"Topple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to topple, and von Liegnitz himself spun away from the blow. The spanner caught him on the shoulder, and he grunted in pain, but he kept on moving ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Willie!" and then standing still in fear and pride, the tears streaming down a smiling countenance on which the red glare of the fire shone. The ladder was set crazily against the flaming window and swayed with their weight. Every step seemed as if it would topple the building, yet the ladder held, and Mark sprang through the blazing window out of sight. It seemed an eternity till he returned bringing a tiny bundle with him, and handing it out ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... crumbling boundary, Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot, Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires. Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; In the ivy's paler blaze ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... His head jerked round toward his shoulder, Rodney Grant looked into the eyes of his friend of a short time past, and suddenly he released his hold on Rackliff, who, gasping and ready to topple over, was supported by one ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... said dryly: "We all know what would happen. President Folsom XXV would take office. No; we've got to keep plugging as before. Nothing short of the invincible can topple the Republic...." ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... and trying some of the attractive looking variations given later on in this book. Again, we say to you: Start right, and right results will follow; but neglect your foundations and your entire building will topple over ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Thick ice frequently appears, too, crowning the exposed sea-cliffs, from the edges of which it droops in thick, tongue-like, and stalactitic projections, until its own weight forces it to break away and topple down the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... mother, and who is in revolt so complete from all that mother's traditions, so highly set on the crown of every opposite principle, that nature vindicates itself by the possibility that she may at any moment topple over and become again what her mother was. He would have been a bold man, however, who in the present stage would have prophesied any such fate for Dolly Prestwich, who between working at Whitechapel, attending on a ward in St. Thomas's, drawing three days a week in the Slade School, and other ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... aspect of the city less striking. The innumerable towers and spires of the churches rose tall and dark through the wavering sheet of flame, and every now and then one of them would topple down or disappear, as if swallowed up by the devouring element. For a short space, the fire seemed to observe a regular progressive movement, but when it fell upon better material, it reared its blazing crest aloft, changed its hues, and burnt with redoubled intensity. Leonard ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... must drench the monster I have awakened until he sleeps again. I drink and become oblivious. In these last paroxysms there is nothing for me but brandy. I shut myself up alone and pour down my gullet huge draughts of spirit. It mounts to my brain. I am a man again! and as I regain my manhood, I topple over—dead drunk. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... could endure a siege like Huguenots. As soon as the cannonading began, the spirit of the inhabitants seemed to depart. The ministers exhorted their flocks in vain as the tiles and chimneys began to topple into the streets, and the concussions of the artillery were responded to by the universal wailing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... To topple over from the sublime to the ridiculous is not difficult. But the presence of humour might save the sublimities from a fall, and Browning had hitherto in his art made but slight and occasional use of a considerable ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... alone is powerless: there must be first a proper choice of materials, and next a proper use of them. The painter's pigments are the bricks wherewith the mortar of his mind must be mixed, either to erect an edifice that shall endure for ages, or one which will quickly topple over like a house of cards. Now in nothing more than in painting is prevention better than cure—indeed cure may be said to be here out of the question: for good or for evil a picture once painted is ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... knows on," drawled the old fellow, laughing until his old head seemed ready to topple from his shoulders. "No blood relation, any how, sir. You see, my wife's cousin's aunt's husband's brother Jerry was a cousin to Nicodemus Dunce, who, if I don't disremember, was related in some way to Isacker Pete's wife's ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... desire you to choose some other whelp. Being in your best lust, I would topple with ye, And pluck a good crow, ere ye brake your fast with me. What? are you mankin[261] now? I reckon it best, I, To bind your hands behind you, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... splendid shell of it left, sufficient for us to see the skeleton of a noble building which had once been the pride of Flemish craftsmen. Even as we turned toward it parts of it were falling upon the ruins already on the ground. I saw a great pillar lean forward and then topple down. A mass of masonry crashed from the portico. Some stiff, dark forms lay among the fallen stones; they were dead soldiers. I hardly glanced at them, for we were in search of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... builders have to take this law into consideration or the structures they put up would topple over. And your body learned the law when you were a little over a year old, or you never could have walked. It is worth while for your brain to know it, too, because it is a very practical law that you can ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... went aloft to furl the sails. We coughed on the yards, and were careful about the bunts. Do you see the lot of us there, putting a neat furl on the sails of that ship doomed to arrive nowhere? There was not a man who didn't think that at any moment the masts would topple over. From aloft we could not see the ship for smoke, and they worked carefully, passing the gaskets with even turns. 'Harbour furl—aloft there!' cried ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... rock so finely balanced that it seemed to be held in its place by the weight of a number of bat-like creatures clustering at one of its angles. As we approached, these bats, startled by the light of our torch, began, one or two at a time, to rise from their resting place, causing the rock to topple toward us. Thus we stood in danger of being crushed by the mass should it fall as we passed the entrance, or, worse still, if it fell before we escaped into the cave beyond, we might find ourselves entombed alive in this dreadful place, to become a prey to the horrors of which ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... of the stream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that he was unaware he was taking care of his body's needs, Cal built up whole structures of alien philosophies on the nature of the universe, and saw them topple ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... of the work of the world is hard, disagreeable work, requiring little intelligence. Most of the people of the world are unintelligent—unfit to do any other work. If it were not done by them it would not be done, and it is the basic work. Withdraw them from it and the whole superstructure would topple and fall. Yet there is too little of the work, and there are so many incapable of doing anything else that adequate return is out of the question. For the laboring class there is no hope of an existence that is comfortable in comparison ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... like a man," continued Ebony, "hims dood eberyting like a man. An' w'en hims topple into de sea hims give sitch a most awful wriggle dat his bonds bu'sted. But hims berry sly, was Massa Zeppa—amazin' sly. I t'ought him lie on's back zif him be dead. Jest move a leetle to look like drownin', an' w'en he long way astern, he slew round, off wid de hanky fro hims ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... personal belongings, now, nor buying and selling, and therefore the occasion of nearly all the legislation formerly necessary has passed away. Formerly, society was a pyramid poised on its apex. All the gravitations of human nature were constantly tending to topple it over, and it could be maintained upright, or rather upwrong (if you will pardon the feeble witticism), by an elaborate system of constantly renewed props and buttresses and guy-ropes in the form of laws. A central ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... staccato spatter of bullets on her iron sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then one of the gunners would reach one of her searchlights, and as the ray was extinguished, one almost expected to see her topple in the direction of her broken support, but in each case it was quickly replaced by another, and she continued to drop nearer and nearer to ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... the sea made a low booming that suggested hidden caves. Looking over the edge in places, one could see that it had hollowed out the porous rock well under the base of the cliffs, and here and there fallen masses of boulder told of a gradual encroachment which, in course of time, would topple down into the abyss the precarious pathway on which I stood. Inland the usual level scrub gave place to a stretch of wild forest, very dense, and composed of trees of many varieties, loftier than was usual on ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... chest, which was small, and the side whereon he lay irking him, he would have turned over to the other and wrought so dexterously that, thrusting his loins against one of the sides of the chest, which had not been set on a level place, he caused it first to incline to one side and after topple over. In falling, it made a great noise, whereat the women who slept therenigh awoke and being affrighted, were silent for fear. Ruggieri was sore alarmed at the fall of the chest, but, finding that it had opened in the fall, chose rather, if aught else should betide, to be out ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... rain, out of some great flat. The very peak of the Matterhorn, of which you have so often seen a picture, is but one single point left of some enormous bun of rock. All the rest has been carved away by rain and frost; and some day the Matterhorn itself will be carved away, and its last stone topple into the glacier at its foot. See, as we have been talking, we have got into ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... begin cooking, take out the smoky, burning pieces and leave a bed of red-hot coals. If you have no axe and can find no logs, a somewhat similar fireplace can be built up of flat stones, but be sure that your stone fireplace will not topple over just at the ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... the world. If, on occasion, a slight hint of maliciousness did find its place with us, it was only because in this insecure world it is delightful to reaffirm our own security as we watch our neighbours topple over. We do not wish them to "topple," but if somebody has got to fall we would ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... hardly enough to grow wealthy upon; some nights ten louis; others twenty-five; on special occasions Sagreda would retire with as many as forty gold coins in his pocket. But thanks to this almost daily gain he was able to fill the gaps of his lordly existence, which threatened to topple down upon his head, and he maintained his lady companion in surroundings of loving comfort, at the same time recovering confidence in his immediate future. Who could tell what was in store ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... against the back of a chair, feeling she was surely going to topple over in a swoon. Summoning all her reserve of nerve power, she strove ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... life within the woodlands, spending the days in shooting at garlands hung upon a willow wand at the end of the glade, the leafy aisles ringing with merry jests and laughter: for whoever missed the garland was given a sound buffet, which, if delivered by Little John, never failed to topple over the unfortunate yeoman. Then they had bouts of wrestling and of cudgel play, so that every day they gained in skill ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... of the stream by a way of his own, and we ran down to the stepping-stones by which we had come, in order to save the time which we should have been compelled to waste in feeling for a foothold as we went. Every second was of importance, and I fully expected to see Dennis topple unconscious into the pool below before I should be able to save him. I knew what it was exactly; he was going through my own horrible experience of "drowning on dry land," to quote Garnesk's vigorous phrase. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... together in a bunch, formation ignored. Presently steps sounded near them. A swift light swept the hole where they crouched, a volley of rifle-shots crashed into it. The Americans answered with their pistols, and saw three or four of the dark forms on the edge of the hole topple over. The rest disappeared. But Rosenlaube had a rifle-ball through his right hip and another through his shoulder. Mitchell and Phipps-Herrick started to ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... overthrown militarily by Laurent Desire KABILA; KABILA immediately assumed governing authority and pledged to hold elections by April 1999, but, in December 1998, announced that elections would be postponed until all foreign military forces attempting to topple the government had withdrawn from the country; KABILA was assassinated in January 2001 and was succeeded by his son Joseph KABILA election results: results of the last election were: MOBUTU Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga reelected president in ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... party," said father. "I will turn out of the road, for there is a treacherous pitch on the other side, and for me to let them topple into the ditch might be profitable, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... I don't know what Dartmouth Bearing had in mind. Who was I to ask questions? You don't realize their power, Shandor. Those bonds I spoke of—they hold millions of dollars worth of bonds! They hold enough bonds to topple the economy of the nation, they've got bonds in the names of ten thousand subsidiary companies. They've been telling Federal Economics Commission what to do for the past ten years! And they're getting us into this war, Shandor—lock, stock and barrel. They pushed for everything ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... near the rear door of the auto and got out one of her books to look at the pictures. Bunny was building some sort of house with some new blocks his father had bought for him, but he was not having very good luck, for the motion of the auto made the house topple over almost as soon as Bunny had ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... catch himself, and finally topple from the seat. As the reins slipped from his fingers the ponies lunged up the arroyo. Waco crouched, clutching the foot-rail. A bullet hummed over his head. Gaining the level, the ponies broke into a wild run. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... know not what feeling 'more than joy' can be, unless haply it topple over t' other side and become woe, and I would be loth to breed ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... pushing and dragging them. More than once the trail fairly hung on the edge of some almost bottomless gorge, and again it wound its way between great walls of rock, so poised that they appeared about to topple over and crush the travelers. But they kept on with dogged patience, through ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... into thinking—you remember that first sermon, Aunt Bell—how independent and noble I thought it was going to be. Oh, Aunt Bell—what a slump in my faith that day! I think its foundations all went, and then naturally the rest of it just seemed to topple. Did you ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... with a life preserver wrapped around you and spent most of your time piking for subs and practicing emergency drills, just to let old Blondy know he can't stop us from coming across—you'd say you were with the Colors! If you stood where I did and saw that little old periscope topple over like a ninepin and heard Tommy say, 'Go get me another apple, Archie—we'll hit 'em again for good luck!'—you'd say you were with the Colors, all right! You might be in the third-line trenches a whole year an' have nothing to do with yourself but carry buckets ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... that it continually increase and progress, but it must suffer much opposition. For the devil is such a furious enemy that when he sees that we oppose him and attack the old man, and that he cannot topple us over by force, he prowls and moves about on all sides, tries all devices, and does not desist until he finally wearies us, so that we either renounce our faith or yield hands and feet and become listless or impatient. Now to this end the consolation is here given when the heart feels that ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... the capstan bars were seized, and in a few minutes, as the two men turned, the rope tightened, the raft gradually rose, and soon after stood up edgewise, resting on two of the corner tubs, and without the slightest disposition to topple over. Then the rope was slackened so as to allow enough to act as a painter to moor the unwieldy framework to the side, levers were seized, and inch by inch it was hitched along the deck to the gangway, and then on and on till a quarter ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... crew behind the captain stood still, staring and frozen with consternation. The captain stood slightly stooped over, his knees bent, mouth open, gasping for air, his eyes popping. Slowly, brutishly he began to wilt and topple forward. He was almost bent double before he fell; and with the thud of his body upon the deck, one of the crew groaned: "Killed by a fist blow, ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... not played football for three seasons for nothing. He quietly ducked, allowing his unscientific assailant to overbalance himself, and topple head first on the lobby outside, at the particular moment when the real owner of the racehorse and the real wine-merchant, who had just arrived, reached the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... corporation the glands of internal secretion are the directors. But the huge corporation, not to topple over with its own unwieldy size, must be composed of smaller units, each within itself a corporation, and governed by a directorate. There are, in the corporation-organism, different departments and bureaus, subdivisions of function, which constitute the smaller corporations within the larger ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... would have been Another world." "Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good." Then The lovers came out of the wood again: The horses started and for the last time I watched the clods crumble and topple over After the ploughshare and the ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... that four inches of bone above his wrist were bared to view—hat he had none—his ears were very large, and the rims of them red with cold, and his neck was so immeasurably long and thin, that his head appeared to topple for want of support. When he had come on deck, he stood with one hand raised to his forehead, touching his hair instead of his hat, and the other occupied with a half-roasted red-herring. "Yes, sir," said ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... mad when Herries will wear his hat a little crooked—habit of looking like a gay dog. Sometime I swear I'll knock it off. That statue of Britannia over there isn't quite straight; it sticks forward a bit as if the lady were going to topple over. The damned thing is that it doesn't topple over and be done with it. See, it's clamped with an iron prop. Don't be surprised if I get up in the middle of the night to ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... and had taught him all he knew, but Farwell's age did not in the least blind Jerry-Jo to the fact that he was a man, and he did not enjoy seeing Priscilla so free and easy with any other of the male sex, be he ancient enough to topple into the grave. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... that stay or you'll topple overboard," warned Frank, as Ben, balancing himself, got into ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of that breed, was a very nervous person, and it was not without much persuasion that I had succeeded in inducing him to join me in my camp under the shadow of the great rock. He feared that it would topple over and crush us, nor was he completely reassured until Saiyid Jasin—the chief of his followers—a shrunken, wizened little man of many wiles, had propped the stone up with a slender sapling, over which he had ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... and its chill atmosphere was tomb-like in its effect upon her. Again Sally shuddered. Groping, she found Gaga's cheque book, and turned again to the door. The walls of the tiny room seemed to rise forbiddingly around her, to come closer, to begin to topple over as if in ruin. Sally gasped for breath. She cowered. Everything became dark.... A long time passed before she was again conscious. Clasping the cheque book, Sally felt her way unsteadily, with her eyes closed, until she stood upon ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Tom, reeling about. He saw Mr. Damon and Mr. Fenwick topple to the beach. The roaring increased, and the rumbling was like thunder, close at hand. The island seemed to ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... Saint-Vincent de Paul, the tower of Saint-Jacques, and, nearer in, the pavilions of the new Louvre and the Tuileries, were crowned by a blaze, which lent them the aspect of sacrificial pyres. The dome of the Invalides was flaring with such brilliancy that you instinctively feared lest it should suddenly topple down and scatter burning flakes over the neighborhood. Beyond the irregular towers of Saint-Sulpice, the Pantheon stood out against the sky in dull splendor, like some royal palace of conflagration reduced to embers. Then, as the sun declined, the pyre-like edifices gradually set the whole of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the forests far and wide, despoiled Of all their giant trunks: for as the mound On earth and brushwood stood, a timber frame Held firm the soil, lest pressed beneath its towers The mass might topple down. There stood a grove Which from the earliest time no hand of man Had dared to violate; hidden from the sun (27) Its chill recesses; matted boughs entwined Prisoned the air within. No sylvan nymphs Here found a home, nor Pan, but ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge, That on th' unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high.—I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong." ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... herself with a newspaper. Mrs. Cramer on the left, having finished her sweeping, had come out on the porch also, and in garments that indicated no padding whatever dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made a dab at her loosely piled hair to see it did not topple down, and proceeded to read the morning newspaper. It was positively shocking, thought Mrs. Barnett, how women could so far forget themselves. ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... order that the proposed enlargement of the electorate was "incompatible with a just equality of civil rights, or with the necessary restraints of social obligation." If it were carried, religion, morality, and property would perish together, and our venerable Constitution would topple down in ruins. "A thousand years have scarce sufficed to make England what she is: one hour may lay her in the dust." In 1861 J. W. Croker wrote to his patron, the great borough-monger Lord Hertford: "There ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... leaves over the grey soil; but the other side of the rock, the side that faces the ocean, is barren and deserted, and so steep that the shrubs that grow there have a hard time to remain where they are and look as if they were about to topple over ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... twisted in the saddle, and he gave the lariat a quick flirt, the loop running out perpendicularly, like a rolling hoop, and not more than a foot from the ground, writhing, undulating, the circle constricting quickly, sinuously. The girl saw the loop topple as it neared the steer—it was much like the motion of a hoop falling. It met one of the steer's hoofs as it was flung outward; it grew taut; the rope straightened and Patches swung off to the right at an acute angle. He did not ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... your knees to play castanetas in cachucha time. We'll call it the heat. Anyway, it's exposure to an atmosphere that you aren't accustomed to, and it doesn't suit you. You'd better try a change, or else you'll topple off in a faint—perhaps you'll die. Now look here: it's just foolery to let this Dog-in-the-Manger Company hold the stage any longer. Let's recast it, and play 'The Partners.' Come, what do you say? It's only a three-part piece, and there's ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... last-named was as yet no more generally known than was the rare genius of the young Lanier. Longfellow, who remains even to-day the most popular of our poets, was still in full swing. Lowell was in his prime. Thus it appears that public appreciation, and not creative power, was the first to trip and topple down the slopes of the Parnassian hill. Not until then did ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Krummlaut spluttered through his soup today at Frau Berg's with shining eyes,—I should have thought it was France who had the old scores that need wiping—"and Russia, the barbarian Colossus, will topple over and choke in ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... the long, rambling sentences that topple a letter over onto the waste basket toboggan. But the sentence with a climax, working up interest step by step, is indispensable. By eye test, by mechanical test, by erasure test and by strength test, Orchard Hill Bond makes good its reputation as the best bond ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... have been a heavy blow for you, my poor ALINE. I can understand that your spirits can never be really high again. And then for poor Master Builder SOLNESS to be so taken up with that Miss WANGEL as he was—that, too, was so wretched for you. To see him topple off the tower, as he did that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... bearers went down, and the palanquin itself began to topple. The Greatest Noble screamed as he fell ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... has cut off the lamps—he's released the platform. God! Look—Foulet!" My voice tore through my throat; my eyes burned with sudden, blinding emotion. In the soft darkness of the starry night I could see the platform waver, topple, rise! It rose straight up, tilting and swaying in the light breeze. What was it Fraser had said? If it was released it would go straight to the stars! It ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... deck. "'Tention-l !" shriek a dozen soprani. Some passenger's fingers have entered his vest-pocket, and the boys are on the alert. Through the air, twirling and glittering, tumbles an English shilling, and drops into the deep water beyond the little fleet. Instantly all the lads leap, scramble, topple head-foremost out of their little tubs, and dive in pursuit. In the blue water their lithe figures look perfectly red,—all but the soles of their upturned feet, which show nearly white. Almost immediately they all rise again: one holds up at arm's- ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... her aunt, "in the next street to ours there is a miserable building, that looks as if it were just going to topple over; and away up in the third story, in a little room just under the eaves, live two poor, lonely old women. They are both nearly on to ninety. I was in there day before yesterday. One of them is constantly ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... operated the auto according to the magazine pictures of racing chauffeurs, leaning far forward, should topple into the road? Suppose a stray breeze should tilt the machine ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... wrestling in a sitting position with both hands tied, the mode of attack being to topple over one's opponent and then bunt him out of the circle. There is considerable skill in the game and a fearful lot of hard work. By the time the victor has won, the seat of the trousers of each of the two contending ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... The other, gallant fellow! reined about in wide, sweeping circle, and turned back to meet his running comrade. They saw him bend to lend a helping hand, saw him bend still lower as three of the Indians leaped from their ponies and, kneeling, loosed their rifles all at once; saw him topple out of saddle, and his stricken horse, with flapping rein, trot aimlessly about a moment before he, too, went floundering in his tracks; saw the other soldier turn to face his fate by his dying comrade's side, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... be treated with contempt, and there would be a scramble for gold. And people would begin to hoard things ... and no one would trust any one else. There would be suspicion and fear and greed and hate ... and very swiftly and very surely, civilisation would reel and topple and fall to pieces.... At any moment that might happen. So far, indeed, things were still steady ... calamity had not come so quickly as imaginative men had foretold ... but presently, when the slums ... the rich man's reproach ... had become hungrier than they usually were, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... topple the chief's plans over; they're very insecure. It plays right into the hands of his enemies, too, and of course Gordon's press bureau will make the most ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... footsteps stopped outside the door. He stood openmouthed, maddened and still, as if in the midst of a catastrophe. The door-handle rattled lightly. It seemed to him that the walls were coming apart, that the furniture swayed at him; the ceiling slanted queerly for a moment, a tall wardrobe tried to topple over. He caught hold of something and it was the back of a chair. So he had reeled against a chair! Oh! Confound it! ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... so weak as to be scarcely equal to the exertion of getting over the side into the life-buoy or bag, and he was so tall that, despite the efforts he made to double himself together, there was so much of him above the machine that he had a tendency to topple over. This would have mattered nothing if he had possessed even a moderate degree of power to hold on, but his hands were as weak as those of a child. However, the case being desperate, he made the attempt, and was sent away from the wreck with many earnest cautions to ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... in my beloved Venice, where many years ago I camped out by the side of a canal—the Rio Giuseppe—all of it, from the red wall, where the sailors land, to the lagoon, where the tower of Castello is ready to topple into the sea. ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... with solid shot, to take his time about computing distance, elevation of piece, and aiming it. When he had the gun ready, we once more raised the cap, and promptly the bullet came. The sergeant had his piece ready aimed and he quickly said "fire." The next I saw the pine tree break off and topple over, and down fell a man with his gun in his hand. Our men sent up a great shout. General Ferrero was delighted with such an exhibition of marksmanship. I noticed that as soon as the reb. struck the ground he jumped up and ran into the thicket to the rear of his tree. I said ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker
... our lips when we would speak, the heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we grow contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the spirit has ceased from its labours, that the high-built beauty of the spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple in the desert sinks into the sand, watched only by a few barbarians too feeble to renew its ancient pomp and the ritual of its once shining congregations. Before we, who were the bright children ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... mean!" blustered Fred, and coming closer, he hit Nat on the shoulder. At once our hero hit back, and Fred received a thump in the mouth that caused him to topple backwards. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... battle-shout—pealed above the bellowing stadium. Even as he cried it, all saw his form draw upward as might Prometheus's unchained. They saw the fingers of the Spartan unclasp. They saw his bloody face upturned and torn with helpless agony. They saw his great form totter, topple, fall. The last dust cloud, and into it the multitude seemed ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... wonder, what a wild, eldritch, gibbering laugh it was, at the thought of how those sharks—yes, there were three; I was certain of it—would jostle and hustle each other, in their greedy haste to get at me, were I to simply stand up and topple over the gunwale into the water. And how easily—how ridiculously easily—I might do it too. I laughed again at the absurdity of taking so much trouble and enduring such frightful extremity of suffering to preserve a life that might be so readily got rid of, and wondered dully why I ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... raised its steepled head toward the sky, but its roof had fallen in, and Turner Hall was a mass of blackened ruins. Parts of the walls were still standing, swaying as if ready to topple over any moment. Off in one corner the blackened timbers and jumbled bits of furniture were ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... often made my mind up to put an end somehow to my own life. They did not allow me a knife, however, and so it was no easy matter to commit suicide. Once, notwithstanding, I took and propped a wooden pole I found there, in position like a trap. I meant to make it topple over on my head, and it would certainly have dashed my brains out; but when I had arranged the whole machine, and was approaching to put it in motion, just at the moment of my setting my hand to it, I was seized by an invisible power and flung four cubits ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... with sword and lance At Algesiras land, Where is the bold Bernardo now Their progress to withstand? To Burgos should the Moslem come, Where is the noble Cid Five royal crowns to topple down As gallant ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance, But Tiber shall become a mournful river. 100 Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po, Crush them, ye Rocks! Floods whelm them, and for ever! Why sleep the idle Avalanches so, To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head? Why doth Eridanus but overflow The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed? Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey? Over Cambyses' host[299] the desert spread Her sandy ocean, and the Sea-waves' sway Rolled over ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... called to Ja, but he must have left after I tumbled into the tank, for I received no response to my cries. Doubtless he had felt as certain of my doom when he saw me topple from our hiding place as I had, and lest he too should be discovered, had hastened from the temple and ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... than thought, truth or motion can be defined. Who has answered the question, "What is truth?" Man cannot see God and live. We cannot go so far back upon ourselves as to undermine our own foundations; if we try to do so we topple over, and lose that very reason about which we vainly try to reason. If we let the foundations be, we know well enough that they are there, and we can build upon them in all security. We cannot, then, define reason nor crib, cabin and confine it within a thus-far-shalt-thou-go-and-no-further. ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... tone. "Never be in a hurry—-especially don't be in a hurry about answering letters. If you leave things long enough and quiet enough they answer themselves, whereas if you hurry matters balanced on the edge of a precipice, they often topple over instead of settling and remaining ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... were a sorrowful thing, that retreat. The best I could do was to remain till the very last, having to deal with a number of persistent louts who all but suffocated me, at that. But I managed to empty my slinger into some of them and to topple the rest. I was mainly angry that Klow ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... to enforce obedience, added gestures to cries. The scared child, further agitated by these demonstrations, entirely lost self-control. His posture caused the unstable trough to topple over and the lad was plunged into the flood. The frothing mouth of a wave swallowed him. No; his doom was not sealed; taught by instinct or by pluck, the little fellow had the presence of mind ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster. Better than the hand and nimbler was the invisible thought which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. Everything ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... already passed resolutions restricting the height of the buildings to six stories. They ain't going to take the chance that New York does, and have some of these big tall ten-story affairs topple over ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... the gnome, hiding among the bracken and looking as mischievous as anything. In one hand he held a white fluff-feather. Now these feathers are as light as anything, and will blow in the wind; and whatever they are placed under, whether light or heavy, they are bound to topple over as soon ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... baby, and wondered if the visit could conceivably be going to be a slight strain. In old days there had always been a certain tenseness about their relationship, made worse by her attempts to topple over his gentlemanliness. She had felt that if her wish could have been gratified just once, she would have been released from it and never have wanted to repeat the experiment. Also a little of the responsibility would have been his—thus obliterating the irritating ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... night when I break from the fight, My Kingdom's awaiting for me; There's comfort and rest, and the warmth of your breast, And little ones climbing my knee. There's fire-light and song — Oh, the world may be wrong! Its empires may topple and fall: My home is my care — if gladness be there, It's a mighty good world ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... similar manner. The wind raved around the ruined pile, but its breath was not felt within it, and the rain was heard descending in deluging showers without, though no drop came through the open roof. The thunder shook the walls and pillars of the old fabric, and threatened to topple them down from their foundations, but they resisted the shocks. The lightning played around the tall spire springing from this part of the fane, and ran down from its shattered summit to its base, without doing any ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... over," Bruno repeated, very gravely, "and if you ever saw a caterpillar topple over, you'd know it's a serious thing, and not sit g'inning like that—and I shan't tell you ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... and then in the small of his back, the after-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 110 days, or nearly four months' work, not counting Sundays. Pump augers were used for boring through the giant. After the trunk was severed from the stump it required five men with immense wedges for three days to topple it over. The bark was eighteen inches thick. The tree would have yielded more than 1,000 cords of four-foot wood and 100 cords of bark, or more than 1,100 cords in all. On the stump of the tree was built ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... stairs, and heaped on all the landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... determined to marry Charity as soon as the three months' probation term was over. But Charity said no! Cowering in seclusion from the eyes of her world, she cherished a dream that when the war broke and the dead began to topple and the wounded to bleed, she might expiate the crime she had not committed, by devoting to her own people her practised mercies. She was afraid to offer them now, or even to make her appearance among the multitudinous associations that ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... He may have looked, wondering, for the first time in his life, upon the bones of the old world, where they rise at Dunkeld out of the lowlands of the Tay; and have trembled lest the black crags of Birnam should topple on his head with all their pines. He may have marched down from that famous leaguer with the Gospatricks and Dolfins, and the rest of the kindred of Crinan (abthane or abbot,—let antiquaries decide),—of Dunkeld, and of Duncan, and of Siward, and of the outraged Sibilla. He may have ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... minister, and the moment they appeared in sight the white portion hurried into the house and seated themselves—some in the few chairs the room contained, some on the table, and some on the long bench Jake had improvised with a board and two boxes, and which threatened every moment to topple over. There were a number of old women with sunbonnets on their heads—two or three higher-toned ones with straw bonnets—a few younger ones with hats, while the men and boys were all in their shirt sleeves. Some of them had come miles that hot day to pay their last ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... I come to think of it, maybe the Candy Rabbit did topple over by himself, to strike against the bowl and so cause Dorothy and Madeline to turn around in time to stop the bad cat from getting the goldfish. Mind you, I am not saying for sure that this happened. The cat's tail certainly brushed ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... and topple around, They see they are pretty near sure to be drowned. A terrible wave o'er the quarter-deck breaks, And the vessel it sinks ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... wilder the better, and on getting up to him to jump off his horse, seize the steer by a horn and the muzzle, then stoop down and grip the animal's upper lip with his teeth, turn his hands loose, and so by means of his powerful jaws and neck alone throw down and topple the steer over. The negro took many chances, and often the huge steer would fall on him in such a way as would have broken the neck or ribs of any ordinary white man. In this case also the steer must be an ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... up his bag and went out to the observation platform. He knew that to attempt to follow the railroad through those swaths the avalanches had left, under the burned skeletons of trees ready to topple at the first pressure of other bodies of snow, was to take one's life needlessly in his hands; but there was another way. The slope from the track at the portal dipped through a park of hemlock and fir, and the blaze that had swept the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... patching up the church walls all round to a height of some six feet from the ground. La Teuse mixed the plaster. When she talked of repairing the parsonage as well, for she was continually fearing that it would topple down on their heads, he told her that he did not think he could manage it, that a regular workman would be necessary; a reply which led to a terrible quarrel between them. La Teuse said it was quite ridiculous to go on ornamenting the church, where nobody slept, while their bedrooms were in ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... grinding all the sharp edges into powder or leaving a polished surface behind it. It gathers rock dust and the wreck of every living thing, and mixes them up with snow and ice. These congeal again, or are compressed into soft, filthy monumental masses, waiting their turn to topple into the waves at last. The wash of the sea undermines the glacier; the sharp sunbeams blast it. It is forever sinking, settling, crushing in upon itself and splitting from end to end, with fearful and ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... way," said he, "with those fine words, peace and conciliation, which are so often void of real wisdom and courage. The terrible truth is that Leo XIII's eighteen years of concessions have shaken everything in the Church, and should he long continue to reign Catholicism would topple over and crumble into dust like a building whose ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... drew nearer his inspection changed to a painful absorption. Suddenly his attitude grew tense; he had the appearance of a man gazing at an enthralling but dangerous spectacle, such—for example—as a wall that might topple over, crushing anything human ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... featureless convexity of chalk and soil—an ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... you profess, (Howe'er you come to know it,) answer me; Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches—though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up— Though bladed corn be lodg'd, and trees blown down— Though castles topple on their warder's heads— Though palaces and pyramids do slope Their heads to their foundations—though the treasure Of nature's germins tumble all together, Even till destruction sicken, answer me To what I ask ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... As she rose unsteadily to her knees, she saw a dark brown bulk topple at the edge of the cake, then roll like a log into the dark pool of water which appeared where the cake had parted. That object was Lucile. Dead or alive? Marian could not tell. But whether dead or alive she had fallen into ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... you," was the reply. "If you built your heavy wall on the bank, the water would strike the concave bank at one of these crossings, eat away the earth under the wall and your wall would topple in. Then the current would cross the stream, undermine the bank on the other side and your masonry would crumble there, too. So much for ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... and there are pretty speeches made to her, and she has her dainty feast and her crown of flowers. Yes, that time is the crown of the day, and that is just the moment when the poor little queen shall topple down. The throne shall be knocked from under her; the presents will vanish; the sovereignty will cease to exist. Poor, poor little queen without a kingdom! How will you like it, Paulie? Do you think you could bear it? To have ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... said Anne. "She finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought 'and for all those who live in ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he made and won he felt that silent approbation behind him; insensibly it steadied Ford and sharpened his instinct for reading the faces of the other players, so that the miniature towers of red chips and blue grew higher until they threatened to topple—whereupon other little towers began to grow up around them. And the men in the saloon began to feel the fascination of his success, so that they grouped themselves about his chair and peered down over ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... accomplish little. He went in search of aid, but his companions, after he had returned to the house, refused to endanger their lives, as the shocks were incessant and a high wall still standing threatened to topple over upon them at any moment. They even endeavored to dissuade the muleteer from any further effort, but the good creature replied that he was indebted to the imprisoned lady for many kindnesses, and that he was willing to risk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... likely to stumble into a man from Bagdad as from Boston. One can stand in the middle of it and with his westerly ear catch the argot of Gotham and with his easterly all the dialects of Damascus. And if through some unexpected convulsion of Nature 51 Broadway should topple over, Mr. Zimmerman, the stockbroker, whose office is on the sixth story, might easily fall clear of the Greek restaurant in the corner of Greenwich Street, roll twenty-five yards more down Morris ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train |
