"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Social opportunity! Social collapse! Disgrace! Why, your prospects were really extraordinary. But now! Where was Meg to-night? Where was Mrs. Marmaduke? Why did ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... by means of which provision had been made for the egress of the gas now dilated by the heat of the sun, which poured down its rays, a sudden gust having cleared the space of the clouds. It was feared that the case of the balloon would crack, and the whole thing collapse, in spite of the efforts of the aeronauts to push back the smaller balloon from the opening. Then the Duke of Chartres seized one of the flags they carried, and with the lance-head pierced the balloon in two places. A rent of ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... collapse, founder, slump, tumble, topple; subside, decrease, decline, settle, moderate; sin, do wrong, go astray; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... since that, and the tariff existing when South Carolina seceded in 1860 had been carried by votes from South Carolina. The absurd Morrill tariff could not have caused secession, for it was passed, without a struggle, in the collapse of ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... more, all his misery and heartache returned. He strode along, his head down, scarcely speaking to acquaintances whom he met, until he reached the railway station, where he sat down on the baggage truck to mentally review, over and over again, the scene with Emeline and the dreadful collapse of his newborn hopes ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... not a trace of his misfortune to be read in his face. But Decker, the victor, moved away like a man oppressed, pale, staggering, half-fainting, as though the nervous strain had brought him to the edge of collapse. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... low sound of laughter, looked up and nearly fell backwards, that is, metaphorically, for the chair prevented such a physical collapse. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... He was pure. Remember Pilate's acquittal: 'I find no fault in Him,' and his wife's warning, 'Have thou nothing to do with that just Person.' Think of Judas, 'I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.' Listen to the penitent thief's low voice gasping out in his pangs and almost collapse: 'This man hath done nothing amiss.' Listen to the Centurion telling the impression made even on his rough nature: 'Truly ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... says I must pedal more quickly. Can't. Rest a minute. Panting. Awfully hot. Observe little children going round comfortably. Pretty girl here again, looking as fresh and cool as possible. Suddenly manage to ride three yards unsupported. Then collapse. But am ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... had dreamed of carrying it. They were not so far ahead of him in time; Reveillaud himself had only two years' start; but they were all going the same way, and he saw that he must either go with them or collapse in the soft heap of rottenness, "la ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... night I was awakened by an old friend and neighbor, Miss M. Brown, with the startling intelligence that the entire Cabinet had been assassinated, and Mr. Lincoln shot, but not mortally wounded. When I heard the words I felt as if the blood had been frozen in my veins, and that my lungs must collapse for the want of air. Mr. Lincoln shot! the Cabinet assassinated! What could it mean? The streets were alive with wondering, awe-stricken people. Rumors flew thick and fast, and the wildest reports came with every new arrival. The words were repeated with ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... an interchange of rifle shots. There were flashes like summer lightning; and then all the sky became a whirling confusion of battle that was still largely noiseless. Some of the Central European aeroplanes were certainly charged and overset; others seemed to collapse and fall and then flare out with so bright a light that it took the edge off one's vision and made the rest of the battle disappear as though it had been ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... look and placid manner of her auditor encouraged her to ease; the sober pleasure expressed by his smile drew out all that was brilliant in her nature. She felt that this evening she appeared to advantage, and as Robert was a spectator, the consciousness contented her. Had he been called away, collapse would at once ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... fills a position where he is practically indispensable, so far as the work, not the position, is concerned, his job is his master. Many a bankboy, on the verge of collapse, is unable to leave for a single day his unhealthy environment. Some, like Evan, are tied down by circumstances; the majority of them are bound by their own foolish tenacity. All of them realize, sooner or later, that their ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... shot struck the sea beside us, sending a spout of water over our rail. Again Marah pulled his trigger-spring, the gun fell over on its side, and the cutter's mast seemed to collapse into itself as though it were wrapping itself up in its own canvas. A huge loose clue of sail—the foresail's starboard leach—flew up into the air; the boom swung after it; the gaff toppled over from above; we saw the topmast dive like a lunging rapier into the sea. We had torn the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... beeves and came near drowning two fine ones. The animals in question were large and strong, but had stood for nearly an hour on a slippery ledge, frequently being crowded into the water, and were on the verge of collapse from nervous exhaustion. They were trembling like leaves when we pushed them off. Runt Pickett was detailed to look especially after those two, and the little rascal nursed and toyed and played with them like a circus rider. They struggled constantly ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... reading her own obituary notices, and her interest in them was characteristically naive. She had made a speech at Lakeside, Ohio, during which, for the first time in her long experience, she fainted on the platform. I was not with her at the time, and in the excitement following her collapse it was rumored that she had died. Immediately the news was telegraphed to the Associated Press of New York, and from there flashed over the country. At Miss Anthony's home in Rochester a reporter rang the bell and abruptly ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... essence is not its existence. Therefore, as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iv, 12): "If the ruling power of God were withdrawn from His creatures, their nature would at once cease, and all nature would collapse." In the same work (Gen. ad lit. viii, 12) he says: "As the air becomes light by the presence of the sun, so is man enlightened by the presence of God, and in His absence returns ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Hippolyte Charles should never be allowed to lead her into such a scrape again. He was put out of her life, and was never more heard of. He was seen but once more by Napoleon, and the sight of his evil face nearly caused the Emperor the humiliation of a collapse. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... this important period in the history of Scotland will be found the true grounds of the local rancour which afterwards prevailed between Mackenzie and the Island Lord, and which only terminated in the collapse of the Earls of Ross and the Lords of the Isles, upon the ruins of which, as a reward for proved loyalty to the reigning monarch, and as the result of the characteristic prudence of the race of MacKenneth, the House of Kintail gradually rose in power, subsequently absorbed the ancient inheritance ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... Montefiore, died at the age of eighty-three, and his sons went into business with a certain Cartoni of Lisina. They appear at first to have met with success, but the sudden death of the head of the firm caused the collapse of ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... Our very shops and counting-houses must resemble the palaces of the Venetian nobility, and our dwellings be more royally arrayed than the dwellings of the mightiest monarchs. When the time comes—as come it will—for paying for all this glorious frippery, we collapse, we wither, we fleet, we sink into the sand.—A third Diogenes, of a more practical turn of mind, vociferates, that the whole thing comes from the want of a high protective tariff. These subtle and malignant foreigners, who are so jealous of our progress, who are ever on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... commit serious crime, such as theft, arson, assault, and even murder. Their inability to maintain economic independence results in vagrancy and destitution. Their helplessness in the face of obstacles frequently brings about their complete collapse at the first rebuff which they have to meet. The interest of the community can only be adequately protected by the segregation of a considerable proportion of these persons in suitable institutions. A sterilized defective would ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... industry during the war, and its subsequent collapse, have resulted in agitation for a duty on ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... desire is that men should learn to see what is beautiful, to find pleasure in homely work, to fill leisure with innocent enjoyment. If education, as the term is generally used, were widely and universally successful, the whole fabric of a nation would collapse, because no one thus educated would acquiesce in the performance of humble work. It is commonly said that education ought to make men dissatisfied, and teach them to desire to improve their position. It is a pestilent heresy. It ought to teach them to be satisfied with ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... territories, and a weak empire was perhaps better adapted for effecting this purpose than a stronger one, even though certain of their own order had a controlling voice in its administration. As already hinted, the collapse of the rebellious knighthood under Sickingen, a few weeks later, clearly showed the political drift of the situation in the haute politique of ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... and roar it like true British sailors; to employ an extravagance that is half conscious and therefore half humorous. Compare, for example, the rants of Shakespeare with the rants of Victor Hugo. A piece of Hugo's eloquence is either a serious triumph or a serious collapse: one feels the poet is offended at a smile. But Shakespeare seems rather proud of talking nonsense: I never can read that rousing and mounting description of the storm, where ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... organization for an advance than with any idea of resisting attack. He lacked the prevision of Winfield Scott and Lee, both of whom expected from the first that the war would last for years. His own expectation up to this had been that the South would collapse after the first smashing blow, and that its western armies were now about to be dealt such a blow. He was not unmindful of all precautions; for he knew the Confederates were stirring on his front. Yet he went downstream to Savannah without making sure that his army was ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... any equal in all Israel. But it was the prophets who led the way in determining the inferences to be drawn from the change in the face of things. Hitherto they had principally had their eyes upon the northern kingdom, its threatened collapse, and the wickedness of its inhabitants, and thus had poured out their wrath more particularly upon the places of worship there. Judah they judged more favourably, both on personal and on substantial ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... some day the earth will fall into the sun, Just as sure and as straight, as if shot from a gun." And he worried about it. "For when gravitation unbuckles her straps, Just picture," he said, "what a fearful collapse! It will come in a few million ages, perhaps." And ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... first time, to witness the enthusiasm of the melancholy temperament—the eloquence of unschooled nature. The bending figure that seemed to collapse in weakness upon my supporting arm, suddenly flung herself from me; her rounded and delicate figure swelled at once into sudden dignity; her muscles assumed the rigidity, yet all the softness of a highly-polished Grecian statue; and stood before me, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... have fired the first shot in more dramatic fashion," she declared. "Even Mr. Phipps lost his nerve for a moment, and I thought that Henry was going to collapse altogether. I wonder what they are ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... guide-book in one fist, a ticket to visit monuments in the other. I heard Scottish soldiers playing, "I'll be in Scotland before ye!" and something within me, a lurking hope, I suppose, seemed to founder and collapse—but only for a moment. It was after four in the afternoon. Soon day would be declining. And I seemed to remember that the decline of day in Egypt had moved me long ago—moved me as few, rare things have ever done. Within half an hour I was alone, far up the long road—Ismail's ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... keep the poisonous matter out, mothers should prepare and strengthen young women for the encounter with it, by lifting the veil, baring the world, giving them knowledge to arm them for the fight they have to sustain; and thereby preserve them further from the spiritual collapse which follows the nursing of a false ideal of our life in youth:—this being, Colney said, the prominent feminine disease of the time, common to all our women; that is, all having leisure to shine in the sun or wave in the wind ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the snow and have it dragged away on the dog-sleds. When the well-like hole was down about fifteen feet, and they were congratulating themselves that at least half of the work was accomplished, there was a sudden collapse. The whole thing had caved in and carried down the platform and all to a distance of eight or ten feet. Nobody was badly hurt. The two men who were in the bottom at the time, busily filling up the leather bucket, were hit with some of the falling logs and nearly buried in the avalanche ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... with the doubtful and dubious exception of the expatriate fortune-hunter, who aims to fish safely in troubled waters at his compatriots' expense. But the case stands otherwise as regards the balance of immaterial assets. The scaffolding of much highly-prized sentiment would collapse, and the world of poetry and pageantry—particularly that of the tawdrier and more vendible poetry and pageantry—would be poorer by so much. The Man Without a Country would lose his pathetic appeal, or would at any rate lose much ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... airlock, and Stevens admitted air until their suits began to collapse. Then, face-plate valves cracked, he sniffed cautiously, finally opening his helmet wide. Nadia followed suit and the man laughed as she wrinkled her nose in disgust as two faint, but unmistakable odors smote her ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... rehearsals, which caused Mr. Dickens to tell me on the stage, four or five days only before the first performance, that the play was not then in as good a state as it would have been in at Paris three weeks earlier. The other was the breakdown of the performer of a most important secondary part; a collapse so absolute that he was changed by the management before the second representation of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... and disuse were invoked expressly to help us over these hard places; but whatever changes can be induced in offspring by direct treatment of the parents, they are not of a kind to encourage hope of real assistance from that quarter. It is not to be denied that through the collapse of this second line of argument the Selection hypothesis has had to take an increased and perilous burden. Various ways of meeting the difficulty have been proposed, but these mostly resolve themselves into improbable attempts ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... school of thought holds to an entirely contrary opinion. The whole trouble, they say, comes from the sad collapse of Germany. These unhappy people, having been too busy for four years in destroying valuable property in France and Belgium to pay attention to their home affairs, now find themselves collapsed: it is our first duty to pick them up again. The English should therefore take all the money ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... him best, and who could appraise at their true value the toils and trials and disappointments of his daily lot, the wonder was not that he broke down; it was rather that physical collapse had not overtaken him sooner. There are many kinds of heroism, but it may be doubted whether any touches a higher level than that exhibited by this patient sower of the seed of life on the sterile ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... youth, and gave his devoted and tender parents moments of very superfluous concern. For with all his immensely vivacious play of brain, there was something in his mental and moral nature from first to last stubbornly inelastic and unimpressible, that made him equally secure against expansion and collapse. The same simple tenacity of nature which kept his buoyantly adventurous intellect permanently within the tether of a few primary convictions, kept him, in the region of practice and morality, within the bounds of a rather nice and fastidious decorum. Malign influences effected ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... be in a more terrible state of complete collapse than poor Mr. Lorrimer. The blow he had most dreaded had overtaken him. He had been as plucky an English gentleman as ever walked. As true-hearted and affectionate a husband and father, as kind and considerate a landlord—as honourable as man could be in all his dealings—a keen sportsman, a lover ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... not be explained through the intelligence of a "little Cockney cad," even though he was "by no means a stupid person and up to a certain limit not badly educated"; and the general development of the world-war, the account of the collapse of the credit system and all such large and general effects necessitated the broad treatment of the historian. So the intimate, personal narrative of Smallways' adventures is occasionally dropped for a few pages; Mr Wells shuts off his magic-lantern ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... spirits rose, and he became the best of all possible good companions. Johnnie, who was becoming constantly more fond of him, felt his anxiety increase in proportion to this improvement in mood; it seemed to him that Branch was on the very verge of a collapse. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... of Challis's over, for Billy Silver's collapse had occurred at the third delivery. Fenn mistimed the first. Two hours' writing indoors does not improve the eye. The ball missed the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... to feel that he has no friend near him, that the world is all against him; he must be confounded till he forget his right hand from his left, till his mind be turned into chaos, and his heart into water; and then let him give his evidence. What will fall from his lips when in this wretched collapse must be of special value, for the best talents of practised forensic heroes are daily used to bring it about; and no member of the Humane Society interferes to protect the wretch. Some sorts of torture are, as it were, tacitly allowed even among humane ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the city of Chicago, and for that matter the entire financial world, was startled and amazed by the collapse of American Match, one of the strongest of market securities, and the coincident failure of Messrs. Hull and Stackpole, its ostensible promoters, for twenty millions. As early as eleven o'clock of the preceding day the banking and brokerage world of Chicago, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... ideal merely in its highest phases; it is ideal through and through. On one level as much as on another, it celebrates an attained balance in nature, or grieves at its collapse; it prophesies and remembers, it loves and dreams. It sees even nature from the point of view of ideal interests, and measures the flux of things by ideal standards. It registers its own movement, like that of its objects, entirely in ideal terms, looking to fixed goals of its own ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... were swarming with men in uniform—French, English, Australian, Canadian, New Zealanders, colored French Colonials, a few Russians who, following the sudden collapse of their government, were now soldiers lacking a flag, Scotch Highlanders in their gaudy kilts, Japanese officers in spick uniforms not yet baptized in the mud of the trenches—a varied, colorful parade of young men bent on one great ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Mississippi by the middle of November. Unfortunately for Burr, however, Wilkinson was far too expert in the usages of iniquity to be taken in by such audacious lying as this. He guessed that the enterprise was on the verge of collapse and forthwith made up his ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... the cry of the newly born child, for it shows that the inactive lungs have opened up and the baby has begun to use them, for all the time baby was living in the uterine room he did not breathe once, the lungs having been in a constant state of collapse; and not until now, the very moment the air comes in contact with his skin, do the lungs begin to functionate as he emits ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... young Duchess of Hereward, in a whirlwind of long-repressed excitement, slammed, locked and bolted all the doors leading from her apartments into the hall, and then fled into her dressing-room and cast herself head long down upon the floor in the collapse of utter, infinite despair—despair in all its depth of darkness, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... was another element in his character, which those who knew him best recognized as one with which he had to struggle hard, —that is, a modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into self- distrust. This, too, betrays itself in the sentences which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I am of opinion that the sudden collapse which so frequently occurs among omnibus and street-car horses, is to be attributed to the stupid but common practice of giving them water when they are overheated. Can you assist me in putting a stop ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... though he had been subjected to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such abominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... The early collapse of the Servian defense led, after some negotiations, to a truce, and diplomacy took up the matter, and in September I went home again. The "Times" correspondence had given the Montenegrin question serious importance in England, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... from the cellar to the shop, and taking her mother's arm led her to the sitting-room. "Now if you feel you must collapse or cry, mama," she adjured her parent with a touch of the scorn the younger generation felt for elders accustomed, in that day, to meet all crises with tears and faints, or at the least wild gesticulation—"if you must, do it now, and here; so that when ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... selection must take the place of the natural selection which the modern State will not allow to act, or we must go on deteriorating. When we can convince the public of this, the opposition of organized religion will soon collapse or become ineffective." Dean Inge effectively answers those who have objected to the methods of Birth Control as "immoral" and in contradiction and inimical to the teachings of Christ. Incidentally he ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Virginia, her hands on her knees, her head hanging low and swaying dazedly from side to side. She was on the verge of collapse; but she looked up and smiled faintly as Dan burst in. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... pervading dread that he will die a beggar. To guard against this misfortune—which I am bound to admit nobody else fears for him—he invested, several years ago, a sum of two hundred thousand pounds in Consols, to serve as a nest-egg in case of the collapse of Golcondas and South Africa generally. It is part of the same amiable mania, too, that he will not allow the dividend-warrants on this sum to be sent to him by post, but insists, after the fashion of old ladies and country parsons, upon calling personally at the Bank of England four times ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... p. 628.](dated February 15, 1865) the nature of the latter's statements and criticisms, he notified the Richmond government as well as Hood that he should demand that the latter be brought before a court-martial; [Footnote: Id., p. 637.] but it was then April, on the very eve of the collapse of the Confederacy, and the discussion was left for continuance in the private writings of the parties and their friends. Johnston affirmed that in the only instances in the campaign in which it could be said that a favorable opportunity for ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... answering gleam rewarded him; no movement of limb or feature. Only the lids fell again; and Desmond knew that this was no fainting fit, but collapse from probable damage ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Mediterranean. England, above all others, was instrumental in preserving that precarious Balance, and England now must confess the utter failure of her policy there throughout a century. It is humiliating to acknowledge the complete collapse of that which for so many decades has been the keystone of our ruling with regard to our Eastern Empire, but the arch has collapsed; Germany pulled the keystone out, and all our efforts to exclude Russia from free access to the Mediterranean have only resulted ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... Movements of the Fourth Century B. C., and making that my third stage. This was the time when the Greek mind, still in its full creative vigour, made its first response to the twofold failure of the world in which it had put its faith, the open bankruptcy of the Olympian religion and the collapse of the city-state. Both had failed, and each tried vainly to supply the place of the other. Greece responded by the creation of two great permanent types of philosophy which have influenced human ethics ever ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... which the forest question touches the average citizen. It enters into our prospects of development, our investment values and our insurance rates. Like the keystone of an arch, or the link of a chain, forests cannot be destroyed without the collapse of the entire fabric. Their preservation is not primarily a property question, but a principle of public economy, dealing with one of the elements of human existence and progress. Failure to treat ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... seems to be more or less in a state of collapse! The bal masque is over, the guests have departed, and all that is left to us now are the recollections of a delightful party that gave full return for our efforts to have ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... was in, this in itself was a calamity. A school eleven are always at their worst and nerviest before lunch. Even on their own ground they find the surroundings lonely and unfamiliar. The subtlety of the bowlers becomes magnified. Unless the first pair make a really good start, a collapse almost invariably ensues. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... were the sort of man who could inspire terror, would not remain content merely to prowl fruitlessly about with every danger of being shot for his pains, and McGuire could hardly remain long in his present situation without a physical or mental collapse. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... he was relieved. Mr. Jarrott did not go on at once, but when he did speak Strange fell back into the depths of his arm-chair, in an attitude suggestive of physical collapse. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... This became one main topic of his tirades, and represented, as he said, the 'Alpha and Omega' of English politics. The theory was simple. The whole borough-mongering system depended upon the inflated currency. Prick that bubble and the whole would collapse. It was absolutely impossible, he said, that the nation should return to cash payments and continue to pay interest on the debt. Should such a thing happen, he declared, he would 'give his poor body up to be broiled on one of Castlereagh's widest-ribbed gridirons.'[188] The ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... time, to my great exaltation of spirits there had succeeded an equally dismal depression. It was my turn now to weep, and I dimly remember any Father coming into the room, and my being carried up to bed, in a state of collapse and fatigue, by the silent and ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... additions to that structure would collapse like a house of cards but for the original foundations which are as indestructible as Harvey's statement as to ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... "I know what I know—there are legible and infallible signs, and it is given to me to interpret them, and I tell you: It is true, unerringly true, as every Alexandrian child has learnt from its nurse: When Serapis falls the earth will collapse like a dry puff-ball under a horse's hoof. A hundred oracles have announced it, it is written in the prophecies of the heavenly bodies, and in the scroll of Fate. Let them be! Let it come! The end is sweet to those who, in the hour ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... joke, sprung on the dear public by the Trinidad Redwood Timber Company to get the said dear public excited, create a real-estate boom, and boost timber-values. Before the boom collapses—a condition which will follow the collapse of the N.C.O.—the Trinidad people hope to sell their holdings and get ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... reading, verse 14 says, 'We were consoled among them, remaining seven days.' The centurion could scarcely delay his march to please the Christians at Puteoli; and the thought that the Apostle, whose spirit had never flagged while danger was near and effort was needed, felt some tendency to collapse, and required cheering when the strain was off, is as natural as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... intelligence, their empty, stereotyped, unremitted industry repel me. And I am not altogether happy about the future of the Human Race; when I think of the slow refrigeration of the Earth, the Sun's waning, and the ultimate, inevitable collapse of the Solar System, I have grave misgivings. And all the books I have read and forgotten-the thought that my mind is really nothing but a sieve—this, too, at ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... fleet they blocked the Thames, and put a stop to the river trade of London. Their demands were more extensive than those of the Spithead Mutineers, but government firmly refused further concessions, and in June the want of union and resolution among the men brought about the collapse of the mutiny. Ship after ship deserted the red flag, until the last vessel was steered into Sheerness harbour, and given up to the authorities. Several of the leaders were tried by court-martial and hanged ; the rest of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... did not all come to Washington county to occupy the land allotted to them, for some remained where they had settled after the collapse of Captain Campbell's scheme, but those who did settle in Argyle were related either by ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... with the drinker's knowledge, I know now why I did not collapse stupefied upon the table. As I have said, I was frozen, I was paralysed, with fear. The only movement I made was to convey that never-ending procession of glasses to my lips. I was a poised and motionless receptacle for ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the world is going to have the truth about War. We're going to put an end to this madness. It's not going to be easy. Just now, in the intoxication of the German collapse, we're all rejoicing in our new happiness. I tell you, the real Peace will be a long time coming. When you tear up all the fibres of civilization it's a slow job to knit things together again. You see those children going down the street to school? Peace lies in their hands. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... first requisite in all surgical cases, as also in all anaemic and neurasthenic cases, is to restore metabolism to its normal condition and thus help the patient to regain his reserve energy in order to prevent the collapse of the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... rim, and when he got up to us, dusty, torn and fagged out, with Don, Tige and Ranger showing signs of collapse, we all blurted out questions. But Jim took ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... in a state of collapse, until she gradually recovered so far as to be able to rise, moaning and groaning, and stagger out of the kitchen into the yard. There she ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... never to rise again. Each child of June, scarce distinguishable in November against the background of moss and rocks and bushes, is brought into final prominence in December by the white snow which imbeds it. The delicate flakes collapse and fall back around it, but they retain their inexorable hold. Thus delicate is the action of Nature,—a finger of air, and a grasp ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... conditions, different environment, different stimuli, until he seemed to be two personalities in one. It was a development which, as it proceeded, produced a tremendous strain on his physical and mental resources, and at one time between 1897-8 threatened him with a complete nervous collapse. And there was for a time distinct opposition between those two natures which made it extremely difficult for him to adjust his life, for the two conditions were equally imperative in their ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... were unloading for the syndicate, which was daily bidding (pounds)167 for spot, while we were selling futures far below that figure. They did not know that at four o'clock London time, when the official market closed on the thirtieth day of April, the syndicate would cease buying and that a collapse would then be inevitable. It was not our business to enlighten them, and strange to relate, not one man asked us our opinion of the market. They bought of us day after day and apparently believed that when the time for delivery came we would ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... that the Americans were all cowards, and incapable of discipline; that five thousand English soldiers were more than a match for fifty thousand provincials. They had no navy, no army, no forts, no organization. They would collapse at the first real threat of force. The English ministry and their followers vied with one another in heaping contempt and abuse upon the colonists. It was in reply to them that Burke made one of his greatest speeches. Burke was an artist in sentiments, and cannot ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... you went away, all alone with Gray. I remained in bed that day with the room darkened. Mother and Cecile were troubled but could not bring themselves to believe that my collapse was due to your going. It was not logical, you know, as we all expected to see you in a week or two in ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... state of the popular temper, however, and the coincidence of the political events already referred to must be ascribed the fact that a piece like Electra should cause the fall of a Government, and bring within dangerous distance the collapse of the monarchy itself. The excitement which it still produces, wherever played, is now in a great part due to the foolish action of some of the bishops and the fact that individual clerics use their pulpits to condemn it, and attempt to forbid ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... to stay until the fate of poor, trembling Yosemite was settled. In vain I rallied them on their fears, calling attention to the strength of the granite walls of our Valley home, the very best and solidest masonry in the world, and less likely to collapse and sink than the sedimentary lowlands to which they were looking for safety; and saying that in any case they sometime would have to die, and so grand a burial was not to be slighted. But they were too seriously panic-stricken to get comfort from anything ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... lose ourselves. Says Arthur Helps on this point, "If it were not for some singular people who persist in thinking for themselves, in seeing for themselves, and in being comfortable, we should all collapse into a hideous uniformity.... In all things, a man must beware of so conforming himself as to crush his nature, and forego the purpose of his being." And Emerson might have added to that thought, "Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... injunctions and prohibitions will lose their purport if the distinction on which their validity depends does not really exist. And further, the entire body of doctrine which refers to final release will collapse, if the distinction of teacher and pupil on which it depends is not real. And if the doctrine of release is untrue, how can we maintain the truth of the absolute unity of the Self, which forms an ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... advice, took lessons and, to his amazement, found that he did not die of nervous collapse when a dog crossed the road in front of the car and that the fitting of detachable wheels did not require the strength of a Hercules. The first time he took Peggy out in the two-seater he ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... capacity of human apprehension.... The limit of a sonnet is imposed by the average duration of an emotional mood.... May we go so far as to say that fourteen lines is the average number which a thought requires for its adequate embodiment before attention must collapse?" ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... in the confidence of sturdy health courts the sternest activities of life and rejoices in the hardihood of constant labor may still have lurking near his vitals the unheeded disease that dooms him to sudden collapse. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... father is lapsed into a most dangerous condition. The physical inertia which has held him for so long is now broken and I look for a dangerous mental and nervous collapse to accompany it. A ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... ever been. And Rose-Marie had seen his bleary eyes pass, without a flicker of interest, over his wife's clean apron and freshly washed hair; had seen him throw his coat and his empty bottle into one of the newly dusted corners, had seen his collapse into a heap in the center of the room. And, last of all, as she had hurried away, with Jim's final insinuation ringing in her ears, she had known the fear that all was not well with Bennie—for Bennie came in every afternoon before she left. She could not know that ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... the hospital. We are, it seems, at Arras. Francis and we form part of the first squad. They tumble us into carts stuffed with straw, and we arrive in front of a great building that settles and seems about to collapse into the street. We mount to the second story to a room that contains some thirty beds; each one of us unbuckles his knapsack, combs himself, and sits down. A ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... when the young man shook him. Therefore Mayo gave over his efforts and hurried back to the long-boat. The spectacle of the girl struggling with the stuff she was jettisoning put new determination into him. Her amazing fortitude at the time when he had looked for hysterics and collapse gave him new light ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... was something else, some memory darker than the others, some shadow of shadows that baffled me. Then as I battled with a growing terror and suspense, it all came back to me, the telegram, the news, my collapse. A great grief welled up in me, and in my agony ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... mum. "But," he adds, "when daylight appeared, this prince, who liked neither rewarding nor punishing, did not for all that look any the more black at me, or give me a quarter-crown more." Thirty years later, in 1617, after the collapse of the League and after the reign of Henry IV., D'Aubigne, wishing to describe the two leaders of the two great parties, sums them up in these terms: "The Duke of Mayenne had such probity as is human, a good nature and a liberality which made him most pleasant to those about him; his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... distant lands, in Egyptian or Ethiopian marble? Whence came her wrath against Thebes? This wrath, how durst it tower so high as to measure itself against the enmity of a nation? This wrath, how came it to sink so low as to collapse at the echo of a word from a friendless stranger? Mysterious again is the blind collusion of this unhappy stranger with the dark decrees of fate. The very misfortunes of his infancy had given into his hands one chance more for escape: these misfortunes had transferred ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... foregoing narrative it will be at once seen that the unfortunate collapse of Gray, when within only two days' journey of the depot, was the direct cause of the death of Burke and Wills. King was a young man, of good physique, and of a nature in which the disposition to mental worry or anxiety ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... had fallen on the crowded and heated store, and in the silence Stingaree was already taking an unguarded interest in Mrs. Clarkson's appearance, which as certainly betokened imminent collapse. "Now!" whispered Radford, and Hilda hesitated no more. She was wearing a black lace shawl between her appearances at the piano; she had the revolver under it in a twinkling, and pressed it to her bosom with both hands, one outside the shawl and one underneath, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... proof of Shakespeare's technical mastery. In the Trial Scene in The Merchant of Venice we have another great peripety. It illustrates the obvious principle that, where the drama consists in a conflict between two persons or parties, the peripety is generally a double one—the sudden collapse of Shylock's case implying an equally sudden restoration of Antonio's fortunes. Perhaps the most striking peripety in Ibsen is Stockmann's fall from jubilant self-confidence to defiant impotence in the third act of An Enemy of the People. Thinking that he has the "compact ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... de Lear had been neglected in this conversation; it was now seen that he was in collapse and deathly pale. He leaned forward, however, from strong habit, to close the meal with a blessing, and his head fell forward upon the table. Duff Salter had him in his arms in a moment, and bore him into the little parlor and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... with you," interrupted Dorothy, sitting up from her collapse as if galvanized into life and speech by Mr. Pierce's monologue. "You don't understand Peter. He is a man of great feeling. Think of that speech of his about those children! Think of his conduct to his mother as long as she lived! Think of the goodness and kindness he showed ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... After the collapse of Hamilton's army at Uttoxeter in August 1648, a body of Covenanters assembled at Mauchline, in Ayrshire, to protest against the leniency with which the Engagement had been treated in the Estates, where, indeed, a considerable minority had been inclined ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... that was! In hot countries there is no drink to equal it, either taken scalding hot to prevent heat apoplexy or as cold as you can get it, without milk or sugar, to be carried in your water-bottle. Many a man was saved from collapse by a timely mug of hot tea, and if there was a rum ration to go with it, so ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... Street direction. They had not yet passed the corner of the garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of an extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by a shattering fracas. Somerset turned in time to see the mansion rend in twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and instantly collapse into its cellars. At the same moment, he was thrown violently to the ground. His first glance was towards Zero. The plotter had but reeled against the garden rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... under his purple umbrella. The rose in his hand shoots its petals up in thin quills of crimson. Then they collapse and shrivel like ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... fellow-labourer of Mr. Cleave as to the causes of his sudden and extensive accession of business in the coffin-making way; and the result of the close questions put to him was the discovery of the whole affair. It need hardly be added that an immediate and complete collapse took place in Mr. Cleave's business, so far as his Police Gazette was concerned. Not another number of the publication ever made its appearance, while the coffin-trade of the 'undertaker' all at once returned ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a more chequered experience. After the collapse of the Halifax and Quebec project, her efforts were confined {68} to the road running north from St Andrews and to the ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... unchanged, he will be successful in dealing with them, but if conditions change, if he is confronted by a new situation, if strong temptation comes, he has nothing with which to meet it, for his conduct was blind. It is the person whose conduct is non-moral that suffers collapse on the one hand, or becomes a bigot on the other, when criticism attacks what he held as true or right. Morality requires that men have a reason for the faith that is ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... received from one of the most eminent members of the Institut of France a pamphlet entitled "Pourquoi la France n'a pas trouve d'hommes superieurs au moment du peril." The writer, M. Pasteur, has no doubt that the cause of the astounding collapse of his countrymen is to be sought in the miserable neglect of the higher branches of culture, which has been one of the many disgraces of the Second Empire, if ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... known that Bannister was awake to his surroundings. The man appeared the picture of helplessness, all the lusty power and vigor stricken out of him; but his indomitable spirit still triumphed over the physical collapse, for as the foreman looked a faint smile touched the ashen lips. It seemed to say: "Still in the ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... was about to collapse. Perhaps Queen, deliberately courting destruction, and being destroyed, was the symbol of society. What matter? Perhaps civilisation, by its nobility and its elements of reason, and by the favour of destiny, would be saved from ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... nature of man is so constructed that a constitution so administered must collapse. It generates faction within, it invites enemies from without. While Sertorius was defying the Senate in Spain and the pirates were buying its connivance in the Mediterranean, Mithridates started into life again in Pontus. Sylla had beaten ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... recent report that the Sittinghurst Vermin Club had killed 1,175 mice in one day, we are asked to say that the number should be 1,176. It appears that one mouse made its way in a state of collapse to the Club headquarters and gave ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... fashionable, goodness is likely to suffer a little. A virtue overdone falls on t'other side. And a holiday that takes on such proportions that the Express companies and the Post-office cannot handle it is in danger of a collapse. In consideration of these things, and because, as has been pointed out year after year, Christmas is becoming a burden, the load of which is looked forward to with apprehension—and back on with nervous prostration—fear ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the action of others. People, carts, cattle, and dogs on the road are liable to such unexpected movements, that the real danger of the cyclist comes from the outside; to danger from absolute collapse, due to a hidden flaw in the materials employed, every one is liable, but, the bicyclist more remotely than the tricyclist, owing to the greater simplicity of his machine. The bicyclist, though he has further to fall in case of an accident from any of these causes, is in a better ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... was but the entrance of his daughter that saved him from an affecting collapse. His daughter removed the record of John McCullough's ravings, sniffed at it, and put a fox-trot ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... daughter. Her long plain face, habitually grave in expression, conveyed no hint of exceptional emotion, but the fingers of the large, capable hands she clasped before her writhed restlessly against one another, and there was a husky-threat of collapse in her voice as ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Clark, and Raymie Wutherspoon, there were no merchants of whose welcome Carol was certain. She knew that she read mockery into greetings but she could not control her suspicion, could not rise from her psychic collapse. She alternately raged and flinched at the superiority of the merchants. They did not know that they were being rude, but they meant to have it understood that they were prosperous and "not scared of no doctor's wife." They often said, "One man's as good as another—and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... chief; this man did not submit tamely to his insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his melodious voice in tones ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... stands deeply and lastingly indebted. When others' courage failed them, he stood firm; when friends and colleagues were counselling retreat, and under their breath were whispering "Fiasco!" and "Collapse!" his spirit never faltered. He has been true to a great purpose, at the cost of obloquy sometimes, and to the detriment even of old friendships. Separated from him by a dozen shades of theological opinion and by as many degrees of ecclesiastical bias, I render ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... at home. There is no longer a clear division between what is foreign and what is domestic. The world economy, the world environment, the world AIDS crisis, the world arms race: they affect us all. Today as an old order passes, the new world is more free, but less stable. Communism's collapse has called forth old animosities, and new dangers. Clearly, America must continue to lead the world we did so much to make. While America rebuilds at home, we will not shrink from the challenges nor fail to seize the opportunities of this new world. ...
— Inaugural Presidential Address • William Jefferson Clinton
... much so that after lunch he sent a telegram to Westonley's Melbourne agents—who were also his own—and asked them if they could tell him how his sister would be affected by the collapse of Dacre's. In a few hours he received an answer—"Deeply regret to say everything will be ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There can BE no difference any- where that doesn't MAKE a difference elsewhere—no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... grace itself indispensable? Certainly, it has been dispensed with. It isn't reckoned with. To sit perfectly mute 'in company,' or to chatter on at the top of one's voice; to shriek with laughter; to fling oneself into a room and dash oneself out of it; to collapse on chairs or sofas; to sprawl across tables; to slam doors; to write, without punctuation, notes that only an expert in handwriting could read, and only an expert in mis-spelling could understand; to hustle, to bounce, to go straight ahead—to ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Ages Charlemagne established the only public schools for civic training, the first being established at Paris, although he planned to extend them throughout the empire. The collapse of his great empire made the schools merely a tradition. But they were a faint sign of the needs of a strong empire and an enlightened community. The educational institutions of the Middle Ages were monasteries, and cathedral schools for the purpose of training men for the service of the church ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... seismic focus. That it amounts to but a few miles at the most is certain from the limited areas within which slight shocks are felt or disastrous ones exhibit their maximum effects. Nor can we suppose that the rocks at very great depths are capable of offering the prolonged resistance and sudden collapse under stress that are necessary for ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... Alas! if I could really devote myself to these interests, if I could at last conquer my inertia.... But no! I shall remain to the end the incomplete creature I have always been.... The first obstacle, ... and I collapse entirely; what has passed with you has shown me that If I had but sacrificed my love to my future work, to my vocation; but I simply was afraid of the responsibility that had fallen upon me, and therefore I am, truly, unworthy of you. I do not deserve that you should ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... is the populace of Faenza applauding him as its saviour. He postpones the duty of undeceiving it under pretence of the danger being not yet over. The next step will be to refuse to do so. His moral collapse, the "tragedy" ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a Mr. Davis over him, could he have accomplished what he did? It will, I am sure, be news to many that General Lee was given the command over all the Confederate armies a month or two only before the final collapse; and that the military policy of the South was all throughout the war dictated by Mr. Davis as President of the Confederate States. Lee had no power to reward soldiers or to promote officers. It was Mr. Davis who selected ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... from the emperor that edicts regarding ceremonial, music, and expeditions to quell rebellion go forth. When it is being ill governed, such edicts emanate from the feudal lords; and when the latter is the case, it will be strange if in ten generations there is not a collapse. If they emanate merely from the high officials, it will be strange if the collapse do not come in five generations. When the State-edicts are in the hands of the subsidiary ministers, it will be strange if in three generations ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... projection of the moon's sumptuous personality. This was a city of Pretend, created by the hypnotism of moonlight.—Yet when I examined the moon she too seemed but a painting of a moon and the sky in which she lived a fragile echo of colour. If I blew hard the whole shy mechanism would collapse gently with a neat soundless crash. I must not, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... window and raised the blind half way. I examined the old man attentively. There was no doubt about the curious pallor of his skin. It was like the pallor of extreme collapse, save for the presence of a faint colour in his cheeks which seemed to lie as a bright transparency over a dead background. My fingers again sought his pulse. It was full and steady. As I counted it my ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... pounders were put into Hill 70 and another pair into the Turk Top Redoubt, and their gunners, of the 2nd Lowland Brigade R.F.A., came to live with us. The guns were well dug in, but there was a general feeling that if they fired, most of the trenches, which were only a few feet away, would inevitably collapse. At Hill 70 Captain Wightman and Captain Moir joined the Battalion, with very little to say in favour of the Egyptian climate and obviously feeling ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... merely. The doctor spoke a few quick words of encouragement to him, and stroked the bristling hair. But without much success. The collie seemed already beyond the reach of comfort such as that, and the collapse of the old dog followed indeed very ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... sternness of the ultimate shepherds. A strange life is theirs, taking them day after day into the bosom of homes prostrated by the emigrating throe. Does this matter-of-fact bearing conceal an infinite tenderness, a pity that dare not show itself for fear of unmanly collapse? Are they secretly broken by the sight of the desolate nursery, the dismantled crib, the forgotten clockwork monkey lying in a corner of the cupboard where the helpless Urchin laid it with care before he and his smaller sister were deported, to be out of the way in the final ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley |
