"Eleventh hour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not only goodness but discipline and science, may terrify them by blows, charm them by blandishments, mollify them by gifts, and urge them on by painful rigour, so that they may become at once Socratics in morals and Peripatetics in learning. Yesterday, as it were at the eleventh hour, the prudent householder introduced you into his vineyard. Repent of idleness before it is too late: would that with the cunning steward ye might be ashamed of begging so shamelessly; for then no doubt ye would devote yourselves more assiduously to ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... I had entered the house, armed in my own mind with a last desperate resolve, only to be communicated to him, or to anybody, in the final emergency and at the eleventh hour. The time had come for saying what I had hoped with my whole heart to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... of persons who, under the law, were qualified for registry was about exhausted; and because of the expense I did not feel warranted in keeping up the boards longer, as I said, "to suit new issues coming in at the eleventh hour," which would but open a "broad macadamized road ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... late to court my dear daughter, my lord, but not too late to repent. We read, 'tis never too late to do that. If others have been received at the eleventh hour, is there any reason why ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when a youth, returning in 1820 from the European station.[Q] "Had regular naval officers," said Kennon bitterly, "instead of being kept in the mud forts on the creeks in Virginia, and in the woods of Carolina cutting timbers to build ironclads, been sent to command these vessels, even at the eleventh hour, they would have proved ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Aunt Emily's will left the money to my father, or, failing him, his 'offspring.' I thought that meant me, but apparently there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work, springing unexpected offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this." ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... wanted only a week of the great race with the Old Boys, and here was I summoned to take charge of the rudder at the eleventh hour, which of course meant I would have to steer the boat on the occasion of the race! No wonder, then, I was half daft with excitement as I hurried down to the boathouse in obedience to the summons of Blades, the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... It was the eleventh hour. Another week, and you would have taken your vows. Oh, I don't mean what I said, dear. I'm glad you're going—thankful. You hadn't the vocation. It would ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at the last altar of refuge, I meet thee, according to the vow of the immortal Constantine, for the purpose of demanding whether thou hast any thing to allege why this doom should not be executed? Even at this eleventh hour, thy tongue is unloosed to speak with freedom what may concern thy life. All is prepared in this world and in the next. Look forward beyond yon archway—the block is fixed. Look behind thee, thou seest the axe already sharpened—thy place for good or evil in the next world ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... blundering way he grudgingly admitted that mayhap it was better to allow citizen Chauvelin to deal with the Englishman. There was always the danger that if his own violent temper got the better of him, he might even at this eleventh hour order this insolent prisoner to summary trial and the guillotine, and thus lose the final chance of the more ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... the hands of man than to disobey the command of my Lord." The saint had interpreted the will of God, and the archbishop, sanctioning a sudden rumour that the deceased had received absolution at the eleventh hour, yielded. But the bishop's yielding by no means countenanced the belief that God might, for once, tolerate the body of an excommunicate in sacred ground, far from it—the vision of the abbess Hildegarde had merely ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... enlightenment for which the stronger races have prepared themselves by ages of growth." There is in this utterance a tinge of the feeling which actuated the laborers who had borne the heat and burden of the day when they objected to the eleventh hour intruders being received on equal terms with themselves. One answer suffices for both: "Other men have labored, and ye are entered into their labors." It is true that the Negro misses evolution and his adjustment to his environment is made the more difficult on that account. Education, therefore, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... abundantly able to take care of herself. She was not at all timid, though she was not aggressive either, and she had a quaint way of expressing herself that would have interested almost any one. But it was the frank good-nature with which she accepted her eleventh hour invitation that appealed most to Eleanor, newly alive to the charm that lies in courageously making the best of a bad matter. For half an hour Eleanor devoted herself to finding out something about ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... not been successful, after all; it had failed ignominiously at the eleventh hour. A great deal of effort had been expended in the private office of this director and that, and a futile attempt made to bring four or five of them together at the office of the bank itself, that the matter might be clenched and ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... borne confers a kind of moral rank. Her neighbors, with respect and pity, stood aside silently. She appeared to be quite unconscious of them. At Phyllis and Elizabeth she looked with great sad eyes, and shook her head mournfully. To the preacher she said, "It's t' eleventh hour, sir, and ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... we have hard measure: the Quakers are indulged with the liberty denied to us. They are; and dearly have they earned it. You have come in (as a sect, at least) in the cool of the evening, at the eleventh hour. The Quaker character was hardened in the fires of persecution in the seventeenth century,—not quite to the stake and fagot, but little short of that: they grew up and thrived against noisome prisons, cruel beatings, whippings, stockings. They have since endured a century or two ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... ducks, &c., out of turnips and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations incident to a great dinner, without even so much as thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that apartment—and ready to fire off duets and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... last lasted till evening. Then he was compelled to leave her, and he did leave her although the blood of his heart congealed, like the fallen wax of a Paschal candle. According to his promise, he wended his way towards Marmoustier, which he entered towards the eleventh hour of the day, and was placed among the novices. Monseigneur de Bastarnay was informed that Sylvia had returned to the Lord which is the signification of le Seigneur in the English language; and therefore in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Bircham, I expect," said Erica to her father. "Ask him upstairs, please. I only hope he doesn't want me to write another article at the eleventh hour. If it's the little Irish sub-editor, you must be very polite to him, father, for he ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... them," he said, "the shame of deserting their lawful sovereign." All were profuse in professions of loyalty, and among them were Churchill, Grafton, and the butcher Kirke. Churchill, we know, continued these professions up to the eleventh hour. On the evening of the 24th James held a council of war, in which Churchill's voice was loudest for battle. That night he left Salisbury for Axminster, and Grafton went with him. Some of the Scottish officers stood firm, but not all. Dumbarton offered ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... time to time in midnight fishing raids and walks from Cambridge to London. He wasted so much of his time that he nearly imperilled his chance of taking a good degree, and might perhaps count himself lucky when, thanks to a heroic effort at the eleventh hour, his excellent abilities won him a first class in classics. At this time he was terribly shaken by religious doubts. But in one of his vacations in 1839 he met Fanny Grenfell, his future wife, and soon he was on such a footing that he could open to her his inmost thoughts. It was she who helped ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... deny your crime, but confess it, and implore your Maker's pardon, even at this the eleventh hour. In my Bible, this morning, I found a paper, written by the spirit of him you murdered here last night, and charging you with the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... man, now seated beside Estridge, who had coolly and cleverly taken his sporting chance in remaining till the eleventh hour and the fifty-ninth minute in the service of his country. Then, as the twelfth hour began to strike, he ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... very suddenly. Corps, I was told, were ignorant up to almost the day of our starting out from Samarra. Staff-captains and quartermasters received orders at the eleventh hour for transport arrangements. The campaign was a tour de force, everything being sacrificed to rations and water. A stream of Fords ran night and day between ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... with Mr. Whitney. And at the eleventh hour, Theodore gave in and said Delia might go, and she needn't rob ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... position; her own father would not see her married because he had no invitation. He must invent some story to get in, but he must attract no attention. No one who knew of his association with the family must see him. He dare not risk a public expose at the eleventh hour. No, her happiness must not be clouded even for a moment! But he must get in; he made ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... about the pressing of a smuggler that was wanting in other cases. The sailor taken out of a merchant ship, or the fisherman out of a smack, might at the eleventh hour spring upon you a protection good for his discharge. Not so the smuggler. There was in his case no room for the unexpected. No form of protection could save him from the consequences of his trade. Once ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... how the ship had been "nipped;" how, after inconceivable toil, the members of the expedition had gained the land; how they had marched southward toward the Chuckch settlements; how, at the eleventh hour, the survivors, exhausted and starving, had been rescued by the steam whalers; how these whalers themselves had been caught in the ice, and how the survivors of the Freja had been obliged to spend another winter in the Arctic. She learned the details of ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... alone in his car, was driven back to New York. On the way he invented a story to explain why, at the eleventh hour, he had jilted Aline Proctor; but when his thoughts reverted to the young man he had seen working with his sleeves rolled up he decided it would be safer to let Miss Proctor tell of the broken engagement in her ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... "They may throw me into the Po," he said, "but I will not stop it." Had he wished, he could not have stopped the current of popular excitement at the point it had reached. It was the knowledge of this, joined to the threatened destruction of all his hopes, that well-nigh overpowered him when—at the eleventh hour—in spite of engagements and treaties, Napoleon seemed to have suddenly decided not to go to war. Prince Bismarck once declared that he had never found it possible to tell in advance whether his plans would succeed; he could navigate ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and there seems no doubt about the well-known War being over at last. Home-keeping folk, who imagine it ended when the whistle blew at the eleventh hour of November 11th, are wide, very wide, of the mark. We have experienced some of its direst horrors since then. Why, at one time (and not so long ago) we were without the bare necessities of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... said, "is the one career in which men seldom recover from their mistakes. I hope that even at the eleventh hour you will relent. It will be a grief to all of us to see you slip ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mould and dampness, and be the means of discovering lost articles. Finally be sure to go over with care your "check list" or inventory the day before camp breaks. This will prevent rushing around excitedly at the eleventh hour, hunting ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... introduced in 1847, a Bill which affected the hours of adult males inferentially, the same lugubrious prophecies were indulged in from both sides of the House. Distinguished economists came forward to prove that the whole profit of the textile industry was reaped after the eleventh hour. Famous statesmen on both sides spoke strongly against the measure. The Parliament, in 1847, was in the same sort of position as we are to-day in this respect, but how differently circumstanced in other respects. That Parliament did not enjoy the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... all the tourists in Constantinople, were placed in open carriages by their dragomans, and driven in a long procession to the Seraglio to see the Sultan's treasures. Those of them who had waited two weeks for this chance looked aggrieved at the more fortunate who had come at the eleventh hour on the last night's steamer, and seemed to think these latter had attained the privilege without sufficient effort. The ministers of the different legations—as is the harmless custom of such gentlemen—had impressed every one for whom they had obtained ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... white and tense. Had his plans failed at the eleventh hour, could anyone have played him false? If the game was up, they should never take him alive. Leaving Helen, he drew a revolver, and, going quickly into the inner hall, he waited in grim silence for the visitors to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... relief was overwhelming. If Lord Dreever's statement was correct and Jimmy had really succeeded in winning Molly's affection, this would indeed be a rescue at the eleventh hour. It was with a Nunc-Dimittis air that he felt for his cigar-case, and extended it toward the detective. A cigar from his own private case was with him a mark of supreme favor and good-will, a sort of accolade which he bestowed only ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... cow-paths through the wilderness of sense that great hardihood is required even to suggest that there may be other and better ways of traversing the empirical common. So it is that the fear of being proclaimed a Brazenhead has restrained me until this eleventh hour from telling of my discoveries concerning the fourth-dimensional reaches of our Exposition. That I have the courage now is due to my desire to help in its preservation; not to the end of enclosing it in a brass wall, but to lift it ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... in my memory ever since. Thank Heaven! the eleventh hour must have struck long ago, and Hortense and her friend must be fast asleep and well out of the cold by now—they need walk those ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... crushingly upon him; an abhorrence of the selfishness that could have forgotten—what he forgot; and for so long,—almost irrevocably long. Mingled with this feeling was a sudden thanksgiving for the boon of which he was unworthy; the memory at the eleventh hour, in time to do as he had done before his word was passed. Arnold strode across the room, his breath coming fast, his eyes flashing fire. He shook the tall man by ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... had their way and Castelnau, Joffre's second in command, came over to their view and set out for Verdun to organize the defence for the position at the eleventh hour. He had with him Petain, the man who had commanded the French army in the Battle of Champagne and henceforth commanded the army that was hurried to the Verdun sector. France now took up definitely the gage of battle as Germany had laid it down. Verdun now ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... assist "the experiment" in every possible way, Father Benwell still lingered in the library. He was secretly conscious of a hope that he might, at the eleventh hour, be invited to join Romayne at the dinner-table. Lord Loring only looked at the clock on the mantel-piece: it was nearly time to dress for dinner. The priest had no alternative but to take the hint, and ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... windows of the houses were darkened, and, save for the summer murmurs, the faint creak of upper branches, and the infinitesimal voices of insects in the grass, there was silence: the pleasant and somnolent hush, swathed in which that part of Canaan crosses to the far side of the eleventh hour. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... to the place of punishment Reynard tried to think of some plan by means of which he could save himself even at the eleventh hour; and knowing that some scheme would occur to him if he could only gain a little time, he humbly implored permission to make a public confession of his manifold sins ere he paid the penalty of his crimes. Anxious to hear all he might have to say, the ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Maerchen. Such tables might be compiled from the learned notes and introductions of Prof. Child to his English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1898). A common plot is the story of the faithful leman, whose lord brings home "a braw new bride," and who recovers his affection at the eleventh hour. In Scotland this is the ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Annie; in Danish it is Skiaen Anna. It occurs twice in M. Fauriel's collection of Romaic songs. Again, there is the familiar ballad about a girl who pretends to be dead, that she may ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... to see the man, woman or child in this town, or any other, that can bear more than I can. I always was independent, thank the Lord. After living without the help of man this long, I hope I can get along without it at the eleventh hour. As to its being a money concern, I don't believe a word of it, and I wouldn't walk across the room, if it just concerned myself alone; but when I see the name of my poor, dead brother, I feel a command on me, just as if I saw ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... few months since had been imperilled, if not lost, by her association with Mrs. Hatch. Once again, Lily had withdrawn from an ambiguous situation in time to save her self-respect, but too late for public vindication. Freddy Van Osburgh was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at the eleventh hour—some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and Rosedale—and despatched to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always be ascribed to Miss Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a summing-up ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... signing it, they promise to sustain the cause of woman suffrage by every means in their power. Nixon, candidate for the Senate, signed it last year. House, candidate for the Assembly, signed the pledge at the eleventh hour, and though he lost two of our votes by the delay, yet he, too, is elected. Thus we have, at least, three public men in New Jersey pledged to sustain the woman suffrage cause. We think it is time to say to candidates for office: "You tell us we have a good deal of influence, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... asking some other company. I cannot possibly disappoint her. I can speak feelingly as to the annoyance (for I have known it by my own experience) when after inviting a number of my friends to meet some strangers, the strangers have sent an excuse almost at the eleventh hour. I think no inducements, however strong, could tempt me to do ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... recipient of an apologetic note from the actor, which caused her to clench her hands in rage, then shrug her thin shoulders with a gesture that did not spell defeat. Somehow, in some way, she would accomplish her purpose. Even at the eleventh hour she would not acknowledge herself beaten. Yet as the day wore on toward evening she could think of nothing to do that would bring her her ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... eleventh hour Dmitrieff grasped the situation and applied to Ivanoff for reenforcements. Owing to some blunder the appeal never reached the Russian chief, and Dmitrieff had to do the best he could. Nothing now could save his small force from those grim lines of gaping muzzles ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... who, siding with Prinsloo on the question of a surrender, had it destroyed whilst Prinsloo's was forwarded. This settled the whole affair. The positions were evacuated, and in part occupied by the enemy. Still, at the eleventh hour, there was a possibility of escape. The long trail of waggons would have been captured, but most, if not all, the burghers could have found their way out. But no, they were to be duped by a set of unscrupulous officers. They were told they could get all they desired, except their independence. ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... of a trick is this, standing up here at the eleventh hour and putting the knife into your party?" he ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and his Radical ally in England, Joseph Hume, and the defection of the Methodists, whose leader, Egerton Ryerson, had quarreled with Mackenzie, resulted in the overwhelming defeat of the Reformers. The sting of defeat, the failure of the Family Compact to carry out their eleventh hour promises of reform, and the passing of Lord John Russell's reactionary resolutions convinced a section of the Reform party, in Upper Canada as well as in Lower Canada, that an appeal to force was the ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... little more conciliating; and yet I began to be sorry for this man, hired spy as I knew him to be. It seemed to me less than decent that he should have been brought up in the expectation of this great inheritance, and now, at the eleventh hour, be tumbled forth out of the house door and left to himself, his poverty, and his debts—those debts of which I had so ungallantly reminded him so short a time before. And we were scarce left alone ere I made haste to hang out a flag ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Now, at the eleventh hour, Breyman was marching on the field to the sound of the firing. He had taken thirty-two hours to get over twenty-four miles. Supposing the day won, Stark's men were scattered about in disorder. Not even Stark himself seems to have thought of a rescuing force. ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... now about to go to "see to things," taking Bertie, his right-hand boy, with him, but leaving Nellie with me. Bertie had expressed himself quite agreeable to the arrangement, but at the eleventh hour refused to go without Nellie; and Nellie, preferring the now fascinating homestead to the company of her lord and master, refused to go with him, and Mac was at his ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... and in that event there materialised the German fears which had urged them on to such great speed and violence. In the eleventh hour, there at the peak of the German thrust, there at the climax of Germany's triumphant advances, there at the point where a military decision for the enemy seemed almost within grasp, there and then the American soldier stepped into the breech to save ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... have I waited for this confession? Night after night I have said to myself, 'Surely Grace will come and tell me that she feels herself in the wrong!' But no such words came. At last I ceased to hope for them; and now at this eleventh hour you can hardly expect me to show much ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... 'scrap of paper' of 1839 would seem, when coupled with Herr von Jagow's desperate bid for neutrality at the last moment, to show that the German Government had counted on the neutrality of this country and had been deeply disappointed. If these outbursts and attempts at the eleventh hour to bargain for our neutrality were genuine efforts to keep the peace between Great Britain and Germany, it is our belief that their origin must be found in the highest authority in the German Empire, ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... Christ, who will pardon his sins, give him a new heart, and save him as he did the thief on the cross. If every hour of his day of grace has been misimproved, let not this last be added to the number. If he has stood all the day idle, let him in the eleventh hour accept his Master's work of faith alone in his own soul, and do what he can for the good of others. But let this moment in life pass, then shall the next moment after death bring only fear and anguish; for, be warned and also encouraged by the words of the truthful and loving Jesus, uttered with ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... favourable turn in our affairs, began at last reluctantly to entertain gloomy forebodings as to our future fate. Our force resembled a ship in danger of wrecking among rocks and shoals, for want of an able pilot to guide it safely through them. Even now, at the eleventh hour, had the helm of affairs been grasped by a hand competent to the important task, we might perhaps have steered clear of destruction; but, in the absence of any such deliverer, it was but too evident that Heaven alone could save us by some unforeseen interposition. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... and succeeded, though not without danger to themselves, in rescuing its occupants. A few minutes more, and they must have perished; and their joy and thankfulness at being saved at, as it seemed to them, the eleventh hour, may be better ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... "beat him up" any time we liked. To tell the truth, many of us felt a little jealous that when, after two years of punishment, we had at last become top-dog, we should be called upon to share the glory of victory with soldiers of the eleventh hour. We believed that we were entirely capable of finishing the job without further aid. My own feeling, as an Englishman living in New York, was merely one of relief—that now, when war was ended, I should be ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... charity, and his amiable qualities become the means of saving him from the consequences of his folly." Fielding was not wholly concerned with the acts of a man; to him the admission of the Penitent Thief into Paradise, at the eleventh hour, could have been no stumbling block. And, further, Tom Jones not only suffers for his ill doing, but wins no heaven until he wholly purges himself from the sin which ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... sometimes to repent and change their ways at the eleventh hour; and on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year of 1918, the Kaiser, and other German war lords, if they did not repent, at least changed their ways, for at that hour the armistice went into ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... I thought savagely. "We could have spared him perfectly. What business has he turning up at the eleventh hour? He didn't cross the ocean with her. He didn't suspect her unforgivably. He didn't help her, and disguise himself as a chauffeur for her, and wing Schwartzmann, and bruise up the other chaps and send them rolling in a heap. This is my adventure. He must have had a hundred. Why couldn't he stick ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... she perceived it came the thought that no one else must know. Something must be done, even though it was at the eleventh hour. ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... apart from envy, fear, discontent, or any of the passions that debase; a life so honest and composed; a soul like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch in music - as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chatting at the eleventh hour, under the shadow ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... refusal at the eleventh hour was very annoying. I was not expected alone, but alone I should have to go. There was no alternative, and the absence of the doyenne must explain itself as best ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... much more tricky. I had to get plain proof that my man was a spy in the dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the very last minute, but to make dead certain of stopping him at the fifty-fifth second of the eleventh hour." ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... "the danger is great. I do not try to conceal it from you. It was my intention this morning to see you and Julie safe on the Lyons train, but John and I have beheld signs, not military, perhaps, but of the soul, and we are firm in the belief that at the eleventh hour we shall be saved. The German host will ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of Anne Tresslyn and Templeton Thorpe took place at the home of the bridegroom at four o'clock on the afternoon of the twenty-third. A departure from the original plans was made imperative at the eleventh hour by the fact that Mr. Thorpe had been quite ill during the night. His condition was in no sense alarming, but the doctors announced that a postponement of the wedding was unavoidable unless the ceremony could ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... should have kept looking for an old man with white hair and a cane like Grandpa Morris. He's a grandpa in Chicago that I know. He's just as kind as he can be, but he has the queerest back. He goes to our church, but says he came in at the eleventh hour. I think he used to have rheumatism. And while I was sitting there you could ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... behind his hand and cleared his throat. At the back of his mind he was speculating whether flight at this eleventh hour would be criminal or merely reprehensible bad taste. A murmur from the nudgers announced the arrival of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the Near East a prey. Such an admission will be a day of reckoning that German Imperialism will postpone until the last hope of some breach among the Allies, some saving miracle in the old Eastern Empire, some dramatically-snatched victory at the eleventh hour, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... predicted a particular solution for the nodus of Repeal, which solution has now become impossible; presuming a perseverance in the original policy of ministers, now that its natural fruits were rapidly ripening—whereas, after all, at the eleventh hour we find them adopting that course which, with stronger temptation, they had refused to adopt in the first hour—were this the true portrait of the case, would it be ourselves that erred, or Government?—ourselves in counting on steadiness, or Government in acting with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... should take place before his departure for Germany, and being anxious to commence the projected campaign with the least possible delay, Henry named the 5th of May as the day on which the ceremony was to be performed; but having learnt from a private despatch that the Archduke had resolved at the eleventh hour not to incur the hazard of a war with France upon so frivolous a pretext as the forcible retention of a Princess, who moreover, remained under his charge against her own free will, and that Madame de Conde ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... been better, Jack, had we known more of each other. But Providence made me fatherless, and I have lived childless by my own folly. Thy mother was a saint, I believe; but I fear I learned it too late. Well, a blessing often comes at the eleventh hour!" ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... it, Andre," concluded Madame as she too rose and gathered her lace shawl round her shoulders. "You may thank God, my dear brother, that you have in Crystal such an unselfish and obedient child, and in me such a submissive sister. Frankly—since you have chosen to ask my opinion at this eleventh hour—I don't like this de Marmont marriage, though I have admitted that I see nothing against the young man himself. If Crystal is not unhappy with him, I shall be content: if she is, I will make myself exceedingly disagreeable, both to him and to you, and that being my last word, I have the honour ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the eleventh hour Lazarus interposed one last word of entreaty: "If only thou, O master, ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... of his confounded luck, said some of the —th not unnaturally. Many a gallant fellow had been killed and buried, many another wounded and not especially mentioned, and all of them had done months of hard work where Billings had put in only so many days, but here he came in at the eleventh hour, and they, who had borne the heat and burden of the campaign and received every man his penny, couldn't help a few good-natured slings at the fact that Billings's penny was just as big and round as theirs. The department commander had been close at hand every time that fortunate youth came ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... departed. Exactly as planned, it all fell out. Captain Toltbon was put in irons, and Riel declared that for the sake of peace and order he must be shot. Many people came and implored him to spare the condemned man's life; but he was inexorable. "At the eleventh hour," however, as the newspapers put it, yielding to ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... not one of the promoters of the revolution which in 1848 drove Louis Philippe from the throne. On the contrary, he would, as prime minister summoned at the eleventh hour, have prevented it if he could. He accepted its consequences in the form of the Republic. He voted for the election of Prince Louis Napoleon as its president. This action brought him much vituperation and ridicule from former political friends. But whatever may have been the motive that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... rejoined. "If Chris has brought herself even at the eleventh hour to be open with you, none will rejoice more sincerely than I. It has always been my principle that wives should have no secrets from their husbands. But, knowing her as I do, I question very much if this can be the case. I have remonstrated with her myself upon the subject, but she ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... mess box and X.'s valise—with its extra blanket and extravagant under-clothing. Great would be the searchings of heart. Still everything always came right in the end—the Brigade sent us some "buckshee" camels at the eleventh hour, or at worst we got permission to send some stuff by train, when it could be delivered in due course somewhere within reach. Something always did have to go by train anyway, for we had now a second ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... other, confident, "when she recovers from a natural and childlike infatuation for you she'll marry somebody... Possibly even such a man as Graylock might make her happy. You can't ever tell about such men at the eleventh hour." ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... up," said I. "God has protected us thus far and we will trust in Him - in the eleventh hour of our trouble He will aid us. ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... Netherlands was one of the earliest formed, Belgium only came in at the eleventh hour; she will, however, owing to the zealous activity of Mr. Lenders, the consul in London, send an important contribution worthy of her interest in the North Sea fisheries. We ought also to mention that Newfoundland ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... 1914-1918. It is simple in form, but very solemn in outline, and you could not help knowing that it meant something to do with the dead. On Armistice Day, each November 11—for you know that the Great War ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—there is a solemn service here, and during the two minutes' silence, after the strokes of Big Ben have begun to sound, thousands of people stand bareheaded and absolutely ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... any more than their master-spirits and spokesmen, spared the shame of their duplicity in those early days of August 1914. A large group of them, including commercial and professional men, drew up a long address to the neutral countries, in which they said that down to the eleventh hour they had "never dreamt of war," never thought of depriving other nations of light and air or of thrusting anybody from his place. And yet the ink of their protest was not yet dry when they gave themselves the lie by showing that down to the last detail of preparation they had everything ready ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... that summer it was decided to withdraw from further contracting with the government. Our profits for the year were dazzling, and the actual growth of our beeves in the Outlet was in itself a snug fortune, while the five herds bought at the eleventh hour cleared over one hundred thousand dollars, mere pin-money. I hurried home to find that fortune favored me personally, as the Texas and Pacific Railway had built west from Fort Worth during the summer as far as Weatherford, while the survey on westward was within easy striking ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... second time, "when reforms cannot be effected without the spilling of blood, the time for them has not yet come, and it is the duty of a brave and peaceful people to wait for the silent operation of natural law and the mighty help of moral forces. Therefore at the eleventh hour I call upon you, in the names ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... you been counselled by me this would not have been. Now it is too late, but not too late to save your soul. Away then with this obstinacy—this hardness of heart; call upon the blessed Saviour, that he may receive your spirit—call upon his wound's for mercy. It is the eleventh hour, but not too late. Amine," continued the old man with tears, "I implore you, I conjure you. At least, may this load of trouble ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... upon Lane was, however, little short of exhilarating. It brought him sympathy, understanding, and a fair measure of support from people who, not until the eleventh hour, had really comprehended their own danger and it inspired him to redouble his efforts to ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Demosthenes who, when Philip had already seized Elatea, hurried to Thebes, who by his passionate appeal gained one last chance, the only possible chance, for Greek freedom, who broke down the barrier of an inveterate jealousy, who brought Thebans to fight beside Athenians, and who thus won at the eleventh hour a victory for the spirit of loyal union which took away at least one bitterness from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the deliberations of the memorable council of war, whose eleventh hour resolve to 'hold the fort' mainly averted the ruin of British prestige in India and throughout the regions bordering on our Eastern Empire; and the credit of its final decision to repudiate the humiliating proposals of Sale and Macgregor belongs to George Broadfoot, who was ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... repulsed Shamash, the Sun, and Eamman, both of whom had come to the rescue; they had driven Ishtar and Anu from their thrones: the whole firmament would have become a prey to them, had not Bel and Nusku, Ea and Merodach, intervened at the eleventh hour, and succeeded in hurling them down to the earth, after a terrible battle. They never completely recovered from this reverse, and the gods raised up as rivals to them a class of friendly genii—the "Igigi," who were governed by five ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to see him as everybody was busy writing despatches! This is indeed our whole situation expressed in a trivial incident; all the plenipotentiaries are trying to save their positions and their careers by violent despatch-writing at the eleventh hour. They know perfectly well that it is they alone who are responsible for the present impasse, and that even if they come out alive they are all hopelessly compromised. Young O—— told me that in their Legation they were ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... had, in fact, resented the business necessity which had brought him thither as guest of honor, not through any emotion approximating inhospitality but wholly because of her mistrust as to the effect of this alien note upon her dinner, which was quite impromptu, having been arranged at the eleventh hour in deference to the wishes of Jerry Dane, a partner of Colcord's, who was handling ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the day to alter the friendly attitude of the banks; they were now politely reluctant, as one of the agents expressed it, which really meant that opposition to the loan had appeared from some unexpected source, as a sort of eleventh hour obstacle. The heads of the two banks had as much as said that negotiations were at an end, that was the long and short of it; it really didn't matter what was back of their sudden change of front, the fact still remained that the transaction was as "dead as a door ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon |
