"Predicament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forty-seven—nay, forty-six—yes, forty-six," the Ancient Mariner chattered. "It was a similar and worse predicament. It was in the longboat, sixteen of us. We ran on Glister Reef. So named it was after our pretty little craft discovered it one dark night and left her bones upon it. The reef is on the Admiralty charts. Captain Doane will verify me . . ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... army craft is speeding across Austria it will be a good time to explain the presence of the four friends in their present predicament and introduce them briefly to those who ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... story of Bell's wooing was told, there were some who held that the circumstances would have almost justified the lassie in giving Sam'l the go-by. But these perhaps forgot that her other lover was in the same predicament as the accepted one—that, of the two, indeed, he was the more to blame, for he set off to T'nowhead on the Sabbath of his own accord, while Sam'l only ran after him. And then there is no one to say for certain whether Bell heard of her suitors' delinquencies until Lisbeth's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... darkness settled over the sea on the last night of September, Baranof was in the same predicament as Bering—a castaway for the winter on a barren island. Instead of sinking under the redoubled blows of an adverse fate, the little Russian rebounded like a rubber ball. A messenger and some Indians were at once despatched in a skin boat to coast ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... to take a message and were credited with no discretionary power, it was thought unnecessary to burden the higher magnates of the State with the unenviable task, or to expose them to the undignified predicament of finding their representations flouted by a rebel who might have eventually to be recognised as a king. A chance was given to younger members of the senatorial order, and the three who landed in Africa were branded by the hostile criticism ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... my forlorn and altogether ridiculous situation. With needle and thread it would have been an easy matter to manufacture a pair of buckskin pantaloons such as I had worn in years gone by and would have welcomed in my present predicament. But needles, thread, scissors, razor and combs had followed the cooking utensils to the bottom of the river. There was nothing to do but simply to "grin and bear it," and I did so with the best possible grace. On an exploring expedition one day I found a tall tree on the bank of the ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... his sisters, even to God, to accept these terms,—to withdraw his little force? Why should he be perilling such precious lives and names in the defence of a government official who had been so reckless as to part with his guard and put himself and his funds in such a predicament? From the other room in which the major now lay, feebly moaning, no word of remonstrance came. Even in their extremity, then, the soldiers of the government would not urge that he stay and encounter ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... of their predicament to the nearest fort, and Lieutenant Pershing was sent with a small detachment to their rescue. He rode straight up to the Zuni chief, who was now on the warpath, and told him he must call off his ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... about the breadth and depth of shallow saucers, almost imperceptible dents, with no corresponding bulge on the interior surface. In fact, the thing looked altogether too safe; though it may not prove quite an agreeable predicament to be thus boxed up in impenetrable iron, with the possibility, one would imagine, of being sent to the bottom of the sea, and, even there, not drowned, but stifled. Nothing, however, can exceed the confidence of the officers in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... attitude of President Wilson had so injured what little standing they still had in the neutral world that unless Germany won the war in a decisive way, their world connections would disappear forever and they would be forced to begin all over after the war. Faced by this predicament, they demanded a ruthless submarine warfare against all shipping in order that not only England but every other power should suffer, because the more ships and property of the enemies destroyed the more their chances with the rest of the world would be equalised when the war ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... of would be speedily redressed, now broke out with more violence than ever. The Virginians spurned the mock-remedy which left the real cause of complaint untouched. His lordship also felt deeply wounded by the disingenuousness of ministers which had led him into such a predicament, and wrote home demanding his discharge. Before it arrived, an attack of bilious fever, acting upon a delicate and sensitive frame, enfeebled by anxiety and chagrin, laid him in his grave. He left behind him a name endeared to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... said no more. Meekly she laid her work on the chair by the hammock and accompanied him to the house. It was the most painful predicament she had ever been in. She knew that there was no escape for her, knew, moreover, that she richly deserved her punishment; yet, as he held open the surgery-door for her, she ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and where there is complete rest, undisturbed by nothing, or what is not nothing."47 Analyze away all particulars until you reach an uncolored boundlessness of pure immateriality, free from every predicament; and that is Nirwana. This is one possible way of conceiving the fate of the soul; and the speculative mind must conceive it in every possible way. However closely the result resembles the vulgar notion of annihilation, the difference ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... that's the shortest, call to Zack or his father," tried Rachel, as the light figure quickly disappeared, leaving her a little annoyed at her predicament. She was not at all alarmed for herself, there was no real danger of drowning, she could at any moment get up the rock herself if she chose to leave the dog to its fate; but that she could not bear to think of, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my doubts—admire the modesty of a sceptic—whether the entire phenomena of religion do not favor the conclusion, that man, in this respect, only the traces of an imperfect, truncated creature; that, he is in the predicament of the half-created lion ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... afterwards the messenger whom she had already despatched rattled up in a hansom. She quickly got into it, and as she rolled away she saw Mr. Booker returning in all haste with another. She gave a passionate moan—this common confusion seemed to add a grotesqueness to her predicament. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... bodies in this way, the hound whose system has been weakened by "heating" and unsuitable food will seldom recover. I do not wish to pose as an authority on this subject and am simply giving, for the benefit of ladies who find themselves placed in a similar predicament, my experience, or rather, at this stage, inexperience, in walking a couple of Cottesmore pups. I tried very hard to save those pups, nursed them night and day, and had them in my room at night, but both died. One of them was slowly recovering, but was so weak that he could hardly ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... pants, but I made no inquiry as to the reason for his so doing. When we took our first position in advance of where the Irishmen had fought, and began firing, Barney had to use both hands, and his predicament was at once revealed. He had held up his pants by a strap around his waist without suspenders. This strap had given out, and that accounted for his holding up performance. When he began loading and firing he had to "let go" ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... a novel predicament in which they found themselves,—near midnight, in a thunderstorm, with a young girl on the ground unable to walk, and neither of them knowing what to do. Howard said it was a deuced shame, and Jack told her not to cry. Sam was sure to come with ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... door slammed shut. Standing in front of him was a very bedraggled figure whom he recognized as Thougor. He also recognized his three other captors; all were elderly reactionaries of the tribe who had disapproved of him from the beginning. In spite of his predicament Builder felt a warm glow of happiness course through him. If these were the only cronies Thougor could round up, that meant the rest of the villagers were sympathetic with his cause. He suddenly became aware of ...
— Regeneration • Charles Dye
... was proposing to help her out of her predicament when the belated motor came racing down the slope. As a matter of fact, I was wrong when I said that a man brought me here in an automobile. It was she who did it. She gave the order. He merely obeyed,—and not very willingly, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... find ourselves in another predicament: this ridiculous little Bambou insists upon coming with us! No, he will take no denial, we must take him with us. This is out of all ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... predicament! We were rocking frightfully. The Nautilus defended itself like a human being. Its steel muscles were cracking. Sometimes it stood on end, the three ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... about a bit, had a drink at a bar and looked at the shops, and when I came to turn my steps back to the hotel I suddenly realised that I didn't remember its name or even what street it was in. There's a nice predicament for a fellow who hasn't any friends or connections in London! Of course I can wire to my people for the address, but they won't have got my letter till to-morrow; meantime I'm without any money, came out ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... and I guess I'll just stop here while I'm in London this journey. No, I've no objection to take a hand. But—it seems to me—there's still a lot of difficulty about this young gentleman here— Mr. Lauriston. I read all the papers carefully, and sized up his predicament. Those rings, now?" ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... a predicament trying to the nerves of even the bravest. The Boer shells were well aimed, and came in quick succession. But Captain Haldane and his men did all that could be done. Lieutenant Frankland directed from ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... concluding a peace with the Lacedaemonians, and determine to stone him. He undertakes to speak in defence of the Lacedaemonians, standing the while behind a block, as he is to lose his head if he does not succeed in convincing them. In this ticklish predicament, he calls on Euripides, to lend him the tattered garments in which that poet's heroes were in the habit of exciting commiseration. We must suppose the house of the tragic poet to occupy the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... at King Alcinous feast, While sad Ulisses soul and all the rest 50 Are held with his melodious harmonie In willing chains and sweet captivitie. But fie my wandring Muse how thou dost stray! Expectance calls thee now another way, Thou know'st it must be now thy only bent To keep in compass of thy Predicament: Then quick about thy purpos'd business come, That to the next I may resign ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... sat down accordingly, while Abernethy, standing with his back against the table, thus began: "I take it for granted that, in consulting me, you wish to know what I should do for myself, were I in a predicament similar to yourself. Now, I have no reason to suppose that you are in any particular predicament; and the terrible mischief which you apprehend, depends, I take it, altogether upon the stomach. Mind,—at present I have no reason ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... was evidently not a Russian. He was a tall man, lithe and sinewy rather than muscular, but he had a handsome, Patrician face; and despite his condition of insensibility, or perhaps because of it, he seemed strangely out of place in the predicament in ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... another proposition of alliance to offer, and he dared not broach it until he and this stranger could lay aside mutual suspicions and meet on the common ground of conspiracy. If there were any chance at all, however slight, that Parish Thornton could emerge, alive and free, from his predicament in court Rowlett wished to waylay and kill him on the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... French language is peculiarly intricate; and it is no uncommon thing to meet with educated men in that country who are unable to spell with accuracy. That Napoleon may have been in a similar predicament, would not be surprising; but that it should be said of the most extraordinary man of the age, that his spelling is extraordinairement estropiee, seems inexplicable upon any fair supposition, except that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... mankind he entirely disowned, having proved to his own satisfaction that the idea originated entirely in priestcraft. In short, with the shadowy metaphysical exception aforesaid, Mr. Joshua Bletson of Darlington, member for Littlefaith, came as near the predicament of an atheist, as it is perhaps possible for a man to do. But we say this with the necessary salvo; for we have known many like Bletson, whose curtains have been shrewdly shaken by superstition, though their fears were unsanctioned ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... to the last quotation, which in our examiner's handling, falls under this predicament of being a thought astonishingly out of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... value of his deduction of God seems in his own estimate to rest. All conceptions which do not possess these two attributes—of being vivid in themselves and discriminated from all others—cannot be true. But the larger part of our conceptions are in such a predicament. We think of things not in the abstract elements of the things themselves, but in connexion with, and in language which presupposes, other things. Our idea of body, e.g., involves colour and weight, and yet when we try to think carefully, and without assuming anything, we find that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... predicament as yourselves," said he, "and have since nine this morning taken up my quarters at the club. Please do not tell Carroll; ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... it, and quite unconscious of such a calamity anxiously talked over the Knight's predicament with the Scarecrow. They both decided that the best plan was to fly straight to the Emerald City and have Ozma release the Knight from the ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... besides a large number of machine guns and the bulk of their baggage. The remainder, supported by the Forty-first Honved Division, which had been hurried up, managed to squeeze themselves out of their predicament by falling back on Uszachow, and the whole retired to Lagow, beyond which the Russians were not permitted to pursue them, lest they should break the symmetry of their own line." It is admitted by the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... which was laden with an iron-bound chest. After entertaining these forced guests at dinner, Robin had them witness his archers' skill and listen to Allan a Dale's music, ere he set forth the knight's predicament and appealed to the bishop to lend him the necessary money. When the bishop loudly protested he would do so gladly had he funds, Robin ordered his baggage examined and divided into three equal shares, one for the owner, one for his men, and ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... sight there was outside! How were we going to begin to bring order out of this chaos? The sledges were completely snowed up; whips, ski-bindings, and harness largely eaten up. It was a nice predicament. Fortunately we were well supplied with Alpine rope, and that did for the harness; spare straps came in for ski-bindings, but the whips were not so easy to make good. Hanssen, who drove first, was bound to have a fairly serviceable whip; ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... this some weeks away from Cape Town, we sent our wash ashore; a resort of desperation. It came back clean enough, but for ironing—well; and as to starch, much in the predicament of Boatswain Chuck's frilled shirts after the gale, upon which, while flying in the breeze, he looked with a degree of professional philosophy that could express itself only by thrashing the cooper. Crumpled would be a mild expression for our linen. We remonstrated, but ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... in a great state of excitement on account of the rain, and also because the dinner had been waiting for nearly an hour. That scamper in the rain, and the laughing and joking at our predicament, seemed to bring us closer together than anything else could have done. Mr. D'Arcy told Mrs. Titwing to take me to my room to change my dress for dinner, and he seemed quite disappointed when I told him that I could eat no dinner, and would like ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... over, he went on. But the lecture committee told him they would send a check. Having no money to pay a hotel bill, he took the train back. Reaching Philadelphia after midnight he boarded a trolley and told the conductor who he was and his predicament, offering to send the man the money for his fare next day. But the conductor was not to be fooled, said he didn't know Dr. Conwell from Adam, and put him off. And Dr. Conwell walked twenty long blocks to his home, chuckling all the way at the humor ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... love of that praise, having now restored him to his own good graces, he regarded himself with more interest and approbation than ever; and his continued omission of inquiry after Isy, heedless of the predicament in which he might have placed her, was a far worse sin against her, because deliberate, than his primary wrong to her, and it now recoiled upon him in increased hardness of ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... of Helga. Between the two parties the bishop, whose motives and intentions are, however, not brought out with sufficient clearness. Like the proverbial fifth wheel of a wagon he seems out of place and embarrassing, whenever he appears—a predicament, to be sure, which he shares with the Church itself in those times, whenever not guided by a ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... permit, and hung his hat upon his knees where they stuck out into the sunlight. It was very hot, and his position was cramped, but he would not go yet; he was still thinking—and the brain of Happy Jack worked ever slowly. In such an unheard-of predicament he felt dimly that he had need of ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... that no Nation will throw-by its work, and deliberately go out to make a scene, without meaning something thereby. For indeed no scenic individual, with knavish hypocritical views, will take the trouble to soliloquise a scene: and now consider, is not a scenic Nation placed precisely in that predicament of soliloquising; for its own behoof alone; to solace its own sensibilities, maudlin or other?—Yet in this respect, of readiness for scenes, the difference of Nations, as of men, is very great. If our Saxon-Puritanic friends, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... on the sole of his natty boot. "One would suppose he would feel very natural anxiety as to the predicament in which he has placed ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... with the written and urgent request for a personal interview with Napoleon. To this request the court proposed to accede; but Savary, who had posted himself behind Hulin's chair, at once declared this step to be inopportune. The judges had only one chance of escape from their predicament, namely, to induce the duke to invalidate his evidence: this he firmly refused to do, and when Hulin warned him of the danger of his position, he replied that he knew it, and wished to have an ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... same predicament of fools are to be ranked such, as while they are yet living, and in good health, take so great a care how they shall be buried when they die, that they solemnly appoint how many torches, how many escutcheons, how many gloves to be given, and ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Leipzig;" and there will be events anon. It is said, Hildburghausen, at the first glimpse of Friedrich over the hill-top, whispered to Soubise, "We are lost, Royal Highness!"—"Courage!" Soubise would answer; and both, let us hope, did their utmost in this extremely bad predicament they ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... paused to consider the serious predicament which confronted him. It was Saturday night. He knew Mr. McGuffey to be the possessor of more money than usual and if he could assure himself that this reserve should be dissipated before Monday morning he was aware, from experience, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... erroneous. The Christian dogma has been formed, like everything else, slowly and piecemeal, by a sort of inward vegetation. Theology, by asserting the contrary, raises up a mass of objections, and places itself in the predicament of having to reject all criticism. I would advise any one who wishes to realise this to read in a theological work the treatise on Sacraments, and he will see by what a series of unsupported suppositions, worthy of the Apocrypha, of Marie d'Agreda or Catherine Emmerich, the ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... them they hauled Pud back, though all three were on the ground and nearly over the edge before the two could stop the heavy Pud. A yell from the opposite shore told them that Mr. Waterman and Mr. Anderson had seen their predicament. Bob and Bill held on and slowly pulled Pud up to them. When all three at last arose, probably only a minute later, they were bathed in perspiration, as they had all been under ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... was becoming a predicament, and you rescued me very ingeniously. There, will that content you?' said Theodora, with one of the smiles the more winning because so rare. I am perfectly ready to own myself in the wrong when ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... asked Jimmie impatiently. "He understands our predicament and intends to help us! He motioned out that he is going to climb the rigging until he can find the rope. Then he'll slide down it until he lands on our stern. If we'll agree not to start the engines while he's there, he'll cut the rope. But we must be ready at the ballast tanks ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... away disgusted and indignant; but his indignation was neutralized by his astonishment at this incomprehensible brutality. He had no resource but to apply to some private house and state his predicament. As that luckless saddle had excited the derision of the girl, and drawn down on him the contumely of the tavern-keeper, he looked around for some safe spot in which to deposit it before it brought him into ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that if we did not do something a wholesale surrender was certain. I strongly objected to being mixed up in that. I felt certain that if we could only start a fight the morale would improve and that we would have every chance of extricating the whole force from its predicament. I led out our cars therefore from the Hotel de Ville, and forcing our way through crowds of infantry and civilians we reached a corner where I found about four hundred Infantry. I implored, and swore, and ordered ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... and upright the pain was bearable. But even to think of movement brought tears of pain to her eyes. She detached her mind from her predicament, and sank into a warm tropical sea of thought. She was no real thinker, but she thought much about thinking, and was passionately interested in watching her own mind at work. Thought was like sleep to her, she sank deeply into it without reaching anything profound, nothing resulted but useless ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... so much at this ridiculous scene, that I could scarcely assist my terrified boy out of his awkward predicament. At last, by coaxing the monkey, offering it a bit of biscuit, and gradually disentangling its small sinewy paws from the curls it grasped so tightly, I managed to relieve poor Fritz, who then looked with interest at the baby ape, no bigger than a kitten, as it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of Northern church-members who have intermarried with slave-holders, and have thus become slave-owners themselves, or enjoy the wealth made by the blood of the slave,—especially if there be any Northern ministers of the gospel in such a predicament. ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... most unfavourably construed. And, finally, assuming the language of a generous and high-spirited man, he made it his particular request that this affair should be passed over without severe notice. He alluded with delicacy to the predicament in which he himself stood with young Ravenswood, as having succeeded in the long train of litigation by which the fortunes of that noble house had been so much reduced, and confessed it would be most peculiarly acceptable to his own feelings, could he find in some sort to counterbalance the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... common treasury of the universal mind, on which treasury, meantime, he had himself conferred these phrases as original donations of his own. Many expressions in the "Paradise Lost," in "Il Penseroso," and in "L'Allegro," are in the same predicament. And thus the almost incredible case is realized which I have described, viz., that simply by having suffered a robbery through two centuries, (for the first attempt at plundering Milton was made upon his juvenile poems,) have Shakspeare and Milton come to be taxed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... them on and drew near to the window to read, his heavy brows lowering in a frown. But his wife did not need to read the letter, for she, like Marcia, had divined its purport, and already her able faculties were marshalled to face the predicament. ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... predicament of multitudes of people whom a natural disaster [a short crop of cotton] denies leave to toil—who must work or starve, but who cannot work because the prime material of their work is not to be obtained in the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... mother only known, Roger was already enduring considerable self-inflicted penance for getting into a predicament which made it ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... insuperable horror of being placed in what the vulgar call a predicament. In a predicament I was most certainly placed at the present moment. A man at my feet in a fit—the cause of it having very wisely disappeared, devolving upon me the charge of watching, recovering, and conducting home the afflicted person—made ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... voice replied in Chinese. We drew close abreast, and my companions held a parley with those on board. Our situation explained we were permitted to ascend. The junk was full of men. She had got into her present predicament in escaping, and they were waiting for the morning flood tide to float her off. Two or three junks, we were told, had struck torpedoes in leaving the harbour and been blown in pieces, and many others had fallen into ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... remembering that there was an elopement, with a carriage overturned in a muddy lane, she decided upon looking it through again. Another book related the love of a young lady who found herself in the awkward predicament of not being able to care for anyone but her groom, who was lucky enough to be the possessor of the most wonderful violet eyes. The fourth described the distressing position of a young clergyman who, when he told the lady of his choice that his means for the moment did not ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Mrs. Mifflin. "Here's Mr. Gilbert. Were you coming to see Roger?" she added, rather enjoying the young man's predicament. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... now, my friends, how can we drink with least injury to ourselves? I can assure you that I feel severely the effect of yesterday's potations, and must have time to recover; and I suspect that most of you are in the same predicament, for you were of the party yesterday. Consider then: How can ...
— Symposium • Plato
... had been condemned to death for contumacy by the decree of Rouen, gave himself up in 1815. He was immediately set free, and a pension granted him. Seeing which, Joseph Buquet, who was in the same predicament, presented himself, and being acquitted immediately, returned to Donnay, dug up the 43,000 francs remaining over from the sum stolen in 1807, and lived "rich and despised." As to the girl Dupont, who had been Mme. Acquet's confidante, she was kept in prison ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... November, almost every body had removed from the town of Agimere, so that I was left nearly alone, and could neither get carts nor camels for my removal, notwithstanding my warrant. The Persian ambassador was in a similar predicament, but complained, and was soon redressed. I therefore sent to court, and on the 11th I received two warrants, for being supplied with carts and camels at the king's price: but it was not easy to procure either, as the great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... existed any necessity to disturb the working of the system, it would have gradually slided into absolute freedom if they were permitted to regulate their own affairs, but the government, or rather, the people of England, had forced on the predicament in which they were placed. The ministry could not help themselves—They were driven to violate the national compact, not in express words, it is true, but in fact. It was, however, the force of public opinion that operated in producing the change. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was entitled to feel the others' cocks. I felt theirs, but again to my mortification, the tightness of my prepuce caused jeering at me; I was glad to hear that there was another boy at the school in the same predicament, though I never saw his. This confirmed me in avoiding my companions, when they were playing at cocks-all-round; being a day scholar only, I was not forced at all times into their intimacy, as I should have been had ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... time in his life Bounding Bull was rendered incapable of action. In all his extensive experience of Indian warfare he had never been placed in such a predicament. If he had been an out-and-out heathen, he would have known what to do, and would have done it at once—he would have gratified revenge. Had Rushing River been an out-and-out heathen, he never would have given him the chance he now possessed of wreaking his vengeance. Then the thought ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... about his body. There are some things than which death is to be preferred; and there came at last to the Englishman the realization that it would be better to die swiftly than to lie in this horrible predicament until his mind broke beneath the strain and he ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... limit, and the best thing to be hoped for now is some vast cataclysmal event, which, by destroying us out-of-hand, may save us the slow misery of extinction by disease, despair, and the enmity of every man against every other. What Columbus can help us out of such a predicament? ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... encountered Bert, who, in company with his lawyer, was on his way to a room in the town hall where the trial was to take place. Bert held his head erect, but his face was flushed with shame at the unpleasant predicament in which he found himself. When he saw Percy approaching he said to himself bitterly: "There is one who will rejoice ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... thought, owing as I do my early training to the kings and queens of England, who are nothing if not stable. They are my acknowledged guardians and to them I turn in all difficulties. Only a year ago they came to my aid in a most awkward predicament. It was my lot to fill up army forms; of what variety I cannot remember save that they were of a jaundicy colour and connected with the men's demobilisation. On these documents I was expected to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... out of this predicament, he scrambled on, handing himself from branch to branch, and once losing his foothold and ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... moment at which she should have spoken, but she did not. She, who had prided herself that she would make a race of it—she, who had always been able to slip out of a predicament in the nick of time—stood mutely by and let Transley and her father interpret her silence as consent. She was not sure that she was sorry; she was not sure but she would have consented anyway; but Transley had taken the matter quite ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... grounds. He ordered the babies put to bed and the curtains taken down in that room and the rugs taken out. Mrs. Martin obeyed his orders in a flutter of distress. She was frightened because her children had the scarlet fever and worried half to death at the predicament her passing guests were in. She had been so grateful to Gladys for taking her along ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... is an awful predicament!" exclaimed the rebuked Noah; "a ra'ally awful situation for a human Christian to have his enemies lying ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... end of my resources. I had always thought I could talk on ordinary topics as well as the average man, but in the presence of this girl, with everything in the world unsaid, I could not think of one word to say. The doctor soon saw my predicament and hastened to assist me, and the remark which he selected shows again his wonderful self-possession in the midst of overwhelming difficulties. He waved his hand gently toward me to attract ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... she, 'you do not at all understand your own predicament, and must just leave your matters in the hands of those who do. I dare say you have never even heard tell of the drove- roads or the drovers; and I am certainly not going to sit up all night to explain it ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in New York, he assisted me in many ways. Afterwards, on learning that I was not to go California, I called him up on the telephone to explain my predicament. He urged me to stay in New York; he guaranteed that there would be no difficulty in securing a splendid position in the East. I had no means of knowing that he was married. I accepted him for what I thought him to be: a genuine American gentleman. They ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... we were first," Lieutenant Mackinson said at last. "We'll take the pack-set with us, and we can probably advise headquarters of our predicament with that, and also inform them of the progress of the ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... apprehension about the cough; but my over-exertions in town have reduced me to a state of much debility; and, until the cough be gone, I cannot be permitted to take any strengthening medicines. This places me in an awkward predicament; but I think I perceive a degree of expectoration this morning, which will soon relieve me, and then I shall mend apace. Under these circumstances I must not expect to see you here at present; when I am a little recovered, it will be a pleasant relaxation to ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... my opinion a man should be either Referee or Umpire. Each position requires a different kind of experience and I do not believe officials can successfully interchange these positions. Those who have officiated can appreciate the predicament I was in, especially just at that time when there was so much talk of football reform, by means of changing the rules, changing the style of the game, stopping mass plays. However, I consented; for appreciating that McClung was sincere in his statement ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... this immense slope the eyes of Costobarus wandered. However he had felt in the preceding days when he looked upon this ruin of the land of milk and honey, he realized now suddenly and in all its fearful actuality the predicament of Judea, its despair and the gigantic travail before those who would save it from the united sentence passed upon it by God and the powers. Immense dejection seized him. He looked from the face of the country, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... been reared and to enlarge their new horizon. Afterwards they went on to read Tolstoi, and Turgenev's powerful and antipathetic fellow-novelist, Dostoievsky, and many other Russian writers: but as he was the greatest artist of them all, his individual revelation of his country's predicament did not lose its effect. Writing in prose he achieved a style of his own which went as near poetry as narrative prose can do. without using the wrong music: while over his realism or his irony he cast a tinge of that mixed modern and oriental fantasy which belonged to his temperament. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... its inevitable train of dire consequences, up to the point when the discomfort compels one to seek treatment. There are patients, of course, who have good and sufficient excuses for their painful predicament; they have, for example, tried persistently for relief and cure, but have failed to find a physician competent to treat their particular case. How many unskilled prescribers there are, and how glaring their shortcomings! Some hold ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... soft, woman's laughter as if she enjoyed this joke on mere man—and even when Rimrock explained the dangerous side of his predicament she refused to take ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... and compressed lips of her captors as the fitful flashes of the flames threw a bright ray upon them, and, in despite of the many hopes she had entertained, she was horror-stricken to contemplate the reality of her sad predicament. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... brain or nervous system. You begin at one end of the body, and show that its parts may be removed without prejudice to the perceiving power. What if you begin at the other end, and remove, instead of the leg, the brain? The body, as before, is divided into two parts; but both are now in the same predicament, and neither can be appealed to to prove that the other is foreign matter. Or, instead of going so far as to remove the brain itself, let a certain portion of its bony covering be removed, and let a rhythmic series of pressures and relaxations of pressure ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... patriarch, came to Danville one day and either drank up or gambled away a certain sum of money intrusted to him by his aunt for disposition in an entirely different manner. When the day was all over, however, he was not too drunk to realize that he was in a rather serious predicament, and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing his clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in a fine state of dilapidation after his ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... (in the morning) to go out and witness the whipping which was to be given to the enemy's cavalry. Riding to the front, I readily perceived that the information was correct, and I had to send a brigade of infantry out to help Sturgis, thus relieving him from a rather serious predicament. Indeed, the enemy was present in pretty strong force, both cavalry and infantry, and from his vicious attack on Sturgis it looked very much as though he intended to bring on a ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... confined to striking. A knight, it was announced, might use a mace or battle-axe at pleasure; but the dagger was a prohibited weapon. A knight unhorsed might renew the fight on foot with any other on the opposite side in the same predicament; but mounted horsemen were in that case forbidden to assail him. When any knight could force his antagonist to the extremity of the lists, so as to touch the palisade with his person or arms, such opponent was obliged to yield himself ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... they cross all Paris with this drum? The first patrol which met them would shoot them. A porter of an adjoining house, who noticed their predicament, gave them a packing-cloth. They enveloped the drum in it, and reached Batignolles by the lonely streets which skirt ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... we had mastered a dozen common substantives and no other parts of speech, to satisfy his inquisitiveness, which I always endeavored to do, because it is wrong to repress that indication of dawning reason in a child, and Jack at eleven years old was in the predicament of a mere infant. More especially was I puzzled when his "what?" was accompanied by a motion pointing first at the dog, then to himself, to learn wherein consisted the difference between two creatures, both of whom, as he intimated, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... she laughed. "You see what it is to be so popular. I should have dined and have come here with Captain Baring—that was our plan for to-night. Captain Baring, however, was generous when he saw my predicament. He suffered me to dine with Mr. Selingman, and he fetched me afterwards. Even then we could not quite get rid of the dear man. He came on here with us, and he is now, I believe, greeting acquaintances everywhere in the Promenade. I am perfectly convinced that I shall have to look the ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of words. Let but the art of Pantomime become universal, and this grand desideratum must be obtained. Then we shall find that candidates, instead of being able, as now, to become legislators by simply professing to be patriots, will be placed in the awkward predicament of having first to act as such; and that the clergy, in lieu of taking a tenth part of the produce for the mere preaching of Christianity, will be obliged to sacrifice at least a portion to charitable purposes, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... speedily had become distasteful to Armitage, who inwardly was floundering for a method of escape from the predicament into which his folly had led him. He had no wish to pose as a freak in her eyes. Still, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... for white flags: South Carolinians never surrender...." By this time Merritt's patience being exhausted, he ordered an attack, and this in short order put an end to General Geary's "last ditch" absurdity, and extricated Allen from his predicament. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... My "predicament" was first "awkward," then "foolish." "It was all along of" a woman. I may even say a "woman in white." "I was a pale young curate" then, but of a dissenting type. Twenty-two years of age. Very white in the face. Dark brown hair, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... inquiries. Although it is the practice to consider that acceptance of office is alone necessary to qualify a man for a statesman, a similar doctrine has not yet prevailed in the world of science. One of these gentlemen, who has established his reputation as a chemist, stands in the same predicament with respect to the other two sciences. It remains then to consider Captain Sabine's claims, which must rest on his skill in "PRACTICAL ASTRONOMY AND NAVIGATION,"—a claim which can only be allowed when the scientific world are set at rest respecting ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... store, in company with Major Brown. When I looked for my gun, I found that I had left it behind me. I got cold consolation from Major Brown when I informed him of my loss. Then I told him that the general had sent for me to shoot a match with him, and that if the old man discovered my predicament ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... Charley was getting along far better than he had dared to hope during the night. He soon would be well enough to take command, and then, thought Walter, they would soon find their friends. He had great confidence in Charley's ability to get them out of their present predicament. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... predicament, the youth cast a distracted look around him. "Is there any good Christian who hears me," he said, "that will tell Ludovic Lesly of the Scottish Guard, called in this country Le Balafre, that his nephew ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the twenty were dead, a dozen others were wounded, and Lieutenant D'Arnot was missing. Night was falling rapidly, and their predicament was rendered doubly worse when they could not even find the elephant trail which they had ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... making repeated efforts to fly but without getting away, though they could spread their wings. We used to say, 'They are marking time.' Now was this sympathy? Was it a vision of my own future?—Oh! to spread my wings and yet be unable to fly! That has been my predicament since that fine undertaking by which I was disgusted, but which has now made four ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac |
