"Foothold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blocks of red Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered two dormer windows, with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two great chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the foe. So then, it is not my grasp of the blessed truth, God in Christ my Friend and Helper, but it is that truth which I grasp at, that makes me strong. Or, to put it into other words, it is the foothold, and not the foot that holds it, that ensures our standing firm. Only there is no steadfastness communicated to us from the source of all stability, except by way of our faith, which brings Christ into us. 'Watch ye; stand ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... results of sexual abandonment, preventing the coarsening and destruction of the emotional life; in his Magda Sudermann has described a type of woman who, from the standpoint of strict morality, is open to condemnation, but in her art finds a foothold, the strength of which even ill-will must unwillingly recognize." In his Sex and Character, Weininger has developed in a more extreme and extravagant manner the conception of the prostitute as a fundamental and essential part of life, a permanent ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... lining the water's edge on everything that served to give foothold, were countless seagulls, all waiting for the breakfast they knew was coming from the discarded fish, and fit companions were the women with shawls over their heads irreverently called mud hens, and old men in dilapidated clothing, who sat along the stringers of the wharf, ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... for some means by which they could mount to the decks of the Boldero, but none was visible. It was like trying to scale a fifty-foot smooth steel wall. There was no place for a foothold. Again the sailor made some peculiar motions, and the lad puzzled over them. They had gone nearly around the wreck now, and as yet had seen no way in which to get at the gold. As they passed around the bow, which was in a deep shadow from ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... slipping. She ground her teeth and kicked convulsively, but decorously, seeking a foothold that wasn't there on the smooth face ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... buried, and it seemed an open question whether she would ever come up or not. It was at this time that Tip O'Neill, a daring young buck of Freekirk Head, performed the highly dangerous feat of walking from her main to her forerigging along the weather run, which fact shows there was foothold on her uppermost side for a man ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... last that they had fallen behind the furious onset of the flood, but Roger was still swimming with it, desperately throwing up his head from time to time, and snorting the water from his nostrils. All his efforts to gain a foothold failed; his strength was nearly spent, and unless some help should come in a few minutes it would come in vain. And in the darkness, and the rapidity with which they were borne along, ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... dead leaves of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it; and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... a wounded bull, while a bedraggled Nobby scrambled and blew and slipped and scratched, caring not at all what was his understanding, so long as it provided a foothold and kept his head ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... from the river, on top of the level gravelly earth which stretched for miles on either side of the river clear to the mountains. This earth and gravel mixture was so firmly packed that even the cactus had a scant foothold. The town interested me for one reason only, this being, that I could get my meals for the evening and the following morning, instead of having to cook them myself. After I had eaten them, however, there was a question in my mind if my own cooking, bad as it was, would not have answered the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... that he would have killed him had not the blow by great good chance turned aside. But, turning aside as it did, it gave Sir Tristram the chance he coveted, and rushing in on the giant before he had recovered his foothold, he smote him with such force and skill that he cleft him clean through; and in his agony Urgan leapt so high in the air that he fell back over the edge of the cliff, and dropped heavily ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... leaning on the arm of her husband, and clinging to his support, both from affection and a dread of the motion of the vessel, Jane ventured with one of the ladies to attempt a walk round the deck of the ship. Unaccustomed to such an uncertain foothold, the walkers were prevented falling by the kind interposition of a gentleman, who for the first time had shown himself among them at that moment. The accident, and their situation, led to a conversation which was renewed at different times during their passage, and in some measure created ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... river in the Bengal Presidency, near the modern Palta above Barrackpore. It has disappeared from the map, but is famous as the principal settlement of the ill-fated Ostend Company, the one great effort made by Germany to secure a foothold in India. The Ostend Company was formed in 1722-1723, and with a capital of less than a million sterling founded two settlements, one at Coblom (Covelong) on the Madras coast between the English Madras and the Dutch Sadras, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... with a hand outstretched to help his foothold, standing for a space to think ere he jumped to a further rock, balancing himself for a moment ere he leaped again. So he would come to stand and stare gloomily ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... not alone fear that the ambitious Napoleon might obtain a foothold in neighbouring territory which moved the Jeffersonians to this inconsistent step. Neither was the action due entirely to fear lest Britain might obtain possession of it in the renewed war with France. The law of compulsion showed in other particulars. The advance of the American pioneers ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... visited by Mr. Worcester in 1906. The Spanish Government never having succeeded in gaining a foothold in it. "During the insurrection Lieutenant Gilmore, of the United States Navy, and his fellow-captives were taken into the southern part of it and there abandoned." "So far as is known, no white man had ever penetrated the southern and central portions ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... does 'and hate thine enemy' come from? Not from Scripture, but in the passage in Leviticus 'neighbour' is co-extensive with 'children of thy people,' and the hatred and contempt of all men outside Israel which grew upon the Jews found a foothold there. 'Who is my neighbour?' was apparently a well-discussed question in the schools of the Rabbis, and, whether any of these teachers ever committed themselves to plainly formulating the principle or not, practically the duty of love was restricted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... as beggar, has now gotten a foothold in his own house. He has made the transition in disguise from the hut to the palace; he has tried his preliminary test upon the Suitors, the test of charity, and found out their general character. He is not recognized, on account of external disguise in ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... flew apace; the Village of Peace entertained more redmen than ever before. Day by day the faith gained a stronger foothold. A kind of religious trance affected some of the converted Indians, and this greatly influenced the doubting ones. Many of them half believed the Great ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... easy, by a long chalk! The rain had made the boughs mighty slippery, and it was all I could do to keep a foothold, but bit by bit I managed it, until at last there I ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... is interesting to recall the fact that before slavery got a foothold in Rome, the masses in their struggle with the classes used what we think of to-day as the most modern weapon employed in industrial warfare. We can all remember the intense interest with which we watched the novel experience which St. Petersburg underwent some six years ago, when the general ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... there was much talking. Among the best speakers of the city was the orator De-mos'the-nes, a very clear-sighted man, who suspected Philip's designs. He therefore warmly advised the Athenians to do all they could to oppose the Macedonian king, so as to prevent his ever getting a foothold in Greece. Indeed, he spoke so eloquently and severely against Philip, and told the people so plainly that the king was already plotting to harm them, that violent speeches directed against any one have ever since ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... though; the next she had cowered, like some animal doubled up within itself. She peeped down the great rugged cliffs—the descent would be easy enough, as they were not precipitous, and the great boulders afforded plenty of foothold. Suddenly, as she grazed, she saw at some little distance on her left, and about midway down the cliffs, a rough wooden construction, through the wall of which a tiny red light glimmered like a beacon. Her very heart seemed to stand still, the eagerness of joy was so ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a foothold among the Saxons its progress was rapid. In no country were monastic institutions more firmly planted. Monasteries and churches were erected in the principal settlements and liberally endowed by the Saxon kings. In Kent were the great sees of Canterbury and Rochester; in Essex ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... the community needed a road or a tramway, if it wanted a town or a village in any position, nay, even if it wanted to go to and fro, it had to do so by exorbitant treaties with each of the monarchs whose territory was involved. No man could find foothold on the face of the earth until he had paid toll and homage to one of them. They had practically no relations and no duties to the nominal, municipal, or national Government amidst whose larger areas their own dominions lay. . . . This sounds, I know, like a lunatic's dream, but mankind ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... townspeople within, and also as a tantalization to the children of the saints who were not allowed to enter the tent of the wicked. Fired by that bewildering and amazing performance, he daily, after the wonderful sight, practised walking on rails, on fences, on fallen trees, and on every narrow foothold which he could find, as a careful preparation for a final feat and triumph of skill on his mother's clothes-line. In an evil hour, as he sat one Sunday in the corner of his father's pew, his eyes rested on the narrow ledge which formed the top of the long ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... save himself from a blow against any obstacle, he stalked off in as straight a direction as he could go, feeling his way with his feet, and always making sure of firm foothold before he moved the one that was safe, for his one great dread in the vast cavern was lest he should suddenly find himself on the brink of some ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... who has thrown his soul at last upon the waste of heaven and made words out of it. One cannot but believe that a man like this is a free man. Let what will happen to the sun that warms him or the star that seems just now his foothold in space. All shall be as his soul says when his soul determines what it shall say. Fire and wind and cold—when his soul speaks—and Invisibility itself and ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... finished disembarkation at Daiquiri and Siboney. It was almost immediately attacked by a superior force of Spanish regulars, and was so harassed, night and day, by the fire of the latter that some of its officers slept only two hours out of one hundred and fifteen. As soon as it had obtained a foothold it went into camp on a slight elevation in the midst of an almost impenetrable jungle, surrounded itself with defensive trenches, and there lived, for a period of ten weeks, exposed to the same sun, rain, and malaria that played havoc with the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... explaining something, then gave the word of command, "One . . . two . . . three!" At the word "three" Ivan Ivanitch flapped his wings and jumped on to the sow's back. . . . When, balancing himself with his wings and his neck, he got a firm foothold on the bristly back, Fyodor Timofeyitch listlessly and lazily, with manifest disdain, and with an air of scorning his art and not caring a pin for it, climbed on to the sow's back, then reluctantly mounted on to the gander, and stood on his hind legs. The result was what the stranger called the ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... moments of religious trust which are man's eternal defiance to the iron silences about him. Originally, as we know, he had shrunk from the thought of change in her corresponding to his own; now that his own foothold was strengthening, his longing for a new union was overpowering that old dread. The proselytising instinct may be never quite morally defensible, even as between husband and wife. Nevertheless, in all strong, convinced, and ardent souls it exists, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hundred years after the first English settlements in America, the majority of the works read there were written by English authors. The hard struggle necessary to obtain a foothold in a wilderness is not favorable to the early development of a literature. Those who remained in England could not clear away the forest, till the soil, and conquer the Indians, but they could write the books and send them across the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... recognising manifold coincidences with that conflict of opinions and tendencies in which we are involved at the present day? But it is no part of our plan to follow these out. Momentary resemblances often mislead the politician who seeks a sure foothold in the past, as well as the historian who seeks it in the present. The Muse of history has the widest intellectual horizon and the full courage of her convictions; but in forming them she is thoroughly conscientious, and we might say jealously bent on her duty. To ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... provisions and set off as fast as I could go towards it. As I drew near it seemed to me to be a white ball of immense size and height, and when I could touch it, I found it marvellously smooth and soft. As it was impossible to climb it—for it presented no foothold—I walked round about it seeking some opening, but there was none. I counted, however, that it was at least fifty paces round. By this time the sun was near setting, but quite suddenly it fell dark, something like a huge black cloud came swiftly over me, and I saw with amazement that it was a ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... occurred to them to scale the wall of the fort and see what was going on inside. They threw some planks across the ditch, and taking half a company of soldiers, climbed cautiously up. They obtained a foothold before the alarm was given. There was a fierce hand to hand struggle, and sixteen of the party fell, and nine of the garrison. The rest fled into the city. The Governor Gysant, rushing to the rescue without staying to put on ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... the men are setting under Mr. Ward now we can work in comparative safety with a light breeze, which we should have during the afternoon. There are few coasts, however rugged they may appear at a distance, that do not offer some foothold for the wrecked mariner, and I doubt not but that we shall find this no exception ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... word, but he spoke of those documents repeatedly, saying they contained his instructions to tie up the mines in order to give a foothold for the lawsuits. He bragged that the rest of the gang were in his power and that he could land them in the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... of growth of these Coral Reefs? We cannot, perhaps, estimate it with absolute accuracy, since they are now so nearly completed; but Coral growth is constantly springing up wherever it can find a foothold, and it is not difficult to ascertain approximately the rate of growth of the different kinds. Even this, however, would give us far too high a standard; for the rise of the Coral Reef is not in proportion to the height of the living Corals, but to their solid parts which never decompose. Add ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... passing over a narrow part of the path and overlooking a deep chasm, one of the hind feet of the donkey slipped, and with an involuntary shudder, I shut my eyes to meet my expected doom; but fortunately the little fellow gained his foothold, and in all probability saved us both from a premature death. After we had passed over this dangerous place, I dismounted, and as soon as my feet had once more gained terra firma, I resolved that I would never again yield my own judgment ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... first to make Lucca secure, and for this he built a fortress in the city; and then to possess himself of Pistoja—for he even thought thereby to gain a foothold in Florence herself—and for this he entered into correspondence secretly with both the Neri and the Bianchi there. These two factions did not hesitate to use the enemy of their city to help their ambitions, so that while the Bianchi ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... of the lake is very curious, a series of natural canals run in all directions through vast swamps which only afford foothold in the height of summer. The thrifty peasants utilise the dry season to plant fields of maize, for the scorching sun dries these swamps in a very short space of time. In the winter or early spring, they are nearly or quite ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the brave militia defending their native soil. To escape the deadly sweep of the cannon they were obliged to prostrate themselves in the slight depressions in the plain. Notwithstanding the inequality of numbers, the main body of the enemy were three times repulsed before they could gain a foothold ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... only a small representation in southern Arizona; and the Coahuiltecan, which intrudes into southwestern Texas. The Athapascan family is represented in Arizona and New Mexico by the well known Apache and Navajo, the former of whom have gained a strong foothold in northern Mexico, while the Taoan, a Pueblo family of the upper Rio Grande, has established a few pueblos lower down the river in Mexico. For the purpose of necessary comparison, therefore, the map is made to include all ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... purposes: First, in making the flower more conspicuous; secondly, in facilitating access to nectar and pollen; and, finally, in discouraging crawling intruders. Where the short tube is thickened, the bee finds her foothold while she forces her tongue between the anther tips. The nectar is well concealed and quite deeply seated, thanks to the rigid cone. Few bee workers are flying at the shooting star's early blooming season. Undoubtedly the female bumblebees, which, by striking the protruding ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... there was something more of them to observe, were now unfamiliar. They seemed not to have been there before. A landscape that is all trees and undergrowth, moreover, lacks definition, is confused and without accentuated points upon which attention can gain a foothold. Add the gloom of a moonless night, and something more than great natural intelligence and a city education is required to preserve one's knowledge of direction. And that is how it occurred that Private ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... house, it appears admirable. There is no dust or smoke, no rumble of wheels, or shriek of whistles. You are gliding along steadily through an ever-green world; skirting the silent hills; passing from one side of the river to the other when the horses have to swim the current to find a good foothold on the bank. You are on the water, but not at its mercy, for your craft is not disturbed by the heaving of rude waves, and the serene inhabitants do not say "I am sick." There is room enough to move about without falling overboard. You may ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... with great clusters of berries, shot out from a little hollow between two ledges, and overhung the place where Mr. Sharp had found foothold. As if its own wealth of berries were not enough, a bitter-sweet vine had sprung up in the same hollow, and coiling itself around the tree, deluged it with a shower of golden clusters that mingled upon the same branch with the bright red ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... in the lowest of the low from every nation except the Chinese, against whom the only charge has been that they are too industrious and thus a menace to the whites. The swarms of people from the low and criminal classes of Europe have enabled the anarchists to obtain such a foothold that in this free country the President of the United States is almost as closely guarded as the Emperor of Russia. The White House is surrounded and guarded by detectives of various kinds. The secret-service department is equal ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... within the besieged city, and Hasdrubal would not surrender. An attack, led by Laelius, on the market-place, gave the Romans a foothold within the city, and a great quantity of spoil. One thousand talents were taken from the temple of Apollo. Preparations were then made for the attack of the citadel, and for six days there was a hand-to-hand fight between the combatants ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the young men went to church. Nothing in the way of heresy found foothold at Jefferson. It was wholly orthodox; although it was suspected that Wade and Ranney had notions of their own in religion; or rather the impression was that they had no religion of any kind. Not to have the one and true, was to have none according ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... only make it! Rising cautiously to her knees she crawled up one more step and rested a moment, digging her fingers into the crevices of the rock and finding a precarious foothold against a projecting ledge. Keeping her eyes fixed upon the door she scrambled up a few inches further, then paused again, exhausted ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... "secret virtue," for if the plant be immersed in glycerine the preservative takes the hue of the flower. Nature having ordained that the plants should be elusive, they appear in remote spots and unlikely situations with foothold among loose and gritty fragments of rock, and with cessation of the sustaining rains disappear, each having borne but a single leaf and produced but a solitary flower. The leaf does not seem to be attractive to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... narrow defile which nature had closed long ago. There was an upward incline, but it was quite easy for the horses. The pass gradually narrowed as they went, and the mountain-sides grew more precipitous, shutting them in like great walls on either side. Little foothold was there for a lurking enemy, and there were no deep gorges where an ambuscade might hide. To defend this part of the pass in the old days must have meant a hand-to-hand struggle in the narrow way. Ellerey noted this as he went. His life in Sturatzberg had made ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... found very soon that his gangway of oars was by no means satisfactory, because while his men were crossing they became so fully exposed to King Olaf's marksmen that of every three who started only one succeeded in gaining a foothold on the Serpent's deck. Many hundreds of men—vikings, Swedes, and Danes — lost their lives on this bridge. So when Erik saw that King Olaf was gaining the upper hand of him he got his berserks to take ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... Lord Dufferin in 1860, a Christian governor was placed over the Lebanon in a semi-independent position. Since then the terraced mountain has been marvellously developed, and every foothold has been planted with vines and figs and mulberries. The industrious peasantry, comparatively safe from Turkish rapacity, have cultivated the ledges among its crags and peaks, and enjoy the fruits of their industry, sitting under their ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... 110. * * * * * * * VIII. The following orders are published for the information and guidance of the "Army in the Field," in its present movement to obtain a foothold on the east bank of the Mississippi River, from which Vicksburg can be approached ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... chasm. I watched her, mute with fear; a word might cause her to lose her balance; but I could not turn my eyes away, I was fascinated with the sight. I was not aware that Rodney had left me until he, too, appeared on the Arch, slowly finding a foothold for himself and advancing toward the centre. A fragment of the rock broke off under his foot and fell in the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... of their wicked faith, and because of these the gods and their high priest must sink into a common ruin. Were it not for these unsubstantial terrors that haunted him, the Spaniards had never won a foothold in Tenoctitlan, and the Aztecs would have remained free for many a year to come. But Providence willed it otherwise, and this dead and disgraced monarch was ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... channel; so we run ashore and let our boats down with lines. In the afternoon we come to more dangerous rapids and stop to examine them. I find we must do the same work again, but, being on the wrong side of the river to obtain a foothold, must first cross over—no very easy matter in such a current, with rapids and rocks below. We take the pioneer boat, "Emma Dean," over, and unload her on the bank; then she returns and takes another load. Running back and forth, she soon has half our cargo over. Then one of the larger ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... of light came on. It was another lantern, borne in the hand of another fur-clad figure. It passed through the gateway. A string of panting dogs followed close behind, clawing at the ground for foothold, bellies low to the ground as they hauled at the rawhide tugs which harnessed them to their burden behind. One by one they passed the waiting figure. One by one they were swallowed up by the blackness within the Fort. Five in all were counted. Then ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... mere pedantry. In both these countries, though, Latin was still the language of the Church, of the universities, of all learned writing, and the means of international intercourse, and after the new humanism had once obtained a foothold it was welcomed by scholars as a great addition to existing knowledge. Erasmus, the foremost scholar of his day, not only labored hard to introduce the new learning in the schools, but welcomed the restored Roman tongue as an international language for scholarship, as a potent weapon for destroying ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... mood is spent. It enters a winding gorge that shuts out the sunlight and the landscape abruptly assumes an epic note; the water tumbles wildly downward, hemmed in by mountains whose slopes are shrouded in dusky pines wherever a particle of soil affords them foothold. The scenery in this valley is as romantic as any in the Sila. Affluents descend on either side, while the swollen rivulet writhes and screeches in its narrow bed, churning the boulders with hideous din. The track, meanwhile, continues ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... one of his brothers to London with a machine to see if a foothold could be found there, and in due time an encouraging report came to the destitute inventor. A corsetmaker named Thomas had paid two hundred and fifty pounds for the English rights and had promised to pay a royalty of ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... M. Vandervelde when these failed to secure representation in their own towns. So welcome are eminent politicians that there can be no ground for supposing that they will suffer from a proportional system. Indeed, large constituencies returning several members give to these a much surer foothold in Parliament than they can possibly secure with single-member areas. The distinguished candidate can appeal almost with certainty of success for the "quota" of votes which is sufficient to secure ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... sounds. But notwithstanding these thoughts, and the qualms which came in their turn, the sound of the coming feet brought great joy. For, after all, they were coming; and coming just in time to prevent the sense of disappointment at their delay gaining firm foothold. It was only when the coming was assured that she felt how strong had been the undercurrent of her apprehension lest they ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... her stern, honest, solid facts. So, for instance, the highest virtue of good writing stands in saying a plain thing in a plain way. And in all art-work the first requisite is, that a man have, in the collective sense and reason of mankind, a firm foothold for withstanding the shifting currents and fashions and popularities of the day. The artist is indeed to work in free concert with the imaginative soul of his age: but the trouble is, that men are ever mistaking some transient specialty of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and of the phantoms, invariably feminine in form, who were said to inhabit ruined places. A panic terror seized him as he watched the apparition gliding so swiftly and noiselessly upon the unconscious girl. Yet he continued to run forward, stumbling and slipping on the treacherous foothold of melting snow. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of a few short trips, and occasional brief sojourns in Paris, in the one foothold which his father had retained there, he was constrained by necessity to remain beneath the family roof-tree. They gave him his food and his clothing, but no money. He suffered from this, and groaned and grumbled as if he were ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... voices, and knew that he did not hear Nora's voice. He poised himself on the edge of a rock in the middle of the stream, and looked up the river and down the river, turning himself carefully on his narrow foothold; but he was thinking only of Nora. Could there be anything nobler than to struggle on with her, if she only would be willing? But then she was young; and should she yield to such a request from him, she would not know what she was yielding. He turned again, jumping from rock to rock ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... churches and monasteries. At present they have but made a beginning here in East Anglia; but if they continue to flock in they will soon overrun the whole country, instead of having, as at present, a mere foothold near the rivers except for those who have come down to Thetford. We have been among the first sufferers, seeing that our lands lie round Thetford, and hitherto I have hoped that there would be a general rising against these invaders; but the king is indolent and unwarlike, and I see that he will ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... once accepted as Heavenly truths." "I enter the arena," says he "as the champion of common sense, against what in my soul I believe to be the most tremendous enemy of God, morals and religion, that ever found foothold on the earth—the most seductive, hence most dangerous form of sensualism that ever cursed a nation, age or people." If Dr. Randolph had been brought from spirits of delusion on our ground, he would have assisted us to open the door ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... poles by themselves afforded no notch or foothold for a Bushman's naked foot. They rose nine or ten feet above the willow, so that the total height of the palisade was about twelve feet, and the tops of the stakes were sharpened. The construction ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... a young acquaintance of mine who is going to live in Cleveland. If there is anything you can do without too much trouble to yourself in recommending a place to board, or assisting him to a situation, I shall be grateful. He has good habits, and if he gets a foothold I am sure he ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... movement beside the white coffin, the men were lifting it off the golden pile of earth and lowering it into the dark pit. The men's feet slipped and shuffled for a foothold in the yielding clay. At last a low, dull thud sounded up from the mouth of the pit. Our brother in the white coffin had at last found a lasting ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... with small foothold on Musandam Peninsula adjacent to Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... setting of the sections or subsequent variations in temperature, he packs the joints between the sections with a layer of felting cloth or other compressible material, thus forming expansion joints. Sometimes he slightly roughens the surface of the material, to give better foothold to pedestrians. Sometimes the grooving is made in imitation of ordinary granite paving sets. In tramway pavement there are grooves to give a grip to the horses' feet, and a slight camber between the rails. He states that a great advantage in laying a pavement by the method is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... of the stone benches and fell into a deep study. There was the bell but where was the mysterious ringer? The bell rope had long ago rotted away. The walls had once been plastered and were still too smooth to offer a foothold to the most expert climber. How then to account for the regular nightly tolling? The mystery had in reality deepened ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... magnificent forestry. From the branches that wave triumphantly from the dizzy heights above, to those that mingle with the delicate mosses in the valley, the verdure nowhere knows a break. Even on the steep rocky faces the persistent vegetation somehow finds for itself a precarious foothold; and where the trees fear to venture the lichen atones for their absence. Up through every crack and cranny the ferns are pushing their graceful fronds. It is a marvellous recovery. Indeed, the landscape is really better worth seeing to-day than in those tranquil days, centuries ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... their pockets, or only five after the filing fee on the land was paid. I have seen them sleep on the prairie, get odd jobs here and there until they could throw up a shelter out of scrap lumber, and slowly get a foothold, often becoming substantial citizens of a community they ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... happy advantage of offering no foothold to this parasite, so harmful to its sister species. It accommodates itself well in many soils in which J. regia will grow, even dry and gravelly, but prefers soils which are fresh, open, rich, and especially, deep. Its roots are long ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... fervent a daughter of Rome; while the English refugees checkmated their own party at home by their readiness to pay any price-even to the betrayal of Calais-for French support. But for timely reinforcements, the English foothold in France would probably have been captured by a coup de main before the close of 1556. Meantime in England the severity ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... land, but were continually slipping back and falling into the water. It was an awful sight to look at them. It reminded me of pictures that I had seen of the deluge in the days of Noah, when the waters had risen to the mountain tops, and men, women and children were fighting for a foothold upon the last dry spots that ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... that domiciled more families and middle-aged married couples than sprightly young single gentlemen. Dick had fallen heir to the establishment of an elderly uncle, who had furnished the place some time in the nineties and when he grew too decrepit to keep his foothold in New York had retired to the country, leaving Dick in possession. Even if Dick had been a conspicuously rakish young gentleman, which he was not, the traditional dignity of his surroundings would have certainly protected him from incongruous ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... the cell was very narrow but high; about ten feet above his head he found an opening, secured by iron bars. All attempts to reach this proved futile, and he could secure no foothold on the slippery walls. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... slipping. All along the green valley the birds flew and sang; blackberry bushes climbed over the broken walls of the mansion of Nero, and red and white daisies and silvery grasses grew in every cranny where the kindly earth found a foothold. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... tribe. It was in Canaan, however, that the shepherd people hailing from Arabia showed the first signs of approaching disintegration. Various tribal groups, like Moab and Ammon, consolidated themselves. They took permanent foothold in the land, and submitted with more or less readiness to the influences exerted by the indigenous peoples. The guardianship of the sublime traditions of the tribe remained with one group alone, ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... the populace. Accordingly, the procedure at the trial, as also the final verdict, turned largely on the desperate efforts of the Jacobins to discredit their rivals, who sought by all means to keep their foothold in the revolutionary torrent. One of the most obvious devices was to represent the Executive Council as the champion of ultra-democratic ideas as against envious and reactionary England. If this notion gained currency, Lebrun and his ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... from Spain to Peru and obtained a foothold only well on toward the close of the first half of the century. The leader of the Bohemian romanticists of Lima was a Spaniard from Santander, Fernando Velarde. Around him clustered a group of young men who imitated Espronceda and Zorrilla and Velarde ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... medium of a world's intercourse, and that it very suitably belongs to Israel, in whose hand will be the destiny of the world. It is the lion of languages. It will grow anywhere, and by reason of its tenacity when once it gets a foothold it abides. It is peculiarly suited to the humanities of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it goes, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... terrible to be able to see nothing. Petronella suddenly made a rush towards the wall, and finding foothold here and there in the chinks of the brick work, contrived to swing upwards her light frame till she ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... whose witness could be accepted, if the condition precedent were proof that he had never invented and promulgated a myth. In the minds of all of us there are little places here and there, like the indistinguishable spots on a rock which give foothold to moss or stonecrop; on which, if the germ of a myth fall, it is certain to grow, without in the least degree affecting our accuracy or truthfulness elsewhere. Sir Walter Scott knew that he could not repeat a story without, as he said, "giving ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... comprising the heads of nine executive departments established by the sovereign. Nominally the ministers are appointed and dismissed by the crown at will, but actually the parliamentary system has acquired sufficient foothold to impose upon the sovereign a considerable measure of restriction at this point. All decrees and orders must be countersigned by the head of one of the ministerial departments; and it is expressly stipulated that responsibility for all royal acts shall lie with the ministers.[727] ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... first obtained a foothold in Europe through the dogma of Metempsychosis. It was introduced into the Hellenes by Pythagoras; but never became popular among the Greeks. This Metempsychosis (or the transmigration of souls) was believed ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... them schools, while he takes of their money to help educate his own sons. They have no ambition,—then closes upon them every door of honorable advancement, and cries through the key-hole, Serve, or starve. They cannot stand alone, they have no faculty for rising,—then, if one of them finds foothold, the ground is undermined beneath him. If a head is seen above the crowd, the ladder is jerked away, and he is trampled into the dust where he is fallen. If he stays in the position to which Anglo-Saxon assigns him, he is a worthless nigger; if he protests against it, he is an insolent ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time. "Let me help you!" I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He kicked about, trying to get a foothold somewhere. It was very like holding a ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... ring of mastery in his voice, as there had been on the mail-boat, but the shiver of panic; and this, it may be, the dog detected, for he settled more alertly, pawing the floor with his forefeet, as though seeking firmer foothold from which to leap. As once before, I wished the beast well in the issue; indeed, I hoped 'twould be the throat and a fair grip! But Jagger caught a billet of wood from the box, and, with a hoarse, stifled cry—frightful to hear—drew back to ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... high favor of fortune, push a dog into the Hydraulic, or get him to jump in after a stick; and then have the excitement of following him from one culvert to another, till he found a foothold and scrambled out. Once my boy saw a chicken cock sailing serenely down the currant; he was told that he had been given brandy, and that brandy would enable a chicken to swim; but probably this was not true. Another time, a tremendous time, a boy was standing at the brink ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... tolerated in Montreal society; moreover, that the tongue of slander had been busily engaged in painting her even blacker than she really was, so that these people, even if personally disposed to associate with her, dared not do so lest they might lose their own insecure foothold on the ladder of social position. In moody silence she presided throughout the entire evening; she was enraged at herself and at the poor enslaved creatures who, though anxious to go and enjoy themselves yet dared not infringe the rules laid down by ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... back along the face of the precipice, stop where the rock offered foothold and begin slowly climbing almost vertically. At first, it was going up the tiers of a broken stone stair. Then, the weathered ledge gave place to slant shale. He saw Wayland dig his heels for grip, grasp a sharp edge overhead, and hoist himself to the overhanging branch ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... boiled along between narrow walls which shot sheer up from the water. There was not even a niche in their smooth surface to afford a foothold to a mountain goat. They ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... New York' and in a short time he was the most notorious character in the country. The aim of the article in question was evidently to shame John Allen into a change of life, and thus to obtain a foothold among his vile neighbors and companions in sin. The stroke was a bold one, but it utterly failed in its purpose to soften John's heart. The result, however, was that thousands of religious persons—clergymen and others—thronged his house daily, either from a motive of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... losing spirit for one instant, although considerably wounded by contact with the rocks, managed to grasp with his hands a shelving piece of rock, which had afforded foothold to a solitary soldier, who, nevertheless, was trembling in the expectation of it giving way at any moment. Mr. Meriton, who was looking for the same mishap, observed with joy the end of a rope coming towards them. ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... wild plain covered with coarse grass and wild poppies. The snake is near her, and there is no one to whom she can call for help. But the sea is in front of her. She will escape down the rocks—there is still a chance! The descent is sheer, but somehow she retains foothold. Then the snake drops—she feels its weight upon her, and with a ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Not being able to arouse much of a following among a loyal people, Augustus sought aid of his namesake, the Czar of Russia, to help in his contest. Knowing that Augustus would be easily disposed of once they got a foothold in Krovitch, the Russ, who had only been waiting for some such pretext, gladly espoused his cause and threw an army of veterans across the length and breadth of the devoted land. Stovik was deposed ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... Chet was saying, as Harkness dragged him on; "help Diane!" But the girl had sprung before them to gain a foothold and extend a helping hand. And they were back in the darkness of a rocky cave before the sunlit entrance was blocked by a hairy head and a horrible, slavering mouth on a body ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... he had made sufficient height to clear the gloom of the woods. As he looked out over their tops, a light breeze cooled his wet forehead, and he pressed on with fresh vigor. Presently the slope grew a trifle easier, the foothold surer, and he mounted more rapidly. The steely lake, and the rough-ridged, black-green sea of the fir-tops began to unroll below him. At last he rounded an elbow of the steep, and there before him, upthrust perhaps a hundred feet above ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... therefore, Thaddeus was grumpy. One premise only was necessary for the conclusion—in fact, it was the only premise upon which a conclusion involving Thaddeus's grumpiness could find a foothold. If Thaddeus felt rested, everything in the world could go wrong and he would smile as sweetly as ever; but with the slightest trace of weariness in his system the smile would fade, wrinkles would gather on his forehead, and grumpiness ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... for a family of very moderate means to obtain a foothold and thrive by farming in Southern California? I cannot answer this better than by giving substantially the experience of one family, and by saying that this has been paralleled, with change of ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... just to the left? I dropped a big rock from the Point square on a rattler who was sunning himself there last spring. I can see a foothold all the way up the cliff. It can be done," he concluded, in a tone that made ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... is a strange one; and each one of the rungs of this ladder corresponds to a stage where philosophy can find foothold, and where one encounters one of these workmen, sometimes divine, sometimes misshapen. Below John Huss, there is Luther; below Luther, there is Descartes; below Descartes, there is Voltaire; below Voltaire, there is Condorcet; below Condorcet, there is Robespierre; below Robespierre, there ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to a gale that roared in his ears like thunder, as he drew his boat high up beyond reach of the tide that was running in strongly; and when the boat was safe he set out to climb the rocks. Up, and up, a dizzy height he went, finding foothold with difficulty, for what looked like solid rock had a trick of crumbling when stepped upon, just as if it ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... ON THE COAST.—Far to the northeast explorers of another European nation by this time were seeking a foothold. When John Cabot came home from his first voyage to the Newfoundland coast, he told such tales of cod fisheries thereabouts, that three small ships set sail from England to catch fish and trade with the natives of the new-found ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... too, have achieved an important success to-day," went on Mr. Farrington; "we have secured a foothold in this somewhat uncertain city, and we shall soon have a roof over our heads that we can call our own, ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... with a half-suppressed howl, his momentum carrying him halfway up Professor Boomly's person. Then, losing foothold, he fell to the floor and began to kick in the general direction of Professor Boomly. It was a sorrowful sight to see these two celebrated scientists panting, mauling, scuffling and punching each other around the ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... rose perpendicularly from the water's edge, frowning in bleak and gloomy grandeur. Here difficulties of all kinds beset their path. The snow was from two to three feet deep, but soft and yielding, so that the horses had no foothold, but kept plunging forward, straining themselves by perpetual efforts. Sometimes the crags and promontories forced them upon the narrow riband of ice that bordered the shore; sometimes they had to scramble over vast masses of rock which had tumbled from the impending ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... for five years, and exacted from the terrorized senate the addition of Transalpine Gaul, where, as he well knew, a storm was brewing which threatened to sweep away Roman civilization beyond the Alps. The mutual jealousies of the Gallic tribes had enabled German invaders first to gain a foothold on the left bank of the Rhine, and then to obtain a predominant position in Central Gaul. In 60 B.C. the German king Ariovistus had defeated the Aedui, who were allies of Rome, and had wrested from the Sequani a large portion of their territory. Caesar must have seen that the Germans were preparing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the interior of this vast cave, finding everywhere the walls rising sheer from the silent, dark waters, not a ledge or a crevice where one might gain foothold. Indeed, in some places there was a considerable overhang from above, as if a great dome whose top was invisible sprang from some level below the water. We pushed ahead until the tiny semi-circle of light through which we had entered was ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... windows was impossible. The front of the house dropped sheer down and there was nothing to give one a foothold. But I remembered the window in the cabinet de toilette giving on to the little air-shaft. That seemed to offer a slender ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... introduction into Ohio, it has spread rapidly through the country and at present forty-four states and territories celebrate Arbor Day. Its every way healthful and desirable features have so generally commended it also that it has gained a foothold abroad and has begun to be observed in England, Scotland, France, and even in far-off South Africa. It has become preeminently a school day and a school festival. In many cases school teachers and superintendents have introduced its observance. But it has soon so commended itself ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... The fact that they live farther inland than the stronger peoples is also evidence that they were the first inhabitants, for it is not natural to suppose that a weaker race could enter territory occupied by a stronger and gain a permanent foothold ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... commanded the approach by water to Antwerp. When the ships of Lumbres and Treslong appeared before the town, the inhabitants rose in revolt, over-powered the garrison, and opened the gates. This striking success, following upon the taking of Brill, aroused great enthusiasm. The rebels had now a firm foothold both in Holland and Zeeland, and their numbers grew rapidly from day to day. Soon the whole of the island of Walcheren, on which Flushing stands, was in their hands with the exception of the capital Middelburg; and in Holland several important towns ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... next floating log. Turner beckoned him on. It was difficult to make the foreman hear above the noise of the water and the continual grinding of the logs, but Rafe yelled some warning and pointed toward the timber now almost upon Turner's foothold. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr |
