"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the holy crucifix, because it was instinctively believed that they contained a mystic blessing. He knew nothing of all this;—he was too painfully conscious of his own shortcomings,—and of late years, feeling himself growing old, and realising that every day brought him nearer to that verge which all must cross in passing from Time into Eternity, he had been sorely troubled in mind. He was wise with the wisdom which comes of deep reading, lonely meditation, and fervent study,—he had instructed himself in the modern schools ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... rock, overhangs the raging sea. Though the place is almost inaccessible, Wallace and his followers found their way into the castle, while the garrison in great terror fled into the church or chapel, which was built on the very verge of the precipice. This did not save them, for Wallace caused the church to be set on fire. The terrified garrison, involved in the flames, ran some of them upon the points of the Scottish swords, while others threw themselves from the precipice into the sea and swam along to the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... spring of 1796, when I had but little passed the verge of manhood, I published a small volume of juvenile poems. They were received with a degree of favour, which, young as I was, I well know was bestowed on them not so much for any positive merit, as because they were considered buds of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... minutes after having that conversation with him, I saw the poor man's daughter-who was his only daughter, so far as I am aware, and who lived with him-going to church, dressed like a fine lady. That struck me as being a very deplorable state of matters. Here were a family who were on the verge of starvation, and unable to get medical comforts for their dying parent, and yet the daughter, who was a knitter, was I might almost say ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... southern verge of the mighty forest called the Andredsweald, or Anderida Sylva, Gilbert d'Aquila, last of that name, founded the Priory of Michelham for ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... did not understand: That Chairs and Flower-pots were introduced as Actors upon the British Stage: That a promiscuous Assembly of Men and Women were allowed to meet at Midnight in Masques within the Verge of the Court; with many Improbabilities of the like Nature. We must therefore, in these and the like Cases, suppose that these remote Hints and Allusions aimed at some certain Follies which were then in Vogue, and which at present we have ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... authorities from venturing upon a spiritual act and granting the prayer of the petitioners. The clergy had ministered to their flocks all along in the face of intolerance and bitter opposition from the Puritan body, and the war for independence had subjected them to peculiar trials and reduced them to the verge of ruin. But, without thinking of themselves, or how they should be supported in the broken and disastrous condition of their cures, their first effort or chief anxiety was to provide for the now entirely headless Church; and so in Mid- ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... until but five sickly worn-out beasts remained; when the Wangwana, soldiers, and pagazis sickened of diseases innumerable; when I myself was finally compelled to lie a-bed with an attack of acute dysentery which brought me to the verge of the grave. I suffered more, perhaps, than I might have done had I taken the proper medicine, but my over-confidence in that compound, called "Collis Brown's Chlorodyne," delayed the cure which ultimately resulted from a judicious use ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... than merry; he is kind. His fleshless hand is raised in benediction over the aged woman; and the bent patriarch leans on his arm, listening to Death's attendant playing the sweet old melodies of Long-Ago as he stands on the verge of ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... pleasantly modulated, and he spoke English with the faintest slur—perceptible, perhaps, only to the keenest ear—of a French accent. To ears less keen it would merely seem that he articulated with a precision so singular as to verge on pedantry. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... his brain had never thoroughly recovered its originally healthy action. In this opinion, both my wife and myself very soon concurred; and yet I am not sure that we could have given a satisfactory reason for such belief. He was, it is true, usually kind and gentle, even to the verge of simplicity, but his general mode of expressing himself and conducting business was quite coherent and sensible; although, in spite of his resigned cheerfulness of tone and manner, it was at times quite evident, that whatever the mental hurt he had received, it had left a rankling, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... at Chatillon, in 1521), twenty-nine. These men, warriors and politicians at one and the same time, in a high social position and in the flower of their age, could not reconcile themselves to the Constable de Montmorency's system, defensive solely and prudential to the verge of inertness; they thought that, in order to repair the reverses of France and for the sake of their own fame, there was something else to be done, and they ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the Abercorn household. About this time, or a little later, she wrote a short description of her temperament and feelings, from which a sentence or two may be quoted. 'Inconsiderate and indiscreet, never saved by prudence, but often rescued by pride; often on the verge of error, but never passing the line. Committing myself in every way except in my own esteem—without any command over my feelings, my words, or writings—yet full of self-possession as to action and conduct.' After describing her sufferings from nervous ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... to Miss Clara Reeve, who hoped to attain success in the attempt to unite the romance and the novel by limiting all supernatural occurrences to the verge of probability. It is obvious that the line would be difficult to draw. Miss Reeve drew it at ghosts. In the "Old English Baron," she took a story similar to that of Walpole. She presented to the reader a castle whose real owner ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... they applied restoratives, they bathed the wound, and tried to staunch the blood. She gave signs at length of life; but hers was no ordinary faint, and for hours did she continue in that state, wavering on the verge of death. As Ada herself, fevered and weary, sat by the side of her friend, she felt almost equally overcome with alarm and anxiety for the fate of her lover. What could have become of him? Had Paolo proved treacherous, and, afraid of his recovery, spirited him away, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... not dare to do that himself, but as he walked he ventured to verge a little toward the vessel's side, and saw below several men in tattered, almost colorless uniforms, marching in line along the brick street, each with ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... figure flashed out of the cave. Mercedes! She backed against the wall. Gale saw a puff of white—heard a report. But the bandit lunged at her. Mercedes ran, not to try to pass him, but straight for the precipice. Her intention was plain. But Rojas outstripped her, even as she reached the verge. Then a piercing scream pealed across ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... semblance of friendship; but his victims soon repented their imprudent confidence when they felt themselves in his power. Unrestrained by a sense of honour or the feelings of humanity, he felt no scruple in pursuing his interest to the very verge of what the law would call fraud. Even his own relations complained that he duped them without scruple; and none but strangers to his character, or persons compelled by necessity, would have any dealings with this man. Of what advantage to him, or to any one ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... flagrantly over-policed. [28] It gives one a queer sense of public security to see, at Rome for instance, every third man you meet—an official, of course, of some kind—with a revolver strapped to his belt, as if we were still trembling on the verge of savagery in some cowboy settlement out West. Greek towns of about ten thousand inhabitants, like Argos or Megara, have about ten municipal guardians each, and peace reigns within their walls. How can ten men perform duties which, in Italy, would require ten times as ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... no roving eye. He seemed, indeed, steady of hearing to the verge of stolidity, yet in a few seconds he had noted and drawn rapid conclusions from the environment. The cheerlessness of the house had struck him and the somber room, decorated, if one calls it decoration, with faded steel engravings of Landseer ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Warham was one of the leaders of that despondent party which will always have its antitype in England. Have we, too, not heard within the last seven years similar prophecies of desolation, mourning, and woe—of the Church tottering on the verge of ruin, the peasantry starving under the horrors of free trade, noble families reduced to the verge of beggary by double income-tax? Even such a prophet seems Warham to have been—of all people in that day, one of the last whom one would have ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... company took an honest view of its obligations—but only for a time. Within a year or so, Quebec was again on the verge of starvation; and in the spring of 1629 the famished inhabitants were eagerly awaiting the Company's ships from France. By July their patience was almost worn out, when at last the watchers at Cap Tourmente brought the news that a fleet of six vessels ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... generally, even at worst time, overflowing with geniality; ready to take kindest view of circumstances, and hope for the best. But SUMMERS, surveying mankind from China to Peru in search of material for fresh conundrum, too much for mildest-mannered man. OLD MORALITY, goaded to verge of madness, jumps up; hotly declines to reply to SUMMERS; begs him to address his questions to Ministers to whose Department ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... the Old Port were on the verge of starvation, the 'Clonmel' men were living in luxury. They had all the blessings both of land and sea—corned beef, salt pork, potatoes, plum-duff, tea, sugar, coffee, wine, beer, spirits, and tobacco from the cargo of the 'Clonmel', and ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... of all the match-making mammas," she said lightly. "Over thirty, he is, and still a bachelor! I'm not sure if he isn't on the verge of being caught now, but you never can tell! With a little luck he may escape—she isn't good enough for him, anyway. Have you finished? I'm dying for a cigarette, and we aren't allowed to smoke here. Come up to my room and I'll make you some coffee; the stuff they give ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... boards about the sea in an archipelagic manner. We then dress our islands, objecting strongly to too close a scrutiny of our proceedings until we have done. Here, in the illustration, is such an archipelago ready for its explorers, or rather on the verge of exploration. There are altogether four islands, two to the reader's right and two to the left, and the nearer ones are the more northerly; it is as many as we could get into the camera. The northern island to the right is most advanced in civilization, and is chiefly temple. ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... again urged. The "Charley" caught his ear, and the daring in his eye brightened still more. He was ready for any change or chance to-night, was standing on the verge of any adventure, the most reckless soul ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and Ruth, who had been on the verge of either laughter or tears ail day, couldn't ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... is situated near the centre of the kingdom, in the north west extremity of the county of Warwick, and so near the verge of it, that within the distance of one mile and a half from the centre, on the road to Wolverhampton, a person removes himself into Staffordshire, and on the road to Alcester, about the same distance from the centre, you are in the ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... part with your house in town, you will never come hither; at least, stow your cellars with drams and gunpowder as full as Guy Fawkcs's-you will be drowned if you don't blow yourself up. I don't believe that the Vine is within the verge of the rainbow: seriously, it is too damp for you. Colonel Campbell marries the Duchess of Hamilton forthwith. the house of Argyle is CONTENT, and think that the head of the Hamilton's had purified the blood of Gunning; but I should be afraid ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in the plain below their feet, and they were standing upon its very verge where it came in close to the mountain, whose top was some seven hundred feet above their heads, while here its perpendicular side went down for fully another thousand to where, in the solemn dark depths of the vast canyon or crack in the rocky crust of the earth, a great rushing river ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... an imperceptible twitching tightened her lips; then the young mouth relaxed, drooping a trifle at the corners. Lying there, so outwardly calm, her tired, faraway gaze fixed absently on him, she seemed on the verge of slumber. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... members?"-(Saint's Privilege, vol. 1, p. 674). The text here quoted forms the foundation of Bunyan's admirable Advice to Sufferers, in which he delightfully dwells upon the topics which Evangelist addresses to the Pilgrims, when on the verge of bitter persecution-(ED). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... recent period had penetrated, even in the vaguest way, all of the mysteries that the nineteenth century has revealed in the fields of chemistry and biology. At the very most the insight of those great Greeks and of the wonderful seventeenth-century philosophers who so often seemed on the verge of our later discoveries did no more than vaguely anticipate their successors of this later century. To gain an accurate, really specific knowledge of the properties of elementary bodies was reserved for the chemists of a recent epoch. The ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... on, and still the merciless brow-beating went on. They had been at it now five long, weary hours. Through the blinds the gray daylight outside was creeping its way in. All the policemen were exhausted. The prisoner was on the verge of collapse. Maloney and Patrolman Delaney were dozing on chairs, but Captain Clinton, a marvel of iron will and physical strength, never relaxed for a moment. Not allowing himself to weaken or show signs of fatigue, he kept pounding the ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... a danger-point, for Lee was on the verge of saying something about Ben's infatuation; but she didn't, and Alice knew why she didn't, for she asked, rather abruptly: "Won't you come over Thursday night? I'm going to take the Haneys to dinner at the hotel." She flushed under Lee's gaze. "It's really Bennie's party, and I'm going to make ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... metaphorical of the once flourishing kingdom, which was now brought to the verge ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... 'my friend,' nor 'dear count,' nothing at all. She begins abruptly: 'Once before, many years ago, I came to you as a suppliant. You were pitiless, and did not even deign to answer me. And yet, as I told you, I was on the verge of a terrible precipice; my brain was reeling, vertigo had seized hold of me. Deserted, I was wandering about Paris, homeless and penniless, and ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... dissembling;" but when she has fooled and chafed the Herculean Roman to the verge of danger, then comes that return of tenderness which secures the power she has tried to the utmost, and we have all the elegant, the poetical Cleopatra in ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... adoring this child, who alone was not afraid to speak to him. The girl afterwards went as a servant to Madame Bonnehon, but one evening Cabuche found her at his door, half mad with fright and on the verge of brain fever. He nursed her tenderly, but she died a few days later. The conduct of President Grandmorin was believed to be the cause of Louisette's flight from Doinville, and Cabuche was overheard to say in ungovernable ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... bringing him down to his present state of abject misery? Her own fortune! If she wanted the interest of her wretched money, let her come to Loughlinter and receive it there. In spite of all her wickedness, her cruelty, her misconduct, which had brought him,—as he now said,—to the verge of the grave, he would still give her shelter and room for repentance. He recognised his vows, though she did not. She should still be his wife, though she had utterly disgraced both herself and him. She should still be his wife, though she had so lived as to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... proposition he advanced; and the argument thus sustained went to prove, beyond all doubt, that the spirit of speculation was in this, as in many other particulars, leading the American people to the verge of madness, and their country to certain bankruptcy. That in leaving their magnificent lakes, their endless rivers, and the smooth waters of their coast,—the highways created by Providence for their use, and amply sufficient for their purposes—to waste their wealth, distract ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... steed, which had borne him through many a hard fight, had fallen under him. He was himself wounded in several places, and was striving in vain to rally his scattered column, which was driven to the verge of the canal by the fury of the enemy, then in possession of the whole rear of the causeway, where they were reinforced every hour by fresh combatants from the city. The artillery in the earlier part of the engagement had not been idle, and its iron shower, sweeping along the dike, had mowed down ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the sublime burial- service, which he repeated most impressively. When it was over, the men commenced filling up the grave. As the clods fell upon the coffin, they smote the hearts of the dead man's children; yet the boys stood upon the verge of the grave as long as a vestige of the tenement of their lost father could be seen; but as soon as the coffin was hidden, they withdrew from the brink, and the younger boys, each taking hold of the hand of the eldest, seemed to imply the need of mutual dependence:—as ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... considerable strength of will, and realizing the imminence of his peril. But granting this, would he be equally able to hide his feelings when he was obliged to submit to the humiliating formalities that awaited him—formalities which in certain cases can, and must, be pushed even to the verge ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Her religious subjects sometimes verge on the sentimental, but are of great sweetness, purity, and tenderness. She was happier in her figures of women than in those of men. She also made etchings of portraits and religious subjects in the manner of G. ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... long been held by this or that interest for investment," and no more was thought of the incident. Even the most alert financiers never suspected that the most important stock secret of the age had been on the verge ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... likely to become a cause of danger than in the plain cylinder boiler. In such boilers the tension of expanded tubes is transmitted to the shell, which are greatly strained without doubt, often nearly to the verge of rupture. When this occurs it is evident an unusual strain, caused by sudden generation of steam, would act in concert with the expansion of the tubes, and we have no doubt these causes combined have given rise to many an explosion ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... that he was in a trance that day. His father, at the breakfast table, jovially prodded him about being late, until he barely caught himself on the verge of telling his queer secret. And so absent-minded was he at the office that he found he had entered the account of a prosaic old ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... found the price of infantry-pantaloons reduced from forty-two to twenty-seven cents,—reduced by the Government itself,—but she made eight pair a week, took care of five children, and was always on the verge of starvation. She declared, that, if it were not for her children, she would gladly lie down and die! A fourth worked for contractors on overalls at five cents a pair! Having the aid of a sewing-machine, she made six pair daily, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... steep ravines, and winding through narrow bottoms of high grass and mimosas for about two hours, during which we disturbed many superb nellut (Ant. strepsiceros) and tetel (Ant. Bubalis), we at length arrived at the point of the high table land upon the verge of which I had first noticed the giraffes with the telescope. Almost immediately I distinguished the tall neck of one of these splendid animals about half a mile distant upon my left, a little below the table land; it was feeding on the bushes, and I quickly discovered several others ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... to get on with Miss Rowe. It felt hard to be corrected sharply for some slight slip, and to be expected to obey every trivial order as promptly as soldiers on parade duty. The girls resented the young teacher's imperious manner, and were sometimes on the verge ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the long hard battles from the Rapidan to this night, I had everywhere found myself thrown in collision with the great soldier—that tried and trusty friend of my heart. The army had saluted him on a hundred fields. His name had become the synonym of unfaltering courage. He was here, on the verge of surrender now, looking as calm and resolute as on ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... There are few buildings more complete or more beautiful in their completeness than the Hospital of St. John; the vast hall with its double row of slender pillars, the exquisite chapel, trembling in the pure grace of its details on the very verge of Romanesque, the engaged shafts of the graceful cloister. The erection of these buildings probably went on through the whole reigns of our three Angevin sovereigns, but the sterner and simpler hall called the Lazar-house beside with its three aisles and noble sweep of wide arches is ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... A. M.—Farewell to the Coombe of Coombes. I write while waiting for the fly, and shall post this at Weymouth, where we are to be met. We have been so happy here, that I could be sentimental, if Leonard were not tete-a-tete with me, and on the verge of that predicament. "Never so happy in his life," quoth he, "and never will be again—wonders when he shall gee this white cliff again." But, happily, in tumbles Aubrey with the big claw of a crab, which he insists on Leonard's wearing next his heart as a souvenir of Mrs. Gisborne; ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I admire her, and I told her—" He stopped, feeling himself on the verge of the irrevocable. "She's a splendid girl," he went on. "I like her exceedingly, but I've known her only a ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... A distant verge morosely gray Appears, while clots of flying foam Break from its muddy monochrome, And a light blinks up far away. I sigh: "My eyes now as all day Behold her ebon loops of hair!" Like bursting bonds the wind responds, "Nay, wait for ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... brings cheerfulness when one is young, strong, and free from any real cares; Agatha's imaginary ones, together with the vague sentimentalisms into which she was on the verge of falling, yet had not fallen, vanished under the influence of a cheerful walk on a sunny summer's day. She arrived at Mrs. Thornycroft's time enough to find that admirable young matron busied in teaching to her eldest boy the grand mystery ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Broadway. Its theme is the battle for power that goes on in an old New York family and culminates on the verge of murder. "This one deserves especial thanks and hearty praises. It returns us to expertness and fascination and fine mood in the theater." Gilbert Gabriel, in New York American. "At last a play has come to town that can be ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... the strength of which had doubtless led the neighbourhood to assemble under its walls for protection. It must, indeed, have been a place of formidable defence, for, on the side opposite to the town, its walls rose straight up from the verge of a tremendous and rocky precipice, whose base was washed by Saint Ronan's burn, as the brook was entitled. On the southern side, where the declivity was less precipitous, the ground had been carefully levelled into successive terraces, which ascended ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... time the tent was in an uproar, for the chevalier's wife had come hurrying in, the chevalier's daughter was on the verge of hysterics, and the chevalier's prospective son-in-law, was alternately hugging the great beast-tamer and then shaking his hand and generally deporting himself like a respectable young man who ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... which he found himself. He was now perfectly aware that it was a position which opened up great possibilities. His dream,—the vague indefinable longing which possessed him for love—pure, disinterested, unselfish love,—seemed on the verge of coming true. Yet he would not allow himself to hope too much,—he preferred to look on the darker side of probable disillusion. Meanwhile, he was conscious of a sweetness and comfort in his life such as he had never yet experienced. His thoughts dwelt with secret pleasure on ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... subject, but I think it right and only fair to tell you that owing to the actual noise of the cowl, and perhaps even more (as our doctor says) to the mental strain of listening to hear whether it is going to begin again, my wife is on the verge of a complete nervous collapse, which seems likely to necessitate some weeks' rest cure in a nursing home, and possibly a trip to the Canaries. I am advised by my lawyer that these are contingent liabilities, the burden of which would fall upon you as the owner ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... Reuben," he writes. "You have now a cross to bear. Do not dishonor its holy character; do not faint upon the way. Our beloved Adele, as you have been told, is trembling upon the verge of the grave. May God in His mercy spare her, until, at least, she gain some more fitting sense of the great mission of His Son, and of the divine scheme of atonement! I fear greatly that she has but loose ideas upon these all-important ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier and flightier,— Rapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death, thro' Berkley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing King! She-wolf ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... My holidays alone with my uncle had been almost as cheerless as my schooldays at Stonebridge House with Miss Henniker. If it hadn't been for Smith I do believe I should have lost every vestige of spirit. But happily he gave me no chance of falling into that condition. He seemed always on the verge of some explosion. Now it was against Hawkesbury, now against the Henniker, now against Mr Ladislaw, and now against the whole world generally, myself included. I had a busy time of it ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... slimness was as it had pictured itself to him in the hot sands. Her hair was as he had seen it there. It was coiled upon her head like ropes of spun silk, jet-black, glowing softly. But it was her eyes he stared at, and so fixed was his look that the red lips trembled a bit on the verge of a smile. She was not embarrassed. There was no color in the clear whiteness of her skin, except ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... casket. That containing the body of the Marchesa, his wife (Vittoria Colonna), has an aperture at the top where the wood is worn away and the embalmed form, partly crumbled, may be seen. This seems strange to the verge of fantasy, but it is, apparently, true. The writer of this volume visited the Church of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples in December of 1906, and was assured by the sacristan that this sarcophagus contains the body of the Marchesa. Inquiries were then made of other prelates ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... shadows; or they would slowly, very slowly, close in upon him, as if it were their intention to crush him to death. A feeling of suffocation would come over him, and he would gasp, choke, beat the air with his arms, be at the verge of losing consciousness, when there would be a loud, mocking laugh—and the walls and ceiling would be in their proper places again. At other times he would see strange figures on the wall—numbers of circles, that would keep on revolving in the most bewildering fashion. Then, suddenly, they would ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... as that awful Ring of the Cosmos, whose hundred million suns are powerless to lighten the Abyss, but as the very Amanogawa itself,—the River Celestial. I see the thrill of its shining stream, and the mists that hover along its verge, and the water-grasses that bend in the winds of autumn. White Orihim['e] I see at her starry loom, and the Ox that grazes on the farther shore;—and I know that the falling dew is the spray from the Herdsman's oar. And the heaven seems very near and warm and human; and the silence ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... from twilight to twilight. For clear daylight was passing when he came to the edge of an old marl-pit, and saw how the two who had gone before had stamped and trampled together in desperate peril on the verge. And here fresh blood stains spoke to him of a valiant defence against his infamous brother; and he followed where the blood had dripped till the cold had staunched its flow, taking a savage gratification from this evidence that ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world, a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we, in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these great carnivals, together with another attraction of great cities, the pomps and festivals of the Pagan worship, broke the monotony of domestic life, which, for the old world, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the vicinity, for there was still fresh in her mind a recollection of another cabin in which she had once passed many fearsome hours, but while she hesitated, on the verge of flight, Doubler came to the door, and when she saw that he was an old man with a kindly face, much of her perturbation vanished, ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... I saw him in London in 1848, but it had not improved so much as his circumstances, as he was according to external appearances and popular belief now extremely well off. But appearances are deceptive, as was soon proved, for he was in reality on the verge of a worse bankruptcy than even his uncle underwent, for the nephew lost not only kingdom and life, but also every trace of reputation for wisdom and honesty, remaining to history only as a brazen royal adventurer ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... him in this place is chiefly founded on the earlier part of life, when, without any opposing influences, a more unbridled range was given to his imagination; when there was an energy in his manner, and a felicity and copiousness in his language, which vibrated on the very verge of human capability. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... deft characterization, his toleration of human failings, largely compensate for his lack of significant plots. He is sometimes whimsical to the point of eccentricity, and his high spirits often verge on extravagance; but at his best he has the power of refreshing the reader with gentle irony, genial laughter, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... among these savages he suffered from 'cold, heat, smoke, and dogs,' and bore in silence the foul language of a medicine-man who made the missionary's person and teachings subjects of mirth. At times, too, he was on the verge of death from hunger. Early in the spring he returned to Quebec, after having narrowly escaped drowning as he Crossed the ice-laden St Lawrence in a frail canoe. He had made no converts; but he had gained valuable experience. It was now more evident than ever ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... "This day thy servant is fourscore and ten years old. From the days of my childhood have I dwelt in Babylon; and never for any long period have I departed hence. Soon thy servant shall leave this world of sorrow—I stand on the verge of the grave. At this time, with deep soberness, I appeal to the God that dwelleth in light for the sincerity of my purpose in thus appearing before my lord the king. My words will be few, therefore, O king, I pray thee hear ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... we had brought, telling them to divide them equally. Then with Suka leading, and carrying a lighted torch made from the spathe of the cocoanut tree, we made our way through the darkened forest to the house in which Susani and her people were living. It was situated on the verge of the shore, on the weather side of the narrow island, so as to be exposed to the cooling breath of the trade wind, and consisted merely of a roof of thatch with open sides, and the ground within covered ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... in a thoughtful mood, and for a day or two went about the house with an air of preoccupation which was a source of much speculation to the family. George Vickers, aged six, was driven to the verge of madness by being washed. Three times in succession one morning; a gag of well-soaped flannel being applied with mechanical regularity each time that he strove to point out the unwashed condition of Martha and Charles. His turn came when the exultant couple, charged ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... omit a Practice that is in use among the vainer Part of our own Sex, who will often ask a Friend's Advice, in relation to a Fortune whom they are never likely to come at. WILL. HONEYCOMB, who is now on the Verge of Threescore, took me aside not long since, and asked me in his most serious Look, whether I would advise him to marry my Lady Betty Single, who, by the way, is one of the greatest Fortunes about Town. I star'd him full in the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... winter-garden he had been on the verge of trusting her, ready to believe in her, and she had vowed to herself that she would prove worthy of his trust. She had meant never to fall short of all that Michael demanded in the woman he loved. And now, before she had had a chance to justify his hardly-won belief, ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... voyages of the Norsemen, on his visit to Iceland in 1477, his opinion that the same shore might be reached by crossing the Atlantic, where it had never been traversed before, was based upon mere surmise. No wonder that his crew were disheartened and on the verge of open mutiny when, under such circumstances, after about sixty-nine days had elapsed since they had sailed from Palos on August 3, 1492, they had still not reached the longed-for land. What faith, almost inspired, must have been his, that he should succeed in persuading ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... work of his old age, we cannot help thinking of what Carlyle said of the octogenarian Goethe: "See how in that great mind, beaming in mildest mellow splendour, beaming, if also trembling, like a great sun on the verge of the horizon, near now to its long farewell, all these things ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... resources displayed in his roving expeditions, that he was vulgarly believed to be attended by a familiar. *11 With a character so extraordinary, with powers prolonged so far beyond the usual term of humanity, and passions so fierce in one tottering on the verge of the grave, it was not surprising that many fabulous stories should be eagerly circulated respecting him, and that Carbajal should be clothed with mysterious terrors as a sort of supernatural being, - the demon of ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... deep stillness was moved with a faint sighing rustle, and he knew he must be nearing the edge of the thicket. The spell of silence thus broken was followed by a fainter, more musical interruption—the glassy tinkle of water! A step further his foot trembled on the verge of a slight ravine, still closely canopied by the interlacing boughs overhead. A tiny stream that he could have dammed with his hand yet lingered in this parched red gash in the hillside and trickled into a deep, irregular, well-like cavity, that again overflowed and sent its slight surplus on. It ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... he needed from his own apartments in Venice, but writing-implements, any metal instruments whatever, even knife and fork, and the books he mentioned, were struck from his list. The inquisitors sent him books which they themselves thought suitable, and which drove him, he said, to the verge of madness. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... made with Charles than persecution fell heavy on the Huguenots; and the seizure of Strassburg and Casale, the keys of Germany and Italy, with that of Luxemburg, the key of the United Provinces, brought Europe to the verge of war. Charles, indeed, was anxious to avoid war and he was as anxious to avoid Parliaments whose assembly war would certainly force upon him as Lewis himself. The tide of loyal reaction was mounting in fact higher every day. The king secured ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... the duke were overthrown by simple statements of fact. Thus, his instance of the Eskimo as pushed to the verge of habitable America, and therefore living in the lowest depths of savagery, which, even if it were true, by no means proved a general rule, was deprived of its force by the simple fact that the Eskimos are by no means the lowest ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... has reared; it would seem to him to commit a crime. He uses the fowls, however (which are a trifle smaller than those in Europe) as a means of exchange for tobacco, rice and other articles but he would never eat one himself unless reduced to the verge of starvation. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... his twenty-first year before he decided to go down to Cheshire and see his Uncle Richard. He had anticipated the visit for weeks, but now as he was on the verge of starting he was ready to back out. A formal letter of excuse and apology was written, but never dispatched. On the appointed day, Josiah was duly let down from the postman's cart at the gate of Squire Wedgwood, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... rest beside his mother, in the little graveyard on the windy hill. After that his mind slowly cleared. He kept to himself the remainder of that day, avoiding the crowd of harvesters camping in the yard and adjacent field; and at sunset he went to a lonely spot on the verge of the valley, where with sad eyes he watched the last rays of sunlight fade over the blackened hills. All these hours had seemed consecrated to his father's memory, to remembered acts of kindness and of love, of the relation that had gone and would never be again. Reproach ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... stood upon this little improvised side-board. If they had been the greatest luxuries imaginable, he could not have swallowed a morsel. The sunlight had faded away; his dream of retribution was over; he seemed to be touching the utmost verge of human wretchedness. Was it possible to kill himself? His neckerchief had been taken away; but he had his braces. The gas-pipe was the only thing to which he could attach them, and it would never bear his weight. He had read somewhere of some poor wretch who had suffocated himself ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and associates in England say, if they could see me now? I have heard of them at different times and through various channels. Lady Malkinshaw, after living to the verge of a hundred, and surviving all sorts of accidents, died quietly one afternoon, in her chair, with an empty dish before her, and without giving the slightest notice to anybody. Mr. Batterbury, having sacrificed so much to his wife's reversion, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... less remote view, the ship, when made signally visible on the verge of the leaden-hued swells, with the shreds of fog here and there raggedly furring her, appeared like a white-washed monastery after a thunder-storm, seen perched upon some dun cliff among the Pyrenees. But it ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... her calm, distant way. "You may take him away, Grant. And"—here she suddenly looked at Craig, a cold, haughty glance that seemed to tear open an abysmal gulf between them—"I do not wish to see you again. I am done with you. I have been on the verge of telling you so many ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... up and down in a bunch of frightened cattle, and it was a piece of comedy for the gods. I have heard Jud, with no more tune than a tom-tom, bellowing the doxology to a great audience of Polled-Angus muleys on the verge of a stampede. And I have sung myself, many a time, like a circuit rider with a ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... she took regular exercise in the open air, went to bed in season, slept soundly, and felt perfectly well; that her mind was never before so bright and clear, and study never so easy and delightful. And at this time, she was on the verge of derangement, from which she was saved only by an entire cessation ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... (1713-1784) was born to be an encyclopaedist, and a captain of encyclopaedists. Force inexhaustible, and inexhaustible willingness to give out force; unappeasable curiosity to know; irresistible impulse to impart knowledge; versatile capacity to do every thing, carried to the verge, if not carried beyond the verge, of incapacity to do any thing thoroughly well; quenchless zeal and quenchless hope; levity enough of temper to keep its subject free from those depressions of spirit and those cares of conscience which weigh and wear on the over-earnest ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... thought. While laughing, and talking, and making the most successful efforts to be at ease with the dozens of people who came and spoke to Mrs. de la Vere and herself, she felt like some frail vessel dancing blithely in a swift, smooth current, yet hastening ever to the verge of a cataract. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... out of the question with the workman in Hamburg, whether stranger or native—unless indeed the latter may have passed through the probationary course of travel and conscription, and be already on the verge of mastership—so also is honourable courtship. His low wages and dependent position form an impassable barrier to wedlock, and a married journeyman is almost unknown. By the law of his native city he must travel for two or three years, independently of the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie |
