every step they take, lest they should stumble at the slightest obstacle, and especially apprehensive of the difficulties of any ascent. At that age their gray hairs thicken like the white flowers of the "almond tree" when it "flourishes," and even the very "grasshopper is a burden," for they cannot bear the slightest inconvenience, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... I take things to heart that belong to the head alone, while father says that, to his mind, feeling is much more of a need to-day than logic; so what can I do but still stumble along according ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... supposed the islanders avoided us, perhaps from distaste, perhaps by order; and those whom we met we took generally by surprise. The surface of the isle is diversified with palm groves, thickets, and romantic dingles four feet deep, relics of old taro plantation; and it is thus possible to stumble unawares on folk resting or hiding from their work. About pistol- shot from our township there lay a pond in the bottom of a jungle; here the maids of the isle came to bathe, and were several times alarmed by our intrusion. Not for them are the bright cold rivers of Tahiti or ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I should stumble on you in this manner, when I have been looking for you all over the country," continued the gentleman, fumbling his pockets for ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... had the good fortune to stumble on a trail that was evidently used by Indians or other dwellers in the wilderness, probably by men portaging the length of bad water down the river. It was a rough enough path, yet it made his task immeasurably easier. But even with its unexpected aid, the ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... dearest friends. Consider the amorous and lascivious, in the height of their fury they dare violate a Vestal. For custom is very powerful to draw the temper of the body to anything that is suitable to it; and he that is apt to fall will stumble at everything that lies in his way. So it is no wonder that those that have raised in themselves an envious and bewitching habit, if according to the peculiarity of their passion they are carried on to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... begin our investigation in Aristotle's way, and look at the [Greek: phainomena] of the subject, we shall immediately stumble over a maxim which is in everybody's mouth, and which, as it is understood in practice, is true and useful, as it is usually applied in argument, false and misleading. "General truths are more important than particular ones." Often, when in conversation, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... from his door. For she was coming there, nay, possibly had come, since his departure from home, and learning his whereabouts, had followed on to the Academy of Music, leaving her baggage where he should stumble over it ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... better manners than any of you," cried Hervey, laughing; but remember, though I've lost this bet, I don't give up my pedestrian fame.—Sir Philip, there are no women to throw golden apples in my way now, and no children for me to stumble over: I dare you to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... animal in its lair, adjusted anew about him the blanket and the painted coat and luxuriated. At intervals he heard the warriors calling in the valley, and once the sound of footsteps not more than twenty yards away reached him, but he was not disturbed. The chance that they would stumble upon him was still only ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mare round, set his heels into her sides and, before anyone could move, the horse and its rider sprang for the window, dashed clear through it on to the roadway and away at a gallop, without so much as a stop or a stumble; leaving a shower of broken glass and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... just now was to assure the safety of the prisoners in the other camp, and he made his way across the island hurriedly, lest by accident Sam should happen to stumble ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... my thoughts: "Men become accustomed to live from youth up as it were in a cage, and when they are once in the open air they dare not venture to use their wings, fearing, if they fly, that they may stumble against everything." ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... (at four o'clock this afternoon) to copy out seven or eight apophthegms of Bacon, in which I have detected such blunders as a school-boy might detect rather than commit. Such are the sages! What must they be, when such as I can stumble on their mistakes or misstatements? I will go to bed, for I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... dance. 'Yes.' 'No,' had not fall'n with half the force. She was fulfill'd with gentleness, And I with measureless remorse; And, ere I slept, on bended knee I own'd myself, with many a tear, Unseasonable, disorderly, And a deranger of love's sphere; Gave thanks that, when we stumble and fall, We hurt ourselves, and not the truth; And, rising, found its brightness all The brighter ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... Church may retire into "chambers of imagery" erected by her own folly; and there, with the light shut out from her, may sink into a slumber disturbed only, now and then, by some dream of superstition; or, with the light still shining on her, her eye may be dim or disordered, and she may stumble at noonday. But the light is as pure as in the days of the apostles; and, if we have eyes to profit by it, we may "understand more than the ancients." The art of printing has supplied us with facilities for the study of the Scriptures which were denied to the fathers ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... be second and not first; All cannot be the first of all: Is not this, too, but vanity? I stumble like to fall. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... smelt the hounds"; his eyes said, "We looked for the shortest way"; his ears said, "We listened for the breathing of the hounds"; and his legs said, "We ran away with you." Then he asked his tail what it had done, and it said, "Why, I got caught in the bushes or made your leg stumble; that is all I could do." So, as a punishment, the Fox stuck his tail out of his den, and the hounds saw it and caught hold of it, and dragged the Fox out of his den by it and ate him all up. So that was the ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... a signal for him to strap on his pack and stumble onward, he knew not where. He was not concerned with the land of little sticks, nor with Bill and the cache under the upturned canoe by the river Dease. He was mastered by the verb "to eat." He was hunger-mad. He took ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... said Christie, gravely. "I am not wise about such things. I know there are some who make this a stone to stumble over—that we can do nothing, and we must just wait. But don't you remember how it is said, 'Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him when He is near.' 'They that seek Me early shall find Me.' And in the New Testament, 'Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find.' ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... with two-inch feet stumble by, their calcimined faces streaked with tears and fright. Gray-haired old men shiver with terror and try to hide in any small corner. Lost children and deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot. And ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... and Mike for the first time inspected the wound inflicted by Gerald Buxton with his shotgun. Little as the lad knew of such things, he saw the hurt was not serious. With the removal of the leaden pellets went the cause of irritation. The stumble in the woods had aggravated the wound temporarily, but a rest for even a day would render it safe for the young man ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... lines as I have, you wouldn't stumble over that," said Ford, falling back, as he commonly did, upon the things he knew. "We shall broaden the Plug Mountain without straightening a curve or throwing a shovelful of earth on the embankment, from beginning to end. On the other hand, the Green ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... characteristic of Russian civilisation, which is a strange conglomeration of products belonging to very different periods. The enquirer who undertakes the study of it will sometimes be scarcely less surprised than would be the naturalist who should unexpectedly stumble upon antediluvian megatheria grazing tranquilly in the same field with prize Southdowns. He will discover the most primitive institutions side by side with the latest products of French doctrinairism, and the most childish superstitions ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... draws near, when you are to leave Saxony and go to Berlin. Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... knew that this intense feeling of energy could not last, that he was rapidly growing weaker, and that ere many minutes had elapsed he would once more stumble and fall, and this time the power to rise ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... was very steep; the Siberian pines swayed their boughs in his face; stones that lay in his path, unseen in the gloom, made him stumble. Now and then a large bird of the night flew by with a rushing sound: the air grew so cold that all Martinswand might have been turning to one huge glacier. All at once he heard through the stillness—for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... more than a great, gaping grave, on the brink of which we walk with wild courage," said the king, softly. "There is no moment that some one does not stumble at our side and fall into the abyss, and we have the courage to continue in the path until our strength fails and we sink, making room for another. Almost all of those who formerly occupied these rooms have vanished. How long will it be ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... June. It is the sweet solstice in life's early summer, which puts forth the fragrant bud and blossom of sin e'er its bitter fruits ripen and turn to ashes on the lips of age. It is the happy transition period, when long legs, and loose joints, and verdant awkwardness, first stumble on the vestibule of manhood. Did you never observe him shaving and scraping his pimpled face till it resembled a featherless goose, reaping nothing but lather, and dirt, and a little intangible fuzz? That is the first symptom of love. Did you never observe him wrestling with ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... study of his subject—the witness—before the trial. In subtle ways with which experience has made him familiar, he studies his man, his life, his character, his habits, his strength, his weakness, his foibles. He divines when he will hesitate, when he will stumble, and he is ready to pounce upon him and force his hesitation into an attempt at concealment, his stumble ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... guide; "pass the word back for 'em to look out they don't stumble, for things are ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... rate, you'll listen to my reasons. There's been time, on both sides, to think them over since——" He caught himself back and hung helpless on the "since": whatever words he chose, he seemed to stumble among reminders of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... experience, I 'ave. Jesus don't only look after you on a Sunday but six days a week, my friends, six days a week. Fix your eye on Him and He'll keep His eye on you—that's all your part of it. I don't mean to say I don't stumble an' fall into sin. There's times when the Devil will get the upper 'and, but oh, my friends, I ask you each an' every one of you, is that the fault of Jesus? No, it is not 'is fault, it is the fault of the person. The person 'as been forgetting ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and offers at least a comparison of how a lofty gable looks when it lacks towers of an appropriate height. At the right of this low tower of the facade, hidden behind a wall, is a thoroughly Pagan doorway, which might well pass unobserved, did one not actually stumble upon it unawares. It is a curious reminder of other days and other ways, and how it became an adjunct of this mediaeval church the local records fail to state. The three main portals of the facade, as that of the transept, are somewhat bare of ornament, though the ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... of searching garish light reflected from its surface are pitilessly flashed into the dark places of the earth, which have been wrapped around by the old-time dim religious light, since first the world began. The people in whose eyes these rays beat so mercilessly, reel and stumble blindly on in their march through life, taking wrong turnings at every step, and going woefully astray. Let us hope that succeeding generations will become used to the new conditions, and will fight their way back to a truer path; ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... to apartments "which were a box of boudoirs, as compact as a Chinese toy." "There were carpets on every floor, chairs that were moveable, mirrors that reflected, sofas to sink on, footstools to stumble over; in a word, all the incommodious commodities of my own cabin in Kildare street." Poor Miladi! this was really too provoking, to have all the trouble and expense of journeying from Dublin to see just what was to be seen there; but no matter, it will serve for the subject of some twenty pages ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of course," replied the stranger. "For instance, this 'notion,' as you call it, will never do. It isn't the thing at all; but see here, Judge, examine this hub. There's a 'notion' in that worth something. I tell you what it is, any boy who can stumble on such an idea, even by accident, has got good stuff ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of St. Augustine there were developed, in every field, theological views of science which have never led to a single truth—which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses of error and sorrow. In meteorology, as in every other science with which he dealt, Augustine based everything upon the letter of the sacred text; and it is characteristic of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... know how happy it makes me to be here where I first knew you, to live over every event of those days. Your movable shack is almost as it used to be, though there is no absurd steel boat outside for me to stumble into. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... made the journey before morning, by carrying little Judie a part of the way. As it was, they had to go through the thickest woods to avoid Indians, and must move cautiously all the time, as they could never know when they might stumble upon a party of savages around a camp-fire, or sleeping under a tree. Those of my readers who live in the far South know what thick woods are in that part of the country, but others may not. The trees grow as close together ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... track, the roses Are backed by sharpest thorns; While berries always nourish, And the violet but adorns;— You will stumble into sluices, And what is worse than all, Your self-respect and conscience Grow weak with ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... a brown thrasher's nest; it is not a nest you are likely to stumble upon in your walk; it is hidden as a miser hides his gold, and watched as jealously. The male pours out his rich and triumphant song from the tallest tree he can find, and fairly challenges you to come and look for his treasures in his vicinity. But ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Bonaparte's invitation, he would have been one of the members of the Government. But Gohier acted the part of the stern republican. He placed himself, according to the common phrase of the time, astride of the Constitution of the year III.; and as his steed made a sad stumble, he fell ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Monkey! Away leaped the Jack who lived in a Box. At the far end of the toy counter the Bold Tin Soldier and his men had placed some sofa cushions from the upholstery department. That was in case either of the three might stumble ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... such little child in My name receiveth Me, but whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble, it is more profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea." ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... of his country as he really thought, Dr. Johnson might have attacked it. Johnson was very courteous to Lady Margaret Macdonald. 'Madam, (said he,) when I was in the Isle of Sky, I heard of the people running to take the stones off the road, lest Lady Margaret's horse should stumble[1163].' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... If the paramount idea of beneficence becomes a national conviction, we may stumble and err, we may at times sin, or be betrayed by unworthy representatives; but we shall advance unfailingly. I have been asked to contribute to the discussion of this matter something from my own usual point of view; which is, of course, the bearing ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... children found more nests and eggs until the basket was quite full. Now arose a dispute between Flossie and Freddie, for each one wanted to carry the basket. Nan was afraid either of the little twins might stumble and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... of our modern historians on the other. But they are all three of them saying the same thing, each in his own way. It is a pity that we teach our children that the sublimest thing about them—their simplicity—is a thing of which they need to be ashamed. And the way in which their tiny tongues stumble over the great word seems to show that, following a true instinct, they do not take kindly to that clause in ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... not stunned. Apparently gaining courage by his success, he seemed to redouble his attacks, and for a time kept me wholly on the defensive. Making a sudden dash at him with the hope of plunging my knife into him, he so cleverly, with one of his wings, knocked aside my knife that in my stumble I found I had awkwardly cut the noose that bound him. As I knew that his talons were now free I presumed he would at once avail himself of his liberty and fly away. But he had now no such idea. His blood was up, and so with a scream of defiance, or triumph, ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
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