"Tether" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that's always such a bad plan—for the man." He waited for her to speak; but she had gone the length of her tether ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... in the matter of caste rites and rumours of an actually maturing husband, had brought her very near the end of her tether. Again Thea was right. Her brave impulse of the heart had only been just in time. And hard upon that unbelievable good fortune followed the news that ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... huddled together beneath the wagon, shivering with fear, their tails between their legs, and their lips drawn back, revealing their fangs, in a sort of snarling grin. Leo was the only animal who did not seem very greatly perturbed, but even he was awake, and lay crouching at the extreme end of his tether, his eyes lambently aglow, and his tail softly beating the earth now ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Having completed every task within the house, she sat down under an olive tree which grew before the door, and fixed her whole intelligence in all its force upon the black-and-white cow, the only living thing in sight, which was browsing in the space allowed by a short tether. So great did the responsibility appear to her that she grew anxious, and by dint of earnest gazing at the cow came to believe that there was something wrong with it. In truth the poor beast had exhausted all the grass within ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... ascending the hill was so great to him that he was forced to pause and hold by the olive trees as he slowly performed his task. The perspiration came in profusion from his pores, and he found himself to be so weak that he must in future regard the brook as being beyond the tether of his daily exercise. Eighteen months ago he had been a strong walker, and the snow-bound paths of Swiss mountains had been a joy to him. He paused as he was slowly dragging himself on, and looked up at the wretched, desolate, comfortless ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... that he held himself together by an effort of will, and it was singularly painful to the onlooker. The strain had told on him, and there was in his haggard eyes, in the deliberate firmness of his mouth, a tension which suggested that he was almost at the end of his tether. He was sterner than before and more silent. Julia could see how deeply he had suffered, and his suffering had been greater because of his determination to conquer it at all costs. She longed to go to him and beg him not to be ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... set with bells Swings from a hook by clasp and tether, With rude embroidery that spells "Diana" worked upon the leather. A flute too, when the woodsman died, The men who dug his grave forgot here; The dog, his only friend, they shot here And laid her by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... community, but gifted with an amount of meddlesome pluck which often makes it necessary to circumscribe the freedom of his movements. One day last spring, when he joined an assembly of his fellow-boarders on a sunny porch, the shortness of his tether did not prevent him from picking a quarrel with a big raccoon. After a few sham manoauvres the old North American suddenly lost his temper and charged his tormentor with an energy of action that led to an unexpected ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... movement,—unexampled yet on Earth or in the waters under the Earth,—I am fairly brought to a stand; and have had to make reflections, of the most alarming, and indeed awful, and as it were religious nature! Professors of the Dismal Science, I perceive that the length of your tether is now pretty well run; and that I must request you to talk a little lower in future. By the side of the shop-till,—see, your small 'Law of God' is hung up, along with the multiplication-table itself. But beyond ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... distress, and saw that the big one, whose name is Mahmoud, was frightening Eblis, the small one. Eblis ran away, but Mahmoud having got the rope in his hands, pulled it with a jerk each time Eblis got to the length of his tether, and beat him with the slack of it. I went as near to them as I dared, hoping to rescue the little creature, and he tried to come to me, but was always jerked back, the face of Mahmoud showing evil triumph each time. At last Mahmoud snatched up a stout Malacca cane, and dragging Eblis near ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... them, by complicated manouvres, might even have made their way into the countess's crowded saloons on a miscellaneous night. She knew the length of their tether. They ranged, as the Price Current says, from eight to three thousand a year. Not the figure that ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... incredible to those responsible for the direction of the older services that the air would be their most valuable partner; as, during the war, they grudged its logical development to strike widely where they could not reach, and tried to tether it closely to them, so now in peace the air is struggling to attain the apotheosis ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... and had then slipped in at Bunning's back door, being absolutely determined to see him. Wallingford answered that she would get no good by waylaying him; he had found her out and was done with her; she was an impostor, an adventuress; she had come to the end of her tether. She then demanded some letters—her letters; there were excited words about this from each, and it was not easy to catch all that was said; at times they were both speaking together. But she got in a clear demand at last—was he or was he not going to hand those letters ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... changed into a live lamb attached to the top of the plant. Mr. Lee says: "The stem or stalk on which the lamb was suspended above the ground, was sufficiently flexible to allow the animal to bend downward, and browse on the herbage within its reach. When all the grass within the length of its tether had been consumed, the stem withered and the plant died. This plant lamb was reported to have bones, blood, and delicate flesh, and to be a favourite food of wolves, though no other ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... To tether a cow, tie her by one hind leg, making the rope fast above the fetlock joint, and protecting the limb with a piece of an old bootleg or similar thing. The knot must be one that will not slip; regular fetters of iron bound with leather ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... response. Thus she was wed. As she whom Zeus loved in a cloud, So lay she in her lover's shroud, And o'er her members crept the chill We know when mist creeps up a hill Out of the vale at eve. As grows The ivy, rooting as it goes, In such a quick close envelope She lay aswoon, nor guessed the scope Nor tether of his hot intent, Nor what to that inert she lent, Save when at last with half-turned head And glimmering eyes, encompassed She saw herself, a bride possest By ghostly bridegroom, held and prest To unfelt bosom, saw his mouth Against her own, which to his drouth Gave no allay ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... a civil war. And, besides, such a marriage, concluded in defiance of all outward ceremony, is a concession made to women and priests—two classes of persons to whom one should be most careful to give as little tether as possible. It is further to be remarked that every man in a country can marry the woman of his choice, except one poor individual, namely, the prince. His hand belongs to his country, and can be given in marriage only for reasons of State, that is, for the good of ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... there—against the witches. And she's to boil them in whatever milk the cow gives, and she's to pour them boiling hot into a hole in the ground; and when she's put the earth over them, and the sod over that, she's to tether the animal there, and milk it there, and the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... true; the poet's pet ewe got entangled in her tether, and tumbled into a ditch; the face of ludicrous and awkward sorrow with which this was related by Hughoc, the herd-boy, amused Burns so much, who was on his way to the plough, that he immediately composed the poem, and repeated it to his brother Gilbert ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... much can be said with confidence, that he has been the most fortunate of leaders. On every occasion in which he has been hard pressed, when to all intents and purposes he has found himself at the end of his tether, the pendulum of fortune has favoured him in its swing. Often enough he has saved his skin through the culpable stupidity of his pursuers. But even when he has almost been cornered by the very best of leaders and men that the British Empire can produce, the law ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... language, than to walk the boards shod with a pair of old shoes, or to get one's backbone gently polished by a hearty dressing with a stick. In one word, you have been a prodigal with money, you have ordered and been obeyed—have been steeped to the lips in enjoyment; while I have dragged my tether after me, have been commanded and have obeyed, and have drudged my life away. Well, although I may seem of such trifling importance beside you, monseigneur, I do declare to you, that the recollection of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Paris long in his lofty house, but clothed on him his brave armour, bedight with bronze, and hasted through the city, trusting to his nimble feet. Even as when a stalled horse, full-fed at the manger, breaketh his tether and speedeth at the gallop across the plain, being wont to bathe him in the fair-flowing stream, exultingly; and holdeth his head on high, and his mane floateth about his shoulders, and he trusteth in his glory, and nimbly his limbs bear him to the haunts ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... of their saddles, and each man leading his own steed by the long tether-rope which had been carefully coiled round its neck, took it to a neighbouring pool to drink, and then proceeded in search of the best pasture. Our animals having been attended to, our next thought was of ourselves; and every one took his bundle of blankets and cloaks ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... disturbed at all during the night that followed. Moses, being well looked after, found no opportunity to slip his tether, and surprise them with a nocturnal visit. Doubtless it was not from lack of trying that he failed to make a second attack upon the oat-sack in the wagon, for fond memories of that other occasion must still linger with him, ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... lay at the root of his difficulty. One was that he had no capacity for large and intricate plans, and the other was that he felt bound as by an invisible tether to the land where ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... Protestant accounts are compared, one sees that the advantages won against Campion were slight. They evidently hoped that by vigorous and repeated attacks they would at last puzzle or bear him down. But they were never near this. He was always fresh and gay, never in difficulties, or at the end of his tether. He stands out quite the noblest, the most sympathetic and important figure in those motley assemblies. The Catholics were delighted. They succeeded in getting their own report of the disputations, which is ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward; but there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the colour of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish grey behind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... compulsion and we use it. One of the most frequently exercised of my magisterial functions is to certify conscientious objections to the Vaccination Act. I do it against the grain. A doctor told me the other day that he believed smallpox had reached the end of its tether, and was on the ebb. I am sure I hope so, lest there should be one day a bad outbreak among these liberty men. I must have signed away the chances of hundreds of children, who, by the way, are not of an age to consent. I never fail to point ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... them a wicker basket containing an ample lunch prepared by the generous hands of Bridget. They would stop at some spot on a mountain pass; tether the pony, sit on a plaid shawl thrown over a boulder, and feast their eyes on green mountain-shoulders reared against the pale blue sky; or gaze across ravines not unworthy of Switzerland. Or they would put up pony and cart at some ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... stock doth prove Wealth cannot make a life, but love. Nor art thou so close-handed but canst spend, Counsel concurring with the end, As well as spare, still conning o'er this theme, To shun the first and last extreme. Ordaining that thy small stock find no breach, Or to exceed thy tether's reach: But to live round, and close, and wisely true To thine own self, and known to few. Thus let thy rural sanctuary be Elysium to thy wife and thee; There to disport yourselves with golden measure: For ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... an end of these verses, he strained his brother Amjad in his arms, till they twain were one body, and the treasurer, drawing his sword, was about to strike them, when behold, his steed took fright at the wind of his upraised hand, and breaking its tether, fled into the desert. Now the horse had cost a thousand gold pieces and on its back was a splendid saddle worth much money; so the treasurer threw down his sword, and ran after his beast.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... said, smiling back at him. "We will break our journey here. You can tether 'Modestina' to that stump. I must do a rough sketch of this, and put in notes for colouring, while you sit beside me and smoke, and talk. When it's complete, I'll present it to you as a memento of to-day. Will that ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... shoulders. "The Gods? They occupy us very little these latter years. With our modern science, we have grown past the tether of the older Gods, and no new one has appeared. No, my Lord Deucalion, if it were merely the Gods who were your competitors on men's lips, your name would be a thousand times ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... of carts, and all at once he saw between three other horses fastened to the railings—he saw Malek-Adel! How he knew him at once, and how Malek-Adel knew him too, and began neighing, and dragging at his tether, and scraping ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... stand that. I had come to the end of my tether; so I sprang up, ordered a cab to be called, seized the cage and drove with it to a bird shop in Shaftesbury Avenue. There I sold the parrot for a trifle. I think, Murchison, that I must have been nearly mad then, for, as I came out of the wretched shop, and stood for ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... it was to write a simple note to Madame Lamotte when he reached his Club warned him still further that he was at the end of his tether. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on the lawn of Forest Edge that Cowperwood now saw Berenice. The latter had had the gardener set up a tall pole, to which was attached a tennis-ball by a cord, and she and Rolfe were hard at work on a game of tether-ball. Cowperwood, after a telegram to Mrs. Carter, had been met at the station in Pocono by her and rapidly driven out to the house. The green hills pleased him, the up-winding, yellow road, the silver-gray cottage with the brown-shingle roof in the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... in on the mailing by your feus down at the Well," said Meiklewham, "and raxed ower the tether maybe a wee bit farther than ye ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and fat, Squeezed tight in tether labour-donned, Makes mirth and jest to chuckle at— Old hero quaint ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... to the horror of the plight to perish there miserably of cold, thinking of home and of the loved ones peacefully asleep so near, while the way to them and safety lay only a few fathoms distant—torturing him by its very nearness. For every now and then driving hard to the end of her tether she would rush forward on a sea and appear to be coming within his reach, only to mock him by drifting away once more, like some relentless lady-love playing with his very heartstrings. The rope under the sunken mainsail prevented her from quite reaching him, and each time that she seemed ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the side of Tell Mapleson's pony and ride like a Plains Indian. But even as I looked up over my little sand ridge a bullet crashed into his broad chest. He plunged forward toward us, breaking his tether. He staggered to his knees, rose again with a lunge, and turning half way round reared his fore feet in agony and seemed about to fall into our pit. At that instant I heard a laugh just beyond the bushes, and a voice, not Indian, but English, cried ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... almost as expert as his teacher. Jim told them the best way to camp out on the plains at night, how to make their fires, and warned them to be careful not to set the grass ablaze in dry weather. He also showed them how to tether their horses, the best way of adjusting a saddle, and instructed them in the art of finding their way ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... that warlike and troublous time, of leagues and battles prevailing in the Ukraine after the union. Everything was cleanly smeared with coloured clay. On the walls hung sabres, hunting-whips, nets for birds, fishing-nets, guns, elaborately carved powder-horns, gilded bits for horses, and tether-ropes with silver plates. The small window had round dull panes, through which it was impossible to see except by opening the one moveable one. Around the windows and doors red bands were painted. On shelves in one corner stood jugs, bottles, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... "But ends thy tether! for Janina makes A grave for thee where every turret quakes, And thou shalt drop below To where the spirits, to a tree enchained, Will clutch thee, there to be 'mid them retained ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... justifying despotism, 'twas but a step to justifying the wicked acts of tyranny; and from that, but another step to thrusting God's laws aside as too obsolete for our clever courtiers. "Give your unbroken colt tether enough to pull itself up with one sharp fall," M. Radisson used to say, "and it will never run to the end of its ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... days, as a space for tethering horses. An old resident tells me that crowds of men were always about the meeting house before and after meeting, and even during meeting, and that in later years the resident of Site No. 32, who owned valuable horses, used to exhibit a blooded stallion on a tether, leading him up and down to the admiration of the horse-owners present, and to their ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... exceptions I have mentioned, whist-players not only stop very far short of excellence in the game, but very soon reach their tether. I cannot say of any man that he has gone on improving for years; his mark is fixed, and he knows it—though he is exceptionally sagacious if he knows where it is drawn as respects others—and there he stays till he begins to deteriorate. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... horses having broken from their tether during the night, we were obliged to put the three saddles on the remaining horse, and proceed to track the stray horses; after tracking them about two miles, we found them on their way back to the camp. We then rode ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... she said. "I mostly lets them run the length of their tether, but sometimes I has to pull them up, and then I does it with a jerk. They don't dast aggravate me, because I've got considerable hard cash, and they're afraid I won't leave it all to them. Neither I will. I'll leave 'em some, but some I won't, just to vex 'em. I haven't ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... together Two loving hearts and those that bear them May join in temporary tether, Though Fate ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... again in his seat. "This is a better car than theirs, and we shall be there first. Now, Miss Mallathorpe, don't you bother—this is probably going to be the clearing-up point of everything. One feels certain, at any rate—Pratt has reached the end of his tether!" ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... the beach I saw the Plymouth Battalion as it marched in from the front line. They were quite different excepting only in the fact that they also had done marvels of fighting and endurance. They were done: they had come to the end of their tether. Not only physical exhaustion but moral exhaustion. They could not raise a smile in the whole battalion. The faces of Officers and men had a crushed, utterly finished expression: some of the younger Officers especially had that true funeral ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... of my tether, Mrs Clinton; I really don't know what to do. The only thing I can suggest is that a mental specialist should examine into the state of his mind. I really think he's wrong in his head, and, you know, it may be necessary for your welfare and his own that he ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... they die, go to Paris"), heard some grave city fathers debating what could be done to mitigate the cruel east wind at an exposed corner of a certain street in Boston. He suggested that they should tether ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... push to try and induce her to go on. "Do you also sometimes come to your wits' ends; and run to the end of your tether?" she went on to say. "I'd like to see what other stuff and nonsense ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Harry Bettis, who saw to it that Johnny kept putting off the marriage. Because, ultimately, Jo-Anne would reach the end of her proverbial tether and decide that Harry's twenty-five percent, if it could be shared as a wife, was better than Johnny's seventy-five ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... because 'tis mine." While I tether'd my horse he blew at the embers, wherein lay a good-sized ball of clay, baking. After a while he look'd up with red cheeks. "They were so fast set on drowning me," he continued with a wink, "they couldn't spare time to look i' my pocket—the ruffin ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... can ne'er reform produce, In Ignorance and Pride obtuse. Then know, ye rain and foolish Pair! Your doom is fix'd a yoke to bear Like beasts on Earth; and, thus in tether, Five Centuries to paint together. If, thus by mutual labours join'd, Your jarring souls should be combin'd, The faults of each the other mending, The powers of both harmonious blending; Great Jove, perhaps, in gracious vein, May send your souls on Earth again; ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... did not complete the one effort. Howard heard its sudden terrified snort, saw it scramble wildly to its feet and go plunging off to the end of its tether, knew that even the strong rope had broken and the horse was running wild. And as the man jumped to his feet he knew why. For before the snort of fear he had heard another sound, one indescribable to him who has not heard it and unforgettable and ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... honey—there's old man Wyncoop's cow broke tether again. What you bet he's out looking for her. See her ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... should find no harbour near; The Philistine should fear to slip his tether; Tobacco should be duty free, and beer; In fact, in room of this, the age of leather, An age of gold all radiant should appear, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... charged particle (ball) towards it and then switches off until the particle swings halfway around; the field then becomes negative in front of the particle again, and again attracts it. As the particle moves faster and faster it spirals outward in an ever increasing circle, something like a tether ball unwinding from a pole. The energies achieved would have seemed fantastic to earlier scientists. The Bevatron, a modern offspring of the first cyclotron, accelerates protons to 99.13% the speed of light, thereby giving them 6.2 ...
— A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis • Glen W. Watson
... Maria's patience had reached its tether. She was a stout, heavily made woman, and when she walked into the center of Polly's garrison she quickly ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... was common enough in the week when those most gallant volunteers entitled the "Yorkshire Invincibles" came down for their annual practice of skilled gunnery against the French. Their habit was to bring down a red cock, and tether him against a chalky cliff, and then vie with one another in shooting at him. The same cock had tested their skill for three summers, but failed hitherto to attest it, preferring to return in a hamper to his hens, with a story ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... me at my door in Edwardes Square, which he refused to enter. I think he was afraid of seeing Viola. I thought at the time that this was because he was aware of her attitude; that he knew she was at the end of her tether, and that he wanted to be righteously fair, to give her time to think about leaving him, if she wanted to leave him; that he was behaving now as he had behaved at Bruges when he stood back and let me have my innings, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... speech, not unlike Lord Castlereagh's about the balance of power and the lawfulness of legitimacy, which puts Turgesius into a frenzy—as Castlereagh's would, if his audience was chained by the leg. He draws a dagger and rushes at the orator; but, finding himself at the end of his tether, he sticks it into his own carcass, and dies, saying, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... skies, and tether to the sod! A daunting gift!' we mourn in our long strife. And God is more than all our thought of God; E'en life itself more than our thought of life, And that is all we know—and it is noon, Our little day will soon be ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... sang-froid has been severely tested. To put the matter in a nutshell, she is a changed woman. But what impresses me most is the fact that when she took to your method she thought herself at the end of her tether, and in the event of its doing her no good had decided to kill herself (she had already attempted ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... big balloon now happily following the wheel at the end of its tether, the still-undamaged power-off fail-safe went into operation. The mirror surface behind each ruby rod rotated into its shielding position, dispersing the energy that the huge mirror directed towards the rods, back ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... little that you may always see the track; as horses that are led make many bounds and curvets, but 'tis always at the length of the halter, and still follow him that leads them; and as a young hawk takes its flight, but still under the restraint of its tether: ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... very severe insomnia. He had been hunted for two days, during which he was perpetually on the verge of destruction, and the cumulative effect of such an experience is bound to leave its mark on the strongest man. When he got back to Zeebrugge he must have been at the end of his tether, and whether by chance or design it was when Karl was, as he would have said, "at a low mental ebb" that Zoe made her last and successful attack upon his resolution not to see her again unless she ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... taken off its head, darting at Jack, it gave him a severe bite in the leg, and nearly treated Armitage in the same manner, but fortunately he had a thick stick with which he gave the little brute so severe a blow on the nose, that it lay down, as we thought, in the sulks. We managed to tether it in a way effectually to prevent its escape, but the next morning we found, to our disappointment, that it was dead. The skins of the two animals were beautiful, their fur being very thick and long, and of a brown colour, with ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... Everard Kingsland, and you own a fine fortune and a haughty, handsome wife, and G. W. Parmalee's no more than the mud under your feet. Very well—we'll see! 'Every dog has his day,' and 'the longest lane has its turning,' and you're near about the end of your tether, and George Parmalee has you and your fine lady under his thumb—under his thumb—and he'll crush you, sir—yes, by Heaven, he'll crush you, and strike you back ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... two big throbs—"if only we had never met! I never set so much as a smile to snare you, you who have snared me. Can Connie be right? Have you felt my thraldom, and are you trying to throw me off? Then I must help you do it. Though I covet your love more than life I will not tether it. Oh, it's because I so covet that I will not tether it! With the last gem from my own throat will I rather help you go free if you want to go. God of mercy, what else ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... my boy," said the doctor quietly. "Yes, we have come to the end of our tether. Let's get back to the Count and ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... with some chagrin, as she rolled homewards—or rather, bedwards—with Peter's flowers in the carriage beside her—"that is the extent of my tether in this direction. A christening mug, and a bit of jewellery on her birthdays—I shall be allowed that; otherwise I can be of no more use to them than if I were a workhouse pauper. They are independent of me ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... employed by the slashers to spy upon the King's men, engaged in the lawful business of cutting masts for his Majesty's navy. They are well named, for they are slashing everywhere, and ruining the forests. But they have about reached the end of their tether, and you can tell them so from me, ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... caricaturist consists in detecting this, at times, imperceptible tendency, and in rendering it visible to all eyes by magnifying it. He makes his models grimace, as they would do themselves if they went to the end of their tether. Beneath the skin-deep harmony of form, he divines the deep-seated recalcitrance of matter. He realises disproportions and deformations which must have existed in nature as mere inclinations, but which have not succeeded in coming to a head, being held in check by ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... leaping as it were like some sky child pranking with the clouds, and the hills and the valleys beneath them, child as she surely was always, playing in some celestial garden space in her mind, where every species of tether was unendurable, where freedom for this childish sport was the one thing necessary to her ever young and incessantly capering mind—"hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... this was the case at the first meeting, what do you suppose it must have been as time went on? Galling slights, petty vexations, chilling annoyances were put upon her, trying her powers of endurance to the very length of their tether; she would wring her hands when alone, and passionately wish that she ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... a beef roast, we'd put it in a sealed container of clear plastic," Gimp laughed. "Set it turning, outside the bubb, on a swiveled tether wire. It would rotate for hours like on a spit—almost no friction. Rig some mirrors to concentrate the sun's heat. Space Force men do things ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... matters now the cause? As little children resting, No more the battle breasting to the rumble of the drums, Enlinked by duty's tether, the blue and gray together, They wait the great hereafter when the last assembly comes. Where'er the summons found them, whate'er the tie that bound them, 'Tis this alone the record of ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... alarm the Governor calls for his white horse, but the shots and yells terrify that animal and he breaks his tether. Harrison now mounts a bay and rides to the first point of attack, Colonel Abraham Owen at his side. Owen is killed, a lock of the Governor's hair is cut away by a bullet, but he brings up Wentworth's company under Lieutenant ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... gone far along the roadway when she came upon the tent of a Bedouin. A woman holding an infant on one arm had just stepped out. She looked about anxiously until her eye caught sight of a goat grazing at no great distance. By its broken tether the goat had made its escape. The milk and cheese of the family depended on the goat. In no spoken word could Mary converse with the woman, but she understood, and holding out her arms for the child, pointed toward the goat. The swarthy woman nodded, placed the little ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... the fear into the silly brutes," said Harris, speaking calmly, although his own flesh was creeping just a little. "I suppose they've ripped their tether ropes to pieces. Well, we'll tie them down here, where they'll have company." And he led them back a short ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... the community—what were you, Carling? What ARE you? Shall I tell you? Roue, gambler, leading a double life of the fastest kind. You did it cleverly, Carling; hid it well—but your game is up. To-night, for instance, you are at the end of your tether, swamped with debts, exposure threatening you at any moment. Why don't you tell ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... we have nothing to clothe them with; that our hospitals are without medicines, and our sick without nutriment, except such as well men eat; and that all our public works are at a stand, and the artificers disbanding. * * It may be declared in a word that we are at the end of our tether, and that now or never our deliverance must come.' Six months later, when Yorktown capitulated, the British forces remaining in North America, after the surrender of that garrison by Cornwallis, were ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... It had been said that evening a hundred times—and Scarron was at his hundredth bon mot on the subject; he was very nearly at the end of his humoristic tether, but one despairing effort ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Cheviot Hills. He could already see it standing, stark and grey, among its ancestral oaks, when down the ravine streamed a band of huntsmen in full chase, the fox going wearily before, evidently near the end of his tether. Among the rout and nearer to Frank than the others, owing to some roughness of the ground, rode a young lady in a man's coat and hat—which, with her vest and skirt, made the first riding-habit Frank ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... a navy in their wish to kill me four days earlier, and if they knew of my nearness, even though Nais were my advocate, her cold reasoning would have had little chance of an audience now. The High Gods who keep the tether of our lives hide Their secrets well, but I did not think it impious to be sure that mine was very near the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Khalifa had embarked on a great venture in planning the invasion of Abyssinia. The vast strength of the Negus was known to the Dervishes, and has since been proved to the world. The Mahdi had forbidden such a war. An ill-omened prophecy further declared that the King of Abyssinia would tether his horse to a solitary tree by Khartoum, while his cavalry should ride through the city fetlock deep in blood. But Abdullah feared neither God nor man. He reviewed the political situation, and determined at all risks to maintain his frontiers inviolate. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... be seen in the cemetery and along the roads, some of the German ladies driving in low dresses and short sleeves. As everybody who has one hundred yards to go drives or rides, rings are fastened to all the side walks in the town to tether the horses to. Many of the streets are planted with the ilanthus-tree, and frequently one comes upon churches of tasteful architecture, with ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Fielding. He suddenly laid a hand on the younger man's arm, gripping it mercilessly. "Look here, Richard! Do you want me to break you? Because that's what it's coming to. Do you hear? That's what it's coming to. You're getting near the end of your tether." ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... or rather impeded,—for he was not altogether brought to a stop,—by a circumstance as unexpected as it was fortunate. That was the tightening of the line attached to the handle of the harpoon. He had slidden to the end of his tether,—the other end of which was fast to the drogue drifting about in the sea, as already said, on the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... were that fellow," I said to myself at last, "I should think it was about time to disappear. I should feel sure I'd come to the end of my tether, and that somehow or other Harvey Farnham, as represented by me, had got ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... streets, is at railway rate: joy itself is unenjoyable, to be avoided like pain; there is no wish one has so pressing as for quiet. Ah me! I often swear I will be buried at least in free breezy Scotland, out of this insane hubbub, where Fate tethers me in life! If Fate always tether me;—but if ever the smallest competence of worldly means be mine, I will fly this whirlpool as I would the Lake of Malebolge, and only visit it now and then! Yet perhaps it is the proper place after all, seeing ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... stiffness and hardness about these men. When I pictured to them the distress of our people in case this strike became a reality, they sat unmoved and apparently indifferent to the seriousness of the whole bad business. I am at the end of my tether, and I do not know ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... my tether was not long in coming. A man, when his shore riotings are thoroughly systematic, as mine were, can calculate his days of revelry to a nicety. I had arrived at my last two twenty-lire notes. I was going to finish up with a ten-lire dinner, then spend four ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... sir, I did na ken what to do; but in despair I just held out the muzzle o' the fusee to fend her off, and I believe that saved my life, for she gripped it atween her teeth, dang me o'er the braid o' my back, and off she set, trailing me through the bushes like a tether-stick; for some way or other I never let go the grip I had o' the stock. I was that stupefied I hae nae recollection what happened after this, till I found mysel' sticking in the middle o' a brier-bush, wi' my breeks rived the way you see, and poor ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Thus my sister's first mistress was an old Ursuline nun, who was very fond of her, and who made her learn by heart the psalms which are chanted in church. After a year or two the worthy old lady had reached the end of her tether, and was conscientious enough to come and tell my mother so. She said, "I have nothing more to teach her; she knows all that I know better than I do myself." The Catholic faith revived in these remote districts, with all its respectable gravity and, fortunately for it, disencumbered ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan |
