"Foothold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still held for him, Rheinberg and Neuss. On the other hand, his rival, Ernest of Bavaria; supported by Philip II., and the occasional guest of Alexander of Parma, had not yet succeeded in establishing a strong foothold in the territory. Two pauper archbishops, without men or means of their own, were thus pushed forward and back, like puppets, by the contending highwaymen on either side; while robbery and murder, under the name of Protestantism or Catholicism, were for a time the only ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Turkish fortress which seems to spring directly from the bosom of the Danube at a point where three curious and quarrelsome races come into contact, and where the Ottoman thought it necessary to have a foothold even in times of profound peace. To the traveller from Western Europe no spectacle on the way to Constantinople was so impressive as this ancient and picturesque fortification, suddenly affronting the vision with its odd walls, its minarets, its red-capped sentries, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... pedantry. In both these countries, though, Latin was still the language of the Church, of the universities, of all learned writing, and the means of international intercourse, and after the new humanism had once obtained a foothold it was welcomed by scholars as a great addition to existing knowledge. Erasmus, the foremost scholar of his day, not only labored hard to introduce the new learning in the schools, but welcomed the restored Roman tongue as an international ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... observance; and they were the keepers of the hearth-fire of the city, not the intermediaries between it and its gods. But the Vestals have no parallel in Greek life. Asiatic rites and devotions, it is true, from an early period obtained a foothold among the populace; but they were either discountenanced, or by being made part of the civic ritual were disarmed of their mystic or monastic elements. An epitaph in the Anthology commemorates two aged priestesses as ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... some means by which they could mount to the decks of the Boldero, but none was visible. It was like trying to scale a fifty-foot smooth steel wall. There was no place for a foothold. Again the sailor made some peculiar motions, and the lad puzzled over them. They had gone nearly around the wreck now, and as yet had seen no way in which to get at the gold. As they passed around the bow, which was in a deep shadow from a great rock, ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... community, their migration lacks the essential conditions which make alien immigration either acceptable or beneficial. So well is this appreciated on the Continent, that, even in the countries where anti-Semitism has no foothold, it is difficult for these fleeing Jews to obtain any lodging. America is ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... a word, then, it is always much easier to cut grass too late than too early; and I, under that evening and come back to these pleasant fields, looked at the grass and knew that it was time. June was in full advance: it was the beginning of that season when the night has already lost her foothold of the earth and hovers over it, never quite descending, but mixing sunset with ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... he lived before he came here. He's only a tramp, and you can't make anything else out of him. Some folks are never satisfied unless they are trying to make gentlemen out of gutter snipes. If we let such fellows get a foothold, there won't be any respectable society after a while; it will be all stable ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... the prostrate man, who was vainly striving to find foothold below the edge of the shelf, let go with one hand and quick as thought flung it over the speaker so that he got hold tightly by the tunic, growling fiercely ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... of Salerno had developed round a medical school. It was the first of the universities, and, in connection with its medical school, feminine education obtained a strong foothold. It is not surprising, then, that with the further development of universities in Italy, feminine education came to be the rule. This rule has maintained itself all down the centuries in Italy, so that there has not ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... other side of Headquarters dome, new squares of living domes were sprouting up daily. At this morning's count they housed fifty-two thousand people. The Hub's major industries and assorted branches of Federation government had established a solid foothold on Manon. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... that was bolted on the inside at the time of the murder. The windows are some forty feet from the ground; there is no rain-pipe near any of them; they are set flush in the wall, and there isn't a foothold for a fly on any part of that wall. The grates are modern, and there isn't room for a good-sized cat to crawl up any of the chimneys. Now, the question is, How did the murderer get in, and how did he ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... we hear of the landing of the Allies in Gallipoli, just two months after the unsupported naval attempt to force the Dardanelles. British and Australian and New Zealand troops have achieved the impossible by incredible valour in face of murderous fire, and a foothold has been won at tremendous cost of heroic lives. Letters from the Western front continue cheerful, but it does not need much reading between the lines to realise the odds with which our officers and men have to contend, the endless discomfort and unending din. ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... inadmissible, the American negro, who had never heard of Count Berchtold, and did not care whether Bosnia belonged to Austria or Siam, got his "chance." It was not the sort of chance that came to the makers of munitions—a chance to make millions. It was merely a widening of a very narrow foothold on life, a slightly better opportunity to make his way in ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... the motorman let fly the whirling rod; the over full cars started with a jerk—there was a howl, a shout, followed by a struggle to keep the equilibrium; an undersized Canuck was seen to be running madly alongside with one hand on the guard and endeavoring to get a foothold; he was hauled up unceremoniously by a dozen hands. The crowd watching them, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... very level to which Reason can surely climb by her own unaided strength may become a foothold for Faith to go further. Unless Wrong, Discord, and Death, are the normal permanent condition of things, then sorrow, too, is not the normal permanent state of the heart; but this merely remains a question, and to its answer no reason helps us. Age after age has passed with no variation ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... been wondering where to bestow herself, noticed the envying glances they cast in its direction. She was not withheld by their restraining fear, so running to the opposite side of the lodge, she climbed its sides, finding foothold in its bark covering, and soon was curled up comfortably, her hands about her knees, where she would miss nothing ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... balance is not exactly disturbed, but rather readjusted by some alien that seems to find a foothold through all opposition and establishes a place through pure vigor and sweetness of character. Of such is the apple tree that came out of the East with other beginnings of civilization, reaching the shores of Western Europe by way of Greece and Rome. Thence it passed with the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... answer generally that the Japanese policy should, I think, be that of keeping Americans and Europeans as much as possible at arm's length. In presence of the more powerful races your position is one of chronic danger, and you should take every precaution to give as little foothold ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... made a plan to seize upon Manassas as the centre of railroads, the true defence of Washington, and the firm foothold in Virginia. Nobody, or only few enemies, were in Manassas. McDowell shows his genuine military insight. Scott, and, as I am told, the whole senile military council, opposed McDowell's plan as being too bold. Do these mummies intend to ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... the open window. The moon still shone brightly on that angle of the house. We were a good sixty feet from the round, and, look where I would, I could see no foothold, nor as much as a crevice in ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his conscience, literary-artistic and simply human, entirely endorsing old Darco's reproof of his work and his evasions; with a financial crevasse at his feet, and Annette chopping away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face—he was disposed alike to remorse ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Now, by some chance, this light was gone, and he saw them instead as untutored and unwashed barbarians, filled with animal lusts and ferocities, struggling by violence and foul chicanery to secure a foothold in a country which did not belong to them—all rude tramps and robbers of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... effort, Douglas surmounted the third shoulder, he paused, appalled by the loneliness and danger of the position. The ridge had narrowed until its top offered barely a foothold, with sides dropping to unthinkable depths. The snow had blown clear and the wind was almost insupportable. A cedar stood before them like a sentinal guarding the eternal loneliness beyond. Tom made for this as if it were his last hope. As the horses brought up in ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... ground I never shall be able to stand the collision of the foe. So then, it is not my grasp of the blessed truth, God in Christ my Friend and Helper, but it is that truth which I grasp at, that makes me strong. Or, to put it into other words, it is the foothold, and not the foot that holds it, that ensures our standing firm. Only there is no steadfastness communicated to us from the source of all stability, except by way of our faith, which brings Christ into us. 'Watch ye; stand fast in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... about, to select from a number of opportunities. If he could manage to wait, even six months, some hospital place might turn up. His old associates at Philadelphia would have him in mind. He did not dare to write them of his necessity; even his friends would be suspicious of his failure to gain a foothold in this hospitable, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the moat of Caylus was rather a ticklish business, even with the aid of an improvised rope, for the face of the cliff was, for the most part, smooth, and afforded little in the way of foothold, but Lagardere was a trained athlete and a man of great physical strength, one that could use his feet with skill for purchase against the face of the rock, and he made his way dexterously to the ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... geography of the moon was enough to fill them with the greatest enthusiasm. But, while thousands were ready to investigate the mysterious visitor, one great difficulty stood in the way of all progress. It seemed impossible to get a foothold on the surface. The great globe rose from the waves on all sides at such an angle on account of its shape that a lodgment could not easily be made. Ships sailed under the overhanging sides, and in a calm sea ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... the thick red waters, we sat down and let the swift current flow by us. We dared not go deeper; we could feel the round stones grinding against each other as they were carried down, and we were all afraid. It was difficult to keep one's foothold, and Capt. Mellon's words were ever ringing in my ears, "He who disappears below the surface of the Colorado is never seen again." But we joined hands and ventured like children and played like children in these red waters and after all, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... slipped from under Teddy's feet, and, with the heavy burden bearing down upon him, he was unable to get sufficient foothold to save himself. ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... said Jack, as he and his brother rode out of the yard. "Especially did I think of home when the brig was dismasted by a tornado in the South Atlantic. We came as near going to the bottom that time as we could without going, and I promised myself that if I ever again got a foothold on solid ground, I would keep it; but here I am thinking of going to sea once more, as soon as I have had a ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... surrounded which was never tilled; Of spongy texture, yielding to the foot— Quite full of danger is this marshy spot. To this place WILLIAM once a fishing went, And, ere his patience was completely spent, Took up a fresh position; but, alas! His foothold proved but little else than grass. While sinking fast he, with a fluttering heart, Gave one quick spring and reached a firmer part. This proved a lesson which he ne'er forgot— He visited no ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... destroy the enemy's transports in that stream and some gunboats which I knew he was building. The navigation, however, proved so much better than had been expected that I thought for a time of the possibility of making this the route for obtaining a foothold on high land above Haines Bluff, Mississippi, and small class steamers were accordingly ordered for transporting an army that way. Major-General J. B. McPherson, commanding seventeenth army corps, was ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... wait for what the morning and the train might bring. The party had been a success, and Frank felt that his election to Congress was almost certain; but of what avail would all this be if he lost his foothold at Tracy Park, as he was sure to do if a woman appeared upon the scene. Both he and his wife had outgrown the life of eleven years ago, and could not go back to it without a struggle, and it is not strange if both wished that the troublesome brother had remained abroad instead of coming home ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... he, "we were glad to get foothold any where; for, not having lightened our machine sufficiently, we came down, with a considerable concussion, on a barren field, remote from any human habitation, and suffered more from hunger and cold, for nearly three days, than we had done from the perils and privations of the voyage. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... vocal challenge and bedevilment from his ancestral syringa bush on the other, and all between is a gap filled with a vista of rose-bushes—not marshalled in a garden together, but scattered here, there, and everywhere that a good exposure and deep foothold could ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... dramatic companies who introduced theatrical plays in the colonies. They went from London to Philadelphia, New York, Williamsburg (Va.), and Charleston (S. C.), but eventually established their strongest and most enduring foothold ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the bully! No, for I assure you I come willingly; I come wooed by Heaven knows what compulsion across ferns and cruets, table splashed and bottles smeared. I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous stability of the fabric; the spine tough as whalebone, straight as oak-tree; the ribs radiating branches; the flesh taut tarpaulin; the red hollows; the suck and regurgitation of the heart; while from above meat falls ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... the right and the left, and you will find no footprints or other marks anywhere. Go round there to the left, and you will be satisfied that the most experienced mountaineer that ever lived could not make a descent, or even anywhere get over the edge of the cliff. There is no ledge or foothold within ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... aboard the schooner Brawl, bound from Sydney to London. Last night I was thrown overboard by my shipmates and after floating about the deep for several hours I landed upon this pile of ruins surrounded by the sea. In making an investigation of the exterior I lost my foothold, fell into a crevice and breaking through a thin crust I landed in the outer passageway which finally led me into this room. I must confess that everything here is as inexplicable to me as I appear to you." As I spoke she seemed to be laboring under intense mental excitement ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... rate of growth of these Coral Reefs? We cannot, perhaps, estimate it with absolute accuracy, since they are now so nearly completed; but Coral growth is constantly springing up wherever it can find a foothold, and it is not difficult to ascertain approximately the rate of growth of the different kinds. Even this, however, would give us far too high a standard; for the rise of the Coral Reef is not in proportion to the height of the living Corals, but to their solid parts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... location with small foothold on Musandam Peninsula controlling Strait of Hormuz (17% of world's oil production transits this point going from Persian Gulf to ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... interested way. This guinea pig's name was Jeff, and he and I became good friends. A long-haired French rabbit was hopping about, and a tame white rat was perched on the shoulder of one of the boys, and kept his foothold there, no matter how suddenly the boy moved. There were so many boys, and the stable was so small, that I suppose he was afraid he would get stepped on if he went on the floor. He stared hard at ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... contracting disease of the anus and rectum do not cease with the period of infancy. The child is left pretty much to shift for itself as to regularity of eating and the evacuation of the contents of its bowels, wherein disease has already obtained a foothold. All kinds of foodstuffs, at all hours, with seeds, stones, etc., are poked into its stomach, followed by constipating remedies to quiet inevitable troubles, or brisk purgatives given with the hope of expelling the arrested contents of the bowels. Is it any wonder ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... either side. Firing commenced at seven in the morning, and was kept up till nightfall. All this time the British were exposed to a violent tropical downpour of rain, which rendered the abrupt declivity so slippery that it was almost impossible to maintain a foothold on it; and, finding he could make no impression on the enemy, the general, about 7 p.m., gave orders for ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... Peabody Seedling were the varieties generally grown. Recently some other varieties have been introduced, but are mostly confined to the hands of amateurs. The Monarch of the West has, however, certainly secured a strong foothold among the large growers. This berry commanded a much larger price in the market than the old varieties. I just remark respecting irrigation that, of course, as you will see, the object of planting upon ridges is to place the vines so high that when the water is let in, the berries will be above ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... the accuracy of the baseball pitcher that he was, hurled it at the swaying figure upon the barrel. The club caught Simmons fair in the mouth, who, being, none too firmly set upon his pedestal, itself affording a wobbling foothold, landed spatting and swearing in the arms of his friends below. With the mercurial temper characteristic of a crowd, they burst into a yell ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... neglected in France. We do not recollect to have met with him even in the "Causeries" of Ste. Beuve, who has ransacked the French Temple of Fame from garret to cellar for feuilleton materials; yet the "Legataire" kept a foothold on the stage for a hundred and twenty years. But the Temple of Fame is overcrowded. Every day some worthy fellow is turned out to make room for a new-comer. Our libraries are not large enough to hold the mob of authors who press in. What with newspapers, magazines, and the last new novel, few persons ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... limestone which juts out of the deep blue Spanish sea. Misty flakes of dispersing cloud above suggested the recent rain which had clothed its frequently barren sides with a mantle of verdure. A few bell-shaped blossoms hung over crevices of rock, fearless in the frail foothold of their thread-like stems, as innocent child-faces above a precipice. It was in this simple way, and by the isthmus of sand connecting it to the continent, long and level, like the dash Nature made after so grand a work, before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... ON THE COAST.—Far to the northeast explorers of another European nation by this time were seeking a foothold. When John Cabot came home from his first voyage to the Newfoundland coast, he told such tales of cod fisheries thereabouts, that three small ships set sail from England to catch fish and trade with the natives ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... weary with the limbs, But, while they slept, still hammered like a Troll, Building all night a bridge of solid dream Between him and some purpose of his soul, Or will to find a purpose. With the dawn 10 The sleep-laid timbers, crumbled to soft mist, Denied all foothold. But the dream remained, And every night with yellow-bearded kings His sleep was haunted,—mighty men of old, Once young as he, now ancient like the gods, And safe as stars in all men's memories. Strange sagas read he in their sea-blue eyes Cold as the sea, grandly compassionless; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of undressed blocks of red Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered two dormer windows, with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two great chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of nine executive departments established by the sovereign. Nominally the ministers are appointed and dismissed by the crown at will, but actually the parliamentary system has acquired sufficient foothold to impose upon the sovereign a considerable measure of restriction at this point. All decrees and orders must be countersigned by the head of one of the ministerial departments; and it is expressly stipulated that responsibility ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... but in reality carry him pick-a-pack safely to the further shore. He considered himself an athlete and wished to show "young England how they do things in Yankeeland," and with a shout he darted forward. Headlong he came to the spot above the water where no foothold was—a space too wide for even his long legs to cover, and all the ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... to the left? I dropped a big rock from the Point square on a rattler who was sunning himself there last spring. I can see a foothold all the way up the cliff. It can be done," he concluded, in a tone that made ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... he surmised that, once up there, one would become master of a pretty enough little plateau on which to sit; but his careful circumvallation could discover no possible method of ascent. The walls afforded no chance for a squirrel's foothold even. He began to doubt whether he had guessed aright as to the girl's whereabouts, and began carefully to examine the tops of the trees. Discovering nothing in them, he cast another puzzled glance at the top of the dike. ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... instantly and saw that one of his men who had lost his foothold had slipped down to the very edge of the precipice and was now hanging half over it. One leg and arm were over, and with the other he clung frantically to the ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... preserved the names of Buda and Pest, which they found for these two places. The origin of Pest proper is obscure, but the name, apparently derived from the old Slavonic pestj, a stove (like Ofen, the German name of Buda), seems to point to an early Slavonic settlement. The Romans never gained a foothold on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... needless to recount the successive failures of Spanish civilization and Christianity to get foothold on the domain now included in the United States. Not until more than forty years after the attempt of Ponce de Leon did the expedition of the ferocious Menendez effect a permanent establishment on the coast of Florida. In September, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... think there is a more striking architectural object in Rome. It is in perfect condition, just as little ruined or decayed as on the day when the builder put the last peak on the summit; and it ascends steeply from its base, with a point so sharp that it looks as if it would hardly afford foothold to a bird. The marble was once white, but is now covered with a gray coating like that which has gathered upon the statues of Castor and Pollux on Monte Cavallo. Not one of the great blocks is displaced, nor seems likely to be through all time to come. They rest one upon another, in straight ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... side in a wall, down which rolled enormous boulders and land-slides of loose earth. To portage goods up these walls was impossible. Fastening an eighty-foot tow-line to the bow, Mackenzie leaped to the declivity, axe in hand, cut foothold along the face of the steep cliff to a place where he could jump to level rock, and then, turning, signalled through the roar of the rapids for his men to come on. The voyageurs were paralyzed with fear. They stripped themselves ready to swim ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... abortive, owing to the blundering shortsightedness of the then Government, for which Lord Derby was chiefly responsible, but what little foothold we possess in New Guinea, is certainly due ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Lung. "Let Shan Tien give the feast and the time of acquiescence will have passed. . . . The foothold of to-morrow looms insecure, yet a very pressing message ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... buildings as the pyramids of Egypt and Ethiopia could have afforded no refuge of the kind. A few could stand upon their summits, supposing them to have lost their capstones, but it would require the wide ramps and terraces of the staged tower to afford a foothold for the population ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... with an act of aggression at Corea's expense, by seizing the important harbor of Fushan. Having thus secured a foothold on the mainland and a gateway into the kingdom, Fashiba hastened to invade Corea at the head of a large army. The capital was sacked and the tombs of Lipan's ancestors desecrated, while he himself fled to the Chinese court to implore the assistance of Wanleh. An army was ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... like a network of branching veins, make their devious way through crevice and cranny, splitting and uplifting the strongest slab, wherein one tiny crack suffices for the string-like fibres to gain foothold. Masks and arabesques, fruit and flowers, fabulous monsters and sacred emblems, encrust the grey balustrades and bas-reliefs of the noble stairways. Roof and column teem with richest ornament, for Hindu art had reached the climax of splendour when the great city, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... was saying, as Harkness dragged him on; "help Diane!" But the girl had sprung before them to gain a foothold and extend a helping hand. And they were back in the darkness of a rocky cave before the sunlit entrance was blocked by a hairy head and a horrible, slavering mouth on a body ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... shocking sound of the impact Stent wheeled from the abyss, then staggered back under the powerful shove from Von Glahn's nervous arm. Swaying, fighting frantically for foothold, there on the chasm's awful edge, he balanced for an instant; fought for equilibrium. Von Glahn, rigid, watched him. Then, deathly white, his young eyes looking straight into the eyes of his old classmate—Stent lost the fight, fell outward, wider, dropping back ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... the first step he determined to lead an army into Italy and assert his claim, inherited from his father, to the kingdom of Naples, which was in the hands of the house of Aragon.[258] While Italy had everything to lose by permitting a powerful monarch to get a foothold in the South, there was no probability that the various little states into which the peninsula was divided would lay aside their perpetual animosities and combine against the invader. On the contrary, Charles VIII was urged by some of the Italians ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... think they will not!" Mrs. Salisbury agreed with a short laugh, "inasmuch as they CANNOT, if they ever hope to get any foothold ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... the dust of documents had injured their health. The moustaches and beards on the lips of each, gave them also a manly appearance. They were all joyously ready to sacrifice themselves and their property for a great spiritual prize, yet looked as if they had a firm foothold in the midst of life; their hale, sensible faces showed no traces of enthusiasm; only the young Seigneur of Warmond's eyes sparkled with a touch of this feeling, while Janus Dousa's glance often seemed turned within, to seek things hidden in his own heart; and at such moments his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... own heart and the mournful sound of the pines whose loftier branches were stirring in the still air. Grasping the heavy bars I tried to climb the gate, but, as there were no projections on which it was possible to get a foothold, I found this an exhausting and difficult task. I climbed repeatedly several feet above the earth, only to lose my foothold and slide down again. Finally, by exerting all my strength, I succeeded in supporting myself with the edge of ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... like a wounded bull, while a bedraggled Nobby scrambled and blew and slipped and scratched, caring not at all what was his understanding, so long as it provided a foothold and kept his ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... foothold in Him outside of them. We are not the slaves of our circumstances, but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... quite a different appearance. True, there was castle wall and turret above, but on this, the weather side, there had likewise been a slight crumbling, which had been neglected, perhaps from over security, perhaps on account of the extreme difficulty of repairing, where there was the merest ledge for foothold above the precipitous quarry; indeed, the condition of the place might never even have been perceived by the inhabitants, as there were no traces of the place below ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that power is to obtain a foothold in the North Pacific, which shall connect Hong Kong with British Columbia, and events will be shaped as far as possible to secure that end. With France strongly fortified at Annam, and Russian power growing on the Amoor, the English are apprehensive that in a war with either of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Jalaloddin found that he was out of their reach, he stopped at a place where his horse found a foothold, and turned round toward his pursuers with looks of hatred and defiance. He then drew his bow, and began to shoot at them with his arrows, and he continued to shoot until all the arrows in his quiver were exhausted. Some of the more daring of the Monguls ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... I started, the fact of our dependence and the fact of our sinfulness. What absurdity it seems for a man about whom these two things are true, that, as I said, he began with a borrowed capital, and has only incurred greater debts in his transactions, there should be any foothold left in his own estimation on which he can stand and claim to be anything but the pauper that he is. Oh! brethren, of all the hallucinations that we put upon ourselves in trying to believe that things are as we wish, there is none more subtle, more obstinate, more deeply dangerous than this, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and imagining the worst, and, although there was not a minute of the day when their hearts were not aching, they managed to smile when the others were looking and to speak hopefully of the future. Under Betty's gallant leadership, they had set up hope in their hearts and refused to give despair a foothold. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... more and more into the sternness of his solitary wayfaring. In dealing with the ignoble wrangle with old Pheres the critic is hard set; but Balaustion, speaking as interpreter for Browning, explains that for a little the king lapses back from the firmer foothold which he had attained. Perhaps it would have been wiser to admit that Euripides has marred his own work by this grim tragic-comic encounter of crabbed age and youth. But it is true that one who has much to give, like Alkestis, gives freely; and one ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... first obtained a foothold in Europe through the dogma of Metempsychosis. It was introduced into the Hellenes by Pythagoras; but never became popular among the Greeks. This Metempsychosis (or the transmigration of souls) was believed by the Indians from the earliest period, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... to-day, growing and strengthening, the time is not coming when we no longer can boast over the people of the God-forsaken land? Mankind is much the same to-day and forever; so is government paternalism; once a foothold gained, it can only be washed out in blood. The Russians have been giving over their souls and their lives to their national fetich which has accepted their patriotic and contrite offerings, and is now leisurely devouring ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... decided me. It was a matter of history that famine, neither wide-spread nor local, ever gained a foothold where "Satsuma Emo" flourished. This year they were fatter and cheaper than ever before. I knew dozens of ways to fix them, natural and disguised; so I bought an extra supply and made up my mind to keep ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... prepared to accept the germ theory of disease to its fullest extent were shown to be true, it seems to be certain that if the invasion of these occult enemies present in the air is undertaken in insufficient force, or upon an animal in sufficiently robust health, they are refused a foothold and expelled; or, if they have secured a lodgment in the tissues, they, so to speak, may be laid hold of, and absorbed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... of the cliffs seemed to conceal no opening. I crept cautiously along the cliff-top, as near to the edge as I dared, till I was some twenty feet from the spot where I had heard the voice. Then I looked down again carefully, searching every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get down, there seemed to ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... confused to sure, but still one finds something like a foothold. I am thunderstruck, annihilated. I listened to Hooker's best friends but can hardly help crying. Hooker is a failure as a commander of a large army. Hooker is good for a corps or two, but not for the whole command and ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... trifle; it is only a thin veneering just to give a secure and comfortable foothold," remarked the professor. He paused at what looked like a trap-door in the deck ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... endeavors his foothold soon became more insecure and suddenly as the ground beneath him gave way George was thrown ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... the delicate mucous membrane. In self-protection it begins to secrete an excess of mucus and if the irritation is great enough, pus. The various bacteria are incidental. The tubercular bacillus is never able to gain a foothold in healthy lungs, but after degeneration of lung-tissue has taken place the lungs furnish a splendid home for this bacillus. The tubercular bacillus is a scavenger and therefore does not thrive in healthy bodies. It is the result of disease, ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... there was no heavy sea to break the vessel to pieces, and she was too substantial to go to pieces of her own account. The nearest island was little more than a barren rock. A few birds wheeled about over it, or sat perched upon its rugged points, but with that exception I doubt if it furnished a foothold for a living creature. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... their cause by impracticable demands. Make no claim which could not be won in a reasonable time. Take one step at a time, get a good foothold in it and advance carefully. Suffrage in municipal elections for property holders who could read, and had never been connected with crime, was the place to strike for the ballot. Say nothing about suffrage elsewhere until ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... up through the clouds. To portage baggage up such cliffs was impossible. Yet it was equally impossible to go on up the canyon, and MacKenzie's men became so terrified they refused to land. Jumping to foothold on the wall, a towrope in one hand, an ax in the other, MacKenzie cut steps in the cliff, then signaled above the roar of the rapids for the men to follow. They stripped themselves to swim if they missed footing, and obeyed, trembling in every limb. The towrope ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... stood still and looked at Herbert. Then the Spanish boy turned and flew over the rocks. Leaping from one slippery foothold to another, he rushed toward the cliffs, up the cliff road, on to the clusters of Chinese huts that made a little fishing-village by itself on the edge of the bay. Whatever Spanish or English vocabulary Timoteo used, he aroused two or three Chinamen to forsake ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... have occasion to note how Descartes, having thus secured one firm foothold and solid resting-place, outwent the farthest stretch of Archimedean ambition by using it, not as a fulcrum from whence to move the world, but as a site for logical foundations whereon he might, if he had persevered, have raised the superstructure of an universe ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... was brought into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who desired to obtain half the state of Lombardy by his intervention. I will not blame the course taken by the king, because, wishing to get a foothold in Italy, and having no friends there—seeing rather that every door was shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles—he was forced to accept those friendships which he could get, and he would have succeeded very quickly in ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the open. Here a carpet of coarse grass peeping through the thin layer of snow gave insecure foothold. He stumbled as he pursued his way. He was walking in the teeth of the northwesterly blast now and he could scarcely breathe, for the great gusts caught his throat, causing ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... orbit a million and a quarter miles from the great planet. Far off to the west, separated by two million miles of empty space, floated Ganymede, the third satellite, on which the people of the United States were now gaining a foothold with their ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... second prophet of Allah, and summoning all the warriors to rally around the chieftain commissioned by heaven to deliver the land from the threatened bondage to Russia. These missionaries in arms having friends and relatives in all the tribes, obtained everywhere a hearing and a foothold. The aouls which refused to join their party were threatened with destruction; and if they persisted in their refusal, their flocks and herds were driven off, their lands and vineyards laid waste, and their habitations razed to the ground. From others whose ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... in exchange for the most trifling pecuniary service, and torment themselves, moreover, that the compensation is so mean. I smiled at Guy's naivete, but none the less turned it to account. From the foothold thus gained, I rapidly extended my influence over his entire nature. My larger experience enabled me to complete his unfinished thoughts, to sympathize with his scarcely conscious feelings, to subtly impress ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... space and foothold, people swarmed, little people, small and minutely clear, except where the sunset touched them to indistinguishable gold. They clambered up the tottering walls, they clung in wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. They swarmed along the edges of the circle ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... ant-hill, but it was hollow, and the crust collapsed under me. I looked down and found that several snakes were crawling and writhing about my feet. I had some difficulty in getting out, for as soon as I got foothold on the edge it broke under my weight. The weather was cold, and the snakes had taken refuge ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... mammals become black; the result would be that they would all be eliminated by selection, and that no mammals would be able to live there at all. But in most cases a certain percentage of animals resists these strong influences, and thus selection secures a foothold on which to work, eliminating the unfavourable variation, and establishing a useful colouring, consistent with what is required for the ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... air of confidence about those letters of Clapp's," said Harry, "as if he felt himself on a firm foothold. It ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... show that it is destined to be the medium of a world's intercourse, and that it very suitably belongs to Israel, in whose hand will be the destiny of the world. It is the lion of languages. It will grow anywhere, and by reason of its tenacity when once it gets a foothold it abides. It is peculiarly suited to the humanities of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it goes, it sounds ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... as important to England and France as it is to us. It is hardly to be doubted that they will postpone all international questions, and secure what has never before been offered to them—a controlling foothold here. How many times I have spoken to you in the old Executive Chamber of the importance to the whole world of the possession of Mexico—and of the power it would infallibly give to this continent, as in Europe to those who possessed it. And ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... the face of the rocks with hand and foot, now swarming down by the ropes alone, until a cry from Robbie warned me that I was coming to the end of the lines. Fortunately I was able to reach a ragged point where I could once more get a firm foothold. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... lightly from one turf of earth to another, now balancing himself on a rotten stump or root, now walking the length of some fallen tree, so decayed and water-eaten that it mashed to a pulp beneath his feet, and then leaping to some other precarious foothold, progressing rapidly all the time and with such skill that he hardly ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... we got a foothold in the Kurdish Hills, Soane was sent up to administer the captured territory. His headquarters were at Khanikin, twenty-five miles from Kizil Robat and but a short distance from the Persian frontier. One morning during the time that I was stationed in that district ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... other lions in the way, but he resolved not to be deterred by the fear of encountering them; he dreaded far more falling into the hands of the Arabs. He expected every moment to reach the shore, when one of his feet stuck fast in the mud. He endeavoured to obtain a firmer foothold by pressing down the reeds so that he might stand upon them, but this caused considerable delay, and in his efforts he was nearly falling on his face into the water. At length he succeeded in drawing out his foot, ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... touch, and that each mountain was supported by a rocky column beneath its base which extended far down into the black pit below. From the land side it seemed impossible to get across the gulf or, succeeding in that, to gain a foothold on any of ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... forestalled us. Uncle Jake was pleased. He laughed hoarsely, and the echo of it was not unlike the natural noises of the place. "Us'll make a start there," he said, pointing to a ledge between which and ourselves was a wide sheet of water. "Yu follow me an' feel for a foothold wi' your pole. Don't yu step ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... night. He felt that he had been belittled to the extremest point, and that there was not a foothold left for his dignity. His soul was incised and chafed, and he lay awake thinking that degradation of himself and his office could ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... The defeat of our common enemies imposes on us the sacred duty of feeding ourselves once more. 'There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to——Oh!" For in his desire to stir his audience, Mr. Lavender had reached out too far, and losing foothold on his polished bedroom floor, was slipping down into the lilac-bush. He was arrested by a jerk from behind; where Blink, moved by this sudden elopement of her master, had seized him by the nightshirt tails, and was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is proof, however, that the flower does possess some "secret virtue," for if the plant be immersed in glycerine the preservative takes the hue of the flower. Nature having ordained that the plants should be elusive, they appear in remote spots and unlikely situations with foothold among loose and gritty fragments of rock, and with cessation of the sustaining rains disappear, each having borne but a single leaf and produced but a solitary flower. The leaf does not seem to be attractive to insects, nor is the flower despoiled or the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... full speed, floundering into pools, breaking through bushes, and finally scrambled up the steep embankment. How to board the train seemed a problem which was insuperable, if the cars were moving at any speed. There was little foothold by the side of the track, and undoubtedly the train was moving quickly, for now the noise of it was a dull roar, and he, who was not wholly unacquainted with certain unauthorized forms of travel, could judge to within a mile an hour the rate it ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... the absorption of the feeble remnant with the stronger tribe. This was certainly the case with the Indian tribes of the northwest territory. Ohio was the battleground for destructive warfare between the Indian tribes long before the white man gained a foothold on its soil. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... government under Salisbury, and between the three countries a secret pact was made to repay themselves. Venezuela is not seldom reluctant to settle her obligations, and she was slow upon this occasion. It was the Kaiser's chance—he had been trying it already at other points—to slide into a foothold over here under the camouflage of collecting from Venezuela her just debt to him. So with warships he and his allies established what he called a pacific blockade ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... hours shall be mine." And I wondered if indeed he actually meant them to be last hours. For my part, I certainly meant nothing of the sort. Mrs. Bal, or no Mrs. Bal, Aline or no Aline, Book or no Book, I didn't intend to walk out of Barrie's life without trying to win a foothold in it for ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... attention had anyone been at hand, I succeeded in fixing one of the iron hooks attached to the rope to the ledge of the window. Then, after a strain to test the rope, I let myself swing across the chasm, and found foothold on the opposite ledge. Once there matters were easy, and in a trice I had ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... survive the loss of friends who may die of any acute disease, under a treatment such as that prescribed by Homoeopathy. It is doubtful how far cases of this kind will be trusted to its tender mercies, but wherever it acquires any considerable foothold, such cases must come, and with them the ruin of those who practise it, should any highly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... constellation presently detached itself, and its orbit evidently would intersect our foothold. It came nearer out of the night, till I could see plainly that it appeared to be a long section of a well-lighted street, say, like a length of Piccadilly. It approached end-on to where I stood, and at last impinged. It actually was a length of street, and I could continue my walk. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... key to all their thoughts. For them the promise of spring is a grim and a sinister thing; to them the springy green turf carpet on the fields means ground fit to bear the weight of teams and guns, dry enough to give firm foothold to the ranks of infantry charging across the death-trap of the neutral ground, where clogging, wet, slippery mud adds to the minutes under the hail of fire and every minute there in the open means hundreds of lives lost. The hard, dry road underfoot means merely that ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... cartridge-boxes on their shoulders, the column pushed cheerfully into the rushing current. The men as they entered the water joined each other in sets of four in a close embrace, which enabled them to retain a foothold and successfully resist the force of the flood. When they were across I turned the column down the left bank of Elk River, and driving the enemy from some slight works near Estelle ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... around the little valley, calling them to come closer. They came flying toward us and crowded upon the nearer crags just beyond the pool, clutching the precipitous sides, and scrambling for a foothold wherever they could. A hundred or more found place on the ledge with us, or above or below it wherever a slight footing could be found on the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... discordant note, as it were, being struck in our intercourse, when Broechner, despite the doubts and objections I brought forward, always took it for granted that I shared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was still tossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But the confidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had an attraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfully prejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of a lifetime behind him, he looked down from superior heights on the sympathies ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... times. Near by, silvery plumes of pampas grass gently swayed on their reed-like stems. Even the garden was not without splashes of color, where, between rows of vegetables, grew pale, pink-petaled poppies, seeming to have scarcely a foothold in the rich soil. But the daintiest, sweetest bed of all, and the one that Mary enjoyed most, was where the lilies of the valley grew in the shade near a large, white lilac bush. Here, on a rustic bench beneath an old apple tree, stitching on her ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... may now and then stir up a Melius or a Manlius, which, if the Commonwealth be not provided with some kind of dictatorian power, may be dangerous, though it has been seldom or never successful; because to property producing empire, it is required that it should have some certain root or foothold, which, except in land, it cannot have, being otherwise as it were ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... out. Chaos and ruin reign supreme. Headlong steeps yawn beside your path, losing their depths in darkness. Great fragments of rock cover all the ground, lie heaped, pile upon pile, jagged, gray, tilted into a thousand sharp angles, refusing a foothold, or offering it treacherously. Wild work has been here; and these gigantic wrecks bear silent witness of the uproar. It seems but a pause, not a peace. Agiocochook, Great Mountain of Spirits, rendezvous ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... reason why alternations of the type fot: fet and mus: mis might not have become established as a productive type of number distinction in the noun. As a matter of fact, it did not so become established. The fot: fet type of plural secured but a momentary foothold. It was swept into being by one of the surface drifts of the language, to be swept aside in the Middle English period by the more powerful drift toward the use of simple distinctive forms. It was too late in the day for our language to be seriously interested in such pretty symbolisms as foot: ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... hesitate to appropriate to themselves the old holy places of the country, neither did they feel any difficulty in instituting new ones. In Gilgal and Shiloh, in the fixed camps where, in the first instance, they had found a permanent foothold in Palestine proper, there forthwith arose important centres of worship; so likewise in other places of political importance, even in such as only temporarily come into prominence, as Ophrah, Ramah, and Nob near Gibeah. And, apart from the greater cities with their more or ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... a more secure foothold upon the stairway; and in some instances stairs have been protected by covering the treads with boards of hard wood, containing grooves about three-eighths of an inch deep, and of similar width, with a space of half an inch between them. These ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... of inlet or indentation in the rock-wall, which rises so steeply up to the plain above that, though covered with grass, it seems hardly to afford foothold for goats. No man in his senses would venture to descend from above in a straight line, nor even by zigzag, were it not for the fact that here and there through the smooth green surface rocks protrude which would break ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... punish not the worst sailors, but the best! The two outermost men on the mizzen-top yard of the Hermione that night, determined to escape the threatened flogging. They made a desperate spring to get over their comrades crowding into the ratlines, missed their foothold, fell on the quarter-deck beside their furious captain, and were instantly killed. The captain's epitaph on the unfortunate sailors was, "Throw ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... Engineer of the Trinity House was a man of few words. He and Taffy had spent the afternoon clambering about the rocks below the light-house, peering into its foundations. Here and there, where weed coated the rocks and made foothold slippery, he took the hand which Taffy held out. Now and then he paused for a pinch of snuff. The round of inspection finished, he took ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... principle of contract, by which alone any tenant is to be permitted to occupy land. There is to be no foothold in the island, from the centre all round to the sea, from the top of the highest mountain to the shore at low-water-mark, for any Irishman in his native land, unless he obtains it by contract from a landlord ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... a narrow part of the path and overlooking a deep chasm, one of the hind feet of the donkey slipped, and with an involuntary shudder, I shut my eyes to meet my expected doom; but fortunately the little fellow gained his foothold, and in all probability saved us both from a premature death. After we had passed over this dangerous place, I dismounted, and as soon as my feet had once more gained terra firma, I resolved that I would never again ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... by after Spain had lost her foothold on the American continent, and she still held her West Indian empire. She misgoverned the islands as she had misgoverned the continent; and in the islands, as once upon the continent, her own children became her deadliest foes. But generation succeeded generation, and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... on which Trewavas had landed was wet and covered with slippery seaweed. Experienced and cautious, he waited for a moment to make sure of his foothold, well knowing the dangers of slipping. Peril was nearer him than he knew. A roller came breaking in, sending a spurt of water right over the spot where he was standing. So precarious was his footing that he did not dare ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... written to the Secretary of the Navy with Caesar-like conciseness: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours!" By land, too, the British had been met and beaten back at every point, till now they were without a foothold on the disputed ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... recovered. If there was any change in his manner to Jo, it was too slight to be seen, though it was felt, and was, after all, the carelessness of a person certain of his foothold in her good graces, rather than the evident withdrawal of attention,—which I could have pardoned even then, had it been the result of honest regret for past carelessness, and stern resolution to repair that past. Whatever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... destruction. I could not see anything, the flood poured down savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was not until 1749, however, that the trustees yielded to the request. In 1755 the legislature passed an act that regulated the conduct of the slaves, and in 1765 a more regular code was adopted. Thus did slavery finally gain a foothold in what was destined to become one of the most important of the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... foreign ports, inspects all ships that enter American harbors, and holds them in quarantine until they and their passengers are given a clean bill of health. Cholera and other dangerous diseases have thus been prevented from gaining a foothold on ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... almost wild, was ready to leap into it after him, thinking he must be sucked back with it, but behold! he still remained clinging to the rock. Instinct seemed to serve him, for he had stuck his knife into the rock and was holding on by it. There seemed no foothold, and while Lanty was deliberating how to go to his assistance, another wave washed him off and bore him to the next rock, which was only separated from the mainland by a channel of smoother water. He tried to catch at a floating plank, but in vain; however, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... either through mistake or design, made several provoking blunders. He seemed to use his utmost endeavors to step into the tracks of those before him, but instead of succeeding, was sure to place his foot a good distance from it; and losing his foothold when about in the center of the stream, came down with an ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... this they rented. Mason Stolpe wanted to have the young couple to live out by the North Bridge, "among respectable people," but Pelle had become attached to this quarter. Moreover, he had a host of customers there, which would give him a foothold, and there, too, were the canals. For Pelle, the canals were a window opening on the outer world; they gave his mind a sense of liberty; he always felt oppressed among the stone walls by the North Bridge. Ellen let him choose—it was indifferent to her where they lived. She would gladly have gone ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... pathetic to see intelligent, capable men bending their energies not to leading wholesome, well-rounded, serviceable lives but to gaining a slender foothold among those who are far less worthy of emulation than themselves and with whom they have nothing whatsoever in common except a despicable ambition to display their wealth and to demonstrate ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... white and gray, No shadows—merely half-obliterated forms melting into the fog and slush. Everything is in a state of disintegration, and one's foothold gives way at every step. It is hard work for the poor snow-shoer who stamps along through the slush and fog after bear-tracks that wind in and out among the hummocks, or over them. The snow-shoes sink deep ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... ford! There, there is neither body nor mind: and where is the place that shall still the thirst of the soul? You shall find naught in that emptiness. Be strong, and enter into your own body: for there your foothold is firm. Consider it well, O my heart! go not elsewhere, Kabr says: "Put all imaginations away, and stand fast ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... time the Plymouth colony made a move to obtain a foothold upon the Connecticut. To secure the color of a title, the colony purchased of a company of Indians who had been driven from their homes by the all-victorious Pequods, a tract of land just above fort Hope, embracing the territory where the town of Windsor now stands. Lieutenant ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... found land of Virginia; and to trace the gradual geographical development of that country out of the unlimited 'Terra Florida' of Juan Ponce de Leon, through the French planting and the Spanish rooting out of the Huguenot colony down to the successful foothold of the English in Wingandacoa under Raleigh's patent, I little suspected either the extent of the research I was drifting into, or the success that ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... see how you'll manage it then," said Beth. "There isn't foothold for a man to get out of the attic-window." Having spoken, she strolled off with an air of indifference, and disappeared. She was a heroine of romance now, going to do a great deed; and before she was missed, the horrified spectators saw her climbing out of the front attic-window ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... on the arm of her husband, and clinging to his support, both from affection and a dread of the motion of the vessel, Jane ventured with one of the ladies to attempt a walk round the deck of the ship. Unaccustomed to such an uncertain foothold, the walkers were prevented falling by the kind interposition of a gentleman, who for the first time had shown himself among them at that moment. The accident, and their situation, led to a conversation which was renewed ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... other, by hook or by crook, to get possession of it. In truth, they are a wonderful and all-prevalent people; of that class who only require an inch to gain an ell; or a halter to gain a horse. From the time they first gained a foothold on Plymouth Rock, they began to migrate, progressing and progressing from place to place, and land to land, making a little here and a little there, and controverting the old proverb, that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Hence they have ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... it sufficed. For the most part, Lady Joan sat with lids dropped over her burning eyes. She tried to force herself not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for. They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. There had been hours too many in which she would have been glad—even with ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... read with advantage the exquisitely pathetic lines in which the poet pictures the desolation and ruin of the rural paradise, and perhaps conclude therefrom that, when glen and strath are depleted of their inhabitants, and these latter driven over the seas to seek a foothold in strange lands, it is the very heart's blood of Britain that ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes |
