"Ladder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thus discovered Sofia saw a ladder of several slimy steps washed by black, oily waters that sucked and swirled sluggishly round spiles green ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the bluff that bounds Port Townsend Bay, while another nearly level space of moderate extent, reaching from the base of the bluff to the shoreline, is occupied by the business portion, thus making a town of two separate and distinct stories, which are connected by long, ladder-like flights of stairs. In the streets of the lower story, while there is no lack of animation, there is but little business noise as compared with the amount of business transacted. This in great part is due to the scarcity of horses and wagons. Farms and roads back in the woods ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... it will be a poor man's plaister when it belongs to me; but they tell me that it is a sure and sartain cure for the thumbago, as they call it, which I've at the small of my back, and which is a hinder to my mounting up the ladder; so as it's Saturday night, and I've just got the money, I'll buy the plaister first, and then try what a little whiskey inside will do, the devil's in it if it won't be driven out of me ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied, she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last another cicada set up a louder note some yards ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... were ornamented a little like the moccasins of the American Indian. Carlo caught the eye of this man, who appeared to be eagerly watching the frigate's gangway for a fare, and holding up a small piece of silver, in a moment the light boat was at the foot of the accommodation-ladder. Ghita now descended; and as soon as her uncle and she were seated, the skiff, for it was little more, whirled away from the ship's side, though two or three more, who had also been left by recreant boatmen ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... found the men of a fire-brigade who had formed a procession to carry their new paper standard, bamboo ladders, paper lanterns, etc. This procession paused at intervals. Then the men steadied the ladder with their long fire-hooks, whilst an agile member of the band mounted the erect ladder and performed gymnastics at the top. His performance concluded, he dismounted, and the march continued, the men as ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... fixed up a plan. He said that he would stand at the foot of the tree and rear up against the trunk, and one of his blood-cousins could climb on his back and rear up, and then another cousin or uncle could climb up, and so on until there was a ladder of bloodthirsty Lions high ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... said, "full of conceit and high-minded ideas of working my own way up the ladder. But in order to work up, you've got to get at least a hand-hold on the bottom rung. I couldn't get it. Nobody wanted a genteel loafer, which was me. My money gave out. I bought a steamboat passage to another city, but I didn't ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... captain here turned to insist that Madame and all the women should shut themselves instantly into the cabin. Estelle dragged hard at Arthur's hand, with entreaties that he would come, but he lifted her down the ladder, and then closed the door on her, Lanty and he being both ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... former course, and indeed was now employed upon occasion to feed the canal; so that the mill of necessity had fallen into disuse and decay. Crossing this floor, you entered another door, and turning sharp to the left, went down a few steps of a ladder-sort of stair, and after knocking your hat against a beam, emerged in the comfortable quaint little cottage kitchen you had expected earlier. A cheerful though small fire burns in the grate—for even here the hearth-fire has vanished ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... one line and limit, and his fierce but impotent endeavour to overleap the barrier, to break his self-imposed fetters, had no result. He had despised and neglected the fundamental condition of future greatness—the long and fatiguing ladder of study and reflection. Maddened by disappointment, furious at the conviction of impotency, he ignominiously dismissed from his studio all his later and most esteemed productions, to which places of honour had been accorded—all his lifeless, senseless, fashionable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... garden next to the one in which I stood. The waterman, pulling to the schooner, talked with the man for a moment, evidently settling the amount of his fare. After the haggling, my gentleman climbed into the boat by a little rope-ladder at the stern. Then the boatman pulled away upstream, going on the last of the flood, within twenty ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... for some time with the greatest difficulty. Together with father he was hanging up the lanterns. And father was charming; he laughed, jested, put Yura on the ladder; he himself climbed the thin, creaking rungs of the ladder, and finally both fell down together with the ladder upon the grass, but they were not hurt. Yura jumped up, while father remained lying on the grass, hands thrown back under his head, looking with half-closed eyes at the shining, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... be provided for him out of doors. The sand pile should not be forgotten, flower-bed making, raking the lawn, a polished coasting board fastened in a slanting position to an upright which can be mounted by means of a ladder, create splendid outdoor sports for ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... right and left at random, seeking for a ladder, a rope, a stone, something in short to assist her. She was afraid of Gisco, and it seemed to her that shouts and footsteps were pursuing her. Day was beginning to break. She perceived a path in the thickness of the entrenchment. She took the hem of her robe, which impeded her, in her ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... said the lieutenant. "We can hold the first floor for awhile yet." But as he was making for the ladder a bullet struck him in the groin and he fell. "Too ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... immediately above the place of the cross on the reredos—"the Saviour's coat, with the Cross, crown of thorns, nails, hammer, pillar, scourges, reed, sponge, lance, sword with the ear of Malchus upon it, lanthorn, ladder, cock, dice, etc." Under the tower the vaulting is of wood, dating from 1634. Before this year the choir-lantern was visible from below, with its striking late Norman stonework divided into two tiers. It has been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... board, sir; come on board," said the Captain, and I could tell by his voice that he knew why we were there. Parson and I climbed up an uneasy kind of ladder, and the Captain took us into the great cabin at the back of the ship, where the bay-window was. It was the most wonderful place you ever saw in your life, all full of gold and silver plate, swords with ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... few days Meg kept up closely in her solitary attic, playing with Robin and tending baby; only leaving them for a few necessary minutes, to run to the nearest shop for bread or oatmeal. Two or three of the neighbours took the trouble to climb the ladder, and try the latch of the door, but they always found it locked; and if Meg answered at all, she did so only with the door between them, saying she was getting on very well, and she expected father home to-day or ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... one, which affords the orthodox "haunted house" belonging to every well-regulated village. The ruined walls of this old mansion, with lichen cropping out from every crevice; the unhinged doors and broken windows; the ladder rotting as it leans against the moss-grown roof, the broken well-sweep and deserted barn, offer an aspect of desolation and decay which should prove sufficient bait to tempt ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... other eye, however, Mr. Diggs caught a glimpse of a step ladder, which he immediately lowered through the trap, and drawing a murderous looking revolver from his pocket, commanded Bunch to come up or ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... Alvarado the lawyer. Juan de Morales, a rich merchant and very honest man, was slain while endeavouring to put out the candles. My father and a number of others, to the number in all of thirty-six, made their escape by means of a ladder from the court-yard of Loyasa into that of the adjoining house, in which I accompanied them, but the governor could not be persuaded to follow them, and was made prisoner by the rebels. My father and all the companions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... to which man would never find his way. At that time it was supposed that Jehovah and his angels lived in the sky, but that region was not spoken of as the destined home of man. Jacob saw angels going up and down the ladder, but not the spirits of those he had known. There are two cases where it seems that men were good enough to be adopted into the family of heaven. Enoch was translated, and Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire. As it is exceedingly cold at the height of a few ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the Marquise d'Aumerle was half way up a ladder in the garden. She was picking the fragrant china blossoms, tossing them down to Berthe's apron, and humming "Mironton, mironton, mirontaine" in blissful indifference to many things, to princes ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... innocent violets. 'Ay, he should see th' bowels o' th' earth an' never naught else. I could take him a mile or two along th' drift, and leave him wi' his candle doused to cry hallelujah, wi' none to hear him and say amen. I was to lead him down th' ladder-way to th' drift where Jesse Roantree was workin', and why shouldn't he slip on th' ladder, wi' my feet on his fingers till they loosed grip, and I put him down wi' my heel? If I went fust down th' ladder I could click hold on him and chuck him over my ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... her well with food and water, and pulled the ladder up on board, and settled themselves each man to his oar, and kept time to Orpheus' harp; and away across the bay they rowed southward, while the people lined the cliffs; and the women wept, while the men shouted, at the starting of ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... up his college as a "ladder" by which, "with one side of it virtue and the other knowledge," men might, while they "are strangers and pilgrims in this unhappy and dying world," "mount more easily to heaven." Changing his metaphor he goes on, "We have ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... we step down to the floral kingdom on the Andes, using as our ladder of descent the following sentence from Humboldt, at the age of seventy-five: "If I might be allowed to abandon myself to the recollections of my own distant travels, I would instance among the most striking ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... It is curious that in all their pretended dreams or visions of their god he has always a crooked leg, like the Egyptian Thau. Supposing that those who were reported to have perished in this cave had fallen over some precipice, we went well provided with lights, ladder, lines, &c.; but it turned out to be only an open cave, with an entrance about ten feet square, which contracts into two water-worn branches, ending in round orifices through which the water once flowed. The only inhabitants it seems ever to have had were baboons. I left at the end ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... change his point of view when he becomes an employer instead of an employee. Old girl, we're on our way up the ladder and nothing but old Grim, himself, can stop us. And when I came in from the old farm, when I was twelve years old, I had only my two hands and the ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... for the purpose of breaking it open, as we knew we were strong enough to murder the family, if they were awaked by the noise; but reflecting that it might create an alarm in the neighborhood, we determined to enter the house secretly, and murder them whilst sleeping. Hark got a ladder and set it against the chimney, on which I ascended, and hoisting a window, entered and came down stairs, unbarred the door, and removed the guns from their places. It was then observed that I must spill the first ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... pasture, and polluted the stream. The house of the peasant cottager was poorer still. Most of them were probably built of posts wattled and plastered with clay or mud, with an upper storey of poles reached by a ladder." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... what came, and did it in the best way he knew how; and when he did not like what he was doing he still did it as well as he could while he was doing it, but always with an eye single to the purpose not to do it any longer than was strictly necessary. He used every rung in the ladder as a rung to the one above. He always gave more than his particular position or salary asked for. He never worked by the clock; always by the job; and saw that it was well done regardless of the time it took to do it. This meant effort, of course, untiring, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... a part of the night at the foot of the monument. M. Barre, who was old and feeble, then retired, after having placed as sentinel one of his associates, whose duty it was to inform him of the arrival of the first courier; and a ladder was placed across the entrance of the arch of triumph, so that no one might pass under it before his Majesty. Unfortunately, the municipal argus went to sleep; and the Emperor arrived in the early morning, and passed by ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... imprudent, a dog is," said Jerome K. Jerome. "He never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or wrong—never bothers as to whether you are going up or down life's ladder—never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, saint or sinner. You are his pal. That is enough for him, and come luck or misfortune, good repute or bad, honour or shame, he is going to stick to you, to comfort you, guard you, and give his life for you, if need be—foolish, brainless, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... a mattock, and tucked up with a spade; said of one that is dead and buried. You will go up a ladder to bed, i.e. you will be hanged. In many country places, persons hanged are made to mount up a ladder, which is afterwards turned round or taken away, whence ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... in the dancers on the rope, and a gorbelly'd blockhead standing out with a ladder, commanded his boy to hopp every round singing, and dance a jigg on the top of it, and then tumble through burning hoops of iron, with a glass in his mouth. Trimalchio was the only person that admir'd it, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... love is in its early days of the past from which it has been excluded, how jealous sometimes of the point of contact with other lives in the unknown years which have gone to make up the rungs of the ladder of life. I was never tired of hearing of her childhood on the braes of Raasay: how she guddled for mountain trout in the burn with her brother Murdoch or hung around his neck chains of daisies in childish glee. And she— Faith, she drew me out with shy questions till that part of my life which ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... that I was studying and exploring in the borderland between the old life and the new; leaping at conclusions, and sometimes slipping; finding inspiration in common things, and interpretations in dumb things; eagerly scaling the ladder of learning, my eyes on star-diademmed peaks of ambition; building up friendships that should support my youth and enrich my womanhood; learning to think much of myself, and much more of my world,—while I was steadily gathering in my heritage, sowed in the dim past, and ripened ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the order was given all hands tumbled up to the hatchway and began swarming down the iron ladder. It was a swaying, staggering crowd. When you stand on a wet deck at an angle of forty-five degrees one way and thirty degrees another and constantly shifting both angles, with nothing but a rope lashed athwart ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... my boys spend three years here, from fourteen to seventeen, grow strong in the love for work, and educated to feel the dignity of labor, and get a trade: then if they have the capacity and desire to qualify for a "top round in the ladder," for leadership in the "world's broad field of battle," it will be time enough to think of Harvard and Yale and Edinburgh, or perhaps similar ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... regarded Bruce with a solemn, weighty stare. He was a lank, lantern-jawed, frock-coated gentleman of thirty-five, with an upward rolling forelock and an Adam's-apple that throbbed in his throat like a petrified pulse. He was climbing the political ladder, and he was carefully schooling himself into that dignity and poise and appearance of importance which should distinguish the deportment of ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... tell me what you want," he said, "I'll get it for you. I know where they all are. If it is French you want, they are up there. I like going up the ladder," he added, half ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... clasping to a mast, endur'd a sea That almost burst the deck, and from the ladder-tackle Wash'd off ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Manager. Mr Carker the Junior, Walter's friend, was his brother; two or three years older than he, but widely removed in station. The younger brother's post was on the top of the official ladder; the elder brother's at the bottom. The elder brother never gained a stave, or raised his foot to mount one. Young men passed above his head, and rose and rose; but he was always at the bottom. He was quite resigned to occupy that low condition: ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... you may enter a narrow and very tortuous path, called the Labyrinth, which leads to an immense split, or chasm, in the rocks. Here is placed a ladder, down which you descend twenty-five or thirty feet, and enter a narrow cave below, which brings you to a combination of rock called the Gothic Window. You stand in this recess, while the guided ascends huge cliffs overhead, and kindles Bengal ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... me, and I sat and watched him, feeling that he must have turned one of the trained plum-trees into a ladder, and climbed up; and I found myself wondering whether he had knocked off any of ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... But soon it was found 'mid the tumult and din That burglars were making attempts to break in. And now there arose o'er the turmoil and noise The woodman's loud summons addressed to 'the boys.' 'The boys' quickly came, and on looking around, At one of the windows a ladder was found, And on it a burglar, who, plying his trade, A ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... green-carpeted stairs, to the second, third, fourth, and fifth stories, while I nearly lost my breath as we came to the fifth and top floor and saw Launcelot disappearing through a trapdoor leading to the castle roof. Up the narrow little wooden ladder we bounced after him, through the trapdoor, and out onto the broad spreading roof of the ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... little was left for me beyond sawing away the boughs that had recently died, and cutting out the useless sprouts on the larger limbs. Before leaving the city I had provided myself with such tools as I was sure I should need; and finding a ladder under a shed, I attacked the trees vigorously. The wind had almost died out, and I knew I must make the most of all still days in this gusty month. After playing around for a time, Winnie and Bobsey concluded that gathering ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... and encouragement of them, amid poverty and trouble, the characters of the boys themselves, their cheerfulness, courage, and patience, and the firm grip which they take upon the lowest rounds of the ladder of success, are told simply ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... only had some sticks," exclaimed Andy hopelessly. "We could drive them in the dirt, leaving the ends projecting, and then we could go up, like on a ladder." ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... weather. Two frogs, of the species **Rana arborea, are kept in a crystal jar, about 18 inches high, and 6 inches in diameter, with a depth of three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry weather, the frogs mount the ladder; but, when moisture is expected, they descend into the water. These animals are of a bright green, and in their wild state here, climb the trees in search ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... too. This weakness surprised him, for he did not know how much blood he had lost, and he could not account for the way in which the lights swam before his eyes and his steps reeled, as he was taken down a dark ladder-like staircase and into a low long room with a swinging lamp suspended from the ceiling. It felt close and airless after the coldness of the night, and everything swam in a mist before his eyes; but he ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... robbers had their dens in the mountains in lonely places, beside a trail sometimes, and in the depths of the forests. The dens had generally two rooms on the ground floor and a loft which was reached by a ladder. If a belated miner sought shelter or food here he was given a lodging in the loft. If he drank with his "host" it would most likely be some liquor that was drugged, and in his heavy sleep he was ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... a microscope" Hogan calls the society of his native city—"everybody pushing upward on the social ladder kicking down those behind." This zoological spectacle is not confined to Dublin, but there appears to be a combination of strictness and indefiniteness of precedence belonging peculiarly to that place. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... to banter his uncommon tallness. For "Krage" in the Danish tongue means a tree-trunk, whose branches are pollarded, and whose summit is climbed in such wise that the foot uses the lopped timbers as supports, as if leaning on a ladder, and, gradually advancing to the higher parts, finds the shortest way to the top. Rolf accepted this random word as though it were a name of honour for him, and rewarded the wit of the saying with a heavy bracelet. Then Wigg, thrusting ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... written by the girls themselves, or some adaptation of an old fairy tale. They acted Jack the Giant-killer in fine style, and the giant came tumbling headlong from a loft when Jack cut down the squash-vine running up a ladder and supposed to represent the immortal beanstalk. At other performances Cinderella rolled away in an impressive pumpkin, and one of their star plays was a dramatic version of the story of the woman ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the helm to starboard, and 'sheer off.' Thus the 'Monitor' retired temporarily from the action, in order to ascertain the extent of the injuries she had received. At the same time Worden sent for me, and I went forward at once, and found him standing at the foot of the ladder leading ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... written comic stories and weird stories, and one or two true stories; and he had turned to economics and political science with reforming zeal. But here we have it all again, not in parts, but as a comprehensive whole, in a novel which asks us to consider every class in the social ladder in modern England, which questions the whole organisation of our society, which raises central questions about birth, marriage, religion, death, and survival, and presents the whole as ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... up the ladder of the conning-tower and looked out through one of the glass ports. My eyes were just even with the surface of the water. A wave came driving and foaming entirely over the top of the vessel, and I could see the curiously beautiful sheen of the bright summit of the water above us. It was a most ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... husband saddled two horses. Mrs. Hawkins lived within her four walls and called that, her "spere," and spoke of her husband as "he." You know the type of woman. That Senator Warfield was anything less than a godlike man who stood very high on the ladder of Fame, she would never believe. So she related garrulously certain incoherent, aimless utterances of Lorraine's, and cried a little, and thought it was perfectly awful that a sweet, pretty girl like that should be crazy. She would have made an ideal witness against Lorraine, her very ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... a fair enough answer and Fred bowed and walked away. Then he went down the ladder leading to the engine room. He met Frank Norton coming up. There was a look of concern on ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... Queen gained the stairs, which led to the chambers formerly occupied by Rodin. Arrived at the landing-place she ascended another ruinous staircase, steep as a ladder, and with nothing but an old rope for a rail. She at length reached the half-rotten door of a garret, situated in the roof. The house was in such a state of dilapidation, that, in many places the roof gave admission to the rain, and allowed it to penetrate into this ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... heart; those words were dagger thrusts coldly given at its tenderest spot, for which she seemed to aim. Moral sufferings are not fixed quantities; they depend on the sensitiveness of souls. The countess had trod each round of the ladder of pain; but, for that very reason, the kindest of women was now as cruel as she was once beneficent. I looked at Henriette, but she averted her head. I went to my new room, which was pretty, white and green. Once there I ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... present, at least, and perhaps forever; so I want you to engage in something where your opportunities for advancement will not be limited as mine have been. No matter if you have to commence at the very bottom of the ladder; you can build yourself up by hard and ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... reason for the darkness. Stumbling up the open stairs, hardly more than a ladder, one came into a half story added to the original building, and so low that the manager bowed his head as he entered; nor was there any point at which he could stand freely upright, this well-fed Englishman nearly ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... minority be fit to be captains, and but three or four to be admirals. Those who object to promotion otherwise than by mere seniority should reflect upon the elementary fact that no business in private life could be successfully managed if those who enter at the lowest rungs of the ladder should each in turn, if he lived, become the head of the firm, its active director, and retire after he had held the position a few months. On its face such a scheme is an absurdity. Chances for improper favoritism can be minimized ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Providence, which gives to every field its increase, and no more. But by this time my glebe was not the only land on which I could plant my foot and say, Lo, thou art mine! for I had so prospered in the five years during which I had held a ladder for my pupils to the tree of knowledge, that much golden fruit had fallen to my share, (being kicked down, as it were, by their climbing among the branches;) so that I had purchased the fee simple of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the duke her father, and told him, that, despairing of ever being able to obtain his consent, he had prevailed upon Silvia to leave her father's palace that night, and go with him to Mantua; then he showed Proteus a ladder of ropes, by help of which he meant to assist Silvia to get out of one of the windows of the palace after ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... some old boxes and rusty tools, a short ladder led to a loft above full of dry hay, and there Miss Clairville explained she had taken refuge ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... nee Sharp, remarked, most people can be good on five thousand a year; and if Cargrim had been high-placed and wealthy he would no doubt have developed his better instincts for lack of reasons to make use of his worser. But being only a poor curate, he had a long ladder to climb, which he thought could be ascended more rapidly by kicking down all those who impeded his progress, and by holding on to the skirts of those who were a few rungs higher. Therefore he was not very ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Cogia taking a ladder on his shoulder, placed it against a garden wall, and mounting, got over, taking the ladder with him. The gardener seeing him said, 'Who are you? and what do you want here?' 'I am come to sell this ladder,' said the Cogia without hesitation. 'Is this a place for selling ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca
... hand of his son, and though neither of them wept, both of them were under the influence of the strongest emotions. Christy accompanied his father to the accommodation ladder, and shook hands with him again as he embarked in his boat. His mother and his sister had been on board that day, and the young commander had parted from them with quite as much emotion as on the present occasion. The members of the family were devotedly attached to ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... hated to go so soon, but he made it an object for me to go, and I went. I started in with the idea that I would begin at the bottom of the ladder, as it were, and gradually climb to the bran bin by my own exertions, hoping by honesty, industry, and carrying two bushels of wheat up nine flights of stairs, to become a wealthy man, with corn meal in my hair and cracked wheat in my coat pocket, but ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... accessible only by a sort of small drawbridge, which might be dropped at pleasure from a little portal near the summit of the turret, to the battlements of another tower of the same construction, but twenty feet lower, and containing only a winding staircase, called in Woodstock Love's Ladder; because it is said, that by ascending this staircase to the top of the tower, and then making use of the drawbridge, Henry obtained access to the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... of this entry, as so many climbers of the ladder-like stairs have felt it before him; and a dazed sensation seized upon him as the wild Ztigane music of the stringed orchestra beat suddenly upon his ears and the intense white light ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... heard voices, the Kurfurst's and French voices, eagerly at work inside. "Admit me, Gracious Herr; UM GOTTES WILLEN, me!" No admission. Unertl, in despair, rushed round to the garden side of the Apartment; desperately snatched a ladder, set it up to the window, and conjured the Gracious Highness: "For the love of Heaven, my ALLERGNADIGSTER, don't! Have no trade with those French! Remember your illustrious Father, Kurfurst Max, in the Eugene-Marlborough time, what a job he ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... increased in proportion as educational privileges have been withdrawn. This brings the Negro face to face with a most dangerous criminal force. What shall this man do? It is true that the white man is further up on the ladder of civilization than the Negro, but the Negro desires to climb and has made rapid ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... and went up the companion-ladder, and the next moment I 'eard a sliding noise and a key turn in a lock. I jumped to the foot of the ladder and, 'ardly able to believe my senses, saw that the hatch was closed. When I found that it was locked too, you might ha' knocked me ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... to educate him would be to open his eyes, to cause him to think and to prevent his being camouflaged. They knew that to educate him would be to make him dissatisfied with his lot at the bottom of the ladder. They knew that to educate him would introduce the leaven of divine discontent into his being. They knew that to educate him would cause him to aspire to something higher than hard labor or menial ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... been executed. But neither surprise nor anger availed aught. The windows, well secured with iron bars for keeping assailants out, proved now as effectual for detaining the inhabitants within. The battlements were open, indeed; but without ladder or ropes to act as a substitute for wings, there was no possibility of descending from them. They easily succeeded in alarming the inhabitants of the cottages beyond the precincts of the court; but the men had been called in to strengthen the guard for ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... you to-night, Ellie. There is a long ladder of knowledge to go up before we can get to the moon, but we will begin to mount to-morrow, if nothing happens. Alice, you have that little book of Conversations on Natural Philosophy, which you and I used to delight ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... when they must speak; another is filled with musicians playing the organ and other instruments; a third contains the throne of the king. The throne is empty; for the king, Julian the apostate, his sceptre, adorned with fleurs-de-lys, in his hand, has come down his ladder to take part in the main action. Hell has its usual shape of a monstrous head, with opening and closing jaws; it stands on the ground, for the better accommodation of devils, who had constantly to interfere in the drama, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... apparently all dispersed to the hotels and cottages for the evening meal and preparation for the concert in the auditorium. That lake was a very popular place in the afternoon; there were accommodations for all grades of swimmers—from the expert divers who used the platform, spring-board, and tall diving ladder on the deep side, to the smallest children, who paddled and waded in the shallow water under the watchful care of their nurses on the other side. The lake was not over a hundred yards ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... precipices, and over-hanging the torrent, which it crossed several times by plank bridges. By dark we arrived at Yangma Guola, a collection of empty wood huts buried in the rocky forest-clad valley, and took possession of a couple. They were well built, raised on posts, with a stage and ladder at the gable end, and consisted of one good-sized apartment. Around was abundance of dock, together with three common English plants.* [Cardamine hirsuta, Limosella ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Killingworth. The railway from the West Moor Pit crosses this road close by the east end of the cottage. The dwelling originally consisted of but one apartment on the ground-floor, with the garret over-head, to which access was obtained by means of a step-ladder. But with his own hands Stephenson built an oven, and in the course of time he added rooms to the cottage, until it became a comfortable four-roomed dwelling, in which he lived as long as he remained ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Was this the ladder by Jacob seen, That reached from heaven to the mattress green On which he lay all the lonely night Till God afforded ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... a resting-place. They had been warned that they would get nothing but hay, so it was no surprise when the "senner" led the ladies out to one side of the house, where, mounting a short ladder, he placed his lantern in the center of a large hay-loft, one side of which was open to the free air of heaven, which blew in, fresh and cool, as also it did from numerous chinks in the roof, through which the clear moonbeams ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... always open. We pass here before and Jacky look for water—look for everything. No water here. But," said he languidly, "Jacky will go up high tree and look a good deal." Selecting the highest tree near he chopped a staircase and went up it almost as quickly as a bricklayer mounts a ladder with a hod. At the top he crossed his thighs over the stem, and there he sat full half an hour; his glittering eye reading the confused page, and his subtle mind picking out the minutest syllables of meaning. Several times he shook his head. At last all of a sudden ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... candidates, I may be permitted to say, that I feel much in the frame of mind of the Irish bricklayer's labourer, who bet another that he could not carry him to the top of the ladder in his hod. The challenged hodman won his wager, but as the stakes were handed over, the challenger wistfully remarked, "I'd great hopes of falling at the third round from the top." And, in view of the work and the worry which awaits the members of the School Boards, I must confess to ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to my wits once more, and have been living on nothing else ever since. But there I had to begin all over again, and at the very bottom of the ladder. I slept in the streets. I begged. I did all manner of terrible things, rather hoping for a bad end, but never coming to one. Then one day I saw a white-headed old chap looking at me through a shop-window—a window I had designs upon—and when I stared at him he stared at me—and we wore the same ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word "Clara," she would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7x8 feet of floor space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... but 'twasn't with ghostesses. One packet I was in, they was that bad yer couldn't sleep a wink in yer watch below, until yer'd 'ad every stitch out yer bunk an' 'ad a reg'lar 'unt. Sometimes—" At that moment, the relief, one of the ordinary seamen, went up the other ladder on to the fo'cas'le head, and the old chap turned to ask him "Why the 'ell" he'd not relieved him a bit smarter. The ordinary made some reply; but what it was, I did not catch; for, abruptly, away aft, my rather sleepy gaze had lighted on something altogether ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... have had a time getting on deck," was Dick's comment. "Hans, throw an end of the rope ladder down." ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... seller, Toubac, knew the way to my little lodging as well as I did, and was not afraid to climb the ladder. Every week his ugly head, adorned with a reddish cap, raised the trapdoor, his fingers grasped the ledge, and he cried out in ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... torrent-bed, and crossing to the Wady Daumah (of the "Single Daum-palm"), we dragged our mules down a ladder of rock and boulder, the left bank of the upper Surr. The great valley now defines, sharply as a knife-cut, the northernmost outlines of the Shrr, whose apex, El-Kusayb, towered above our heads. Thorn-trees are abundant; fan-palm bush grows in patches; and we came upon what looked ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... and there is a fine semi-circular display of green at the back of the pulpit. At the south-eastern corner there are sundry pieces of old timber piled up; at the opposite side there is a cupboard; and over the entrance numerous forms, colour poles, and a ladder are placed. These constitute all the loose ornaments in the chapel. About 150 persons can be accommodated in the place. When we visited it—the time was rather unfavourable, owing to the roughness of the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... when they came to Mooltan, the city of a tribe called the Malli. This was a fort shut in by a strong outer wall, within which trees were growing. Alexander planted a ladder against the wall, and mounted it first, but while his men were climbing up after him, it broke, and he stood alone on the wall, a mark for all the darts of the enemy. His guards stretched up their arms, begging him to leap back ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sire for ever being good.— First hang the child, that he may see it sprawl,— A sight to vex the father's soul withal. Get me a ladder. ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... represented by Chateaubriand's five volumes of Le Gene du Christianisme and two volumes of Les Martyrs. Corneille and Racine, among poets, had the honour of accessibility. When Monsieur Urbain wanted one of his own books, he had to fetch a little ladder from a cupboard in the hall. Angelot, from a child, was forbidden to use that ladder. The prohibition was hardly necessary. Angelot seldom opened a book at all, or read for more than five minutes at a time. He followed his uncle in this, as in so much else. The moors, the woods, the riverside, ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... concealed in her most private chambers: in the darkness of a winter night, Zimisces, with his principal companions, embarked in a small boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by the female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings of his friends, nor the tardy aid of his brother Leo, nor the fortress which he had erected in the palace, could protect Nicephorus from a domestic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... her bed, in sudden dread, She to her lattice flies: Oh! sight of woe, from far below Behold a ladder rise: ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lark staggered singing by Up his shining ladder of dew, And the airs of dawn walked softly about the room, Filling the morning sky with the scent of the woman's hair, And giving, in sweet exchange, its hawthorn and daisy breath: And the man awoke with a ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... we'll leave it in. Now the rest of you get down the accommodation ladder. Stay there, Mr. Sneed!" he called to the grouchy actor, who seemed to want to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... the Ebro; of buttresses built among them in unremembered times; of the great towers lifting up in multitudes from the buttresses; and of the mighty wall, windowless until it came to incredible heights, where the windows shone all safe from any ladder ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding the Civil War,—pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This style still holds the stage of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... probably here refers to his own experience when he was in prison, and was threatened by the judge to be hung for not going to parish church. 'I thought with myself, if I should make a scrabbling shift to clamber up the ladder, yet I should, either with quaking or other symptoms of faintings, give occasion to the enemy to reproach the way of God. I was ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees in such a cause as this.'—Grace Abounding, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... up the front stairs and tried to teach my father's high-stepping barouche-horses to jump—crashing their knees into the hurdles in the field—and climbed our incredibly dangerous roof, sitting on the sweep's ladder by moonlight in my nightgown. I had scrambled up every tree, walked on every wall and knew every turret at Glen. I ran along the narrow ledges of the slates in rubber shoes at terrific heights. This alarmed other people ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... assuredly bid fair, when normal conditions shall have returned to us once more, to attain to a measure of gratifying expansion and progress." He believes that Liberia will then be in a position "of having her feet placed firmly upon the ladder which should bring her in time to great heights. The author concedes that the rung which Liberia has already reached is not a high one perhaps, "but the way before her seems plain and unmistakable." He believes ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the hour of her greatest triumph and splendour Anne Luttrell was an unhappy woman. She had climbed to the dizziest heights of the social ladder; her pride was more than satisfied; but her heart was empty and desolate. Her fickle husband soon wearied of her charms, and flaunted his fresh conquests before her face. In the royal family circle, into which she had forced her way, she was an unwelcome stranger; ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... now, than her whole population numbered twenty-three years ago. She has the usual Upper River quota of factories, newspapers, and institutions of learning; she has telephones, local telegraphs, an electric alarm, and an admirable paid fire department, consisting of six hook and ladder companies, four steam fire engines, and thirty churches. Davenport is the official residence of two ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... if you venture to lean against it. The wood of which the chairs are made is mahogany, walnut, or cedar. The large round or oval table which stands in the middle of the room is of the same wood, and so are the card-table, the Davenport, the chiffonier, and that Jacob's-ladder-like what-not in the corner. In some houses the upholsterer has stuffed the room with useless tables. Of course there is a fender and fire-irons, and probably a black doleful-looking grate, which during two-thirds of the year is stuffed with paper shavings of all the colours of the rainbow ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... logs, each split into two parts and laid the flat side up. A plank door and three small windows completed the primitive dwelling. There was but one large room on the ground floor, twenty by thirty feet, and a loft above, to which access was obtained by a ladder. In the loft were the straw beds on ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... Spanish ladder, it is a tall pine tree notched on the sides for steps, and the stump of a branch left or a peg inserted at considerable intervals, for hand supports to assist in raising ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... ship, and were watching our piles of luggage arrive up the accommodation ladder when the solution of Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon's problem appeared. She arrived alongside in the official boat of the German consulate, a German officer in white uniform on either hand, and the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... emanation of the Spirit of the Age. Had he lived in any other period of the world, he would never have been heard of. As it is, he has some difficulty to contend with the hebetude of his intellect, and the meanness of his subject. With him "lowliness is young ambition's ladder:" but he finds it a toil to climb in this way the steep of Fame. His homely Muse can hardly raise her wing from the ground, nor spread her hidden glories to the sun. He has "no figures nor no fantasies, which busy passion draws in the brains of men:" neither the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... done," answered Deck. He turned to the cavalrymen standing near. "Boys, have any of you seen a ladder about?" ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... longer. "We must cut down a couple of trees and make a ladder, Beorn. The pine-trees grew very close together where we passed through them a quarter of a mile before we got here, and were very slender for their height. We have no axes or we could fell a couple of them in a few minutes; but even if we had them, we should not dare use them, for ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... I boldly walked up to Scheimer's house to get a few books and other things I had left there, and I saw Sarah. I told her to be ready on the following Thursday night and I would have a ladder against her window for her to escape by. She promised to be ready. Meantime, though I had been in the house but a few minutes, some one who had seen me go in gathered the crowd of the day before, and the first thing I knew the house was beseiged. ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... Joey having placed the ladder, Strap (being loaded with our baggage) mounted first; but, just as he was getting in, a tremendous voice assailed his ears in these words: "God's fury! there shall no passengers come here." The poor shaver was ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... Vickers-Maxim from the port-hole. 'Speak, or I fire ten shots a minute.' 'God save the Queen,' was the ready response sent up from a thousand throats. 'Pass, friends,' said the sentry, as he unhitched the port companion-ladder. In a twinkling the snowy deck of the great transport was swarming with the dusky figures of the native bearers, who swiftly transferred the cargo from the groaning hold into the nimble bum-boats, and carried the large-limbed ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... vessel's side, and in a glance across to Mrs. Steele I see her looking with wide-eyed amusement and a dash of concern at my companion. I turn in time to catch a queer, earnest look in the boyish face, as he stands with one hand grasping the rope ladder and his ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... flares up in his dreadful eyes. An oil-lamp is upon a shelf. He dashes towards it, and soon its dull, yellow flame sheds its feeble rays about. He stoops and prises up the heavy square of wood. Below sees the top rungs of a rough ladder. His poor brain is incapable of argument and with a fierce joy he clambers down into the dank, earthy atmosphere ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... unite with him in arraying the poor against the rich, or the unlearned against the learned. Nor does our Church believe that Jesus Christ was a Locofoco, as Johnson asserts in his Inaugural, and held that Christianity and Democracy, in converging lines, led to the foot of Jacob's Ladder, and thence to heaven, via Mount Pisgah, from whose lofty summit you first beheld the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... the world will lay at our feet before the middle of August, and you will be a proud woman to own a husband who will be pointed at as the most successful amusement purveyor the world has ever witnessed, and a son who will start in at the bottom round of the circus ladder and rise, step by step, until he will stand beside the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... vain your efforts to escape, I still continue blowing; With magic speed my tunes take shape Into a ladder growing. ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... phosphorus which resulted. One match burned clear on the floor of the cavity, and, rubbing his eyes, Racksole picked it up, and looked down the hole which he had previously descried. It was a hole apparently bottomless, and about eighteen inches square. The curious part about the hole was that a rope-ladder hung down it. When he saw that rope-ladder Racksole smiled the smile of a ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... calamitous fire, he was so impressed with the idea of showing his household and pupils the proper mode of effecting their escape, in the event of such an accident befalling his own house, that he ascended with them to the top storey, and pushing a ladder through the loft door, mounted quickly, saying: 'Now I am safe—I can get to the roofs of the adjoining houses.' As he turned to descend he missed his step and fell, dislocating his right arm severely. At this time he was engaged upon the portrait ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the top he slid down to the ground. There he found a large hole in which was placed a ladder. This led to the bottom of the ditch where a series of pipes protruded from the soil. Fandor lit his pocket lamp ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... yon'er "in de Alerbamer way," De Niggers goes to wo'k at de peep o' de day. De bed's too short, an' de high posts rear; De Niggers needs a ladder fer to climb up dere. De cord's wore out, an' de bed-tick's gone. Niggers' legs hang down fer de ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... he wrote from Ronciglione on the 29th January, "in your state room, when the fog makes your white blinds yellow, and the wind howls in the brick and mortar gulf behind that square perspective, with a middle distance of two ladder-tops and a background of Drury-lane sky—when the wind howls, I say, as if its eldest brother, born in Lincoln's-inn-fields, had gone to sea and was making a fortune on the Atlantic—at such times do you ever ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... beneath him, he perceived that the stucco was peeling from his favorite turret. "Here is danger, indeed!" he said; and loudly shouted for his ah! too dilatory servant to bring the ladder by which he ascended and descended his lofty pinnacle. At last the servant came, and he was a new ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... reason, a thief, who steals In by a ladder at a window, and takes all imaginable care to cause no disturbance, is in no respect criminal. For either he will not be perceived, or if he be, it is impossible he can produce any error, nor will any one, from these circumstances, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... discussion, but they are invariably those on the midway rounds of the conversational ladder; people to whom the joy of the amicable intellectual tussle is unknown, and to whom the highest standards of the art of talking do not appeal. Where there is much intellectual activity discussion is sure to arise, ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... But the rope ladder was not there, so they could not go up, and they wandered on, half hoping they might meet somebody who would really think they were Quaker ladies. Crossing the orchard, they came out on one of the main streets ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... light in the air, Weaves golden sunshine Fitful and fair Through the cloud pillars Thrown to the sky, Like the Dream-ladder ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... theft, the proper action is not theft, but on the case. Where, however, Titius commits theft with the aid of Maevius, both are liable to an action on theft. A man, too, is held to have aided and abetted a theft who places a ladder under a window, or breaks open a window or a door, in order that another may steal, or who lends tools for the breaking of them open, or a ladder to place under a window, if he knows the object for which they are borrowed. ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... by the ordinar in it. I went back to the warks I had got a footing in, the Glencart Iron Warks, and gradually won my way to the topmost rungs o' the ladder. I am head buyer now, hae a gude share i' the concern, and i' money matters there's plenty folk waur off than David Cargill. When I put my father's forgiveness, my mither's love, and my Bessie's bonnie lad to the lave, I may weel say that 'they are weel guided ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of his own house, was a real show! There was a man and a little boy and a monkey! The monkey had on a kimono. The monkey and the little boy did tricks together. Then the man and the boy did tricks. The man balanced a ladder on his shoulder. The little boy climbed right up the ladder and hung from the top of it by ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... elected by an overwhelming majority. But the high eminence of military distinction enthralled him. He seemed to live in an atmosphere of greatness and glory, and was looking eagerly forward to the time when he would command armies. He had begun to climb the ladder of glory under most favorable and auspicious circumstances. He felt his consequence and keeping. He was detailed once, and only once, to take command of the third relief of camp guard. Ah, this thing of office was a big thing. He desired to hold a council ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... literally a ladder, and implies ascent, upward movement. The best authors use it only in this sense, and not to denote ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... imagination. Inward impulse not being dominant, the words, however shiny, are touched with coldness. Under the inward dominance (supposing always that the intellectual tool be of due temper and sharpness) the poet mounts springily on a ladder self-wrought out of the brain as he ascends; and thus there is a prompt continuity and progressiveness, a forward and upward movement towards the climax which ever awaits you in a subject that has a poem in it. In a genuine poem, a work of inspiration and not mainly of art, there is brisk ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of crimson velvet was immediately lowered into the water, and as Don Quixote stepped on board of it, the leading galley fired her gangway gun, and the other galleys did the same; and as he mounted the starboard ladder the whole crew saluted him (as is the custom when a personage of distinction comes on board a galley) by exclaiming "Hu, hu, hu," three times. The general, for so we shall call him, a Valencian gentleman of rank, gave him his hand and embraced him, saying, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the marsh. It shook the shutters and rattled the windows, and the little boy lay awake in the bare attic. His mother came softly up the ladder stairs shading the flame of the tallow candle with ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... the window locks that night, visiting parts of the house that I had not seen since I bought it. Then I went to the roof. Evidently it had not been intended for any purpose save to cover the house, for unlike the houses around, there was no staircase. A ladder and a trap-door led to it, and it required some nice balancing on my part to get up with my useless arm. I made it, however, and found this unexplored part of my domain rather attractive. It was cooler than down-stairs, and I sat on the brick parapet and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the pit, made his way quietly to where a servant was holding for him a place. The fellow pulled his forelock in response to his master's nod, then shouldered his way through the press to the ladder-like stairs that led to the upper gallery. Haward, standing at his ease, looked about him, recognizing this or that acquaintance with his slow, fine smile and an inclination of his head. He was much observed, and presently a lady leaned from ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... ladder of fifteen feet long, a slab of oak, split from the tree by wedges, and having six holes chopped out of the solid for steps, they climbed to their perch, the first floor of their abode. I never heard of a ladder made in this way, but the Zunis used simply to ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... high with shout and cry We bore him down the ladder lang; At every stride Red Rowan made, I wot the Kinmont's ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... do nothing for you there.' But the little group stood paralyzed with fear, unable to attend to the directions which were given them, or perhaps unable to hear them, for the fire was roaring and crackling enough to deafen any one. Three brave men of the fire-brigade went with a ladder round to the back of the house, while the engines kept the fire somewhat down by constantly playing on the front, as far as the confined space would allow of their doing so. In reality, I suppose, not many minutes elapsed from the time ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... hollowed out under the ground on the borders of a lake. A vine, however, struck its roots so deeply in the earth as to reach their habitations, and some of them ascended to the surface by the aid of this impromptu ladder. The descriptions given by them on their return of the vast hunting-grounds, rich in game and fruit, which they had seen, led the rest of the tribe to resolve to reach so favoured a land. Half of them had gained the surface, when ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the orchard of the flaming house, they stopped at the gate of the garden, dumb before the overwhelming misfortune of the peasant. For there, his wife hung, quite naked, on the branches of an enormous nut tree, among which he himself was now mounting on a ladder, and beneath which, on the frozen grass, lay his nine little daughters. Korneliz had already, climbed along the vast boughs, when suddenly, by the light of the snow, he saw the crowd who horror-struck watched his every movement. With tears in his eyes, he made a sign to them to help him, whereat ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... should go back. The boys thought he came back because he was undecided whether to go with them or not, and they renewed their invitations with redoubled urgency. Marco did not reply, but looked steadily toward the house. He saw a man standing in the yard with a small ladder in his hand. A moment afterward, Marco's uncle came out of the house, and, to Marco's great consternation, he perceived that he had a saw and a hatchet in his hand, and then he recollected that his uncle had been intending to prune some trees that forenoon. The trees were ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... find his door screwed up when he went back after mess; and as soon as they found that he was awfully particular about his boots, they filled them all full of water one night. Then some one got a ladder and threw a lot of crackers into his bedroom in the middle of the night, and Stapleton came rushing down in his night-shirt with his sword drawn, swearing ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... rejoice, well knowing that happiness is at best but transient; that the higher one is elevated on the see-saw balance of fortune, the lower must be his subsequent depression; that he who is on the uppermost round of a ladder has most to suffer from a fall, while he who is at the bottom runs very little risk of breaking his neck ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... her fault—since how could she control her father begetting her forty years ago in the suburbs of Manchester? and once begotten, how could she do other than grow up cheese-paring, ambitious, with an instinctively accurate notion of the rungs of the ladder and an ant-like assiduity in pushing George Plumer ahead of her to the top of the ladder? What was at the top of the ladder? A sense that all the rungs were beneath one apparently; since by the time that George Plumer became Professor of Physics, or whatever it might be, Mrs. Plumer could ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... neighbouring house grow up from its foundation he noted in an article called, "The Wings of Stone," what was the reality of a staircase. We pad them with carpets and rail them with banisters, yet every "staircase is truly only an awful and naked ladder running up into the infinite to a deadly height." (A correspondent pointed out in a letter to the Daily News that here he had touched a reality keenly felt by primitive peoples. When Cetewayo, King of Zululand, visited London, he would go ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward |
