"Laggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... veils; the clocks that never told the time, or, if wound up by any chance, told it wrong, and struck unearthly numbers, which are not upon the dial; the accidental tinklings among the pendant lustres, more startling than alarm-bells; the softened sounds and laggard air that made their way among these objects, and a phantom crowd of others, shrouded and hooded, and made spectral of shape. But, besides, there was the great staircase, where the lord of the place so rarely set his foot, and by which his little ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... a poetic word—mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart of the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... train seemed a laggard, left far behind in the race of the journey by his swift desire, which kept pace with the telegram announcing his departure from Solaris and the probable time of his arrival in Washington. At length his heart was made glad by a distant glimpse ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Republican state, one that has taken a conspicuous part in the great drama of the past. In an evil hour, and under wild delusions, Ohio elected the recent Democratic legislature. With this warning behind us let us not be backward or laggard in the civic contest in November; but, with a ticket worthy of our choice, let us appeal to our fellow-citizens to place again our honored state at the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... worth in Timour's eyes. Than forty chariots, though each were made Of ebony or ivory or gold, And all the laurel India ever grew. The third, a tunic of soft Cashmere wool, On which, by skillful needles deftly wrought, The race itself as if in life stood forth. The fourth, a belt to gird the laggard's loins And whip to ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... pocket-book, containing Seventeen dollars and a half, by the operation. Ere he alighted at the Netherby mansion He stopped to borrow a dry suit of clothes, And this delayed him considerably, so when He arrived the bride had consented—the gallant Came late—for a laggard in love and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen, and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... fellow to come now and claim her, when perils were past, when there was naught left to do but lead her to the altar? Could he be worthy of such a pearl of womanhood, this laggard who, because a fever touched him, sat him down in an inn within a few hours' ride of her to rest him, as though the world held no such ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... laggard at his post," says Miss Kavanagh, still smiling, but now in a little provoking way that seems to jest at his pretended suspicion of Dysart's constancy and dissolve it into the thinnest of thin air. "He was here just now, but ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... best trained conscripts of Europe. Not urged to the front like slaves by the whips of innumerable penalties, their needs not considered to the provision of a button, or a ration of salt, shabby even to squalor in their appointments, they gathered in response to a call which it was easy for the laggard to disobey, and almost uncared for by the forethought ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... the street, and hurried in to avoid her, looking ostentatiously in the opposite direction. But that was a turning-point. Shame overtook him. On Friday his belief in love was warm and living again, and his heart full of remorse for laggard days. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... sand.—For although the mob was half-way up the lawn by now, the shuffling, sliding sand stayed always with them.—After a nasty struggle it got on to its feet, tottering forward under savage blows, dead lame. Another, a laggard, fell into its tracks, and lay there foundered, rattling in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... be more propitious than of late, I intend returning forthwith to Jamaica, where I will leave you with your relatives, the Bradshaws, while I go back once more to await the course of events. You will thus, probably, reach Jamaica sooner than you would have done had you waited for these laggard men-of-war." ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... moral? Who rides may read. When the night is thick and the tracks are blind A friend at a pinch is a friend indeed, But a fool to wait for the laggard behind. Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... it all her ears sought for two sounds with agonizing acuteness—the firm, rapid step of Jonah mounting the stairs winding from the shop, or the nonchalant, laggard footfall of Ray ascending from the stairs at the rear. Would Cassidy send the bottle and trust her for the other eighteen pence? Would Jonah hurry back to meet Miss Grimes? Presently her ear distinguished the light, uncertain step of Ray. Every ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... make her happy, he knew his moral debt to her, and was sore about it, and had been sore about it often. It had never been in his mind for an instant to evade his burden, even when he had felt the weight of it most heavily, and he was willing and even eager to offer this small and laggard reparation. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... sit on History in an easy chair, Still rivalling the wild hordes by whom 'twas writ! Sure, this beseems a race of laggard wit, Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air. If more than hands' and armsful be our share, Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit. Have we not heard derision infinite When old men play the youth to chase the snare? Let us be belted athletes, matched ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when the mind's inaction Has robbed the soul of power, When moments of deep reflection Arrive at so late an hour That they lose the force of their mission In the laggard way they come, And like withered buds of fruition, ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... Between Modestine's laggard humour and the beauty of the scene, we made little progress all that afternoon; and at last finding the sun, although still far from setting, was already beginning to desert the narrow valley of the Tarn, I began to cast about for a place to camp ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And she, so much her heart the world disdains, Longer to tread life's wearying round repines. Hence still in her sweet frame we view decay All that to earth can joy and radiance lend, Or serve as mirror to this laggard age; And Death's dread purpose should not Pity stay, Too well I see where all those hopes must end, With which I fondly soothed ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... with the most destructive agencies that human imagination and ingenuity could devise, schooled the citizens of each nation in the suicidal formula: "might makes right; every nation for itself and woe betide the laggard and ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... greatly extended; and the voice of the State has been uttered in a firmer tone than ever before in English educational history. Taxes have been increased; the scope of the school system extended; all elements of the system better integrated; laggard local educational authorities subjected to firmer control; the training of teachers looked after more carefully than ever before; and the foundations for unlimited improvement and progress in education ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... disorderly army. The soldier has burden enough to carry in heavy marching order without souvenirs. That collector of the stoppers of carafes who had thirty on his person when taken prisoner was bound to be a laggard in ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... willing, There will be a dreadful revel, And liquor red be spilling. O, that each chief[142] whose warriors rife, Are burning for the slaughter, Would let their volley, like fire to holly, Blaze on the usurping traitor. Full many a soldier arming, Is laggard in his spirit, E'er his blood the flag is warming Of the King that should inherit. He may be loon or coward, That spur scarce touch would nearly— The colours shew, he 's in a glow, Like the stubble of the barley. Onward, gallants! onward speed ye, Flower and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and honorable old age, and a full reward for all their labors. They cannot justly suppose that permanent success and a distinguished name can be attained through any other channel than by honesty, and excellence in their works. Honors and rewards from private sources may be very laggard in their approach, but they must ultimately come—especially in this enlightened, progressive, and prosperous country—to those who ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... eyes of those who had nothing to trust to but the mercy of a God who will be far more merciful to us than we are to one another; and I say decidedly that the Christian's death is the glorious one, as is his life. You can never find a good man who is not a worker; he is no laggard in the race of life. Three, two, or one score years of life have been to him a season of labour in his appointed sphere; and as the work of the hands earns for us sweet rest by night, so does the ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... the latter half of May, or at the season of apple bloom, and the early part of September. It passes northward with an almost scornful rapidity. Audubon mentions having seen it in Maine at the end of October, but this specimen surely must have been an exceptional laggard. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... known in that region of the country by the name of Prairie Round. Three hours were necessary to reach it, and this so much the more, because Margery's shorter steps were to be considered. Margery, however, was no laggard on a path. Young, active, light of foot, and trained in exertions of this nature, her presence did not probably retard the arrival ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable city, ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and the straight highways, tell visibly of man's active and comfortable ways; and you may be never so laggard and never so unimpressionable, but there is something in the view that spirits up your blood and puts you in ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and tired came the hunters; Stopped in darkness in the court. 'Ho, this way, ye laggard hunters! To the hall! What sport, ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... once," answered the Young Doctor. Yet his feet were laggard, for he was not so sure that there would be another home for Jean Jacques with his grandchild as its star. He was thinking of Norah, to whom a waif of the prairie had made home what home should be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the direct light of the moonbeams and left the abyss again in dense darkness long before the coming of the laggard dawn. Blake slept on, storing up strength for the renewal of the battle. Yet even he could not outsleep the reluctant lingering of night. He awoke while the tiny flame of the watchfire still flickered bright against the inky darkness ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... these smooth waters, waiting for the laggard wind, up came a shoal of dolphin, ready as at all times to attach themselves for awhile to the ship. Nothing is more singular than the manner in which deep-sea fish will accompany a vessel that is not going too fast—sometimes for days at a time. Most convenient too, and providing hungry Jack with ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... on with his digging, but his heart was not in it. With every laggard shovelful of dirt, he glanced over his shoulder apprehensively, watching Mack Nolan crawl into the back of the car and settle himself, with an audible sigh of satisfaction, on top of the load. He had one wild, wicked impulse to lengthen the hole and ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... shut it up. I found it was nearly twelve o'clock, and Boggley hadn't arrived. I waited another quarter of an hour, and then went in and ate some ham and eggs. One o'clock, and the train came and went, but still no trace of the laggard. Outside the station the blinding white road lay empty. Nothing stirred, not even a native was visible; the whole world seemed asleep in the heat. A pile of trunks lay on the platform addressed to somewhere in Devonshire and labelled Not wanted on the Voyage. Some happy people were going ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... herself at the small table and was vigorously rattling the dice in one of the boxes by way of a hint to the laggard menfolks. "Women have a soft side, and men come up on that side and take advantage—and Joe Harnden's mealy mouth has always served him well with his womenfolks—but I do hope Vona Harnden has got done being fool enough to galley-slave and sacrifice for the rest ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... away the sunlit hours of life (Unsatisfied, sad life), We wake in shadow and we rise in gloom. False as a wanton's artificial bloom Is that made light we labour in till dawn (The lonely, laggard dawn). ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... played the coward— And in the sloth of false humility, Cast by the pearl I dared not to deserve. How laggard I must seem to her, though she love me; Playing with hawks and hounds, while she sits weeping! 'Tis not ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... and patriotism is the effort to extend our foreign commerce. To this end our merchant marine should be improved and enlarged. We should do our full share of the carrying trade of the world. We do not do it now. We should be the laggard no longer. The inferiority of our merchant marine is justly humiliating to the national pride. The Government by every proper constitutional means, should aid in making our ships familiar visitors at every commercial port of the world, thus opening up new and valuable markets ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... lay hushed and waiting like a seed, Some laggard of the season still abed Though the sun calls and gentle zephyrs plead, And Hope that waited long must deem it dead; Yet lo! to-morrow sees its shining head Singing at dawn 'mid all the garden throng: Ah, had it known, it had been earlier sped— Was it for fear ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... of the old series were all used up. Thus, the 1/2c, 2c and 6c did not appear until early in September, the 8c was placed on sale in the first few days of October, the 10c was issued in the early part of November, while the 5c, which was the laggard of the series, was not on ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... in the hope that I may prevail upon you to quit Scotland and your attachment to a king, whose fortunes prosper not, nor can prosper. Cynthia is pining, and if you tarry longer from Castle Marleigh she must perforce think you but a laggard lover. Than this I have no more powerful argument wherewith to draw you from Perth to Sheringham, but this I think should prevail where others have failed me. We await you then, and whilst we wait we daily drink your health. Cynthia ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... and wife, like one bleeding body cleft:—let that master thrice shrive his soul; take every sacrament; on his bended knees give up the ghost;—yet shall he die despairing; and live again, to die forever damned. The future is all hieroglyphics. Who may read? But, methinks the great laggard Time must now march up apace, and somehow befriend these thralls. It can not be, that misery is perpetually entailed; though, in a land proscribing primogeniture, the first-born and last of Hamo's tribe must still succeed to all their sires' wrongs. Yes. Time—all- healing Time—Time, great ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... he heard. He moistened his lips repeatedly, and his tongue fought for articulation. "It is as I have said," he succeeded, finally. "I did not do it. Before God, I did not do it!" He stared fixedly at John the Swede, waiting the while on his laggard thought. "I . . . I did not do it . . . I did not . . . I . ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... opposite sidewalks, craned forward as far as they dared to see them, came the eight or ten racers at a furious pace. They were come and gone in a breath; and finally, after the body of them were passed, came a laggard, who had been left at the post, and was trying to make up for lost time. I believe it was this horse who actually killed somebody on the course. The race over, back into the street thronged the crowd, filling it from wall to wall; then there was a gradual thinning away, as the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... worshippers—is filled with armed men, kneeling in humble supplication to the stern God of Islam and his most holy Mahdi. It is finished. They rise and hurry to the parade. The Emirs plant their flags, and all form in the ranks. Woe to the laggard; and let the speedy see that he wear his newest jibba, and carry a sharp sword and at least three spears. Presently ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Jesus has always been the standard of reformation when Christianity has become recreant or laggard or corrupt. A man named John Wilkes started a political movement in England in the eighteenth century, and around him sprang up a party who called themselves Wilkites. These followers of Wilkes, however, went to extremes so wild and perilous that poor John Wilkes himself ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... youth like you, gifted with courage, skill, and health,—the state demands some activity at your hands; 'tis ill to be a laggard." ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... when the fourth part of the day was gone, Then Enid was aware of three tall knights On horseback, wholly arm d, behind a rock In shadow, waiting for them, caitiffs all; And heard one crying to his fellow, "Look, Here comes a laggard hanging down his head, Who seems no bolder than a beaten hound; Come, we will slay him and will have his horse And armor, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... watched it all with the same critical interest as before, but his mind was far away. It wandered to the foreign city, to the gaunt pauper hospital there, to a little low bed where lay an old dying friendless man, tossing and moaning for the laggard death to give him rest. He saw nothing of what went on before him; he felt none of the merry boy's nudges at his side; he even ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... species, determined to be on hand when wanted. For we do not gather that the lower animals stand in need of his services, or are capable of benefiting by them. One might be tempted to conceive him as guiding the course of evolution and hastening its laggard process; but (as we shall see) he scorns the role of Providence, and resolutely abstains from any intromission in organic or meteorological concerns. It would be pleasant to think that he had something to do with (for instance) the retreat of the ice-cap in the northern ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... a laggard," she said. She was burning to see the arrival of her whom we had formed the habit of calling "the ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... betakes himself to haunts of his own till male and female, old and young, meet again on common ground, late in the fall. But rob the sitting bird of her eggs, or destroy her tender young, and she immediately sets out in quest of a male, who is no laggard when he hears her call. The same is true of ducks, and other aquatic fowls. The propagating instinct is strong, and surmounts all ordinary difficulties. No doubt the widowhood I had caused in the case of the woodpeckers ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... those laggard hours pass less bitterly for M. de Camors. He tried to take no rest, but walked up and down his apartment until daylight in a sort of frenzy. The distress of this poor child wounded him to the heart. The souvenirs ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... sugar and spice. Apple-butter-making was an all-day job in the boiling alone but the rich and tasty product is considered well worth the effort and any mountain woman who cannot display shelves laden with jars of apple-butter would be considered a laggard indeed. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... for brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Esk river, where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... "Fouquet was twice attacked at Landshut; but made a lucky figure both times. Attack first was by Deville: attack second by Harsch. Early in July, not long after Friedrich had left for Schmottseifen, rash Deville (a rash creature, and then again a laggard, swift where he should be slow, and VICE VERSA) again made trial on Landshut and Fouquet; but was beautifully dealt with; taken in rear, in flank, or I forget how taken, but sent galloping through the Passes again, with a loss of many Prisoners, most of his furnitures, and all ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... kirsch. The maire was a young man, spare and vehement. He talked with a headlong impetuosity which caused him to be always hot, and his hair limp and errant; and at the end of each sentence there were so many laggard halves of words to come out together, with so little breath to bring them out, that he eventuated in a stuttering scream. His clothes were of such a description, that the most speculative Israelite would not have gone beyond ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... manager, Dunn, but his eyes were not yet opened. He could see the $75 a month very plainly, but he could not comprehend the eight long years of service that had made Dunn's salary what it was—and that had made him the laggard he was. Dunn had not entirely lost ambition, any more than a hundred Dunns in every bank to-day have lost it; but eight years' specialty service makes a young man useless for anything else but his specialty, and when he does muster enough strength to sit up ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... mirth of the threshing-floors with the shout of battle, and swept away the year's harvest. The banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestral foes. Perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw as he was, he, and not the morbid laggard at Gibeah, who was only stirred to action by mad jealousy, was the sword of Israel. The little band bursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered Philistines, recaptures the cattle which like moss troopers ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... the pin having been neglected in the furious haste, and swinging free, fell crashing through the timbers upon the scurrying, scrambling men below. On its way it swept off the middle bent Rory, who was madly entreating a laggard to drop to the earth, but who, flung by good fortune against a brace, clung there. On the plate went in its path of destruction, missing several men by hairs' breadths, but striking at last with smashing cruel force across the ankle of poor little Ben Fallows, in the act of sliding ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... and you find a Tartar," said West, laughing too. "When I finally caught you, laggard that I was, you looked as if ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that idly fold, And lips that woo the reed's accord, When laggard Time the hour has tolled For true with false and new with old To fight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... After Sim had seen him safely in the distance he went with laggard step toward the door ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... in such a case the wholesomest were sleep. And so the drums beat, in made fits, and the stormbells peal. Saint-Antoine itself does but draw out and draw in; Commandant Santerre, over there, cannot believe that the Marseillese and Saint Marceau will march. Thou laggard sonorous Beer-vat, with the loud voice and timber head, is it time now to palter? Alsatian Westermann clutches him by the throat with drawn sabre: whereupon the Timber-headed believes. In this manner wanes the slow night; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... for brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Eske river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... third day passed without any news of Maganga. Accordingly, Shaw and Bombay were sent to hurry him up by all means. On the fourth morning Shaw and Bombay returned, followed by the procrastinating Maganga and his laggard people. Questions only elicited an excuse that his men had been too sick, and he had feared to tax their strength before they were quite equal to stand the fatigue. Moreover he suggested that as they would be compelled to stay one day more at the camp, I might ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... to play a low, dreamy air, which stole into his heart and riveted his laggard feet still more to the room ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... eyes, and also "a mountainous me." It is very probable poor Edgar Poe has had his faults exaggerated by those who suffered from the critical superiority of his intellect; since some of those notices of him which tend most to fix his character as a reprobate, and appear in a laggard way in the English periodicals, were probably written by some of his own countrymen. It was a painful consciousness of this literary revenge that made H.W. Herbert, in his last agony, call on his brother-penmen for mercy on his remains, and that induces many of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... home—my work with them was done. Now I could go to her, and with a sprig of laurel to lay upon my brow, could silence stinging tongues while I worked quietly on at home. Home! never would I leave its blessed roof again. Oh, how my longing heart hurried my laggard feet. I did not write; no pen should cheat my tongue of the blessed story. I wished to feel her arms, see her smile, catch her heart-beat while I told her. God! I whispered His name softly in gratitude and love. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... the villagers would be about the roads for an hour or more, and it would be well to delay on the island, and he chose a high rock to sit upon. His hand ran the water off his hard thighs, and then off his long, thin arms, and he watched the laggard moon rising slowly in the dusky night, like a duck from the marshes. Supporting himself with one arm, he let himself down the rock and dabbled his foot in the water, and the splashing of the water reminded ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... so warmly of the good influence which the ex-Dissenting or Protestant sects have exercised in Australia, it must not be supposed that the Church has been altogether a laggard. Probably no section of the English clergy has worked harder and more manfully than that which has been stationed in Australia. It is no fault of theirs if their sphere has been limited and their good influence less effective than that of their rivals. But ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... to appear a cipher among them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with my school-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood or inclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company I was lower than the least of them; in my solitude, at their head I captured the universe. Daily, to and fro, for two or three years I journeyed between my home and this school, with a couple of two-mile walks and a couple of train ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Delaware Indians show their advance from their early home in central Canada southward to the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay to have been a slow zigzag movement, interrupted by frequent long halts, leaving behind one laggard group here and sending out an offshoot there, who formed new tribes and thereby diversified the stock.[132] It was an aimless wandering, without destination and purpose other than to find a pleasanter habitat. The Vandals appear first ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... expressive dumbshow. But when the trial of the King came on, he took a bold and dangerous share in the proceedings, which destroyed what little popularity the ruin of his federal schemes had left him, and came near costing him his head. He was already so great a laggard behind the revolutionary march, that he did not suspect the determination of the Mountain to put the King to death. Louis was guilty, no doubt, Paine thought,—but not of any great crime. Banishment for life, or until ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... that I'm not a man, or a laggard in love; but I'd like to know what you'd do to a girl dumb with grief over the recent loss of her mother, who was her only relative worth counting, sick from God knows what exposure and privation, and now a dying relative on her hands. What ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... seemed to him, as alone afar he lay, With the Nile to watch for laggard friends, fierce foes to hold at bay; Though the tired red lines toiled onward up the Cataracts, and we Dreamed of the shout of the rescuing host his eyes should ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... Deane, we have gossiped too long. I am a laggard this morning; but before starting work, I have a few serious ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... and knew, therefore, that their word should not return unto them void, but waited for some far future day when happier harvesters should come bringing their sheaves with them. How looks the promise now? A beneficent Providence has outstripped our laggard hopes. The work which we had so summarily given over to the wiser generations behind us is rapidly approaching completion beneath the strokes of a few sharp, short years of our own. Slavery, which was apologized ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... on his way some of the hotel servants, who even thus early had commenced work, for your industrious Frenchman is no laggard in the morning. Going to the hall-porter's office he found that functionary snoring peacefully. The poor fellow was evidently tired out, and twenty telephone bells might have jangled in his ears without ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... resolute, as though a revelation had come to them overnight, and so now they know what to do, undiverted by any doubt. There is a brief glimpse of a downcast face looking as though it had just chanted the Dies Irae through the mouthfuls of a hurried breakfast; and once more this laggard is passed in the day's race towards the higher peak. The reproof goes home. It justly humiliates. But the weather is only a little west of south for one of the last fair days of the year; and the gloom of the yew in the churchyard—which stands over the obscure headstone of a man named Puplett—that ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... a finer sight. A band of antelope sprang forward with their white sterns shining. Of all the quadrupeds on the Plains, the antelope is the speediest. The greyhound can catch the hare; but is left a hopeless laggard by the swift-footed courser. No mounted Indian ever dreamed of overtaking the antelope in open chase. In speed it stands the highest in the West. Jim had often wished to match his steed against these plains-born coursers; but, hitherto, although antelope were often ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... tempestuously in upon the shivering city. Chill and keen out of the northeast came the air that hinted not at all of spring, but urgently of winter. The people in the streets walked briskly, with no laggard steps; they were accustomed to this sort of untimely treatment from the New England climate, and they had no intention of being betrayed thereby into pondering over southern lands or sunny vineclad hillsides where summer always lingered. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... in front was no laggard. Whether she increased her speed at sight of the light which was seemingly hustling down the river after her, or whether she simply held her former rate, she was going at a tremendous pace. Soon leaving Long Ledge on their right, the pursuer ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... darkened for a moment, for she bore no kindness just then to the laggard in war. Then her ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... laggard glance Reach to an arrow's flight, that day They shall behold, and not in trance, The region "very ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... van Of earth's great army, mingling with the best And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud The battle-cries that yesterday have led The host of Truth to victory, but to-day Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave, He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has made This world a strife of atoms and of spheres; With every breath I sigh myself away And take my tribute from the wandering wind To fan the flame of life's consuming fire; So, while my thought has life, it needs ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... endears, If they would lay no more lilies on biers— Let them say! For we are swift to enchant and tire Time's will! Our feet are wiser than all desire, Our song is better than faith or fame; To whom it is given no ill e'er came, Who has it not grows chill! Who has it not grows laggard and lame, Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre, Smitten and never still!... Last night ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... a weaker man would have thrown up his office or abandoned his post. Washington stuck to his task. If Howe would but remain inactive, the laggard country would in time retrieve itself. As a matter of fact, many of the soldiers, after a brief period of liberty, returned of their own accord to the standard. We find at least one case in the diary of David How, which, in addition to revealing his actions, ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... dust over the herd, and that the wagon was just behind, because the wind that day was blowing from the southwest, and also because the oxen did not walk as fast as the herd. In the distance he saw the "Drag" moving lazily along after the dust-cloud, with barefooted niggers driving the laggard cattle and singing dolefully as they walked. Emphatically Buddy ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... you are carrying on their business or their benevolence at a pace which drains the life out of you, resolutely take a slower pace; be called a laggard, make less money, accomplish less work than they, but be what you were meant to be and can be. You have your natural limit of power as much as an engine,—ten-horse power, or twenty, or a hundred. You are fit to do certain kinds of work, and you need a certain kind and ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... escape by the stairs on the further side. But the window was heavily barred. Yet again, if I went forth by the door, and lurked on the postern stair, there was Robin Lindsay's dirk to reckon with, when he came, a laggard, to ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... an effort to remember a man of his acquaintance who possessed a lower lip like that of the man opposite him, eyes with the same expression in them, and a nose that was similar. He did not succeed, for memory was laggard, or his imagination was playing him a trick. He had worried over the man's face since the first time ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... concealed by the clerk's desk to wait her appearance. This required longer than anticipated, and fearing lest he might have missed the departure entirely, he was about to question the busy Thomas, when he beheld Hawley enter hurriedly from the street and run up the stairs. He then had been the laggard. All the better, as he would now have no opportunity to unfold his tale to the lady, as it would be necessary for them to hurry to the theatre. Whatever the nature of the revelation it would have to wait until the walk home. The excitement of the adventure was already creeping into Keith's ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... The laggard winter ebbed so slow With freezing rain and melting snow, It seemed as if the earth would stay Forever where the tide was low, In sodden green ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... bless our native soil, Far from these acres keep ill luck away! No withered ears the reaper's task to spoil! Nor swift wolf on our laggard lambs ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... he still contributed vigorous and timely articles to the editorial columns of this same journal. He was grievously hurt by the gratuitous affront to which he had been so rudely subjected, but all he said was, "I may be superfluous, but no one can truthfully say I ever was a laggard." ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... congested branches until in a little time it rose a coralline shape of many feet in height. Compared with such a growth the terrestrial puff-ball, which will sometimes swell a foot in diameter in a single night, would be a hopeless laggard. But then the puff-ball grows against a gravitational pull six times that of the moon. Beyond, out of gullies and flats that had been hidden from us, but not from the quickening sun, over reefs and banks of shining rock, a bristling beard of spiky ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... as he bowed to the Fool-Killer. "I have often heard your name mentioned, but 'tis said in the world that you are a laggard in your duty." ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... One night. He bade farewell to Ruth; and when Above the seas the bare-browed dawn arose, While the last laggard drops ran off the eaves, He dressed, but took some customary garb On his arm; stole swiftly to the sands; and there Cast clown his garments by the ancient heap Of stones. At first brief pause he made, and thought: "And thus I play, to win perchance a tear From her whom, first, to save ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... be a laggard," the girl added, "and unless you can duly excuse yourself, shall have naught to say ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... no laggard. On they went, threading their way through the ranks of the Highland army, now getting mixed up with Balmawhapple's horsemen, who, careless of discipline, went spurring through the throng amid the curses of the Highlanders. For the first time Edward saw with astonishment that more than ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... main strength and brute force employing men and horses after the custom of the ancients when more than thirty-seven hundred years ago King Menes, son of Cham reigned in Egypt, who albeit surnamed Mizrain the Laggard, yet was the first king of the first dynasty of the ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... singing or a gesture Seen from afar gospell'd them of love; And no more than the mere announcement had. Ah, but all these to mine were kindly dealing; For not till they'd trepann'd him out of life Did he, poor laggard, come to claim my soul.— O my love, but your ears played you falsely When they were taken by Death's ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... mind HIM." In reality Filgee pere, a widower of two years' standing, had tacitly allowed the discipline of his family to devolve upon Rupert. Remembering this, the master could only say, "Very well," and good-naturedly dismiss the pupil to his seat and the subject from his mind. The last laggard had just slipped in, the master had glanced over the occupied benches with his hand upon his warning bell, when there was a quick step on the gravel, a flutter of skirts like the sound of alighting birds, and a ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... was hard on his heels. With danger abroad he was no laggard. Joan—poor little Joan! And there were miles to be covered before her lover could ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... rain We never ceased to hurtle Came to their work again. The Forty-fourth is with them, That first its laurels won With stout old Abercrombie Beneath an eastern sun. It rushes to the battle, And, though within the rear Its leader is a laggard, It ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... "good luck" which urges villainy to its destruction, Vetch beached the boat, and the party, bruised and bleeding, reached the upper portion of the shore in safety. Of all this number only Cox was lost. He was pulling stroke-oar, and, being something of a laggard, stood in the way of the Crow, who, seeing the importance of haste in preserving his own skin, plucked the man backwards by the collar, and passed over his sprawling body to the shore. Cox, grasping at anything to save himself, clutched an ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... phantom of Pale Winter died, Methought the Voice of Spring within me cried, "When Hymen's rose-decked altars glow within, Why nods the laggard Bachelor outside?" ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... her gilding of its rudeness, the pastimes she thought out for children; I saw her nursing the helplessness which leaned upon her, and turning aside the contempt of pioneer women who passionately admired strong men. I saw her eyes waiting on the distant laggard who stupidly pursued his own affairs until it was too late to protect her. I read the entries over and over. When day broke it seemed to me the morning after my own death, such knowing and experiencing had passed through me. I could not see her again until I had command ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood |
