"Insecurely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the French Department of War, and was in active service at the beginning of the war. Her two successors on the company's building ways were less fortunate. La Patrie, after many successful trips, and manoeuvres with the troops, was insecurely moored at Verdun, the famous fortress where she was to have been permanently stationed. Came up a heavy gale. Her anchors began to drag. The bugles sounded and the soldiers by hundreds rushed from the fort to aid. Hurled along ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... fulfilment of his great contract with the States-General, by which the war on the Rhine had been farmed out to him on such profitable terms:—had led his mercenaries against this important town. He had found one of its gates somewhat insecurely guarded, placed a mortar under it at night, and occupied a neighbouring pig-stye with a number of his men, who by chasing, maltreating, and slaughtering the swine, had raised an unearthly din, sufficient to drown the martial operations at the gate. In brief, the place was easily mastered, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... trumpeting, gesticulations, and rhythmic pacings that stun and dismay my nerves, I find, the same object sought, release from self, and the same end, the end of identification with the immortal, successfully if perhaps rather insecurely achieved. I see God indubitably present in these excitements, and I see personalities I could easily have misjudged as too base or too dense for spiritual understandings, lit by the manifest reflection of divinity. One may be led into the absurdest underestimates of religious possibilities ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... very insecurely, clinging fast. He put a hand on her waist, to support her. And he held her closely, he clasped her as in an embrace, he was weak with desire as he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... made you suppose I was bothered?" Her reply was instinctive; and then, after a pause, she continued, more insecurely, "I was only thinking about some things.... Lee," she inquired, "you love me very much, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... glorious hair was twisted in a loose coil and pinned insecurely; the habit she had thrown on was still open at ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the running of the water beneath her feet, and saying, "Please let Dolly 'ook," in her pretty broken tones, she pushed her doll through the rustic work, holding it by its sash. But, alas! the doll was heavy, and the sash insecurely fastened. It gave way, and the doll plunged ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... part of the night to see if the others would come in: they did not, and he therefore came up to inform me of what had occurred. He was without fire, blankets, or anything to eat. I did not pity him; he ought to have been more careful. I had several times warned him not to leave the mare insecurely tied, or she would be off. I gave him a fresh horse, and sent him and Campbell off to follow them up to wherever they go, and not to come back without them. It is most dreadfully annoying to be kept back in this manner, all through ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... which Pevensey had just vacated: and this Marlowe nodded his flaming head portentously. "Hoh, look you, I am displeased, Mistress Cyn, I cannot lend my approval to 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 bye and bye 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, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... faint stars, and comfort herself with a feeble repetition of her favourite plea, that it was not "my fault." The poor lady was startled out of her own troubles by the sight of her nephew's tall unmistakable figure; and, as bad luck would have it, Rosa's hat, tied insecurely by her agitated fingers, blew off at that moment, so that Mr Wentworth's aunt became aware, to her inexpressible horror and astonishment, who his companion was. The unhappy Curate divined all the thoughts that would arise in her perturbed bosom, when he saw the indistinct figure at ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... was,—but the Rabbi's room was something quite new. His favourite books had been gathering there for years, and now lined two walls and overhung the bed after a very perilous fashion, and had dispossessed the looking-glass,—which had become a nomad and was at present resting insecurely on John Owen,—and stood in banks round the bed. During his few days of illness the Rabbi had accumulated so many volumes round him that he lay in a kind of tunnel, arched over, as it were, with literature. He had been reading Calvin's Commentary on the Psalms, in Latin, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... storm of popular and manageria indignation from the head of its blower: as it now stands, "one fiddle" among many, the faulty individual will, I hope, escape detection. The story of the flying play-bill is calculated to expose a practice much too common, of pinning play- bills to the cushions insecurely, and frequently, I fear, not pinning them at all, if these lines save one play-bill only front the fate I have recorded, I shall not deem my labour ill employed. The concluding episode of Patrick Jennings glances at the boorish fashion of wearing the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... ability to use them, man were indeed but a "poor, bare, forked animal,"—worse clothed than the birds, worse housed than the beaver, worse fed than the jackal. "Weak in himself," says Carlyle, "and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, Jest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... suddenly emigrated into the street; when the respectable old Dutch striking-clock that never went correctly and always caused confusion, all at once found itself hanging on a branch of the pear tree, brightly illuminated by the beams of the May sun, while under it stood insecurely the round worm-eaten dining-table which, when there happened to be very little on it, had so often elicited from us the wish that we could have everything that had ever been eaten off it. However, the whole affair was also, quite naturally, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... made his way noiselessly to his studio in the attic. With cautious movement he fingered the locks on his door. Would Miller's plan for catching Spencer's murderer work out? According to their arrangement he had left the door insecurely fastened. ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... standing in the middle of the room, standing insecurely, his legs far apart, the decanter in his hand, the decanter which had been more than half full when Honor left the room and had now less than an inch of liquor in it. Yaqui Juan, his face sullen, his eyes black ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... so with the question of the cost of drainage. If the work is insecurely done, and is liable, in five years or in fifty, to become worthless; the increase of the crops resulting from it, must not only cover the yearly interest on the cost, but the yearly depreciation as well. Therefore what may seem at the time of doing the work to ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... be found many examples of George's tendency to graphic alliteration. The Fall of the Leaf affords a capital specimen of the kind of design to which we allude. The leaf of the dinner-table has been so insecurely fastened that it falls, burying with it the mistress of the house, the fish, the champagne, a sherry decanter, a vase of flowers,—everything, in fact, to which it formed a treacherous and unreliable support; Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" lies in a corner of the room, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Batimens, Jardins, Arts, Academies & Manufactures" to Lewis the Fifteenth, above which is a delicate headpiece by M. Charles-Nicolas Cochin (the greatest of the family), where a couple of that artist's well-nourished amorini, insecurely attached to festoons, distribute palms and laurels in vacuity under a coroneted oval displaying fishes. For Monsieur Abel-Francois Poisson, Marquis de Marigny et de Menars, was the younger brother of Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the celebrated Marquise de Pompadour. Cochin's etching ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... The gown, made like a wrapper to show the line of a white bosom, was of pearl-gray moire with large open sleeves, from which issued the arms covered with a second sleeve of puffed tulle, divided by straps and trimmed with lace at the wrists. The beautiful hair, which the comb held insecurely, escaped from a cap of lace ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... pair of very large feet encased in boots which had never been a pair. He sat upon a rickety, straw-bottomed chair under an improvised awning which was made up of four poles and a bit of sacking. He had a table in front of him—a table partially and very insecurely propped up by a bundle of old papers and books, since no two of its four legs were completely whole—and on the table there was a neckless bottle half-filled with ink, a few sheets of paper and a ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... figure, with the hands over the belly, aproned and ornately tasseled on its left. It has armlets and a ruff-like ornament round its neck. The interesting part of the statuette is most decidedly its head, which had been knocked off and only insecurely replaced, when I first set eyes on it. The thick-lipped, broad-nosed face is negroid in type.... The treatment of the hair in this granite head is especially of the very greatest interest. The hair is represented ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... are built of sandstone and cobblestone and adobe mortar. No part of the walls are standing above the rubbish; but they were apparently contemporary with the stone pueblos. The first stands upon the brink of the river, which is now cutting away its foundations, thus proving that it was insecurely located. The mass of fallen material is very great, showing an apparent depth of at least fifteen feet. Some of the basement rooms in each of these pueblos are probably still entire, judging from the great mass of material over them. Great pit-holes indicate the position of chambers and inclosing-walls. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... early one warm evening when my friend and I arrived in Kraighten. We had reached Ardrahan the previous night, sleeping there in rooms hired at the village post office, and leaving in good time on the following morning, clinging insecurely to one ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... showed her dislike of the remark, with its implied criticism of her own judgment. And she was uneasy over the turn that the whole matter had taken. Farvel married, no matter to whom, was one thing: Farvel very insecurely tied, and possessed of a small daughter whose mother repudiated her, that was quite another. She watched Sue narrowly, for ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... one of the Persians saw close by one of the towers the mouth of an old underground passage, which was insecurely concealed with some few small stones. In the night he came there alone, and, making trial of the entrance, got inside the circuit-wall; then at daybreak he reported the whole matter to Cabades. The king himself on the following night came to the spot with a few ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... burnished waves of her golden brown hair were pushed a bit awry, and her face was so wan and thoughtful that even her dress of crimson wool did not lessen its pallor. The voices of the three children on the floor grated on the old man's mood as they were busied in defending a settler's fort, insecurely constructed of stones and sticks, and altogether roofless, garrisoned by a number of pebbles, while a poke full of wily Indian kernels of corn swarmed to ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of Brunswick is most certainly to have the Garter, and I think I have secured you the honor of putting it on. When I say SECURED, I mean it in the sense in which that word should always be understood at courts, and that is, INSECURELY; I have a promise, but that is not 'caution bourgeoise'. In all events, do not mention it to any mortal, because there is always a degree of ridicule that attends a disappointment, though often very unjustly, if the expectation was reasonably grounded; however, it is certainly most ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... simple exercise he had expected, any more than the upward climb had been. Light as she was, it was clear that her unsupported weight would be a heavy drag upon a body resting insecurely on a slippery roof with nothing more substantial than snow and ice to cling to. But eventually she was down, a little shaken but unhurt, and ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... night when the whole world was shaken and things he had regarded as fixed loosened and fell. Just how much had been loosening before that—some, he knew—just how much would have more or less insecurely held its place had it not been for that night, he was not prepared to ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... manner that when Uncle Jim came up for the fourth time—and now he was nearly out of his depth, too buoyed up to walk and apparently nearly helpless,—Mr. Polly, fortunately for them both, could not reach him. Uncle Jim made the clumsy gestures of those who struggle insecurely in the water. "Keep out," said Mr. Polly. Uncle Jim with a great effort got a footing, emerged until his arm-pits were out of water, until his waistcoat buttons showed, one by one, till scarcely two remained, and made for ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... fiery heart; and heard the boiling blood of earth, chafing and roaring far below; while my eyes vainly endeavoured to explore its glowing depths. Anon, by some fatal necessity, I was compelled to cross this terrible abyss—my bridge, a narrow plank insecurely placed upon the rounded stems of two yielding, sapling trees. Suddenly, frightful cries resounded on every side, and I was pursued by fiend-like forms in the shape of animal life. I put my foot upon the fearful bridge, I tried its strength, and felt a horrid consciousness ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... to the house, the two riding Jack's peppery palimeno with some difficulty; while Surry stepped softly that he might not dislodge that burden in the saddle, whose body lurched insecurely and made the horse feel at every step the ignorance of the man. They got him and themselves to the house; and his presence there did its part towards strengthening Don Andres' liking for gringos, while Bill himself gained a ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... stand, crowded together on the platforms of the driver and conductor. I have seen officers, of rank which gave dignity, clinging to the back of the conductor's platform with their feet planted insecurely on a buffer. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... England. The new conquest gave it a strip of coast on the southern border of the sea, but no port. The harbor of Algiers, with the exception of a little haven artificially protected and capable of holding insecurely a dozen vessels, was much like that of Cherbourg, an open bay, facing northward. The storms sweep it with such fury that not less than twenty vessels have been driven ashore in one gale. But the French genius seems to delight in such struggles for empire with the waves. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... mean time they in the ships were at their wits end, hearing nothing from us ashore, and not knowing well what to do. They rode very insecurely in an open anchorage, the wind blowing continually hard at S.S.E. inclosed all round with shoals, and their water beginning to fail, as we had started fifty tons in our large ship to lighten her when we got aground. While in this perplexity, an honest ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... Whether it was insecurely fastened or whether she broke the fastenings, was not disclosed at the moment, but the door gave way and the enraged beast sprang into the smaller compartment ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... met in the centre of the ring, and as they shook hands the old pugilist grinned almost affectionately. The lack of several front teeth incidental to his late profession was momentarily apparent, and an enthralled Ordinary Seaman, perched insecurely on the lower funnel casing, ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of an intensely modern Gobelin sofa, studied her cousin as he balanced himself insecurely on one of the small gilt chairs which always look surprised ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... breeze from south-east, the only direction from which we experienced any wind; the breeze generally blew strong at night, whilst during the day it was light, or nearly calm; so that during the night we were very insecurely placed if the anchorage was at all suspicious, and in the day were either delayed very much ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... felt the huge cliff on which he stood tremble, stoop slowly forward, and gradually sink from its position. Projecting as it was, and shaken as its equilibrium had been by the recent earthquake, it lay now so insecurely poised, that its balance was entirely destroyed, even by the addition of the young man's weight. Aroused by the imminence of the danger, Arthur, by an instinctive attempt at self-preservation, drew cautiously ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... He took the good luck that befell him so seriously, that he would brook no jesting, and at once laid hands on the fortune of his future wife, as he considered that it was disadvantageously and insecurely invested, and thought that he knew of much more profitable ways of employing it. My friend therefore explained, with much pain and evident embarrassment, that she had renounced all control over her capital, and was unable to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of rocks which formed the Chimneys was solid. It was composed of enormous blocks of granite, a few of which, insecurely balanced, seemed to tremble on their foundations, and Pencroft could feel rapid quiverings under his head as it rested on the rock. But he repeated to himself, and rightly, that there was nothing to fear, and that their retreat ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... comparison with which I seemed in the full bloom of youth and beauty. This horse, which she called JACK, had lost not merely the ornaments of mane and tail, but his head, one fore and one hind leg; so that nothing remained of the once noble quadruped but a barrel with the paint scratched off, rather insecurely perched upon a stand with wheels. But he was a faithful animal, and did his work to the last. The baby used to tie me on to his barrel, and Jack and I were drawn round and round the kitchen with as much satisfaction to our mistress, ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... wolf was at the door. The "Saints" held daily meetings, and the people had time enough to attend them. Winter proved how insecurely the town was established, how feeble were its roots; it was not here as it was up in the country, where a man could enjoy himself in the knowledge that the earth was working for him. Here people made themselves as small and ate as little ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... "Permit me to say you love the position he has given you. You love the pedestal on which you stand so insecurely. You would rather hear his curse than to see the hand of social ostracism raised against you. Wait! A word from me and not only David Cable, but the whole world would ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... For several hours he adhered to this programme. Every time he was thus awakened he drove back the wolves with flying brands, replenished the fire, and rearranged the pine-knot on his hand. All worked well, but there came a time when he fastened the pine- knot insecurely. As his eyes closed it fell away ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... in fact, I have heard that a nervous young man fresh from home was the victim of an untoward mishap by mistaking the captain's bathroom for the one belonging to his own cabin, when on dashing in, the door having evidently been insecurely fastened on the inside, he found himself face to face with the captain's wife in her bath. Retreat was naturally instantaneous, but the position was so serious that his only course was to at once seek the captain and ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... off the stones as she lifted them. At last the ford was complete. Ida stepped daintily over the bridge she had made, and jumped triumphantly on to the big stone. Alas! for trusting to appearances. The stone that looked so firm, was insecurely balanced below, and at the first shock one side went down with a splash, and Ida went with it. What a triumph for the shrimps! She scrambled to the bank, however, made up a charming bunch of primroses, and turned to go home. ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... group, rage on Courant's face, disgust on Daddy John's, and on David's an abstraction of aghast dismay that was not unlike despair. To her question Daddy John gave a short answer. David's horses, insecurely picketed, had pulled up their stakes in the night and gone. A memory of the young man's exhaustion the evening before, told the girl the story; David had forgotten to picket them and immediately after supper had fallen asleep. He had ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... dropped off the rope, having been insecurely fastened, and with the shrieks of the women fell into the sea, but hardly had she reached the water than with a splash Darry was over, and had seized ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... left, her feet only a pace from the edge of the cliff. Now she saw the mouth of the cave, a black ragged hole just above a flat rock which thrust itself outward so that it seemed hanging, balanced insecurely, over the abyss. By the pale rays of the lantern she saw the fairly smooth, gently sloping floor of the cavern; then, stooping, she passed in, turned, and held the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... three men exercising a large influence over the worst elements of the population of this city, giving to those elements an immunity for riot and bloodshed, the general-in-chief will see how insecurely I felt in letting them occupy their respective positions in the troubles which might occur in registration and voting in the reorganization of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... of attention until frost commences its havocs; shoots will need thinning, and the branches must be secured to stout stakes firmly placed in the earth; autumnal winds wreak great destruction among such branches as are insecurely made fast, and a number of handsome blooms are thus destroyed without coming to perfection. Insects are very fond of infesting dahlias, and their depredations must be guarded against. Hollyhocks, if entirely free from disease, will still be handsome objects, but their ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... much attention to their lips and eyes. For Maurice loved a thing of beauty, were it a woman, a horse or a Mediterranean sunset. What a difference between these two years in Vienna and that year in Calcutta! He never would forget the dingy office, with its tarnished sign, "U. S. Consul," tacked insecurely on the door, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... seventy-two hundred tickets. Then for thirty-seven days he conducted an auction-sale of the treasures at Fonthill, charging a half-guinea admission. He ultimately sold the estate for $1,750,000. In 1825 the tower, which had been insecurely built, fell with a great crash, and so frightened the new owner, who was an invalid, that, though unhurt by the disaster, he died soon afterwards. The estate was again sold and the abbey taken down, so that now only the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... given. I sprang into the road, seized the horse by the bridle and backed the wagon into the bank. Tim, insecurely balanced, fell off the seat and joined his comrades ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... expressions, applied to the viewless art of literature, must fit it loosely and insecurely at best—does it not seem so? They are words usurped from other arts, words that suppose a visible and measurable object, painted or carved. For criticizing the craft of fiction we have no other language than that which ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... to the roofed cabin to escape this downpour. But they were fearful that at any moment the flying machine, resting so insecurely upon the shelf of ice, would be ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... because every man who stayed two months at that station stayed to die, eaten up mysteriously like a leper with its dismantled sheds and its decaying pier of wormrotten and oblique piles and planks, still insecurely possible. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the water, drifting right across the bows of our boat? A shout from the banks apprises me that others besides myself have taken the sudden alarm. An empty boat, insecurely moored to the bank, has got adrift, and is calmly floating up with the tide in mid- stream along our very course! What is to be done? The other boat, being on the opposite side, can easily clear the obstacle, but not so ours. Either we must put ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... was his gravity. An astonished tear glittered in the corner of his eye. The grief of the gayer sorts of stout people appears, sometimes, to dumfound even themselves. The young man took off his glasses and wiped them slowly. "—An old and very dear friend of mine." He replaced the glasses insecurely upon his nose. "I telephoned to your headquarters, and they said ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... with her last ounce of strength she hung on to the baby's white dress, which she had already torn to ribbons in her clutches. She heard the swift oncoming of the motor boat and feared lest its waves might even yet wash the little form away that she held so insecurely. She refused to lift her eyes as the sound of the engine grew louder and she felt a sickening fear of the first waves that might reach her from the ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... Penrod, of Penrod and Sam, and of Seventeen passes for an expert in youth; rarely has so persistent a reputation been so insecurely founded. What all these books primarily recall is the winks that adults exchange over the heads of children who are minding their own business, as the adults are not; the winks, moreover, of adults who have forgotten the inner concerns of adolescence and now observe ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... slipped from her as she fell," remarked the latter, after a cursory examination of the glittering trinket. "The pin by which she attached it to her dress must have been insecurely fastened." Then quickly and with a sharp look at Miss Tuttle: "Do you know if this was ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... enough to undo the overcoat and slip out of it. The top button caught fast in its buttonhole, the coat being new and its buttonholes being stiff. He gave a sharp tug at the rebellious cloth, and the button, which probably had been insecurely sewed on in the first place, came away from its thread fastenings and lodged in the fingers of his right hand. Mechanically he dropped it into a side pocket of the overcoat and a moment later, with the garment turned ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... go to the druggist's for some medicine, and he came out of the house in such haste, calling to Joe to follow him, that nothing more was thought of the insecurely prisoned monkey. ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... notes were accompanied by a wave of a long white hand, which, when waved, gave off a flash of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Ralph wondered whether she more resembled an elephant, with a jeweled head-dress, or a superb cockatoo, balanced insecurely upon its perch, and pecking capriciously at a ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... time, for he had drunk of it once with his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life of humanity, "the woman tempted him," and he acted as she told him. He drank it off deep. "Ha, ha! that is good!" he cried, smacking his lips. "That is a drink ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... moved as rapidly as possible. Each time he raised his knee a sharp pain stabbed his groin, as though he had been stuck by a penknife; each time he bent his ankle in the recover the mal de raquette twisted his calves, and stretched his ankle tendons until he felt that his very feet were insecurely attached and would drop off. During the evening he sat quiet, but after he had fallen asleep from the mere exhaustion of the day's toil, he doubled up, straightened out, groaned aloud, and spoke rapidly in the strained voice of one who suffers. Often he would strip ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... at Neustadt, Intrench'd but insecurely in our camp, When toward evening rose a cloud of dust From the wood thitherward; our vanguard fled Into the camp, and sounded the alarm. Scarce had we mounted ere the Pappenheimers, Their horses at full speed, broke through the lines, And leapt the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... been the maddest of his tribe—a high, coarsely woven crown surrounded by a quarter inch brim which related him much more nearly to Petit Patou than to the British General of Brigade. His delicate fingers nervously played with cigarette or glass stem. He gave me the impression of a man holding insecurely on to ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke |
