"Topple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and his autocrat promptly dragged one foot from under him, causing him to topple on the parapet. He hissed at her. Le Rossignol looked up at the threatening flat ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... recollection of it. After all these years I can hardly think of the fortress at Itzia without some return of the depression and half-dismay which fell upon me when I first looked at it, with the black clouds gathering thickly over it, the mountain on which it stood looking as if it would topple over and bury fortress and valley, and one spear-like gleam of bleak sunshine lighting up a few of its windows and a few square yards of its western wall. Of course I had never been guilty of such a madness as to think of approaching the place by anything but wile and stratagem; ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... that stay or you'll topple overboard," warned Frank, as Ben, balancing himself, got into ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... continued her aunt, "in the next street to ours there is a miserable building, that looks as if it were just going to topple over; and away up in the third story, in a little room just under the eaves, live two poor, lonely old women. They are both nearly on to ninety. I was in there day before yesterday. One of them is constantly confined to her bed with rheumatism; the other, weak and feeble, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... possession of citizens, who up to that period had justified La Noue's assertion, that none could endure a siege like Huguenots. As soon as the cannonading began, the spirit of the inhabitants seemed to depart. The ministers exhorted their flocks in vain as the tiles and chimneys began to topple into the streets, and the concussions of the artillery were responded to by the universal wailing of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the right path through the trees. But if you are walking north from the lake it is worth while to make your way to the Cumberland obelisk—a gaunt column which the clustering ivy and shrubs at its base will some day topple down among the grass and heather—and to reach the Bishop's Gate through the single narrow stretch of Windsor Great Park that lies in Surrey. In winter, pheasants crouch under the brushwood or splutter through ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the beanstalk which cut it half in two. The ogre felt the beanstalk shake and quiver so he stopped to see what was the matter. Then Jack gave another chop with the axe, and the beanstalk was cut in two and began to topple over. Then the ogre fell down and broke his crown, and the ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... aside with a swift movement, and the big red lantern swayed and threatened to topple as ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... said David, "so she won't topple, and fix her up to suit yourselves, girls, while we ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... Anne. "She finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought 'and for all those who live in houses where cushions are loved ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and we ran down to the stepping-stones by which we had come, in order to save the time which we should have been compelled to waste in feeling for a foothold as we went. Every second was of importance, and I fully expected to see Dennis topple unconscious into the pool below before I should be able to save him. I knew what it was exactly; he was going through my own horrible experience of "drowning on dry land," to quote Garnesk's vigorous phrase. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when I reached ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... on top of that huge, uplifted log will topple off, and that man underneath will get his eyes filled ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... drooping features, the languid inanition of the arms. The veins throb in his hands and feet: the spine has ceased to be rigid, and were it not for the support of Judith's hands buried in his hair, he would topple over inanimate. The treatment of the bronze is successful and its patina is admirable. Judith's drapery, it is true, has a restless crackling appearance. It is furrowed into small and rather fussy folds, almost suggesting, like the figures of the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... the ramparts, a high red town above the fortresses, a thin red tower above the town. The whole thing looked dangerous and unsteady, as if any minute it would topple over. She knew John was there. Something awful was happening to him, and ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... slowly and with age, a woodstack on his back. Heavier even than a knapsack containing a spirit kettle and a Decameron and biscuit remainders in a paper bag, it must be. Peter watched the slow figure sympathetically. Would he sway and topple over; and if he did would the woodstack break his fall? The whisky flask stood ready on ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... 16 May 1997 when his government was overthrown militarily by Laurent Desire KABILA, who immediately assumed governing authority; KABILA pledged to hold elections by April 1999, but in December 1998 announced that elections would be postponed until all foreign military forces attempting to topple the government had withdrawn from the country; KABILA was assassinated in January 2001 and was succeeded by his ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... lightless passage to the front rooms, a curious sensation touched Halder—a terrifying conviction that some undefinable thing had just gone wrong. And with that, his whole body was suddenly rigid, every muscle locking in mid-motion. He felt momentum topple him slowly forwards; then he was no longer falling but stopped, tilted off-balance at a grotesque angle, suspended in a web of forces he could not feel. Not the slightest sound had come from Kilby, invisible in the ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... over," Bruno repeated, very gravely, "and if you ever saw a caterpillar topple over, you'd know it's a serious thing, and not sit g'inning like that—and I shan't tell you ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... to come and sit Oft when the sun sloped midway to the west, Watching with sweet enjoyment interknit The long light slant across the green earth's breast, And clouds upon the ranges opposite, Rolled up into a gleaming thundercrest, Topple and break and fall in purple rain, And mist of summer showers trail ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... just want to start out like Jean is doing and rush over three thousand just to settle down at the other end for ever and ever. I'd want to keep on going. It's such a comfort to know that the world is round after all, and you can't topple off the end." ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... "It may topple the chief's plans over; they're very insecure. It plays right into the hands of his enemies, too, and of course Gordon's press bureau will make the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... nervousness. He walked in the afternoon toward Notting Hill, but he succeeded in not breaking the vow he had taken not to meddle with his actress. She was like an acrobat poised on a slippery ball—if he should touch her she would topple over. He passed her door three times and he thought of her three hundred. This was the hour at which he most regretted that Mrs. Alsager had not come back—for he had called at her house only to learn that she was still at Torquay. This ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... We'd better make a dash for the forest and trust to God to reach the frontier. Take this, Paul," he said, thrusting a flask into the hands of the nobleman, who was swaying upon uncertain legs. "Brace up." He caught his friend as the latter was about to topple over. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... A head with kindling eyes above the throng, 'A boon, Sir King—this quest!' then—for he marked Kay near him groaning like a wounded bull— 'Yea, King, thou knowest thy kitchen-knave am I, And mighty through thy meats and drinks am I, And I can topple over a hundred such. Thy promise, King,' and Arthur glancing at him, Brought down a momentary brow. 'Rough, sudden, And pardonable, worthy to be knight— Go therefore,' and all ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... tonakcento. Tonnage enhavebleco. Tonsure tonsuro. Too (much) tro. Tool ilo. Tooth dento. Toothless sendenta. Top (summit) supro. Top (peak) pinto. Top (of head) verto. Topaz topazo. Topic subjekto. Topmost plejsupra. Topography topografio. Topple fali. Topsy-turvy, to turn renversi. Topsy-turvy renversita—ite. Toque cxapo. Torch torcxo. Toreador toreadoro. Torment turmenti. Torment turmento—ado. Torpedo torpedo. Torpedo boat torpedboato. Torpid sensenta. Torpidity sensenteco. Torpor sensento. Torrent ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and wellnigh inevitable catastrophe. "All will go on almost of its own accord, so long as foreign affairs are quiet and unbroken," wrote Mirabeau after Frederick's death. "But at the first gunshot or at the first stormy situation the whole of this little scaffolding of mediocrity will topple to the ground. How all these underling Ministers would crumple up! How everyone, from the distracted chief to the convict-gang, would shout for a pilot! ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... in a sitting position with both hands tied, the mode of attack being to topple over one's opponent and then bunt him out of the circle. There is considerable skill in the game and a fearful lot of hard work. By the time the victor has won, the seat of the trousers of each of the two contending heroes ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... any more accurately. It was simply a walk with the least possible waste of energy. It fitted Dr. Holmes's definition of walking as forward motion to prevent falling. And yet Field never gave you the impression that he was about to topple over. His legs always acted as if they were weary and would like to lean their master up against something. As to what that something might be, he ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Paul, the tower of Saint-Jacques, and, nearer in, the pavilions of the new Louvre and the Tuileries, were crowned by a blaze, which lent them the aspect of sacrificial pyres. The dome of the Invalides was flaring with such brilliancy that you instinctively feared lest it should suddenly topple down and scatter burning flakes over the neighborhood. Beyond the irregular towers of Saint-Sulpice, the Pantheon stood out against the sky in dull splendor, like some royal palace of conflagration reduced to embers. Then, as the sun declined, the pyre-like edifices gradually set the whole ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the reply. "If you built your heavy wall on the bank, the water would strike the concave bank at one of these crossings, eat away the earth under the wall and your wall would topple in. Then the current would cross the stream, undermine the bank on the other side and your masonry would crumble there, too. So much for ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... hope through me. Some little distance back a tree hung over the sandy bottom, its roots partially laid bare by the washing of the stream which had now disappeared. The trunk was inclined at a sharp angle; but little force would be needed, I thought, to topple it over until it lay athwart the path which the pursuers must follow. Its foliage was thick, and though I did not flatter myself 'twould put an end to the pursuit, I thought it might serve as a check, and enable Uncle Moses to gain strength enough ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... or tired: Insatiate wanderer, marvellously fired, Most grandly piling and piling into the air Stones that will topple or arch he ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... could be heard the staccato spatter of bullets on her iron sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then one of the gunners would reach one of her searchlights, and as the ray was extinguished, one almost expected to see her topple in the direction of her broken support, but in each case it was quickly replaced by another, and she continued to drop nearer ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... evident by hoarse shouts, now of encouragement to his horses, and now of derision at some luckless driver. Out in the country, when the heavily laden market carts loomed slowly out of the fog as they passed, they had the appearance of being miles up in the air, and as if they must inevitably topple over. Joshua knew all the carters, not by sight, for he could not see them, but by the time and place he met them on his nightly journey. Tim could reckon pretty well that after he had heard his gruff salutation of "a dark night, mate," repeated a certain number ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... had thought Quito a large city, but this, I guessed, must be ten times larger. All the houses, too, looked wonderfully high, and I thought if an earthquake were to occur, how quickly they would all topple down. I asked my mother how people could venture to build such tall houses. She laughed, and said that happily in England there were no earthquakes; and that, in another city in the north, there ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... Whom nothing touched of danger, or of harm. His life was just a rare-bit dream, where some one Seems like to fall before a truck or train— Instead he walks across them. Or you see Shadows of falling things, great buildings topple, Pianos skid like bulls from hellish corners And chase the oblivious fool who stands and smiles. The buildings slant and sway like monstrous searchlights, But never touch him. And the mad piano Comes up to him, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... he had realized his power over these men; now he perceived that these men, some of them, realized it even better than he.... Realized it and resented it; resented it and fought with all the strength of their souls to undermine it and make it topple in ruin. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... into blue. As for me—I have laid hands on a canal—the Rio Giuseppe—all of it—from the beginning of the red wall where the sailors land, along its crookednesses to the side entrance of the Public Garden, and so past the rookeries to the lagoon, where the tower of Castello is ready to topple into the sea. ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... seemed to mark the spot where the voyage was to end. There was no going beyond that clear-cut line. When the ship came up to it, there would be no more water beyond; naught but a vast space into which the vessel must topple and go on falling to the end of time. The great sirens were silent, for the fog of the night before had lifted, laying bare a desolate plain. The ship was sliding into oblivion, magnificently indifferent to the catastrophe that awaited its arrival at the edge of the ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... unevenness; inclination of the balance, partiality, bias, weight; shortcoming; casting weight, make-weight; superiority &c 33; inferiority &c 34; inequation^. 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^. Adv. haud ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that your house, with all that therein is, stands on the edge of a precipice, and that at any moment a landslip might topple it over into everlasting ruin. And yet you behave as though your house was planted in the midst of a vast and secure plain, sheltered from every imaginable havoc. I speak metaphorically, of course. It is not a material precipice that your house stands on the edge of; it is a metaphorical ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... midst of a catastrophe. The door-handle rattled lightly. It seemed to him that the walls were coming apart, that the furniture swayed at him; the ceiling slanted queerly for a moment, a tall wardrobe tried to topple over. He caught hold of something and it was the back of a chair. So he had reeled against a chair! Oh! Confound it! ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... has cut off the lamps—he's released the platform. God! Look—Foulet!" My voice tore through my throat; my eyes burned with sudden, blinding emotion. In the soft darkness of the starry night I could see the platform waver, topple, rise! It rose straight up, tilting and swaying in the light breeze. What was it Fraser had said? If it was released it would go straight to the stars! It ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... scramble for gold. And people would begin to hoard things ... and no one would trust any one else. There would be suspicion and fear and greed and hate ... and very swiftly and very surely, civilisation would reel and topple and fall to pieces.... At any moment that might happen. So far, indeed, things were still steady ... calamity had not come so quickly as imaginative men had foretold ... but presently, when the slums ... the rich man's reproach ... had become hungrier than they usually were, there ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... which before them none had questioned. The movement spread until uneasiness was everywhere in the realm of thought, and people walked about therein fearsomely, as in a land subject to earthquakes. It was as if people had said: "We don't know what will topple next. Let's raze everything to the ground, and then we shall feel safer." And there came a moment after which nobody could ever look at a picture of the Nativity in the old way. Pictures of the Nativity were admired perhaps as much as ever, but for the exquisite beauty ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... meridian. By that time the heat has increased from an arctic temperature to double the boiling water point, from 250 deg. below zero to 500 deg. above it, or the point at which tin melts. Subjected to these extremes, the glassy rocks crack, shiver and crumble away; enormous land slides occur; peaks topple over; and tons of debris, crashing down the mountains, are swallowed up forever in the yawing chasms of ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... supporting logs must be close enough together to hold up the pots and pans, and, being round, this leaves too little space between them for the fire to heat the balance evenly; besides, a pot is liable to slip and topple over. A better way, if one has time, is to hew both the inside surfaces and the tops of the logs flat. Space these supports close enough together at one end for the narrowest pot and wide enough apart at the other for ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... was too much under the spell of his music. And his instinct told him that a work of art the less would not make one happy man the more. The tragedy of want was no new thing to him: from his childhood on he had been used to treading on the edge of such abysmal depths, and contriving not to topple over. But he was apt to judge suicide harshly, being conscious as he was of such a fullness of force, and unable to understand how a man, under the pressure of any suffering whatsoever, could give up the struggle. Suffering, struggling, is there anything ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... service in the Baptist chapel, of which Rev. Mr. Kingdon is pastor. The chapel, which is a part of Mr. K.'s dwelling-house, is situated on the summit of a high mountain which overlooks the sea. As seen from the valley below, it appears to topple on the very brink of a frightful precipice. It is reached by a winding tedious road, too rugged to admit of a chaise, and in some places so steep as to try the activity of a horse. As we approached nearer, we observed the people climbing up in throngs ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... off. I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat; it will topple down if they don't get some buttresses. They have pulled down three,—Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, kind, light-hearted Wainewright, their Janus. [1] The best is, neither of our fortunes ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... reason, I answer as before that this can no more be done than thought, truth or motion can be defined. Who has answered the question, "What is truth?" Man cannot see God and live. We cannot go so far back upon ourselves as to undermine our own foundations; if we try to do so we topple over, and lose that very reason about which we vainly try to reason. If we let the foundations be, we know well enough that they are there, and we can build upon them in all security. We cannot, then, define reason nor crib, cabin and confine it within a thus-far-shalt-thou-go-and-no-further. ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... battle-shout—pealed above the bellowing stadium. Even as he cried it, all saw his form draw upward as might Prometheus's unchained. They saw the fingers of the Spartan unclasp. They saw his bloody face upturned and torn with helpless agony. They saw his great form totter, topple, fall. The last dust cloud, and into it the multitude seemed ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... is a home of earthquakes, and when an earthquake starts to rock the land and topple the houses about the peoples' ears, then a tall, strong house of stone or brick would be both dangerous in its fall and very expensive to put up again. The second is that Japan is a land of fires. The people are very careless. They use ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... obedience, added gestures to cries. The scared child, further agitated by these demonstrations, entirely lost self-control. His posture caused the unstable trough to topple over and the lad was plunged into the flood. The frothing mouth of a wave swallowed him. No; his doom was not sealed; taught by instinct or by pluck, the little fellow had the presence of mind to save himself by clinging to the capsized canoe. He held on tenaciously, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes, Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... so silly in our lives. Poor bandit, he was just one of those figures that sit in a chair and are pelted with baseballs, three shots for a dime. "Every time you hit the nigger!" That's what the man used to call. When some one hit him a good hard crack he'd topple off the seat and then the man would give you a kewpie doll or maybe an ash-tray. The poor old wooden "nigger" had been packed away and all we had seen was his black face sticking up ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Jefferson ejaculated, moving restlessly in his effort to find the easiest corner of his chair. "I hope nothing is going to excite me. I have heart-disease, little girl, and I'm liable to topple off at any moment. I tell you, I must not ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... not offered some sort of shelter from the storm, however, the place would hardly have appealed to Harvey and Henry Burns. The aged building seemed to creak and sway in the wind, as though it might fall apart from weakness and topple into the water. The stream plunged over the dam with a sullen roar, much as if it chafed at the barrier and longed to sweep it altogether from its course and carry its timbers with it. Once the lightning flashed into ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... slowly up the first six miles to the summit of the intervening range at the Cross Foxes Inn, and jolts swiftly down the other six miles, with red hot drag creaking and groaning lugubriously, till it seems to topple over sheer into the sea at the clambering High Street of the old borough. As you turn to descend the seaward slope at the Cross Foxes, you appear to leave modern industrial England and the nineteenth century well behind you ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... raised its steepled head toward the sky, but its roof had fallen in, and Turner Hall was a mass of blackened ruins. Parts of the walls were still standing, swaying as if ready to topple over any moment. Off in one corner the blackened timbers and jumbled bits of furniture were ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... who ventures thither. Yet, to descend from these speculative comparisons, it seems that thou hast a friendly and meaning purpose in thy warnings. Thou knowest that there are in this armament men who grudge to me whatever I now owe to Fortune, who would topple me from the height to which I did not climb, but was led by the congregated Greeks, and who, while perhaps they are forging arrowheads for the eagle, have sent to place poison and a snare in its distant nest. So the Nausicaa is on its voyage to Sparta, conveying to the Ephors complaints ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... cried Tom, reeling about. He saw Mr. Damon and Mr. Fenwick topple to the beach. The roaring increased, and the rumbling was like thunder, close at hand. The island seemed to rock to ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... I saw the schooner topple over, slide down first on its left side, crush one of the men who delayed too long about jumping to one side, then bound from block to block, and ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... featureless convexity of chalk and soil—an ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... of bone above his wrist were bared to view—hat he had none—his ears were very large, and the rims of them red with cold, and his neck was so immeasurably long and thin, that his head appeared to topple for want of support. When he had come on deck, he stood with one hand raised to his forehead, touching his hair instead of his hat, and the other occupied with a half-roasted red-herring. "Yes, sir," said Smallbones, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... accident, for the line was old and neglected, but why should it happen now? He hung up the receiver and reviewed it all calmly. There were a hundred things which might happen to the line, for it passed through rough country near Vegas; but the weather was fair and there was no wind blowing to topple over the poles. No one used the line but him—it had been connected up by Blount when he had first taken over the mine—and yet the wire had been cut. But by whom? As he sat there pondering he raised his eyes to the hill-top, and Stiff Neck ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... parted from Roland and marched away with the bulk of his army toward his own land. But ever as he passed over the high mountains and through the deep ravines whose steep sides shut out the light of the sun and seemed about to topple upon him, his heart grew heavy with some strange oppression he could not understand. Ever and anon he turned to his bodyguard and said, "I much fear me that some terrible danger awaiteth our beloved Roland and the noble rear guard. I feel that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... at all—it's a rickety old Scare-crow! However," he added, as he saw the Blackbird look rather ashamed and crestfallen, "I was quite taken in myself at first; but one day I happened to be passing the orchard just as a gale of wind was blowing, and saw the Scare-crow topple over. Since that day I've never been afraid of scare-crows, although there's an old farmer near here who puts most frightful-looking ones in his corn fields, worse than any I've ever seen anywhere else. It's of no ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... traced inland, are almost invariably found to terminate against glaciers. Thick ice frequently appears, too, crowning the exposed sea-cliffs, from the edges of which it droops in thick, tongue-like, and stalactitic projections, until its own weight forces it to break away and topple down ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... felt that silent approbation behind him; insensibly it steadied Ford and sharpened his instinct for reading the faces of the other players, so that the miniature towers of red chips and blue grew higher until they threatened to topple—whereupon other little towers began to grow up around them. And the men in the saloon began to feel the fascination of his success, so that they grouped themselves about his chair and peered down over his shoulder ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... the sailor was longer than usual in taking aim, but when he fired the schooner's foremast was seen to topple over, and her head flew up into the wind, thus presenting her ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... symptoms of satisfaction at securing such a helper. He told the young man that his particular care would be the dynamite—to handle the boxes, store them in the little shed, unpack the sticks, and follow the drills, planting the rendrock ready for the blast that was to topple the hillock into the pit. Mr. Wagg explained to the warden, after a time, that the dynamite could be planted more safely and to better advantage when the drillers were off the job. Therefore, Vaniman was detailed to ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... or near it— At the races you can hear it, At the dog-fights, too! Every shrieking, dancing drover As the canines topple over Yells applause to Grip or Rover, "Give ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... of another huge rock which still stood upright. Some force of nature had slit the two like a piece of paper—from the looks of it, the break was a recent one—and had forced a section outward, making it look like a wall about to topple over. ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... part of the whole invention. All the way up the P.B., inside, are loops for the thumbs; so it's something like going up-stairs, only perhaps less comfortable; and, by the time the A. T. has risen out of the bag, all but his head, he's sure to topple over, one way or the other—the Law of Gravity secures that. And there he ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... steward, my lord, the greatest of the great, thou richest of the rich, whose greatness is true greatness, whose riches are true riches, thou rudder of heaven, thou pole of the earth, thou measuring rope for heavy weights (?)! O rudder, slip not, O pole, topple not, O measuring rope, make no mistake in measuring! The great lord taketh away from her that hath no master (or owner), and stealeth from him that is alone [in the world]. Thy rations are in thy house—a pot of beer and three bread-cakes. ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... youth which was Vance Cornish crumbled and fell away. A new man looked down at her. The firm flesh of his face became loose. His whole body was flabby. She had the feeling that if she pushed against his chest with the weight of her arm, he would topple to the floor. That weakness gradually passed. A peculiar strength of purpose grew in ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... dash o'er them and topple around, They see they are pretty near sure to be drowned. A terrible wave o'er the quarter-deck breaks, And the vessel it sinks ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... face!" Alain swore; "the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the door, the sill, the ledge inside, the jambs of the door, its edges; stood on the ledge, went through the motions and concluded that I could slam the door shut and not be knocked off into the ooze by its impact or topple off because of the sill's narrowness. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Do the words express the reality before us as we move along the mile of road between Albert and La Boisselle? Hardly. The earth-shudder that visits a volcanic district may topple towns and villages into ruins in a few minutes. It does not tear and grind and pound what it has overturned, through hour after hour, till there is nothing left but ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a battle, but become ever stronger and stronger. For the new life must be so regulated that it continually increase and progress, but it must suffer much opposition. For the devil is such a furious enemy that when he sees that we oppose him and attack the old man, and that he cannot topple us over by force, he prowls and moves about on all sides, tries all devices, and does not desist until he finally wearies us, so that we either renounce our faith or yield hands and feet and become listless or impatient. Now to this end the ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... groaning beneath the wealth and weight of the vegetable produce they carried, and laden so high with cunningly- arranged nests of baskets on baskets, that one believed each moment that they would topple over, and held the breath for fear of hastening their fall; many a time sought to trace each curving lane to its probable goal, or tried to hunt out the hidden histories which lay concealed within the crumbling walls of the old dwellings ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... cross over him, and bless him and commend him to God. And he holdeth his spear in rest and cometh toward the three knights that guard the first bridge. They all set upon him at once and break their spears upon his shield. One of them he smiteth with such force that he maketh him topple over into the river that runneth under the bridge, both him and his horse. Of him was he quit, for the river was wide and deep and swift. The others held out against him a much longer bout with sharp sword-play, ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... Lord! Have pity on innocent souls!" In his mind Semyon saw the engine strike against the loosened rail with its left wheel, shiver, careen, tear up and splinter the sleepers—and just there, there was a curve and the embankment seventy feet high, down which the engine would topple—and the third-class carriages would be packed ... little children... All sitting in the train now, never dreaming of danger. "Oh, Lord! Tell me what to do!... No, it is impossible to run to the hut ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... that which you profess, (Howe'er you come to know it,) answer me; Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches—though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up— Though bladed corn be lodg'd, and trees blown down— Though castles topple on their warder's heads— Though palaces and pyramids do slope Their heads to their foundations—though the treasure Of nature's germins tumble all together, Even till destruction sicken, answer me To what I ask ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... a sorrowful thing, that retreat. The best I could do was to remain till the very last, having to deal with a number of persistent louts who all but suffocated me, at that. But I managed to empty my slinger into some of them and to topple the rest. I was mainly angry that ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... that the track is banked very steeply at the corners, and when the motorist is going round these corners at, say, 80 miles an hour, his motor makes a considerable angle with the level ground, and looks as if it must topple over. The aeroplane acts in a similar manner, and, unless some means are taken to prevent it, it will ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... you to choose some other whelp. Being in your best lust, I would topple with ye, And pluck a good crow, ere ye brake your fast with me. What? are you mankin[261] now? I reckon it best, I, To bind your hands behind you, even ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... His keen eye measured the aperture at the bottom. No giant, such as these were, could crowd through that hole. And the hopper was heavy. Applying all his strength to it, he felt it give ever so slightly. It was not bolted down; it was merely balanced there. He would be able to topple it over. And, once over, it would be a difficult affair to ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... carronades looking with peculiar wickedness and malignity down a shelving rock, which perhaps, although not without tremendous difficulty, might be scaled. The mere wind of one of these huge guns would be sufficient to topple over a thousand men. What sensations of dread and horror must be awakened in the breast of a foe when this hollow rock, in the day of siege, emits its flame, smoke, and thundering wind from a thousand yawning holes; horror not inferior to that felt by the peasant of the neighbourhood ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... tree is subject to these dangerous falls of immense limbs, without warning or apparent cause, so that it is not safe to rest under elms. An accident might not occur once in ten years; nevertheless the risk is there. Elms topple over before gales which scarcely affect other trees, or only tear off a few twigs. Two have thus been thrown recently—within eighteen months—in the fields opposite Tolworth Farm. The elm drags up its own roots, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... so weak as to be scarcely equal to the exertion of getting over the side into the life-buoy or bag, and he was so tall that, despite the efforts he made to double himself together, there was so much of him above the machine that he had a tendency to topple over. This would have mattered nothing if he had possessed even a moderate degree of power to hold on, but his hands were as weak as those of a child. However, the case being desperate, he made the attempt, and was sent away from the wreck with many earnest cautions to "hold ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... forward, catch himself, and finally topple from the seat. As the reins slipped from his fingers the ponies lunged up the arroyo. Waco crouched, clutching the foot-rail. A bullet hummed over his head. Gaining the level, the ponies broke into a wild run. The red wind whined as it drove across the mesa. The buckboard ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... passed resolutions restricting the height of the buildings to six stories. They ain't going to take the chance that New York does, and have some of these big tall ten-story affairs topple ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... their safety depended on felling this forest monarch before the arrival of the Matabili. The latter could not be far-off, and every exertion was made to get the fortress ready for receiving the attack. There was a doubt as to the direction the tree would take in falling. Should it topple over into the water, their labour would be lost, and the way would be open for the Matabili to reach them by a rush. Should it fall across the isthmus, it would form an insurmountable barrier to their enemies. In silence and with intense interest ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Horace had not played football for three seasons for nothing. He quietly ducked, allowing his unscientific assailant to overbalance himself, and topple head first on the lobby outside, at the particular moment when the real owner of the racehorse and the real wine-merchant, who had just arrived, reached the top ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... were simultaneous. Under the rising powder smoke the buck was seen to spring in air and then topple over in a quivering mass, dead beyond a doubt. The crashing echoes rolled away into the depths of the forest. We were on our feet instantly, ready to run forward with drawn knives; but before we could do so an unexpected thing checked us. Up the valley behind us, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... vision new constellations, and into my soul has come the clear, white light of peace and truth. With you I am purified, freed from sin, and harmony fills my tired heart. Without you—why, really I have never dared think about it, for fear that reason would topple, and my mind forget its 'customed way—let's talk ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... The steep flanks of the mountains between Beaulieu and Cape Roux are so exposed to the sun, and so protected from the cold, that this region has been called the Petite Afrique. Cape Roux itself, the abrupt termination of a lofty ridge, looks as if it would topple over into the sea, to which it is so close that both the rail and the road have to pass through it by tunnels. On the eastern side of this cape is the equally picturesque and sheltered bay, the Mer d'Eze, backed ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... who remains even to-day the most popular of our poets, was still in full swing. Lowell was in his prime. Thus it appears that public appreciation, and not creative power, was the first to trip and topple down the slopes of the Parnassian hill. Not until then did the poet come ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... to Ja, but he must have left after I tumbled into the tank, for I received no response to my cries. Doubtless he had felt as certain of my doom when he saw me topple from our hiding place as I had, and lest he too should be discovered, had hastened from the temple ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her, upset the spider-legged table that was always ready to topple over on the least provocation, made a hopeless labyrinth of her embroidery silks, gave her a kiss of greeting, and hurried on with numberless questions, just as if he were in the greatest possible haste, and it was a necessity of life and death that he should throw off everything ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... back of a chair, feeling she was surely going to topple over in a swoon. Summoning all her reserve of nerve power, she ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... long way," said he, "with those fine words, peace and conciliation, which are so often void of real wisdom and courage. The terrible truth is that Leo XIII's eighteen years of concessions have shaken everything in the Church, and should he long continue to reign Catholicism would topple over and crumble into dust like a building whose ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... topple into any flour barrels. It was Sue who had the next accident at the corner grocery, and this ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... Windermere. The coach was greatly overburdened with outside passengers,—fifteen in all, besides the four insiders, and one of the fifteen formed the apex of an immense pile of luggage on the top. It seems to me miraculous that we did not topple over, the road being so hilly and uneven, and the driver, I suspect, none the steadier for his visits to all the tap-rooms along the route from Cockermouth. There was a tremendous vibration of the coach now and then; and I saw that, in case of our going over, I should be flung ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... developed in the modern mind, and—what is to be regretted—it has been mostly at the expense of the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push and topple it over. The fear which all Americans have before their eyes, and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked individuality ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... extract the most convenient blocks to stop the holes in their hovel walls, or to build a fence on the windward side of their poppy patches. The rains soon undermine the pavement, especially where it is laid on a steep incline; sections of it topple down the slope, leaving chasms a yard or more in depth." Where traveling by water is impossible, sedan chairs are used to carry passengers, and coolies with poles and slings transport the luggage and goods. The distances covered by the sedan chair porters are remarkable, being ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... effect this, genius alone is powerless: there must be first a proper choice of materials, and next a proper use of them. The painter's pigments are the bricks wherewith the mortar of his mind must be mixed, either to erect an edifice that shall endure for ages, or one which will quickly topple over like a house of cards. Now in nothing more than in painting is prevention better than cure—indeed cure may be said to be here out of the question: for good or for evil a picture once painted is painted for ever. Without a strong constitution there is no hope for it; no chemistry can strengthen ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... bearding manifold dangers from rickety stone-walls, strong enough to keep women in, but not strong enough to keep bears, bulls, and other wild beasts out,—toppling enough to play the mischief with draperies, but not toppling enough to topple over when urgently pressed to do so. But I secure my man, and remember no more my sorrow of bulls and stones for joy at my success. From Beersheba I proceed to Padan-aram to buy seven pounds of flour, thence to Galilee of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the palanquin bearers went down, and the palanquin itself began to topple. The Greatest Noble screamed as he fell ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the after-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this straddling ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... it was enabled to proceed through the air in any direction I chose; for, as may be conceived, a little too much weight made the kite a fixture, whilst a little too little, or a sudden flaw of wind, would topple the kite over and bring it to the earth. As a means of signalizing between ships when stationary, the flying of kites of different colours, sizes, or numbers, attached one to the other, would, I am sure, in the clear atmosphere ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... at last, as a revolution. Our boat ruffled its shadow, doing pretty violence to its dignity, that we might know the greater grandeur of the substance. There was a gentle agency of atmosphere softening the bold forms of this startling neighbor, and giving it distance, lest we might fear it would topple and crush us. Clouds, level below, hid the summit and towered aloft. Among them we might imagine the mountain rising with thousands more of feet of heaven-piercing height: there is one degree of sublimity in mystery, as there is another degree ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... grinding all the sharp edges into powder or leaving a polished surface behind it. It gathers rock dust and the wreck of every living thing, and mixes them up with snow and ice. These congeal again, or are compressed into soft, filthy monumental masses, waiting their turn to topple into the waves at last. The wash of the sea undermines the glacier; the sharp sunbeams blast it. It is forever sinking, settling, crushing in upon itself and splitting from end to end, with fearful and prolonged intestinal reverberations, that ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... share with a deep sigh, and a single stealthy glance at the dead Thevenin, who was beginning to sink into himself and topple sideways off ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... thing to my mind, of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social order headlong. If on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand pits, I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, unless it were some relation of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... baby, and wondered if the visit could conceivably be going to be a slight strain. In old days there had always been a certain tenseness about their relationship, made worse by her attempts to topple over his gentlemanliness. She had felt that if her wish could have been gratified just once, she would have been released from it and never have wanted to repeat the experiment. Also a little of the responsibility would have ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... half a meter beyond that of the next house if it happens to be straight or but slightly inclined. The strangest part of it all is, that adjoining houses lean in different directions; one will lean forward as if it were going to topple over, another backward, some to the right, others to the left. In some places, where six or seven neighboring houses all lean forward, those in the middle being most inclined, they form a curve, like a railing ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... the saddle, and he gave the lariat a quick flirt, the loop running out perpendicularly, like a rolling hoop, and not more than a foot from the ground, writhing, undulating, the circle constricting quickly, sinuously. The girl saw the loop topple as it neared the steer—it was much like the motion of a hoop falling. It met one of the steer's hoofs as it was flung outward; it grew taut; the rope straightened and Patches swung off to the right at an acute angle. He did not brace his legs, this time. This was a different game. ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... similar manner. The wind raved around the ruined pile, but its breath was not felt within it, and the rain was heard descending in deluging showers without, though no drop came through the open roof. The thunder shook the walls and pillars of the old fabric, and threatened to topple them down from their foundations, but they resisted the shocks. The lightning played around the tall spire springing from this part of the fane, and ran down from its shattered summit to its base, without doing any damage. The red bolts struck ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the Secretary of War, filled with criminations and recriminations, and a flat refusal to yield the old men and boys in State service, in obedience to the call of the "usurping" and "despotic" demand of the Confederate States Executive. Georgia trembles, and may topple over ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... coast is hardly so remarkable as our Cornish one. There are none of those queer pinnacles and tors one sees there, just ready to topple down into the sea. This granite is not half ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... stress would still expand The crevice, and topple upon the sand The temple, while ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... priestly absurdities— called the Bible, forsooth! as if there were no other book worthy to be mentioned beside it. Think for a moment how soon, were it not for their churches and prayers and music and their tomfoolery of preaching, the whole precious edifice would topple about their ears, and the livelihood, the means of contentment and influence, would be gone from so many restless paltering spirits! So what is left them but to play upon the hopes and fears and diseased consciences of men as they best can! The ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... "You get out! Out of this cabin with you till you can come back and say that I make him live. Pull—by God, man, you've got to pull with me with all your soul. Your brother's travelling a hairline razor-edge. Do you understand? A thought can topple him off. Now get out, and come back sweet and wholesome, convinced beyond all absoluteness that he will live and be what he was before you and he played the fool ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... as the bookcase shook and the statue seemed about to topple over by reason of Billie's ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... light died, and in the instant before the sound of the thunder came shatteringly, we turned about ... in time to see Cragmire Tower, a blacker silhouette against the night, topple and fall! A red glow began to be perceptible above the building. The thunder came booming through the caverns of space. Nayland Smith lowered his wet face close to mine ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... ridge emerges massed and dun In the wild purple of the glowering sun Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, They leave their trenches, going over ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... At some such places the stream was engaged at undermining the banks which rose eight and ten feet above the water. Occasional sections, containing tons of earth and covered with tall, slender willow trees, would topple over, falling on the water with the roar of a cannon or a continued salute of cannons; for the falling, once started, quite often extended for half a mile down the stream. At one such place eighteen trees fell in three minutes, and it would be ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... soldier. He was determined to marry Charity as soon as the three months' probation term was over. But Charity said no! Cowering in seclusion from the eyes of her world, she cherished a dream that when the war broke and the dead began to topple and the wounded to bleed, she might expiate the crime she had not committed, by devoting to her own people her practised mercies. She was afraid to offer them now, or even to make her appearance among the multitudinous associations that sprang up everywhere in ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... sight of them suggests the throes of a troubled planet. Huge rocks hang over, only half resting upon fearful precipices; vast boulders that seem as though the touch of a feather would cause them to topple down. Grim chasms open into deep, dark defiles, that lie silent, and solemn, and frowning. Here and there, stunted trees, the cedar and pinon, hang horizontally out, clinging along the cliffs. The unsightly limbs of the cactus, and the gloomy foliage of the creosote bush, grow together in seams ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... did not disarm her suspicion. Sometimes she dug surreptitiously around the roots with a pointed stick to see what she could discover for or against it, and always with a fearful excitement of daring, lest she topple the tree over, perchance, and destroy herself and Aunt ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... yonder. They have for years been quite oblivious of the world about them. Thrones might topple, empires rise and fall, it would matter nothing to them so long as their garden bloomed, and the birds nested and sung, and he sold a picture once in an age that the larder might ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Moor with sword and lance At Algesiras land, Where is the bold Bernardo now Their progress to withstand? To Burgos should the Moslem come, Where is the noble Cid Five royal crowns to topple down As ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... alone at first the rock you encounter. Get behind the boulder by taking a roundabout path. Then quietly dig the support from under the negative idea. If you make no fuss while you are undermining the obstacle, it will be likely to topple over and roll from your path without your prospect's noticing that it has disappeared. If his interest is diverted from it, there is no reason why he should turn his mind back to a stubborn insistence on his objection. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... it all; and to witness now the rehabilitation of our Society in its newly-furnished salons, where it is my duty to light ministerial fires, in the midst of a busy throng, with whistles, electric bells, piles of gold pieces so high that they topple over—it borders on the miraculous. To convince myself that it is all true, I have to look at myself in the glass, to gaze at my iron-gray coat trimmed with silver, my white cravat, my usher's chain such as I used to wear at the Faculty ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... yourself told me it was no little thing to enter old Al Jezira in the night. Those narrow lanes, with strange figures here and there, eying one fiercely; the houses that threaten to topple over on one's head; all these things make it a risky place to wander in even during the daytime. After dark ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... have entered his vest-pocket, and the boys are on the alert. Through the air, twirling and glittering, tumbles an English shilling, and drops into the deep water beyond the little fleet. Instantly all the lads leap, scramble, topple head-foremost out of their little tubs, and dive in pursuit. In the blue water their lithe figures look perfectly red,—all but the soles of their upturned feet, which show nearly white. Almost immediately they all rise again: one holds up at arm's- length ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... real powers as miraculous in her own eyes as those which were imputed to her were in theirs (for what are real spiritual experiences but daily miracles?) she was just in that temper of mind in which she required, as ballast, all her real goodness, lest the moral balance should topple headlong after the intellectual, and the downward course of vanity, excitement, deception, blasphemous assumptions be entered on. Happy for her that she was in Protestant and common-sense England, and in a country parish, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... trying some of the attractive looking variations given later on in this book. Again, we say to you: Start right, and right results will follow; but neglect your foundations and your entire building will topple over sooner or later. ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... skirted coats, and three-cornered hats—very fine beaux, indeed; and the women stiffly encased in the most uncomfortable garments that ever the wit of mortal devised, holding their heads erect, lest the marvellous pyramids, built up with such expenditure of time and money, should topple over, and, in spite of all disadvantages, looking pretty and piquant. It was a crowd not so far removed from us by time, so that we can attribute to the men and women who composed it the same feelings and sensibilities as ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... seen the three Gray Sisters, nor does any one know what became of them. But the winds still whistle through their cheerless cave, and the cold waves murmur on the shore of the wintry sea, and the ice mountains topple and crash, and no sound of living creature is heard in all ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... chalky-green, and setting your knees to play castanetas in cachucha time. We'll call it the heat. Anyway, it's exposure to an atmosphere that you aren't accustomed to, and it doesn't suit you. You'd better try a change, or else you'll topple off in a faint—perhaps you'll die. Now look here: it's just foolery to let this Dog-in-the-Manger Company hold the stage any longer. Let's recast it, and play 'The Partners.' Come, what do you say? It's only a three-part piece, and there's ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... proved serious, and he considered the Colonel and Skinner, and the whole Citizens' Party they had been instrumental I organizing, as parts of the same joke. They would stand until he was ready to lazily push out his hand and topple them over. It was almost time to topple them, now, and he was glad to see the Colonel; he motioned him ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... the aspect of the city less striking. The innumerable towers and spires of the churches rose tall and dark through the wavering sheet of flame, and every now and then one of them would topple down or disappear, as if swallowed up by the devouring element. For a short space, the fire seemed to observe a regular progressive movement, but when it fell upon better material, it reared its blazing crest aloft, changed its hues, and burnt with redoubled intensity. Leonard watched it thread ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of all his trouble, in thinking about Miss Walton. The plain girl, as he had at first regarded her, with a weak, untried character that he had expected to topple over by the breath of a little flattery, now seemed divinely beautiful and strong. She reminded him of the graceful, symmetrical elm, which, though bending to the tempest, is rarely broken ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... at the time of doing the work to be cheapness, is really the greatest extravagance. It is like building a brick wall with clay for mortar. The bricks and the workmanship cost full price, and the small saving on the mortar will topple the wall over in a few years, while, if well cemented, it would have lasted for centuries. The cutting and filling of the ditches, and the purchase and transportation of the tiles, will cost the same in ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... feed on their banquet of corruption; the social, religious, philosophic, and eternal harms brought out in full detail; the progress of this world's misery in the lives of the confessing, and of studious crime in the heart of the absolver: a scene laid among the high Alps, and the sunny plains they topple over; the time, that of some murderous Simon de Montfort; the actors, Waldensian saints, and demon inquisitors; the prominent characters, a plausible intriguing friar, (as of old a monk of Cluni,) whose ambition is the popedom, and whose conscience has no scruple ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to H lne. Don't be afraid of that peacock of a doorman; push him over. He's so stiff he'll topple easy." ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... rolled about a lot the first time round, but soon got his equilibrium. He brandished the shears and plunged the points of them into Podgy's belly-wool—also into Podgy's skin. "Bur-UR-R!" Podgy blurted and struggled violently. Dave began to topple about. He dropped the shears. The audience guffawed. Then Dave jumped; but Podgy's horns got caught in his clothes and made trouble. Dave hung on one side of the horse and the sheep dangled on the other. Dave sang out, so did Podgy. And the horse stopped and snorted, then swung ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... he saw the drop in her face, when he saw features and expression fall from the lofty height of anticipation as a pile of cards topple in a mass upon the table, he was sorry. Her mouth opened—gaped. She looked as if a flat ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... floor and began to wind her way along like a snake. By the light of her torch Jack saw that the roof threatened at every second to fall in and block the passage. One great stone hung half-released from the grip of its fellows, as if about to topple headlong. The woman went through the tiny space in safety, and then crouched down on the other side and threw the light into the gap to show her companions ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Kansas, in the early Eighties, I saw a loaded four-horse wagon skid and topple in going ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... if he chose. In his hand were strings, which, if he liked to pull them, would topple down a goodly edifice, with uproar and dust and amazement indescribable: so slight an effort, so incommensurable an outcome! He had it in his power to shock the conventional propriety of a whole town, and doubtless, to some ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... o'clock a torrential rain fell, but it lulled neither wind nor sea. The hurricane was unleashed at a speed of forty-five meters per second, hence almost forty leagues per hour. Under these conditions houses topple, roof tiles puncture doors, iron railings snap in two, and twenty-four-pounder cannons relocate. And yet in the midst of this turmoil, the Nautilus lived up to that saying of an expert engineer: "A well-constructed hull can defy any sea!" This submersible was no resisting rock that waves could ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... said an urchin, "she's Joe Cough's wife. I seed her going down the street with a great big bundle, and Mam said, she looked like she was going to topple over." ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... newspaper. Mrs. Cramer on the left, having finished her sweeping, had come out on the porch also, and in garments that indicated no padding whatever dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made a dab at her loosely piled hair to see it did not topple down, and proceeded to read the morning newspaper. It was positively shocking, thought Mrs. Barnett, how women could so far forget themselves. She ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... different. For it would have been Another world." "Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good." Then The lovers came out of the wood again: The horses started and for the last time I watched the clods crumble and topple over After the ploughshare and ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... and builders have to take this law into consideration or the structures they put up would topple over. And your body learned the law when you were a little over a year old, or you never could have walked. It is worth while for your brain to know it, too, because it is a very practical law that you can use ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... safe!" exclaimed the boy from the ranch. "It is shaking now. It'll topple down! It needs bracing! Do you mean to tell me they run trains up in the air, on a track, and ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... dismally around the little hut, at times giving it a wrench as if it would topple it from its foundations. The spruces and firs in the neighborhood creaked and tossed in the breath of the tempest, and there was a dull, heavy roar from the head of the Falls. Suddenly, amid all these sounds, the solitary old ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance |
