"Foothold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the natives were rather proud than otherwise of their pebbly paths, for, according to Bisset, when one returned from visiting the metropolis, he said he liked everything in London very much "except the pavement, for the stones were all so smooth, there was no foothold!" ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Professor Maxon had said. "It will be but a matter of a day or so when I can introduce him to Virginia, but we must be careful that she has no inkling of his origin until mutual affection has gained a sure foothold ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and frankly admitted, as was the fact, that receding from the anti-slavery position was part of the conciliation policy of the hour, and that the Republicans did it the more readily because they had full faith that slavery never could secure a foothold in any of the Territories named, it must be likewise admitted that the Republican party took precisely the same ground held by Mr. Webster in 1850, and acted from precisely the same motives that inspired the 7th of March speech. Mr. Webster maintained ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... early London were fought for over and over again, as wolves wrangle round a carcass. On Cornhill there probably dwelt petty kings who warred with the kings of Ludgate; and in Southwark there lurked or burrowed other chiefs who, perhaps by intrigue or force, struggled for centuries to get a foothold in Thames Street. But of such infusoria History (glorying only in offenders, criminals, and robbers on the largest scale) justly pays no heed. This alone we know, that the early rulers of London ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... surpassed. He was swept into the Governor's chair on the crest of the Democratic tidal wave in 1874, and once there every effort was directed to the Presidential succession. He had the sagacity to perceive that in order to gain any solid foothold in the country the Democratic party needed to cut loose from its discredited past and secure a new rallying-cry. It was loaded down with its odious war record; it was divided on fiscal questions; it had fought a losing battle for twelve years on ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... fire dashed the foremost of the stormers into the ditch, killing Lieutenants Rogers and Smith and clearing the ladders. Fresh men instantly manned them, and, after a brief struggle, Captain Howard, of the voltigeurs, gained a foothold on the parapet. M'Kenzie, of the forlorn hope, followed; and a crowd of voltigeurs and infantry, shouting and cheering, pressed after him, and swept down upon the garrison with the bayonet. Almost ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... they would have been resolute to climb as far and as high, between earth and heaven, as they could find foothold, if Hannah's strength had not begun to fail, and with that, her courage also. Her breath grew short. She refused to burden her husband with her weight, but often tottered against his side, and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort. At last, she sank down on one of the rocky ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only the dawn of battle. All our lives will be a battle. Some of us will be killed in battle, some of us will be waylaid. There is no easy victory—no victory whatever that is not more than half defeat for us. Be sure of that. What of that? If only we keep a foothold, if only we leave behind us a growing host to ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... the eye of the American shall behold it, may he have reason to bless it! On whatsoever spot it is planted, there may freedom have a foothold, humanity a brave champion, and religion an altar. Though stained with blood in a righteous cause, may it never, in any ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... Siboney. It was almost immediately attacked by a superior force of Spanish regulars, and was so harassed, night and day, by the fire of the latter that some of its officers slept only two hours out of one hundred and fifteen. As soon as it had obtained a foothold it went into camp on a slight elevation in the midst of an almost impenetrable jungle, surrounded itself with defensive trenches, and there lived, for a period of ten weeks, exposed to the same sun, rain, and malaria that played havoc with the troops ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... Indeed, she began to doubt if even her poor power of charming him, as at first she had been able to do, with the sparkle of her wit and the half- unconscious display of her natural grace, was not on the wane, and if she was not near to losing her precarious foothold in his esteem and affection. The thought that he might be tiring of her struck her like a freezing wind, and for a moment ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... been wondering where to bestow herself, noticed the envying glances they cast in its direction. She was not withheld by their restraining fear, so running to the opposite side of the lodge, she climbed its sides, finding foothold in its bark covering, and soon was curled up comfortably, her hands about her knees, where she would miss nothing of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... coincidences with that conflict of opinions and tendencies in which we are involved at the present day? But it is no part of our plan to follow these out. Momentary resemblances often mislead the politician who seeks a sure foothold in the past, as well as the historian who seeks it in the present. The Muse of history has the widest intellectual horizon and the full courage of her convictions; but in forming them she is thoroughly conscientious, and we might say jealously bent ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... anything about his family or how he lived before he came here. He's only a tramp, and you can't make anything else out of him. Some folks are never satisfied unless they are trying to make gentlemen out of gutter snipes. If we let such fellows get a foothold, there won't be any respectable society after a while; it will be all ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... the hill which here fell almost sheer to the level of the lake, and the old McConachans had no doubt chosen their site for its unscalable position. Indeed, the place must always have been impregnable from that side, the rock offering no foothold to a goat till within twenty feet of the base of the tower, where the surface was broken and uneven, and had, in places, been built up with solid masonry. In the crevices up there, seeds had germinated and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... nervously. "Something good up there," he thought, and began to climb. But the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped back half a dozen times without rising two feet. Then he went down stream to a point where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up till under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the clay bank. There he crept cautiously along till his nose found the nest, and slipped down till his fore paws rested on the threshold. A long hungry sniff of the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... fact the idea of an actual reunion seems never from the very outset to have had any real foothold in his mind. In 1779 he said: "We have long since settled all the account in our own minds. We know the worst you can do to us, if you have your wish, is to confiscate our estates and take our lives, to rob ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... is interesting to recall the fact that before slavery got a foothold in Rome, the masses in their struggle with the classes used what we think of to-day as the most modern weapon employed in industrial warfare. We can all remember the intense interest with which we watched the novel experience which St. Petersburg underwent some six years ago, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the influence of Spain, gave least support to the uprising, but in the east, where the Cubans and negroes raised and ground cane, or grazed their herds, discontent at the system of favoritism and race discrimination was an important political force. Here the insurgents soon gained a foothold in the provinces of Santiago, Puerto Principe, and Santa Clara. From the jungle or the mountains they sent bands of guerrillas against the sugar mills and plantations of the ruling class, and when pursued their troops hid their weapons and became, ostensibly, peaceful farmers. A revolutionary ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... location with small foothold on Musandam Peninsula adjacent to Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit point for world ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the army of 1798, he sought for men distinguished for their boldness of execution, not less than for their prudence in counsel, and contemplated a system of continued attack. "The enemy," said the General in his private letters, "must never be permitted to gain foothold on ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... among the beads of the rosary instead of the name of Mary. But the worst thing of all was that his religion, like the outer world, seemed to be slipping away from him as the days went by. To this last foothold he clung with feverish tenacity, spending several hours of each day in prayer and meditation; but his thoughts wandered more and more often to Bolla, and the ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... of bitter turmoil he came back again and again to that, the only solid foothold left him in the shifting desert-sand. So long as his heart should beat he would defend that one precious possession that yet remained,—the honour of the woman who loved him and whom he loved as only the few ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... absurdity it seems for a man about whom these two things are true, that, as I said, he began with a borrowed capital, and has only incurred greater debts in his transactions, there should be any foothold left in his own estimation on which he can stand and claim to be anything but the pauper that he is. Oh! brethren, of all the hallucinations that we put upon ourselves in trying to believe that things are as we wish, there is none ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... immediately after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. Very soon afterwards the nascent spirit of fanaticism began to obtain a foothold in England; and although large numbers of negro slaves were owned in Great Britain, and, as I said before, were daily sold on the public exchange in Lon-don, questions arose as to the right of the owners to retain property in their slaves; and the merchants of London, alarmed, submitted ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Dr. Atwater, the Russian Commission for the study of alcoholism, after two years' work, said: "The claim that alcohol is a food in any proper sense of the term is not sufficiently proved." In the St. Paul convention spoken of, politics obtained a foothold, and some weak resolutions in favor of the army canteen were adopted but not even the champions of the canteen were willing to subscribe to the statement that alcohol is ever ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... Many of them inclined to mercy or to compromises which found little favour with the populace. Accordingly, the procedure at the trial, as also the final verdict, turned largely on the desperate efforts of the Jacobins to discredit their rivals, who sought by all means to keep their foothold in the revolutionary torrent. One of the most obvious devices was to represent the Executive Council as the champion of ultra-democratic ideas as against envious and reactionary England. If this notion gained currency, Lebrun and his colleagues ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... soon turned off the wagon road to make his way directly down the side of the mountain. Bob possessed his full share of personal courage, but in this unaccustomed skirting of precipices, hopping down ledges, and sliding down inclines too steep to afford a foothold he found himself leaning inward, sitting very light in the saddle, or holding his breath until a passage perilous was safely passed. In the next few years he had occasion to drop down the mountainside a great many times. After the first few trips he became so thoroughly accustomed that ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... shocking sound of the impact Stent wheeled from the abyss, then staggered back under the powerful shove from Von Glahn's nervous arm. Swaying, fighting frantically for foothold, there on the chasm's awful edge, he balanced for an instant; fought for equilibrium. Von Glahn, rigid, watched him. Then, deathly white, his young eyes looking straight into the eyes of his old classmate—Stent lost the fight, fell outward, wider, dropping back into mid-air, down ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... had half raised itself to look at the heather, and continued to keep this position, until at length it stood upright. It scratched its head and set forth again, taking such a vigorous foothold that it seemed as though the mountain must feel it. "If you will not have me, then I will have you." The fir crooked its toes a little to find out whether they were whole, then lifted one foot, found it whole, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... man to the beggar's grave in Montparnasse cemetery. After having told some friends the short, but pitiful story of Z. Marcas, Charles Rabourdin, following the advice of the deceased, left the country, and sailed from Havre for the Malayan islands; for he had not been able to gain a foothold in France. