"Perilously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out. The wood-pile that stood so high when the first snow came is getting lowered to very near the ground. The poor man's little hoard, that was to bridge him over till the season of good work, is perilously shrunken. Vitality, too, begins to run low. The body pines for the out-door life from which it has too long been shut off. Winter is a hard-fisted churl who does n't give just measure. He drives off the mellow and jolly Autumn before its mid-month ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... And when at length she must make an end of farewells she hugged him with all her might and was glad that the hard buttons hurt the delicate breast that he felt against him smotheringly sweet and perilously yielding. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... spellbound, as the agile form ascended, using every physical device and disregarding every danger. More than once Tom almost shuddered at the chances which his young companion took upon some perilously slender limb. Once, the impulse seized him to call a warning, but he refrained from a kind of inspired confidence in that young dare-devil who by now seemed a mere speck of brown moving in and out of the darkened green above him. Once he was on the point of shouting advice ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... several days,—and was glad to make a reconnaissance before the enemy arrived upon the field of battle. He had made—at least he had thought so—considerable progress with Alice during the three weeks since her return from Washington, and once or twice Alice had been perilously near the tender stage. This visit had disturbed the situation and threatened to ruin his chances; but he did not mean to give up ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... fascinated by Johnny's sneers at superstition, and sometimes on dark nights the inventor had to make his courage good by seeing the farmer past the doulie yates (ghost gates), which Muckle Haws had to go perilously near on his way home. Johnny was a small man, but it was the burly farmer who shook at sight of the gates standing out white in the night. White gates have an evil name still, and Muckle Haws was full of horrors as he drew near them, clinging to Johnny's arm. It was on such a night, ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... to it and the dim outline bulked bigger and plainer, and bigger and plainer, until he was close upon it, and the cracking whips and the shouts of the postboys rose above the din of hoofs and wheels. The carriage was swaying perilously, but Sir George saw that the ground was rising, and that up the hill he must win; and, taking his horse by the head, he lifted it on by sheer strength until his stirrup was abreast of the hind wheels. A moment, and he made out the bobbing figure of the leading postboy, and, drawing his pistol, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... grass beside the trestle, hanging perilously over the edge of the dizzy drop to the river bottom, Tressa watched the unceasing struggle with the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... like. Kind-hearted Mrs. Ozanne, with mind always divided between stern conviction and a wish to deride it, suffered a mental trepidation that grew daily more unbearable, for what had been serious enough when Rosanne was younger began to be something perilously sinister now that she was turning into a woman and her deeper passions and emotions began to be aroused. In fact, the thing had come home to Mrs. Ozanne with renewed significance lately, and she was still trembling with apprehension over several ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... of the sleigh, but nothing else, and lurching perilously in the saddle he got the rifle in his hand; but, cold and stiffened as he was, he dared not loose his grasp on the bridle, and so, with the butt at his hip, he raced up level with the sleigh. Then, the horse, perhaps edged off the beaten trail into the snow outside it, blundered in its stride, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... natural pride and a strong sense of personal dignity, which made him always impressive, but apparently cold, and sometimes solemn in public. In his later years this solemnity degenerated occasionally into pomposity, to which it is always perilously near. At no time in his life was he quick or excitable. He was indolent and dreamy, working always under pressure, and then at a high rate of speed. This indolence increased as he grew older; he would then postpone longer and labor more intensely to make up the lost time than ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... and turned away, and June dived across the road, perilously near to a motor-omnibus, clutching her ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... perilously low, McKinlay was anxious to get to the mouth of the Albert, it having been understood that Captain Norman, with the steam-ship Victoria was there to form a depot for the use of the Queensland search parties. His attempts to reach it however, were ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... recrimination, and that I am writing history because an accurate knowledge of what has occurred is not only indispensable to any sort of reasonable behaviour on our part in the face of Europe when the inevitable day of settlement comes, but because it has a practical bearing on the most perilously urgent and immediate business before us: the business of the appeal to the nation for recruits and for enormous sums of money. It has to decide the question whether that appeal shall be addressed frankly to our love of freedom, and our tradition (none the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... it was the song of the siren that was calling Mr. Opp, who, instead of lashing himself to the mast and steering for the open sea, was letting his little craft drift perilously near the ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... felt that he ought to note his impressions on his first ascent, but all that he actually did notice was that it was hard to tell at what instant they left the ground; that when they were up, the wind threatened to crush his ribs and burst his nostrils; that there must be something perilously wrong, because the machine climbed so swiftly; and, when they were down, that it had been worth waiting a ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... looked very thoughtful for a moment. They were getting perilously near the old theme now, and Gray was getting grim ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... now evident that its spies were here even before the war began, and it is, unhappily, not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction, of official agents of the Imperial German Government accredited to the ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... fearful enemy, Which in the human heart opposes me, By its coward fear alone made fearful to me. Not that, which full of life, instinct with power, Makes known its present being; that is not The true, the perilously formidable. O no! it is the common, the quite common, The thing of an eternal yesterday. What ever was, and evermore returns, Sterling tomorrow, for today 'twas sterling! For of the wholly common is man made, And custom is his nurse! Woe then to them Who lay irreverent hands upon his old House ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... undreamt of by other ladies, became conspicuous. Her costume had evidently been designed for a lady not divinely tall, but considerably less of flesh than the wearer. Maria did not actually overflow, though perilously near that point. Surely buttons were never designed to resist such strain. Coloured ladies generally sit meekly among the audience and chatter and maintain the drum-beats, lacking which no corroboree could be successful. During the intervals they may emboss ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... watched it in suspense. But until the meeting of the two giant highways was effected, everything depended upon an equable balance of forces, of which a touch might destroy the equilibrium. German possessions and German forces lay perilously near the meeting of the two lines. At any moment a spark from some other part of the world might be wafted to Africa and set the fierce flame of war ablaze in ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... I cannot. I beg of you not to ask. Leave me! or let me leave you. I refuse to answer further." The latter half of this sentence was uttered doggedly and sounded sullen and ill-humored, although, of course, it was not so intended. He had been so perilously near speaking words which would probably have lighted, to their destruction—to his, certainly—the smoldering flames within their breast that it frightened him, and the manner in which he spoke was but a tone giving utterance to ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... men swimming. As for themselves they seemed to be clear and unhurt, except for the loss of their bowsprit; indeed, the little vessel was riding over the seas on the bar like any swan. Hans glanced at the slow-match which was smouldering away perilously near to the deck, whereon ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... George, I intend to go down fighting," and with the recollection came a like resolve on her part—to go down fighting, and so she struck out against the powerful waters that swirled her hither and thither, now perilously close to the rocky sides of the entrance, and now into the mad chaos of the channel's center. Would to heaven that Theriere were near her, she thought, for if any could save ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... theory. The work of Monsignor Perrelli is, above all things, a human document—the revelation of a personality cultured and free from prejudice. Indeed, when one considers the religious situation of those days, he seems to be sailing perilously near the wind in some of his theological reflections; so much so, that Mr. Eames often wondered whether this might not account for our ignorance of his later life and the manner of his death. He held it possible that the scholar may have fallen into the clutches of the Inquisition, never ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... another, it was that of maintaining peace, and non-intervention in the affairs of other nations. This, indeed, was emblazoned upon the banner unfurled by Lord Grey, on advancing to the head of affairs. Can it, however, be necessary to show how systematically—how perilously—this principle was set at nought by the late Government? As represented by Lord Palmerston, Great Britain had got to be regarded as the most pestilent, intrusive, mischief-making of neighbours. A little longer, and our name would have actually stunk in the nostrils of Europe. Some began to hate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... only kept down by the natural law that prevents any animals increasing beyond the capacity of the country they inhabit to support them. Needless to say, however, we did not shoot many of them, first because we could not afford to waste ammunition, of which our stock was getting perilously low, a donkey loaded with it having been swept away in fording a flooded river; and secondly, because we could not carry away the ivory, and did not wish to kill for the mere sake of slaughter. So we let the great beasts be, only ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... down his head, he charged, and butting the corporal in the pit of the stomach, sent him flying down the staircase and through a window beyond. Fortunately the corporal was unhurt, but Gordon was perilously near dismissal, and having his military career cut short. The act of insubordination was, however, overlooked by the authorities, but that it did not subdue his spirit is evident from the fact that on another occasion, when told ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... then Rick looked up. They were getting near the boat, he thought. Perilously near. The boat was anchored just inside the reef, and he could see activity on its deck. Apparently the frogmen had returned from their first ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... bent forward, with head perilously near her own, and whispered: "There she is, between that harlequin and the Norman peasant maiden! You can see the pins gleaming in her hair. She is laughing ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... some confusion—blushed stammered, protested—all would have been well; but he waited calmly. Captain Evan had only two manners—his polished, first-class maimer and his ship manner, the manner with which he worked the Francis Cadman—and it was a mere step from one to the other. For a moment he was perilously near assuming his natural and most successful manner, blasting Done to the depths for a high-stomached, adjectival swab, and commanding him out of hand to accept the proposed honours and emoluments with proper respect and gratitude, and be ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... half-way along one of those hideous shelves. Weigall let himself down upon a lower rock, braced his shoulder against the mass beside him, then, leaning out over the water, thrust the branch into the hand. The fingers clutched it convulsively. Weigall tugged powerfully, his own feet dragged perilously near the edge. For a moment he produced no impression, then an arm ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... not turn round and I dared not stop. Words and phrases began repeating themselves in my head as they will under a strain: so I know at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller makes a kind of litany of his instructions. The central part was passed, the three-quarters; the tension of that enduring effort had grown intolerable, and I doubted my ability to complete the task. Why? What could prevent ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... England still Remembering Rome and bloody Mary's reign. France o'er a wall of bleeding Huguenots Watched for an hour to strike. Against all these What shield could England raise, this little isle,— Out-matched, outnumbered, perilously ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... At last Light penetrates that cobwebbed cranium, And I can laugh in public! All these months, I several times have come perilously near Bursting with mirth at the ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... away without further event on board the schooner, yet in all the anxiety that might be supposed incident to men so perilously situated. Habits of long-since acquired superstition, too powerful to be easily shaken off, moreover contributed to the dejection of the mariners, among whom there were not wanting those who believed the silent steersman was in reality ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... and not free from a wistful, backward look, nor from regard to his own reputation; but the soul of it is an earnest desire to know the 'wherefore' of this disaster. It traces the defeat to God, and means really, 'Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me.' No doubt it runs perilously near to repeating the old complaints at Kadesh and elsewhere, which are almost verbally reproduced in its first words. But the same things said by different people are not the same; and Joshua's question is the voice ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... clean swept as the smallest village on the road. Everything had been carried off or destroyed. Moscow lies far to the north and the days began to grow perilously short. Napoleon sought to make terms with the Russians, but met with nothing but delays. The Russians were waiting for the approach of their great ally, ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... variety. His upper lip and chin were clean-shaven, still showing the blue-black roots of the beard which covered the rest of his face and depended in a thick fleece under his throat. He carried a small bundle tied up in a silk handkerchief in one hand, and a "shot-gun" in the other, perilously at half-cock. Entering the sanctum, he put down his bundle and quietly closed the door behind him. He then drew an empty chair towards him and dropped heavily into it with his gun on his knees. The editor's heart dropped ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lifted one of her mother's full white petticoats and turned to wring it dry with her red and blistered hands, a look that was perilously near disgust was on her face—for though she had done her duty heroically and meant to do it until the end, there were brief moments when it sickened her to desperation. She was the kind of woman whose hands perform the more thoroughly because the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous in an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of angels, had grasped a truth which on one side touched the divine, even though on the other it came perilously near to the grotesque. And He, Who taught them as by parables, never misunderstood—as did certain of His followers—their reverent irreverence; but, understanding it, saw that ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... sounded so perilously sweet to her, said thus in Ralph's low voice, that once again her eyes met his in that full, steady gaze which tells heart secrets and brings either life-long joys or unending regrets. Nor—as ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... itself. Then its mere cleverness attracts its user, and gives him an easily purchased pleasure. When a poet falls a complete victim to this pleasure, imagination hides her face from him, passion runs away, and what he produces resembles, but is not, poetry. And Browning, who had got perilously near to the absence of poetry in Bishop Blougram's Apology, succeeded in Mr. Sludge, the Medium, in losing poetry altogether. In The Ring and the Book there are whole books, and long passages in its other books in which poetry almost ceases to exist ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... at the first stinging dart of the picador. Domineering and ever dominant, he had been accustomed throughout his life to impose his will upon others. Shrewd and capable in his chosen business, successful in the limited area of his activities, he had come perilously close to believing himself omnipotent, not only in all that pertained to his own destiny, but in the destinies of those about him. Never until the last few weeks had either men or events dared to march contrary to his wish, whereas now ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... two amiable young men who had been tacking home-made lace handkerchiefs and embroidered "art centres" in the vacant spaces left on the pink cambric wall by the departure of last night's purchases. A comely matron kept guard simultaneously over the useful but not perilously alluring wares of the "household table" and the adjacent temptations of the flower-stand and the candy-booth. The last was indeed fair to see, having a magnificent pyramid of pop-corn balls and entrancing heaps of bright-colored home-made French candy; and round and round ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... months and a fortnight after the firing of the shot which did not echo round the world, but was merely a local defiant and emphatic promulgation of authority, a fire was set to the base of the tree, for our tents had been pitched perilously close. Space was wanted, and moreover its bony, imprecating arms, long since bereft of beckoning fingers, menaced our safety. I said it must fall to the north-east, for the ponderous inclination is in that direction, and ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... features, the long, liquid, iridescent eyes, the sweet, indolent morbidezza, that make southern beauty so perilously fascinating, are not uncommon here, and are often united to a clearness and brilliancy of complexion scarcely to be found nearer the tropics. The Upper Ten Thousand by no means monopolize these personal advantages. At the hour of "dress ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... by no means been free from anxiety. We are told that the fabric of the balloon repeatedly caught fire, which it took the aeronauts all their time to extinguish. At times, too, they came down perilously near to the Seine, or to the housetops of Paris, but after the most exciting half-hour of their lives they found themselves once ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... quandary, and I noted that each one had his eyes, as it were, fastened immovably upon the cannon and the glowing coal which the fellow held in the tongs. For, in order to keep it clear of ash, he kept waving it to and fro, and once or twice when he brought it perilously close to the touchhole, I give you my word I began to think in a moment of all the things I had done in my life. And I remember, too, that if one of us was speaking when the fellow made as if he would touch off the gun, there was an interruption ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... ordered to the Mediterranean under Lord Hood. The fleet arrived in those seas at a time when the south of France would willingly have formed itself into a separate republic, under the protection of England. But good principles had been at that time perilously abused by ignorant and profligate men; and, in its fear and hatred of democracy, the English Government abhorred whatever was republican. Lord Hood could not take advantage of the fair occasion which presented itself; and which, if it had been seized with vigour, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... sailing. I long have wished to voyage into mid sea, To give my senses rest from wondering On this perplexed grammar of the land Written in men and women, the strange trees, Herbs, and those things so like to souls, the beasts. My wilful senses will keep perilously Employed with these my brain, and weary it Still to be asking. But on the high seas Such throng'd reality is left behind,— Only vast air and water, and the hue That always seems like special news of God. Surely 'tis half way to eternity To ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... improvements at home goes perilously far toward turning the activity of an ambassador or minister from its proper channels. Scores of people write regarding schools for their children, instructors in music, cheap boarding-houses, and I have had an excellent fellow-citizen ask me to send him a peck of turnips. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... but ungainly, crooked of body, and doubtless short of vision, missed her way among the columns and passed perilously near to the Knight. With his long arm, he could have clasped her. How old Antony would have chuckled, could she but have known! "Sister Mary Rebecca embraced by the Knight of the Bloody Vest? Nay then; the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... thinking. His mind was so engrossed with the probability of his deliverance from the trials and anxieties of trying vainly to please Antoinette that when he went, by appointment, to take her to Electric Park to see the vaudeville show he came perilously near telling her all about it. And that to the swain who hopes to capture a hesitating maiden would, as every masculine knows, have been fatal. As it was, Alexander's countenance was so benign and cheerful that the little ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... passed since the vote in the House and we were perilously near the end of the session, when on the 16th of September, Senator Overman, Democrat, Chairman of the Rules Committee, stated to our Legislative Chairman that suffrage was "not on the program for this session" and that the Senate would recess in a few ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... distance or else her nearsighted baby eyes failed to take account of the four-foot drop to the gravel drive below. Too late, she tried to check her awkward rush. And, for a moment, her fat little body swayed perilously on ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... turned, paid no attention to the warning—probably did not even hear him. The coping, poised on the wall's edge, swayed perilously. If it fell, there would be one less of the indigent and helpless for the relief committees to support. With a half ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... atmosphere there far longer than was necessary after her recovery, and roused Harold's jealousy to a violent pitch by her demeanour towards a fellow of her own rank, whom she probably would have married but for Harold's unfortunate advantages, and whom she now most perilously preferred. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had two banks, four hotels, a chemist, saddler, besides other branches of industry, we felt that we were being drawn perilously within the influences of ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... horrid improper-looking gods and goddesses in clouds and chariots on the ceilings at Belforest," observed that lady, in a half-puzzled, half-offended tone of voice, that most perilously tickled the fancy of Mother Carey and her brood! and she could hardly command her voice to make answer, "Never fear, Ellen; we are not going to attempt allegorical monstrosities, only to make a bower of green leaves and flowers such as we see round us; though after what we have ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while we, with our forest appetites, would have been glaring hungrily at each other, or perhaps drawing lots for a cannibal doom. Once again, as we were shooting a long rapid, a table-top rock caught us in mid-current. We were wrecked. It was critical. The waves swayed us perilously this way and that. Birch would be full of water, or overturned, in a moment. Small chance for a swimmer in such maelstroems! All this we saw, but had no time to shudder at. Aided by the urgent stream, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... youngest daughter) went to Dublin and saw the house and came back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old—manifestly there is no lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were shipmates in a wild excursion perilously near 40 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the so-called Augustinians, that pure nature needs actual grace to save itself, and consequently has a claim to such grace at least ex decentia Creatoris and ex lege iustissimae providentiae, perilously resembles Baius' condemned proposition that the state of pure ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... she came perilously near the histrionic standard of the tragic stage. Josie rose, looked at her in surprise, in which there seemed to be some defiance, and walked steadily out to the parlor. I was glad to be out of the affair, and went back to Jim. I stood regarding my broken and ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... boulder slowly turning his pages, with leafy shadows flickering over his uncovered head and touching it with alternate sun and shade. The book proved interesting, and Sylvia was rapidly skimming into the heart of the story, when an unguarded motion caused her swing to slope perilously to one side, and in saving herself she lost her book. This produced a predicament, for being helped into a hammock and getting out alone are two very different things. She eyed the distance from her ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... in which the material welfare of a family had been so perilously near destruction was to the two notaries nothing more than a matter ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... marveling again at this race. Earth science had nothing to match their enormous command of the physical universe; adapting a hypnopaedic language-course to an alien being so quickly had been wonder enough, but adapting the perilously delicate mechanisms that necessarily made up any lie-detector machinery was almost a miracle. The Tr'en, under other circumstances, would have been a valuable addition to the Comity ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... too, was her family. For, at the sight of Laura running down-stairs with Prothero after her, Mr. Gunning broke loose from Addy's arm and followed her, perilously followed her. Addy was only just in time to draw him back from the hall door as Prothero ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the matter of the rooms a thought." Whitney moved restlessly; he hated to see a woman cry, and his wife looked perilously upon the point of tears. In spite of his assertion that he did not miss the loss of sleep, his nerves were not under full control. Ordinarily not a drinking man, he had stopped on his way from his bedroom to help himself to the small amount of ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... the top of the bench the Duke indicated, where the view broadened in every direction, that being the last barrier between the river and the distant hills. The ranchhouse appeared big even in that setting of immensities, and perilously near the edge of the crumbling bluff which presented a face almost sheer on the river more than three hundred ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... again. And Welch staggered weakly to his knees, the ice beneath him tilting perilously. Jerry's hands stretched ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... doing practical housekeeping for a family of eight, she naturally resents the suggestion that there is anything in domestic science for her to learn. Moreover, when said person is anemic and nervous from overwork, and has a tongue that has never known control, it is perilously easy to get into trouble, despite ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... he could see nothing but the occasional wet stem of an olive, which their lamp illumined as they passed it. They travelled quickly, for this driver did not care how fast he went to the station, and would dash down each incline and scuttle perilously round the curves. ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... In an effort to express scorn adequately Mr. Higbee came perilously near to snorting. "What do you suppose a girl like that cares for love? She was dead in love with the nice long yellow-backs that I've piled up because the public knows good ham when they taste it. As for being in love with Henry or with any man—say, young fellow, you've ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... the wondrous and splendid Churchill, who, having fought brilliantly for the Stuarts and been made by them first Lord Churchill of Eyemouth, and next Baron Churchill of Sandridge, having, after receiving these advancements, the cold astuteness to see the royal fortunes waver perilously, deserted James the Second with stately readiness and transferred his services to William of Orange. He was rewarded with an earldom and such favour as made him the most shining figure both at the Court of England and in the foreign ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I hit upon a scheme that I thought might be worth trying; and we proceeded forthwith to put it into practical shape without more ado, since the unfortunate people on the wreck were in a perilously exposed situation, and evidently in such a terribly exhausted state that they might relax their hold, and be washed ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... and more bitter. In 'Thais' he has undertaken to show the bond of sympathy that unites the pessimistic sceptic to the Christian ascetic, since both despise the world. In 'Lys Rouge', his greatest novel, he traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in 'Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard' he has given us the most radical breviary of scepticism that has appeared since Montaigne. 'Le Livre de mon Ami' is mostly autobiographical; 'Clio' (1900) contains ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Were you perilously near the crisis when you wrote me? Did the reflective tone come because you were brought at last squarely to the mark, because you must decide what one of the possible conceptions of life you really want? Don't ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... through a violently kicked swinging door, bearing aloft a tin tray heaped perilously. She slanted around a corner in graceful opposition to the centrifugal, brought the tray to port on a sort of landing stage by a pillar, and began energetically to distribute small "iron-ware" dishes, each containing a ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... where, as a returning Californian, and a presumably successful one, his services and experience were eagerly sought by an English party engaged in developing certain disused Mexican mines. As the post, however, was perilously near the route of regular emigration, as soon as he had gained a sufficient sum he embarked with some goods to Callao, where he presently established himself in business, resuming his REAL name—the unambitious but indistinctive one of "Smith." ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... gratitude made his companionship the sunshine of her life. Pauline saw this, and sometimes owned within herself that she had evoked spirits which she could not rule, but her purpose drove her on, and in it she found a charm more perilously potent than before. Gilbert watched the three with a smile darker than a frown, yet no reproach warned his wife of the danger which she did not see; no jealous demonstration roused Manuel to rebel against the oppression of a presence so distasteful to him; no rash act or ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... grace at all as should make him go leave off any of his mirth, and so sit and mourn for his sin." Such mind as this, lo, have some of those who are not unlearned, and have worldly wit at will, who tell great men such tales as perilously beguile them. For the flatterer who so telleth them would, if he told a true tale, jeopard ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... blessed little simpleton, what's the meaning of this? You'd no business to come. There's no room for you. I'm nearly well now. There's no need— I—I—oh, Pixie!" and poor, tired, hungry Pat lay back weakly in his sister's arms, and came perilously near subsiding into tears. It had been hard work keeping up his pecker all these long weeks, it was so overwhelmingly home-like to see Pixie's face, and listen ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... demands of our bodily needs, abundant means to supply our spiritual wants. To possess more material resources than we can or will use or bestow to the spiritual advantage of ourselves and others is to be perilously rich, whether we belong to a grinders' union in the cutlery works or to a royal family. Why is it so often right that a rich college, for example, should, in its money-chest, feel poor? Because it could so easily supply more spiritual wants if it ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... often looked like that, he would be a fascinating companion. To have the power so to influence him and excite his interest would be perilously attractive. A few hours before, Mollie had been almost prepared to declare that she distrusted and disliked this new acquaintance; now she was conscious of a distinct feeling of ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... long, weary, and bitter years of slavery among Algerine pirates, he held up his head, being a man; plotted escape in dreams and waking; fought for freedom as a pinioned eagle might; was at last rescued by the Society for the Redemption of Slaves; sailed home from slavery to penury; came perilously near the age of threescore, poverty-stricken and unknown, when, like a sun which leaps from sunrise to noon at a single bound, this maimed soldier sprang mid-sky, impossible to be ignored or forgotten, and disclosed himself, the marked Spaniard ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... while he battered at his face and Mormon writhed to get away from the reach of those long arms. The soft dust clouded about them and their grunts came out from it as they struggled. Once, with Mormon striving to open the leg grip, jerking away from the flailing blows, they rolled perilously near a clump of prickly pear on the verge of their little arena and a universal ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... the maddening perfume of her glorious hair, so perilously near his own face. The shimmer of her shoulders, the adorable curves of that enticing scarlet mouth murmuring so near his own, and yet so far away, in this soul-racking game of make-believe, stirred his blood as nothing else had done ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... tripped the other but in that viselike embrace one could not fall alone—Es-sat dragged Om-at with him, toppling upon the brink of the niche. Even Tarzan held his breath. There they surged to and fro perilously for a moment and then the inevitable happened—the two, locked in murderous embrace, rolled over the edge and ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and with withering scorn declared that she did not wish Reggie to wear a girl's coat. She would look at something else. Reggie pulled off the coat, as if it burned him, and felt he had been perilously near to something very compromising and indelicate. Thus did young Reggie receive a lesson in sex contempt at ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... imagination. The fancy of being pinned down by even the lightest of these constructions was excruciating. You moved about in narrow alleys among upstanding, unyielding metallic enormities, and you felt fragile and perilously soft. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Irene Lepelletier's amour propre to make herself conspicuous, to be held up to ridicule or blame. She does not care for marriage; her position is infinitely more delightful in its variety. She can make a world of her own without being accountable to any one, but she has come perilously near to loving Floyd Grandon, when she considered love no longer a temptation, had dismissed it as a puerile insanity ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... callow assistant in a draper's "emporium" at Putney. He learnt to ride a bicycle, set out to tour the south coast for his short summer holiday and rode into romance. One section of the book is a trifle too hilarious, coming perilously near to farce, but underlying the steady humour of it all is a perfectly consistent, even saddening, criticism of the Hoopdriver type. He has imagination without ability; life is made bearable for him chiefly by the means of his poor little dreams ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... I did not tell you to parboil your patient!" exclaimed Traverse, speaking to the old woman. Traverse was shocked to find how perilously his ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... in a curious, strained voice, "passion may be perilously misleading. Ask yourself if you are not injudicious in making this declaration—to ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... responsibilities; not quailing with any outcry, or abandonment of strength, when the shock of that revelation in the vestry came violently on her. Rhoda, seeing there that it was a brute, and not a man, into whose hand she had perilously forced her sister's, stood steadying her nerves to act promptly with advantage; less like a woman, Robert thought, than a creature born for battle. And she appeared to be still undaunted, full of her scheme, and could cry without fear of floods. Something of the chivalrous restraint ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not over, for by the next day our brother was as ill, or worse, than ever. The doctor who came from London allowed that he had expected something of the kind, but thought we must have let him exert himself perilously. Poor innocent Martyn and Anne, they little suspected that their bright eyes and happy voices had something to do with the struggle and disappointment, which probably was one cause of the collapse. As to poor Frank Fordyce, I never saw him so distressed; he felt as if it were ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know! I know!" cried Dot, perilously balancing a spoonful of mush and milk on the way to her mouth, in midair. "It was in 1492 at Thanksgiving time, and the Pilgrim Fathers found it first. So they called it Plymouth Rock—and you've got some of their hens in ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... abandon Mr. Greenwood's case. Will appears to me to be now perilously near acceptance as Greene's "Shake-scene," who was a formidable rival to Greene's three professional playwrights: and quite as near to Ben's Poet-Ape "that would be thought our chief," who began by re-making old plays; then won "some little wealth and credit on ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... the captain did acrobatic feats like a strange demon upon his chin. His eyes stood perilously from his head. The suspender wheezed and tugged like the tackle ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... quarry; and gentleman Jones intent on non-existent booty and rapt out of him self by cynical fury at the discovery of an unsuspected woman in the case. And while Mr. CONRAD in his novel drives all these to a relentless doom Mr. HASTINGS contrives a happy ending, which goes perilously near an anticlimax, with the hero on his knees and the heroine pointing up to heaven and claiming a "victory" quite other than their creator intended. But then he knew perfectly well that nobody wants to come to see Miss ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... diction, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in a preface that is as unconventional in manner as it is stimulating in most of its substance, maintains the tradition. As a matter of fact, what Coleridge has to say on poetic diction is prolix and perilously near commonplace. Instead of making to Wordsworth the wholly sufficient answer that much poetry of the highest kind employs a language that by no perversion can be called essentially the same as the language of prose, he allows himself to be led by his German metaphysic into considering ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... foul cutties loaded with that rank and odoriferous compound which, under the name and in the fame of tobacco, is widely retailed at tuppence the ounce. Their women-folk more commonly squatted on the thresholds, cheerfully squabbling; from opposing second-story windows, two leaned perilously forth, slanging one another across the square briskly in the purest billingsgate; and were impartially applauded from below by an audience whose appreciation seemed faintly tinged with envy. Squawking and yelling ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... not very long before they reached her side, and she was able to explain the situation. A few more excited coo-ees brought the boys back, and the question became: What to do next? The sun was getting perilously near the horizon, and once it dropped behind the sea, darkness would fall rapidly and the rocks be really unsafe, especially as the tide was ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... gone; and the hour of lunch was perilously near. The face of the archduke was dark with the dread that he would be late for it. There was a terrifying but sympathetic throbbing not far ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... such a denial may be mere prejudice, a reluctance to renounce a long cherished critical prepossession, but in the face of this new evidence does it not come perilously close to scientific dishonesty, to a disregard for that respect for truth in research the imperative duty of which has been so finely expressed by the late M. Gaston Paris.—"Je professe absolument et sans reserve cette doctrine, que la science n'a ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... not as playful as it seemed to her lover, for something in the glow of his eyes and something vibrant in the tones of his voice had disturbed her profoundly. The fear of something which he seemed perilously near saying filled her with unrest, bringing up questions which had thus far been kept in the background of ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... it seemed natural to care very little whether England went to war with Russia or not: the interest lay in the moral struggle that was going on within her own limits. Awkward as this moral struggle made her appear, perilously as it seemed to have exposed her to the sarcasm of some of her neighbors—of that compact, cohesive France, for instance, which even yet cannot easily imagine a great country sacrificing the substance of "glory" to the shadow of wisdom—this was the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the hour: the almost live food [25] was washed down with huge draughts of milk. The feasters resembled Wordsworth's cows, "forty feeding like one:" in the left hand they held the meat to their teeth, and cut off the slice in possession with long daggers perilously close, were their noses longer and their mouths less obtrusive. During the dinner I escaped from the place of flies, and retired to a favourite tree. Here the End of Time, seeing me still in pain, insisted upon trying a Somali medicine. He cut two pieces of dry wood, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... quickly and perilously into the cleft, and found the creature with its leg broken and bleeding. It was not a sheep but a young goat. He had no cloak to wrap it in, but he took off his turban and unrolled it, and bound it around the trembling animal. Then he climbed ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... confess that most of the spirits I have met seem to me merely parasitic or secondary personalities (to use Maxwell's term), drawn from the psychic or from myself. Nearly every one of the mediums I have studied has had at least one guide, whose voice and habit of thought were perilously similar to her own. This, in some cases, has been laughable, as when 'Rolling Thunder,' a Sioux chief (Indians are all chiefs in the spirit world), appears and says: 'Goot efening, friends; id iss a nice night alretty.' And ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... which had been all smiles, underwent a sudden change. She said with something perilously ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... ever conferred upon me. Jason, with his Argonauts, went to bear away the Golden Fleece; Columbus, and his heroes, to give a world to the sovereign of Spain; and I, with two little boys, pushed out of the Cove perilously to procure some sand in the dingy. Nothing elevates a biography like appropriate comparison. But I doubt whether either Jason or Columbus felt a more enthusiastic glow pervade their frames when each saw himself fairly under sail for unknown seas than I did when I seized the tiller of the dinghy, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... later portion of this march convinced Metellus that some decisive effort should be made, which would crown his earlier successes, give him some sort of command of the line of country through which he had so perilously passed, and might, by the importance of the attempt, force Jugurtha to a battle. The hilly country through which he had just conducted his legions, was that which lay between the great towns of Sicca and Zama.[1033] The possession of both these places was absolutely essential if ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... curtailed decoration, but the enthusiastic employes (mainly feminine) of one tall store strove to rectify the lack by arming themselves with flags and stationing themselves at every window. Balancing perilously, they waited until the Prince came level, and then set the whole face of the tall ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... leaves us perilously near to morbidness. The Worship of Sorrow might well be but a natural and not less morbid reaction from the former morbidness, the worship of self and happiness. From that, however, it is saved by the word "works," which is spoken with emphasis in this connection. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... in his charming 'Der Junggesett und der Muehlbach'. There was certainly no novelty in such an attempt. The poem is in parts charmingly written, but the oak is certainly "garrulously given," and comes perilously ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... soft—perilously soft—as she looked at him with uplifted eyebrows and a faint smile struggling at the corners of her lips. A wave of tenderness crept into his heart. What a brave ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that Wordsworth did a far ampler work by his doctrine of immanence, which is perilously near Pantheism. Understood, however, in the spirit of "liberal theology," it will not only finally govern, but also "bring about at last the complete reconcilement of science and religion." But we must remind Mr. Brooke that this is sheer prophecy. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... the foolish, and that common sense will prevail in the Cabinet when a treaty is the subject of converse. Still further, I will assume that, contrary to nearly all precedent, the collective sagacity of the Ministry has not been impaired, and its self-conceit perilously tickled, by the long exercise of absolute power in face of a Parliament of poltroons. And, lastly, I will abandon my old argument that the discussion of peace terms might shorten the war, without any risk of prolonging ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... may be said to be of the nature of retrospective prophecies; though it is perhaps a little hazardous to employ phraseology which perilously suggests a contradiction in terms—the word "prophecy" being so constantly, in ordinary use, restricted to "foretelling." Strictly, however, the term prophecy applies as much to outspeaking as to foretelling; and, even in the restricted sense of "divination," it is obvious that ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Woman at his elbow was a dismal hole, and Casey got out of it as soon as possible. As per instructions, he drove down to San Diego, ventured perilously close to the Mexico line, fooled around there for a day looking for trouble, failed to find so much as a ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... stretched the lines of the Persians, with their fleet behind them, extended along the beach. On the high ground in the rear were marshalled the Greeks, spread out so long that their line was perilously thin. The space of a ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... wind, standing to the eastward for about a mile, which took him far enough to windward to enable him to fetch the canoe on the next tack. He then hove about without a moment's delay, for the little craft was by this time perilously close to the surf, and it was questionable whether they would reach her in time to save her from being caught and dashed to pieces in it. So close, indeed, was she that Leslie began to seriously ask himself whether he was justified in taking the catamaran into ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... One of them, balanced perilously on the top of a couple of packing-cases, was hurling tins of fruit in all directions; and another performed incredible feats with an armful of bottles; while a third, standing over an immense crate, shied ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... as a child," he said, "a perilously wilful child, determined upon her own way, and possessed of her own fancies about this, that, and the other, which were seldom, if ever, the ideas of anyone else. There was always plenty of excitement where she was—always that same disturbing air! Even ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... then, "that poor Mr. Polymathers had a won'erful great opinion of himself over there." He nodded towards Nicholas's corner, and used this periphrasis with a sense that he had taken a precaution against perilously arousing the boy's vanity. "Times and agin last summer he was sayin' to me the lad 'ud do credit to us yet if he had his chances. A pity it 'ud be, he said, if he didn't iver git to school, or maybe College itself. And gave him his books ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... neglecting it. Judas set his teeth against two things, the solemn conviction that Jesus Christ knew his sin, and the saving assurance that Jesus Christ loved him still. And whosoever resists either of these two is getting perilously near to the point where, not in petulance but in pity, God will say, 'Very well, I have called and ye have refused. Now go, and do what you want to do, and see how you like it when it is done. What thou doest, do quickly.' Do you remember the other word, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... for an aquatic life. These paid the price of existence along lines too narrow and vanished from the earth. The grebe, however, has so far stuck to a life which bids fair to allow his race safety for many generations, but he is perilously near the limit. Every fall he migrates far southward, leaving his northern lakes, but if the water upon which he floats should suddenly dry up, he would be almost as helpless as the gasping fish; for his wings are too weak to ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... ground floor was the crowded little laundry with its red-lettered sign, its uncurtained windows, its shelves of red-tagged parcels, and its ever-present odor of borax. Below this was a basement, a cellar as narrow and dark as a cistern. A flight of perilously inclined steps led to the door of this basement. This door, in turn, was glass-fronted, but protected by a heavy woven-wire grating. On it was ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... disappointing trip to the opposite shore of the island Madge had not been well. The sunshine had faded. The cold autumn rains had begun. The food in the larder, supplied from the houseboat, had grown perilously low. It was hard work to spend many hours in hunting or in fishing in such weather. Nuts had commenced to pall as an article of daily diet. Fight as they might, the spirit of the houseboat party had begun to ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... about, Punch awaited his with gentlemanly patience, and even when purposely passed by in order to see what he would do, obtruded his claims by nothing more than a gentle movement of the head on his friend's knee; while Scamp, in like case, twisted himself into knots of anxiety and came perilously ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... feel faint and headachy and hungry, having reached that stage of faintness, headache and hunger when the body sheds its weight and seems to walk gloriously upon air, to be possessed of supernatural energy. He went up and down library steps that were ladders, and stood perilously on the tops of them. He walked round and round the walls, making calculations, till the library began to swing slowly round too, and a thin circle of grey mist swung with it. And all the time he was obscurely aware of a delicate grey-clad figure going to and fro ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... this point, Ensign Dave was perilously near to breaking his word as to believing Surigny. It looked to him as if the Frenchman were "fencing" in order to ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... perilously over the scantlings, laths and plaster, Addison made his way back to the rear end of the meetinghouse. The honeycombs were mostly on a beam against the boards of the outer wall. The punk smoke was so dense up there that he could hardly get his breath. The bees, nearly torpid from the smoke, were ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... of 1,500 years, must be reinstated in something resembling its old position; for Korea has always been the keystone of the Far Eastern arch, and it is the destruction of that arch more than anything else which has brought the collapse of China so perilously near. ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... laying by his bow, seated himself in corner well screened from harm, beckoning Beltane to do the like, since the enemy's missiles whizzed and whistled perilously near. But sighing, Beltane closed his vizor and heedless of flying bolt and arrow strode to the narrow stair that led up to the gate-tower and being come there sat him down beside the great mangonel. But lo! ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... past months seemed to culminate in this crowning injury; and if to wish ill to one's fellow is to be a murderer, Captain Oliphant had already come perilously near to adding one new sin ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... sorts of conditions where I had to hold myself to the matter in hand with every grain of will power that I could muster; but never since that night in the old Page hall have I experienced precisely the same unnerving feeling that possessed me then. I came perilously close to an ignominious retreat—and before ever I had an idea of what I was ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... had found gold, but had died of thirst, and those who found him came perilously near to sharing the same fate, so keenly anxious were they to make the dead yield up the knowledge of his find, by tracing his poor wandering footprints round and round and in and out among the hillocks of sand, the clumps of spinifex, and the ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... transitory gleam in the American's eyes, though his face was as impassive as usual. And the worst of it was that it suggested humor, not resentment. Even in the tumult of wounded pride that took her heart by storm, she realized that her fiery vehemence had gone perilously near to a literal translation of the saintly scoff at old Barbariccia. And, now if ever, she must be dignified. Anger yielded to disdain. In an instant she grew cold ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... business, and this is my opportunity. Seth, they tell me, is very good at figures. Somebody said that Seth could figure to live comfortably on nothing if he found he had to. Now most churches are perilously near the place where they have to live on nothing and so, if any one can steer our finances in an exact and careful manner, Seth can. And it is the only, absolutely the only way in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... trees and hiding-places the paddles and the pretty triangular sails are fetched and fastened on the canoes; then the boats are pushed off and the whole crowd jumps in. The babies sit in their mothers' laps or hang on their backs, perilously close to the water, into which they stare with big, dark eyes. By twos and threes the canoes push off, driven by vigorous paddling along the shore, against the current. Sometimes a young man wades after a canoe and joins some fair friends, sitting in front of them, as etiquette demands. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... of the well for the lowering beam, hitching the cord about it. Then the merman noosed one end about him, and Dalgard, the door taking some of the strain, lowered him. The end of the cord was perilously close to the scout's fingers when there was a signaling pull from below, and he was free to reel in the loose line. He turned to ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... known to every French-speaking child, and with many variants the old "ronde" is sung and danced from the remotest plains of Canada to the valleys of the Swiss Alps. The good folk of Avignon, however, protest that their "rondes" were not danced perilously on the narrow Pont St. Benezet, but under its arches on the green meadows of the Isle de la Barthelasse, and that "Sur" in lieu of "Sous" is due to northern misunderstanding of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the coppers; bake loaves in the furnaces? It makes you look at me perilously—and a perilous game you would find it, most likely to swallow this place and all the rest. Why, you, who had the making of a man of business in you, might reflect that you can't annihilate property without ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his mind, he could see the whole twenty-odd miles of his valley. Along the left bank, hanging perilously to the slope of the mountain, he saw the rails of a narrow-gauge railroad reaching from Coldriver Valley to the main line that passed the valley's mouth. He saw sturdy, snorting little engines drawing logs to sawmills of a magnitude not dreamed of by any other man in the locality, and he saw other ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... she had perilously dared to hope he would be at this crisis. He soothed her and healed her by his loyalty; promised, without her extorting it, that he would never tell a soul what she had just told him; pixie-shy, yet he spoke of his personal need of her—and more than anything else she had desired to hear ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... shouted Fort excitedly. He was glancing at his watch again, and changing the angle of his wings. "By heavens, we are just in time!" The craft dove perilously; he straightened its course. "Look closely, I tell you! It's something you've never seen before, and will ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... chivalry gazed in enchantment. The Countess's fan, depending from her arm, dangled against Denry's suit in a rather confusing fashion, which withdrew his attention from his feet. He laid hold of it gingerly between two unemployed fingers. After that he managed fairly well. Once they came perilously near the Earl and his partner; nothing else. And then the dance ended, exactly when Denry had begun to savour the astounding spectacle of ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett |
