"Stagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... already alluded to the perverting tendencies of alcoholic stimulants. Their peculiar influence upon the cerebellum causes the subject to reel and stagger, as though a portion of that organ were removed; the group of energetic faculties is stupefied, and mental as well as corporeal lethargy is the result. The reaction, which inevitably follows, is almost unbearable, and relief is sought by repeating ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... with me at the same desk. I remember trying to speak and at times finding myself unable to give utterance to my thoughts. Though I was able to answer questions, that fact hardly diminished my feeling of apprehension, for a single failure in an attempt to speak will stagger any man, no matter what his state of health. I tried to copy certain records in the day's work, but my hand was too unsteady, and I found it difficult to read the words and figures presented to my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... stout, and he values no swagger; A cleaver's a match any time for a dagger, And a blue sleeve may give such a cuff as may stagger. Which, &c. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in the world is this?" cried a little, pleasant-voiced old lady, who had witnessed the young girl enter the gate, and saw her stagger and fall. In a moment she had fluttered down the path, and was kneeling ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... be, he never forgot his duty and when the hour for starting the night's baking arrived he would stagger off to the bakery; the moment he took up his position before the mouth of the furnace his intoxication evaporated and he set to work as soberly as ever, ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... me that I had the worst watch of all—from one to three; it broke my night right in two. Of course a Scout takes what duty comes, and says nothing. But jiminy, I was sleepy when Carson woke me and I had to stagger out into the dark and the cold. He cuddled down in a hurry into my warm nest and there I was, on guard over the sleeping camp, here in the timber far away from ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... paces of the cemetery wall, when from behind it rises a battalion of men in the green uniform of the Santee Rangers and pours a withering fire into the ranks. The shock is too great to withstand, and the red-coats stagger away with broken ranks, leaving many dead and wounded on the ground. Lord Percy is the coolest of all. He urges the broken columns forward, and almost alone holds the place until the infantry, a hundred yards behind, come up. Thereupon ensues one of those hand-to-hand encounters that are so rare ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... became aware of the peculiar sensations that alarmed him some time before. His head was dizzy, a curious lightness took possession of his limbs, and he felt that if he should undertake to cross the lodge, he would stagger and fall like a ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... generally came upon me. He would read his hymn, and nod at me to commence. I would at times do so; at others, I would not. My non-compliance would almost always produce much confusion. To show himself independent of me, he would start and stagger through with his hymn in the most discordant manner. In this state of mind, he prayed with more than ordinary spirit. Poor man! such was his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... the room, stamping her feet and shedding tears. But back she came presently for more, thirsting for knowledge, eager to meet her trainer on more equal grounds, to be able to answer him to some purpose, to contradict him, to stagger ever so slightly the ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the crossbows which they carried and pulled trigger. One quarel went wide and hit the wall of the house behind, where it stuck fast in the joints of the stud-work. But the other, better aimed, smote Christopher above the heart, causing him to stagger, but being shot from below and turned by the mail he wore glanced upwards over his left shoulder. The men, seeing that he was unhurt, pulled their horses round and galloped off, but Christopher, setting ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... would have the worst end of it, for we had to carry the pay dirt down to the stream's edge. For the purpose we used the pack-sacks—or alforjas, as the Spaniards call them. Each held about sixty or seventy pounds of dirt. We found this a sweaty and stumbly task—to stagger over the water-smoothed boulders of the wash, out across the shingle to the edge of the stream. There one of us dumped his burden into the cradle; and we proceeded to wash it out. We got the "colour" at once ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... earth, until King Ahab and his people repent of their sins. Elijah himself was fed by ravens in a miraculous manner, and later by a poor widow who had only just enough in her larder to furnish one meal for herself and her son. Here are a series of complications enough to stagger the faith of the strongest believer in the supernatural. But the poor widow meets him at the gates of the city as directed by the Lord, improvises bread and water, takes him to her home and for two years treats him with all ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Record missed being the first to give out certain information that was to stagger the world. The dispatch, which had evidently outrun an earlier one, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... enquiries from the neighbours elicited the fact that the cook of the establishment had caught the beast and cut its throat; that the miserable creature, in its dying struggles, had escaped from his grasp and run in the direction of home, only to stagger by the roadside and expire ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Queen. They expressed a warm sympathy with the difficulties of his position, and spoke in strong terms of the necessity that the Netherlands and England should work heartily together. For otherwise, they said, "the cause will fall, the enemy will rise, and we must stagger." Notwithstanding the secret negotiations with the enemy, which Leicester and Walsingham suspected, and which will be more fully examined in a subsequent chapter, they held a language on that subject, which in the Secretary's mouth at least was sincere. "Whatsoever ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Danbridge as I did after that summer when you were abroad, you'll understand, too. Everybody knows everybody else's business. It is the main occupation of a certain set, and the per-capita output of gossip is a record that would stagger the census bureau. Still, you can't get away from the note, Craig. There it is, in Dixon's own handwriting, even if he does deny it: 'This will cure your headache. Dr. Dixon.' That's ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... The leafy boughs and twigs of the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches, against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, for the leaves are not trodden through, yet plain enough to the eye, winding gently to avoid tree-trunks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... to work for us—multiplied a million times. If, instead of that energy just oozing away and the uranium disintegrating infinitesimally each year, it could be exploded at a given moment you could drive an ocean liner with a handful of it. You could make the old globe stagger round and turn upside down! Mankind could just lay off and ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense Bewildered! like a bad leech falling sick, Thou art faint at soul, and canst not find the drugs Required ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... motionless men and women, who lean upon the supporting barrier, and rapt children who hold by their skirts and hands. There is not the eager New England neatness about these homes; now and then they have rather a sloven air, which does not discord with their air of comfort; and very, very rarely they stagger drunkenly in a ruinous neglect. Except where a log cabin has hardily survived the pioneer period, the houses are nearly all of one pattern; their facades front the river, and low chimneys point either gable, where a half-story forms the attic of the two stories ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... things, asked my master, was he fit for company for her, and he drinking all night? This nettling him, which it was hard to do, he replied, that as to drinking all night, he was then as sober as she was herself, and that it was no matter how much a man drank, provided it did no ways affect or stagger him: that as to being fit company for her, he thought himself of a family to be fit company for any lord or lady in the land; but that he never prevented her from seeing and keeping what company she pleased, and that he had done his best ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... moment Maren Le Moyne, straining every muscle of her young body to save the man she loved, looked swiftly back, having left the defile to stagger, stumbling, southward to where Mowbray's men ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... not long in realizing that the cherished scheme for which he had studied and struggled was actually beginning to stagger to its feet; or in reaching the equally stirring conclusion that his part in the suddenly reopened game called instantly for shrewd blows and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... map of Africa, who has not only been the first to set foot on the shores of vast inland seas, but who, with the simple appliances of his bodily stature for a sounding pole and his stalwart stride for a measuring tape, lays down new rivers by the hundreds, is a task calculated to stagger him. It may be provoking to find Livingstone busily engaged in bargaining for a canoe upon the shores of Bangweolo, much as he would have secured a boat on his own native Clyde; but it was not in his nature to be subject ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... else in the Scriptures is there a more striking picture of the fate that overtakes those who yield to sin? "They meet with darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night" (Job V, 14). And further on: "They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man" (Job XII, 25). I read these beautiful passages over and over ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... shone, and the clear waters of the Wabash held as yet no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... the selectmen whose terms expired. In his dual capacity as selectman and town clerk Asaph felt himself to be a very important personage. To elect some one else in his place would be, he was certain, a calamity which would stagger the township. Therefore he was a busy man and made many calls upon his fellow citizens, not to influence their votes—he was careful to explain that—but just, as he said, "to see how they was gettin' along," and because he "thought ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with Highland dhuinie-wassels till each gibbering Gael grew dumb; But a stouter, bolder drinker—one that loved his liquor more— Never yet did I encounter than our friend upon the floor! Yet the best of us are mortal, we to weakness all are heir, He has fallen, who rarely stagger'd—let the rest of us beware! We shall leave him, as we found him—lying where his manhood fell, 'Mong the trophies of the revel, for he took his tipple well. Better't were we loosed his neckcloth, laid his throat and bosom bare, Pulled his Hobi's off, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... interfere with one's duty to God, possessed his soul. The flight from the world was merely the method adopted to satisfy his soul-longings. If such times of degeneracy and rampant iniquity ever return, if humanity is again compelled to stagger under the moral burdens that crushed the Roman Empire, without doubt the love of solitude, which is now held in check by the satisfactions of a comparatively pure and peaceful social life, will ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... cyclone of shot and shell upon the Spanish craft. Two torpedo boats ventured from shore. One was sunk, one beached. The Reina Christina, the Amazon of the fleet, steamed out to duel with the Olympia, but "overwhelmed with deadly attentions" could barely stagger back. One hundred and fifty men were killed and ninety wounded on the Christina alone. In a little less than two hours, having sunk the Christina, Castilla, and Ulloa and set afire the other warships, the American ceased firing to assure and arrange his ammunition supply and to breakfast ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... made this great king stagger, Reel, and shriek—"unclean, unclean!" Thunderbolt, or flash of dagger? Nay, 'twas but ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... stowed in the lower hold of this house, like leaguers in the ground-tier, it does a body's heart good to conter'plate. All hands is bowsing out their jibs on it, sir, and the old Hall will soon be carrying as much sail as she can stagger under. It's nothing ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... through his frame. His head sank into his hands, and he looked and felt like one utterly crushed by a fate from which there was no escape. His ever-recurring thought was, "I have but one life, and it's lost, worse than lost. Why should I stagger on beneath the burden of an intolerable existence, which will only grow heavier as the forces of ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... distributing them to the several brigades which we overhauled and passed, we ran a distance of forty miles and made no less than fifteen portages. The carrying or portaging power of the Indian is very remarkable. A young boy will trot away under a load which would stagger a strong European unaccustomed to such labour. The portages and the falls which they avoid bear names which seem strange and un meaning but which have their origin in some long-forgotten incident connected with the early history of the fur trade or of Indian ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... All'erta for the best Italian, heereof sometimes may rise some use: since, have he the memorie of Themistocles, of Seneca, of Scaliger yet is it not infinite, in so finite a bodie. And I have seene the best, yea naturall Italians, not onely stagger, but even sticke fast in the myre, and at last give it over, or give their verdict with An ignoramus, Boccace is prettie hard, yet understood: Petrarche harder, but explaned: Dante hardest, but commented. Some doubt if all aright. Alunno for his foster-children ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... lay round in bar-rooms with a red nose, and a stagger onto him. He wuz up and about, with his senses all straight, and the star he follered wuzn't the light of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... general melee, when the bull and several picadors were in a tangled mass at one side of the ring, I saw one of these horses, terribly wounded, with its life pouring from it, emerge from the conflict and stagger unnoticed ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... from Josephine, so loud, so fearful, that it made even Raynal stagger back a step, the screen ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... "Zounds, Sir," on the slightest provocation. Opposite to him was his wife, a Roman-nosed lady, with an imperious manner, and a Colonel-subduing way of curling her lip. On my left was the funny man. As usual he was of a sea-green colour, and might be expected at any moment to stagger to a porthole and call faintly for the steward. Further down the table sat two young nincompoops, brought on board specially in order that they might fulfil their destiny, and fill out my story, by falling in love with the fluffy-haired English girl who was sitting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... published to illustrate the brutal expression of men who had taken part in bayonet charges. Lies were spread broadcast by supposedly reputable persons, stating how soldiers had to be maddened with drugs or alcohol before they would go over the top. Much of what was recorded was calculated to stagger the imagination and intimidate the heart. The reason for this was that the supposed eye-witnesses rarely saw what they recorded. They had usually never been within ten miles of the front, for only combatants are allowed in the line. They brought civilian minds, undisciplined ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... The stagger, the sense of one's unpardonable heaviness.... I slipped on her hand as on a piece of orange-peel, and, jumping like a chamois, sent the next pail all over the heels of the ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... catch him, but they are after the fleetest foot in Rugby. There they go straight for the School goal-posts, quarters scattering before them. One after another the bull-dogs go down, but young Brooke holds on. "He is down." No! a long stagger, but the danger is past. That was the shock of Crew, the most dangerous of dodgers. And now he is close to the School goal, the ball not three yards before him. There is a hurried rush of the School fags ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... neutrals, was as far away as ever. That desperate attack made during the darkness broke down as others had done, and the Germans—those who were left of them—fled to the cover of the evergreen pine-trees, leaving the poilus of General Joffre's armies to stagger back to their battered trenches, there to prepare—not to rest, not to sleep, for that was out of the ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... become in his own line one of the most famous persons in the world, so that, wherever civilized man was to be found, there his name was known as "Monk, who invented that marvellous machine, the aerophone." Lastly, there was no more need for him, as for most of us, to stagger down his road beneath a never lessening burden of daily labour. His work was done; a great conception completed after half a score of years of toil and experiment had crowned it with unquestionable success. Now he could sit at ease and watch the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... now so utterly spent I could barely stagger rapidly enough to escape those pitiless thrusts, I mechanically noted enough of our surroundings to understand that we traversed ground which had been cultivated; that low fences, here and there encountered, divided the land ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... they resume their journey as best they could until death should claim a victim. All acquiesced. Slowly rising to their feet, they managed to stagger and to crawl forward about three miles to a tree which furnished fuel for their Christmas fire. It was kindled with great difficulty, for in cutting the boughs, the hatchet blade flew off the handle and for a time was lost in ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... willing to multiply this result by 10,000,000,000 which still shows that the theory has less than one chance in a million to be true. Darwin himself says, "The belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is more than enough to STAGGER ANY ONE." Yet he and his followers refuse to be "staggered," and proceed to argue as if this unanswerable objection had little or no weight. Any hypothesis is weakened or damaged by every support that is an uncertain guess. ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... lay there in a state of collapse, until she gradually recovered so far as to be able to rise, moaning and groaning, and stagger out of the kitchen into the yard. There ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... the Lone Trail lures you on. And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs, And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire. And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where the orchid glows, And you ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... Then, advancing boldly again, they released their hands from something which they had been holding, and lo! four jets of water struck at the very roots of the flames, tripped at them, and made them stagger, drove them twice into the roof, and caught them with deadly accuracy as they came out again; and, in less than five minutes, changed all their brave splendor to dull, black smoke, and set the victor's ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... clinging to the rail, riveted by the paralysis of fright, saw her champion stagger back and half crumple to the deck. Then she saw him make a brave and desperate rally, as, though torn with agony, he lurched forward in an endeavor to clinch with the brute before him. Again the mucker struck his victim—quick choppy hooks that rocked Mallory's ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the poise of their bodies, the lightness of their eyes, the freshness of their lips and the bloom upon their cheeks. But Oh! it was so sad to see how soon the manly gait would change to the drunkard's stagger. To see eyes once bright with intelligence growing vacant and confused and giving place to the drunkard's leer. In many cases lassitude supplanted vigor, and sickness overmastered health. But the saddest thing was the fearful ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... withdrawn, sir," John repeated. As he spoke he saw the Colonel stagger backwards and sink into his chair; his face became white and twitched; his head fell to one side; he breathed stertorously, flushed slightly, and was instantly as ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... no further remark but led the way back to the point where the main river rolled by in full sight. Both banks of the creek were rank with lush jungle; great, warped trees seemed to stagger, so gnarled were their trunks; while immense beards of moss depended from their hideous branches almost to the water. A sullen, ominous splash under the bank was sufficient warning against ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... is the foundation of faith, and the triumph of hope, God's faithfulness to His promise, and His power to perform. Having these to look to, what should stagger our faith, or deject our hope? We may, we ought to smile at all carnal objections, and trample upon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ridges and mountains, and the tundra that lay between, in search of the lost copper mines of the Indians; the mines that lured Hearne into the North in 1771, and which Hearne forgot in the discovery of a fur empire so vast as to stagger belief. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... and with a great effort managed to drag the bicycle to the side of the road. Then, clutching the rail that bounded the plantation, I began to stagger slowly forward along the slightly raised path. I think I had a sort of vague notion that there might be something to eat round the ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... there will be another way for you to go, on the other side. Look at the mountains, dear. See, there are other peaks beyond, with alternating slopes of sunshine and canyons of shadow. It is much easier to stick to the sunny slopes when there are two together. It is very easy to stagger off into the shadows, when one has to travel alone. But, Carol, don't you go into the shadows. I want to think always that you are staying in the sunshine, on the slopes, where it is bright, where Julia can ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... better looked after if I am there to give him his midday bite and sup, and brush him up, than if he is left to cater for himself; and as to exercise for the Billy-boy, 'tis not so far to the Thames Embankment. The only things that stagger me are the blacks! I don't know whether life is long enough to be after the blacks all day long, but perhaps I ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eyes at once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also was wheeling to ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gold crystal are made to work out patterns. The squares used are tiny particles having not over a quarter-inch surface; and the amount of labor and the expense in covering the vast ceiling of this tremendous structure with incomputable myriads of these small particles fairly stagger any attempt ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of difficulty, and we say the person is being suffocated. We observe that the face becomes dark, the lips blue, the surface cold. Should the process of arrest or stoppage of the breathing be long continued the person will become unconscious, will stagger and fall, and should relief not be at hand, he will in a ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... day determined men with rifles or shotguns, ostensibly intending to go hunting after they had voted, gathered around the polls. An occasional random shot might kick up the dust near an approaching negro. Men actually or apparently the worse for liquor might stagger around, seeking an excuse for a fight. It is not surprising that among the negroes the impression that it was unwise to attempt to vote ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... rifle-shots pealed almost like one, and, to the delight of the boys, they saw the young bull they had shot stagger forward on to its knees, and then roll over ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... afterwards confessed to the dearest friend he had, that in that moment he had the nearest approach to the thought of murder and hate he ever knew. But before he could reply to Van Shaw's brutality he saw him stagger and reel and throw up his arms on the edge of the rock. He heard him cry out, "For God's sake, Bauer!" and then he fell backward and disappeared ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... we hope to have all important Parliamentary debates filmed. It will be essential, of course, to provide some comic relief, and we are relying confidently on certain Members to practise the wearing of mobile moustaches and to take lessons in the stagger, the butter slide, the business with the cane and the quick ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... to-day were a couple of Germans, who looked like artists and went about in enthusiastic talk; one kept dealing the other severe blows on the chest, which occasionally made the recipient stagger—all in pure joy and friendship. They measured some of the columns, and in one place, for a special piece of observation, the smaller man mounted on his companion's shoulders. Miriam happened to see them whilst they were thus posed, and the spectacle struck her with such ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... been kinder, perhaps, to hide, and Blodgett himself seemed uneasy lest he should be poisoned by the berries he had eaten. But no harm came of them, and by the time the stars were shining again Neddie appeared to be over the worst of his sickness and with the help of the rest of us managed to stagger along. So we chose a constellation for our guide and set ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... stripper and He bagged it with a bagger; The bags were all so lumpy that They made the lumper stagger. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... though worlds stagger, and the suns Seem shaken in their place, Trust thou the leaping love that runs Creative over space: Take heart of grace, ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... the bit of coast that Kingsley so vividly described: 'What a sea-wall they are, those Exmoor hills! Sheer upward from the sea a thousand feet rise the mountains; and as we slide and stagger lazily along before the dying breeze, through the deep water which never leaves the cliff, the eye ranges, almost dizzy, up some five hundred feet of rock, dappled with every hue, from the intense dark of the tide-line; through the warm green ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... bread-fruit tree, following the turtle to see where it deposits its eggs, discovering the spring of water, building the hut—housekeeping, Melisande. . . . Or take Robinson Crusoe. When Man Friday came along and left his footprint in the sand, why did Robinson Crusoe stagger back in amazement? Because he said to himself, like a good housekeeper, "By Jove, I'm on the track of a servant at last." There's ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... last: For thou hadst liv'd, till every thing that chears In thee had yielded to the weight of years; Extreme old age had wasted thee away, And left thee but a glimmering of the day; Thy ears were deaf; and feeble were thy knees,— saw thee stagger in the summer breeze, 20 Too weak to stand against its sportive breath, And ready for the gentlest stroke of death. It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed; Both Man and Woman wept when Thou wert dead; Not only for a ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... Highnes, The question did at first so stagger me, Bearing a State of mighty moment in't, And consequence of dread, that I committed The daringst Counsaile which I had to doubt, And did entreate your Highnes to this course, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... stones, it required the greatest care to stand upright. Looking at the bottom, through the rapid water, made my head so giddy, I was forced to stop and shut my eyes; my friend, who had firmer nerves, went plunging on to a deeper and swifter part, where the strength of the current made him stagger very unpleasantly. I called to him to return; the next thing I saw, he gave a plunge and went down to the shoulder in the cold flood. While he was struggling with a frightened expression of face to recover his footing, I leaned on my staff and laughed till I was on ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... paid no heed to the pain, which, indeed, she scarcely felt; but when the enemy had been put to flight and the little band returned to the palace, faintness suddenly overtook her, and she could hardly stagger up the ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... hover, dacker[obs3], hum and haw, demur, not know one's own mind; debate, balance; dally with, coquet with; will and will not, chaser-balancer[obs3]; go halfway, compromise, make a compromise; be thrown off one's balance, stagger like a drunken man; be afraid &c. 860; "let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would'" [Macbeth]; falter, waver vacillate &c. 149; change &c. 140; retract &c. 607; fluctuate; pendulate[obs3]; alternate &c. (oscillate) 314; keep off and on, play fast and loose; blow hot and cold &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... to wake up in my coffin, having been prematurely buried; or to hear sighs in the area, followed by light, unsteady footsteps on the stairs, and then to see a lady all in a white shroud stained with blood and clay stagger into my room, the victim of too rapid interment. As to the notion that my respected kinsman had a mad wife concealed on the premises, and that a lunatic aunt, black in the face with suppressed mania, would burst into my ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... presence might portend—for clearly his business was with me—I leaned out of the window, and as he came up to the door of the inn I saw him stagger and clutch at the post which supported the sign-board, swaying dizzily. He was clearly almost exhausted, and his voice when he ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... preceded him by a few seconds, and then he entered himself—so large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action when the door had closed behind him was to stagger against the table, whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that majestic figure prostrate and insensible upon our ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... further side, up the long gradual slope to the Boer rocks, has been burnt black and bare, and the bullets, cutting through the cinders, throw up spots of dust, that show white against the black. Men here and there stagger and fall. It is hard to see whether they fall from being hit, or whether it is to shoot themselves. The fire gets faster and faster, our guns thunder, and through the drifting smoke of the veldt fires we can ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... our passions and imaginations, and we have drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, without our knowing where we are going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... high fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-thunder Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... their mutilations to the idiot God they have invented (the Devil take them, I grow bored with laughing at them); to the anointed ones who identify their paranoic symptoms as virtues, who build altars upon complexes; to the anointed ones who have slain themselves and who stagger proudly into graves (God deliver Himself from their caress!); to the religious ones who wage bloody and tireless wars upon all who do not share their fear of life (Ah, what is God but a despairing refutation of Man?); to the solemn and successful ones who gesture with courteous ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... about. He had a muffler loose about his neck and chin. I thought he seemed shy and irresolute, and the tall man gave him a great jolt with his elbow, which made him stagger, and I fancied a little angry, for he said, as it seemed, a ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... subject-matter from the crown grants to his own family. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way of putting things together, his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Petrarch in the original language. And strange to say, the Warwickshire audience would cheer the Latin more than the English rendition, on the principle that the least you know about a thing the more you enjoy it! Thus pretense and ignorance make a stagger at information, and while fooling themselves, imagine that they ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... deside is this: At a great and most himportant Dinner that is about to be held soon, at which most of the werry grandest swells left in Lundon will be present, we intends to hinterduce 'The Loving Cup;' not," he added, smiling, "so much to estonish the natives, as to stagger the strangers. The question, therefore, that you, as the leading Citty Waiter of the day, have to settle, is, How many of the Gests stand up while one on 'em drinks?" Delighted to find how heasy ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... folds enormous three spans thick was the shield, If all be true they tell us, that Brunhild bore in field. Of steel and gold compacted all gorgeously it glow'd. Four chamberlains, that bore it, stagger'd beneath ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... on his periodical sprees quite regularly, about one week every three months, and he was the least offensive tippler I ever knew. He came up to the city during one of his lapses, and called at my office. He was dressed with unusual care (he was always a good deal of a dandy), and he did not stagger nor slush his syllables; indeed, the only way I could have told what was the matter with him, at first, was by the solemn preoccupation of his expression. A little black pickaninny followed him, grinning and carrying a big bundle, covered with ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... thousand times, in those three weeks of torture, he would fix his eye on a tree ten feet away, up the steep trail. And to himself he would say, "I'll struggle, somehow, as far as that tree, and then die under it." And he would stagger another ten feet, his heart pounding in the unaccustomed altitude, his lungs bursting, his lips parted, his breath coming sobbingly, his eyes starting from his head. Leaping lightly ahead of him, around the bend, was Jessie, always. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... was seen to stagger, and fall down. That was perhaps the first time he had ever taken a dose of his own medicine. How often had he stood jeeringly over some wretched fellow whom he had sent to grass, counting him out with monotonous chant, in which the joy of brutal ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... and splashed into the muddy waters of the ford. And on the further bank the good gray stumbled again, tried gallantly to regain its stride, and came crashing to the ground with a coughing groan and a long sickening stagger. But Nicanor had saved himself from a falling horse before. He was on his feet almost as the beast was down, reeling with sheer weakness, but recovering with dogged persistence. He left the horse dying at the water's edge, and started running up the street which led across the island from ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... as in New England, proves, beyond doubt, that there is something essentially wrong in this system. Some years ago the public were startled by the shocking developments of depravity in one of the female Public Schools of Boston; so shocking, indeed, as almost to stagger belief. The Boston Times published the whole occurrence at the time, but after creating great excitement for a few weeks, the matter was quietly hushed up, for fear of injuring the character of ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... other hand to steady the expected weight of coppers; but there was at once a frown, a little cry of horror. Toby came up so light in his hand, that all his great effort was thrown away, and only made him stagger back in dismay, falling backward from the chair, and poor Toby crashing to pieces on the floor as he fell, while out rolled— ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for himself was Adlerstein Wildschloss that all this did not stagger him; for, even if he had believed more than he did of the old lady's story, there would have been no sense of intrusion or impropriety in such a visit to the mother. Indeed, had Christina been living in ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reached Florence, and was endeavouring to stagger back with her in his arms; but the waves were too strong for him, and they both fell, and were lost to sight in an enormous breaker, while everyone held their breath. As the wave dispersed three forms could be seen struggling forwards; and, amid the wildest cheers and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... uncovered; in a little while the button next below became visible, and now he was sure that the tide was ebbing, and that he was safe if only he could hold out long enough. At last the rock itself became visible, and after many hours he was able, almost spent with fatigue, to stagger to the land. Now, what saved that man? was it his gun? Surely not; it was the rock: that was his standing-ground. But was his gun, therefore, useless? Assuredly not, for it helped to steady him on the rock, though it could not take the place of the rock. Just so with the pledge; it is not the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... shouted, for the wind was swift to carry all sounds from his lips to O'Shea; but the latter's voice, as it came back to him, seemed to stagger against the force of the wind ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... vertigo, deafness, tinnitus aurium, and various other phenomena. It is also called aural or auditory vertigo. The salient symptom is vertigo, and this varies somewhat in degree according to the portions of the ear affected. If the disease is in the labyrinth, the patient is supposed to stagger to one side, and the vertigo is paroxysmal, varying to such a degree as to cause simple reeling, or falling as if shot. Gray reports the history of a patient with this sensational record: He had been a peasant in Ireland, and one day crossing one of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... prodigious accession to the Lake marine during the past season—no less than sixty vessels, whose aggregate tonnage is over 13,000 tons, and at an outlay of 825,000 dollars. Had we not the evidence before us, the assertion would stagger belief. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... dirty face, his great round paunch stuffed with straw, represented the disreputable old rake who, after a long course of dissipation, was now about to suffer for his sins. Hoisted on the shoulders of a sturdy fellow, who pretended to stagger under the burden, this popular personification of the Carnival promenaded the streets for the last time in a manner the reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a drummer and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... from the ground. I cut down the bladder as fast as I could, and saved about half a pint in the bottom of it, which I tasted, and could not distinguish it from the best mountain wine. I drank it all, and found myself greatly refreshed. By this time the eagles began to stagger against the shrubs. I endeavored to keep my seat, but was soon thrown to some distance among the bushes. In attempting to rise, I put my hand upon a large hedgehog, which happened to lie among the grass upon its back; it instantly closed round my hand, so that I ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... a hoarse yell, and a man sprang up not above a hundred yards away, dropped his rifle, and turning round he began to stagger away. ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... her hand, and a powerful arm caught her and whirled her up, only to hurl her to the ground; Arizona's snarling, panting face bent over her. In the very midst of that fury she felt Arizona stiffen and freeze; the snarling stopped; his nerveless arm fell away, and she was allowed to stagger to her feet. She found him staring at her with a ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... elements need nothing when circumstances favour their junction, save their own peculiar properties, whether individual or united, with the motion that is essential to them, to produce all those phenomena which powerfully striking the senses of mankind, either fill him with admiration, or stagger him ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... brother-in-law, "you lie! Never mind. Pick up that wheel instead. Prenez la roue, Herbert.... C'est bien. Alors, attachez-la ici. Yes, I know it's heavy, but ne montrez pas la langue. Respirez par le nez, man. And don't stagger like that. It makes me feel tired.... So. Now, isn't that nice? Herbert, my Son, void la fin de ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... too sick to dig sinks; some are delirious. When the poor emaciated wrecks of manhood have to obey the calls of Nature, they must either wallow in their own filth or stagger a few paces from their wet beds on the slimy soil to deposit more germs of disease and death on the surface already reeking with ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... the result of it, and saw the man with the silver face drop his rifle, stagger to the side of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... the Place de L'Etoile was broken by a terrible cry: "To arms! To arms! The Prussians!" And the four Uhlans[275-1] at the head of the column could see up there on the balcony a tall old man stagger and fall. This time Colonel ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... example, with his calves shining like moons, who, after going through all the intricacies of the country dance, bow, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place, cut—"cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger!" The very Fiddler, who "went up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches!" Master Peter Cratchit, again, arrayed in his father's shirt collars, who, rejoicing to find himself so gallantly attired, at one moment ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... got fairly round—his head and forepart were over dry land—the three guns were pointed—the eyes of the three hunters were about to glance through the sights of their pieces, when all at once he was seen to rock and stagger,—and then roll over! With a loud plash, his vast body subsided into the water, sending great waves to every corner of ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid |
