"Top-heavy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... staggering and nearly falling headlong as he stepped down from the iron platform, making for the side. But he recovered himself, tottering on, and then in the darkness kicking against something soft—a sleeper—the encounter sending him, top-heavy as he was, crash against the bulwark, but doing all that he wanted, for the breech-block struck against the rail, glanced off, and went overboard, to fall with a tremendous splash, followed by another, which the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... tomb, and gave the matter up. Two well established customs among the early colonists seem to have been to die early and to marry often. Perhaps they usually reversed the order; but, at any rate, dying in middle age after having married "thirdly" or "fifthly"—yes, even "sixthly"—makes top-heavy family trees and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... in mid-stream), and across at the lonely tower of Philippe le Bel and the ruined wall of Villeneuve, makes at a distance, in spite of its poverty, a great figure, the effect of which is carried out by the tower of the church beside it (crowned though the latter be, in a top-heavy fashion, with an immense modern image of the Virgin) and by the thick, dark foliage of the garden laid out on a still higher portion of the eminence. This garden recalls faintly and a trifle perversely ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... matter with you at one time?" asked Jack Parker. "We saw you were having a sort of convulsion. Our cap'n said you were bold chaps to be trifling with such a top-heavy boat." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... unfathomable dungeons through every possible outlet and organ. It might be the voice of the earth itself, snoring in its mighty sleep. This is the deepest, the oldest, the most wholesome and religious sense of the value of Nature—the value which comes from her immense babyishness. She is as top-heavy, as grotesque, as solemn and as happy as a child. The mood does come when we see all her shapes like shapes that a baby scrawls upon a slate—simple, rudimentary, a million years older and stronger than the whole disease that is called Art. The objects of earth ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... trade of a horse-leech, which trade, for the girl's felicity, held him much abroad, and gave her occasion, seldom by her neglected, to prove to her intimate of the hour that there can be fire without smoke. Now I, being somewhat top-heavy at this season with the wine of so fair a lady's favors, thought that I might, with no small advantage to myself and no small satisfaction to my mistress, set me to doing her honor with some such tuneful words ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... men seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous swish and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... its modest oil resources and favorable agricultural conditions, Cameroon has one of the best-endowed primary commodity economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, it faces many of the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as a top-heavy civil service and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. Since 1990, the government has embarked on various IMF and World Bank programs designed to spur business investment, increase efficiency in agriculture, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... fish pails only of the ordinary size. There is never any ill-feeling after a little spar, and each proceeds, in the most amicable way, to steal some other pelican's fish. A spar at this club, by-the-bye, is a joyous and hilarious sight. Two big birds with stumpy legs and top-heavy beaks, solemnly prancing and manoeuvring before one another with an accompaniment of valiant gobbles and a punctuation of occasional ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... for to have my beer a-board before I go, I shou'dn't get top-heavy, as the saying is; for I can carry as much weight in my head as e'er a he that wears a head, ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... protect her cauliflowers. "You be off, Bill," she cried. "I don't want to hurt you, because you have been a good bird in your time, but now you be growing outrageous." Bill made a rush for it, but losing a slice of his top-heavy comb, retired. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... moment carries a tremendous top-heavy burden of responsibilities; his death would be no more disastrous than a scandal that would tend to destroy public confidence ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... is in the case of Prunus domestica, the European plum, when worked on Prunus Americana, the American plum. In that case, the top always outgrows the stock, and in ten years it presents a very curious appearance. It presents the appearance of a very top-heavy head on a very spindling stem. The bearing is usually encouraged, but the fruit is usually small. The amount of fruit measured by numbers is increased, but the amount of fruit measured by the size of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... occurred to me that the weight of the planks upon the deck must not only keep the vessel deeper in the water, but make her more top-heavy, and I determined to throw them overboard; but first I looked for something to eat, and found plenty of victuals in the iron pot in which the men had cooked ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... in, so as to fill the entire space and when these were in their places, the whole of the interior formed an enclosed apartment, of a height sufficient to allow even a man to stand erect without his hat. It is true, this arrangement rendered the boat clumsy, and, to a certain extent, top-heavy and unmanageable; but so long as it could be retained, it also rendered it infinitely more comfortable than it could possibly be without it. The roof, moreover, might be cut away in five minutes, at any ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... especially President Roberts, who proved himself a safe and prudent ruler, taking into consideration his surroundings and the material with which he had to work. The form of government was modeled after that of the United States, but it was top-heavy. Honorables, colonels, and judges were thicker than in Georgia. Only privates were scarce; for nothing delights a negro more than a little show or a gaudy uniform. On landing I was met by a dark mulatto, dressed in a straw ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... scuffle in the outer office, and a thin, piping voice was calling down all the curses of the Koran on the heads of my great top-heavy Hindu guards. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... plains the native poplar (CODONOCARPUS) stands sentry, its head, top-heavy from the mass of seeds, drooping gracefully to the setting sun; the prevalent wind at the present day would seem to be from the E.N.E. Here, too, an occasional grass tree or "black-boy" may be seen, and at intervals little clumps of what is locally termed "mustard ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... correction or two in my part of the post-office article. I still observe the top-heavy "Household Words" in the title. The title of "The Amusements of the People" has to be altered as I have marked it. I would as soon have my hair cut off as an intolerable Scotch shortness put into my titles by the elision of little words. "The Seasons" wants a little punctuation. Will the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Behind him, to the clash of cymbals, a file of men in motley robes swaggered into position, wheeled, and formed the ragged front of a Falstaff regiment. Overcome by the scarlet ribbon, the long-coated "boy" bowed, just as through the gate, like a top-heavy boat swept under an arch, came heaving an unwieldy screened chair, borne by four broad men: not naked and glistening coolies, but "Tail-less Horses" in proud livery. Before they could lower their shafts, Heywood ran ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the command, and so distinguished was the cavalcade that the viceroy would have appointed each of the gentlemen a captain but for fear of making the command top-heavy with officers. It was early in 1540 that the gallant expedition set out, some of the horsemen arrayed in brilliant coats of mail and armed with swords and lances, others wearing helmets of iron or tough bullhide, while the footmen carried cross-bows and muskets, and the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... week a little incident occurred that raised me perceptibly in Mrs. Pinkerton's estimation. The great, lumbering stage-coach came up just at evening, more heavily laden than usual, and top-heavy with trunks piled up on the roof. The driver dashed along with his customary recklessness, the six horses breaking into a canter as they turned to come up the rather steep acclivity to the house. The coach was drawn about a foot ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... our pretty violet-sprinkled bower caved in as a little "turner-in" lurched against it in passing with a top-heavy column of boxes. Through the opening daylight is visible once more, and from the region of the machines is heard a chorus of voices singing ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... help got into the cab with me, and we told the driver to go to number 33, such-a-street. It was at the furthest extremity of the town, and when we reached there, after two or three attempts on the part of the top-heavy cab to upset, I was greeted by the information that no such person as the landlady of whom I was in search lived there. What was worse, nobody had ever heard of her, and no cab containing a baby had called ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... one evening, top-heavy with gin, And rehearsing his speech on the weight of the crown, He tript near a sawpit, and tumbled right in, "Sinking Fund," the last words as his noddle ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... begin with, the case is unique; so much so that your entire structure of approach is wrong. I mean top-heavy! Top-heavy ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... have taken flight to others. I sail by the windows, and throw a searching eye through these bars which are, I believe, placed there to keep top-heavy babies from tumbling out. Sometimes I peer down the chimney. From the nook of a wall or the hollow of a tree, I overlook the children's gardens and playgrounds. I have an eye to several schools, and I fancy (though I may be wrong) that ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... balance, he is full of noble qualities. Apemantus has the very thing which he lacks, yet Apemantus is contemptible beside him. The churlish philosopher is like some dingy little scow, which rides out the tempest because the small cargo which it has is all in its hold; Timon is like some splendid, but top-heavy, battleship, which turns turtle in the storm through lack of ballast. There is something lionlike and magnificent, despite its unreason, in the way he accepts the inevitable, and later, after the discovery of the gold, spurns away both the chance of wealth and the human jackals whom it attracts. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... too heavy to admit of running at any speed, he goes awkwardly jogging across the rolling plains, as though uncertain in his own mind of whether he is acting sensibly or not; but his companion in pack-slavery is less fortunate, since he tumbles into a gully, bringing up flat on his broad and top-heavy pack with his legs frantically pawing the air. Stopping to assist the driver in getting the collapsed mule on his feet again, this individual demands damages for the accident; so I judge, at least, from ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... never help thinking of the story of the Irishman, who, when the bottom and seat of his sedan-chair fell out, remarked to his bearers, that "he might as well walk, but for the honour of the thing." One feels so strongly that the Pope might every bit as well walk as ride in that ricketty, top-heavy chair, in which he sits, or rather sways to and fro, with a sea-sick expression. Then the ostrich feathers are so very shabby, and the whole get-up of the procession is so painfully "not" regardless of expense. You see Cardinals ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... case against that modern society that is symbolised by such art and architecture. It is not that it is toppling, but that it is top-heavy. It is not that it is vulgar, but rather that it is not popular. In other words, the democratic ideal of countries like America, while it is still generally sincere and sometimes intense, is at issue with another ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Wonderland"—"Why not?" impresses us as his general motto. He could not see why he should not be on good terms with all things. The pomp of war and ambition, the great empire of the Middle Ages, and all its fellows begin to look tawdry and top-heavy, under the rationality of that innocent stare. His questions were blasting and devastating, like the questions of a child. He would not have been afraid even of the nightmares of cosmogony, for he had ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... the whole planet was flying to pieces, the greater part of this lava floor sank down, or fell down, a depth of about five hundred feet, to the level whereon we now walked. The wonderful tale was plain to us as we examined the details on the spot. It was as though a top-heavy and dried-out pie-crust had fallen in in the middle, leaving a part of the circumference bent down, but clinging at the outside to ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... his own; her actions under pressure of this intense excitement, were swifter and more sure. She was tall and strong; she took a quick step backwards and knocked over the small Sheraton table which was already top-heavy, and which fell down with a crash, together with the massive candelabra ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... morning of her sailing came, so full of sadness for me. Why not confess, after nigh threescore years, that break of day found me pacing the deserted dock. At my back, across the open space, was the irregular line of quaint, top-heavy shops since passed away, their sightless windows barred by solid shutters of oak. The good ship Annapolis, which was to carry my playmate to broader scenes, lay among the shipping, in the gray roads just quickening with returning light. How my heart ached that morning none shall ever know. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... almost a miracle that the top-heavy sled did not upset. Had the course been less smooth and even, it must have done ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... show how frisky he can be, even if he is old, they have a wrestling match together. Daikoku nearly always beats, because Fukuroku Jin is so tall that he has to bend down to grip Daikoku, who is fat and short, and thus he becomes top-heavy. Then Daikoku gets his rival's long head under his left arm, seizes him over his back by the belt, and throws him over his shoulder flat on the ground. But if Fukuroku Jin can only get hold of Daikoku's lop ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... A top-heavy canoe is decidedly dangerous, that is why it is safest to sit or kneel on the bottom, and in loading your camp stuff bear the fact well in mind. Pack the load as low in the canoe as possible with the heaviest things at the bottom, but use common sense ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... train of thought that followed the grey figure of a woman on a bicycle in Oxford Street. She had an enormous and top-heavy omnibus at her back. All the things on the near side of the street—the things going her way—were going at different paces, in two streams, overtaking and being overtaken. The tributary streets shot omnibuses and carriages, cabs and carts—some to go her own way, some with an ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... stud shone like a lone star. His stutter was nearly outgrown; but he, as well as George, spoke in the tone of condescension, which, with the blase airs they assumed, made a very funny contrast to their youthful faces and foolish remarks. Good-hearted little fellows both, but top-heavy with the pride of being Sophs and the freedom ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... from my own window and on a level with my eye, so that I have been able to see what was going on at all hours of the day. In each case the nest was made well and rapidly up to a certain point, and then got top-heavy and tumbled over, so that little was left on the tree: it was reconstructed and reconstructed over and over again, always with the same result, till at last in all three cases the birds gave up in despair. I believe the older and stronger ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... string of broken-backed, disjointed clauses, eked out with stammerings and throat-clearings. They possess the art (learned from the pulpit) of rounding an uneuphonious sentence by dwelling on a single syllable—of striking a balance in a top-heavy period by lengthening out a word into a melancholy quaver. Withal, they never cease to hope. Even at last, even when they have exhausted all their ideas, even after the would-be peroration has finally refused to perorate, they remain upon their feet ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... banks of the great river were gray and mysterious under the effulgence of a top-heavy yellow moon. The search-light on the peak pierced out the fact that a low, swirling mist was creeping up ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... core of my matter. Side by side with what I have called "the Official Press" in our top-heavy plutocracy there has arisen a certain force for which I have a difficulty in finding a name, but which I will call for lack of a ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... from us. Then we lifted our bodies, loaded with cartridges and guns, into the saddle at the risk of toppling over on the other side, like a lizzard sliding down a bank, and rode on in silence, drowsily and top-heavy. ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... the little man nodding his head with its top-heavy forehead three or four times emphatically. "If she do not make such a sensation in Ravenna as we have not known here for a long time, say that Ercole Stadione knows nothing of ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... five large soldiers with five large kits, the aspect of the room filled us with terror. The fiercest frost or foe we could have faced, but the bravest man may quail before wax-flowers and fragile tables top-heavy with ornaments and knick-knacks, and all felt that to encounter such things within the Arctic Circle was an unfair test of our fortitude. Why had not the War Office or some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... billhook, the woodman next swings the cumbrous grub-axe, whose wide edge clears the earth from the larger roots. Then he puts his pipe in his pocket, and settles to the serious work of the 'great axe,' as he calls it. I never could use this ungainly tool aright: a top-heavy, clumsy, awkward thing, it rules you instead of you ruling it. The handle, too, is flat—almost with an edge itself sometimes—and is quite beyond the grasp of any but hands of iron. Now the American axe feels balanced like ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... has passed out of modern sport; but I remember mine with regret, and think I shall some day buy another. I still find that the best double-barrel seems top-heavy in comparison; in poising it the barrels have a tendency to droop. Guns, of course, are built to balance and lie level in the hand, so as to almost aim themselves as they come to the shoulder; and those who have always shot with a double-barrel are ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... more, in his meats and drinks, his morals and the activities of his daily life, from Washington. If he will only stop and think he must realize that no one central authority can supervise the daily lives of a hundred million people, scattered over half a continent, without becoming top-heavy. He must realize, too, that, even if such a centralization of power and responsibility were humanly possible, our National Government is unsuited for the task. The electorate is too numerous and heterogeneous; its interests and needs are too diverse. Shall the conduct of citizens ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... never thought of that. After I'm dead," he repeated. "Child, a conscience like yours is top-heavy. Still, I'll mull it over. I can't take 'em to the grave with me, that's a fact. But my ghost is bound to get leg-weary doing the rounds to view them again. What do you ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... conditions, Cameroon has one of the best-endowed, most diversified primary commodity economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, it faces many of the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as political instability, a top-heavy civil service, and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. The development of the oil sector led rapid economic growth between 1970 and 1985. Growth came to an abrupt halt in 1986, precipitated ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... gate, built across the narrow road between the cliff and the river, and we enter the town. It has been raining and the cobblestones are slippery. They shine in the gleams of pale light that come from the top-heavy street lamps. Gargoyle water spouts drip drainage from ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Of course, there is a lower grade of measly, "moral heroes," who (thank heaven and the innate sense of human justice!) are usually well peppered with sorrow and punishment. The hero of romance is a different stripe; Hyperion to a Satyr. He doesn't go around groaning page after page of top-heavy debates as to the inherent justice of his cause or his moral right to thrust a tallow candle between the particular ribs behind which the heart of his enemy is to be found—balancing his pros and cons, seeking a quo for each quid, and conscientiously prowling for final authorities. When you invade ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... honest to try to slur it over. The punishment of long ages of sin, carried on from father to son, does in the course of that history of the world, which is a part of the judgment of the world, fall upon one generation. It takes long for the mass of heaped-up sin to become top-heavy; but when it is so, it buries one generation of those who have worked at piling it up, beneath its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... in relief: even Michelangelo but rarely attempted the "freestanding group." It is, however, to such a work we come in the splendidly composed Rape of the Sabines by Giovanni da Bologna in the Loggia itself. Spoiled a little by its too laboured detail, its chief fault lies in the fact that it is top-heavy, the sculptor having placed the mass of the group so high that the base seems unsubstantial and unbalanced. Bologna's other group here, Hercules and Nessus, which once stood at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio, is dramatic and well composed, but the forms are feeble and even insignificant. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... shallow or a rock it cannot be brought off again. Moreover, its supply of coal requires to be constantly renewed, so that it cannot be sent on long expeditions. Our ironclads have their own specific purpose—they are intended for a naval battle. But they are like giants, are rendered top-heavy by their own weight, and are thus easily capsized, and the loss of an ironclad battleship, apart from the effect it might have upon our chances in the war, entails the loss of more than a million pounds. The cruisers, again, I would not ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... he had never seen anything in Pittsburg that quite equalled it. If the rapid was not bad, they sat upright on the deck, but this made the boats top-heavy, and as much of the oarsman's work depended on swinging his weight from side to side, it was important that no mistake should be made about this distribution of weight. Often the bottom of a boat would show above the water as it listed to one side. At such a time a person sitting on the raised ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... than that. Compare it to Sir George Grove's staggering tome on the Beethoven symphonies if you want to understand the difference between mere scholastic diligence and authentic criticism. The one is simply a top-heavy mass of disorderly facts and worshipping enthusiasm; the other is an analysis that searches out every nook and corner of the subject, and brings it into coherence and intelligibility. The Chopin rhapsodist is always held in check ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... water, waning, sickly, moth-eaten, top-heavy, and altogether out of condition—as if it had been on duty for weeks on end. In other respects, too, its appearance was not quite normal. In fact, it soon took to behaving in the most extraordinary fashion. Sometimes there were two moons, and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... it, dearest—and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let me have it a minute, please." Susy lifted the hat from her friend's head and began to manipulate its trimming. "This is the way Maria Guy or Suzanne would do it.... And now go on ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Noel. "Well, we are not top-heavy in that respect, I own. But, after all, it's not worth worrying about. We get on very nicely without it. And we wouldn't any of us ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... devil remember me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it's squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands —visitors and all —were called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into .. the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts did not ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... with a like broad stripe of lace, not inaptly characterized by some humorist as "railroad" trousers. The theory of these last, I believe, is that so much decoration on hat and collar, if not balanced by an equivalent amount below, is top-heavy in visual effect, if not on personal stability. Whatever the reason, it is all there, and I had it all at Oxford; all on my head and back, I mean, except the epaulettes. For to my concern I found that over all this paraphernalia I must also wear the red silk gown ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... every variety of form, and almost every size. They sometimes resemble castles, sometimes churches with glittering spires, and sometimes the peaked and jagged mountains of Norway. They are also frequently seen in the form of immense misshapen and top-heavy masses. ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the gable, that there is a disproportion between the little arcade in the lowest stage of the towers and the great lancets in the upper stages, that the height of the latter makes the towers appear top-heavy, that the whole facade lacks projection and depth of shade, and that there is too much glass. Some dissatisfaction was felt, as the Fabric Rolls indicate, in 1379, when masons were employed to divide each of the large windows into two lights with a quatrefoil above.[36] The mullions and quatrefoils ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... was dense, though by no means so much so as those of the Far East. On either hand were hundreds of native shacks,—mongrel little huts of earth floors, transparent walls of a sort of corn-stalk, and a thick, top-heavy roof of jungle grass or banana leaves, set carelessly in bits of space chopped out of the rampant jungle. Now and then we passed gangs of men fighting back the vegetation that threatened to swallow ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... looks top-heavy," Jack at one time called out. "You can see that it leans toward the north; and sometimes I've thought it wobbled considerably, though that may have been the plane waving ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... fifth and sixth rocks are of immense size and thickness, and overhang fearfully, all round, the four lower rocks which support them. All are perfectly irregular; the projections of one do not fit into the interstices of another; they are heaped up loosely in their extraordinary top-heavy form, on slanting ground half-way down a steep hill. Look at them from whatever point you choose, there is still all that is heaviest, largest, strongest, at the summit, and all that is lightest, smallest, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... for half an hour thereafter, St. Vincent, fascinated, studied his inscrutable countenance. To begin with, it was a massive head, abnormal and top-heavy, and its only excuse for being was the huge bull-throat which supported it. It had been cast in a mould of elemental generousness, and everything about it partook of the asymmetrical crudeness of the elemental. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... responsible forms of rule, have collapsed under plutocracy, which is irresponsible rule. And this has come upon us because we departed from the old morality in three essential points. First, we supported notions against normal customs. Second, we made the State top-heavy with a new and secretive tyranny of wealth. And third, we forgot that there is no faith in freedom without faith in free will. A servile fatalism dogs the creed of materialism; because nothing, as Dante said, less than the generosity of God could give to Man, after all ordinary ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... these top-heavy giants tortured by an invisible and violent witchcraft, a phrase comes back into my mind. I remember a little boy of my acquaintance who was once walking in Battersea Park under just such torn skies and tossing trees. He did not like the wind at all; it blew in his face too much; ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... the Fizzer left us the horse-teams came in, and went on, top-heavy with stores for "inside"; but the "Macs" were now thinking of the dry stages ahead, and were travelling at the exasperating rate of about four miles a day, as they "nursed the bullocks" through the good ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... much shortcoming we will condone as regards actual execution. Whereas, let the execution be perfect, if the details given be ill-chosen in respect of relative importance the whole effect is lost—it becomes top-heavy, as it were, and collapses. As for the number of details given, this does not matter: a man may give as few or as many as he chooses; he may stop at outline, or he may go on to Jean Van Eyck; what is essential is that, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... as 1786, for anything but copies of the design in Dugdale, with modifications made a plaisir. In Pope's edition (1725) Vertue gives the monument with some approach to accuracy, but for the bald plump face of the bust presents a top-heavy and sculpturally impossible face borrowed from "the Chandos portrait," which, in my opinion, is of no more authority than any other portrait of Shakespeare. None of them, I conceive, was ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... returned Bob, nodding his head aside; "I think my head's all alive inside like an old cheese, for I'm so full o' plans, one knocks another over. If I hadn't Mumps to talk to, I should get top-heavy an' tumble in a fit. I suppose it's because I niver went to school much. That's what I jaw my old mother for. I says, 'You should ha' sent me to school a bit more,' I says, 'an' then I could ha' read i' the books like ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoice in the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest-home. Intervenes the rest of two sunny Sabbaths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give the last ripeness to the overladen stalks that, top-heavy with aliment, fall over in their yellowy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. Few fields now—but here and there one thin and greenish, of cold, unclean, or stony soil—are waving in the shadowy winds; for all are cleared, but some stooked stubbles from which the stooks are fast disappearing, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... can sail well too—for a brig—but I should set her down as being too heavily sparred, and likely to be top-heavy. If she was going along full sail, and was caught in such a squall as we had yesterday, and laid flat like the schooner, I don't believe she'd lift again. Anyhow, I ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... might have a number of tiny communes; we might have co-operation; we might have Anarchist Communism; we might have a hundred things. I am not saying that any of these are right, though I cannot imagine that any of them could be worse than the present social madhouse, with its top-heavy rich and its tortured poor; but I say that it is an evidence of the stiff and narrow alternative offered to the civic mind, that the civic mind is not, generally speaking, conscious of these other possibilities. The civic mind is not free or alert enough to feel how much it has the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... horse, for society fitted, Be doomed to employment so utterly bad, And why should a coarse-looking man be permitted To dance on his back on a top-heavy pad? ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... sociable disposition, Mr Sudberry was about to address this ill-favoured beggar—for such he evidently was—when the coach came round a distant bend in the road at full gallop. It was the ordinary tall, top-heavy mail of the first part of the nineteenth century. Being a poor district, there were only two horses, a white and a black; but the driver wore a stylish red coat, and cracked his whip smartly. The road being all down hill at that ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... is just what it pretends to be—an elementary treatise on the subject, and is not rendered top-heavy, by overloading of extraneous matter. It will take one about an hour to read it, and he will then know ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... ever met! And he don't have to scratch gravel any more, either, for he has a third interest in that Twin Spring find, and it pans out big. They say the girl sold her share for two hundred thousand. She doesn't look top-heavy over ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... hands. And whole-tone and duodecuple scales and modern harmony in general are taking us farther and farther away from those natural laws of the vibrating string upon which arm-chair theorists have sought to build a very top-heavy edifice. Of course, the vibrating string ultimately gives—mostly out of tune—all the notes of the chromatic scale, but composers employ them on principles the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... to sure," advised Perry, darkly. "You never can tell. And there's another thing, too. We're top-heavy, with all these boards piled up on deck here, and if a storm came up we might easily ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... I do. I sort of leaven the lump. Without me he'd be just a clever prig; he couldn't help it. With me he is only better than most men; and his lofty ideas don't get top-heavy, because I keep him in ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... hair piled as always on top of her head. As she did so she caught sight of herself in the mirror and wondered absurdly why she should have kept all her hair and lost so much of her face. She looked more top-heavy than ever. Her face was a small oblong, her eyes out of all ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... every conceivable kind and shape. On the overloaded boats the curious little Japanese sailors, oddly dressed in thick padded coverings and bowl caps on their heads, with nothing on limbs and feet save small straw sandals, strapped to the feet between great and second toes, looked top-heavy. ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... and the indigenous population had not become adapted to organized trade. After the move southward of the Chin dynasty the many immigrants had made the country of the lower Yangtze more thickly populated, but not over-populated. The top-heavy court with more than the necessary number of officials (because there was still hope for a re-conquest of the north which would mean many new jobs for administrators) was a great consumer; prices went up and stimulated local rice production. ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... came the dream of a strange, huge, top-heavy vehicle, that seemed like three yellow carriages stuck together, and a mountain of luggage at the top under an immense black tarpaulin, which ended in a hood; and beneath the hood sat a blue-bloused man with a singular cap, like a concertina, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... deck so as to make her top-heavy—so as to be sure of catching us," suggested Mayo, beginning to work his hammer ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... brown pony which had been Nigel's former mount, rode Samkin Aylward the bowman, who had taken upon himself the duties of personal attendant and body-guard. His great shoulders and breadth of frame seemed dangerously top-heavy upon the tiny steed, but he ambled along, whistling a merry lilt and as lighthearted as his master. There was no countryman who had not a nod and no woman who had not a smile for the jovial bowman, who rode for the most part with his face over his shoulder, staring at the last petticoat ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... superior adversary, but his skill and nautical experience enabled him to play at what was then considered long bowls with extraordinary effect. The greater lightness and mobility of his vessels made them more than a match, in this kind of encounter, for the clumsy, top-heavy, and sluggish marine castles in which Spain and Portugal then went forth to battle on the ocean. It seems almost like the irony of history, and yet it is the literal fact, that the Dutch galleot of that day—hardly changed in two and a half centuries since—"the bull-browed galleot butting through ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it wasn't any use delaying, and I might as well go back to knitting sale-socks then as any time. However, I didn't go till October. You needn't think I'd stayed away from the farm all that time, while the tender things were opening, the tiny top-heavy beans pushing up, the garden-sarse greening, the little grass-blades two and two,—while all the young creatures were coming forward, the chickens breaking the shell, and the gosling-storm brewing and dealing destruction,—while the strawberries were growing ripe and red up ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... red-haired boy. "Call me 'Scorch.' 'Patrick Sarsfield' makes me feel top-heavy. I'd soon get ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the halliards. His left arm was of little service; his right hung useless at his side. She reached forward—one hand on the tiller—to help him. The rim of the storm slipped up over the sun—a sudden flaw struck them—the rudder flew sharp round, wrenched out of her slight hold—the top-heavy sail caught the full force of the blow, surged downward with a heavy lurch, and the gale was on them. A great blow, and swift darkness, then fierce currents rushing coldly past him; strange, wild sounds ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... spend the greater part of it writing the history of dead hours. Our lives lack balance because we find it hard to discover a mean between the triolet we wrote last I night and the big book we are going to start tomorrow, and also because living only with our heads we tend to become top-heavy. We justify our present discomfort with the promise of a bright future of flowers and sunshine and gladdest life, though we know that in the garden of art there are many chrysalides and few butterflies. Few of us are fortunate enough to accomplish anything ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... times more incomprehensible and mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg. But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all. It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it looks like ourselves. When a tree really looks like a man ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... in the day than cooking for four—half an hour off your sleep, or half an hour off your march? I do not believe that five men on the lid of a crevasse are as safe as four. Wilson writes that the stow of the sledge with five sleeping-bags was pretty high: this makes it top-heavy and liable to capsize in ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... retired presently to her cabin, and made a fair start on her announced policy of crying all the way from America to Europe. When, however, the ship met with a playful little cross-sea and began to bobble and weave and splash about in the manner of our top-heavy leviathans of travel, she was impelled to take thought of her inner self, and presently sought the fresh and open air of the deck lest a worse thing befall her. There in a sheltered angle she snuggled deep ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Sam Pitman's diminutive farm-house. Three watch-dogs came from beneath the little front porch, but, recognizing the visitor, they stood wagging their tails cordially and uttering low whines of welcome. There was a broken harrow, with rusty iron teeth, leaning against the house near the log steps; a top-heavy ash-hopper and a lye-stained trough stood under the spreading branches of a beechnut-tree beside a rotting cider-press and a huge pot for heating water during hog-killing or for boiling lye and grease ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... aeroplane was overhead. There were armoured cars on the road, going toward the front; top-heavy machines that made surprisingly little noise, considering their weight. Some had a sort of conning tower at the top. They looked sombre, menacing. The driving of these cars over slippery roads must be difficult. Like the vans, they keep as near the centre of the road ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that the body before him was of a cripple, short-legged, hunch-backed, long-armed, pigeon-breasted. The large head sat strangely top-heavy between even the broad shoulders. It confirmed the hopeless but sullen despair that brooded on the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... a slender, wide-mouthed child, top-heavy with her damp clumps of hair. Now she was squaring and thickening and looking horrid, like Mr. Hancock. Beside her Harriett felt tall ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... sea wonderfully well. She is a noble ship, stiff, fast, and dry. Her motion is very easy, and her performance, whether in strong or light breezes, is always excellent. Her grating-deck has been taken off, as it made her a little top-heavy and uneasy, and detracted from her speed; and she is infinitely better ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... in the full expectation of being duly found and ecstatically pounced upon; then he had caught sight of the butcher's cart, and, forgetting his obligations, had rushed off for a ride. Harold, it further appeared, greatly coveting tadpoles, and top-heavy with the eagerness of possession, had fallen into the pond. This, in itself, was nothing; but on attempting to sneak in by the back-door, he had rendered up his duckweed-bedabbled person into the hands ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... to find proof in this paper of the author's statement that earth pressures on the sides of a structure buried in earth are greater at the top than at the bottom of a trench. That some banks are "top-heavy," is, no doubt, a fact, the writer having often heard similar expressions used by experienced trench foremen, but, in every case called to his attention, local circumstances have caused the top-heaviness, ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... me a long lecture on my sins, and told me to sit and think them over while she just 'lost' herself for a moment. She never finds herself very soon, so the minute her cap began to bob like a top-heavy dahlia, I whipped the Vicar of Wakefield out of my pocket, and read away, with one eye on him and one on Aunt. I'd just got to where they all tumbled into the water when I forgot and laughed out loud. Aunt woke up and, being more good-natured after her nap, told me to read a bit and show what ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... there before, but in the front garden he had come upon Linda walking up and down the grass, stopping to pick off a dead pink or give a top-heavy carnation something to lean against, or to take a deep breath of something, and then walking on again, with her little air of remoteness. Over her white frock she wore a yellow, pink-fringed shawl from the ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... raiment that her wardrobe contained, and she was bright and cheery and exceedingly incompetent. It was her costume that shocked him. Not only was she attired in a low-necked, rose-coloured evening gown, liberally bespangled with tinsel, but she wore a vast top-heavy picture-hat whose crown of black was almost wholly obscured by a gorgeous white feather that once must have adorned the king of all ostriches. She was not at all his idea of a chambermaid. He started to back out of the door with an apology for having ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... miss the highest mark. A certain one, praised by a magazine editor as the best of the year, suffers in the opinion of the Committee, or part of the Committee, from an introduction too long and top-heavy. It not only mars the symmetry of the whole, this introduction, but starts the reader in the wrong direction. One thing the brief story must not do is to begin out of tone, to promise what it does ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... curve of the tapered outline of the shaft of the column. Without the taper, which is perceptible enough in the order of this building, and much more marked in the order of earlier buildings, the columns would look top-heavy; but the entasis is an additional optical correction to prevent their outline from appearing hollowed, which it would have done had there been no curve. The columns of the Parthenon have shafts that are over 34 ft. high, and diminish from a diameter of 6.15 ft. ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... on a siding of the railway that runs from Moscow to Warsaw through Smolensk, was a string of thirteen freight cars, the short, chunky Russian kind—barely half as long as the American—looking as flimsy, top-heavy, and unwieldy as houseboats on wheels. No locomotive was tied to the string, and from the windward side, where the cars were whitewashed by the biting blizzard that had already stopped all traffic with its drifted ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... are remarkable for the prodigious height to which they struggle upwards from the dense jungle towards the air and light; and one of the most curious of nature's devices, is the singular expedient by which some families of these very tall and top-heavy trees throw out buttresses like walls of wood, to support themselves from beneath. Five or six of these buttresses project like rays from all sides of the trunk: they are from six to twelve inches thick, and advance from five to fifteen feet ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... nearly to their knees. The fallen logs over which they climbed were as slippery as wet glass—the branch spikes on these logs as dangerous under slipping feet as upturned pitchforks. The men were top-heavy under their packs; the women uncomplaining and soaked to their skins. The moist air was still impregnated with the scent of smoke—a sinister odour which kept in their minds the ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... realities, as well as the outward form of the action." True, but the "invisible realities" form that from which true unity is derived, else their partial presence but makes the whole the more incomplete and lop-sided, if not indeed, top-heavy, from light weight beneath; and it is in the unity derived from this higher pervading, yet not too assertive "invisible reality," that Stevenson most often fails, and is, in his own words, "execrable"; the ending shaming, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... however, one exception, which would have proved extremely inconvenient, and that was her size; for as they could not make her quite forty tun burthen, she would have been incapable of containing half the crew below the deck, and must have been so top-heavy, that if they were all at the same time on deck, there would be no small hazard of her oversetting; but this was a difficulty not to be removed, as they could not augment her beyond the size already proposed. After the manner of rigging and fitting up the bark was considered and regulated, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... that in Jimson I had struck a pretty sound fellow. As I lit the candles on my dressing-table I observed that the stack of silver which I had taken out of my pockets when I washed before supper was top-heavy. It had two big coins at the top and sixpences and shillings beneath. Now it is one of my oddities that ever since I was a small boy I have arranged my loose coins symmetrically, with the smallest uppermost. That made ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the portrait again. The artist had given it a head that would have been, in an intellectual point of view, top-heavy for Shakespeare. 'Romance, however,' Flora went on, busily arranging Mr F.'s Aunt's toast, 'as I openly said to Mr F. when he proposed to me and you will be surprised to hear that he proposed seven times once in a hackney-coach once ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of Mason Jones' taunt to the Southern Independence Association at Manchester, that The Index, from the end of March to August, 1864, was unable to report a single Southern public meeting. The London Association, having completed its top-heavy organization, was content with that act and showed no life. The first move by the Association was planned to be made in connection with the Alexandra case when, as was expected, the Exchequer Court should render a decision against the Government's right to detain her. ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... without noticing it, had stepped into a little pool of water on disembarking. Buckskin while dry is very adhesive; when wet very slippery. As he followed Sam out on the curving cheek of the rock his foot slid, he lost his equilibrium, was on the edge of falling, overbalanced by the top-heavy pack he was carrying. Luckily Sam himself was portaging the canoe. Dick, with marvellous quickness, ducked loose from the tump-line. The pack bounded down the slant, fell with a splash, and was whirled ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... saucer from which it is to be eaten. The cakes should be prettily arranged in a cake dish with a doily under them. The fruit should be placed on a flat salver, as high piled dishes are apt to be top-heavy and difficult to pass. Oranges, bananas, grapes, the last cut into rather small bunches, make a pretty array. Each guest must be supplied with a fruit plate, doily, finger-bowl, fruit-knife and fork or spoon. Souvenirs are ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... so can the lines of loose drapery, but not cylinders too loose to be the first and too tight to be the second. Nor is a subtle sense of harmony needed to see that while there are hundreds of differently proportioned hats, a hat that actually grows larger towards the top is somewhat top-heavy. But what is largely forgotten is this, that these two fantastic objects, which now strike the eye as unconscious freaks, were originally conscious freaks. Our ancestors, to do them justice, did not think them casual or commonplace; they thought them, if not ridiculous, at ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Buddhism which was not yet decadent, for Vasubandhu and Asanga, who probably lived in the fourth century, were constructive thinkers. It is true that their additions were of the dangerous kind which render an edifice top-heavy but their works show vitality and had a wide influence[23]. The very name of Asanga's philosophy—Yogacarya—indicates its affinity to Brahmanic thought, as do his doctrines of Alayavijnana and Bodhi, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... bargained to deliver donkeys, approached the President with the explanation that donkeys being live-stock, would have to be accommodated upon an upper deck where there was ample ventilation; the result of which, they said, would be that the ship would be top-heavy and would be obliged to take in ballast. Surely, it was argued, it would be folly to carry worthless ballast when good mealies, which were in any case badly needed in the country, would serve the purpose of ballasting equally well and would, of course, show ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... cut open, and the six kids jump out all alive and kicking. Stones are then placed in the wolf's stomach, and it is sewed up. When the wolf wakens he cannot account for the jumbling and tumbling in his stomach, so he goes to the well to get a drink. But the weight of the stones makes him top-heavy; he falls ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the road had been deserted. Now they had come up to a stream of traffic flowing slowly toward the Front. Armored cars, looking tall and top-heavy, rumbled and jolted along. Many lorries, one limousine containing a general, a few Paris buses, all smeared a dingy gray and filled with French soldiers, numberless and nondescript open machines, here and there a horse-drawn vehicle—these filled the road. In and out among them Jean threaded ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... charmingly developed by conscientious tutors. But at the moment he thought that the compelling power lay in some deep subtlety of eye, her little air of lofty aloofness, her classic small features in a small face, and the top-heavy masses of blue black hair which she carried with a certain naive pride as if it were her only vanity; in her general unlikeness to the gray-eyed fair-haired American—a type to which himself belonged. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the clerks, and in one lazy tone Through the long, heavy, painful page drawl on; Soft creeping, words on words, the sense compose, At every line they stretch, they yawn, they doze. 390 As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low Their heads, and lift them as they cease to blow, Thus oft they rear, and oft the head decline, As breathe, or pause, by fits, the airs divine; And now to this side, now to that they nod, As verse or prose infuse the drowsy god. Thrice Budgell aim'd to speak,[339] but ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... eyes—young Dippel, son of the rich drug-store man. Feuerstein saw that Dippel was on the verge of collapse from too much drink. As he still had his eighty-five cents, he pressed Dippel to drink and, by paying, induced him to add four glasses of beer to his already top-heavy burden. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... white cravat with a golden-headed cane and a tall hat and a frown; a thing which will stop breathing some fine day and the worms will eat! Shall I tremble when an ecclesiastical Leo utters a roar? Shall I halt and stammer because a top-heavy lad from a theological seminary, hopelessly in love with himself, scowls ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... Henry," leaving her fifteen, and with a rough tracing of the American coast drawn on a sheet of foolscap, with his lever watch and a quadrant for his instruments, he squared off for New London. A rough, hard passage they had of it. The ship's ballast was gone, by the bursting of the tanks; she was top-heavy and under manned. He spoke a British whaling bark, and by her sent to Captain Kellett his epaulettes, and to his own owners news that he was coming. They had heavy gales and head winds, were driven as ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... started, four of us, in an open waggonette with a pair of horses, for Monte Oliveto, the luggage heaped mountain-high and tied in a top-heavy mass above us. After leaving the gateway, with its massive fortifications and frescoed arches, the road passes into a dull earthy country, very much like some parts—and not the best parts—of England. The beauty of the Sienese contado is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and how we had to get the boat up to Shepperton by five o'clock to meet him, and then he went for George. Why was George to fool about all day, and leave us to lug this lumbering old top-heavy barge up and down the river by ourselves to meet him? Why couldn't George come and do some work? Why couldn't he have got the day off, and come down with us? Bank be blowed! What good was ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... The top-heavy, four-horsed, yellow old coach from Vicenza, which arrived at Padua every night of the year, brought with it in particular on the night of October 13, 1721, a tall, personable young man, an Englishman, in a dark blue cloak, who swang briskly down from the coupe and asked in stilted ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... one evening, tired out and profoundly depressed. A table, covered with books, stood beside the fire. She gave the top-heavy pile an impatient thrust and the mass fell, with a great crash, to the floor. A heap of manuscript—her musical achievement for the past year—was involved in the fall. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... hard, stinted him for food and clothing and had been in the habit of flogging him whenever he felt like it. In addition to the above charges, Abe did not hesitate to say that his master meddled too much with the bottle, in consequence of which, he was often in a "top-heavy" state. Abe said, however, that he was rich and stood pretty high in the neighborhood—stinting, flogging and drinking were no great disadvantages to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... &c. 33; inferiority &c. 34; inequation[obs3]. V. be unequal &c. adj.; countervail; have the advantage, give the advantage; turn the scale; kick the beam; topple,topple over; overmatch &c. 33; not come up to &c. 34. Adj. unequal, uneven, disparate, partial; unbalanced, overbalanced; top-heavy, lopsided, biased, skewed; disquiparant[obs3]. Adv. haud passibus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... thought we had come to the hotel that he had mentioned, for he got out without another word, and followed me down the garden. I had to walk beside him to keep him steady, for he was still a little top-heavy. When we came to the door, I opened it, and led him into the front room. I give you my word that all the way, the father and the daughter were walking in front ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... leaving their burdensome charge behind. There it stuck, helplessly alone,—even more thoroughly belying its own name than diligences usually do,—perched on the edge of a declivity of the height of a tall house, stock still, top-heavy with piled luggage, deserted by its passengers, abandoned of its friend in the velvet cap, a motionless and apparently objectless coach. How it was to be dislodged and conveyed down the "vast abrupt" became matter of conjecture to the four, when presently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... said that the composition of the Provisional Government was received with popular satisfaction. It was top-heavy with representatives of the bourgeoisie. There was only one Socialist, Kerensky. Miliukov's selection, inevitable though it was, and great as his gifts were, was condemned by the radical working-men ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... will forgive him and put all such slips down as the result of leaving boys' company once in a while and associating with men. The reader knows that men dearly love big, ungainly words and that just as soon as boys do something worth while the men get busy hunting up some top-heavy name for it. ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... she suggested. By good chance Oscar Hank's ship, the Prinz Karl, was due in from New York at the time, and when I saw her two big yellow funnels and top-heavy passenger decks blocking the view of the Principe, I went over. Mr. Hank, Signore Hank, was a man who had seen the best of his life before he married Rebecca. He was a tall, spare-ribbed man with high ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... What're you goin' to do now? Lay the Maggie alongside the bark? I wouldn't if I was you. The sea's a mite choppy an' if you bump the Maggie agin the bark she'll do one o' two things—stave in her topsides or bump that top-heavy deckload o' vegetables overboard. An' if that happens," he reminded Scraggs, "you'll be doin' your bookkeepin' with red ink for quite ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... run it up to two dollars it will be that top-heavy that the littlest kick in the world will knock it over. Be satisfied now with what you've, got. Suppose the price does break a little, you'd still make your pile. But swing this deal over into July, and it's ruin. The farmers all over the country are planting wheat as they've never planted it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... overflowed to the sidewalk and crushed up against the iron picket-fence of a millionaire across the street. The motors speeding along the avenue were compelled to stop, and in a jiffy were piled three, five, and six deep at the edge of the crowd; auto-busses, top-heavy turtles of traffic, plunged into the jam, their passengers crowding to the edges of the roofs in wild excitement and peering down into the centre of the mass, which presently could hardly be ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