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... It's meself never refused help to any man," said Paddy; and jumping down, he produced a chain. Fastening the tongue of the waggon to one end, and the horses to the other, he drove them up to the high-road, where, having firmer foothold, a few pulls drew us out of the mud-hole. We thanked the old man for his help, but saw him and his chain depart with regret. Having better horses and a lighter load, he soon left us ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... simply human, entirely endorsing old Darco's reproof of his work and his evasions; with a financial crevasse at his feet, and Annette chopping away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face—he was disposed alike to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... retained and become long, out-reaching, and spreading over the mountain slope for many feet; the upper limbs are irregularly disposed, not whorled; they strike downward from the start (so that it is almost impossible to climb one of the trees for want of foothold), then curving outward to the outline of the tree, they are terminated by short, hairy branchlets that decline gracefully, and are decorated with pendant cones which are glaucous purple until maturity, then leather ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... has no longer that immutable faith in the genius of the "master" Proudhon, which Tolain seems to have preserved intact. According to Bakounine "Proudhon, in spite of all his efforts to get a foothold upon the firm ground of reality, remained an idealist and metaphysician. His starting point is the abstract side of law; it is from this that he starts in order to arrive at economic facts, while Marx, on the contrary, has enunciated ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... opportunity to take a position as private secretary to one of the instructors in her college. They understood that it was a situation which would pay fairly well, and give her associates who gained an added glory in the minds of these humble folk by their distance. In short, it would be a foothold in the white people's world; and Grant Payson's mother trembled for her son, while the mother of Mary Jackson feared to lose, once for all, her daughter. The two Southern-bred black women could see in such things as the girl reported only the wiping out of all race barrier, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... and our Alsatian driver helped me to the platform, I looked around with dread at the throng, being too weak to battle for a foothold; but the brave Alsatian elbowed a path for me, and the Countess warded off the plunging human cattle, and at length I found myself beside the cars where line-soldiers stood guard at every ten paces and gendarmes stalked about, shoving the frantic ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the hope of your abolitionists, not our fear, that I am rehearsing. Should your armies obtain a foothold on our soil, we know that you will put knives and guns into the hands of our slaves, and incite them to emulate the deeds of their race in San Domingo. You will parcel out our lands and wealth to your victorious soldiery, not so much as a reward for their past services, but to seal the bond between ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... dismay of Brutus, two of his own sons were found among the number. With the unswerving virtue of a Roman or a Spartan, he condemned them to death, and they were executed before his eyes. The discovery of the plot of Tarquin put an end to his efforts to regain any foothold at Rome by peaceable methods, and he made the appeal to arms. These plots led to the banishment of the whole Tarquinian house, even the consul whose troubles had brought the result about being obliged to lay down his office and leave the city. Publius Valerius ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... The slope was in no way a danger. A man could walk up it without often using his hands, and a man could go down it slowly without any direct fall, though here and there he would have to turn round at each dip or step and hold with his hands and feel a little for his foothold. I suppose the general slope, down, down, to where the green began was not sixty degrees, but have you ever tried looking down five thousand feet at sixty degrees? It drags the mind after it, and I could not ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... life, this plaint ended with the same restless, unceasing question. But there was a difference. There was no longer the material, distant note of a pagan mind; there was the intimate, spiritual note of a mind finding a foothold on the submerged causeway of life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... immediate surroundings. The groping toe touched the edge of the narrow shelf, and I drew back startled at thought of another sheer drop into the black depths. My heart was still pounding when De Artigny found foothold beside me. As he swung free from the cord, his fingers ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... that legations were established in Peking. But while this gave foreign nations a solid foothold at the capital, it did not by any means give them the recognition that they demanded, for their intercourse with the court was still hedged about with innumerable exactions and indignities. The Hon. Thomas Francis Wade, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... without roads, and the difficulty of getting items of news, it does not seem strange that those early adventures were short-lived. But as time wore on, one after another succeeded in getting a foothold, and in finding its way into the home of the settler. They were invariably small, and printed on coarse paper. Sometimes even this gave out, and the printer had to resort to blue wrapping paper in order to enable him to present his ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... polygamy, yet it never in the history of man obtained a foothold. The system is more logical than polygamy, because the wife's dependence would be distributed between two or more husbands, in which case she would be better insured against poverty and her support would be ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... it, our suspicion of the creative memory of Smith, and the lack of all contemporary allusion to it? It is a pity to destroy any pleasing story of the past, and especially to discharge our hard struggle for a foothold on this continent of the few elements of romance. If we can find no evidence of its truth that stands the test of fair criticism, we may at least believe that it had some slight basis on which to rest. It is not at all improbable that Pocahontas, who was at that time a precocious ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cultivation, Idaho was a competitor at the World's Fair with the best of her sisters in the quality of her field products. The exhibit in the Palace of Agriculture was impartially chosen and fairly represented all parts of the State where agricultural interests have a foothold. In the exhibit were 47 varieties of wheat, 41 varieties of oats, 32 varieties of flax—the only specimen of white flaxseed known to exist, from the farm of Alonzo McWillis, of Rosetta, who received a ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... failed. Will Mr. Wells succeed any better? Is it not apparent in the foregoing discussion that, even if the word had no other demerits, it leads us into regions in which the mind can find no firm foothold? I have done my best to accept Mr. Wells's definitions, but I am sure he feels that I have constantly slipped from the strait and narrow path. Has he himself always kept to it? I think not. And, waiving ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... with Lydia Mott, who was now an active abolitionist, Susan heard a great deal about antislavery work. At this time, however, Canajoharie took little interest in this reform movement, but temperance was gaining a foothold. Throughout the country, Sons of Temperance were organizing and women wanted to help, but the men refused to admit them to their organizations, protesting that public reform was outside women's sphere. Unwilling to be put off when the need was so great, women formed their own secret temperance ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... somewhere back in the hills. The trail between these two dams lay almost wholly above the rocky river bed. It would have been difficult if not impossible to patrol the bed of the river itself, for close to the water's edge there were places where no foothold could have been obtained even now, low as the water was. Therefore it seemed most needful to watch the main wagon trail along the ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... from the borrowers. Bled dry at last, and unable to pay {116} such extortionate interest and the principal too, their goods are seized, and the members of the household become objects of charity. Whereever these chattel-mortgage companies gain any foothold, many of their victims are applicants for relief. The law usually furnishes ample protection, but the companies flourish through the poor man's ignorance of ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... of repelling the refugees. Still more, when the armed galleots of the Levant came crowding to Barbary, fired with the hope of rich gain, the ports were open, and the creeks afforded them shelter. A foothold once gained, the ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... She ground her teeth and kicked convulsively, but decorously, seeking a foothold that wasn't there on the smooth ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... dropped over her burning eyes. She tried to force herself not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for. They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. There had been hours too many in which ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pine were far above her head, and in order to get a foothold in them Mary had to climb a neighboring tree and swing herself across. The ground seemed terrifying far away even from this lowest branch; but this was only the beginning. She resolutely refrained from looking down and kept on steadily, branch above branch, ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... talking. Among the best speakers of the city was the orator De-mos'the-nes, a very clear-sighted man, who suspected Philip's designs. He therefore warmly advised the Athenians to do all they could to oppose the Macedonian king, so as to prevent his ever getting a foothold in Greece. Indeed, he spoke so eloquently and severely against Philip, and told the people so plainly that the king was already plotting to harm them, that violent speeches directed against any one have ever since been called ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... they. I should have helped and did not. What would I not give that I could unsay that now! Two of them died by their own hand, the third in Bloomingdale. I had been making several attempts to get a foothold on one of the metropolitan newspapers, but always without success. That fall I tried the Tribune, the city editor of which, Mr. Shanks, was one of my neighbors, but was told, with more frankness than flattery, that I was "too green." Very likely Mr. Shanks ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... not see him as his horse, striking out valiantly, swimming and finding precarious foothold by turns, bore down upon her; she saw only the yellow, dirty current when she saw anything at all. She could not know when, the first time, he leaned far out and snatched at her ... and missed. For at the moment a sucking maelstrom had caught her ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... great relief, something blacker than the starlight gathered into form over his head,—a slanting bulk, which gradually took on a familiar meaning. He chuckled, reached for it, and fingering the rough edge to avoid loose tiles, hauled himself up to a foothold on the beam, and so, flinging out his arms and hooking one knee, scrambled over and lay on a ribbed and mossy surface, under the friendly stars. The outcast and his strange brethren had played fair: this was the long roof, and close ahead rose the wall of some higher building, an upright blackness ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... "There is such a message, and it has fallen to me to be its mouthpiece; woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips." It is needless, therefore—nay, it is harmful—to be always breaking your heart against tasks beyond your strength. Work in some little province; get foothold and grow outwards from it; go on from weakness to strength, and then from strength to the stronger, doing the things you can do while you practise towards the things you hope to do, and illustrating impersonal themes until the time comes for you to try your own individual battle in the great world ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... Mowgli looked at was the sides of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran nearly straight up and down, while the vines and creepers that hung over them would give no foothold to a tiger ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... the successive failures of Spanish civilization and Christianity to get foothold on the domain now included in the United States. Not until more than forty years after the attempt of Ponce de Leon did the expedition of the ferocious Menendez effect a permanent establishment on the coast ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... scientifically or even intelligently, according to the demands made upon them. They impose as much as they can upon the credulity of their clients. I consider that their existence is absolutely the worst possible thing for us who are endeavouring to gain a foothold in the scientific world. Your friend Mr. Rochester, you know, called me ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... separate us. Though we were Catholics on the surface, we were pagans at bottom. I had fed my fill on the fairy tales of Ireland. Fortunately, these fairy tales were told to me, not read, and told in such a way that they led me to seek no individual foothold in a world at war with my heart: they helped to take away what the world calls personal ambition. They strengthened my natural quality as a dreamer, my tendency to care only for the welfare of the soul. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Tapolo, opened the gate of the town to the warriors of Walpi and Mishoninovi, who slaughtered the liberals, thus effectually rooting out the new faith from Tusayan, for after that time it never again obtained a foothold. ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... the rate of growth of these Coral Reefs? We cannot, perhaps, estimate it with absolute accuracy, since they are now so nearly completed; but Coral growth is constantly springing up wherever it can find a foothold, and it is not difficult to ascertain approximately the rate of growth of the different kinds. Even this, however, would give us far too high a standard; for the rise of the Coral Reef is not in proportion to the height of the living Corals, but to their solid parts which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Yankee would certainly have been lost. As it was, the surprise was so overwhelming that the pirates, who had been concealed in the large whaleboat that had come alongside, were not only able to gain a foothold upon the deck, but for a time it seemed as though they would drive the crew of the brig ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... who were jealous of any other nation than their own having a foothold in America, determined to get rid of these wild but hitherto harmless buccaneers. This they accomplished, and in time drove the cattle-hunters out of Hispaniola; and to make sure that the unwelcome visitors should not return, they exterminated all the wild ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... the expeditionary force, the unexampled heroism and determination of our troops enabled them to establish a foothold on the tip of the peninsula, but photographs confirm the reports of eye-witnesses that they were literally holding on by their eyelids to the positions they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... Tertiary and post-Tertiary periods, it does not suddenly make its appearance without premonition in those periods. Far back, in the Secondary, we find it under imperfect forms, struggling, as it were, to make good a foothold. At length it gains a predominance ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... little in fear of them it wasn't because they bullied me, because they had got an oppressive foothold, but because in their really pathetic decorum and mysteriously permanent newness they counted on me so intensely. I was therefore very glad when Jack Hawley came home: he was always of such good counsel. He painted badly himself, but there was no one like him for ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... he set his face to the task of climbing. Severe as this was upon his unaccustomed muscles, the firm rocks were still a welcome relief after the racking looseness of sand that interminably sank away from foothold. At midnight the wearied pursuers dropped down from a high plateau to a narrow arroyo. Here again was sand. Fortunately, this time, for in it footprints stood out clear, illuminated by the white moonlight. They led direct ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... movement was made, it was found that this was the principal influence operating to move the Negroes to the North. Former residents of some of the rural districts of the South who had gone North and secured a foothold wrote letters back to their friends and relatives telling them of their success in the new environment. They depicted in these missives wages which seemed fabulous sums when compared with those received in the South, told of the good conditions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... a ledge, high above a street which seemed to be vaguely familiar. He could not see very well, because of a silk mask tied upon his face, and the eyeholes of which were badly cut. From the ledge he stepped to another, perilously. He gained it, and crouching there, where there was scarce foothold for a cat, he managed fully to raise a window which already was raised some six inches. Then softly and silently—for he was bare-footed—he ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... serious, whooping-cough for its close relation to brain and spinal trouble; measles for their effect on the eyes and lungs; chicken-pox for its similarity to smallpox, and mumps for its general lowering of the tone of the system, allowing other diseases to gain a foothold. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... few minutes the train rolled into a small station, near the top of the range. There was a flare of yellow torches under the cars as the trainmen searched every possible foothold, while Jim stood a short distance back so that he could see on either side of the train if a short, dark figure should dart forth to seek escape in the wilds of the mountains; but their quarry was not flushed into the open, even by the flare ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... glance sufficed to show that on such waters the little red squares had already blocked a foothold for other owners. Thorpe surmised that he would undoubtedly discover fine unbought timber along their banks, but that the men already engaged in stealing it would hardly be likely ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... are harder to fight than those I have made mention of. We cannot be too careful in guarding against these trespassers which can be kept out much easier than they can be put to rout after they have secured a foothold. Therefore I would urge the substitution of a commercial fertilizer for barnyard manure in every instance. Scatter it liberally over the soil as soon as spaded, or ploughed, and work it in with the harrow or the hoe or rake, when you are doing the ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... strangers landed, and asked for trade And a permanent "Open Door," And we deemed it best to grant the West A foothold on our shore; Their slaves in truth we have not become, Yet who can fail to find That Japan obeys in a thousand ways The will ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... give him your daughter," he said. I accepted bravely that life of suffering that I might not lose you, and I suffered joyfully, seeing that we were called to bear the same yoke—My God! I have been firm, faithful to my husband; I have given you no foothold, Felix, in your kingdom. The grandeur of my passion has reacted on my character; I have regarded the tortures Monsieur de Mortsauf has inflicted on me as expiations; I bore them proudly in condemnation of my faulty desires. Formerly I was disposed to murmur ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... a building that domiciled more families and middle-aged married couples than sprightly young single gentlemen. Dick had fallen heir to the establishment of an elderly uncle, who had furnished the place some time in the nineties and when he grew too decrepit to keep his foothold in New York had retired to the country, leaving Dick in possession. Even if Dick had been a conspicuously rakish young gentleman, which he was not, the traditional dignity of his surroundings would have certainly protected him from ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... take everything. How foolish of Stephen Candy and his tribe not to be born of the class of landlords! The inconvenience of having no foothold on the earth's ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... remain non-partisan and with one exception did so, but thousands of women rallied to the standard of the new party. As most of them were disfranchised they brought little voting strength but the other parties were forced to admit them and for the first time they gained a foothold in politics. The division in Republican ranks resulted in putting into power the Democratic party, with an unfavorable record on woman suffrage and a President who was opposed to it, but "votes for women" was now a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care. The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and roared thunderously below him, lesser stone loosened by the men above him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and, turning halfway about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were in his blood. Cinders and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... pressed within the besieged city, and Hasdrubal would not surrender. An attack, led by Laelius, on the market-place, gave the Romans a foothold within the city, and a great quantity of spoil. One thousand talents were taken from the temple of Apollo. Preparations were then made for the attack of the citadel, and for six days there was a hand-to-hand fight between the combatants amid the narrow streets which led to the Byrsa. The ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... foot of the garden, covered with fragrant jessamine and myrtle. If she could only get over that wall, thought Sylvia, she would be safe. She ran swiftly forward and began to scramble up, grasping the sturdy vines, and finding a foothold on some bit of rough brick. She reached the top just as she heard Miss Rosalie's servant ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... safety. Let him begin by swerving from truth or fairness, in small particulars, he will find his character gone—whispered away, before he knows it. Such an one may not indeed be irrecoverably lost; but it will be years before he will be able to regain a firm foothold. There is no profession, in which moral character is so soon fixed, as in that of the law; there is none in which it is subjected to severer scrutiny by the public. It is well, that it is so. The things we hold dearest on earth,—our fortunes, reputations, domestic peace, the future ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... this over-greedy oblivion that gapes for all. No, it is not a satisfying arrangement, that I should teeter insecurely through the void on a gob of mud, and be expected by and by to relinquish even that crazy foothold. Even for Kit Marlowe death lies in wait! and it may be, not anything more after death, not even any lovely words to play with. Yes, and this Marlowe may amount to nothing, after all: and his one chance of amounting to ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... much better for you to come to me," she told Sanchia. "I'm an old woman, and an old tyrant, I daresay, but I'm somebody, you know. And I'm pretty lonely, and happen to want company just now. It will be good that you have a foothold to your name when your Nevile Ingram comes after you. I shall bring him to reason quicker than most people, I don't doubt. Your quarrel is absurd; you can't afford to quarrel with your bread and cheese. You've your father, you'll say; but my answer ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... followed down this artificial promontory, a wharf, and have seen the waves on three sides of us, we have taken the first step toward circumnavigating the globe. This is our last terra firma. One step farther, and there is no possible foothold but a deck, which tilts and totters beneath our feet. A wharf, therefore, is properly neutral ground for all. It is a silent hospitality, understood by all nations. It is in some sort a thing of universal ownership. Having once built it, you must grant its use to ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... expected, Puss on saying good-bye tried to appear as though something along the order of gratitude might be striving to gain a foothold ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... six feet and with stentorian voices, were driving back the mixed multitude in order to afford foothold for the new arrivals on that marvellous landing place, which in those days served for all the trains which came in and all that went out, both north and south. One man tears open the door of a first with commanding gesture. "A' change and hurry up. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Wilkinson found a demand, too)—well, then, even the vagaries of the West African market are a simple matter compared with the vagaries of the Exchange. The mystery of the mark, for instance, is so utterly beyond that, in trying to understand it, I do not even know where to begin. I see no mental foothold anywhere. ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... leaves atop, which is plentiful in these dark, damp, northern slopes. Now we struggled and hopped, horse and man, down and round a corner, at the head of a glen, where a few flagstones fallen across a gully gave an uncertain foothold, and paused, under damp rocks covered with white and pink Begonias and ferns of innumerable forms, to drink the clear mountain water out of cups extemporised from a Calathea leaf; and then struggled up again over roots and ledges, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... within nineteen miles of Metz, But before the end of the month the French had been compelled to evacuate both their former provinces. They continued during September, however, to make frequent assaults on the German frontier positions, but without regaining a sure foothold on German soil, the bulk of their efforts being devoted to the defense of their ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... opened fire, notwithstanding which the enemy dashed alongside, and strove fiercely to gain the deck. But in this they were foiled by the gallantry of the defenders, who fought desperately, and cut down the few British who managed to gain a foothold. The conflict was short, and the discomfiture of the enemy complete. After but a few minutes' fighting, one boat was sunk, one captured, and the other three drifted helplessly away, filled with dead and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... encountered was a smooth, slippery surface offering no grip for the feet. Stepping out of the shelter of the Hut, one was apt to be immediately hurled at full length down wind. No amount of exertion was of any avail unless a firm foothold had been secured. The strongest man, stepping on to ice or hard snow in plain leather or fur boots, would start sliding away with gradually increasing velocity; in the space of a few seconds, or earlier, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... sometimes, under high favor of fortune, push a dog into the Hydraulic, or get him to jump in after a stick; and then have the excitement of following him from one culvert to another, till he found a foothold and scrambled out. Once my boy saw a chicken cock sailing serenely down the currant; he was told that he had been given brandy, and that brandy would enable a chicken to swim; but probably this was not true. Another ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Everglades. They had in front of them hills behind hills and an intrenched enemy whom they could not see generally and who could always see them. Behind them was only a strip of beach, the sea, and the more or less uncertain support of their ships. So narrow was their foothold that even if they had had more men, they could scarce find place to ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hovels of the poor, know how wretched and filthy they are, how even the healthy can scarcely bear the foulness of their atmosphere. How great must be the power of such pest-holes to extend the plague when once it finds a foothold there! Let us tear down those hovels. There are enough rich men among you to build new and better houses. You have heard that many have become ill through drinking the water from the wells. Water you must drink; but a German doctor tells us that heat will kill the germs ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... surely did not have to share a third part of her sisters' room, did she? For nothing is so much prized by most girls as a room of their very own, and a middle daughter, particularly such a middle daughter as Grace Wainwright, has a claim to a foothold—a wee bit place, as the Scotch say—where she can shut herself in, and read her Bible, and say her prayers, and write her letters, and dream her dreams, with nobody by to see. Mrs. Wainwright had been a good deal disturbed about there being no room ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... favor. Against this, the possibility of a scouting party stumbling over the remains of a colony the location of which is almost completely problematical, and which by analogy with all of the earlier colonial attempts has at best managed to survive as a marginal foothold, is so fantastically remote as ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... the one leading to the left, but had not proceeded more than a hundred feet when he stopped abruptly on the very brink of a chasm that spanned the entire width of the passage-way. There was no ledge however narrow to furnish a foothold along its sides. Once more they were ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... that night were the same as on the night before. Again there was the islet in mid-ocean. Again he was alone upon it. Again the squirming hydrophinnae were eating his foothold piece by piece. ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... young men went to church. Nothing in the way of heresy found foothold at Jefferson. It was wholly orthodox; although it was suspected that Wade and Ranney had notions of their own in religion; or rather the impression was that they had no religion of any kind. Not to have the one and true, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... architectural object in Rome. It is in perfect condition, just as little ruined or decayed as on the day when the builder put the last peak on the summit; and it ascends steeply from its base, with a point so sharp that it looks as if it would hardly afford foothold to a bird. The marble was once white, but is now covered with a gray coating like that which has gathered upon the statues of Castor and Pollux on Monte Cavallo. Not one of the great blocks is displaced, nor seems likely to be through all time to ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... people had been accustomed to obey and follow, and by whom they had been protected. It was equally important that the legislation should come from such sources, when we consider the effect upon the enemy, still having a foothold in the State. They might reasonably apprehend that the laws springing from such a body would be marked by a stern directness and decision of purpose which would leave nothing to be hoped by disaffection or hostility; ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... dispiriting landscape—nothing but white and gray, No shadows—merely half-obliterated forms melting into the fog and slush. Everything is in a state of disintegration, and one's foothold gives way at every step. It is hard work for the poor snow-shoer who stamps along through the slush and fog after bear-tracks that wind in and out among the hummocks, or over them. The snow-shoes sink deep in, and the water often ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... it pretty secure. But he did a cleverer thing even than this. There was a piece of steep rock, up which the besiegers would have to climb. This he covered with grease, so as to make it difficult to get a foothold, and planks with barbed hooks were placed ready to catch those who were rash enough to seek ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... pocket, before launching out up the hole. When I had cleaned up the mess of mortar, I started up the chimney, carefully replacing the bar behind me. Soon I was seven or eight feet above the room, trying to get at the upper bars. I was scrambling about for a foothold, when I noticed, to my left, an iron bar or handle, well concealed from below by projecting bricks. I seized hold of it with my left hand, very glad of the support it offered, when, with a dull grating noise, it slid downwards under my weight, drawing with it the iron panel ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... pampas grass gently swayed on their reed-like stems. Even the garden was not without splashes of color, where, between rows of vegetables, grew pale, pink-petaled poppies, seeming to have scarcely a foothold in the rich soil. But the daintiest, sweetest bed of all, and the one that Mary enjoyed most, was where the lilies of the valley grew in the shade near a large, white lilac bush. Here, on a rustic bench beneath an old apple ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... darkness, together with the blinding lights of the ship, that they permitted themselves to be caught and handled. When thrown into the air they immediately returned, to light on the bulwarks, shrouds, deck, or awnings, in fact, anywhere affording foothold. Scores of them roosted all night on the Kashgar; but with the first break of morning light they shook their feathers briskly for a moment, uttered a few harsh, croaking notes, as a sort of rough thanks for their night's lodging, and sailed ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... postponed the execution of his plans, in order first to conquer the Scythian countries north of Greece, thinking, probably, that this would make the subsequent conquest of Greece itself more easy. By getting a firm foothold in Scythia, he would, as it were, turn the flank of the Grecian territories, which would tend to make his final descent upon them more ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... The defeat of our common enemies imposes on us the sacred duty of feeding ourselves once more. 'There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to——Oh!" For in his desire to stir his audience, Mr. Lavender had reached out too far, and losing foothold on his polished bedroom floor, was slipping down into the lilac-bush. He was arrested by a jerk from behind; where Blink, moved by this sudden elopement of her master, had seized him by the nightshirt tails, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... black; the result would be that they would all be eliminated by selection, and that no mammals would be able to live there at all. But in most cases a certain percentage of animals resists these strong influences, and thus selection secures a foothold on which to work, eliminating the unfavourable variation, and establishing a useful colouring, consistent with what is required for the ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... and Austrian armies, marching and counter-marching across it. For years there was hardly a cow in the country, nor enough grass to feed a flock of geese. Such was the desperate plight of the family which, a generation later, was to have gained a foothold in half the reigning Houses of Europe. The Napoleonic harrow had indeed done its work, the seed was planted; and the crop would have surprised Napoleon. Prince Leopold, thrown upon his own resources ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... the Secretary of the Navy with Caesar-like conciseness: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours!" By land, too, the British had been met and beaten back at every point, till now they were without a foothold on the disputed ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... not as yet invaded the village, but it is rapidly gaining a foothold in the smaller cities and village merchants may as well prepare for its competition, for there seems no good reason why its greater buying power and superior organization should not enable it to undersell the local merchant if the customer is willing to pay cash. As yet all chain ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... no difficulty about the descent for the first eight or ten feet. Then the shrubs that had afforded foothold for his feet suddenly ceased, and the foot that he had thrust down for another perch touched nothing but the slippery side of the pit. Clinging firmly with his left hand to the network of vegetation which grew above his head, Colwyn flashed his electric torch into the blackness of the pit ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... imagination, which has for good or evil become part and parcel of our mental vision forever. She gives the reader the impression that she never declined a fancy, just as some gentlemen of the eighteenth century never declined a duel. When she fell it was always because she missed the foothold, never ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time. "Let me help you!" I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He kicked about, trying to get foothold somewhere. It was very like holding a ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... doctrine of the second prophet of Allah, and summoning all the warriors to rally around the chieftain commissioned by heaven to deliver the land from the threatened bondage to Russia. These missionaries in arms having friends and relatives in all the tribes, obtained everywhere a hearing and a foothold. The aouls which refused to join their party were threatened with destruction; and if they persisted in their refusal, their flocks and herds were driven off, their lands and vineyards laid waste, and their habitations razed to the ground. From others whose fidelity was ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... of a minute. Beads of perspiration appeared upon his brow and ran together; he bared his teeth in a snarl; his hat slipped over one eye. He groaned with rage. Then, using the starting handle as a club, he assailed the car. He smote the brazen Mercury from its foothold and sent it and a part of the radiator cap with it flying across the road. He beat at the wings of the bonnet, until they bent in under his blows. Finally, he hurled the starting-handle at the wind-screen and smashed it. The starting-handle rattled ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Leonard saw that they were at the commencement of a decline measuring four or five hundred yards in length, and so steep that, even had it offered a good foothold, human beings could scarcely have stood upon it. As yet the tongue of ice was fifty paces or more in width, but it narrowed rapidly as it fell, till at length near the opposite shore of the ravine, it fined away to a point ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... space and foothold, people swarmed, little people, small and minutely clear, except where the sunset touched them to indistinguishable gold. They clambered up the tottering walls, they clung in wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. They swarmed ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... a fence, took careful aim and, with the accuracy of the baseball pitcher that he was, hurled it at the swaying figure upon the barrel. The club caught Simmons fair in the mouth, who, being, none too firmly set upon his pedestal, itself affording a wobbling foothold, landed spatting and swearing in the arms of his friends below. With the mercurial temper characteristic of a crowd, they burst ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... appointed, in 1849, professor of esthetics and French literature at the Academy of Geneva, a post which he held for four years, exchanging it for the professorship of moral philosophy in 1854. Thus at twenty-eight, without any struggle to succeed, he had gained, it would have seemed, that safe foothold in life which should be all the philosopher or the critic wants to secure the full and fruitful development of his gifts. Unfortunately the appointment, instead of the foundation and support, was to be the stumbling block of his career. Geneva at the time was in a state of social ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... despite the doubts and objections I brought forward, always took it for granted that I shared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was still tossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But the confidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had an attraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfully prejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of a lifetime behind him, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... 27 we had also succeeded in throwing back upon the Meuse the enemy, who was endeavoring to gain a foothold on the left bank. Our successes continued on the 28th in the woods of Marfee and of Jaulnay. Thanks to them we were able, in accordance with the orders of the General in Chief, to fall back on ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in my youth I never astonished him in this way. But this morbid conscientiousness or delicacy as to being dependent did him no good, for he might just as well have been thoroughly comfortable, and my father would never have missed it. The feeling that he could get no foothold in life, which had long troubled me, became a haunting spectre which followed him to the grave. His work "Americans in Rome" is one of the cleverest, most sparkling, and brilliant works of humour, without ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... which is one of the most exalted among "the high traditions of the world." They opened the sluices and submerged the whole country under water. Still, their position was almost desperate, as the winter frosts were nearly certain to restore a firm foothold to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... vessel to pieces, and she was too substantial to go to pieces of her own account. The nearest island was little more than a barren rock. A few birds wheeled about over it, or sat perched upon its rugged points, but with that exception I doubt if it furnished a foothold for ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne |
