"Precarious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... established without some alarm, though I can hardly suppose that Lady Susan's plans extend to marriage. I wish you could get Reginald home again on any plausible pretence; he is not at all disposed to leave us, and I have given him as many hints of my father's precarious state of health as common decency will allow me to do in my own house. Her power over him must now be boundless, as she has entirely effaced all his former ill-opinion, and persuaded him not merely to forget but to justify her conduct. Mr. Smith's account of her proceedings at Langford, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... what I ask, won't you? It's a ripping feeling being independent (EVANGELINE passes the window) and earning money, and I want to go on at it—(He glances out of the window). Here comes Vangy. Now leave it to her. Novel writing is a frightfully precarious show and she's a woman ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... somewhat precarious source from which to derive an income, so Vandeloup soon found himself pretty hard up, and was at his wit's end how to raise money. His gay life cost him a good deal, and Kitty, of course, was a source of expense, although, poor girl, she never went anywhere; but there ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... indignation that Laurier should pass them by to associate with his former enemies. They did not realize the political necessity that controlled Laurier's course. Laurier had great need to hold his new allies for his position in Quebec for the first year or so of office was precarious. The Manitoba school question had still to be settled. Laurier was political realist enough to know that he would have to take what he could get and this he would have to dress up and present to the public as his own child. He knew that the bishops, chagrined, ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... which I proceed, are good, and my method clear, and warrantable, the subsequent histories will in consequence of it receive great illustration. But should it be my misfortune to have my system thought precarious, or contrary to the truth, let it be placed to no account, but be totally set aside: as the history will speak for itself; and may ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... body. There is no distinction on the face of our experiences; one is vivid indeed, and one dull, and one pleasant, and another agonising to remember; but which of them is what we call true, and which a dream, there is not one hair to prove. The past stands on a precarious footing; another straw split in the field of metaphysic, and behold us robbed of it. There is scarce a family that can count four generations but lays a claim to some dormant title or some castle and estate: a claim not prosecutable in any court of law, but flattering ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... store, the most precarious position among the besiegers, Red Connors and Lanky Smith were ensconced and commanded a view of the entire length of the barroom. They could see the dark mass they knew to be the rear door and derived a great ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... there you have the explanation. I had only my theory to work upon even after Mme. Gobin's evidence. But as it happened it was the right one. Meanwhile, of course, I made my inquiries into Wethermill's circumstances. My good friends in England helped me. They were precarious. He owed money in Aix, money at his hotel. We knew from the motor-car that the man we were searching for had returned to Aix. Things began to look black for Wethermill. Then you gave me ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of South's death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking about in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases. But having naturally succeeded to these properties through his ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... you must not yet see Antony. He who began this mischief, 'Tis just he tempt the danger; let him clear you: And, since he offered you his servile tongue, To gain a poor precarious life from Caesar, Let him expose that fawning eloquence, And speak ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... for Egypt. That there was peril in such a step he was well aware. Not merely could Artemisia, if recaptured, receive any form whatsoever of brutal punishment, but he, as the abettor of her flight, would be liable to a heavy penalty. Slave property was necessarily very precarious property, and to aid a slave to escape was an extremely heinous crime. "So many slaves, so many enemies," ran the harsh maxim; and it was almost treason to society for a freedman to aid a servant to ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... the only object discerned by the 'Wise of this World,' in this twofold union of the 'Zodiacal' and 'Cometical' systems: yet it is nevertheless a most 'Thrilling Warning,' to all the inhabitants of this precarious and transitory EARTH. We have no authorized intimation or reasonable prospective contemplation, of 'current time' beyond a year 1860, of the present century; or rather, except 'the interval which may now remain ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... reason," Cuthbert agreed. "It was one of the points for which Cumming and I, talking it over, could see no motive. Certainly he would wish that if anyone said to him you ought to have prevented Mr. Hartington buying those shares when you knew that he was in a precarious state of health, to be able to reply that when the shares were bought he had not the slightest idea of his being in anything but the best ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... immediately to have gone abroad; but the indisposition of his mother made him unwilling to leave the kingdom till her health seemed in a situation less precarious. That time, however, came not; the Winter advanced, and she grew evidently worse. He gave over, therefore, his design till the next Spring, when, if she were able, it was her desire to try the South of France for her recovery, whither ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... method of existence had been possible for them. In the surroundings in which their forefathers had lived the arts of peace had been carried on in a civilisation to which there had been none comparable in the world as it then existed; on all this the Moslem had now to turn his back, and to earn a precarious living by the strong hand. War, sanguinary and incessant, was henceforward to be his lot, and it must be said that he turned to this ancient avocation with a zest which left but little to be desired from the point of view of those by whom he was led. In the new life of bloodshed and adventure he ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... who was certainly of milder mood; whereas Bill seemed a most unalluring example of the virtue of Temperance. It is true that he had only been "Blue Ribbon" since the end of his Christmas bout—that is, for nearly a fortnight—and Virtue, a precarious tenant, was not yet comfortable in her ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... shown a moment's hesitation, nor did he now though the path was dangerously narrow and rocky, overhanging unfathomable abysses of dark water. But Christina was in mortal terror, both for herself and Andrew. She did not dare to call his name, lest, in the sudden awakening he might miss his precarious foothold, and fall to unavoidable death. She found it almost impossible to follow him nor indeed in her ordinary frame of mind could she have done so. But the experience, so strange and thrilling, had lifted her in a measure above ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... had ever known, to Dolly's apprehension. How she and the rest were ever to get on board was an insoluble problem to her, as to most of them; and the chair that was presently lowered along the ship's side to receive them, seemed a very precarious sort of means of transport. However, the getting aboard was safely accomplished; one by one they were hoisted up; and Dolly's feet stood upon the great main deck. And the first view was perfectly satisfactory, and even went far beyond her imaginings. She found herself standing under a ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... precarious nineties, a few men wrestled with the big vision of a horseless age. Down in Ohio and Indiana were Winton and Haynes; Duryea was in Pennsylvania; over in Michigan were Olds, Ford, Maxwell, with the brilliant Brush, dreaming mechanical dreams; in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... of hogs and cows is true also of hens. The common opinion that the farm-raised hen that has free range is healthier or happier than her sister in a well-ordered hennery is not based on facts. Freedom to forage for one's self and pick up a precarious living does not always mean health, happiness, or comfort. The strenuous life on the farm cannot compare in comfort with the quiet house and the freedom from anxiety of the well-tended hen. The vicissitudes of life are terrible for the uncooped chicken. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... particular starts with albuminoid materials. Many larvae adhere to the egg-food, many adult insects do likewise. But the struggle to fill the belly, which after all is the struggle for life, demands something better than the precarious hazards of the chase. Man, at first a ravenous hunter after game, brought the flock into existence and turned shepherd to avoid a time of dearth. An even greater progress inspired him to scrape the earth and to sow seed, which assures him of a living. The evolution from scarcity to moderation and ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... States was supposed to render the measure of domestic emancipation dangerous, if not impracticable. Yet those who had the misfortune to be subjected to this evil, would willingly have commuted a species of precarious and artificial property for any other more substantial in itself, and more consonant with their own moral feelings. It has since been the frequent effort of Southern legislation to diminish the quantity of the evil, which, it is was supposed, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... th' unknown, precarious sea, And down the unbounded winds adventurous roam, Searching the world's horizons for a home, A haven for the heart of liberty:— Boaster of freedom, found no longer free, What vaporous phantom from time's ocean-foam Blurs the translucence of th' eternal dome Where sang the burning stars that ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... French monarchy; and although, by the peace of Nimeguen, part of his acquisitions in Flanders was abandoned, enough was retained by the devouring monarchy to deprive the Dutch of the barrier they had so ardently desired, and render their situation to the last degree precarious, in the neighbourhood of so formidable a power. The heroic William, indeed, had not struggled in vain for the independence of his country. The distant powers of Europe, at length wakened to a sense of their danger, had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... maintained at the expense of the company, and furnished with suitable clothing and equipments. His probation was generally passed at the interior trading posts; removed for years from civilized society, leading a life almost as wild and precarious as the savages around him; exposed to the severities of a northern winter, often suffering from a scarcity of food, and sometimes destitute for a long time of both bread and salt. When his apprenticeship ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Brotherton Hunt, of which Sir Simon Bolt was the master, at Cross Hall Gate. The grandfather of the present Germains had in the early part of the century either established this special pack, or at any rate become the master of it. Previous to that the hunting probably had been somewhat precarious; but there had been, since his time, a regular Brotherton Hunt associated with a collar and button of its own,—a blue collar on a red coat, with B. H. on the buttons,—and the thing had been done well. They had four days a week, with ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... solid.' - That's piling it up mountaynious, ain't it? - 'The students were no longer dispersed through the streets and lanes of the city, dwelling in insulated houses, halls, inns, or hostels, subject to dubious control and precarious discipline.' - That's stunnin', isn't it? just like those Times fellers write. - 'But placed under the immediate superintendence of tutors and governors, and lodged in comfortable chambers. This was little less than an academical revolution; and a new order of things may be dated ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... children pleased to see them smile and sometimes to hear them laugh. They were all getting better; Valentine took care they should not want for amusement, and Crayshaw, who, to do him justice, had not yet heard of little Janie's death or of Nancy's extremely precarious state, did not fail to write often, and bestow upon them all the nonsense he could think of. After his short sojourn in Germany, he had been sent back to Harrow, and there finding letters from the Mortimers awaiting him, had answered ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... which lay stretched across it. Without hesitation or difficulty the natives of the country passed over, trusting themselves without apparent concern to walk at that tremendous height along the rough surface of the primitive bridge, which afforded so uncertain and precarious a foothold. The captain, having the nerves and nimbleness of a sailor, followed them fearlessly and safely. But for the Caliph the adventure was extremely perilous. However, seeing the others cross, with his wonted intrepidity and hardihood he ventured to follow them. But on reaching the middle ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... himself, with great delicacy of honor, represented to us the evil consequences that must ensue from the continuance of this practice,—since, by suffering the principal officers of the government to depend for the support of their dignity on the precarious fund of perquisites, they in a manner oblige them to pursue oppressive and corrupt measures, equally injurious to the country and the Company; and they accordingly assigned twelve lac of rupees for the maintenance and support of the said Mahomed Reza Khan, and two other principal ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the world's position; how, indeed, we are dependent for life, and all that now is, upon the small matter of the tilt of the poles; and that we, as men, are products, as it were, not only of earth's precarious position, but of her more precarious tilt."—W. L. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... life than any white person in the West. Both tribes were friendly and peaceable, but there were bad Indians, half-breeds, and outlaws that made the trading-post a venture Withers had long considered precarious, and he wanted to move and intended to some day. His nearest neighbors in New Mexico and Colorado were a hundred miles distant and at some seasons the roads were impassable. To the north, however, twenty miles ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... procured for Alonzo, who succeeded to the precarious throne of the Christians, in the Asturias, about 795, the epithet of the Chaste, was not universal in his family. By an intrigue with Sancho Diaz, Count of Saldana, or Saldenha, Donna Ximena, sister of this virtuous prince, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... taken up his position. "A very nasty case." He was a brusque little man with a pair of keen black eyes, which he turned on the blind man curiously. "An artery cut by bullet. Small artery. Your daughter most cleverly stopped bleeding. Many thanks to her. Patient lost gallons of blood. Precarious position—very. No danger from wound now. Exhaustion only. Should he bleed again—death. But he won't; artery tied up securely. Miss Marbolt says you desire patient removed to usual quarters. I say no! Remove him—artery break afresh—death. Sheriff, I order distinctly ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... permission to enter, followed by the other trio of flushed beauties. To the outlaw chief it was at once apparent with what Dutch courage they had been fortifying themselves to some resolve. It was characteristic of him, though he knew on how precarious a thread his life was hanging, that disgust at the foul breaths with which they were polluting the atmosphere was his ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... tenure by which Englishmen in the public service held their posts became the subject of debates in the Union Parliament, and the employment of Government servants of colour was decidedly precarious. They were swept out of the Railway and Postal Service with a strong racial broom, in order to make room for poor whites, mainly of Dutch descent. Concession after concession was wrung from the Government by fanatical Dutch postulants for office, for Government doles and ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... to the pleasures of possession, seeing that they are often difficult of attainment and always precarious, we must be moderate in their pursuit and make the most of such as fall to our lot. Contentment here is everything, and contentment is the result of an even balance between desire and fulfilment, the former being always ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the house to the other, and in the passage were three leaded lattice-windows of greenish glass, plentifully sprinkled with blobs and nodes, giving on the long inn-yard. The room was thus admirably situated for people in our precarious position, having a look-out back and front, and a way of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... reason, or—the brothers Quick escaped. But here is a list of the men who were aboard when she sailed from Hong-Kong. She was, I have already told you, a low-down tramp steamer, evidently picking up a precarious living between one far Eastern port and another—a small vessel. Her list includes a master, or captain, and a crew of eighteen—I needn't trouble you with their names, except in two instances, which I'll refer to presently. But here are the names of Noah Quick, Salter Quick—set down as passengers. ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... British principles of ancestral wisdom, Philip Christy would probably never have seen anything more of the distinguished-looking stranger had it not been for a passing accident of muscular action, over which his control was distinctly precarious. He happened in brushing past to catch the stranger's eye. It was a clear blue eye, very deep and truthful. It somehow succeeded in riveting for a second Philip's attention. And it was plain the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... last and nothing remained but the narrow channel of the brook itself, the smooth stones making a precarious and uncertain footing for the adventurous explorer. How soothing was the ceaseless plash of that little stream, fretting its moss-grown banks and dashing in miniature surge against the stones in its path! What infinite peace reigned in this place, around which the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of the bumblebees; they are the creatures of a summer. In August, when the flowers fail, the colony breaks up, they desert the nest and pick up a precarious subsistence on asters and thistles till the frosts of October cut them off. You may often see, in late September or early October, these tramp bees passing the night or a cold rain-storm on the lee side of a thistle-head. The queen bee alone survives. You ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... references might be obscure, but he helped Drew transfer Croxton from the precarious balance in the wounded man's own saddle to Drew's hold, and then rode at a walking pace beside the scout while Boyd trailed with the ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... may lightly throw off a sonnet to the sunset or to the nocturnal gale, while another may seek refuge in her water-colours or her lute. They are all dignified and resolute in the most distressing situations, yet they weep and faint with wearisome frequency. Their health and spirits are as precarious as their easily extinguished candles. Yet these exquisitely sensitive, well-bred heroines alienate our sympathy by their impregnable self-esteem, a disconcerting trait which would certainly have exasperated heroes less perfect and more human than Mrs. Radcliffe's Theodores and Valancourts. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Hyria and Trichonis and Mount Aracynthus, forms a rich agricultural country. The northern and eastern regions are broken by an extensive complex of chains and peaks, whose rugged limestone flanks are clad at most with stunted shrubs and barely leave room for a few precarious mule-tracks. These heights often rise in the frontierranges of Tymphrestus, Oxia and Corax to more than 7000 ft.; the snow-capped pinnacle of Krona attains to 8240 ft. A few defiles pass through this barrier to the other side of the north ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... God be my witness. Ah! but you say you will constrain yourself to serve me: to what end? to do it on the third essay, and raise it by stroke of baton? I doubt not you are become a perfect knight since last I saw you. Begone, and constrain yourself to live; for here, methinks, your tenure is but precarious, so hectic and wasted is your appearance. Nay more; I tell you this, that, should Paganino desert me (which he does not seem disposed to do so long as I am willing to stay with him), never will I return to your house, where for one while I staid to ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... enough for us to pass through to the top, but holding exactly midway a large rock lodged in such a manner that we could not crawl under and yet seeming in danger of rolling down if we went over it. It was precarious not only for the man ahead who tried to pass but for those below waiting for results, but it was more firmly wedged than it appeared to be and each one in turn climbed over it. Emerging from this crack we were on the summit 2190 feet above the river and 5360 ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... wings not only unnecessary, but cumbersome; while the male is not exposed to the danger of being eaten by his cannibal spouse, as among spiders, nor to be set upon and assassinated by infuriated spinsters, as among bees, but drags out a precarious existence for a few days, and then either dies or is devoured by insectivorous insects. There is reason to believe that some females are fertilized before leaving the nest. I have observed flights of the common Formica rufa, in which the females flew away ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... were held fast. In vain the Indians, using their big oars as poles, endeavoured to push the boat back into deep water. Finding this impossible, some of them sprang out into the water which threatened to engulf them; but, with the precarious footing the submerged rock gave them, they pushed and shouted, when, being aided by a giant wave, the boat at last was pushed over into the deep water beyond. At considerable risk and thoroughly drenched, the brave fellows scrambled on board; the sail ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Clubs, and of the London Press. He was, in short, as nearly a dictator as the forms of our constitution permit; and the genius, which for forty years had been hampered and trammelled by the exigencies of a precarious struggle, could now for the first time display its true character and significance. Liberals who had been bored and provoked by the incessant blunders of the Liberal ministry in its last years, and, like Matthew Arnold, had welcomed a change of government, soon began to see that ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... of hops, though profitable when it succeeds, is very precarious: as soon as the plant appears above ground, it is attacked by an insect somewhat similar to the turnip-fly, which devours the young heads. Hop-gardens, situated on chalky soils, are peculiarly subject to its depredations. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... of vacant posts or appointments, but each answer was only a fresh disappointment for him and for Ernest. In the end, he was fain to advise his peccant under-master, since nothing else remained for it, that he had better go up to London for the present, take lodgings, and engage in the precarious occupation known as 'looking about for something to turn up.' On the morning when Edie and he were to leave the town, Dr. Greatrex saw Ernest privately ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... up a precarious living fishing and hunting, and lived at first in a miserable house of bark, under a tree, but later moved into quite a pretentious building back of the new Clemens home on Hill Street. It was really an old barn of a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of France is no more ended than war itself. The severities of war may be deplored, but the precarious justice of arbitration tribunals, still weak and divested of sanction, has not done away with its intervention in earthly quarrels. I do not suppose that my country is willing to submit to the mean estate, scourged with superb contempt by Donoso ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... little distance from it were the huts of a few poor fishermen, who supported their numerous children by their precarious labour. In these little huts she frequently rested, and denied herself every childish gratification, in order to relieve the necessities of the inhabitants. Her heart yearned for them, and would dance with joy when she had relieved their wants, or ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... passage for our departure, and the boys brought oars to be ready for the voyage. This important undertaking we were forced to postpone until the next day, as it was by this time far too late to attempt it. It was not pleasant to have to spend another night in so precarious a situation; but yielding to necessity, we sat down to enjoy a comfortable supper, for during our exciting and incessant work all day we had taken nothing but an occasional ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... unknown, in order to hide themselves from the World; when, to support their Independency, the Father laboured as well as he could at Husbandry, and the Mother and Daughter sometimes got spinning and knitting Work, to help to furnish the Means of Subsistence; which however was so precarious and uncertain, that they often, for many Weeks together, lived on nothing but Cabbage and Bread boiled in Water. But God never forsaketh the Righteous, nor suffereth those to perish who put their Trust in him. At this Time a Lady, who was just come to England, sent ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... Fashion, the Point of Honour became, of Course, a common Topick of Discourse among the best bred Men: By this Means the Rules for Quarrelling and Ponctilio in Behaviour, which at first were very uncertain and precarious, came to be better understood, and refin'd upon from Time to Time, till, in the Beginning of the last Century, the Sence of Honour was arrived to such a Degree of Nicety all over Europe, especially ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... for a time she had been numbed. In a week or two, with returning consciousness, her sufferings began to be felt. She could not sleep at night, and when she did sleep she dreamed perpetually of one thing, the endless, precarious descent of a slippery mountain-side in the company of Radway. The dream always ended in the same way, with a fall, a laugh, a shattering report, and a flash of light which ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... nor M. Sarpy ever exchanged a word about it together. The stay of the Continental army at Pointe-aux-Trembles was only temporary. Its stay around Quebec, after it returned there, would be at least rather precarious. It was, therefore, hardly desirable that one of its officers should be known to have contracted other than military engagements which might bind his good name among the vicissitudes of a most hazardous war. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... Christians in knots and coteries. But sixty years passed before the building of the first house of worship in Providence, and at the end of almost a century "there had not existed in the whole colony more than eight or ten churches of any denomination, and these were mostly in a very feeble and precarious state."[107:1] ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... store, by the scales, was another crowd. An Indian threw his pack upon the scales, the white owner jotted down the weight in a note-book, and another pack was thrown on. Each pack was in the straps, ready for the packer's back and the precarious journey over the Chilcoot. Frona edged in closer. She was interested in freights. She remembered in her day when the solitary prospector or trader had his outfit packed over for six cents,—one hundred ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... of our Creator intended that we should be affected with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the understanding is ready ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... that ain't one way of doing it, I don't know what is!" exclaimed that astonished charioteer, emerging from his precarious quarters. "Down ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... agreeably settled in the capital and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy, under the sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which, under the Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and precarious. The situation of these men was such as the great majority of the divines of the Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochial clergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favourite ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... society. Probably he might have endorsed, if he had been asked, the great principle which somebody or other has formulated, that the most expensive way of living is staying in other peoples houses. At any rate his condition was rather precarious till 1835, when Lord John Russell and Lord Lansdowne obtained for him a Civil List pension of three hundred pounds a year. In his very last days this was further increased by an additional hundred a year to his wife. His end was not happy. The softening of the brain, which ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... lay between life and death. Miller's knife-thrust, although it had made a deep and dangerous wound, had not pierced any vital part; the amount of blood lost made Alfred's condition precarious. Indeed, he would not have lived through that first day but for a wonderful vitality. Col. Zane's wife, to whom had been consigned the delicate task of dressing the wound, shook her head when she first saw the direction of the cut. She found on a closer examination that ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... so much rain that it was heavy wading through the padi, and it was quite dark when we reached the jungle, in which the rain had made the footing very precarious, and in darkness we forded the swollen stream, and stumbled along the shore of the Perak, where fireflies in thousands were flashing among the bushes—a beautiful sight. When we reached the bank of the river where we had left the canoe we ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... at this rate. The soldiers were not taxed, and were exempt from forced labour during the time that they were away from home on active service; with this exception they were liable to the same charges as the rest of the population. Many among them possessed no other income, and lived the precarious life of the fellah,—tilling, reaping, drawing water, and pasturing their cattle,—in the interval between two musters. Others possessed of private fortunes let their holdings out at a moderate rental, which formed an ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the Gandava Pass; and Khodadad was again elected chief by the very men who had only the previous year caused his overthrow, and who had lately been accomplices to the murder of his cousin. After the above events Khodadad maintained his precarious position with great difficulty; but owing to his inability to govern his unruly subjects without material assistance from the British government, which they were not disposed to give, his country gradually fell into the greatest anarchy; and, consequently, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... nothing even approaching a feminist movement in Hungary, yet the recent Reform Bill which has just passed the two Houses includes a long and thorough explanation of the usefulness and need of woman suffrage and apologies on the part of the Government for not being able (owing to the present precarious political situation) to grant it. The marked inclination of the Government in favor of woman suffrage and the discussion which took place in the House afterwards, together with the fact that an amendment to include woman suffrage received ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... In 1720, Robert Temple from Cork brought to Maine five shiploads of people, mostly from the province of Munster. They landed at the junction of the Kennebec and Eastern rivers, where they established the town of Cork, which, however, after a precarious existence of only six years, was entirely destroyed by the Indians. For nearly a century the place was familiarly known to the residents of the locality as "Ireland." The records of York, Lincoln, and Cumberland counties contain references ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... different place at different periods of the world's history. In the infancy of mankind, poetry, with the exception of proverbs, is the whole of literature, and the only instrument of intellectual culture; in modern times she is the shadow or echo of her former self, and appears to have a precarious existence. Milton in his day doubted whether an epic poem was any longer possible. At the same time we must remember, that what Plato would have called the charms of poetry have been partly transferred to prose; he himself (Statesman) admits rhetoric to be the handmaiden of Politics, and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... worn out with fatigue. Fortunately, the Indians did not follow the retreating survivors into their entrenchments, or they would have exterminated the Spaniards. The remnants of this force next appeared at Campeachy, where they established a precarious settlement, and were at last obliged to withdraw, so that in 1535 not a ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... at this time, increasingly precarious; one complaint rapidly succeeding another; as will appear ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... mooring of the floating light was a great point gained, but in the erection of the beacon at this late period of the season new difficulties presented themselves. The success of such an undertaking at any season was precarious, because a single day of bad weather occurring before the necessary fixtures could be made might sweep the whole apparatus from the rock. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the writer had determined to make the trial, although ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... began to work in earnest on their farms; and there descended upon island affairs a brief St. Martin's Summer of peace before the final winter of blight and death set in. The Admiral, however, was obviously in precarious health; his ophthalmia became worse, and the stability of his mind suffered. He had dreams and visions of divine help and comfort, much needed by him, poor soul, in all his tribulations and adversities. Even yet ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... went near. It was worth while to hear the poultry cries of the gallinules if nothing more; and often several of the birds would be seen swimming about among the big white lilies and the green tussocks. Once I discovered one of them sitting upright on a stake,—a precarious seat, off which he soon tumbled awkwardly into the water. At another time, on the same stake, sat some dark, strange-looking object. The opera-glass showed it at once to be a large bird sitting with its back toward ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... these low appeals to the witless. And even as he looked the cross-eyed man entered the scene. Garbed in the weirdly misfitting clothes of a waiter, holding aloft a loaded tray of dishes, he entered on roller skates, to halt before Baird with his uplifted tray at a precarious balance. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... a subject derived from such various sources and for the most part of uncertain date and origin, is necessarily precarious. No critic can separate the actual laws of Solon from those which passed under his name in later ages. Nor do the Scholiasts and Lexicographers attempt to distinguish how many of these laws were still in force at the time when they wrote, ...
— Laws • Plato
... had always been much more sanguine in expecting success for his friend at the Bar, than Stanbury had been for himself. It might well be that such a man as Trevelyan might think that a clever rising barrister would be an excellent husband for his sister-in-law, but that a man earning a precarious living as a writer for a penny paper would be by no means so desirable a connection. Stanbury, as he thought of this, declared to himself that he would not care two straws for Trevelyan in the matter, if he could see his way without other impediments. But the other impediments ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... difficult time of it in the past, and the difficulties might keep on in the future. He was also the ranking officer here and consequently the immediate boss of Joe's enterprise. Today's affair was still highly precarious. The whole thing was controversial and uncertain and might spoil the career of somebody with stars on his collar if it should fail. So nobody in the high brass wanted the responsibility. If everything went well, somebody suitable would ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... provisions to support the inhabitants of their spice islands, who, applying themselves wholly to the cultivation of that important article of trade, and laying out all their ground in plantations, can breed few animals: Possibly their supplies by this occasional traffic were precarious; possibly they were jealous of being supplanted in their turn; but however that be, their East India Company, about ten years before, entered into a treaty with the rajas, by which the Company stipulated to furnish ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... half, which he said he had put into the hands of the porter of the hospital, and which he wanted to get back. Several times he expressed his wish to return to America (of which he was not a native), and, on the whole, I do not think he had any real sense of his precarious condition, notwithstanding that he assented to the doctor's hint to that effect. He sank away so much at one time, that they brought him wine in a tin cup, with a spout to drink out of, and he mustered ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to the south as an invalid, and having no means, he had picked up a precarious living by hunting, fishing, and doing such odd jobs of work as he could find. When I came across him he was hungry, and without a place to lay his head. With good living on board the Sylvania, and with his mind relieved of all anxiety about his daily food and shelter, he ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... by French privateers and men-of-war. When Nelson shattered the naval power of France at Trafalgar in 1805, and vigilant British frigates patrolled the whole highway of commerce from Europe to the Cape of Good Hope, Decaen's position became precarious. The supplies sent out to him were frequently captured by the enemy; and had it not been that Port Louis became a regular nest of adventurous French privateers—"pirates," the British called them—who frequently found a rich prey in the shape of heavily laden India merchantmen, his garrison must ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... off the faint blue banners of smoke blowing now right, now left, then tossed aloft in the pallid sunshine. He looked about sharply for the Boy, as he had been doing this two hours. There was the Jesuit bending over the fire, bettering the precarious position of a saucepan that insisted on sitting lop-sided, looking down into the heart of coals. Nicholas was ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Perhaps the precarious footing on which the peace stood between Great Britain and France at this juncture, and the critical situation of affairs in Germany, determined the ministry of England to compromise all differences with Spain, upon such terms as at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... try to set it down as nearly as possible in her own words, although I cannot hope to convey the peculiar charm and interest that she gave it for me. It was not, I need hardly say, told all at once, but was subject to the inevitable interruptions which render a dinner-table intimacy so piquantly precarious. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... carried on between the supporters of the Hanoverian succession and the adherents of the Pretender is, of course, a matter of history. On August 5, 1714, came to the Elector of Hanover, James Craggs, junior, with a letter from the Privy Council, dated July 31, announcing the precarious state of Anne's health, and conveying assurances that in the event of her demise every precaution would be taken to safeguard the rights of George Lewis. The same night messengers arrived at Hanover from London with the news of the death of the Queen, who had passed ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... ignorance, than to be continually reminded of yourself by the anxiety of your family. Remember always that you are your own best doctor! I have told you the worst, and now I may add that I have known people in as precarious a condition as yourself live twice, and even three times the time specified by their doctors. You know what is needful—a peaceful life without excitement; fresh air, rest, and, above all things, the specific which our Quaker ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... annihilation, nor had he ever prayed in nakedness beside the Ganges. Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster, was as little like a starveling Sanyasi as any biped descendant of the anthropoids could possibly be. A noticeable man, singularly handsome, of conspicuous, indeed of almost precarious, personal attraction, a Prince of the Church, clothed, quite literally, in purple and fine linen, faring as sumptuously as he pleased every day, welcome at the tables of the society that is above religion, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... moody and spoke only in monosyllables. His disease became rapidly aggravated, and he presently spoke only in words whose spelling was regular and which presented no difficulty to the beginner. Realizing his precarious condition he voluntarily submitted to be incarcerated in an asylum, where he abjured mathematics and devoted himself to writing the History of the Swiss Family Robinson in words of ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... suggestion for his "Flying Dutchman." It was in the French capital that Minna's domestic qualities were given their most severe trial, for the composer found little or no chance to produce his own works, and was forced to gain a precarious living by the commonest musical drudgery. Probably her constant care and economy were all that turned the scale in favour of success. At length the Dresden authorities became interested in some of the earlier ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... always "intended" to rule, and that no other outcome could even be considered by Nature. This is one of the remnants of ignorance certain religions have left: but it's odd that men who don't believe in Easter should still believe this. For the facts are of course this is a hard and precarious world, where every mistake and infirmity must be ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... government is so stable as that which is bottomed on opinion, and depends for its existence on general utility, and the consent of the governed? Dominion may, indeed, be acquired, and continued by force and terror; but if it have no other props to support it, it is at best but precarious, and must, sooner or later, fall, either by the resistance of those whom it would hold in subjection, or by undermining their moral and physical energies, and thus rendering them unfit even for the vile purposes ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... calves by hand is also, in various respects, advantageous. Instead of depending on the uncertain, or perhaps precarious supply of the dam, which may be more at first than the young animal can consume or digest, and at other times too little for its supply, its food can, by hand-feeding, be regulated to suit the age, appetite, and the purposes for which the calf is intended; ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... There is, moreover, an air of seasoned authority abroad. Many who were second lieutenants or lance corporals three months ago are now commanding companies and platoons. Bobby Little is in command of "A" Company: if he can cling to this precarious eminence for thirty days—that is, if no one is sent out to supersede him—he becomes an "automatic" captain, aged twenty! Major Kemp commands the battalion; Wagstaffe is his senior major. Ayling has departed from our midst, and rumour ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... every city church, with the Bishop of London, the choir of St. Paul's, the mayor, aldermen and crafts in their liveries, for the preservation of the infant prince and for the health of the queen, who lay in a precarious state.(1195) A few days later (24 Oct.) she was dead. The citizens caused her obit to be celebrated in St. Paul's with ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... from the woods and fields, or let Nature provide bushes for us where she will? When Nature produces a bush on my place where it is not in the way, I let it grow, and pick the fruit in my rambles; but the supply would be precarious indeed for a family. By all means get plants from the woods if you have marked a bush that produces unusually fine fruit. It is by just this course that the finest varieties have been obtained. If you ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... been withheld from nations even more in need of it than those to whom it was given? Are we to suppose that the salvation of these myriads was a matter of indifference to their Creator, or that Heaven preferred the slow and precarious working of the missionary to the instantaneous action of its own fiat? This is the question which scepticism asks, and which the great author of the "Analogy of Religion" ...
— The Religious Situation • Goldwin Smith
... somehow, and, clinging with one hand, contrived to reach the dog's collar with the other and hold him up. What she would have done next it is impossible to say, for he was too heavy to lift in her already precarious position; but at that moment a gentleman, evidently in quest of his pet, parted the hazel boughs and took in the situation at ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... been in many senses unfortunate. The original German member, a gentleman of the name of Eggert, fell early into precarious health; his work was from the first interrupted, he was at last (to the regret of all that knew him) invalided home; and his successor had but just arrived. In like manner, the first American commissioner, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his education availed him; and the resources which it taught him prolonged the lives of his family and himself. But he was soon obliged to limit himself to this sole care; for the supply he obtained was scanty, and he knew how precarious it must be. He had explored the cavern of the Peak with great attention, and he bored the rock in various places, and used means suggested by his knowledge of natural causes, which had procured a slender flow of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... situated from each other. Upon the railroad the regular progress of commercial intercourse is not interrupted by either high or low water, or freezing weather, which are the principal difficulties that render our future hopes of water communication precarious and uncertain. Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad through our country may be; however high our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of it—there is always a heart appalling shock accompanying the account of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... the party were by this time awake, and, armed with whatever they could first seize, and seeing what had happened, they all set up a shout of triumph, every one of us forgetting entirely for the moment the very precarious position in ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... for absolute command knew the same thing . . . nothing. Not one of them could say with certainty what lay beyond the visible horizon, nor whither the ship was drifting. The sullen hostility of mystery surrounded them all; their life was precarious, necessitating incessant care in order to maintain it, yet in spite of that, the crew for ages and ages, had never known an instant of agreement, of team work, of clear reason. Periodically half of them would clash with the other half. They killed each other that they ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... comparatively flourishing condition. But the northern or Genoese line had been completely broken up by the irruptions of the Tartars and the Turks, and the military and political disturbances of the countries through which it passed. The Eastern trade of Genoa was not merely in a precarious condition—it was on the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... first ray of the rising sun resting full upon them, seventeen horsemen, officers, and just back of them about 5,000 infantrymen, all within a stone's throw of us. What made our position all the more precarious, the infantry was standing at a "rest," and were, as all soldiers do when first halted, looking in every direction in search of something—an enemy, fruit, a stray porker or a fowl. Our chances of being discovered were becoming ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... hills which extended around the western side of the village was occupied by several families, known as the "Hillers." They were ignorant, degraded people, living in miserable hovels, and obtaining a precarious subsistence by hunting, fishing, and stealing. With them the villagers rarely, if ever, had intercourse, and respectable persons seldom crossed their thresholds. The principal man among the Hillers was known as Bill Powell. He was a giant in strength and stature, and used ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... Michaelis appears. His face in flushed, his hair disordered, and his whole person expresses a feverish and precarious exaltation. ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... to make a proposition of this kind. In former times, Francesca was the Croesus of the party, Salemina came second, and I last, with a most precarious income. Now I am the wealthy one, Francesca is reduced to the second place, and Salemina to the third, but it makes no difference whatever, either in our relations, our arrangements, or, for that matter, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Meg's mode of conducting herself towards chance travellers, who, knowing nothing of nearer or more fashionable accommodations, or perhaps consulting rather the state of their purse than of their taste, stumbled upon her house of entertainment. Her reception of these was as precarious as the hospitality of a savage nation to sailors shipwrecked on their coast. If the guests seemed to have made her mansion their free choice—or if she liked their appearance (and her taste was very ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of fatiguing days and sleepless nights, and with contemplating the precarious situation I stand in with my beloved, I fell into a profound reverie; which brought on sleep; and that produced a dream; a fortunate dream; which, as I imagine, will afford my working mind the means to effect the obliging double purpose ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to that? Add to these ten millions half of the twenty- four others, whose property, burdened with mortgages, parcelled out, impoverished, wretched, gives them no support, and still you will not have the number of individuals whose living is precarious. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... to ships in distress and to wrecks; in which dangerous occupation they are successful in annually saving much property and many human lives. Their livelihood from salvage, as may be supposed, is very precarious. Sometimes they are "flush of cash," at other times reduced to a low enough ebb. In such circumstances it almost invariably follows that ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... authority, like some Deus ex machin in the dramatic art. And if this one fact were all that had survived of the public annals at this period, we might sufficiently collect the situation of the two other parties in the empire —the army and the imperator; the weakness and precarious tenure of the one, and the anarchy of the other. And hence it is that we can explain the hatred borne to the senate by vigorous emperors, such as Aurelian, succeeding to a long course of weak and troubled reigns. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... approaching.' . . . The end of all was fast approaching. On the 1st of June, every painful symptom of the poor sufferer had so increased that his friends held counsel with Doctor Kind, who considered his state highly precarious. Fuerstenau was desirous of watching by his bedside. 'No, no,' replied Weber, 'I am not so ill as you want to make me out.' He refused even the attendance of Sir George Smart's servant in his anteroom. Blisters were applied to his chest, and he noted in his diary, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... outside China, a pile of golden hair above the face of a pink-and-white doll. Staring from this face, however, were two of the loveliest, most unscrupulous of eyes, and those eyes did more for Lady Charlotte's precarious income than any other of her resources. She wore her expensive clothes quite beautifully, and gave lovely little lunches and dinners; no really merry house-party was complete ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... palm-leaves were forced down by the forest, which overhung them, to wade on frail stilts. A canoe would be tied to a toy jetty, and on the jetty a sad woman and several naked children would stand, with no show of emotion, to watch us go by. Behind them was the impenetrable foliage. I thought of the precarious tenure on earth of these brown folk with some sadness, especially as the day was going. The easy dominance of the wilderness, and man's intelligent morsel of life resisting it, was made plain when we came suddenly upon one of his little shacks secreted among the aqueous roots of a great tree, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... not turned. Rawson felt one quick flash of annoyance at his helper's dullness—or indifference; then he knew that Smithy's dark-haired head was reached forward, that he was bending at a precarious angle to stare below ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... work contenting himself to remain there on his precarious perch; indeed, only that he did not wish to seem to be interfering with Jack's plans Joel certainly would have ventured across the window sill. Unable to beep silent any longer, he finally gave ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Prairie herbejo. Praise lauxdi. Prank petoleco—ajxo. Prate babili. Prattle babili. Pray (religious) pregxi. Pray (to request) peti. Prayer pregxo. Prayer-book pregxlibro. Preach prediki. Preacher predikisto. Preaching predikado. Preamble antauxparolo. Prebendary kanoniko. Precarious duba, necerta. Precaution antauxzorgo, singardo. Precede antauxiri. Precedence antauxeco. Precedent antauxajxo. Precentor kantoro. Precept ordono. Preceptor guvernisto. Precinct limo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... pointed out that she could not live alone in the cottage, she had listened with a mysterious smile. With Jonah's allowance and her earnings, she was the rich woman, the lady chatelaine of the street, and she chose a companion from the swarm of houseless women that found a precarious footing in the houses of their relations—women with raucous voices, whose husbands had grown tired of life and fled; ladies who were vaguely supposed to be widows; comely young women cast on a cold world with a pitiful tale and a handbag. And she fed them till they were ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... cover his nakedness. The civilized nations of the present day were in their origin savages composed of erratic tribes,—mere wanderers who were occupied with war; employed in, the chace; painfully obliged to seek precarious subsistence by hunting in those woods which the industry of their successors has cleared; which their labour has covered with yellow waving ears of nutritious corn; in time they have become stationary: they first applied ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... fatal element of uncertainty in all systems of government which depend for their success merely upon personal qualities. The first sign of this precarious tenure of greatness was afforded by the death of the aged Nizam Chin Kulich, Viceroy of the Deccan, which took place immediately after that ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... and Mrs. Alcott's brother, Samuel J. May, joined his name to a note for $300, to be paid by instalments in two years. And now that the first instalment is due, he sends me word that he declines paying it. As all my cash has been expended in buying and keeping up the affair, I am left in a precarious position, out of which I do not see the way without some loveful aid, and to you I venture freely to submit my feelings. Above all things I should like to discharge at once this $300 note, as unless that is done the place must, I fear, fall back ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... I had that day seen a ghost. The flesh-and-blood Ailsee, he declared, had been dead many years. Her father, Coot Harris, was a rough customer who took up his abode in the marsh—'mash,' Uncle Tucker called it—at the close of the Civil War. Here he gained a precarious livelihood by 'pot-hunting'; for Harris and others of his ilk paid but little attention to the poorly enforced game laws of the section. Coot Harris, the marshman, had a daughter, who, as Uncle Ashby contemptuously remarked, 'was peart enuff, as ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... of Christ Church, Oxford, where he lectured on Greek, rhetoric, and philosophy. He interested himself in theology, but never took orders; and he also studied medicine and for a time practiced it. His own health was precarious, he having suffered, from chronic consumption nearly all his life. Nevertheless, he accomplished a tremendous amount of work. The friendship of the Earl of Shaftesbury gave Locke some political prestige. He lived in the family of that nobleman for many years, and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... good ten minutes' wait before his ruse was rewarded. Being on the "fence" was a pastime compared to this precarious test of his muscles. The two men who had followed the first footprints tired of waiting before the house. One of them determined to investigate the other steps, which led into the house of their vigilance, from the other dwelling. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... hurried past as doth a dream (This is the favourite simile with us) And taking all together it would seem The dream had not implied an incubus; For my part I am somewhat dubious If days like those before they all had known, Tho' Dora's state had been precarious For some three weeks or more I that must own, But she'd recovered now. Oh how those ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... deal about the Gays in the days that followed. Louisa had asked her to promise that she would tell no one the precarious state of their finances—"no one can help and I won't be discussed like the 'cases' they bring up at the sewing circle," ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... special terms. Speculation has now almost ceased in consequence of the enormous number of books published, which makes it difficult for a bookseller to keep a large stock of any single work, and renders the life of a new book so precarious that the demand for it may at any moment come to ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... Mr. Landor saw his bearer Chanden Sing, in a very precarious condition, as the latter had had no food for four days. During all this time the prisoners were firmly bound and carefully guarded. Next day, Mr. Landor and Chanden Sing were placed on yaks. Mansing had to ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... Horse-shoe or great British Fall, pouring down its volume of ice and water, at the distance of a few feet from where we stood. The rock felt to me as though it vibrated, and a large mass did in fact lately give way, soon after a party had retired from the precarious stance. It is limestone, full of ugly fissures and rents. A narrow wooden staircase conducts adventurous travellers to the bottom of the Fall, where a sort of entrance is generally effected to a short ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... the voice of Oscar. Before he had well begun to think what it could mean, Gibbie appeared on the opposite side of the loch, high above its level, on the top of the rocks forming its basin. He began instantly a rapid descent towards the water, where the rocks were so steep, and the footing so precarious, that Oscar wisely remained at the top, nor attempted to follow him. Presently the dog caught sight of Donal, where he stood on a lower level, whence the water was comparatively easy of access, and starting off at full speed, joined him, with much demonstration of welcome. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes—a gulf subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering distance palpable, and return precarious. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck |
