"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men back of all this?" Mr. Sinclair asked. He felt sure now that he was on the verge of a ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... longed to be there again. Is there aught in the place whereof folk tell wide about, so that I might have heard it told of and not noted it at the time? Nay, lady, said the dame, save perchance that it is on the verge of a very great and very evil wood, otherwise it was once a merry town and of much ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... second week in June, Beatrix's baby was born, and for days afterward, the mother's life, so long in danger, now hung by a thread. Then the good old fibre of the Danes reasserted itself, and Beatrix came slowly upward from the verge of the River of Death. Bobby's face cleared itself of its shadows, Thayer signed his contracts and, the next week, he and Arlt ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... of that moment of ineffable delight, and her brown eyes sparkled with the glow of a soul on fire, and she was brought back to earth only by the knowledge that Felix, standing at his post near a window, was on the verge ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... beautiful! but on the verge From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn By the distracted waters, bears serene Its brilliant hues with all ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... went out of her expression, and Mirabelle was on the verge of sniffling. "That's just exactly it. I know you won't. And the humiliation of it to me. When you know perfectly well ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... church, found that the spiritual influence had been concentrated in hands as haughty as their own, and connected with no feelings likely to buttress their order any more than the Crown—a new and sterner monkery, under a different name, and essentially plebeian. Presently the Scotch were on the verge of republicanism, in state as well as kirk, and I have sometimes thought it was only the accession of King Jamie to the throne of England that could have given monarchy a chance of prolonging its existence here." One ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... beginning to look forward, almost hopefully, to the Christmas vacation, that a flood of light streamed suddenly upon Miss Pillby's troubled mind. The revelation happened in this wise. Evening service at a smart little newly-built church, where the function was Anglican to the verge of Ritualism, was a privilege reserved for the elder and more favoured of the Mauleverer flock. All the girls liked this evening service at St. Dunstan's. It had a flavour of dissipation. The lamps, the music, the gaily decorated altar, the Saint's-day banners and processional hymn, were faintly ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... untrue; and, on the other hand, the more universal and entire it is, the more perfect and vital will be the art. Bearing this in mind, and also the facts that Shakspere's early training was effected in a little country village; that upon the verge of manhood, he came to London, where he spent his prime in contact with the bustle and friction of busy town life; and that the later years of his life were passed in the quiet retirement of the home of his boyhood—there would be good ground for an argument, a priori, even were ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... quite suddenly, the obvious, satisfactory answer came to him. The factors clicked into place, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of them long ago. He looked up from the reports, at the people on the verge of panic, and he knew what to say to quiet them. ...
— An Empty Bottle • Mari Wolf
... determined should end its days in peace, and never pass from our hands; the little coach- house and stable were let; the servant boy, and the more efficient (being the more expensive) of the two maid-servants, were dismissed. Our clothes were mended, turned, and darned to the utmost verge of decency; our food, always plain, was now simplified to an unprecedented degree—except my father's favourite dishes; our coals and candles were painfully economized—the pair of candles reduced to one, and that most sparingly used; ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... with Suka leading, and carrying a lighted torch made from the spathe of the cocoanut tree, we made our way through the darkened forest to the house in which Susani and her people were living. It was situated on the verge of the shore, on the weather side of the narrow island, so as to be exposed to the cooling breath of the trade wind, and consisted merely of a roof of thatch with open sides, and the ground within covered with coarse mats, upon which we saw were ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... doubt a considerable depression of prices, and, in some degree, a stagnation of business. But the case presented by Mr. Speaker was not one of depression, but of distress; of universal, pervading, intense distress, limited to no class and to no place. We are represented as on the very verge and brink of national ruin. So far from acquiescing in these opinions, I believe there has been no period in which the general prosperity was better secured, or rested on a more solid foundation. As applicable to the Eastern ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... went on, up and up, cautiously, clear of head as one who had from childhood played about the cliffs, and reaching the summit breathless, to stand on the extreme verge, watching one of the ravens, which came sailing up, saw him at a distance, rose above his head, and then began to circle ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... scene. While paying out cable there was the fear of the rope breaking or the anchor dragging; then, on nearing the wreck, there was the risk of being dashed to pieces on the rocks, and after getting under her lee, the surging of the waves kept them constantly on the verge of being hurled against the rigging. The wreck of the foremast, too, which still lay rolling alongside, was a source of constant anxiety, and the rolling of the ship itself rendered it probable that one or both of the remaining ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Chesterfield to distinguish himself from his patient and good-natured countrymen, and ridiculously to afford the world an opportunity of examining into the particulars of an adventure which would perhaps never have been known without the verge of the court, and which would everywhere have been forgotten in less than a month; but now, as soon as ever he had turned his back, in order to march away with his prisoner, and the ornaments she was supposed to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... as they were. However distinct the mental image might have been to him, with the descent of but one flight of steps into the market-place below, it must have retreated again, as if at touch of some malign magic wand, beyond the utmost verge of the horizon. But it had been actually, in his clearest vision of it, a confused place, with but a recognisable entry, a tower or fountain, here or there, and haunted by strange faces, whose novel expression he, the great physiognomist, could by no means read. Plato, indeed, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... mind,' Trombin answered, 'but it works slowly. You are on the verge of guessing what my inspiration is. Let us, for a large consideration, be the means of carrying off the Lady Ortensia for this rich young man, and when we have done so and received his money, let us execute the plan we have already made. For it will be easy for us to persuade her to do anything ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... concerning his famous uncle's surrender only to her and to death, when he succeeded in conquering his quickly kindled senses. Blushing at his own weakness, he averted his eyes from the Queen, and when he met those of Proculejus and the other witnesses of the scene, he realized the abyss on whose verge he stood. He had half succumbed to the danger of losing, by a moment's weakness, the fruit of great sacrifices ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... child," said Nan, laughing, yet on the verge of tears herself. "You might have been drowned, you WOULD have been had it not been for Mr. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... lights his waning moons, and Venus dips her queenly robes anew. Thy fountains are shoreless as the ocean of heavenly love; thy centre is everywhere, and thy boundary no power has marked. Thy beams gild the illimitable fields of space, and gladden the farthest verge of the universe. The glories of the Seventh Heaven are open to thy gaze, and thy glare is felt in the woes of the lowest Erebus. The sealed books of heaven by thee are read, and thine eyes like the Infinite can pierce the dark veil of the future, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... black night's sport to hold me as chief mourner; and, indeed, poor wretch, I had much to mourn for. The great plumed hat they had put upon me flapped and swaled over my eyes so as almost to blind me. My foot was for ever catching in my great mourning cloak, and I on the verge of tripping myself up; and there was a hot smoke sweltering from the tapers, and a dreadful smell of new black cloth and sawdust and beeswax, that was like to have suffocated me. Infinite was the relief when two of the ladies attired in black, who had sat on either side of me, as though ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... I embarked upon lengthy thanks for their kindness to me after my accident. I tried to understand Lady Osprey's game of patience, but it didn't appear that Lady Osprey was anxious for me to understand her patience. I came to the verge of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... which he would treat plainly of the normal circle of their physiological lives; but this would be a method of dealing with the whole matter which would be open to criticism, and for me, at least, a task difficult to the verge of the impossible. I propose a more superficial plan as on the whole the most useful. The man who desires to write in a popular way of nervous women and of her who is to be taught how not to become that sorrowful thing, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... dialecticians and theologians was unfortunate. He not only felt himself the intellectual superior of any living man, which he probably was, but he also began to look down upon the current thought of his time as obsolete and unworthy, and to set at naught even current opinion. He was now on the verge of forty, and his life had so far been one of spotless purity; but now, under the influence of vanity, this too gave way. Having no further conquests to make in the intellectual world, he began to consider whether, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... advanced, the mighty weight in his hand, to the verge of the dreadful gulf of the Earthquaker. The dim walls grew radiant; a long slant arm of yellow light touched the black body of the Earthquaker, and a thrill went through him, and shook the world, so that, far away, the bells rang in Pantouflia. A moment more, and he would waken in his strength; ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... It is observed by one of the fathers, that he who restrains himself in the use of things lawful, will never encroach upon things forbidden. Abstinence, if nothing more, is, at least, a cautious retreat from the utmost verge of permission, and confers that security which cannot be reasonably hoped by him that dares always to hover over the precipice of destruction, or delights to approach the pleasures which he knows it fatal to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... will give her great comfort; and if she should be hastening to her account, what a pleasure will it give such a lady as you, to have illuminated a benighted mind, when it was tottering on the verge of death! ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... dangerous. "The convention," said Martin, "was on the verge of dissolution, scarce held together by the strength of a hair." When things were looking darkest, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman suggested a compromise. "Yes," said Franklin, "when a joiner wishes to fit two boards, he sometimes pares off a bit from both." The famous Connecticut ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation, in places where we would not keep our cattle.... Our comic prints do an infinity of harm by their caricatures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not greater than that in England; secondly, they exasperate the people ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... gayety, and from every side they were assailed by the raucous whistles of ferry-boats. The surroundings were not conducive to sentiment, but for the first time Polly Kirkland seemed a little uncertain, a little frightened; almost on the verge of tears, almost persuaded to surrender. For the first time she laid her hand on Ainsley's arm, and the shock sent the blood to his heart and held him breathless. When the girl looked at him there was something in her eyes that neither he nor ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... slipped to the very verge of the rock, where he lay face down with right arm and leg completely over the precipice, his left hand vainly grabbing empty air for grip of anything that would hold him back. Captain Lewis was horrified, but kept his presence of mind; for the man's life hung ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... superfluous to remark that he was in a trance that day. His father, at the breakfast table, jovially prodded him about being late, until he barely caught himself on the verge of telling his queer secret. And so absent-minded was he at the office that he found he had entered the account of a prosaic old firm ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... ticked on, and still the merciless brow-beating went on. They had been at it now five long, weary hours. Through the blinds the gray daylight outside was creeping its way in. All the policemen were exhausted. The prisoner was on the verge of collapse. Maloney and Patrolman Delaney were dozing on chairs, but Captain Clinton, a marvel of iron will and physical strength, never relaxed for a moment. Not allowing himself to weaken or show signs of fatigue, he kept pounding the ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... such a whopper, Mr. Darrel, especially when one is on the verge of eternity," said Ruggles, ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... and essayed conversation, but her companion's blond head was bowed over the book in her lap, and the effort met with no response. Lulled by the somniferous droning of insects and lazy echoes from afar, Miss Chapin was on the verge of slumber, when she saw her guest rapidly turn the last pages of her novel, then, with a chocolate between her teeth, read wide-eyed to the finish. Miss Blake closed the book reluctantly, uncurled slowly, then stared out through the dancing ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... determined to broaden his views by travel. He went to Italy, which the Englishmen of his day still regarded as the home of art, culture, and song. After about fifteen months abroad, hearing that his countrymen were on the verge of civil war, he returned home to play his part in the mighty tragedy of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... other; and like wild boars whetting their savage tusks, they met, their cheeks all moist with foam; and they rushed forward with their lances; but they couched beneath the orbs of their shields, in order that the steel might fall harmless. But if either perceived the other's eye raised above the verge, he drove the lance at his face, intent to be beforehand with him: but dexterously they shifted their eyes to the open ornaments of their shields, so that the spear was made of none effect. And more sweat trickled ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... picture receded and new lands came into view, familiar lands which he had traversed often. They too were black and wasted with the tempest of war from east to west, but nevertheless those swarming streams came on, countless and undiminished, up out of the south and east, while on the western verge vast armies and fleets battled desperately with each other on sea and land, as though they heeded not those locust swarms of dusky millions ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... practised also moral philosophy. They were regarded as the justest of men, and on this account were intrusted with the settlement of private and public disputes. They had been the means of preventing armies from fighting when on the very verge of battle, and were especially intrusted with the judgment of cases involving human life. According to Strabo, they and their fellow-countrymen held that souls and the universe were immortal, but that fire and water would sometime ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... led straight across the clearing into another forest, lying upon the verge of which I saw a bit of white. It appeared to stand out in marked contrast and incongruity to all its surroundings, and when I stopped to examine it, I found that it was a small strip of muslin—part of the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he concluded solemnly. "Master Courage," he added with becoming severity, seeing that the youth was on the verge of making a ribald remark, which of necessity had to be checked betimes, "come into my room with me and help me to clean the traces of my difficult task from ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and spades, while the women remained outside the church with the cure, they sought a suitable ambuscade. Approaching a mill on a rising ground adjacent to the verge of the forest, they saw the light of the burning farm flaming against the stars. There they waited under enormous oaks, before a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... brought things into shape, putting the transportation in good working order, giving each regiment its proper quota of wagons, and turning the surplus into the general supply trains of the army. In accomplishing this I was several times on the verge of personal conflict with irate regimental commanders, but Colonel G. M. Dodge so greatly sustained me with General Curtis by strong moral support, and by such efficient details from his regiment—the Fourth Iowa Volunteer Infantry—that I still bear him and it great affection ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... visible in those directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Some great ones lift their red backs high above the woods, in the next town, like huge roses with a myriad of fine petals; and some more slender ones, in a small grove of White Pines on Pine Hill in the east, on the very verge of the horizon, alternating with the Pines on the edge of the grove, and shouldering them with their red coats, look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. Till the sun got low, I did ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... supplied the information. She had been on the verge of despair, harboring her fear and despair all alone, with the loyal desire to protect not only Foster, but Alice as well, and now she felt an immense relief to have a man's ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... a fine of forty thousand pounds, and to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure. He was declared incapable of holding any office in the State or of sitting in Parliament: and he was banished for life from the verge of the court. In such misery and shame ended that long career of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it all," Honor explained at length; and Quita nodded. The fact that she was crying her heart out on the shoulder of her detested rival made the whole incident dreamlike to the verge of stupefaction: and it was Honor ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... enormously swollen civil expenditure, and with the inclusion of services strictly Imperial in origin and character. Now it is a different matter, and we are faced with the opposition of British statesmen who, by sustaining the Union, drove Ireland to the verge of insolvency, and now use insolvency as an ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... the rays of suns extinguished, the splendours of vanished worlds, the glories of Olympus eclipsed—all seemed to have concentrated their reflections. When contemplating them one thought of eternity, and felt himself seized with a mighty giddiness, as though he were leaning over the verge of the Infinite. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... no answer, and it is more than probable that I shall receive none in this world which one or both of us may be upon the verge of leaving. In the latter case we can settle the matter elsewhere—perhaps. In the former, should it be my lot to go and yours to stay, I hope that you will think kindly of me at times as of one who loved you ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... be much noted for cutlery and hardware, iron as well as coal being abundantly produced in Shan-si. Apparently the present Birmingham of this region is a town called Hwai-lu, or Hwo-luh'ien, about 20 miles west of Cheng-ting fu, and just on the western verge of the great plain of Chihli. [Regarding Hwai-lu, the Rev. C. Holcombe calls it "a miserable town lying among the foot hills, and at the mouth of the valley, up which the road into Shan-si lies." He writes (p. 59) that Ping-ting chau, after the Customs' barrier (Ku ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... toward the mountains of the Picts. For all the interval of time and space, I, when I looked from the cliff-house on the broad Pacific, was that man's heir and analogue: each of us standing on the verge of the Roman Empire (or, as we now call it, Western civilization), each of us gazing onward into zones unromanised. But I was dull. I looked rather backward, keeping a kind eye on Paris; and it required a series of converging incidents ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Kallikrates, will I once more wash and make me pure and clean, and yet more fit for thee. Therefore also, when thou dost in turn stand in the fire, empty all thy heart of evil, and let soft contentment hold the balance of thy mind. Shake loose thy spirit's wings, and take thy stand upon the utter verge of holy contemplation; ay, dream upon thy mother's kiss, and turn thee towards the vision of the highest good that hath ever swept on silver wings across the silence of thy dreams. For from the germ of what thou art in that ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... beyond which there seemed to be nothing but the snow-covered slope, with only a few projecting rocks along the edge of a tremendous gorge which now broke upon our astonished gaze. Toward this we directed our course, and, an hour later, stood upon its very verge. Our venerable companion now looked up at the precipitous slope above us, where only some stray, projecting rocks were left to guide us through the wilderness of snow. "Boys," said he, despondently, "I cannot reach the top; I have not rested during ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... painful to her that Henrietta should be so much excited about what had never after all been more than a potential love affair. To tell the truth, she thought it a trifle petty and not worthy the dignity of one on the verge of old age. She wanted to be sympathetic, and she was too kind to say anything that would wound, but Henrietta could see that Evelyn did not ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... boldly onward in pursuit of wealth, were already in the enjoyment of a competency in their own part of the Country. They take their wives along with them, and make them share the countless perils and privations, which always attend the commencement of these expeditions. I have often met, even on the verge of the wilderness, with young women, who, after having been brought up amid all the comforts of the large towns of New England, had passed, almost without any intermediate stage, from the wealthy abode of their parents, to a comfortless hovel in a forest. Fever, solitude, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... perpetual creation, a constant becoming, and its source is not in the matter through which it is manifested, though inseparable from it. The material substance of life, like the rain-drops, is in perpetual flux and change; it hangs always on the verge of dissolution and vanishes when the material conditions fail, to be renewed again when they return. We know, do we not? that life is as literally dependent upon the sun as is the rainbow, and equally dependent upon the material elements; but whether the physical conditions sum up ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... thirtieth descendant of the Thegn—was close on six feet in height and thin, with thirsty eyes, and a smile which had fixed itself in his cheeks, so on the verge of appearing was it. His hair waved, and was of a dusty shade bordering on grey. His wife, of the same age and nearly the same height as himself, was of sanguine colouring and a Cornish family, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... made at Yale College And now she is dead—& I can never tell her. And of the article: "I read it to the cat Been on the verge of being an angel all my life Carbuncle is a kind of jewel Compliment that helps us on our way Defeat waits somewhere for every conqueror Don't reform any more. It is not an improvement Edited manuscript-by a half wit Embroidery line Every man is strong until ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... To overhang the world; for wide expand Beneath the wan stars, and descending moon, Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom Of leaden-colored even, and fiery hills Mingling their flames with twilight on the verge Of the remote horizon. The near scene In naked, and severe simplicity Made contrast with the universe. A pine Rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response at each pause, In most familiar ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... drive the chariot of the Sun, his father, through the heavens. But his unskilful hands frighten the steeds. The flaming chariot, thrown out of its course, approaches the terrestrial regions. The whole universe is on the verge of ruin when Jupiter strikes the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... race of princes who proclaimed themselves the heirs of Charlemagne, and a factious younger branch that was eager to bury the Constable de Bourbon's treason under the throne; obliged too, to fight down a heresy on the verge of devouring the monarchy, without friends, and aware of treachery in the chiefs of the Catholic party and of republicanism in the Calvinists, Catherine used the most dangerous but the surest of political weapons—Craft. She determined to deceive by turns the party that was anxious to secure ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... nothing at all then—nothing that any one would pay a cent to read. I have told you from the start that what you want is a grande passion, something to stir your soul to its depths. You are on the verge of that experience. Already you have had a glimpse of what it will be like. For the first time the touch of a woman's fingers has driven sleep from your eyelids. No, you didn't tell me you laid awake all ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in this way they got under cover of a little clump near the water's edge, and near enough to the gigantic game. Upon their hands and knees they now approached the verge of the underwood; and having parted the leaves, looked through. The mighty quadruped was right under their eyes, within twenty yards ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... losing its purchasing power. The people about here all profess to be very hot for the South, but when you come to buy anything from them what they call 'Linkum money' goes ten times as far. We have never known anything but profusion, but now we are on the verge of poverty." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... knew, was quite true. Whether I should ever rear No. 1 was a matter for time to prove. It was so delicate that once or twice already it had been on the verge of collapse, but I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... Rigby came in. Without a word Eddie popped up, a bit red in the face, and followed the lawyer into the private room, closing the door behind him. Rosie's ears went very pink and she pounded the keys so viciously that the machine trembled on the verge of collapse. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the next chapter, which partly public sentiment, partly lack of army and navy, made it impossible for our Government to prevent, enraged Great Britain to the verge of war. After the British orders in council of November 6, 1793, intended to destroy all neutral commerce with the French colonies, and Congress's counter-stroke of an embargo the following March, war was positively imminent. The President resolved to send Jay to England as envoy extraordinary, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... completely avoid friction; so that the results would have remained only middling, had not this ingenious physicist devised a new improvement which has some analogy with superheating of steam in steam engines. He slightly varies the initial temperature of the compressed air on the verge of liquefaction so as to avoid a zone of deep perturbations in the properties of fluids, which would make the work of expansion very feeble and the cold produced consequently slight. This improvement, simple as it is in appearance, ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... and set to work. It was hard work, but her fingers were willing, and Zara's frightened pleading, as the thunder began to roar, and flashes of lightning came to her through the cracks in the woodshed, urged her on. And then, just as she was on the verge of success, she heard Jake's coarse laugh in her ear. "Look ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... are on the verge, take not the leap! Go back whence you set out, and tell us of that other, and still more mysterious Azzageddi; him whom you hinted to have palmed himself off on ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... not only troubled, he was seriously embarrassed. The hint thrown out by his little brother about the Koshare had struck him; for it led to the inference that the child had knowledge of secret arts and occult practices of which even he, Okoya, although on the verge of manhood, had never received any intimation. Far more yet than this knowledge, which Shyuote might have obtained through mere accident, the hint at unpleasant relations between Okoya and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... management; but its Address and Resolutions were hardly laid at Mr. Johnson's feet, when, in his exultation, he blurted out that unfortunate remark about "a body called, or which assumed to be, the Congress of the United States," which, it appears, "we have seen hanging on the verge of the government." Now all this was in the Address of the Convention, but it was not so brutally worded, nor so calculated to appall those timid supporters of the Johnson party who thought, in their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... now on the verge of fifty, strikingly handsome in his features, and of imposing presence, from the union of a fine person with manners unusually dignified. No man understood better the art of restraining his least governable impulses of anger or malignity within the decorums of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... movement of the head, a comfortable h'm-m, and a half-smile. Sympathetic he was, indeed, and warm with the fire that never goes out in great natures. He had much dignity; so much that persons in his own country sometimes thought him shy and reticent to the verge of morbidness. But it was merely the gentlemanliness of the man, who was jocund with no one but his intimate friends, and never fierce except with rascals, as I observed on one or two occasions. Those who thought him ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... surveyed their Canaan. Beneath them moved the unruffled river, gliding around the reed-grown shores of marshy islands, the haunt of alligators, and betwixt the bordering expanse of wide, wet meadows, studded with island-like clumps of pine and palmetto, and bounded by the sunny verge of distant forests. Far on their right, seen by glimpses between the shaggy cedar-boughs, the glistening sea lay stretched along the horizon. Before, in hazy distance, the softened green of the woodlands was veined with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... not reply; an imperceptible twitching tightened her lips; then the young mouth relaxed, drooping a trifle at the corners. Lying there, so outwardly calm, her tired, faraway gaze fixed absently on him, she seemed on the verge of slumber. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... came for the brigade to march. It now consisted of only three regiments, for the time of one, composed of three months' men, had expired while at Centreville; and though requested and importuned to remain a few days longer, they basely withdrew, even while they were on the very verge of the battlefield. This regiment left, and carried with it the scorn and contempt of the loyal and true men, who were as ready to fight the battles of their country on ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... my companions at times, I had vague misgivings. It was as if these two had fascinated me to the verge of some danger. Sometimes Castro, looking up, uttered vague ejaculations. Carlos pushed his hat back and sighed. They had preoccupations, cares, interests in which they ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... his window he was recalling the separate events of the day. The court room had been crowded to the verge of suffocation; when he entered it a sudden hush and a mighty craning of necks had been his welcome, and he had felt his cheeks redden and pale with a sense of shame at his hapless plight. Those many pairs of eyes that were fixed on him seemed ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... Raglan appeared, and a pang of apprehension shot through her bosom. She was approaching the unknown. Like one on the verge of a second-sight, her history seemed for a moment about to reveal itself—where it lay, like a bird in its egg, within those massive walls, warded by those huge ascending towers. Brought up in a retirement that ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... harmony That mingle in the silent sky Then slowly disunite, passed by And left the tenderness of tears, 985 A soft oblivion of all fears, A sweet sleep: so we travelled on Till we came to the home of Lionel, Among the mountains wild and lone, Beside the hoary western sea, 990 Which near the verge of the echoing shore The massy forest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Annan left the victim of his tact and technique agreeably trapped, suffering gratefully, excited by self-approval to the verge of sentimental tears. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... to seize him. His lips shut and his figure stiffened with determination. "But it has to be—it has to be," he declared abruptly. His air was forceful to the verge of aggressiveness as he ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... among many in both high and low life that calls for vehement protest. The question with many seems to be how near they can come to the verge of decency without falling over."—Ashore ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... say that I had the three hundred pounds, ineerest and all, plack and farthing, to pay; though, by my folly and simplicity, I had brought my wife and family to the verge o' ruin, she never was the woman to fling my silly conduct in my teeth; and all that she ever did say to me upon the subject, was—'Weel, Nicholas, this is the first o' your bill transactions, or o' your being caution for ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... like cold water on Old Tom's delight. He pitched it back in the shape of a doubt of what Andrew had told him. Whereupon Andrew defied him to face three miserable women on the verge of hysterics; and Old Tom, beginning to chuckle again, rejoined that it would bring them to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pale, and their cheeks contracted, and they gazed with lips apart and opened eyes on the sea, as if on the point of uttering a cry half-suppressed by fear. They were standing on tiptoe on the very verge of the shore, with their tunics girt up to the knee, and extending their arms towards the bull, as if meditating to rush into the sea in pursuit of him, and yet shrinking from the contact of the waves. The sea was represented of a reddish tint inshore, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... here Baseek erred. Had he contented himself with looking fierce and ominous, all would have been well. White Fang, on the verge of retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him. But Baseek did not wait. He considered the victory already his and stepped forward to the meat. As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fang bristled slightly. Even then it was not too late ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... lake's left bank, As we sail hence to Brunnen, right against The Mytenstein, deep-hidden in the wood A meadow lies, by shepherds called the Rootli, Because the wood has been uprooted there. 'Tis where our Canton boundaries verge on yours;— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... asked her, "a skeleton? Do you know, I think that Rick's ghost, or whatever influence presides over this house, has a sense of humor. You find a room, or a trunk, or something which makes you feel that you are on the verge of getting what you want, and then it all fades into just nothing again. Now, by rights, that writing-desk should have contained the secret message which would have told us where to find a hidden passage or something. But what is in it? A couple of pieces of lining almost ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... given to be fiery in Parliamentary talk withal; and these did proceed to Porto-Bello on the Spanish Main of South America; did hurl out on Porto-Bello such a fiery destructive deluge, of gunnery and bayonet-work, as quickly reduced the poor place to the verge of ruin, and forced it to surrender with whatever navy, garrison, goods and resources were in it, to the discretion of fiery Vernon,—who does not prove implacable, he or his, to a petitioning enemy. Yes, humble the insolent, but then be merciful to them, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fire of them hurt. Matt, in spite of his heavy nature, slept lightly, like a wild animal alert in its sleep; and Jim noticed, every time he moved, that his partner's body moved sufficiently to show that it had received the impression and that it was trembling on the verge of awakening. For that matter, Jim did not know whether or not, frequently, the other was awake. Once, quietly, betokening complete consciousness, Matt said to him: "Aw, go to sleep, Jim. Don't worry about them jools. They'll keep." And Jim had thought that at that particular moment Matt ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... fur-traders, where he had deposited a lot of peltries, which he wished to convert into supplies for the journey. This was readily agreed to, and, accordingly, next day about noon, they came in sight of Rocky Mountain Fort—so-called because of its being situated in a somewhat wild glen, near the verge of one of the eastern ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... Jennie left the room. She came back later, so full of mystery, as Helen declared, that she seemed on the verge of bursting. ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... with the Father was broken, in that awful hour when He cried: 'My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' We tread there on the verge of mysteries, beyond our comprehension; but this we know—that it was our sin and the world's, made His by His willing identifying of Himself with us, which built up that black wall of separation. That hour ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... the foes drew nearer, all Lisburn and Antrim together came pouring into Londonderry. Thirty thousand Protestants, of both sexes and of every age, were crowded behind the bulwarks of the City of Refuge. There, at length, on the verge of the ocean, hunted to the last asylum, and baited into a mood in which men may be destroyed, but will not easily be subjugated, the imperial race turned desperately to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... alive three million, five hundred thousand starving children in Central Europe, but in addition to contribute to that enormous fund to save the thirty million Chinese who find themselves at the verge of starvation, owing to one of those recurrent famines which strike often at that densely populated and inert country, where procreative recklessness is encouraged as a matter of duty. The results of this international charity have not justified the effort nor repaid the generosity ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... travelling agents or the credit system: and to this policy he has adhered. Besides this, he spared no expense which he judged would add to the value of his publications, and his judgment has always set the bounds far off on the very verge of extravagance. Whatever machine promised to keep his office abreast of the times, and increase the capacity for good work, he has dared buy. Whatever man he has thought would brighten and strengthen his staff of assistants, he has gone for, and if ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... of the state banks, or not filled at all. If with the former, whence are they to derive their increased means of circulation, seeing that nearly all of them have carried their issues to the extreme verge of safety, and some of them, perhaps, beyond it? It will, however, be said, that there will be new banks established—the capital that is vested in the Bank of the United States will not be annihilated by the termination of that establishment, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... prove the final wrench to a heart that had been on the verge of breaking for many a year, and it was not long before Olive and ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... effects which at once seize upon the imagination, and inspire it with new worship of Nature, we have great lack. In private grounds we cannot of course command the opportunity which the long tenure under British privilege gives; but the conservators of public parks have scope and verge; let them look to it, that their resources be not wasted in the niceties of mere gardening, or in elaborate architectural devices. Banks of blossoming shrubs and tangled wild vines and labyrinthine walks will count for nothing in park-effect, when, fifty years hence, the scheme shall have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the world to trust to except Moses' word, and Moses' report of God's Word. 'We will do you good; God has said that He will do good to us, and you shall have your share in it.' It was a grave thing, and, in many circumstances, would have been a supremely foolish thing, credulous to the verge of insanity, to risk all upon the mere promise of one in Moses' position, who had so little in his own power with which to fulfil the promise; and who referred him to an unseen divinity, somewhere or other; and so drew bills upon heaven and futurity, and did not feel himself at all bound to pay them ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the Founder. Before the death of his brother and predecessor Mangku, who died in 1259 before an obscure fortress of Western China, it had been intended to remove the seat of government from Kara Korum on the northern verge of the Mongolian Desert to the more populous regions that had been conquered in the further East, and this step, which in the end converted the Mongol Kaan into a Chinese Emperor,[3] was carried ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... foretell earthquakes. France is undermined; America is moving; all Europe is prepared to discard Christianity as a crab its shell; Economics are reduced to a science; nature is ransacked; we are on the verge of something novel and tremendous; I feel ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... wind fans. The sea sighs a love melody. The caressing sand takes print of my foot alone. All the world might be mine, for none is present to dispute possession. The sailless sea smiles in ripples, and strews its verge with treasures for my acceptance. The sky's purity enriches my soul. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... on and on he went, Till he attained the forest's verge, The garish day was well-nigh spent, Birds had already raised its dirge. Oh what a scene! How sweet and calm! It soothed at once his wounded pride, And on his spirit shed a balm That all its ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... opens from the verge of these hills; the waters that gather on its pleasant pastures and fat fields, or among the green moss tracts of its lowlands, flow eastward by the Boyne or southwestward by the Shannon to ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... was possible to contemplate with some calmness the prospect of giving her up if he failed in his search. When Carvel had proposed to come out and had asked my advice, we had fancied ourselves on the verge of the final discovery, and with natural and pardonable enthusiasm Paul had joined me in urging John to bring his family at once. He had felt sure that the end was near, and he had wished that Hermione might arrive ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... paced the room in deep sorrow. "You, Williams! on the verge of the sixth-form. Alas! I fear, from this, that the state of things among you is even worse than ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar |
