"Top-heavy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ceased, and our horses were calmly grazing some distance from us. Then we lifted our bodies, loaded with cartridges and guns, into the saddle at the risk of toppling over on the other side, like a lizzard sliding down a bank, and rode on in silence, drowsily and top-heavy. ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... stalwart young men seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... name of the princely house of Fuerstenberg appeared as an advertisement for light beer. They even, through their interest in a department store on the east end of the Leipziger Strasse, sold pins and stockings and ribbons to the working classes of Berlin. As this top-heavy structure of foolish business enterprise tumbled, the favour of Prince Max at the Imperial Court fell with it. For the Emperor ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... parties connected, more or less, with the P.R. who—whether from interest, vanity, or sheer cussedness, still pin their faith to this "huge, lumbering, soft, long-shanked, top-heavy, shambling, thump-shirking Son of a Gun," as NOBBY NUPKINS, of the Nautical Division, pithily called him the other day. If some of these credulous or conceited coves had witnessed the little trial "scrap" which took place recently (on the strict ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... hospitably their broad mahogany doors, and which, alas! are becoming traditional to this generation—obsolete as the brave chivalric, warm-hearted, open-handed, noble-souled, refined southern gentlemen who built and owned them. No Mansard roof here, no pseudo "Queen Anne" hybrid, with lowering, top-heavy projections like scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes; neither mongrel Renaissance, nor feeble, sickly, imitation Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none of the queer, composite, freakish impertinences of architectural style, which now-a-day ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... across at the lonely tower of Philippe le Bel and the ruined wall of Villeneuve, makes at a distance, in spite of its poverty, a great figure, the effect of which is carried out by the tower of the church beside it (crowned though the latter be, in a top-heavy fashion, with an immense modern image of the Virgin) and by the thick, dark foliage of the garden laid out on a still higher portion of the eminence. This garden recalls faintly and a trifle perversely the grounds of the Pincian at Rome. I know ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... yet Apemantus is contemptible beside him. The churlish philosopher is like some dingy little scow, which rides out the tempest because the small cargo which it has is all in its hold; Timon is like some splendid, but top-heavy, battleship, which turns turtle in the storm through lack of ballast. There is something lionlike and magnificent, despite its unreason, in the way he accepts the inevitable, and later, after the discovery ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... twinkling all over the place, "I'm aiming to keep it a secret, but I don't mind hinting to an old friend that my part of the evening's entertainment is going to be so good it'll make the whole show top-heavy. Them ladies said they'd rely on me to think up something novel, and I said I would if I could, and I did—that's all. I'd seen enough of these shows where you ladies pike along with pincushions and fancy lemonade and infants' wear—and mebbe a red plush chair, with gold ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the twentieth century," he said, "I should have had to reverse that proportion—in fact, my entire list would then have been top-heavy, and I should have been forced to give half of all the places to agriculture. But thanks to our scientific farming, the personnel employed in cultivation is now reduced to a minimum while showing maximum results. I have already stored the ark with seeds of the latest scientifically ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... spring in a tree not twenty feet from my own window and on a level with my eye, so that I have been able to see what was going on at all hours of the day. In each case the nest was made well and rapidly up to a certain point, and then got top-heavy and tumbled over, so that little was left on the tree: it was reconstructed and reconstructed over and over again, always with the same result, till at last in all three cases the birds gave up in despair. I believe the older and stronger birds secure the fixed and best sites, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... one evening, top-heavy with gin, And rehearsing his speech on the weight of the crown, He tript near a sawpit, and tumbled right in, "Sinking Fund," the last words as his noddle came down. Oh! ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Bolshevik orators toured the barracks and factories, violently denouncing "this Government of civil war." One Sunday we went, on a top-heavy steam tram that lumbered through oceans of mud, between stark factories and immense churches, to Obukhovsky Zavod, a Government munitions-plant out on the ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... not sleep, and presently she found herself puzzling over a problem that had been growing upon her and now bulked big. The truth was that already the weight of the top-heavy household had fallen upon the girl's shoulders. Utterly unprepared and ignorant, she had been thrust into a tangled labyrinth of domestic affairs. The more familiar she had become with the internal working of the household, the more was she baffled and daunted. And presently it ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... of April they may be planted in the bed where they are to bloom, and all the further care they need will be judicious watering and the careful staking of the flower stalks if they are weak and the buds top-heavy,—and by the way, as to the staking of flowers in general, a word with ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... every variety of form, and almost every size. They sometimes resemble castles, sometimes churches with glittering spires, and sometimes the peaked and jagged mountains of Norway. They are also frequently seen in the form of immense misshapen and top-heavy masses. ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... a slender, wide-mouthed child, top-heavy with her damp clumps of hair. Now she was squaring and thickening and looking horrid, like Mr. Hancock. Beside her Harriett felt tall and ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... opposite of this. He has a top-heavy head, proportionately large for his body, and ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... should a horse, for society fitted, Be doomed to employment so utterly bad, And why should a coarse-looking man be permitted To dance on his back on a top-heavy pad? ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... he wishes to take exercise, and Fukuroku Jin wants to show how frisky he can be, even if he is old, they have a wrestling match together. Daikoku nearly always beats, because Fukuroku Jin is so tall that he has to bend down to grip Daikoku, who is fat and short, and thus he becomes top-heavy. Then Daikoku gets his rival's long head under his left arm, seizes him over his back by the belt, and throws him over his shoulder flat on the ground. But if Fukuroku Jin can only get hold of Daikoku's ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... last night the rolling had been particularly bad, so much so that the ship is pronounced to be much too top-heavy. I had slept straight on till 5 and did not feel a particularly heavy roll at 2 a.m., which every one is talking about, and which had tumbled a lot of people out of bed. One old sailor says he got a terrible ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Noel. "Well, we are not top-heavy in that respect, I own. But, after all, it's not worth worrying about. We get on very nicely without it. And we wouldn't any of ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... itself is whether an elaborate organization of this sort can be made to pay for itself; whether such an organization is not top-heavy. This question will best be answered by a statement of the results of the third year of working under ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... the courage to speak of peace. My belief in Germany's responsibility is based largely on German apologetics and strengthened by the evidence of commercial conditions in Germany before the outbreak. Professor Millioud, for instance, has shown that "German industry was built up on a top-heavy system of credit, unable to keep solvent without expansion, and unable to expand sufficiently without war."[65] Or if a good working test of German responsibility were needed it would be sufficient to point out that no nation innocent of aggressive intentions would ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... sworn to by Dan Overton. You don't know Dan, I suppose? Squarest man you ever met! And he don't have to scratch gravel any more, either, for he has a third interest in that Twin Spring find, and it pans out big. They say the girl sold her share for two hundred thousand. She doesn't look top-heavy ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Justice, where the law courts sit. It cost nearly L2,000,000 to build, and is much bigger than anything in London. It stands on an eminence overlooking the lower part of the town, and is so huge that it may almost be said to make the capital of this tiny kingdom look top-heavy. ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... were top-heavy with administrative machinery and were officered by incompetent and corrupt officials. Such men as Cloud in Alabama, Cardozo in Mississippi, Conway in Louisiana, and Jillson in South Carolina are fair samples of them. Much of the personnel was taken over ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... cabin, and made a fair start on her announced policy of crying all the way from America to Europe. When, however, the ship met with a playful little cross-sea and began to bobble and weave and splash about in the manner of our top-heavy leviathans of travel, she was impelled to take thought of her inner self, and presently sought the fresh and open air of the deck lest a worse thing befall her. There in a sheltered angle she snuggled deep in her chair, and presently, braced by the vivifying air, was by way of almost ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... true," returned Bob, nodding his head aside; "I think my head's all alive inside like an old cheese, for I'm so full o' plans, one knocks another over. If I hadn't Mumps to talk to, I should get top-heavy an' tumble in a fit. I suppose it's because I niver went to school much. That's what I jaw my old mother for. I says, 'You should ha' sent me to school a bit more,' I says, 'an' then I could ha' read i' the books ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... train of thought that followed the grey figure of a woman on a bicycle in Oxford Street. She had an enormous and top-heavy omnibus at her back. All the things on the near side of the street—the things going her way—were going at different paces, in two streams, overtaking and being overtaken. The tributary streets shot omnibuses and carriages, cabs ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... of its oil resources and favorable agricultural conditions, Cameroon has one of the best-endowed primary commodity economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, it faces many of the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as a top-heavy civil service and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. Since 1990, the government has embarked on various IMF and World Bank programs designed to spur business investment, increase efficiency in agriculture, improve trade, and recapitalize ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... find proof in this paper of the author's statement that earth pressures on the sides of a structure buried in earth are greater at the top than at the bottom of a trench. That some banks are "top-heavy," is, no doubt, a fact, the writer having often heard similar expressions used by experienced trench foremen, but, in every case called to his attention, local circumstances have caused the top-heaviness, either undermining at the bottom ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... himself and her in little ease by plying the trade of a horse-leech, which trade, for the girl's felicity, held him much abroad, and gave her occasion, seldom by her neglected, to prove to her intimate of the hour that there can be fire without smoke. Now I, being somewhat top-heavy at this season with the wine of so fair a lady's favors, thought that I might, with no small advantage to myself and no small satisfaction to my mistress, set me to doing her honor with some such ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... invented a screw propeller for boats, and found a splendid market for this type of machinery. He built the steamship Princeton, the first screw steamer with her machinery under the water line. This was a great improvement on the old top-heavy style of steamboats, but how great was only to be known when war showed that ironclads with machinery safely sunk beneath the water line and so out of reach of the enemy's guns were to revolutionize ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... appeared to have grown considerably. I wondered idly for the moment whether I had not made a mistake and put on Minikin's; if so, I should be glad to exchange back for my own. This thing I had got was a top-heavy affair, and ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... the matter up. Two well established customs among the early colonists seem to have been to die early and to marry often. Perhaps they usually reversed the order; but, at any rate, dying in middle age after having married "thirdly" or "fifthly"—yes, even "sixthly"—makes top-heavy family trees ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... upon the little brown pony which had been Nigel's former mount, rode Samkin Aylward the bowman, who had taken upon himself the duties of personal attendant and body-guard. His great shoulders and breadth of frame seemed dangerously top-heavy upon the tiny steed, but he ambled along, whistling a merry lilt and as lighthearted as his master. There was no countryman who had not a nod and no woman who had not a smile for the jovial bowman, who rode for the most part ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... what it pretends to be—an elementary treatise on the subject, and is not rendered top-heavy, by overloading of extraneous matter. It will take one about an hour to read it, and he will then know ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... to Saint Paul and then down to hustling St. Louis, and from there to beautiful San Antonio, and when the binders cut wide swaths into the ripening, top-heavy, golden grain on the banks of the Rio Grande, I found myself back in my chosen element, toiling long hours during the day in the harvest field, and then until way into the night dancing the fantastic fandango with dark eyed Mexican Senoritas, to the accompaniment of twanging guitars and squeaking ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... to steady;—as a substantive, a comprehensive mind. A man is said to "lose his ballast" when his judgment fails him, or he becomes top-heavy from conceit. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... life, from Washington. If he will only stop and think he must realize that no one central authority can supervise the daily lives of a hundred million people, scattered over half a continent, without becoming top-heavy. He must realize, too, that, even if such a centralization of power and responsibility were humanly possible, our National Government is unsuited for the task. The electorate is too numerous and heterogeneous; its interests and needs are too diverse. Shall the conduct of citizens of ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... shame's garden? I had long before determined that no man can stand on dignity, for it must be dignity that stands upon the man, and by no act or word of his, be it remarked, but by the high act of God. For those men who stand on dignity are top-heavy things, pigmies upon ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... the forge she uttered a scream of delight. Jack had neatly joined a hollow iron globe, taken from the newel post of some old iron staircase railing, to the two prongs, and covered it with a coat of red fireproof paint. It was true that its complexion was rather high, that it was inclined to be top-heavy, and that in the long run the other dolls suffered considerably by enforced association with this unyielding and implacable head and shoulders, but this did not diminish Mary's joy over her restored first-born. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... the command, and so distinguished was the cavalcade that the viceroy would have appointed each of the gentlemen a captain but for fear of making the command top-heavy with officers. It was early in 1540 that the gallant expedition set out, some of the horsemen arrayed in brilliant coats of mail and armed with swords and lances, others wearing helmets of iron or tough ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... woodman next swings the cumbrous grub-axe, whose wide edge clears the earth from the larger roots. Then he puts his pipe in his pocket, and settles to the serious work of the 'great axe,' as he calls it. I never could use this ungainly tool aright: a top-heavy, clumsy, awkward thing, it rules you instead of you ruling it. The handle, too, is flat—almost with an edge itself sometimes—and is quite beyond the grasp of any but hands of iron. Now the American axe feels balanced like a sword; this is because of the peculiar curve of the handle. To strike ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... ship in which Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander were to have sailed was the Endeavour. It was, they said, unfit for the voyage. The Admiralty altered it in such a way as to render it top-heavy. It was nearly overset on going down the river. Then it was rendered safe by restoring it to its former condition. When the explorers raised their former objections, they were told to take it or none. Ann. Reg. xv. 108. See also Boswell's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... dream of a strange, huge, top-heavy vehicle, that seemed like three yellow carriages stuck together, and a mountain of luggage at the top under an immense black tarpaulin, which ended in a hood; and beneath the hood sat a blue-bloused man with a singular cap, like a concertina, and mustaches, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... simple-hearted soldier iron-master, though it was merely a repetition of a lesson well conned by the earlier investors in Southern coal and iron fields. Caleb's craft was the making of iron; not the financing of top-heavy corporations. So, when he was told that the company had failed, and that he and Farley had been appointed receivers, he took it as a financial matter, of course, somewhat beyond his ken, and went about his daily task of supervision with a mind as undisturbed as it would have been ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... an astonishing structure, just as the cathedral at Antwerp is astonishing; but one has to be very indulgent, or very forgetful of better models, not to deprecate this absolutely wanton riot of overladened panelling and bulging, top-heavy pinnacles. The expiring throes of Belgian Gothic were a thousand degrees less chaste than the classicism of the early Renaissance: few, perhaps, will prefer the lacelike over-richness of this midfifteenth century town hall at Louvain to the restraint of the charming sixteenth-century ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... the clash of cymbals, a file of men in motley robes swaggered into position, wheeled, and formed the ragged front of a Falstaff regiment. Overcome by the scarlet ribbon, the long-coated "boy" bowed, just as through the gate, like a top-heavy boat swept under an arch, came heaving an unwieldy screened chair, borne by four broad men: not naked and glistening coolies, but "Tail-less Horses" in proud livery. Before they could lower their shafts, Heywood ran clattering ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... herring-fishers, was perceptible. A number of coves and bays opened as I proceeded; a faded green turf comes down in curves at some parts on the cliff-brows, like wings of a young soldier's hair, parted in the middle, and plastered on his brow; isolated chalk-masses are numerous, obelisks, top-heavy columns, bastions; at one point no less than eight headlands stretched to the end of the world before me, each pierced by its arch, Norman or Gothic, in whole or in half; and here again caves, in one of which ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the men, if they had women to think of. You see, the boat is top-heavy, owing to the cabin superstructure, and it wouldn't be impossible for her to turn turtle in a heavy sea. Besides, rough waves might break the cabin windows, and if she began to take in water in that way, we should be done, for no bailing could help us. Do you still want to make the trip, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... started, four of us, in an open waggonette with a pair of horses, for Monte Oliveto, the luggage heaped mountain-high and tied in a top-heavy mass above us. After leaving the gateway, with its massive fortifications and frescoed arches, the road passes into a dull earthy country, very much like some parts—and not the best parts—of England. The beauty ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... kicked up one heel with a snort of disgust, And—sudden as though by a giant hand thrust, The top-heavy pack on his lean back revolved, Came crashing to ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... on from father to son, does in the course of that history of the world, which is a part of the judgment of the world, fall upon one generation. It takes long for the mass of heaped-up sin to become top-heavy; but when it is so, it buries one generation of those who have worked at piling it up, beneath ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... you see; I wish to God I did not see deeper. In order to lead you to my point, what, let me ask you, what precisely was it that ruined the old nations—that brought, say Rome, to her knees at last? Centralisation, you say, top-heavy imperialism, dilettante pessimism, the love of luxury. At bottom, believe me, it was not one of these high-sounding things—it was simply War; the sum total of the battles of centuries. But let me explain ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... it all on deck so as to make her top-heavy—so as to be sure of catching us," suggested Mayo, beginning to work his hammer and chisel on ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... peddlers of jewelry—sharp men cloaked in scarlet and blue, top-heavy under prodigious white turbans, and fully conscious of the power there is in the lustre of a ribbon and the incisive gleam of gold, whether in bracelet or necklace, or in rings for the finger or the nose—and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... with double belfry windows, closely resembles that of its neighbour at Huish Episcopi. It is inferior in its buttresses and mouldings, but has a better W. window. The elaborate crown produces a more top-heavy effect than at Huish. The niches which adorn the tower are noticeable for retaining in many cases their figures, which are seated (cp. Ile Abbots). The tower arch is finely panelled with niches on the E. face, and there is a clerestory (note the angel corbels below ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... halliards. His left arm was of little service; his right hung useless at his side. She reached forward—one hand on the tiller—to help him. The rim of the storm slipped up over the sun—a sudden flaw struck them—the rudder flew sharp round, wrenched out of her slight hold—the top-heavy sail caught the full force of the blow, surged downward with a heavy lurch, and the gale was on them. A great blow, and swift darkness, then fierce currents rushing coldly past him; strange, wild sounds filling his ears; and when his vision cleared ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... space and when these were in their places, the whole of the interior formed an enclosed apartment, of a height sufficient to allow even a man to stand erect without his hat. It is true, this arrangement rendered the boat clumsy, and, to a certain extent, top-heavy and unmanageable; but so long as it could be retained, it also rendered it infinitely more comfortable than it could possibly be without it. The roof, moreover, might be cut away in five minutes, at any time, should ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... ejaculated the red-haired boy. "Call me 'Scorch.' 'Patrick Sarsfield' makes me feel top-heavy. I'd soon get round-shouldered carrying ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... put a preposterous green bonnet, top-heavy with plumes, on a little lady in yellow, who sat in a carriage; the lady beside her, in winter costume of velvet pelisse and ermine boa, was fitted to a bride's head with its orange flowers and veil, and these ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... copies of the design in Dugdale, with modifications made a plaisir. In Pope's edition (1725) Vertue gives the monument with some approach to accuracy, but for the bald plump face of the bust presents a top-heavy and sculpturally impossible face borrowed from "the Chandos portrait," which, in my opinion, is of no more authority than any other portrait of Shakespeare. None of them, I conceive, was painted from ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... however, various styles of dressing the hair of girls, by which you can form a pretty accurate estimate of any girl's age up to her marriage, when the coiffure undergoes a definite change. The boys all look top-heavy and their heads of an abnormal size, partly from a hideous practice of shaving the head altogether for the first three years. After this the hair is allowed to grow in three tufts, one over each ear, and the other at the back of the neck; as often, however, a tuft is grown at the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... core of my matter. Side by side with what I have called "the Official Press" in our top-heavy plutocracy there has arisen a certain force for which I have a difficulty in finding a name, but which I will call for lack of a better name "the ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... these top-heavy giants tortured by an invisible and violent witchcraft, a phrase comes back into my mind. I remember a little boy of my acquaintance who was once walking in Battersea Park under just such torn skies and tossing trees. He did not like the wind at all; it blew in his face too ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... thrust her hands info the thick coils of hair piled as always on top of her head. As she did so she caught sight of herself in the mirror and wondered absurdly why she should have kept all her hair and lost so much of her face. She looked more top-heavy than ever. Her face was a small oblong, her eyes out of all ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... must take care of the details of administration. Charles had ruled eleven years without parliament; but so had Wolsey, and Elizabeth had apologized when she called it together oftener than about once in five years. If the state had had more financial ballast, and the church had been less high and top-heavy, Charles might seemingly have weathered the storm and let parliament subside into impotence, as the Bourbons let the States-General of France, without any overt breach of the constitution. After all, the original design of the crown had been to get ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Mr Sudberry was about to address this ill-favoured beggar—for such he evidently was—when the coach came round a distant bend in the road at full gallop. It was the ordinary tall, top-heavy mail of the first part of the nineteenth century. Being a poor district, there were only two horses, a white and a black; but the driver wore a stylish red coat, and cracked his whip smartly. The road being all down hill at that part, the coach ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be constantly renewed, so that it cannot be sent on long expeditions. Our ironclads have their own specific purpose—they are intended for a naval battle. But they are like giants, are rendered top-heavy by their own weight, and are thus easily capsized, and the loss of an ironclad battleship, apart from the effect it might have upon our chances in the war, entails the loss of more than a million pounds. The cruisers, again, I would not without urgent necessity ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... way you wear it, dearest—and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let me have it a minute, please." Susy lifted the hat from her friend's head and began to manipulate its trimming. "This is the way Maria Guy or Suzanne would do it.... And now go on ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... when all is quiet about it. But I was in hopes that provident fear might prevent fruitless penitence. I trusted that danger might produce at least circumspection. I flattered myself, in a moment like this, that nothing would be added to make authority top-heavy,—that the very moment of an earthquake would not be the time chosen for adding a story to our houses. I hoped to see the surest of all reforms, perhaps the only sure reform,—the ceasing to do ill. In the mean time I wished to the people the wisdom of knowing how ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... eye—invisible realities, as well as the outward form of the action." True, but the "invisible realities" form that from which true unity is derived, else their partial presence but makes the whole the more incomplete and lop-sided, if not indeed, top-heavy, from light weight beneath; and it is in the unity derived from this higher pervading, yet not too assertive "invisible reality," that Stevenson most often fails, and is, in his own words, "execrable"; the ending shaming, if not degrading, the beginning—"and without ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... too," Jack said. "They understand balance and center-of-gravity. They're bracing it well, and not making it top-heavy." ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... offshore oil resources and favorable agricultural conditions, Cameroon has one of the best-endowed, most diversified primary commodity economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, it faces many of the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as political instability, a top-heavy civil service, and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. The development of the oil sector led rapid economic growth between 1970 and 1985. Growth came to an abrupt halt in 1986, precipitated ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... open, and the six kids jump out all alive and kicking. Stones are then placed in the wolf's stomach, and it is sewed up. When the wolf wakens he cannot account for the jumbling and tumbling in his stomach, so he goes to the well to get a drink. But the weight of the stones makes him top-heavy; he falls in ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... yet gets over the sea wonderfully well. She is a noble ship, stiff, fast, and dry. Her motion is very easy, and her performance, whether in strong or light breezes, is always excellent. Her grating-deck has been taken off, as it made her a little top-heavy and uneasy, and detracted from her speed; and she is infinitely better for ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... to do it no more harm than pinpricks. Fortunately for them, for its part, the beast would not let go of Jerry, and having only one sound arm, could but snap at its assailants, for if it had lifted a foot to rend them, its top-heavy bulk would have caused ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... conceivable kind and shape. On the overloaded boats the curious little Japanese sailors, oddly dressed in thick padded coverings and bowl caps on their heads, with nothing on limbs and feet save small straw sandals, strapped to the feet between great and second toes, looked top-heavy. ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... with a sudden flare of friendliness, "I am no baby-eater! Put a peg in that! Shiver my soul if this is a way to welcome friends! Come aboard all of you and test the Canary we got in the hold of a fine Spanish galleon last week! Such a top-heavy ship, with sails like a tinker's tatters, you never saw! And her hold running over with Canary and Madeira—oh! Come ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoice in the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest-home. Intervenes the rest of two sunny Sabbaths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give the last ripeness to the overladen stalks that, top-heavy with aliment, fall over in their yellowy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. Few fields now—but here and there one thin and greenish, of cold, unclean, or stony soil—are waving in the shadowy ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Camp of Santee Indians not far of, we set out intending to take up our Quarters with them that Night. There being a deep Run of Water in the Way, one of our Company being top-heavy, and there being nothing but a small Pole for a Bridge, over a Creek, fell into the Water up to the Chin; my self laughing at the Accident, and not taking good Heed to my Steps, came to the same Misfortune: All our Bedding was ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... our pretty violet-sprinkled bower caved in as a little "turner-in" lurched against it in passing with a top-heavy column of boxes. Through the opening daylight is visible once more, and from the region of the machines is heard a chorus of voices singing "The ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... over the water, waning, sickly, moth-eaten, top-heavy, and altogether out of condition—as if it had been on duty for weeks on end. In other respects, too, its appearance was not quite normal. In fact, it soon took to behaving in the most extraordinary fashion. Sometimes there were two moons, and sometimes one. They seemed to merge together—to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... George; we might have a number of tiny communes; we might have co-operation; we might have Anarchist Communism; we might have a hundred things. I am not saying that any of these are right, though I cannot imagine that any of them could be worse than the present social madhouse, with its top-heavy rich and its tortured poor; but I say that it is an evidence of the stiff and narrow alternative offered to the civic mind, that the civic mind is not, generally speaking, conscious of these other possibilities. The civic mind is not free or alert enough to feel how ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... cannon-ball, with a vast, bumpy forehead, on which the soft fluffy hair began far back, and stood out like a nimbus. His eyes were either desperately dreamy or desperately sharp, never normally attentive or at rest; his blunted nose and chin were so short as to make the face look top-heavy. A carefully tended young moustache stood straight out along his cheeks. He had large, slender hands, and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... glanced at the portrait again. The artist had given it a head that would have been, in an intellectual point of view, top-heavy for Shakespeare. 'Romance, however,' Flora went on, busily arranging Mr F.'s Aunt's toast, 'as I openly said to Mr F. when he proposed to me and you will be surprised to hear that he proposed seven times ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... wardrobe contained, and she was bright and cheery and exceedingly incompetent. It was her costume that shocked him. Not only was she attired in a low-necked, rose-coloured evening gown, liberally bespangled with tinsel, but she wore a vast top-heavy picture-hat whose crown of black was almost wholly obscured by a gorgeous white feather that once must have adorned the king of all ostriches. She was not at all his idea of a chambermaid. He started to back ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it's squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands —visitors and all —were called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into .. the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all drunken ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... was impossible for earth or sky to look more lovely.—The house is of stone, with large windows; and an ill-shaped dome rises in the centre. The height of the building is somewhat greater than its width, which makes it appear top-heavy; and every thing about it is formal; but the noble avenue, the terrace-steps, great lanthorns, iron gates, and sheets of water on either side of the approach, are upon an extensive scale, and in a fine baronial style.—Yet, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... democracy, responsible forms of rule, have collapsed under plutocracy, which is irresponsible rule. And this has come upon us because we departed from the old morality in three essential points. First, we supported notions against normal customs. Second, we made the State top-heavy with a new and secretive tyranny of wealth. And third, we forgot that there is no faith in freedom without faith in free will. A servile fatalism dogs the creed of materialism; because nothing, as Dante ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... one below having four windows and a door, and the one above (approached in the usual Swiss fashion by an external staircase), which is much the prettier, having six windows and a door. There are shutters outside, and the overhanging roof at first sight gives the building somewhat of a top-heavy appearance, but this impression wears off after a time, and it is found to be effective and well-proportioned. "The five mirrors" which Dickens placed in the chalet have been removed from the upper room, but they are scarcely necessary, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... study of it shows that it is very much more than that. Compare it to Sir George Grove's staggering tome on the Beethoven symphonies if you want to understand the difference between mere scholastic diligence and authentic criticism. The one is simply a top-heavy mass of disorderly facts and worshipping enthusiasm; the other is an analysis that searches out every nook and corner of the subject, and brings it into coherence and intelligibility. The Chopin rhapsodist is always held in check by the sound musician; there is a ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... all right, that's all right," the man hastened meekly to say. "I was just a-wonderin', that is all. It seemed a mite top-heavy." ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... can sail well too—for a brig—but I should set her down as being too heavily sparred, and likely to be top-heavy. If she was going along full sail, and was caught in such a squall as we had yesterday, and laid flat like the schooner, I don't believe she'd lift again. Anyhow, I shouldn't ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... half an hour thereafter, St. Vincent, fascinated, studied his inscrutable countenance. To begin with, it was a massive head, abnormal and top-heavy, and its only excuse for being was the huge bull-throat which supported it. It had been cast in a mould of elemental generousness, and everything about it partook of the asymmetrical crudeness of the elemental. The hair, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... strikingly fantastic structure in Moscow is the Cathedral of St. Basil, which is top-heavy with spires, domes, and minarets, ornamented in the most irregular and unprecedented manner. Yet, as a whole, the structure is not inharmonious with its unique surroundings,—the semi-Oriental, semi-barbaric atmosphere ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... some stage of inebriation: Over the bay, half seas over, hot, high, corned, cut, cocked, shaved, disguised, jammed, damaged, sleepy, tired, discouraged, snuffy, whipped, how come ye so, breezy, smoked, top-heavy, fuddled, groggy, tipsy, smashed, swipy, slewed, cronk, salted down, how fare ye, on the lee lurch, all sails set, three sheets in the wind, well under way, battered, blowing, snubbed, sawed, boosy, bruised, screwed, soaked, comfortable, stimulated, jug-steamed, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... be there before, but in the front garden he had come upon Linda walking up and down the grass, stopping to pick off a dead pink or give a top-heavy carnation something to lean against, or to take a deep breath of something, and then walking on again, with her little air of remoteness. Over her white frock she wore a yellow, pink-fringed shawl ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... sense. The famous remark of the Caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland"—"Why not?" impresses us as his general motto. He could not see why he should not be on good terms with all things. The pomp of war and ambition, the great empire of the Middle Ages, and all its fellows begin to look tawdry and top-heavy, under the rationality of that innocent stare. His questions were blasting and devastating, like the questions of a child. He would not have been afraid even of the nightmares of cosmogony, for he had no fear in him. To him the world was small, not because he had any views ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... been too thinly settled, and the indigenous population had not become adapted to organized trade. After the move southward of the Chin dynasty the many immigrants had made the country of the lower Yangtze more thickly populated, but not over-populated. The top-heavy court with more than the necessary number of officials (because there was still hope for a re-conquest of the north which would mean many new jobs for administrators) was a great consumer; prices went up and stimulated local ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... within them. She would never knowingly touch a drunken man, or even a partially intoxicated man, if she could help it. She was not a bit like the polite young lady above, who seemed to specialise in noisy tipplers. Her way with the top-heavy was to leave them to recover in tranquillity. No other way was safe. Nevertheless, in the present instance she did venture again into the bedroom. The plight of the lace coverlet troubled her and practically drove her into the bedroom. She got a little towel, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... think his craft would be top-heavy and over he would go, as the kayah has no keel and carries no ballast, and if we should try a kayah, it would certainly be on land. But those Greenlanders learn to handle themselves so well that their kayahs will go dancing ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... attempted the "freestanding group." It is, however, to such a work we come in the splendidly composed Rape of the Sabines by Giovanni da Bologna in the Loggia itself. Spoiled a little by its too laboured detail, its chief fault lies in the fact that it is top-heavy, the sculptor having placed the mass of the group so high that the base seems unsubstantial and unbalanced. Bologna's other group here, Hercules and Nessus, which once stood at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio, is dramatic and well composed, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... should be divided into the natural divisions of the heaviest, or darkest, part at the bottom, which is the floor; the medium color tone in the middle, which is the wall; and the lightest at the top, which is the ceiling. This keeps the room from seeming top-heavy and gives the necessary feeling of support for the wall and ceiling. The walls and floor serve as a background and should not be insistant or startling in color; and the size and height of the room, the amount of wall space, the position of doors, windows and fireplace, the quantity ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... of the board of superintendents, in which body Brooklyn has but a small voice. It has reminded me of those people who personally care for their own dogs and horses and leave their children to servants and hired tutors. The system has been wrong. The wrong system has been made top-heavy. The ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... continually presenting to those with whom he engaged in argument. "Look at this," he would say, pointing to an inverted pyramid, "that is the British constitution as it is at present. Does it not strike you as being rather top-heavy, and not unlikely to topple over in a storm? Now look at this," and he placed the pyramid on its proper base. "That is what I want to see, and you'll agree with me it's a great deal safer than the other way." I thought of Tennyson's words: "Broad-based ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... it up to two dollars it will be that top-heavy that the littlest kick in the world will knock it over. Be satisfied now with what you've, got. Suppose the price does break a little, you'd still make your pile. But swing this deal over into July, and it's ruin. The farmers all over the country are planting ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... Sweeper, who can catch fish by chasing them under water. He can dive like a flash and fly more than a hundred yards under water before coming up to breathe, but is very awkward and top-heavy on land because his legs are so far back that he has to stand up on end. His nest is on the ground and his flesh is not fit to eat, being too rank and fishy. You can hear his ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... butter-barrels condemned to be knocked to pieces for kindling-wood. Yes: the sound had come from there, for the pile had toppled over and lay in a long moraine across the entrance gate. "Must ha' been built up top-heavy," said the Elder to himself: and with that, running his lantern-ray along the yard wall, he caught sight of a small bare leg and a few inches of striped skirt for an instant before they slid into darkness across ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... never help thinking of the story of the Irishman, who, when the bottom and seat of his sedan-chair fell out, remarked to his bearers, that "he might as well walk, but for the honour of the thing." One feels so strongly that the Pope might every bit as well walk as ride in that ricketty, top-heavy chair, in which he sits, or rather sways to and fro, with a sea-sick expression. Then the ostrich feathers are so very shabby, and the whole get-up of the procession is so painfully "not" regardless of expense. You see Cardinals with dirty robes, under the most gorgeous ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... looks top-heavy," Jack at one time called out. "You can see that it leans toward the north; and sometimes I've thought it wobbled considerably, though that may have been the plane ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... thy dethroning Or watch thy effulgence depart Without unaffectedly owning A pang of regret in my heart. I know thou wast stuffy, non-porous, Unstable, top-heavy and hot; But O! thou wast grimly decorous; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... lives lack balance because we find it hard to discover a mean between the triolet we wrote last I night and the big book we are going to start tomorrow, and also because living only with our heads we tend to become top-heavy. We justify our present discomfort with the promise of a bright future of flowers and sunshine and gladdest life, though we know that in the garden of art there are many chrysalides and few butterflies. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the rain began to pour, a self-sacrificing friend who had remained to help got into the cab with me, and we told the driver to go to number 33, such-a-street. It was at the furthest extremity of the town, and when we reached there, after two or three attempts on the part of the top-heavy cab to upset, I was greeted by the information that no such person as the landlady of whom I was in search lived there. What was worse, nobody had ever heard of her, and no cab containing a baby had called at the house that day. Where then was the baby, and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... this moment carries a tremendous top-heavy burden of responsibilities; his death would be no more disastrous than a scandal that would tend to destroy public confidence ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... cockleshells, in which to fare forth to London, or Cadiz, or the Windward Islands—some of them not much larger and far less seaworthy than the lifeboat which hangs at a liner's davits. Pinching poverty forced him to dispense with the ornate, top-heavy cabins and forecastles of the foreign merchantmen, while invention, bred of necessity, molded finer lines and less clumsy models to weather the risks of a stormy coast and channels beset with shoals and ledges. The square-rig ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... these was a regiment of cooks, but instead of paper caps on their heads, each wore a white bonnet of ludicrous form, which they could tip over so as to shield their faces from the heat. It gave them a top-heavy appearance which ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... measly, "moral heroes," who (thank heaven and the innate sense of human justice!) are usually well peppered with sorrow and punishment. The hero of romance is a different stripe; Hyperion to a Satyr. He doesn't go around groaning page after page of top-heavy debates as to the inherent justice of his cause or his moral right to thrust a tallow candle between the particular ribs behind which the heart of his enemy is to be found—balancing his pros and cons, ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... or two in my part of the post-office article. I still observe the top-heavy "Household Words" in the title. The title of "The Amusements of the People" has to be altered as I have marked it. I would as soon have my hair cut off as an intolerable Scotch shortness put into my titles by the elision of little words. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... their gate-posts with stone balls, vases, or griffins; your living images are a great improvement, love, especially the happy boy in the middle," said Mr. George, eying Ben with interest, as he nearly tumbled overboard, top-heavy ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg. But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all. It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it looks like ourselves. When a tree really looks like a man ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... was the matter with you at one time?" asked Jack Parker. "We saw you were having a sort of convulsion. Our cap'n said you were bold chaps to be trifling with such a top-heavy boat." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... of useless metal, and that in a place where the least strength is required, yet as if this unnecessary metal was not sufficient, they add a great projection at the mouth, which serves to no other purpose than to make the Mortar top-heavy. The mouldings are likewise jumbled together, without any taste or method, tho' they are taken from architecture." Field mortars in use during Mueller's time included 4.6-, 5.8-, 8-, 10-, and 13-inch "land" ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... the real case against that modern society that is symbolised by such art and architecture. It is not that it is toppling, but that it is top-heavy. It is not that it is vulgar, but rather that it is not popular. In other words, the democratic ideal of countries like America, while it is still generally sincere and sometimes intense, is at issue ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... saw it wasn't any use delaying, and I might as well go back to knitting sale-socks then as any time. However, I didn't go till October. You needn't think I'd stayed away from the farm all that time, while the tender things were opening, the tiny top-heavy beans pushing up, the garden-sarse greening, the little grass-blades two and two,—while all the young creatures were coming forward, the chickens breaking the shell, and the gosling-storm brewing and dealing destruction,—while the strawberries were growing ripe and red up in the high field, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... with a parachute of his own invention, which, in actual performance, seems to have been the most perfect instrument of the kind up to that time devised. It was said to be about 18 feet in diameter, whereas that of Garnerin, already mentioned, had a diameter of some 30 feet, and was distinctly top-heavy, owing to its being thus inadequately ballasted; for it was calculated that its enormous size would have served for the safe descent, not of one man, but of four or five. Baldwin's parachute, on the contrary, was reckoned to give safe descent to 250 lbs., which would include weight of man ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... yards it bumped along, ramming its top-heavy nose into the carpet and seeming to become more and more enraged at its slow progress. Then it paused a moment and pawed at the floor with ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... whole planet was flying to pieces, the greater part of this lava floor sank down, or fell down, a depth of about five hundred feet, to the level whereon we now walked. The wonderful tale was plain to us as we examined the details on the spot. It was as though a top-heavy and dried-out pie-crust had fallen in in the middle, leaving a part of the circumference bent down, but clinging at the outside to ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... as may be dislodged will not be deep: icebergs, as of course you know, capsize in consequence of their becoming top-heavy by the wasting of the bulk that is submerged. This block will make but a small berg should we liberate it, and I very much fear that the weight of the schooner will overset it the instant we ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... banks of the great river were gray and mysterious under the effulgence of a top-heavy yellow moon. The search-light on the peak pierced out the fact that a low, swirling mist was creeping up ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... siding of the railway that runs from Moscow to Warsaw through Smolensk, was a string of thirteen freight cars, the short, chunky Russian kind—barely half as long as the American—looking as flimsy, top-heavy, and unwieldy as houseboats on wheels. No locomotive was tied to the string, and from the windward side, where the cars were whitewashed by the biting blizzard that had already stopped all traffic with its drifted barricades, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... lantern Wendy saw his hook grip the boat's side; she saw his evil swarthy face as he rose dripping from the water, and, quaking, she would have liked to swim away, but Peter would not budge. He was tingling with life and also top-heavy with conceit. 'Am I not a wonder, oh, I am a wonder!' he whispered to her; and though she thought so also, she was really glad for the sake of his reputation that no one heard him ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... disjointed clauses, eked out with stammerings and throat-clearings. They possess the art (learned from the pulpit) of rounding an uneuphonious sentence by dwelling on a single syllable—of striking a balance in a top-heavy period by lengthening out a word into a melancholy quaver. Withal, they never cease to hope. Even at last, even when they have exhausted all their ideas, even after the would-be peroration has finally refused to perorate, they remain upon their feet with their mouths open, waiting for some further ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be so jolly," he continued. "As a rule I don't like Germans. When they try to be jolly they generally only succeed in being top-heavy. But, of course, your friend is half-English. Can't he play, too? And to think of your having written those ripping tunes. His sister, too—no wonder we haven't seen much of you, Mike, if that's where you've been spending your time. She's rather ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... with a like broad stripe of lace, not inaptly characterized by some humorist as "railroad" trousers. The theory of these last, I believe, is that so much decoration on hat and collar, if not balanced by an equivalent amount below, is top-heavy in visual effect, if not on personal stability. Whatever the reason, it is all there, and I had it all at Oxford; all on my head and back, I mean, except the epaulettes. For to my concern I found that over all this paraphernalia I must also wear the red silk gown ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... large soldiers with five large kits, the aspect of the room filled us with terror. The fiercest frost or foe we could have faced, but the bravest man may quail before wax-flowers and fragile tables top-heavy with ornaments and knick-knacks, and all felt that to encounter such things within the Arctic Circle was an unfair test of our fortitude. Why had not the War Office or some newspaper correspondent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... composers for the piano have, at present rather tentatively, tried their hands. And whole-tone and duodecuple scales and modern harmony in general are taking us farther and farther away from those natural laws of the vibrating string upon which arm-chair theorists have sought to build a very top-heavy edifice. Of course, the vibrating string ultimately gives—mostly out of tune—all the notes of the chromatic scale, but composers employ them on principles the reverse ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... the open plains the native poplar (CODONOCARPUS) stands sentry, its head, top-heavy from the mass of seeds, drooping gracefully to the setting sun; the prevalent wind at the present day would seem to be from the E.N.E. Here, too, an occasional grass tree or "black-boy" may be seen, and at intervals ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... commence work in a box five inches high, much sooner than one seven or eight. To give the requisite room, and have the boxes less than five inches high, would require more than thirteen inches on the top, this would make the hive too much out of shape; it would appear top-heavy. ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... asked Mary Jane, who had never heard the word before. But before her father could answer they were pushed into the crowd at the crossing, hurried across and the next second Mr. Merrill had hailed a great, lumbering, top-heavy automobile and was helping ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... habit of flogging him whenever he felt like it. In addition to the above charges, Abe did not hesitate to say that his master meddled too much with the bottle, in consequence of which, he was often in a "top-heavy" state. Abe said, however, that he was rich and stood pretty high in the neighborhood—stinting, flogging and drinking were no great disadvantages to a ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... thundering big lump of granite from the top o' the mountain," answered Herb, replying to the second question. "That plaguy heavy rain must ha' loosened the earth around it the clay and bushes that kep' it in place. So it got kind o' top-heavy, and came slumping and pitching down, slow at first, and then a'most as quick as a cannon-ball, bringing all that pile along with it. I've seen the like before; but, sho! I never came so near being buried ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... answered Mother Mayberry, as she picked up little Hoover, who was nodding like a top-heavy petunia in a breeze, and stretched him across her lap for a nap. "But as long as she have got the spanking of man sprouts from they one to ten years she oughter make out to get in a vote to suit herself, as ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in this pleasant land. The annoying thing about it was, one could never penetrate beyond a certain point. I might wander up that road as often as I liked, I was bound to be brought up at the gateway, the funny galleried, top-heavy gateway, of the little walled town. Inside, doubtless, there were high jinks going on; but the password was denied to me. I could get on board a boat and row up as far as the curly ship, but around ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... The top-heavy, four-horsed, yellow old coach from Vicenza, which arrived at Padua every night of the year, brought with it in particular on the night of October 13, 1721, a tall, personable young man, an Englishman, in a dark blue cloak, who swang briskly down from the coupe and asked in stilted Italian ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... scuffle in the outer office, and a thin, piping voice was calling down all the curses of the Koran on the heads of my great top-heavy Hindu guards. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... tap-root was fixed in a crevice a few feet below the parapet. Lying on the edge of the cliff, the man sliced off the top of the cactus, and began jabbing into its interior, breaking down the fibrous walls of the water-cells, of which the top-heavy plant is almost entirely composed. In a few moments ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... off your sleep, or half an hour off your march? I do not believe that five men on the lid of a crevasse are as safe as four. Wilson writes that the stow of the sledge with five sleeping-bags was pretty high: this makes it top-heavy and liable ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... has made simplicity and subordination of importances his first aim, it is surprising how much shortcoming we will condone as regards actual execution. Whereas, let the execution be perfect, if the details given be ill-chosen in respect of relative importance the whole effect is lost—it becomes top-heavy, as it were, and collapses. As for the number of details given, this does not matter: a man may give as few or as many as he chooses; he may stop at outline, or he may go on to Jean Van Eyck; what is essential is that, no matter how far or how small a distance he may go, he should have begun ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... with four horses each, prepared for starting, and surrounded by some twenty or thirty seamen. Some quickly clambered up on the roof and into the front seats, and others behind; those who had climbed outside shouting out that the ship would be top-heavy if the rest did not stow themselves away below, the last half-dozen or ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston |
