"Stagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aguardiente. Look! I have long time an ancestor of whom is a pretty story. One day in church he have seen a young girl—a mere peasant girl—pass to the confessional. He look her in her eye, he stagger"—here Enriquez wobbled pantomimically into the road—"he fall!"—he would have suited the action to the word if I had not firmly held him up. "They have taken him home, where he have remain without his clothes, and have dance and sing. But it was the drunkenness of lofe. And, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... spreads: inside and outside the inclosure men begin to quiver and dance, others join, a circle forms, winding monotonously round some one in the centre; some "heel and toe" tumultuously, others merely tremble and stagger on, others stoop and rise, others whirl, others caper sideways, all keep steadily circling like dervishes; spectators applaud special strokes of skill; my approach only enlivens the scene; the circle enlarges, louder grows the singing, rousing shouts of encouragement come in, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... victory within his grasp, and resolved to persevere. The last broadside from the frigate told with fearful effect on the corvette. Her spars and rigging were much cut about; three more men wore struck, and the brave captain was seen to stagger back. Had not Rogers sprang forward and caught him in his arms he would have fallen to the deck. He was speechless, but he motioned to Bonham, who ran up to continue the fight. When an attempt was made ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... hand to his head with an inarticulate cry of bewilderment. Then, with one supreme effort, he began to stagger hastily but noiselessly about the room. The servants of the house were already astir, and the day would soon be here. He put his sacred letters carefully away, and destroyed all worthless ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble; they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... started back as she heeled to starboard. He was vaguely conscious that Mr. Uhl had shut down his engines before coming on deck and that in consequence the ship had lost headway and was beginning to wallow. In his weak state her plunging caused him to stagger like a drunken man. As he crossed to the port side of the ship and gazed down the deck he noticed that the incandescent lamps had all been screwed back in their sockets, and by their brilliant light he beheld one of the firemen in the act of removing ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... paid with careless liberality, and Lord Polperro ran up the stairs to his flat. More strictly speaking, he ran for a few yards, when breath failed him, and it was all he could do to stagger with loud pantings up the rest of the ascent. Arrived in his sitting-room he sank exhausted on to the nearest chair. Gammon saw that he pointed feebly to the drink cupboard, and heard a gasp ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... to make up for that now. You're going to have so much home life from now on, that you can hardly stagger under it. And I'm going ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... garden, and His goodness causes me to glorify Him in the cucumbers and melons which He gives me. Let us pray that He may keep us in His peace. For nothing is more to be feared than those unruly passions which trouble our hearts. When these passions disturb us we are like drunken men, and we stagger from right to left unceasingly, and are like to fall miserably. Sometimes these passions plunge us into a turbulent joy, and he who gives way to such, sullies the air with brutish laughter. Such false joy drags the sinner into all sorts ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... saw him stagger and then flop down all of a heap over the kidney-beans, whose props, giving way as he descended, broke ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Paton, starting up in uncontrollable emotion, which changed into a burst of anger as he gave Walter a box on the ear which sounded all over the room, and made the boy stagger back to his place. But the flash of rage was gone in an instant; and the next moment Mr Paton, afraid of trusting himself any longer, left his desk and hurried out, anxious to recover in solitude the calmness of mind and action which had been so ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... She managed to stagger across to the cupboard, unlocked it, and then sank down in a chair. Susy instantly made her appearance; she was not dead, but she was extremely red in ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... to think otherwise. His mode of progression was rather that of an intoxicated snake, or an over-fed turtle on dry land; but he managed to stagger along as far as the foster's muzzle, and swayed there on his little haunches within reach of her warm breath. Instinct guided the pup so far, and ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... involves an accident upon a cliff, he must clamber in person about the chest of drawers and fall bodily upon the carpet, before his imagination is satisfied. Lead soldiers, dolls, all toys, in short, are in the same category and answer the same end. Nothing can stagger a child's faith; he accepts the clumsiest substitutes and can swallow the most staring incongruities. The chair he has just been besieging as a castle, or valiantly cutting to the ground as a dragon, is taken away for the accommodation of a morning visitor, and he is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was undoubtedly taken by surprise this time. To be attacked in such a way by the very person he meant to attack, to be accounted the injurer by the very person who, he thought, had injured him, sufficed to stagger the blacksmith's dull brains. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... head, or for my ruin; and one never feels very comfortable under such offers, at any time or in any country. The reckless lies which this man gets adventurers at Cawnpore to write for him, and careless or corrupt editors to publish, are apt to stagger those who do not know the vile character of the individual, or the true nature of the facts ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... main source of leakage in the American Church. They are not able to answer the most ordinary objections, and they have not moral strength to withstand the shafts of ridicule. In the fierce cross-currents of unbelief, he is poorly able to keep his foothold. Many stagger; some fall, ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... rice, black pepper, nutmeg, mixed, they get well if you take good care of them. Hens must not have fish, it physics them. Hens must not have anything relaxing. If hens have rattling in their throat give them Epsom salts and black pepper, they get well. If hen has her head quiver, and stagger, give her Epsom salts, and keep her quiet, and her food soak cracker in milk, she get well. If hens taken lame in the afternoon without being hurt, rub on mutton tallow and black pepper, they get well. If hen's ...
— A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce • Nancy Luce
... application of the two systems is dependent not only on the dip but on the method of supporting the excavation and the ore. With rill-stoping, it is possible to cut the breaking benches back horizontally from the winzes (Fig. 25), or to stagger the cuts in such a manner as to take the slices in a descending angle (Figs. 21 ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... neglected to strike until he had passed them, by which means he gained some six or eight paces without receiving a blow; but now they fell hard and fast upon him, accompanied with screams and yells of the most diabolical nature; and ere he had gone thirty yards, he began to stagger, when a heavy stroke on the head laid him senseless on the earth. In a moment the renegade, who had kept him company outside, burst through the lines, just in time to ward off the blow of a powerful warrior, aimed ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... him, and he was seen to advance a few paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody yelled together, and the guns were reloaded in frantic haste. The overthrown Martian set up a prolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant, answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. It would ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... raised his Remington, as the creature hobbled past, and sent a bullet through its brain. The wounded man flew forwards out of the high saddle, and fell heavily upon the hard track. His companions in misfortune, looking back, saw him stagger to his feet with a dazed face. At the same instant a Baggara slipped down from his camel with ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... philosophic breasts. Could Tempest but hold out these few yards, we were safe. He would! No! Yes! No, they're all but level another six yards. Then suddenly we saw Tempest fling his hand behind and reel forward with a blind stagger over the tape, and as the simultaneous report proclaimed a dead heat, fall sprawling and helpless on ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... mouths half a mile and more, so that you wait as you do for the sound of the man's axe who is chopping on the other side of the river, to see the fellow you have "saved" clap his hand to his breast and stagger over. It makes me nervous to think of such things. I don't want to be suspicious of every queer taste in my coffee, and to shiver if I see a little powdered white sugar on the upper crust of my pastry. I don't want, every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... dude could stop him the younger Racer boy had snatched it from his pocket. "Whew! Yes, this is it!" he cried, holding his nose as he handed the gaudy linen back. "How did it happen, Chet? Did you drop it somewhere? It's awful!" and he pretended to stagger back. "Better ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... the tempter. "A little earth rubbed upon one side of the head—perhaps a trifling scratch to show a few drops of blood. You have been assaulted, beaten down, despite a heroic resistance, and left for dead. An hour afterward you stagger into the house ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... near the future site of Fort William Henry, left their canoes, and, with their prisoners, began their march for the nearest Mohawk town. Each bore his share of the plunder. Even Jogues, though his lacerated hands were in a frightful condition and his body covered with bruises, was forced to stagger on with the rest under a heavy load. He with his fellow-prisoners, and indeed the whole party, were half starved, subsisting chiefly on wild berries. They crossed the upper Hudson, and, in thirteen days after leaving the St. Lawrence, neared the wretched goal of their ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... end he quit all this, and fell to whimpering and crying like a baby. His spirit broke and he became a quivering jelly-mountain of misery. He'd get attacks of palpitation of the heart, and stagger around like a drunken man, and fall down and bark his shins. And then he'd cry, but always on the run. O man, the gods themselves would have wept with him, and you yourself or any other man. It was pitiful, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... whirls; but the brave fellows dodged back, and were unhurt. Then, advancing boldly again, they released their hands from something which they had been holding, and lo! four jets of water struck at the very roots of the flames, tripped at them, and made them stagger, drove them twice into the roof, and caught them with deadly accuracy as they came out again; and, in less than five minutes, changed all their brave splendor to dull, black smoke, and set the victor's mark upon them—the column of white ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... neighborhood of the preparations, and are served under a plane tree beautiful as that whose limbs were hung by Xerxes with bracelets. A soup, absolutely set on fire with red pepper, introduces the repast: pancakes follow, and various meats smothered with eggs or onions. Then two half-naked cooks stagger up bearing on a wooden dish, under a gold-bordered napkin, a sheep roasted entire and still impaled with the spit. The chief cook takes hold of the skewer and draws it violently toward himself, applying a smart stroke with his naked heel to the tail of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... its effect. A scuffling noise followed upon the gravel, a chair was overset, and then Francis saw the father and daughter stagger across the walk and disappear under the verandah, bearing the inanimate body of Mr. Rolles embraced about the knees and shoulders. The young clergyman was limp and pallid, and his head rolled upon his shoulders ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the masts bend, the ship begins to stagger along, groaning and creaking in every joint, under the severe pressure. The topsails are close-reefed to meet the increased wind; but still, as before, she is under quite as much canvas as ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... to hide herself in the caravan, had ascended the steps first, and forgotten the strain upon the handcuff. 'Come down, and let's show you the way.' And after jerking the miserable girl down with a force which made her stagger on the pavement, she got into the vehicle, and was followed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... though his burden made him stagger, he did not fall. As he started for the open doorway, there was a crash, and the stairway became a thing of the past. The young major had missed death ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... snow. Snell, bitter. Snooded, bound up with a fillet. Snool, cringe. Solan, gannet. Soote, sweet. Souter, cobbler. Spak, spoke. Spean, wean. Speel, climb. Spier, ask, inquire. Spraing, stripe. Sprattle, scramble. Spreckled, speckled. Spryte, spirit. Squattle, squat. Stacher, stagger, totter. Stane, stone. Steer, stir. Steyned, stained. Stibble, stubble. Still, ever. Stirk, young steer. Stole, robe. Stonen, stony. Stote, stout. Stoure, dust, struggle. Stown, stolen. Strang, strong. Strath, river-valley. Strathspeys, dances for two persons. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... to the people of Jerusalem a summary of his previous oracles. He told them that the cup of the Lord's wrath was given into his hand; Judah and other nations, especially Egypt, must drink it and so stagger to their doom. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... those three weeks of torture, he would fix his eye on a tree ten feet away, up the steep trail. And to himself he would say, "I'll struggle, somehow, as far as that tree, and then die under it." And he would stagger another ten feet, his heart pounding in the unaccustomed altitude, his lungs bursting, his lips parted, his breath coming sobbingly, his eyes starting from his head. Leaping lightly ahead of him, around the bend, was Jessie, always. She had a way of ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... well clear of the Channel and to the southward of Ushant before it changed, and then it gradually veered round until it came out strong from the north-west, when away we all went for Madeira, the slowest ships carrying every rag of canvas that they could stagger under, while the faster craft were unwillingly compelled to shorten down in order that all might keep together, while as for ourselves and the Astarte, the utmost that we could show, without running ahead of our station, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... stagger, trailing an empty cuff behind him, flailing his arms wildly. Ahead of him he could see a big cop with an upraised billy. Malone tried to alter his course, but it was too late. He skidded helplessly into the cop, who jerked round and swung the billy automatically. Malone said: ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... by fears opprest, He stagger'd to a chair; He falter'd, spoke, then on her breast, He ...
— The Maid and the Magpie - An Interesting Tale Founded on Facts • Charles Moreton
... up, two guns spoke through the clamor as one gun. The men were not ten feet apart as their guns spoke. Norton felt a bullet rip along his outer arm, the sensation that of a whip-lash cutting deep. He saw del Rio stagger back under the impact of a forty-five-caliber bullet which must have merely grazed him, since it did not knock him off his feet. Del Rio, his lips streaming his curses and hatred, fired again. But his wound had been sorer ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... their charge is sacred; that the sheets he has produced are impossible to replace. High words. Abrupt re-opening of the front door. Struggling humanity projected on to the pavement. Three persons—my scribe in the middle, an emissary on either side—stagger strangely past me. The scribe enters the purple night only under the ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... cruel. I could see his mother almost stagger under the blow. She attempted to remonstrate, but it was too late. George assured her that "it was all fixed," and that Clara had agreed with him regarding ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... dozens of them; they clutched my wrists, my elbows, and in between my wrists and my elbows, and my shoulders. One pair of arms was round my neck, another round my waist, and they kept on trying to catch my legs with ropes. We seemed to stagger all over the deck; I expect they got in each other's way; they would have made a better job of it if they hadn't been such a multitude. I must then have got a crack on the head, for everything grew dark; the night seemed to fall on ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... breath, his hands falling helplessly at his sides. In a way he appeared suddenly bowed; the great frame of bone and sinew seemed in some strange, indefinable manner to shrink, to stagger under the sudden assumption of an intolerable burden—a burden that was ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... shooting was able to stagger forward towards the Pacific Express building on the corner of Washington and Montgomery Streets, and entered the office, only to drop to the floor. Several doctors were soon in attendance, and his wound bandaged, and ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... had been bowed down in deep abstraction, to look in the direction indicated. A figure was approaching them. It looked like a woman. She walked very slowly, and appeared rather to stagger than to walk. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... not the usual period for Aztec fighting. It was this alone that saved the lives of the remaining few for, having seen Alvarado stagger to freedom along the causeway, the Aztecs concluded that they had done enough and returned to the city rejoicing. They took back with them many Spaniards and Tlascalans as captives for sacrifice and the cannibalistic ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the accounts of the disasters which had overtaken so many others in the canyon below us. Many who had escaped the water had climbed out on to this death trap, as it had proven to be for them, some to perish of thirst and starvation, a few to stagger into the ranch below the canyon, a week or more after they had escaped from the water. Small wonder that some of these had lost their reason. We could only conjecture at the fate of the party whose wrecked boat had been found by the Stone expedition, a few miles below ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... of sticking plaster—the party repairs to a tavern to breakfast; and there the morning is killed over beer and Rhine wine till one o'clock, by which time some of them are usually more than half tipsy. They then repair to the table-d'hote, dine, drink more, and finally stagger home to sleep off their libations. We have more than once, in German university towns, seen students reeling-drunk at four ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... astronomy has not yet appeared. The atom itself is an invention of science. To get the mystery of vitality reduced to the atom is getting it in very close quarters, but it is a very big mystery still. Just how the dead becomes alive, even in the atom, is mystery enough to stagger any scientific mind. It is not the volume of the change; it is the quality or kind. Chemistry and mechanics we have always known, and they always remain chemistry and mechanics. They go into our laboratories and through our devices chemistry and mechanics, and they come ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... a high fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-thunder Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the affair, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... And Jim would stagger doggedly past me, where I sat on the parapet, his poor cheeks shaking and the tail of his bath robe wrapping itself around his legs. Yes, he ran in the bath robe in deference to me. It seems there isn't much to a ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... me that I had the worst watch of all—from one to three; it broke my night right in two. Of course a Scout takes what duty comes, and says nothing. But jiminy, I was sleepy when Carson woke me and I had to stagger out into the dark and the cold. He cuddled down in a hurry into my warm nest and there I was, on guard over the sleeping camp, here in the timber far away from lights or houses ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... progress of a particularly fearful tempest. The lightning blazed in the black sky and seemed to strike all about them like stabbing swords of fire, the thunder crashed and bellowed as it may be supposed that it will do on that day when the great earth, worn out at last, shall reel and stagger to its doom. The rain fell in a straight and solid sheet; the tall reeds waved confusedly like millions of dim arms and while they waved, uttered a vast and groaning noise; the scared wildfowl in their terror, with screams and the sough of wings, rushed past them in flocks a thousand strong, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... imaginations, and we have drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, without our knowing where we are going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was very potent, for Dick, thanks to the warning glances of the professor, had drank but little, yet he could scarcely keep awake; whilst Junes and Grosman were snoring like pigs, and could scarcely be awakened sufficiently to enable them to stagger to their tent. Dick barely managed to get to his own before sleep overcame him too, and his last hazy thought was: "That wine was drugged, the professor ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... tough fiber and the extreme shock that would leave some men stunned and prostrate only made him stagger a little. His revolver was spitting an intermittent stream of fire and it continued this after a second slug through his lungs had forced him to his knees. He sank down fighting and got his third fatal ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... extraordinary a change in your sentiments. Have I not explained everything to you with respect to myself which could bear a doubtful meaning, and which the ill-nature of the world had interpreted to my discredit? What can you now have heard to stagger your esteem for me? Have I ever had a concealment from you? Reginald, you agitate me beyond expression, I cannot suppose that the old story of Mrs. Mainwaring's jealousy can be revived again, or at least be LISTENED to again. Come to me ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... station when I came home from Wardway," replied Maria, faintly. Her strength was almost gone. She could hardly stagger up the steps of the house with her father, he bearing his recovered child, she bearing ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... during the years when he is old enough to be cautious about accepting new ideas and young enough to be enthusiastic concerning them after careful consideration, when he is so mature as not to desire to stagger the orthodox by the impudence of his opinions, and sufficiently youthful to be willing to shock the conservative by the audacity of his views. He may then seem jaded because he is not easily moved, but will be quicker to give encouragement to sincere effort, to perceive talent imperfectly manifested, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... alive by that man of the moment Mandeville, until half-way down the shed and the long box-car train they brought up on a pile of ordnance stores and clung like drift in a flood. And at every twist and stagger Anna said in her heart a speech she had been saying over and over ever since the start from Callender House; a poor commonplace speech that must be spoken though she perished for shame of it; that must be darted out just at the right last instant if such an instant Heaven would only ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... no doubt, is the thing To stagger Big Bounce, in a fashion Socratic. I fancy I know now to plant a sharp sting, The success of my bayonet-play is emphatic. Remember a picture I once chanced to see, A Pompeian sentinel posed at a portal, And "faithful to death" though fire ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... backwash. Then we began to get the stores and gear out, working like men possessed, for the boats could not be pulled up till they had been emptied. The blubber-stove was quickly alight and the cook began to prepare a hot drink. We were labouring at the boats when I noticed Rickenson turn white and stagger in the surf. I pulled him out of reach of the water and sent him up to the stove, which had been placed in the shelter of some rocks. McIlroy went to him and found that his heart had been temporarily unequal to the strain placed upon ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... he gleefully exclaimed, as he saw his man stagger and fall almost at the feet of Dr. Marlowe. "I don't know the gentleman's name, but a first-class obituary notice is in order. That makes six, and now for the seventh. I really hope the doctor is keeping score ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... Clare happened to do something not altogether to the farmer's mind. It was a matter of no consequence—only cleaning that side of one of the cow-houses first which was usually cleaned last. He gave him a box on the ear that made him stagger, and ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... and Albert staggered, too, from excitement and nervousness, but he remembered to take aim and fire again and again with his heavy repeater. In his heat and haste he did not hear a shout behind him, but he did see the great bull stagger, then reel and fall on his side, after ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... gloomy old house, so much so that Lord Strepp turned back among them and appeared to be urging them to make haste. However, their slow progress may be explained by the fact that a certain number of them were carrying a huge piece of timber, so heavy that they had to stagger along cautiously. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... ground, which would enable him to throw him with greater ease. But Ben was wary, and experienced in this mode of warfare, having often had scuffles in fun with his school-fellows. He evaded Tim's grasp, therefore, and dealt him a blow in the breast, which made Tim stagger back. He began to realize that Ben, though a smaller boy, was a formidable opponent, and regretted that he had undertaken a contest with him. He was constrained to appeal ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger into the wrong house. Some fall early in the day, and are put to bed by their ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... who had discreetly gone on, turned to go back to him. But as he came up with a word of wonder and repeated congratulations, he saw Stafford put his hand to his forehead, and, as it seemed to Howard, almost stagger. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... onusual fact to see prospectors in these parts. What made me think twice about this one was how big he seemed, how he filled up that door. He looked round the saloon, an' when he spotted Rojas he sorta jerked up. Then he pulled his slouch hat lopsided an' began to stagger down, down the steps. First off I made shore he was drunk. But I remembered he didn't seem drunk before. It was some queer. So I ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Some are age-bent and blind, and others sprawl, And stagger in the Long-Knife's villages; And some are dead, and some have fled away, And some are lurking in the forest here, Sneaking, like dogs, ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... France, and on the lakes of Switzerland and Italy. We embarked in one, after passing two delectable nights at the Hotel d'Angleterre. The boat was a frail-looking thing, and so loaded with passengers, that it appeared actually to stagger under its freight. The Seine has a wide mouth, and a long ground-swell was setting in from the Channel. Our Parisian cockneys, of whom there were several on board, stood aghast. "Nous voici en pleine mer!" one muttered to the other, and the annals of that eventful voyage are still related, I make ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which the captain displayed his infirmity was rather a laughable one. He came up from the cabin about three o'clock in the afternoon so full that he was forced to stagger as he walked. Directly in front of him the young dude, Montgomery Clinton, was pacing the deck, carrying in his hand a rattan cane such as he used on shore. As he overhauled him, Captain Hill, with the instinct of a drunken man, locked arms with ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... character nor true desire in you, then you will indeed want to be free. You will begin early, and, as a boy, desire to be a man; and, as a man, think yourself as good as every other. You will choose freely to eat, freely to drink, freely to stagger and fall, freely, at last, to curse yourself and die. Death is the only real freedom possible to us; and that is consummate freedom, permission for every particle in the rotting body to leave its neighbor particle, and shift for itself. You call it "corruption" in the flesh; ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... heard the offense, bellowed with laughter, and condemned the ex-peddler to a fine of half a crown in grog. This softened brutus, and a harmonious debauch succeeded. Like the old Egyptians they debated first sober and then drunk, and to stagger my general notion that the ancients were unwise, candor compels me to own, it was while stammering, maudling, stinking and in every sense drunk that mephistopheles driveled out a scheme so cunning and so new ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Thorpe's mind was searching for additional means of defense. He found it in the cargo he had seen. The drums of carbide! He could scatter it on the deck—it reacted with water, and those slimy arms, if they came and touched it, could find the contact hot. He took his lantern and went hastily below to stagger back with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... features by which the Rockland-born children remembered the farm-house, when they had grown to be men. Such are the recollections that come over poor sailor-boys crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as their vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner flush of the red wave out of which Memory arises, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... alluded to the perverting tendencies of alcoholic stimulants. Their peculiar influence upon the cerebellum causes the subject to reel and stagger, as though a portion of that organ were removed; the group of energetic faculties is stupefied, and mental as well as corporeal lethargy is the result. The reaction, which inevitably follows, is almost unbearable, and relief is sought by repeating and increasing ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... reading, since it took so famous a man as Mr. Carewe such length of time to peruse a little note. But perhaps the great gentleman was ill, for it appeared to the boy that he lurched several times, once so far that he would have gone over if he had not saved himself by a lucky stagger. And once, except for the fact that the face that had turned away had worn an expression of such genial humor, the boy would have believed that from it issued a sound like the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... neared the middle stream, So strong the torrent swept, That scarce that long and living wall, Their dangerous footing kept. Then rose a warning cry behind, A joyous shout before: "The current's strong—the way is long— They'll never reach the shore! See, see! They stagger in the midst, They waver in their line! Fire on the madmen! break their ranks, And ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their wit's end, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... electric power, though diffused and turned by Yva's insulated body, struck the great gyroscope's travelling foot with sufficient strength, not to shift it indeed on to the right-hand path as Oro had designed, but still to cause it to stagger and even perhaps to halt for the fraction of a second. Even this pause may have been enough to cause convulsions of the earth above; indeed, I gathered from Marama and other Orofenans that such convulsions had occurred on and around ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... a step as if to pick it up, then appeared to alter his mind, hesitated perhaps a dozen seconds, and turning abruptly on his heel walked down the street without a stagger. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... little while the button next below became visible, and now he was sure that the tide was ebbing, and that he was safe if only he could hold out long enough. At last the rock itself became visible, and after many hours he was able, almost spent with fatigue, to stagger to the land. Now, what saved that man? was it his gun? Surely not; it was the rock: that was his standing-ground. But was his gun, therefore, useless? Assuredly not, for it helped to steady him on the rock, though it could not take the place of the rock. ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... upon the southern bank. Everywhere there were signs of the passage of the enemy. A litter of crippled or dying horses marked their track, and a Krupp gun was found abandoned by the drift. The Dewetsdorp prisoners, too, had been set loose, and began to stumble and stagger back to their countrymen, their boots worn off, and their putties wrapped round their bleeding feet. It is painful to add that they had been treated with a personal violence and a brutality in marked contrast ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been a prodigious accession to the Lake marine during the past season—no less than sixty vessels, whose aggregate tonnage is over 13,000 tons, and at an outlay of 825,000 dollars. Had we not the evidence before us, the assertion would stagger belief. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... very painful pilgrimage, but he set his teeth and leaned hard on his stick, and hobbled along dauntlessly, though every now and then his injured foot would give a twinge which made him snarl to himself and stagger. ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... time, had regained his senses, and was sitting up in the middle of the trail rubbing his shoulder and wearing a most woebegone and dazed look upon his expressive countenance. Observing this, Chip walked toward him, and imitating a drunken stagger, sang: ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... ever mortally wounded a head of large game? You hear your bullet thud upon the living flesh, and see the creature throw up its head and stagger for a moment, and then plunge forward with desperate speed, crashing through bush and reeds as though they were meadow-grass. Follow him awhile, and you will find him standing quite still, breathing in great sighs, his back humped and his eye dim, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... cataract, and that across this bridge Hood and St. Helen's were wont to pass for interchange of visits; that, while this bridge existed, there was a free subterraneous passage under it for the river and the canoes of the tribes (indeed, this tradition is so universally credited as to stagger the skeptic by a mere calculation of chances); that, on a certain occasion, the mountainous pair, like others not mountainous, came to high words, and during their altercation broke the bridge down; falling into the river, this colossal Rialto became a dam, and ever since that day the upper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... assassinate the king. Sir Thomas Gascoigne, a very aged gentleman in the north, being accused by two servants, whom he had dismissed for dishonesty, received a like verdict. These trials were great blows to the plot, which now began to stagger, in the judgment of most men, except those who were entirely devoted to the country party. But in order still to keep alive the zeal against Popery, the earl of Shaftesbury appeared in Westminster Hall, attended by the earl of Huntingdon, the lords Russel, Cavendish, Grey, Brandon, Sir Henry ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... can describe. The men "saw red," they were drunk with lust for honorable revenge, from which nothing but death could stop them. Wounds, mortal wounds, were unheeded so long as the man still had strength to stagger on; I have seen a sergeant with a great fragment of common shell through his lungs run forward for several hundred yards vomiting blood, but still encouraging his men, who, truth to tell, were as eager as he. It is impossible to describe or even conceive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... endless ages and limitless space! Once we grasp this idea of the unity and progressiveness of Life going on ad infinitum, what boundless vistas of possibility open before us. It would be enough to stagger the imagination were it not for our old friends, the Law and the Word. But these will always accompany us, and we may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. This Law of Unity is what in natural science is known as the Law of Continuity, and the Ancient Wisdom has embodied ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... shaken off the numbness caused by the blow that he had received, and he managed to stagger to where Dick was lying, and knelt beside him and begged the Malays to bring water. They had evidently received orders to do all they could to revive the two young officers, and one at once brought half a gourd ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... results of this legalized injustice, derived from a past experience, must be tame to those who stand face to face with the gigantic conspiracy in which it has concentrated its venom, and from which it must stagger to its doom. The familiar proverb which declares that the gods make mad those whom they would destroy has a significance not always considered. For when a man loses his intellectual equilibrium, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... told upon its character and appearance was shown in the remnants of whitewash on the high wall, scaling off in discolored patches; in the stagger of the tall fence opposite, drooping like a drunkard between two policemen of posts; and in the unkempt, bulging rear of the third wall,—the front house,—stuffed with rags and tied ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... plot thickened. What should he do with this poor drunkard? Could he endure to let him stagger to his home to that waiting sister in this condition? A shrill, sharp, merry whistle broke at this moment on his ear; that voice he knew too, and waited until its owner came up; then addressed ...
— Three People • Pansy
... I wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not account for the ten thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... arms around Jason's neck; and, lifting her from the ground, he stepped boldly into the raging and foamy current, and began to stagger away from the shore. As for the peacock, it alighted on the old dame's shoulder. Jason's two spears, one in each hand, kept him from stumbling and enabled him to feel his way among the hidden rocks; although every instant he expected ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... silently, Sweeps thro' the steadfast depths of the mind's heaven, Like the fixed splendor of the morning star— Nearer and nearer to the wasteless flame That in the centres of the universe Burns through the o'erlapping centuries of time. And shall it stagger midway on its path, And sink its radiance low as the dull dust, For the death-flutter of a fledgling hope? Or, with the headlong phrensy of a fiend, Front the keen arrows of Love's sunken sun, For that, with nearer vision it discerns What in the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... point barbed like a spear. This, he launches at them, just as I've heard say whalers do their harpoons. For, if he kept the shaft in his hands, he'd catch it from their lightning, and get strokes that would stagger him. Still, he doesn't let go altogether; as there's a cord attached to the spear, and with that he can haul in the fish, if he has struck it. But he must have a care to keep his cord out of the water; if it gets wetted he'll have a fit of the trembles upon him, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine a vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea, carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their foreheads with just the shadow of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... opinion. It is a typical statement of what was in the mind of ninety-nine out of every hundred republican nationalists at this time. The aspirations it contains were proclaimed a fortnight later to the world by President Krueger himself in the boast that his Republic would "stagger humanity." They appeared in the nonchalant remarks made a few days later by Mr. Gregorowski, the Chief Justice of the Transvaal, in bidding farewell to Canon Farmer,[150] who was preparing to leave his cure at Pretoria in view of ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... so proud—so young, only upon the verge of womanhood—has, you already know, left us. Would to God it had been for her grave, rather than her destroyer!—a fellow-student of that poor youth, who, if he dreamt of her dishonour, would stagger like a spectre from what will be his death-bed to avenge her. Poverty is one of the surest guides to dishonour; those who have not been tempted know nothing of it. It is one thing to see it, another to feel it. Do not think her altogether base, because ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... waters of the Wabash held as yet no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if the hope of his life was cut off. The pain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... hard!" shouted Cunningham in an ecstasy of delight, as he smote me a blow between the shoulders that made me stagger. "The catamaran!" he continued. "Of course. Oh, what a lot of fools we were not to have thought of that before! But," suddenly bethinking himself, "if we had, it would have been of no use, for you had her. She is available now, however, and in ten minutes we'll rip enough stuff ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... the howling of the blizzard died down a bit, Tom made West go down with him to the creek and get wood. It must have been a terrible hour. They'd come back so done up, so frozen, they could hardly stagger in with their jags of pine for the fire. I never heard the man complain—not once. He stood up to it the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... some uncertainty. I don't know whether you intended that for a joke or for a staggerer. You should provide your conversation with a series of printed instructions for the listener. Get a lot of cards, and have printed on one, "Please laugh"; on another, "Please stagger"; on another, "Kindly appear confused." Then when you mean to be jocose hand over the laughter card, and so on. ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... moments, although the time seemed hours to the watchers, the feet of Teach touched the shore, and although the terrific undertow of the wave that had dropped him there almost bore him back again, yet by a superhuman exertion he managed to stagger forward, and the next moment they saw him fall prostrate ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... sentences with two-second waits between each word. For that reason he brightened to see me—was delighted to find a through-journey companion who would take him on terms of greatness. In the railway carriage, divested of troublesome bags that imparted anxiety to his small face and a stagger to his walk, he swelled to his ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... The hollow is full of ruts and broken stones! She is too heavy—You stagger and reel like a craft that has lost her helm! Steady, sir—steady, or ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... the man inside stagger to his feet, drop his gun and throw both hands up to his face—he was starting to rub his eyes as though they had already commenced to feel the terrible effect of the pungent acid that would start the tears flowing in streams and render him temporarily ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... am yet alive, arise up and depart out of this sacred place; though Antipater and the Macedonians have not left so much as thy temple unpolluted." After he had thus spoken and desired to be held up, because already he began to tremble and stagger, as he was going forward, and passing by the altar, he fell down, and with a groan gave ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... good meal when we wakened. He was in a shaking fright, trembling and quavering, and I eased up. What was the use of anger and suspicion in the face of this horrible threat of death while you slept? We hove the two bodies overboard, and made a stagger at the pump; but we could not lessen the water in the hold, and at last I gave up, cleared away a boat, and stocked it with water and grub for two. Meanwhile I shaped a course for the Bermudas, and steered it after a fashion, hoping that I might beach the schooner and get, out of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... and as he climbed out of his machine, helped by orderlies and others who rushed up, he was seen to stagger. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... Decrees of the Eternal, that People cannot come to good. By a course too clear, by a necessity too evident, that People will come into the hands of the unworthy; and either turn on its bad career, or stagger downwards to ruin and abolition. Does the Hebrew People prophetically sing "Ou' clo'!" in all thoroughfares, these ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... a last, dry-throated, desperate crow.] Cock-a-doodle-doo [Both stagger, suddenly flooded with light.] It is done! [He adds, in a tone of satisfaction.] A proper Sun,—a giant! [He totters toward a mossy rise and ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... to see how hard he finds it to look a couple of thousand people in the face, on which head, by-the-bye, I notice the papers to take "Mr. Dickens's extraordinary composure" (their great phrase) rather ill, and on the whole to imply that it would be taken as a suitable compliment if I would stagger on to the platform and instantly drop, overpowered by the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... stood upon that schooner's driven deck Last night as reefed and shuddering she hove Into the twilight and all desperate drove From wave to angrier wave that sought her wreck? Who labored at her helm and watched the wind Stagger the sea with all his stunning might, Until in dimness dwindling from our sight She vanished in the wrack that rode behind? We know not, you and I, but our two souls That followed as storm-petrels o'er the waves Felt all the might of Him who sinks or saves, And all the pity of earth's unreached goals. ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... began to shew signs of peculiar interest in their guide. In spite of her unquestioning readiness to shoulder burdens, Prescott would run to relieve her. Liosha has assured me that Jaffery did the same—and indeed I cannot conceive Jaffery allowing a female companion to stagger along under a load which he could swing onto his huge back and carry like a walnut. To go further—she maintains that the two quarrelled dreadfully over the alleviation of her labours, so much so, that often before they had ended ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... only prominent writer that ever lived who persistently affirmed that life is an evil—existence a curse. Yet every man who has ever lived has at times thought so; but to proclaim the thought—or even entertain it long—would stagger sanity, befog the intellect and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... as long as we could; nor was it till Ludar received a gun shot in his arm, and I a slash that laid bare my cheek-bone, that we knew the game was up. The maiden had been carried off into the house; the old nurse lay in a swoon; three men, besides the captain, were disabled. As for us, we could but stagger to the gateway more dead than alive. Once outside, the gate was closed. The guard from within sent a few flying shots after us, one of which lightened me of my little finger, and another missed Ludar's knee. Then, seeing us gone and hearing ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... faculty of very extraordinary expansion in their muscles, without at the same time impairing the muscular action or power. The bulk of the animals which these serpents are capable of gorging would stagger belief, were the fact not so fully attested as to place it beyond doubt. The state of torpor in which they are sometimes found in the woods, after a stuffing meal of this kind, affords the negroes an opportunity of killing them. Lander informed ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... wind became stronger, and they presently had as much as the boat could stagger under, with only her mizzen and foresail set. The sea, however, was not as heavy as might have been expected. Tom kept the boat's head close to it, and she rode easily over the fast-rising billows. The hatch, which had hitherto been of no use, was shipped, and ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... was crossing the street in the direction of the Grand View Hotel. The group watched him with mild interest. In front of the two-story frame building that seemed to stagger, or at least to shrink, under the weight of its own importance, the stranger—a man—paused to glance at one of the placards heralding the misfortune and at the same time the far from parsimonious regard of the lady who had been despoiled of a fashionable bulldog. Having ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... with a sound and look of such intense misery as almost to stagger the Doctor himself, by reminding him of Leonard's violent temper, and the cause Henry had to remember his promptness of hand; but that Ethel's pupil, Aubrey's friend, the boy of ingenuous face, could under any provocation strike helpless old age, or, having struck, could abscond without calling ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stagger Mrs. Wrandall somewhat to reconcile my pedigree to the position I occupy in Sara's household—that of companion, so to say?" asked Hetty, a slight curl to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the afternoon when the latter met with an accident. Johnny, who had taken a spell at the rear, heard him cry out, saw him stagger, struggle to hold his footing, then sink into the snow. The dogs paused instantly, lay down, and began to strip the ice ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... of rage and pain answered the reports. They saw the gorilla stagger, then drop to all ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... him by the throat, and he went reeling sideways among his comrades. Then, as by a signal the tumult began, for with a crash of splintered glass the nearest lamp went out, and a rush was made upon us. Something struck me heavily on the head; I saw Johnston stagger under a heavy blow; but I held myself before the girl as we were hustled through the doorway, and when a pistol-barrel glinted one of the railroad men whirled aloft an axe. We were outside now, but the pistol blazed before the blade ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... to a close, when all become so intoxicated they can neither tell story nor sing song. Then some stagger to their tents, others dropping over where they sit, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... wave tossed up—and how she took off her shoes and stockings and dipped her feet in the cool water, and listened to the bees' drowsy hum from the old tree trunk close by, and watched the busy ant stagger home, under the weight of his well earned morsel—and how she made a bridge of stones over a little streamlet to pluck some crimson lobelias, growing on the other side, and some delicate, bell-shaped flowers, fit only for a fairy's bridal wreath,—and how she ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... fainted; du Bousquier, who saw her stagger, sprang forward and received her in his arms; some one opened the door and allowed him to pass out with his enormous burden. The fiery republican, instructed by Josette, found strength to carry the old maid ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... pipe was vulgar had been stiffly maintained in that sacred parlour. In the light of these facts did not Mrs. Maldon's gift indeed shine as a great and noble act of surrender? Was it not more than a gift, and entitled to stagger beholders? Was it not a sublime proof that the earth revolves and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... on the terrace. It was not a night on which you could stroll and talk; there was a wind against which you had to stagger, holding your hat on tightly, and shouting such remarks as might occur to you. Against that wind acquaintance could make no headway. Yet I see now that despite that wind, or, rather, because of it, I ought already to have known Pethel a little better ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... poor beast to cheer him, for he evidently was much exhausted, and approached but slowly, they soon had the satisfaction of seeing him pass through the surf, which, even at this time, was not heavy in the cove, and, with the water pouring from his shaggy coat, stagger towards them, bearing in his mouth his burden, which he laid down at Forster's feet, and then shook off the accumulation of moisture from his skin. Forster took up the object of the animal's solicitude—it was the body of an infant, apparently a ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... gave the young man a violent shock; feeling himself stagger, he leaned against a tree, like a man deprived for a moment of reason. Modest, who had left him, turned her head and came ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... fools who could not rest In the dull earth we left behind, But burned with passion for the West, And drank strange frenzy from its wind. The world where wise men live at ease Fades from our unregretful eyes, And blind across uncharted seas We stagger on our enterprise." ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... Gasper Farrington," answered Ralph, and this news caused the prisoner to turn pale and stagger back. He realized that he had come to the end of his plotting and must now suffer the consequences of his misdeeds. He was marched off to jail, and it may be as well to state, was, later on, sent to prison for a term ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... long in realizing that the cherished scheme for which he had studied and struggled was actually beginning to stagger to its feet; or in reaching the equally stirring conclusion that his part in the suddenly reopened game called instantly for shrewd blows and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... him, after making sometimes the pretence of a struggle to blind the lookers-on, if there be any curious enough to interest themselves. This man in khaki is often "the terror of the innocent, the laughing-stock of the guilty." The poor man or the foreign sailor, if he stagger ever so little, is sure to be "run in." The Argentine law-keeper (?) is provided with both sword and revolver, but receives small remuneration, and as his salary is often tardily paid him, he augments it in this way when he cannot see ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... a Valkyrie save in the hour of his death; therefore no living being had ever seen one.) As sounds of the approaching steps of panting people are heard she retires amongst the rocks; Siegmund and Sieglinda stagger in, the woman fainting. She has sinned and is overwhelmed with terror; he cannot comfort her; she faints, then sleeps—the Valkyrie having thrown a spell on her. Siegmund bends over her; slowly Bruennhilda advances and calls, "Siegmund! I come ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... picture of the fate that overtakes those who yield to sin? "They meet with darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night" (Job V, 14). And further on: "They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man" (Job XII, 25). I read these beautiful passages over and over again. They ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... the rear of the storm, and as the air-ship headed across that track of destruction, it gave a drunken stagger, casting down its inmates, from whose parching lips ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr. |
