"Lapsing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anything of my own resolution I should do it. Were Verner's Pride to lapse to me to-morrow, I believe I should set about it the next day. But," Lionel added after a short pause, "there's no probability of its lapsing to me. Therefore I want you to set ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of consolidating the kingdom and of internal order, they had retained sufficient power to trample on the liberties of the people, while they were not strong enough to form a barrier against the encroachments of the absolute monarchs who succeeded, or to prevent the power eventually lapsing into the hands of the Church. "Consequently, theocracy gained the ascendency, formidably aided and strengthened by the odious tribunal whose installation shadowed even the glorious epoch of Isabel and Fernando, absorbing ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... woman, you're asking me ower much at last," said Archie, profoundly moved, and lapsing into the broad Scots. "Ye're asking what nae man can grant ye, what only the Lord of heaven can grant ye if He see fit. Ay! And can even He? I can promise ye what I shall do, and you can depend on that. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a payment of $245.00 had to be made on the contracts on our home—to save the contract from lapsing. I did not have the money. I tried every possible way to borrow it from different banks, and failing that, I tried to get it from some of the brethren. The last one I approached surely capped the climax. He assured me that he had the money and could loan ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... odors; thickets wherein the great god Pan might have delighted to lurk; fair colonnades thick-carpeted with the petals of roses and framed to greet all cool, benevolent breezes; temples to exquisite divinities; fountains lapsing, murmurous as the laughter of youth, into great basins whose smooth waters welcomed smooth bodies; grottoes deep and mysterious, affording shelter in the fiercest heats. To these enchanted privacies the young and ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... others with himself in Socialism. He has to make and keep this idea of synthetic human effort and of conscious constructive effort clear first to himself and then clear in the general mind. For it is an idea that comes and goes. We are all of us continually lapsing from it towards individual isolation again. He needs, we all need, constant refreshment in this belief if it is to remain a predominant living fact ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... she disliked him; and if, like her father, she would openly let him see and hear it—but doesn't she? What had he to offer her? How could he overcome her father's dislike? He felt in his soul what would come to him finally, but then, in the lapsing time? ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... me, you would think me wonder- ful Beyond compare; You would weep to be lapsing on such harmony As carries me, you would wonder aloud that he Who is so strange should correspond with ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... declared good-naturedly. "We must learn wisdom of our children. Their paper is quite non-partisan. In fact," he continued, lapsing into seriousness, "the younger generation teaches us many things. I've learned a lesson or two from your son. You have put a great deal of your fineness of principle into him, Cameron. I hope you realize ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... particularity to his messages. And I was ashamed of myself. Yes; at the bottom of my heart I was ashamed of myself because my sensuous being responded to the call of these masterpieces. In my ignorance I thought I was lapsing from a sane and proper ideal. And then—the second miracle in my career, which has been full of miracles—I came across a casual reference, in the Staffordshire Recorder, of all places, to the Mademoiselle de ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... through the gathering night to turn him into the smoothest way, lapsing into jerky, habitual ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... rose, fair daughter—well she was graced As a cloud her going, stept from her chair, As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced, Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;— Lapsing like music, wavery as water, Slid to ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... be excused if in making his defence he speaks after his accustomed manner: not merely in home-spun phrase, that is to say, very different from what is usually heard at least in those sophisticated law-courts of Athens, nor merely with certain lapsing into his familiar habit of dialogue, but with a tacit assumption, throughout his arguments, of that logical realism which suggested the first outline of Plato's doctrine of the "ideas." Everywhere, with what is like a ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... for Sager and Pederson, since neither of them had been expecting it. Pederson, who had already been slightly distracted, got the major brunt of the force. He managed to jerk his gun free, but his brain was already lapsing into unconsciousness. ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... my heart," she replied, lapsing into the Indian rhetoric of deep emotion. "He has looked into my heart, and in the doorway he blots out the world. At the first I wanted to die when he would not look on me with favour. Then I wanted to die when I thought I should never possess him. Now it is enough that ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... can never die. But at length my eyes grew dim, the room seemed to darken, the form of Ethelind alternately brightened and waxed indistinct, like the last flickerings of a fire; I swayed toward her, and felt myself lapsing into unconsciousness, with my head resting on ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... very sensible personal danger to which he was thus called. General Lovell having to devote his attention solely to his military duties, the city which had so long been under martial law was escaping out of the hands of the civil authorities and fast lapsing into anarchy. Between one and two in the afternoon Bailey landed, accompanied by Perkins, the first lieutenant of the Cayuga; who, having shared his former perils, was permitted to accompany him ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... murmured, lapsing into the Western idiom which a whole week spent in the society of her bosom friend was bound to call up. "But why Lord Chilminster?" She ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... long scene the tender stream of melody flows on, never lapsing into anything approaching prettiness or feebleness, flooding us with an overwhelming sense of a far-away past, while full utterance is found for Eva's anxiety, then her despair, and her wish, timidly spoken, to give herself to Sachs rather than to be won by Beckmesser. A scene of such ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... her as she cast a careless eye over her fellow travellers, let it rest for a moment on the two men in the section in front of her own and then turned to her book. Alternately reading, looking at the passing landscape, and now and then lapsing into reverie, her attention was so withdrawn from her surroundings that she was not aware that one of the men in front had turned several times and allowed a casual glance to pass from her down the row of heads behind her. Nor did she notice, when ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... and shock, heart strained, superficial lesions, bruises, scratches, and so forth. Mentally he is in a great state of excitement and terror, lapsing into delirium at times—that is really the most serious feature. In fact, unless I can calm him I am afraid we may have some brain trouble on top of the ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... tears, Allan launched himself into the full violence of his recital, stumbling recklessly over his figures of speech, lapsing into idioms that it taxed his hearer to follow. Had she been less acquainted with the Caribbean dialects she would have missed much of the story, but, as it was, she followed him closely, urging him on with sharp ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... "That's why, is it? Well, my dear, the reason why you part your hair in the middle is the reason why I sleep outside the admiral's door. I know how to deal with 'em!" chuckled old Mazey, lapsing into soliloquy, and stirring up his ale in high triumph. "Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives—I know how ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... fragment of the wall jutted into the marsh, and passing this I saw before me, brightened by the sunset, a narrow stretch of dry, baked soil, raised somewhat above the level of the pools, and strewn with shattered bricks and scraps of tiling and potsherds. The musical lapsing of the water now fell upon my ears distinctly, and I saw a little way off a quaint old fountain, standing half a stonecast clear of the wall. With the sunlight bathing it, the limpid water sparkling away from its base, it was the only cheerful object in the landscape; yet I felt an unaccountable ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a sort of ocean-hasheesh, or wholesome aliment, I never knew, but certain it is that, from the moment its juices passed my lips, a strange and delightful quietude stole over my weary senses, fast lapsing, as these had seemed, into, unconsciousness when I left my place to seek the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... detail every step of the lapsing of these monsters,—to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them; how they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch of clothing; how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs; how their foreheads fell away ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... as rather a weak argument for a man to offer for himself?" returned his companion, lapsing into her Southern drawl which, of late, had not been so prominent; "to ask a girl to bind herself irrevocably to him for life and holding out as an inducement the privilege of reforming him?" and there was a note of scorn in the lazy tones ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... suddenly lapsing into a confidential tone, I questioned him: "By the way, Jake, is this the first time you ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... weather, Lapsing soon into June; On a golden, golden day Of the green and golden May, When our hearts were beating tune To the coming feet of June, Walked we in ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... hushed vales and gulfy hills of Greece Night brooded on her darkly jewelled wing, Binding in drowsy chains of dewy peace Sweet birds, white flocks and every living thing, And lapsing streams which to the forest sing. Beneath that pillared fane which guards the place Where spirits twain sleep in the charmed ring, I slept after the banquet, and the rays Of a past heaven flashed on my ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... of little consequence. We come and go. We cannot alter the course of nations or the fate of mankind; but the people, the great mass of humanity, are moving up or down. They are marching on, keeping step with civilization and human progress; or they are lapsing back toward barbarism and darkness. The people today make peace and make war—not a sovereign, not the whim of an individual, not the ambition of a single man; but the sentiment, the friendship, the affection, the feelings of this great throbbing mass of humanity, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most harmless and engaging of mortals. Her youth had been cruel, disorderly, and vicious. It had lasted long; but now, when middle age stood at last confessed, she was lapsing, it seemed, into amiability and good behavior. She was, indeed, fast forgetting her own history, and soon the recital of it would surprise no one so ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... quality of her voice, when they asked her to sing. They made a much ado over that, a genuine admiration that flattered Stella. It was easy for her to fall into the swing of that life; it was only a lapsing back to the ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... she sank rapidly, sleeping lightly, waking occasionally with a child-like smile, then lapsing again into unconsciousness. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... elasticity, and the sprightliness of the sister's spirits, that invariably rose with the coming on of night, failed under the depressing influence of that rain-hastened funeral and that "set-in" rainy evening. As for the sister whose spirits fell with the fall of day, she was fast lapsing into a melancholy condition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... large family, and their pursuits and habits were very simple; yet the summer was lapsing toward the first pathos of autumn before they found themselves all in such case as to be able to take the day's pleasure they had planned so long. They had agreed often and often that nothing could ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... English parishes, and, although each nationality spoke the same mother tongue, still the spread of schools and churches fostered the different languages of the fatherland, and perpetuated the distinction of race which otherwise would have disappeared by lapsing into savagery. In an earlier chapter I have traced the events immediately pre ceding the breaking out of the insurrectionary movement among the French half-breeds, and in the foregoing pages I have tried to sketch the early life and ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... arch. It is perfect whether you look up through it from the lake, or down through it to the transparent waters. We both ascended and descended, no very easy matter, the steep and crumbling path, and rested at the summit, beneath the trees, and at the foot upon the cool mossy stones beside the lapsing wave. Nature has carefully decorated all this architecture with shrubs that take root within the crevices, and small creeping vines. These natural rains may vie for beautiful effect with the remains of European ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... it came "heeled," ready for what might befall. From Tomaso, the ragpicker in the farthest rear cellar, to the Signor Undertaker, mainstay and umpire in the varying affairs of life, which had a habit in The Bend of lapsing suddenly upon his professional domain, they were all there, the men of Malpete's village. The baby was named for the village saint, so that it was a kind of communal feast as well. Carmen was there with her man, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Jack, I don't at all approve. It will be hard enough, I've no doubt, to keep you from lapsing into barbarism, and I shall never allow you to set up a den, a regular Bluebeard's room, all by yourself. I promise never to put your table in order, but I wouldn't trust the best of men with the care of a closet or a bureau-drawer ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... Lapsing into silence, his face went ruminative and then sad. With a sudden indrawing of breath he freed himself from his reverie, and bending over from his saddle patted a buckskin neck in affectionate tattoo. Tawny ears turned backward in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... turning to the child, and lapsing into the soft dialect of the south and east—"come here, thou ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... composed of an innumerable multitude of pieces, of which it is strangely unlikely but some will be out of order; and yet, if any one be so, the whole fabric falls of necessity to the ground: and he that shall put them together, and maturely consider all the possible ways of lapsing and nullifying a priesthood in the Church of Rome, will be very inclinable to think that it is a hundred to one, that among a hundred seeming priests, there is not one true one; nay, that it is not a thing very improbable that, amongst those many millions which make ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... garish noon, They were slily wooed by the trembling moon. It rose—for the guardian zephyrs had flown, And left the valley that night alone. No sigh was borne from the leafy hill, No murmur came from the lapsing rill; The boughs of the willow in silence wept, And the aspen leaves in that sabbath slept. The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute. The slender rush o'er the glassy rill, As a marble shaft, was erect and still, And no airy sylph on the mirror wave, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... the twanging cord as seamen and fishers spanged from deck to deck; rose cries in loud and southward Gaelic or the lowlands of Air. The world was no longer dreaming but stark awake, all but the sea and the lapsing bays and the brown floating hills. Town Inneraora bustled to its marge. Here was merchandise, here the pack and the bale; snuffy men in perukes, knee-breeched and portly, came and piped in high English, managing the transport ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... and children are no better off, perhaps are worse off than before? What if his powers of work are being impaired by debauchery and he is thus surely losing the footing which he has won on the higher round of the industrial ladder and lapsing back into penury and despair? What if instead of gaining he is really losing in manhood and real independence? I see nothing shocking in the fact that a mechanic's wages are now equal to those of a clergyman, or an officer in the army who has spent perhaps thousands ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... too, clear waters coursed Which willow branches, lapsing low, Breaking their crystal gliding forced To sing as they ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... supreme moment when Mrs. B., after an interview with the whisky bottle, forgets her part and, lapsing into the mere widow of the undertaker, gives it to the intriguing Lady Tonbridge in the neck with a wealth of imagery, a command of slightly slurred invective and a range of facial expression beyond adequate description, she is perhaps less ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... I fought I saw her as I had last seen her, standing against the bank of sand, her dark hair, half braided, drawn over her bosom and hanging to her knees. Her eyes haunted me, and my lips yet felt the touch of her hand. I fought well,—how well the lapsing of oaths and laughter into breathless silence ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... about the dark stranger, as in his illness he had forgotten all that this episode had reminded him of. I don't like this lapsing into forgetfulness. It may make or continue some injury to the brain. I must not ask him, for fear I shall do more harm than good, but I must somehow learn the facts of his journey abroad. The time is come, I fear, when I must open the parcel, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... serving as a window at the stars twinkling on the black sky; she was awaiting the time of start for her appointed meeting-place. With quiet happiness she thought of that meeting in the great forest, far from all human eyes and sounds. Her soul, lapsing again into the savage mood, which the genius of civilisation working by the hand of Mrs. Vinck could never destroy, experienced a feeling of pride and of some slight trouble at the high value her worldly-wise mother had put upon her ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... was this sad reverse! She can be tranquil, but never more will she be happy. To promote her forgetfulness of him, I persuaded her to leave her country, which contained a thousand memorials of past calamity, and which was lapsing fast into civil broils. Clarice has accompanied us, and time may effect the happiness of others by her means, though she can never remove ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... followed. Captain Bennydeck was thinking over the message which he had just read. Catherine and her mother were looking at him with the same interest, inspired by very different motives. The interview so pleasantly begun was in some danger of lapsing into formality and embarrassment, when a new personage ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... the state of Maine, the story goes, A woman, to secure a lapsing pension, Married a soldier—though the good Lord knows That very common act scarce calls for mention. What makes it worthy to be writ and read— The man she married had been nine ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... figger what salvage on a seven-hundred-tonner would come to? Well, just lemmee drop it into your think tank, an' lay to what I say. It's all the ways from fifty to seventy thousand dollars, whatever her cargo is; call it sixty thousand—thirty thou' apiece. Oh, I don't know!" he exclaimed, lapsing to landman's slang. "Wha'd I say about a million to one on the unexpected ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... pistil, stamen, pollen, or an insect of its 'superfluous' antennae, as simplify any Historical Religion down to the sorry stump labelled 'the religion of every honest man'. We shall escape all bigotry, without lapsing into such most unjust indifferentism, if we vigorously hold and unceasingly apply the doctrine of such a Church theologian as Juan de Lugo. De Lugo (A.D. 1583-1660), Spaniard, post-Reformation Roman Catholic, Jesuit, Theological Professor, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... did not answer, he went on: 'Take care! You are lapsing into sin again. It was sufficient for that man to pass by to send a thrill through your whole body. I saw you by the light of the moon looking as pale as a girl. Take care! take care! Do you hear me? Another time God will ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... afternoon before the young man reascended to the antechamber, where Pavaniev greeted him with the report: "Great exhaustion, lapsing from semi to total unconsciousness." Any attempt at rousing might possibly prove fatal.—Was there any message?—No?—Then one could but wait.—These things were, indeed, most trying. And so Ivan seated himself on a bench against the wall in ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... you've read ower many novels,' said the doctor, lapsing into the vernacular. 'Well, your notion is not unthinkable, nor pheesically impossible. She's a queer one, Jean Bower, that waked the corpse, sure enough. However, you'll soon be on the spot, and can examine the case for yourself. Mr. Logan has no idea but that the body was ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... flood Than by dispansion of the still sweet air, Shall from the furthest utter silences In glimmering secrecy have gathered up An host of whisperings and scattered sighs, To loose at last a sound as of the plunge And lapsing seethe of some Pacific wave, Which, risen from the star-thronged outer troughs, Rolls in to wreathe with circling foam away The flutter of the golden moths that haunt The star's one glimmer ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... moment when his dream became established. Davis was partly responsible, for he promptly sent him out of the country on the bootless English mission. Thereafter, until his death in 1863, Yancey was a waning, overshadowed figure, steadily lapsing into the background. It may be that those critics are right who say he was only an agitator. The day of the mere agitator was gone. Yancey passed rapidly into futile but bitter antagonism to Davis. In this attitude he was soon to be ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... difficult when standing: her hands would fold in front of her and the schoolgirl attitude annoyed and restrained her. Also, the man appeared to be in earnest in what he said. His words at the least and the intention which drove them seemed honorable. She could not give rein to her feelings without lapsing to a barbarity which she might not justify to herself even in anger and might, indeed, blush to remember. Perhaps his chief disqualification consisted in a relationship to Mrs. O'Connor for which he could not ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Tom Verity, it followed that insomnia, with its thousand and one attendant miseries, was an unknown quantity likewise. Upon the eve of the stiffest competitive examination those, now outlived, years of tutelage had imposed on him, he could still tumble into bed secure of lapsing into unconsciousness as soon as his head fairly touched the pillow. Dreams might, and usually did, visit him; but as so much incidental music merely to the large content of slumber—tittering up and down, too airily light-footed ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sir, but I've done nowt to deserve it," cried the lad, lapsing for the moment into the ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... to state that the greatest of the native sovereigns more than once reduced the extramural Tartars to subjection. Between the two races there existed an almost unceasing conflict, which had the effect of civilizing the one and of preventing the other from lapsing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... at the Shoals has had its incipient childhood, its period of youthful strength and gaiety, its bright noontide of maturity, and seems now to be lapsing into a serene and comfortable old age. Many, at least, of the brilliant men and women who made it what it was, are gone, and others do not appear to take their places. The Isles of Shoals are changing as all things ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... them, a row of statues; and from bottom to top a marvellous minuteness of inlaid marbles, filling up the vast and beautiful design of this heaven-aspiring tower. Looking upward to its lofty summit,—where angels might alight, lapsing downward from heaven, and gaze curiously at the bustle of men below,—I could not but feel that there is a moral charm in this faithful minuteness of Gothic architecture, filling up its outline with a million of beauties that perhaps may never be studied ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... invention. I do not know what put him into my head, and for the moment, it fell in with my humour for a space to foist the man's personality upon you as yours and call you scientific—that most abusive word. But here he is, indisputably, with me in Utopia, and lapsing from our high speculative theme into halting but intimate confidences. He declares he has not come to Utopia to meet again ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Doctor, lapsing into solemnity. "I thought you could give me a material suggestion as to what to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... loved seem gradually withdrawing from human contact and human desires, their cares parting slowly farther and farther from the cares of those they leave—a gulf ever widening between, already impassable as lapsing ages can make it. But when final departure had left the mind free to work for the heart, Cosmo said to himself—"What if the dying who seem thus divided from us, are but looking over the tops of insignificant earthly things? What if the heart within them ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... ocean, List to the lapsing waves; With what a strange commotion They seek their coral caves. From heat and turmoil let us oft return, The ocean's solemn ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... that way," hurriedly. "You merely did not know him, was all. If you had been acquainted all your life as I have—" Against her will she was lapsing into a defence, and she halted abruptly. "You ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... said slowly, for the moment lapsing into the name by which he had called his friend in their childhood; "since you came back from Johannesburg, you've not been the same ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... prevail, and eighteen years after Decatur was killed, Jonathan Cilley, of Maine, was killed in a duel at Washington by William J. Graves, of Kentucky. This event occurred forty-five years ago, but the outcry with which it was received even at that time—one of the newspaper moralists lapsing into rhyme as he deplored the cruel custom which led excellent men to ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... the common family delusion,—reasons which seemed to make it impossible that she should attract a suitor. Who would dare to marry Elsie? No, let her have the pleasure, if it was one, at any rate the wholesome excitement, of companionship; it might save her from lapsing into melancholy or a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had a kind of superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prevalent idea, her whole frame ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have been acquainted with my favorite ten years, and during most of this time have heard him sing nearly every day, I still detect notes and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all of his music is sweet and tender, lapsing from his round breast like water over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on into a sparkling foam of melodious notes, which, glow with subdued enthusiasm, yet without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... "Then," he said, lapsing in his self-forgetfulness into the terse language of his everyday life and thought, "what on earth have you ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... significance of these suggestions—a significance that lay, she knew, in the fact of their coming from her—by lapsing into the absurdities with which she embellished her familiar talk. She pronounced "languisheth" with a prolongation of the last syllable that gave to it a characteristic touch ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... recognition of Fenn's case passed around the group in the corner. Fenn saw the look as he came in. He was walking painfully straight. "I may," he said, lapsing into the poetry that came welling from his memory and marked him for a drunken fool, "I may," opening his ardent eyes and glancing affectionately about, "have been toying with 'lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon' and my feet may be 'uncertain, coy and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Lord! my heart is sick Of this perpetual lapsing time, So slow in grief, in joy so quick, Yet ever casting shadows so sublime: Time of all creatures is least like to Thee, And yet it is our share of ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... position; the struggle ended in his reign in a balance of power in England which, on the one hand, prevented any great feudatory becoming a rival of the king, as happened in several instances in France, and on the other hand prevented the king lapsing into ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... he'd say, lapsing in his earnestness into the broad Scotch accent of his youth, "you canna' mean plunder, and destruction, and riot! You canna! Not in ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... hour to play her kind patroness to sleep with all the dreamiest and most pensive melodies in her extensive repertoire, the girl suddenly faltered in her playing, wandered from one air into another, and with a touch so uncertain that Aunt Betsy, who was fast lapsing into dreamland, became broad awake again all at once, and wanted to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... lapsing from him thus, and from her own true self yet more, the gallant young sailor, whose last prize had been that useful one misfortune, was dwelling continually upon her image, because he had very little else to ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... over a vast territory suggested what Brazil with its provinces might accomplish in the southern continent. Hence the vast majority of intelligent Brazilians felt that they had become self-reliant enough to establish a republic without fear of lapsing into the unfortunate experiences of ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... by the marge Of lapsing Gihon. 'Thus one spoke, I stood, I ate.' Or next the mariner-saint enlarge Right quaintly on his ark of gopher wood To wandering men through high grass meads that ran Or sailed the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... as he straightened his erect torso, that had withstood so many Parisian years, against the back of his chair. "Ah! Les femmes! But in zee fields zey cannot follow us? Hein?" He laughed, lapsing into his broken English. "Zey cannot follow us through zee hedges, ovaire zee rough grounds, in zee rains, in zee muds. Nevaire take a woman hunting," he counselled me sotto voce beneath his vibrant hand, for Alice de Breville was present. "One can nevaire make love and ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... and lapsing into the calm, composed manner which had distinguished him all day, he led the way as before, and they resumed their march, this time in silence, for conversation was well-nigh impossible. The nearer they came to the yet invisible Fall, the more thunderous grew the din—it was as though they approached ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... have a resolution grow on us to serve God more strictly in His house and in private than heretofore. This is a call to higher things; let us beware lest we receive the grace of God in vain. Let us beware of lapsing back; let us avoid temptation. Let us strive by quietness and caution to cherish the feeble flame, and shelter it from the storms of this world. God may be bringing us into a higher world of religious truth, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... deep, profound and all-pervading reigned. I had been talking, as an old pensioner will talk, of byegone times, of my experiences in a long railway career, and my companion, himself a rising railway man, seemed greatly interested. As we sauntered along, the conversation now and again lapsing into a companionable silence, he suddenly said: "Why don't you write your reminiscences? They would be very interesting, not only to us younger railway men, but to men of your own time too." Until that moment I had never seriously thought of putting my reminiscences on record, but my ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... to cower and fail in her trial. Suddenly she shook herself up, when she was lapsing into a heap nearly as passive as that beside her; a suggestion darted across her brain; she detected in the little pocket of her dress a bottle of a strong essence and perfume, which Polly Musgrave had forced upon her the day ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... cried, lapsing into her Highland speech, "it iss ashamed of myself I am, but no one has done that to me for many a ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... used to do this sort of thing when he was a boy in the mountains of Placer County, before he became a car-boy at the mine. The dentist enjoyed himself hugely during these days. The instincts of the old-time miner were returning. In the stress of his misfortune McTeague was lapsing back ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... pointed, Arthur saw a great hand, clothed in white samite, stretched above the lapsing waves, and in its grasp was a long two-handed ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... have to fear, in all this, is of lapsing into indolence and solitary enjoyment, guarding and hoarding our own happiness. We must measure the effectiveness of our enjoyment by one thing and one thing alone—our increase of affection and sympathy, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from the pathway that irresistibly draws it, but at the same time a new groove be traced upon the hard, unyielding cells. The task is difficult beyond expression. This is why reformed men always have a hidden fear of lapsing into the former life. It is the call of the old pathway, traced ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... toward the edge of low water. The tide was nearing the last of the ebb; and now, the slope of the shore being very gradual, and the difference between high and low water in these turbulent channels something between forty and fifty feet, the lapsing fringes of the ebb, yellow-tawny with silt, were a good three-quarters of a mile away from the foot of the cliffs. The vast spaces between were smooth, oily, copper-red mud, shining and treacherous ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... time that night Grace busied herself with the troublesome hooks and eyes. Elfreda jerked off the new gown. Her temper was rising. "This is what comes of cultivating freaks," she muttered, lapsing into her old rudeness. "I might have known she'd do something. Catch me on any more ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... excitement. He hardened his heart against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow attitude into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French or expressing himself ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... entries was as follows. Having migrated from the Stanhopes' at Chevening to a neighboring old house in Kent, he wrote, "What a comfort it is, after staying with people who are too clever, to find oneself with people who are all refreshingly stupid!" If it were not for the danger of lapsing into indiscretions like these—indiscretions of which Hare seemed altogether unconscious—interesting anecdotes might be here ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... the People's College had no intention of raising the additional endowment and providing the equipment required by the act which gave them the land grant, there was great danger that the whole fund might be lost to the State by the lapsing of the time allowed in the congressional act for its acceptance. Just at this period Mr. Cornell invited me to attend a meeting of the State Agricultural Society, of which he was the president, at Rochester; and, when the meeting had assembled, he quietly proposed to remove the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... picture suddenly revealed for an instant by a flashlight. In the cabin there were four men. Two sat at a table, directly in front of him. One held a dice box poised in the air, and had turned a rough, bearded face toward him. The other was a younger man, and in this moment of lapsing consciousness it struck Roscoe as strange that he should be clutching a can of beans between his hands. A third man stared from where he had been looking down upon the dice-play of the other two. As Roscoe came in he was in the act of lowering a half-filled bottle ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... finished. Georgie's strong, sweet faith strengthened me unawares, and involuntarily I repeated the little prayer after him. Then we were silent for a long time. I was strangely weak and weary. The fear of death was gone now; I thought no more of even my mother. I think I was fast lapsing into unconsciousness when Georgie's voice half aroused me. "Allie! Allie!" he cried. "Wake up! You are slipping down! O, Allie, dear, do try to get up! You'll be drowned!" But even this failed to arouse me from the stupor into which I had fallen. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... thee Fellow, Thy Generall is my Louer: I haue beene The booke of his good Acts, whence men haue read His Fame vnparalell'd, happely amplified: For I haue euer verified my Friends, (Of whom hee's cheefe) with all the size that verity Would without lapsing suffer: Nay, sometimes, Like to a Bowle vpon a subtle ground I haue tumbled past the throw: and in his praise Haue (almost) stampt the Leasing. Therefore Fellow, I must haue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... create dangers, even where they might not have been feared. Daily instruction and inspection of the cottages and their inmates was required. The knowledge that they were under control and supervision was a support to the frightened people and prevented their lapsing into careless habits. Also, there began to develop among them a secret dependence upon, and desire to please "his lordship," as the existing circumstances drew him nearer to them, and unconsciously they were attracted and dominated by his strength. The strong man carries his power with ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and understand full soon, when once thou hast seen the life of the great city and the strife of faction there," answered his companion, lapsing into the familiar "thou" as he spoke with increased earnestness. "In thy hermit's life thou hast had no knowledge of the robbery, the desecration, the pollution which our Holy Mother Church has undergone from these pestilent heretics, who have thought ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the other tombs are worth attention, each lapsing further into the bad taste of later ages; yet there is one still deserving admiration, placed close to the head of that of the two Barons. It is the effigy of a lady, aged and serene, with a delicately-carved face beneath her ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them: are they not my own?—have been dancing the Haul-back for many generations, and now, under my own eye and quite perceptibly in the rural parts of Virginia, the dance is coming to an end. Slowly but surely we are lapsing into Bullo-doodledom, with a momentary preponderance of Bull. Tempora—do, I entreat you, allow me the use of my solitary dear delightful old bit of Latin—mutantur; ay! and we mutate with them. The world moves, and no amount of Haul-back ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... in favor of death. But I recovered. Whether it was youth, a good constitution, or the skill of Dr. White, no one could decide. It was a faint, feeble, fluttering return at first. The faces round me, mobile with life, wearied me. I was indifferent to existence, and was more than once in danger of lapsing into ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... know what it is—my heritage?" lapsing, as he often did when hurried by some pressing thought, into a ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... 'comf'table' polity of England as we have known it. I gazed away from it to a large-ish castle that the sea was just reaching. A little, then quickly much, the waters swirled into the moat. Many children stood by, all a-dance with excitement. The castle was shedding its sides, lapsing, dwindling, landslipping—gone. O Nineveh! And now another—O Memphis? Rome?—yielded to the cataclysm. I listened to the jubilant screams of the children. What rapture, what wantoning! Motionless beside his ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... that, ma'am," was the response, and then unconsciously lapsing into his rhythmical way of expressing himself, the old man added: "Though flying through the air so high they'll come ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... treaties negotiated by our nation in 1913 and 1914 with three-quarters of the world, providing for investigation of all disputes before hostilities can begin, run for five years and then, instead of lapsing, continue until one year after one of the parties to the treaty has formally demanded its termination. Note the difference: the old treaties gave the presumption to war—the new treaties give the presumption to peace. As our constitution requires a ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... plenty of people who would let you have one, if you would give her a good home and be kind to her," Caroline began, lapsing for the moment into her ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... your hand, Mr. Armadale!" cried Pedgift Senior, warmly; "I honor you for being so angry with me. The neighborhood may say what it pleases; you're a gentleman, sir, in the best sense of the word. Now," pursued the lawyer, dropping Allan's hand, and lapsing back instantly from sentiment to business, "just hear what I have got to say in my own defense. Suppose Miss Gwilt's real position happens to be nothing like what you are generously determined to believe ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... said my father, lapsing into verse. "'The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me into green pastures, and beside ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... himself in the attempt. The very bread he has swallowed cannot so in any real sense be his. There does not exist such a power of possessing as he would arrogate. There is not such a sense of having as that of which he has conceived the shadow in his degenerate and lapsing imagination. The real owner of his demesne is that pedlar passing his gate, into a divine soul receiving the sweetnesses which not all the greed of the so-counted possessor can keep within his walls: they overflow the cup-lip of the coping, to give themselves ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... no; certainly not." And then Borrow's face lit up with the light that Philips longed for, and he commenced declaiming at the top of his voice, while the painter made the most of his opportunity. When he found his subject was lapsing into silence, and that the old feeling of weariness and boredom was again creeping upon him, he would start him off again by saying, "I have always heard that the Turkish—or the Armenian—is a very fine language," with a like result, until at ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... has given us his Word and his Spirit to aid us in purging out the remaining old leaven, and in holding to our newly-begun purity instead of lapsing from it. We must retain the faith, the Spirit and Christ; and this, as before said, we cannot do if we give place to the old carnal disposition instead of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... supper!" Arthur interrupted with an air of relief, as the maid entered with the tray. And he steadily resisted all my attempts to return to the subject of Lady Muriel until the evening had almost worn itself away. Then, as we sat gazing into the fire, and conversation was lapsing into silence, he ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll |
