"Prop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 3d of March, 1754, Mr. Pelham, the Prime Minister, died, and, had Murray's ambition soared in that direction, he might at once have stepped into the vacant office. He had long been the prop of the Ministry in the House of Commons, and was by far the most sagacious member of the Government. Throughout his Parliamentary career, what has happily been called his "clear, placid, mellow splendor" had suffered no tarnish, and had not been obscured by a single ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... of the word which is here translated prowess, e.g. cobnet, colwed, eofned, but all of them are capable of that construction, thus "cobnet" comes from cobiaw, to thump, "colwed," from col a sting, or a prop, ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... arrival? I say no. He is the lord of land—and is also, what he seems still more proud of, a lord of parliament; but I will front him in both capacities, and frankly tell him, that in the first he is a burthen to his own estate, and not a benefactor; and in the second, a peer but not a prop. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... to pieces of which gives the greatest revulsion to the frame. This depth of nature, this force of passion, this tug and war of the elements of our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing it, the contrast between the fixed, immoveable basis of natural affection, and the rapid, irregular starts of imagination, suddenly wrenched from all its accustomed holds and resting-places ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... country. We don't build a house by way of experiment and live in it a few years, then tear it down and build another. We live in a house till it cracks, and then we plaster it over; then it totters, and we prop it up; then it rocks, and we rope it down; then it sprawls, and we clamp it; then it crumbles, and we have a new underpinning,—but keep living in it all the time. To know what moving really means, you must move from just such a rickety-rackety ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... if they persisted in abusing Sumner he should be obliged to leave their company; Sumner being looked upon by the Democrats and more timid Republicans as the chief obstacle to pacification; as if any one man could prop a house up when it was about to fall. After the War began, this naturally came to an end, and Sumner was afterwards invited to join the Club, with what satisfaction to Hoar, Lowell, and Holmes it might be considering ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... exclaimed Fulk. "Thou art a youth of promise, and wilt well be a prop to our grandson's English throne. Thou shalt take knighthood from mine own hand as thy prowess well deserveth. And thou, fair damsel, here is one whom we could scarce hold back from rushing with single ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... start Nor shed one teardrop, as your ships depart. Ye love-charmed bowers of Spain! your Houris' eyes Are rayless now—for brighter lustre vies! Ye, boundless plains, and giant hills, that rise In craggy pride, and prop Columbia's skies, Ye view your maddened sons, with guilty haste, Roll from your shores and tempt the watery waste— Forgotten every claim that Virtue knows, Despised the scenes, where early childhood rose, Swift to the land of gold, they, joyful, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... deeply, then drew off a small, worn, gold ring which had lost its "set," and laid it in the man's hand, saying, "That's all the prop'ty I've got except eight hens which I gave Gail for those I poisoned. It had a ruby in it once, but the old rooster picked it out and et it. I used to have two bunnies, too, but last Christmas the German kids ate Winkum and Blinkum ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... bold attempt, then, on the part of Reid and Stewart (for Stewart adopts the doctrine which he reports) to prop their tottering analysis on direct observation and experience, must be pronounced a failure. Reid's "plain statement of fact" is not a true statement of observed fact; it is a vicious statement of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Mally had an orthodox corn, or bunyan, that could as little bear a touch from the royne-slippers of philosophy, as the inflamed gout of polemical controversy, which had gumfiated every mental joint and member of that zealous prop of the Relief Kirk. This was indeed the tender point of Miss Mally's character; for she was left unplucked on the stalk of single blessedness, owing entirely to a conversation on this very subject with the only lover she ever had, Mr. Dalgliesh, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... But when we ascend from the conception of a bare physical maintenance for an average family to such a wage as would provide the real minimum requirements of a civilized life and meet all its contingencies without having to lean on any external prop, we should have to make additions to Mr. Rowntree's figure which have not yet been computed, but as to which it is probably well within the mark to say that none but the most highly skilled artisans are able to earn a remuneration ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... his reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York. But the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a fruitful theme, and Undine, called on for the first time to view her own progenitors as a subject of conversation, was struck by their lack of points. She had never paused to consider what her father and mother were "interested" in, and, challenged to specify, could have named—with sincerity—only ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, and ponds are endowed with added beauty from the lovely names they wear—a tragic yet a charming legacy from Kanonsis and Kanonsionni, the brave and mighty people of the Long House, and those outside its walls who helped to prop or undermine ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... this: True friendship is a goodly thing and a rare in this world, and, therefore, to be treasured; 'tis thing no man may buy or seek, since itself is seeker and cometh of itself; 'tis a prop—a staff in stony ways, a shield 'gainst foes, a light i' the dark. So do I love friendship, Robin, and thou'rt my friend, yet must leave thee, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... shrivelled with care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of Time has method ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... "Prop me up against this tree, Trent—and listen," Monty whispered. "Don't fritter away the little ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when perched on the top of his chariot, it looked like the image of the all-destroying fire. And the presiding deity of the power which conduces to the victory of the god, and which is the director of the exertions of all creatures, and constitutes their glory, prop and refuge, advanced before him. And a mysterious charm entered into his constitution, the charm which manifests its powers on the battlefield. Beauty, strength, piety, power, might, truthfulness, rectitude, devotion to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... ambitious little head. Yes, father would see that he was right in trusting her; Nell would discover that there was no one so clever as Polly; Mrs. Power would cease to defy her; Alice would obey her cheerfully; in short, she would be the mainstay and prop of ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... Shade looked sidewise sometimes at his companion as he asked the news of their mutual friends, and she answered. Yet when he got, along with her mild responses, one of those glances, he was himself strangely subdued by it, and fain to prop his leaning prejudices by contrasting her scant print gown, her slat sunbonnet, and cowhide shoes with the apparel of the humblest in the village which ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... headquarters-on-the-field at the head of Shonoho Canyon; and at that hour Evan Blount, blinking dizzily, and with his head bandaged and throbbing as if the premier company of all the African tom-tom symphonists were making free with it, was letting Mrs. Honoria beat up his pillows and prop him with them, so that the drum-beating clamor might be minimized ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... to behold the full-mapped mind Of his opponent, Marmont arrows forth Aide after aide towards the forest's rim, To spirit on his troops emerging thence, And prop the lone division Thomiere, For whose recall his voice has rung in vain. Wellington mounts and seeks out Pakenham, Who pushes to the arena from the right, And, spurting to the left of Marmont's line, Shakes Thomiere ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... much behind us as we advance. We first throw away the tales along with the rattles of our nurses: those of the priest keep their hold a little longer; those of our governors the longest of all. But the passions which prop these opinions are withdrawn one after another; and the cool light of reason, at the setting of our life, shows us what a false splendor played upon these objects during our more sanguine seasons. Happy, my lord, if instructed by my experience, and even by my errors, you come early to make such an ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... at some distance, and our path took us by flower-beds where some exquisite little toys were growing, and a hot-bed where new varieties were being prop—propagated. Pretty soon we came to a plantation of young trees, with rattles, and rubber balls, and ivory rings growing on the branches, and as we went past they rang and bounded about in the merriest sort ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... was answered that the faith would be safely retained by the masses. The maxim that the voice of the people is the voice of God is as old as Alcuin; it was renewed by some of the greatest writers anterior to democracy, by Hooker and Bossuet, and it was employed in our day by Newman to prop his theory of development. Rousseau applied it to ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the difference, and I sent a courier back to the general, with my compliments, and with the information that at precisely eight o clock and twenty-seven minutes he could start across. Then we fell to work. Large, long trees were cut for stringers, and hewn square, posts were made to prop up the stringers, though the stringers would have held any weight. Then small trees were cut and flattened on two sides, for the road-bed, holes bored in them and pegs made to drive through them into the stringers. A lot of cavalry soldiers never worked as those ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... considering what we choose to pay, not what a disinterested court might consider adequate, for the good-will of the United States of Colombia, a good-will desired solely and entirely for an additional safeguard to the Panama Canal and a prop to the policy or doctrine substituted by the present Administration for the moribund ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... running, At the tipsy-topsy Tunning Of Mistress Eleanor Rumming! How for poor Philip Sparrow Was murdered at Carow, How our hearts he does harrow Jest and grief mingle In this jangle-jingle, For he will not stop To sweep nor mop, To prune nor prop, To cut each phrase up Like beef when we sup, Nor sip at each line As at brandy-wine, Or port when we dine. But angrily, wittily, Tenderly, prettily, Laughingly, learnedly, Sadly, madly, Helter-skelter John Rhymes serenely on, As English ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... her on additionally in the midst of all this was the remembrance of the cardinal. What must the mistrustful, restless, suspicious cardinal think of her silence—the cardinal, not merely her only support, her only prop, her only protector at present, but still further, the principal instrument of her future fortune and vengeance? She knew him; she knew that at her return from a fruitless journey it would be in vain to tell him of her imprisonment, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... particular crisis was irreparable. One after one, all the agents and tools by whom he could hope to work upon the counsels of the Klosterheim authorities had been removed. Losing their influence, he had lost every prop of his own. Nor was this all; he was reproached by the general voice of the city as the original cause of a calamity which he had since shown himself impotent to redress. He it was, and his cause, which had drawn upon the people ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... staircase with such velocity, that they at first mistook it for the application of drumsticks to the head of an empty barrel. This uncommon speed, however, was attended with a misfortune; he chanced to overlook a small defect in one of the steps, and his prop plunging into a hole, he fell backwards, to the imminent danger of his life. Tom was luckily at his back, and sustained him in his arms, so as that he escaped without any other damage than the loss of his wooden ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... than a torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take charge of the thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles southward, his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was, "Bai Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!" The topmast was a stick about as thick as a clothes-prop, but the flat-iron was Judson's first command, and he would not have exchanged his position for second post on the "Anson" or the "Howe". He navigated her, under convoy, tenderly and lovingly to the Cape (the ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... has doubtless often happened to persons of vivid imagination and susceptible nerves, that talking of the devil has caused them to fancy they saw him; as even in our more incredulous days, listening to ghost stories predisposes us to see ghosts; and thus, as a prop to the a priori fallacy, there might come to be added an auxiliary fallacy of malobservation, with one of false generalization grounded on it. Fallacies of different orders often herd or cluster together ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Prop. In faith I am not, Publius; nor I cannot. Sick minds are like sick men that burn with fevers, Who when they drink, please but a present taste, And after bear a more impatient fit. Pray let me leave you; I offend you all, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... fer him, an' hurrah fer him, an' whar's yer promise' lan'? Little you know 'bout Scripter when you say he secon' Moses. Don' want no more sich Moseses in dis town. Dey wouldn't lebe a brick heah ef dey could take dem off. He'n his tribe got away wid 'bout all ole Missus' and young Missus' prop'ty in my 'pinion. Anyhow I feels it in my bones dey's poah, an' I mus' try an' fin' out. Dey's so proud dey'd starbe fore dey'd ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... dollar—an' he toled me, th' 'ministratur hadent sot yit, an' he cudent dew nuthin til he hed. Ses I: 'ye mean th' 'ooman's got ter gwo ter th' hi'est bider?' 'Yas,' he sed, 'the Cunel's got dets, an' the've got ter bee pade, an' th' persoonel prop'ty muste bee sold ter dew it.' Then I sed, 'twud bee sum time fore thet war dun, an' the 'ooman's 'most ded an' uv no use now; 'what'll ye hire har tur me fur.' He sed a hun'red for sicks months. I planked down the money ter onst, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... Even a frog, which has nostrils opening into its throat, still has to swallow its air in gulps, as you can see by watching its throat when it is sitting quietly. And, strange as it may seem, if you prop its mouth open, it will suffocate, because it can ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... champion of the men of Ireland, their prop in the middle of the fight; you were the head of every battle; your ways ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... her 'main prop,' George, the eldest boy, "that gentleman who gave me the half dollar for going to the bank for him, last week,—you know him we washed for at the United States Hotel,—said he was to be here again to-morrow. I was to call for ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... some time in the winter. Everybody knows that comical devil wanted lion's Head to burn up so 't he could build new, and I presume there a'n't a man, woman, or child anywhere round but what believes I set her on fire. Hired to do it. Now, see? Jeff off in Europe; daytime; no lives lost; prop'ty total loss. 's a clear case. Heigh? I tell you, I'm afraid I've ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Joab, as next of kin to Asahel, was by the law and custom of the country the avenger of his blood. For some time afterwards the war was carried on, the advantage being invariably on the side of David. At length Ishbaal lost the main prop of his tottering cause by remonstrating with Abner for marrying Rizpah, one of Saul's concubines, an alliance which, according to Oriental notions, implied pretensions to the throne (cp. 2 Sam. xvi. 21 sqq.; 1 Kings ii. 21 sqq.). Abner was indignant ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Leipzig; he could not put his finger on a single person remaining with whom he had had a nearer acquaintance. No one was left to comment on what he did and how he lived. And this knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense of propriety. He ceased to face the trouble that care for his person implied, just as he gave up raising the lid of the piano and making a needless pretence of work. Openly now, he took up his abode in the BRUDERSTRASSE, where ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... prop, their guide, their whole youth, all the best part of their lives which was disappearing. It was their bond with life, their mother, their mamma, the connecting link with their forefathers which they would thenceforth miss. They now became solitary, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... free to live in Europe. She was a partner with a partner's obligations. To desert Mortimer would not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary bachelor quarters, with none of the comforts and little luxuries he intensely loved, but it would also deprive him of his surest social prop. People had accepted him and liked him as well as they liked the totally uninteresting of the good old stock; but many would drift into the habit of not inviting him to anything but large dances, if his wife were absent. Alexina knew that her invitations to all important ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... populated rural communities. Uzbekistan is now the world's third largest cotton exporter, a major producer of gold and natural gas, and a regionally significant producer of chemicals and machinery. Following independence in December 1991, the government sought to prop up its Soviet-style command economy with subsidies and tight controls on production and prices. Faced with high rates of inflation, however, the government began to reform in mid-1994, by introducing ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... me, and not without reason, too, for if I had been under it, I had never wanted a gravedigger. I had now a great deal of work to do over again, for I had the loose earth to carry out; and, which was of more importance, I had the ceiling to prop up, so that I might be sure ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... growl and flung herself against the door, making it fairly crack; it seemed as if the door would be broken in. Sullivan and Jason hurriedly knocked their slab bed to pieces and used the slats and heavy sides to prop and strengthen the door. The bears kept surging and clawing at the door, and while the prospectors were spiking the braces against it and giving their entire attention to it, they suddenly felt the cabin shake and heard the logs strain ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... if Miss Howe had not been a Protestant and so impervious he would have excommunicated her—and as he looked his movement imperceptibly changed to afford him a better place. He put an undecided hand upon a prop of the box that rose behind Alicia's shoulder, and so stood leaning and looking, more conspicuous in the straight lines and short shoulder-cape of the frock of his Order than he knew. Hilda, in one of those ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... heart is the sight that God hath given him, a sight of the uncleanness of his best performance; the former sight of his immoralities did somewhat distress him, and make him betake himself to his own good deeds to ease his conscience, wherefore this was his prop, his stay; but behold, now God hath taken this from under him, and now he falls; wherefore his best doth also now forsake him, and flies away like the morning dew, or a bird, or as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind, and the smoke out of a chimney (Hosea 9:11; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... prop himself up on his elbow and promptly fell out of the hammock in a flurry of arms and legs and a heavy landing thump that brought a shout of laughter from Chris. After an attempt at making his bed again ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... good 'un. I've known 'im from a lad; 'Twas me as taught 'im ridin', an' 'e rides uncommon bad; And he says—But 'ark an' listen! There's an 'orn! I 'eard it blow; Pull the blind from off the winder! Prop me ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... curve, would inevitably be broken, did not a ligament, which the Indians call a drop of water—goutte d'eau—fall from the tree and take root in the earth; there it swells, and grows in proportion with the size of the branch, and acts to it as a living prop. Besides which, around the trunk, and at a considerable distance from the ground, are natural supports, which rise up in points or spirals to about the middle of the trunk. Has not the Grand Architect ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... it might aggrandise the state, Could private luxury dine on plate? Kings might indeed their friends reward, But ministers find less regard. Informers, sycophants, and spies, Would not augment the year's supplies. 40 Perhaps, too, take away this prop, An annual job or two might drop. Besides, if pensions were denied, Could avarice support its pride? It might even ministers confound, And yet the state be safe and sound. I care not though 'tis understood I only mean my country's good: And (let who will my freedom blame) ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... she bought a photograph frame which had lost its prop in an unequal contest with a tea-tray which had collapsed from the heartiness of the Rector's clapping at the conclusion of the Countess's speech; and a Noah's Ark from which the star performer and his very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... Sheriff Court. Before Sheriff Gillespie. John Young, a pit-head worker, pleaded guilty to assaulting Alexander Storrar by beating him about the head and body with his fists, throwing him on the ground, and also striking him with a pit prop. Fined 1 pound. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... father's old broadsword—suspended it by a belt round his waist, and seldom stirred without it. He was a sweet boy and a gentle if spoken fair, but cross him and he was a born devil. "In a word," she said, bursting into tears, "deprive me of Edward, good father, and ye bereave my house of prop and pillar; for my heart tells me that Halbert will take to his father's gates, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... litigation in which the citizen Indian figures as a party defendant and in a more widespread disposition to levy local taxation upon his personalty, but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court which struck away the main prop on which has hitherto rested the Government's benevolent effort to protect him against the evils of intemperance. The court holds, in effect, that when an Indian becomes, by virtue of an allotment of land to him, a citizen of the State in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... progeny is considered a blessing, as being likely to prop the declining years of their parents, but in Dahomy, children are taken from their mothers at an early age, and distributed in villages remote from the places of their nativity, where they remain with but little chance of being ever seen, or at least recognized by their parents afterwards. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and desolate places of the world, are the true saints. Nothing else will do in its place. Not Churches, nor creeds, nor rituals, nor respectabilities. Without it we are not friends of Christ, nor co-workers with God. Without it we deepen the channels of human woe, and prop the strong-holds of wickedness. Without it, whatever we may not be, we are Allies of the Tempter. The Saviour says to each of us to-day, placed amidst these antagonistic forces of Life—"He that is not with me is ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... alone in her lowly cabin. She had hoped for a prop and stay in her advancing years. The little boy was always active, kind and helpful. Her tears fall as she speaks of her loss, yet with an upward glance she says: 'He's gone to a better worl'. There's nary night, nor sin, nor ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... authorities—on the economy effected to the State by those whom I can conscientiously reject. Owing to the malignant Tsin Lung's sinister dexterity these form an ever-decreasing band, so that you may now be fittingly deemed the chief prop of a virtuous but poverty-afflicted line. When you reflect that for the past eleven years you have thus really had the honour of providing the engaging Fa Fei with all the necessities of her very ornamental existence you will see that you already possess ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... makes a difference," Phil argued. "If you want to write Braille with it,—which seems unlikely,—I'll consider. But if you want it to prop open the door with, or crack nuts on, or something, you can't ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... looked down at me, and then he went back up stairs a-follered by the flunk, which last pretty soon came down ag'in an' told me I was to go up. I don't think I ever felt so much like a wringed-out dish-cloth as I did when I went up them palatial stairs. But I tried to think of things that would prop me up. P'r'aps, I thought, my ancient ancestors came to this land with his'n; who knows? An' I might 'a' been switched off on some female line, an' so lost the name an' estates. At any rate, be brave! With such thoughts as these I tried to stiffen my legs, figgeratively speakin'. ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... correctly? He turned to Proposition xxxiii. "If we love a thing which is like ourselves we endeavor as much as possible to make it love us in return." His eye ran over the proof with its impressive summing-up. "Or in other words (Schol. Prop, xiii., pt. 3), we try to make it love us in return." Unimpeachable logic, but was it true? Had he tried to make Klaartje love him in return? Not unless one counted the semi-conscious advances of wit-combats ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... had "got out" with a few further remarks uncomplimentary to American women, and the damage was done. Ernestine could not be made to see that with the departure of the pastry-cook, the last substantial prop to Milly's ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Achilles' love: he bore To Aulis and the dark ship-clutching shore, He held above the altar-flame, and smote, Cool as one reaping, through the strained throat, My white Iphigenia.... Had it been To save some falling city, leaguered in With foemen; to prop up our castle towers, And rescue other children that were ours, Giving one life for many, by God's laws I had forgiven all! Not so. Because Helen was wanton, and her master knew No curb for her: for that, for that, he slew My daughter!—Even then, ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... immorality to Christian congregations; that, instead of the saving morality of the Gospel of Christ, which rests upon revealed mysteries and supernatural gifts, it is offering us that same old array of the natural virtues or qualities which helped, for a while, like rotten pillars, to prop up the heathen nations of old. It must, then, be evident to every man of common sense that the reading of the Bible alone, though it be the Word of God, will not counterbalance the results of Pagan education. Indeed the ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the King. Gondomar rather belonged to the party who looked for the welfare of the Spanish monarchy in the maintenance of peace, especially with England. The scheme of the marriage was part of the system of powerful alliances by which it was sought to prop the greatness of Spain. Even the uncertain rumour of this scheme, which was instantly propagated, sufficed to agitate the Protestant party in Europe and in England itself. The King declared that he moved only with leaden foot towards the proposal which had been made to him; and that, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... persons who had once occupied privileged positions (I thus designate those in which people receive more from others than they give), who had lost them, and who wished to occupy them again. To one, two hundred rubles were indispensable, in order that he might prop up a failing business, and complete the education of his children which had been begun; another wanted a photographic outfit; a third wanted his debts paid, and respectable clothing purchased for him; a fourth needed a piano, in order to perfect ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... measure, was the privilege of trading to the English plantations; yet, excepting Glasgow and Dumfries, I don't know any other Scotch towns concerned in that traffick. In other respects, I conceive the Scots were losers by the union. — They lost the independency of their state, the greatest prop of national spirit; they lost their parliament, and their courts of justice were subjected to the revision and supremacy of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... on the table while one is eating. To sit with the left elbow propped on the table while eating with the right hand (unless one is alone and ill), or to prop the right one on the table while lifting the fork or glass to the mouth, must ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... every day I talk with you, and of you, in my heart; and I need only set down what that is thinking of. The nearer I find myself verging to that period of life which is to be labour and sorrow, the more I prop myself upon those few supports that are left me. People in this state are like props indeed; they cannot stand alone, but two or more of them can stand, leaning and bearing upon one another. I wish you and I might pass this part of life together. My only necessary ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... after this, falling into ill-health, he was sent at great expense to a more favourable climate; and then I think his perplexities were thickest. When he thought of all the other young men of singular promise, upright, good, the prop of families, who must remain at home to die, and with all their possibilities be lost to life and mankind; and how he, by one more unmerited favour, was chosen out from all these others to survive; he felt ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vagabonds as you are, and do not presume to remain in a spot which is hallowed by the grey hairs of the patriarchal gentleman to whose tottering limbs I have the honour to act as an unworthy, but I hope an unassuming, prop and staff. And you, my tender sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, addressing himself in a tone of gentle remonstrance to the old man, 'how could you ever leave me, though even for this short period! You have absented yourself, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... charms on earth, that I, reminded By them, might be consoled though you depart; But vainly! Far from you, by sorrow blinded, I find no prop of comfort for ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... the great pity I have for him. He is weak and helpless, almost child-like in his dependence on me. I am the prop which holds up the last shreds of his self-respect. If I left him, he would drift lower and lower, I know it. Sometimes I pass some awful creature staggering along the sidewalks. He is dirty and uncared for. Long matted hair falls across his bleared and sunken eyes. I say to myself: 'But for ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... him in action against a king's ship, and all his wild nonsense is apt to delude ye into thinkin' him a drunken play-actor. But you will never take him alive, so long as those bandy legs have strength to prop him up." ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Firgrove, which was only about a mile from the village. But Joe and Moll would be sure to follow them, in order to make an attempt to recover their captives. Several times before Joe had tried to kidnap an attractive smart child whom he could train to be a sort of golden prop upon which his laziness could lean, but hitherto he had always been balked in his purpose. He would be furiously angry, Bambo knew, when he discovered that, just when a life of ease and idleness such as he had longed for seemed certain in the near future, he was ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... was a fine-looking man to just below his hips, and there he had been razed, as he called it to Aleck Donne, while the most peculiar thing about him as he toddled along was what at first sight looked like a prop, which extended from just beneath his head nearly to the ground, as if to enable him to stand, tripod-fashion, steadily on a windy day. But it was nothing of the sort, being only his pigtail carefully ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... better if I had brought her with me," he said, as he read extracts; "she's a little thing, Gordon, but she's a wonder. And she's the prop on ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... dogged male determination to over-ride all obstacles, whether feminine or financial. And pretty Belinda Bolingbroke, being alone and unsupported by other suitors at the instant, had entwined herself instinctively around the nearest male prop that offered. It had been one of those marriages of opposites which people (ignoring the salient fact that love has about as much part in it as it has in the pursuit of a spring chicken by a hawk) speak of with sentiment as "a triumph of love over differences." Even in the first days of their engagement, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the church wore the papal tiara or the English crown. Two hundred years after Wyckliff, in 1582, laws were still fulminated against "divers false and perverse people of certain new sects," for Protestant England would support but one form of religion as the moral prop of the state. She regarded all innovations as questionable, or wholly evil, and their authors as dangerous men. Chief among the latter was Robert Browne. But before Browne's advent and in the days of Henry ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... were before the door, and we drove up the mountain, took the little narrow-gage railroad which is there to carry the logs down to the lake. Sitting on the front logs, we rode down the mountain. The big beams of timber are brought to the mines in order to prop up the places where the ore has been taken out. These logs do a lot of traveling. They are cut on the other side of Lake Tahoe, dragged over the lake by a tug, sawed the right length by a sawing-mill, then carried up the mountain by ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... full performance, honour that As won, which aye love worketh at! It is but as the pedigree Of perfectness which is to be That our best good can honour claim; Yet honour to deny were shame And robbery: for it is the mould Wherein to beauty runs the gold Of good intention, and the prop That lifts to the sun the earth-drawn crop Of human sensibilities. Such honour, with a conduct wise In common things, as, not to steep The lofty mind of love in sleep Of over much familiarness; Not to degrade its kind caress, As those do that can feel no more, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... with these," urged Eph, placing the tray on the cabin table. "Wait a minute. I'll prop you up and put a pillow at ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... mended the broken lights in the kitchen windows, and got rid of all the old hats and bonnets that had been stuffed into them. He put on new buttons to keep up the sashes, and so banished the big sticks from the wood-pile that had been used to prop them up. He said they were too ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... the hotel within five feet of the chimney and dropped so low that his prop wash flattened the reeds in the marsh. Then, climbing again, he swung wide and went over Seaford at a legal altitude. He was, even the critical Gus admitted, a safe-and-sane flier, but the temptation to get back at Carrots Kelso a little was too much. High over the town, he turned to Scotty. "I ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... Indeed, there was a general chorus of commiseration, which Burt brought to a prosaic conclusion by saying: "Crocodile tears, every one. You'll all enjoy the pot-pie to-morrow with great gusto. By the way, I'll prop up one of these little fellows at the foot of Ned's crib, and in the morning he'll think that the original 'Br'er Rabbit' has hopped out of Uncle Remus's stories to make him ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... his opportunity, and taking his lasso and an extra rope, he crawled into the hole. Not fifteen feet from the opening sat one of the cougars, snarling and spitting. Jones promptly lassoed it, passed his end of the lasso round a side prop of the shaft, and out to the soldiers who had followed him. Instructing them not to pull till he called, he cautiously began to crawl by the cougar, with the intention of getting farther back and roping its hind leg, so as to prevent disaster ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... pray to the Spirit of Life, who is said to inhabit that spot. The Spirit of Life appears; also Death—uninvited. They are (supposably) invisible. Death, tall, black-robed, corpse-faced, stands motionless and waits. The aged couple pray to the Spirit of Life for a means to prop up their existence and continue it. Their prayer fails. The Spirit of Life prophesies Zoe's martyrdom; it will take place before night. Soon Appelles arrives, young and vigorous and full of enthusiasm: he has led a host against ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Sioux would wreak swift vengeance could not be doubted. As soon as the murderous work was over, guides were with difficulty engaged. Having fitted up a sort of prop in which I could tie Hamilton to the saddle, I saw both Father Holland and Eric set out for Red ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... majority of its members grew more radical. Necker trimmed to their demands, but lost popularity by his monotonous calls for money, and fell in September, reaching his home on Lake Leman only with the greatest difficulty. Mirabeau succeeded him as the sole possible prop to the tottering throne. Under his leadership the moderate monarchists, or Feuillants, as they were later called, from the convent of that order to which they withdrew, seceded from the Jacobins, and before the Assembly had ceased its work the nation was cleft ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... an offer at the Hippodrome to walk in front of an Elephant, waving a prop Palm, but she spurned it, because she was ready to do Desdemona at a ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... two-story, wooden house, dark and weather-beaten. The front windows, some of them, were shattered and open, and others were boarded up. Trees and shrubbery were growing neglected, so as quite to block up the lower part. There was an aged barn near at hand, so ruinous that it had been necessary to prop it up. There were two old carts, both of which had lost a wheel. Everything was in keeping. At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a decrepit and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spirits drop. I saw those of Hepatica and the Skeptic and the Philosopher drop, although they made haste to prop their ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... stalks last several years, bearing fruit. The bean vines are thicker than a man's arm, and run to the top of the highest trees. Peach trees are abundant, and bear fruit equal to the best which can be found in France. They are often so loaded, in the gardens of the Indians, that they have to prop up the branches. There are whole forests of mulberries, whose ripened fruit we began to eat in the month of May. Plums are found in great variety, many of which are not known in Europe. Grapevines and pomegranates are common. ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... from yon fountain?" [S] Thou, my Friend! art one 210 More deeply read in thy own thoughts; to thee Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneum, and a prop To our infirmity. No officious slave 215 Art thou of that false secondary power By which we multiply distinctions; then, Deem that our puny boundaries are things That we perceive, and not that we have made. To thee, unblinded by these formal ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... There he will feel the whole splendid barbaric story for himself: the flocks of Abraham and Laban: the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt for corn: the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the gleaning, and Rispah beneath the gibbet: Sisera bowing in weariness: Saul—great Saul—by the tent-prop with the jewels ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent brightness—the window-glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop all wreathed about with climbing flowers—nothing but its air of a well-tended, smiling veteran, sitting, crutch and all, in the sunny corner of a garden, marked it as a house for comfortable people to inhabit. In poor or idle management it would soon have ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be an accident here," declared the girl aloud. "I wonder the company doesn't send out men to fix it. Although I guess they could not prop up that pole. ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... a sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her knees, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... things, {19b} when one action can make so many historians. This puts me in mind of what happened at Sinope. {20a} When the Corinthians heard that Philip was going to attack them, they were all alarmed, and fell to work, some brushing up their arms, others bringing stones to prop up their walls and defend their bulwarks, every one, in short, lending a hand. Diogenes observing this, and having nothing to do (for nobody employed him), tucked up his robe, and, with all his might, fell a rolling ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... and twenty-two dollars still lay in the chamois bag against her bosom, but the additional five dollars a week on to her salary was a saving prop against the not infrequent sag ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... himself at a crisis like the one in which he was called upon to act, rendered his conduct doubtful, and all his intended operations suspicious to both parties, whether his feelings were really inclined to prop up the fallen kingly authority, or his newly-acquired republican principles prompted him to become the head of the democratical party, for no one can see into the hearts of men; his popularity from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... having retired into the obscurity of the river Yuan (in Honan), I had no appetite for the political affairs of the country. As the result of the revolution in Hsin Hai, I was by mistake elected by the people. Reluctantly I came out of my retirement and endeavoured to prop up the tottering structure. I cared for nothing, but the salvation of the country. A perusal of our history of several thousand years will reveal in vivid manner the sad fate of the descendants of ancient kings and emperors. What then ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... but luxuriant hop Around a cankered stem should twine, What Kentish boor would tear away the prop So roughly as to wound, nay, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... years. He needed her; alone, broken, wrecked among his dreams, he needed her. He had recovered consciousness almost at once, and his first words were a curse on the man who had aimed so badly. He could talk but little, but he declared that he would rip the bandages if they did not prop his pillows so he could see the bay. The second time he woke he saw Hildegarde. She smiled brokenly, but he turned his ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... property & demand for it the protection afforded by the Const^n. It became, in course of time, a matter of dispute whether the South could take their slaves there as property. (As a matter of course this arose from jealousy—the N. having no such prop, to take.) This great quest. was decided, however, by the Chief Justice in the highest Tribunal in the world, in favor of the South; viz. that slaves were property. I refer to the "Dred Scott" Case. This should have been sufficient, as it came from the highest authority in the Gov^t. ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... Old Calabar river, but we found the tide stronger than the wind, and that it had carried us on a mud-flat off little Quay river, which, at about half ebb left the schooner aground, this obliged us to get some spars out, to prop her up on each side. At which time we were in the following situation: West point of Old Calabar river, W. by S. Fish Town point N. by W. 1/2 W. and the entrance of little Quay river N.N.E. At 5 in the afternoon we got the spars in and laid a small anchor out, with the assistance ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... imagined that the hour of their triumph was at hand. They did not know on what a treacherous prop they were leaning, or what sore trials were yet in store for them ere that triumph should be gained. They knew the regent to be weak and timid; they did not know him to be deceitful—so deceitful that, within six weeks after the last of the messengers were despatched ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... governing those who are not Siegfrieds or risking destruction at their hands. And this dilemma will persist until Wotan's inspiration comes to our governors, and they see that their business is not the devising of laws and institutions to prop up the weaknesses of mobs and secure the survival of the unfittest, but the breeding of men whose wills and intelligences may be depended on to produce spontaneously the social well-being our clumsy laws now aim at and miss. The majority of men at present in Europe have no business ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... succession, arose a series of military leaders who aimed to secure by the sword what was no longer to be obtained through constitutional and legal means. Marius, a great general but no politician, could only break down and destroy. Sulla, a sincere but narrow-minded statesman, could do no more than prop up the structure— already tottering—of senatorial rule. Pompey soon undid that work and left the constitution to become again the sport of rival soldiers. Caesar, triumphing over Pompey, gained a position of unchallenged supremacy. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... from that Slave Oligarchy which now controls the Republic, and refuse to be its tool. Let its power be stretched forth toward this distant Territory, not to bind, but to unbind; not for the oppression of the weak, but for the subversion of the tyrannical; not for the prop and maintenance of a revolting Usurpation, but for the confirmation ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... 2. Prop open the mouth by means of some form of gag; seize the tongue with a pair of forceps and draw ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... "will this unnatural prejudice against the respectability of female labor ever die out? You know that I am to be a sewing-girl, not from choice, like you, but from necessity. You learn the use of a machine only as a prop to lean upon in a very remote contingency; I, to make it the staff for all my future life. You will continue to be a lady,—indeed, Miss Effie, you never can be anything else,—but I shall be only a sewing-girl. The prejudice will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... twenty-three years since we have seen each other. My marriage was the occasion of our last interview, after which we parted, and both of us were happy. Assuredly I could not then foresee that you would one day be the prop of the family whose prosperity you ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... No one was glad to find that it was he, not even Nat; for, spite of all his faults, and they were many, every one liked Dan now, because under his rough exterior lay some of the manly virtues which we most admire and love. Mrs. Jo had been the chief prop, as well as cultivator, of Dan; and she took it sadly to heart that her last and most interesting boy had turned out so ill. The theft was bad, but the lying about it, and allowing another to suffer so ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the workmen of the present day. For whatever appearance of self-complacency there may be in their outward bearing, it is visible enough, by their feverish jealousy of each other, how little confidence they have in the sterling value of their several doings. Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up; and there is too visible distress and hopelessness in men's aspects to admit of the supposition that they have any stable support ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and, even in their darkest hours, he had laughed at her dread of the workhouse, and assured her that while head and hands remained to him she need not fear, but should enjoy the independence of a home. Now this sole prop and stay was gone—gone, just as the black cloud had ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... don't!" she cried. "You may flout our beliefs,—but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with an endorsement by the wife of a clergyman! It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You can't prop up your wild-eyed theories against the good black of one minister's coat. Not by any means! I think myself that you have probably stumbled on the truth about Willem's mother; but that doesn't prove there's anything in all your notions, for that child ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... Honor? Is it that you thought would plase me, Honor?—To lave your father alone in his ould age, after all the slaving he got and was willing to undergo, whilst ever he had strength, early and late, to make a little portion for you, Honor,—you, that I reckoned upon for the prop and pride of my ould age—and you expect you'd plase ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... picking her up. "There, you sit down next time, and I'll prop up the pole with a rock—this way. There, now, you hold it a little easy, and when you feel a nibble you ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... the lower sash. He managed to open it some ten inches, and then, as a protest against this interference with its gradual decay, the sash-cord broke. He heard with a jump of the heart the weight thud down behind the woodwork: then, as he groped hastily behind him for a brick, to prop the sash, it came down with a run, and closed its descent with a jar that shook out two of its bottle panes to drop into the water that rushed below. Prompt upon this came a flutter and scurry of wings in water, and a wild ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of the arrival of Sir Arthur St. Ives, and his daughter; I believe it was in the postscript; and that I was immediately going to—Pshaw! I am beginning my story now at the wrong end. It is throughout exceedingly whimsical. Listen, and let amazement prop your ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... gentleman was a good friend of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, who was the head of his household, and, according to his own frequent statement, the main prop of his declining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to open the matter to Mr. Hinckman, but, as I said before, I had never asked her whether or not she would be mine. I thought ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... Woodpeckers do not perch in the true sense—they rest either against a tree-trunk or on a limb, and even sleep in these positions. They almost all have four toes, two in front and two behind, and the strong pair of hind toes prop them up when they climb the trunks of trees, or when they stop to bore for their food. They also have stiff, pointed tail-feathers that they press against the upright trunks of trees to keep themselves in place, the same as Swifts do inside chimneys, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... savages. While this clashing of one object against another could not be called the beginning of music, and while it could not be said to originate a musical instrument, it did, nevertheless, bring into existence music's greatest prop, rhythm, an ally without which music would seem to be impossible. It is hardly necessary to go into this point in detail. Suffice it to say that the sense of rhythm is highly developed even among those savage tribes which stand the lowest in the scale of civilization to-day, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... had plenty of color and she held to the cat as an embarrassed actor does to a prop. "I tried to see you one day at Keefe, but you ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... his own strength to the effort, and succeeded in raising the lid against the timbers of the house, where he took care to secure it by a sufficient prop. Judith fairly trembled as she cast her first glance at the interior, and she felt a temporary relief in discovering that a piece of canvas, that was carefully tucked in around the edges, effectually concealed all beneath it. The ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... I found my friend bolstered upright in bed, with a small two-legged crutch at hand to prop his head on when he became weary of the perpendicular position. This had been his attitude for fifty days. Whether from its impeding his circulation, the distribution of his nervous currents, or both, the prostrate posture invariably brought on cessation of the heart—and the sense of intolerable ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... haue herkned & herde of mony hy[gh]e clerke[gh], & als i{n} resou{n}e[gh] of ry[gh]t red hit my seluen, [Sidenote: The high Prince of all is displeased with those who work wickedly.] {a}t at ilk prop{er} prynce at paradys welde[gh] Is displesed at vch a poy{n}t at plyes to scae. 196 Bot neu{er} [gh]et i{n} no boke breued I herde at eu{er} he wrek so wy{er}ly on werk at he made, Ne venged for no vilt of vice ne sy{n}ne, Ne so hastyfly wat[gh] hot for hatel of his wylle, 200 ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various |
