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Lapse   /læps/   Listen
Lapse

verb
(past & past part. lapsed; pres. part. lapsing)
1.
Pass into a specified state or condition.  Synonyms: pass, sink.
2.
End, at least for a long time.
3.
Drop to a lower level, as in one's morals or standards.  Synonym: backslide.
4.
Go back to bad behavior.  Synonyms: fall back, recidivate, regress, relapse, retrogress.
5.
Let slip.
6.
Pass by.  Synonyms: elapse, glide by, go along, go by, pass, slide by, slip away, slip by.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lapse" Quotes from Famous Books



... Now loud proclaiming their late, whisper'd grief, Be wrought at length? Perhaps to yield the city. Thus where the Alps their airy ridge extend, Gently at first the melting snows descend; From the broad slopes, with murm'ring lapse they glide In soft meanders, down the mountain's side; But lower fall'n streams, with each other crost, From rock to rock impetuously are tost, 'Till in the Rhone's capacious bed they're lost. United there, roll rapidly away, And roaring, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... to. In order that their legions might easily pass from one portion of this huge empire to another, they built roads, generally in straight lines, and so solidly constructed that in many places throughout Europe they can be traced even to the present day, after the lapse of fifteen hundred years. Owing to them, in a large measure, Rome was enabled to preserve its empire intact for nearly five hundred years, and even to this day one can trace a difference in the civilisation of those countries ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... other end of the scale have I had what I should call an inside acquaintance with that dusty but attractive class of people who go about on the high-roads drunk but enfamille (so redeeming the minor lapse), in the summertime, with a perambulator, lavender to sell, sun-brown children, a smell, and ambiguous bundles that fire the imagination. Navvies, farm-labourers, sailormen and stokers, all such as sit in 1834 beer-houses, are ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... I remained totally ignorant of the lapse of time, until, feeling the terrible pressure diminish, I opened my eyes and dreamily beheld the heavy instruments and pieces of furniture move gently away, and bump against one another as they floated lightly ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... him from her violet eyes—"a child-like way of describing scenes and incidents in a kind of graphic style which—What an idiot I am!" he broke off to exclaim, he had been feeling in his pocket; "I have actually left the letter at home! Please forgive me. But perhaps you will regard my lapse of memory as ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... 512), "commenced its return march, the cavalry was deployed across the Valley, burning, destroying or taking nearly everything of value, or likely to be of value to the enemy. It was a severe measure, and appears severer now in the lapse of time, but it was necessary as a measure of war." The plea of 1864 was the same as the plea of 1914. In a vivid sketch of Sherman's March, Prof. HENRY E. SHEPHERD, whose North Carolina home, Fayetteville, lay in the track of the invaders (Battles and Leaders, 4, 678) winds up by saying that the ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... copy my name." And Peabody wrote the assumed name of William Hickey, first with a stub and then with a fine point, both of which signatures she copied like a flash, in each case, however, being guilty of the lapse of ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... law, or of its machinery, hardly excuses a lapse into barbarism," he protested. "The discharged employee, in the case you are supposing, might hold himself justified in shooting at me; but if I should shoot back and happen to kill him, it would be murder. We've got ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... Pendennis—Boniface; or presented to him by his affectionate friend Thompson or Jackson, the author. How strange the epigraphs look in those half-boyish hands, and what a thrill the sight of the documents gives one after the lapse of a few lustres! How fate, since that time, has removed some, estranged others, dealt awfully with all! Many a hand is cold that wrote those kindly memorials, and that we pressed in the confident and generous grasp of youthful friendship. What passions our friendships ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... After a considerable lapse of time, the matron returned. "The chief in the cook-house," she explained, "says that the four sets of moulds for soups have all ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... the masses, without, however, disturbing the confidence in the traditional superstitions. The strange combination of primitive and advanced religious beliefs is characteristic, as we shall have occasion to see, of various divisions of the Babylonian religious literature. The lapse from the ethical strain to the incantation refrain is as sudden as it is common. The priest having exhausted the category of possible sins or mishaps that have caused the suffering of the petitioner, proceeds to invoke the gods, goddesses, and the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... lapse of time there seems little difference between the disordered dreams of unconsciousness and the actual waking turmoil of that night. At first as I came slowly to my senses there seemed only a sea of voices all about me, and a constant thumping, as of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... every part of the land, and of a most effective process for introducing local knowledge into the trial of cases, Henry had accomplished great results, and the only ones that he directly sought. But two others plainly seen after the lapse of time are of quite equal importance. One of these was the growth at an early date ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... after-career is part of the war's history, always strenuous and constantly rising. The fame which attaches to the Sixth Corps is largely due to the leadership of Wright. If he fell short at Cedar Creek in 1864 it was a lapse which may be pardoned in the circumstances. Sheridan retrieved the day and magnanimously palliated the misfortune of Wright. "It might have happened to me or to any man." The good soldier deserves the fine monument which stands by his grave in ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... however, but as a moving stream of impressions, paid out of the volume in a slender thread as we turn the pages—that is how the book reaches us; or in another image it is a procession that passes before us as we sit to watch. It is hard to think of this lapse and flow, this sequence of figures and scenes, which must be taken in a settled order, one after another, as existing in the condition of an immobile form, like a pile of sculpture. Though we readily talk of the book as a material work ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... he is also under treatment for lapse of memory, sir, or perhaps I should say for hesitancy of speech. I am hoping that presently he will remember who did break the violin and tell us. Have we your permission to ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... at all that night, no gossiping spirit disturbed his visions to whisper in his ear of certain matters just then in bud in the East, more than a thousand miles away that after the lapse of a few years would develop influences which would profoundly affect the fate and fortunes of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... another kind of illustration:—If you regard the whole series of stratified rocks—that enormous thickness of sixty or seventy thousand feet that I have mentioned before, constituting the only record we have of a most prodigious lapse of time, that time being, in all probability, but a fraction of that of which we have no record;—if you observe in these successive strata of rocks successive groups of animals arising and dying out, a constant succession, giving you the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... of these cases iron may be advantageously added to the bath. The duration of the baths should at first not exceed fifteen minutes; in some cases this even is too long, the patient complaining of being fatigued perhaps after the lapse of ten minutes. When this is the case, the bath should be at once terminated. It is in these instances not the electric current, but the warm water bath, that gives rise to the sense of fatigue. Later on in the treatment, the duration of the baths may be from twenty to twenty five ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... upon the deep valley, it burns also upon the heavy masses of snow; so that after the lapse of years, they melt into shining ice-blocks, and become rolling ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... no one can now travel through the more frequented tracts, without being offended, at almost every turn, by an introduction of discordant objects, disturbing that peaceful harmony of form and colour, which had been through a long lapse of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... mighty works of divine mercy which they wrought for sufferers from the evils of the world. But whatever their evidential value to the eye-witnesses at that remote day, it was of the inevitably volatile kind that exhales away like a perfume with lapse of time. Historic doubts attack remote events, especially when of the extraordinary character which tempts the narrator to that magnifying of the marvellous which experience has found to be a constantly recurring human trait. It is simply impossible ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... at times, fearfully. He kept trying to overcome the habit, and the result was that his affliction came and went in spasms. Sometimes he could talk as well as any one of his four chums; then again, especially when excited, he would have a serious lapse, being compelled to resort to his old trick of giving a sharp whistle, and then stopping a couple of seconds to get a grasp on himself, when he was able to ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... difficult for a Protestant to write upon this subject with perfect impartiality, however earnestly he may desire to do so. The lapse of two hundred years has not terminated the great conflict. The surging strife has swept across the ocean, and even now, with more or less of vehemence, rages in all the states of this new world. Though the weapons of blood are laid aside, the ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... Governor of King Philip of Spain had ordered Senor del Campo Valdez to besiege Leyden a second time and reduce it to subjection. They were aware, that William of Orange could not raise an army to divert the hostile troops from their aim or relieve the city before the lapse of several months; they had experienced how little aid was to be expected from the Queen of England and the Protestant Princes of Germany, while the horrible fate of Haarlem, a neighboring and more powerful city, rose as a menacing example before their eyes. But they were conscious ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... did a painful misgiving that she had hardly done her duty by it; while on the mother's heart there rested an abiding burden, made doubly heavy by a dreadful consciousness of neglect on her part—a burden which no lapse of time could ever wholly remove. Thus a stationary shadow brooded over that home where all might ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... gravely to his wife. "Old hon," he murmured softly, "Don Mike Farrel is a pinch-bug. He pinched Kay's chin during a mental lapse; then he remembered he was still under my thumb and he cursed ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... moisture, and yet at the same time, if not hydraulically compressed, will take up a sufficient quantity of moisture from the air to prevent condensation upon the surface of the walls. It not only resists the disintegrating influences of the atmosphere, but becomes even harder with the lapse of time. It may also be made in several different colors, and can be finished off to nearly a polished surface or can be left quite rough. Walls built of this material may be made so hard that a nail cannot be driven ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... his mind, chiefly owing to lapse of time, had been easier concerning Bridget. Without being demonstratively affectionate, she appeared as cheerful as ever, so that he reached Number 5, Golfney Place at half-past three this afternoon with every hope of spending an agreeable hour ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... (with an effort). Father, Brocklehurst has been so loyal to me for these two years that I should despise myself were I to keep my—my extraordinary lapse from him. Had Brocklehurst been a little less good, then you need not have told ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie

... turning their backs on Virginia affluence to invite the hardships of pioneer life, had brought with them certain of the cavaliers' instincts. A hundred years in the stagnant back-waters of the world had brought to their descendants a lapse into illiteracy and semi-squalor, but through it all had fought that thin, insistent flame of instinct. Such a survival was the boy's clinging to his hounds. Once, they had symbolized the spirit of the nobility; the gentleman's ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... of the wood it had eaten away. Molecule by molecule, in a mystery too small for human eye to detect, even had a watchful human eye been lying in wait to observe, the marvellous process went on; until, after the lapse of nobody knows how many centuries, the wood was gone, and in its place lay its exact image in stone,—rings of growth, individual peculiarities of structure, knots, broken slivers and chips; color, shape, all perfect. Men ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... not the slightest clew. It is difficult to conceive their motive. They cannot hope at present to dispose of the picture, which is known by reputation in Europe and America, nor is it certain that they could safely realize on it after the lapse of years. The watchman, who has recovered consciousness, declared that he has no knowledge of how the thieves entered the building. It was about midnight, he states, when he was knocked down from behind. He ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... the executioner and tuck of drum, and to be banished the burgh and liberties in all time coming." In bygone ages, it was a common custom to banish persons from towns for immoral conduct. A woman at Dumfries, for example, was for a fourth lapse from virtue sentenced "to ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... become so different from his nearest relative, the Mongol. The two are as truly distinct races as are the white man and the Malay. Nor could the Indians themselves have become so extraordinarily diverse except during the lapse of thousands of years. The Quichua of the cold highlands of Peru is as different from the Maya of Yucatan or the Huron of southern Canada as the Swede is from the Armenian or the Jew. The separation of one stock from another has gone so far that almost ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... suddenly, and Jack knew by her voice that her mother was a painful subject, and he began at once to speak of something else. He was a good talker, and Eloise a good listener, and neither took any heed to the lapse of time, until there was the sound of wheels before the house. A carriage had stopped to let some one out; then it went on, and Howard Crompton came up the walk and knocked at the door just as Jack had done ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... stage of moderate Strombolian activity; they were always accompanied by violent earthquakes; and all succeeded intervals of long repose. As the eruption of 1302 happened after at least a thousand years of rest, the lapse of six more centuries does not justify us in concluding that Epomeo is ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... their savings are invested is honest. In making up their minds, I implore them not at the present time, or at least until the question has been more fully ventilated, to allow their policies to lapse. Under any and all circumstances they should keep up the payment of their premiums, for the one thing especially desired and schemed for by some of the "frenzied finance" insurance companies is ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... too, the overseer, was well contented with his post. He enjoyed the confidence of his lord, and became independent. He married; and, after the lapse of a year, had the happiness to press a lovely child to his fond bosom. But the birth of the child cost him the life of her mother. Herbert promised to provide for the orphan, and maintained his word. My great-uncle was a bachelor, who had never been able to meet with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... as it was also visible that she too now and again met her husband's. For her as well, in all his pulses, he felt the conveyed impression. It put them, it kept them together, through the vain show of their separation, made the two other faces, made the whole lapse of the evening, the people, the lights, the flowers, the pretended talk, the exquisite music, a mystic golden bridge between them, strongly swaying and sometimes almost vertiginous, for that intimacy of which the sovereign law would be the vigilance of "care," would be never rashly ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... man whose father had been with Colonel Ray for quarter of a century, a faithful Irishman by the name of Hogan. He was honest to the core and had but one serious failing—he would drink. He would go for months without a lapse, and then something would happen to give him a start, and nothing short of a spree would satisfy his craving. It was said that in days gone by "old man Hogan" was similarly afflicted, but those were times when an ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... is perhaps not a matter of surprise, if in the lapse of time, which is unlimited, while fortune[101] is continually changing her course, spontaneity should often result in the same incidents; for, if the number of elemental things is not limited, fortune ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... problems of the world are not found here. They are found in the decline of spiritual understanding, the decay of moral standards, the growth of the vindictive and unforgiving spirit, the lapse from charity, the overweening pride of the human heart. With these matters the church must chiefly deal; to their spiritual infidelity she must bring a spiritual message; to their poor thinking she must bring the wisdom of the eternal. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... country were happy to have their thought and inspirations printed in its staid columns. Boston was a state of mind in 1830, and a good Methodist preacher who visited the city a little later lamented the lapse from the great virtues and the great ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... been a slip, a mental lapse on Mead's part which he discovered the moment it was too late, and then, being too cowardly to admit his fault, and having so much at stake, he took care to make detection impossible. It may have been that, but my idea is rather that probably it was neither quite pure accident nor pure design. I ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... lapse of many years, he died, there was great grief among the people, and his body was laid out in his own room, and the people were permitted to come and look upon his face for ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... something to you," said Eleazer, almost in a raucous voice, "something that you will be surprised to see." And the lapse in his speech from the Quaker "thee" to the plural "you" struck Mainwaring ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... the complexity of his thought, his decision did not take an instant. There was no waiting to offer the sporting opportunity to Harold. Virginia was not aware of a lapse in time between the instant that Bill caught sight of the bear and that in which his gun came leaping to his shoulder. He had full confidence in the hard-hitting vicious bullet in Harold's thirty-five, and most of all he relied on the four ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... the Armada in 1588 led the world to suspect the decline of Spain's maritime power, but only in the lapse of decades did the suspicion of her helplessness become a certainty. Meantime Portugal was for sixty years an appanage of the Spanish crown, while the Netherlands were at their heroic labor for independence. Thus when the Dutch came to prevail at sea in the early seventeenth ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... mandolin. So, on this one night in history, the music of another tribe had come to Taai. It just escaped being an authentic "tune." How it escaped was indefinable. The sophisticated ear would almost have it, and abruptly it had got away in some provoking lapse, some sudden and bizarre disintegration of tone. And the drumbeat, bringing it back, ran like a fever pulse in a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... severe consequences may ensue. As most of the popular remedies are rubbed in, they are of course worse than nothing. Be careful not to suck the wound as so many persons do; this produces irritation in the same way with rubbing. Who does not know that a musquito bite, even after the lapse of several days, may be brought to life again, by violent rubbing or sucking? The moment that the blood is put into a violent and unnatural circulation, the poison is quickly diffused over a considerable ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... principles of Montanism. It disappeared with the rise of a "scientific theology" such as that of Alexandria, the exclusion of Montanism, and the changed conception of the relation of the Church and the world, due to the lapse of time and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the State. From the fourth century it ceased ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... sacred as the mementoes of the Divine Man, and the counsels of the great apostles; a shrine in which men drew near to the supreme manifestation of God upon earth. But they became wrongly sacred also, as the lengthening lapse of time isolated these precious heirlooms of the Christian household into relics it was blasphemy to criticise; as the falling waters of the river of life stranded high above men's reach the thoughts and experiences of the inspired fisher-folk of Galilee. In the Dark Ages, when to read was a sign ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... Drona's divisions, covering it with a thick net-work of arrows and confounding the very sense (of those that followed Drona). Incessantly placing his arrows on the bow-string and quickly shooting them, none could notice any lapse of time between these two acts of the renowned son of Kunti. Neither (four cardinal) directions, nor the firmament above, nor the earth, O king, could any longer be distinguished, for everything then became one dense mass ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... disappearance from the shop. Monsieur Le Blanc was unable to account for her absence, and Madame Rogt was distracted with anxiety and terror. The public papers immediately took up the theme, and the police were upon the point of making serious investigations, when, one fine morning, after the lapse of a week, Marie, in good health, but with a somewhat saddened air, made her re-appearance at her usual counter in the perfumery. All inquiry, except that of a private character, was of course immediately hushed. Monsieur Le Blanc ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... at which Johnson's critical ear instantly took offence, and discoursing vehemently on the unmetrical effect of such a lapse, he shewed himself as full as ever of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... Giorgione's dreamy ones, and each carries out the mood of the rest of the picture. This one is full of power, mystery, and romance. Tintoret had modelled his colouring upon Titian and was by nature a great colourist, but too often he used bad materials that have turned black with the lapse of years. In this picture you see his colour as it was meant to be, rich, and boldly harmonious. The vivid red and blue of the princess's clothes are a daring combination with the brilliant green of the landscape, but Tintoret knew what he was doing, and the ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... gave them they went round among the sheep with a will. The majority of the afflicted animals were lying down, and could not be stirred. These were bodily lifted out, and the others driven into the adjoining field. Here, after the lapse of a few minutes, several more fell down, and lay helpless and livid as ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... noble eminences, and on the west, along which we drove, there is a part of the way a lovely wood, and nearly the whole distance a precipitous range of lofty cliffs, descending sheer down without any slope, except what has been formed in the lapse of ages by the fall of fragments, and the washing down of smaller stones. The declivity thus formed along the base of the cliffs is in some places covered with trees or shrubs; elsewhere it is quite ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... With the lapse of time and the general progress of mankind, we may, I think, perceive some such slow ameliorations in the matter of the brutality and superstition of the old religions. How far any later ameliorations were due to the direct influence of Christianity might be a difficult question; ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... humble efforts to impart some of her treasures to other souls. This early inclination for receiving and communicating religious instruction, was a pre-disposition for the grand work which the future reserved for her, and when, after the lapse of many years, her destiny had associated her with the generous missionaries who bore the knowledge of the name of Christ to infidel lands, she recalled the aspirations of childhood's days, in which, as she says, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... she said, once more serene mistress of herself after a peculiarly dangerous lapse. "That is why I shudder. What could be more dreadful than to fall into the clutches of that merciless foe to peace? He rends one's heart into shreds; he stabs in the dark; he thrusts, cuts and slashes and the wounds never heal; he blinds without pity; he ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... States and Great Britain which, attended by irritating circumstances, threatened most seriously the public peace. The difficulty of adjusting amicably the questions at issue between the two countries was in no small degree augmented by the lapse of time since they had their origin. The opinions entertained by the Executive on several of the leading topics in dispute were frankly set forth in the message at the opening of your late session. The appointment of a special minister by Great Britain to the United ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Strasburg still holds her place on the Place de la Concorde. The French language, although rigidly prohibited throughout Germanized France, is studied and upheld more sedulously than before Sedan. And after the lapse of forty years a German minister lately averred that French Alsatians were more French than ever. Les Nollets of Ren Bazin, M. Maurice Barrs' impassioned series, Les Bastions de l'Est, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Germany for the relief of Pekin were instructed by the War Lord to grant no quarter to the Chinese. On the other hand, the latter were to be so disciplined that they would never dare look a German in the face again. The whirligig of time brings its own revenge, and today, after the lapse of scarcely seventeen years, we hear the Vossiche Zeitung commenting on the diplomatic rupture between China and Germany, lamenting that even so weak a state as the Far Eastern Republic dares look defiantly at the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... such a feeling of hilarity in the ship, that that night, as we floated over the Sea of Marmora, a general vote was expressed for broiled bones and a regular supper-party. Punch was brewed, and speeches were made, and, after a lapse of fifteen years, I heard the "Old English Gentleman" and "Bright Chanticleer Proclaims the Morn," sung in such style that you would almost fancy the proctors must hear, and send us ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Polly grows much humbler to him on paper, which being instantly perceived by the mercurial one, his caressing condescension to her is very beautiful. She is taunted with Mr. Nicholas Frim, and answers, after the lapse of a week, that the aforesaid can be nothing to her, as he 'went in a passion to church last Sunday and got married.' It appears that they had quarrelled, 'because I danced with you that night.' To this Mr. Raikes rejoins in a style that would be signified ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... moments. Duane was equal to his great opportunity. But he could not quell that self in him which reached back over the lapse of lonely, searing years and found the boy in him. He who had been worse than dead was now grasping at the skirts of life—which meant victory, honor, happiness. Duane knew he was not just right in part ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... some calculation of his own, but the forecastle, more picturesquely, saw him as guarding constantly the heavy casket he had himself carried aboard. He breathed the air, walked briskly, turned with the German military precision at the end of his score of strides, and re-entered his cabin at the lapse of the half hour. After he had gone, remained Percy Darrow leaning indolently against the taffrail, his graceful figure swaying with the ship's motion, smoking always the corn-husk Mexican cigarettes which he rolled with one hand. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... For the moment I had gone back twenty years, and to-morrow was none so near." He laughed softly, as though his lapse of memory ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... the steward has brought aft the dishes containing the cabin supper. A savory smell issues from the open sky-light, through which also ascends a ruddy gleam of light, the sound of cheerful voices, and the clatter of dishes. After the lapse of a few minutes the turns of Mr. Langley in pacing the deck grow shorter, and at last, ceasing to whistle and beginning to mutter, he walks up to the sky-light and looks down into the cabin below. Gentle reader, place yourself by his side, and now attend as closely as the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... a similar fuse from the substance of the lung after the lapse of nine months, the patient having developed an empyema, and a chronic fistula, which rapidly closed after the removal ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... to the nation at large, after a lapse of 27 years, during which no Parliament had been held, writs were issued for the attendance of both Houses, at Dublin, on the 18th of May, 1613. The work of confiscation and plantation had gone on for several years without the sanction of the legislature, and men were at a loss to conceive ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... change from the handsome to the curious which the features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter months. Angles were taking the place of curves, and reticulations of surfaces—a change constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate to the primitive on Nature's canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step from the art of an advanced school of painting to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... of birds that are unknown to us, and then become the seat of wild chiefs of whom we know nothing, until with their axes they cut their Runic signs into a few of these stones, which then came into the calendar of time. But as for me, I had gone quite beyond all lapse of time, and had become a cipher and a nothing. Then three or four beautiful falling stars came down, which cleared the air, and gave my thoughts another direction. You know what a falling star is, do ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... was wet with tears, And his wrinkled brow was pale, As after a lapse of many years He stood in his ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... character in Shakespeare: he tells the truth about himself in a magical way. The passage I allude to is the first speech made by Falstaff in the Second Part of "Henry IV."; it shows us Shakespeare getting into the character again—after a certain lapse of time: ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... five years the longer as a giver of heat.[14] Whether we will or not, we have no choice except to face the tremendous fact, calmly set down by von Hartmann in 1904: "The only question is whether . . . the world-process will work itself out slowly in prodigious lapse of time, according to purely physical laws; or whether it will find its end by means of some metaphysical resource when it has reached its culminating point. Only in the last case would its end coincide with the fulfilment of a purpose or object; in ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... are still exposed to view. Here, after a lapse of 1,500 years, the visitor may tread the streets and pavements, handle the implements which the old Romans used, admire their well-turned arches, and see the paint and plaster upon the walls of their ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... at a time when the ancestors of the manufacturers of Manchester, who now clothe the world, were themselves covered with skins, and tattooed like the red men of the wilderness. But influences more powerful even than the awful lapse of time separate and distinguish you from that race. They were the children of the sun; you live in a distant, a rugged, and northern clime. They bowed before different altars; they followed different customs; they were modified by different manners. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... parchments, once so priceless, now carelessly scattered about the chamber, had lost their value, but these tokens of love had not parted with their potency through lapse of time. As by a magic power they called up in a moment a mist of memories which shut me up in a world of my own—a world in which the present had no part. I do not know for how long I sat thus tranced ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... night—reloaded, entered his store, and bolted himself in. He went to bed at about ten o'clock, and lay awake listening, for he could not sleep. It was not very long before he heard some person's steps close by his hut, and a muttering of smothered voices. The steps passed on; and then; after the lapse of about ten minutes, he heard a shot—a scream—and hurried footsteps running close past his hut. He lay in bed, determined not to go out, as he feared that this was only a ruse on the part of the thieves to induce him to open his door. But soon he heard shouts outside, as of persons ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... creature, who Hath power, directed thus, to bend elsewhere; As from a cloud the fire is seen to fall, From its original impulse warp'd, to earth, By vicious fondness. Thou no more admire Thy soaring, (if I rightly deem,) than lapse Of torrent downwards from a mountain's height. There would in thee for wonder be more cause, If, free of hind'rance, thou hadst fix'd thyself Below, like fire unmoving ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... of the writings of Junius, as exhibited by silent influence in the lapse of years, the schemes he proposed and the party he championed alike failed of success. His farewell letter to Woodfall bears date the 19th of January, 1773. In that letter he declared that "he must be an idiot to write again; that he had meant well by the cause and the public; that both ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... thirty miles from Kequoughtan) are seventeen [men] under the command of one Leiftenaunte Cradock; all these are fed and maintained by the Colony. Their labor is to make salte; and to catch fishe at the two seasons aforemencioned [spring and fall]." The work was allowed to lapse and in 1620 the "salt works" were described as "wholly gone to rack and let fall" with serious consequences. It led, it appears, to some "distemper" in Virginia caused by the colonists "eating pork and other meats fresh ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... I had been away for years. I would not have been surprised to find great changes. If the brevet monitor had come hobbling out to meet me holding an ear trumpet in his withered hand, the sight would have been quite in keeping with my own sense of the lapse of time. However, he approached with his ancient springy, businesslike step, as I climbed down from my machine. I swallowed to clear the passage to my ears, and heard him say, "Alors ca va?" in a most disappointingly perfunctory ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... suffice to explain everything in the Bible, such imperfection does not spring from its own nature, but from the fact that the path which it teaches us, as the true one, has never been tended or trodden by men, and has thus, by the lapse of time, become very difficult, and almost impassable, as, indeed, I have shown in the difficulties I ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza

... to you the power, in case two-thirds of the trustees shall at any time, after the lapse of 30 years, deem it expedient, to close this trust, and of the funds which at that time shall be in the hands of yourselves and your successors, to distribute not less than two-thirds among such educational or literary institutions, or for such educational purposes as they may determine, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... family, no doubt, came of a very old stock; perhaps we belong to the nobility. Our ancestors, it is thought, came over laden with honors, and no doubt were embarrassed with riches, though the latter importation has dwindled in the lapse of years. Respect yourself, and when you grow up you will not regret that your old and careful aunt did not wish you to play with the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... himself from point to point, and from moment to moment, and accounted for himself to himself without any lapse whatever; unless, indeed, his brain had played him false and he had gone out of the house again after going into it, and followed Tom and ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... the attempted robbery, Talbot had worn constantly round his neck. Strange and powerful was the contrast of the pictured face—in which not a colour had yet faded, and where the hues and fulness and prime of youth dwelt, unconscious of the lapse of years—with the aged and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... disclose the whereabouts of the ivory snuff box, in return for his liberty, what could he do, in retaliation? Hartmann would calmly deny his story, and would doubtless produce witnesses, such as Mayer, to prove that the detective came to him for treatment for some slight mental disorder, some lapse of memory and that the exposure to the light rays had been but part of his usual treatment. Clearly the doctor had ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... I say that all we deem sublime in the world's history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if mankind does not relinquish at once, and for ever, its vain, mad, and fatal dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism. England was great and glorious, because England was unjust, and England's greatest son was the personification ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... with a sudden lapse of tone. "Where is Madame Torrebianca's husband? That's the question. Where?" And he winked suggestively. "How can I tell you where he is? If I could tell you that, you don't suppose I 'd be wearing ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... this libertine Duchesse was mad; and certainly he would be a bold champion who would try to prove her sanity. But, apart from any question of a disordered brain, there was a taint in her blood sufficient to account for almost any lapse from conventional standards of pure living. Her father was that Duc d'Orleans who shocked the none too strait-laced Europe of two centuries ago by his orgies; her grandfather was that other Orleans Duke, brother of Louis ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... Louisa did not leave their country empty handed. Her Parents, 'tis supposed, gave Louisa money, but what sum, after this long lapse of time, is uncertain. Nor does tradition say for how much Marion sold his little farm. But it is well known that on their arrival in Carolina, they went up into the country, and bought a plantation on Goose Creek, near ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... question whether the little one would live, for so greatly had it been reduced by the looseness of the bowels that it had not strength to grasp the nipple of its nurse; the milk, therefore, was obliged to be drawn, and the child fed with it from a spoon. After the lapse of a few days, however, it could obtain the breast-milk for itself; and, to make short of the case, on the 25th of the same month, the mother and child returned home, the former having a very fair proportion of healthy milk in her bosom, and the child perfectly ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... devolves or lapses to the next superior patron, e.g. from an ordinary patron to the bishop, and if he makes similar default to the archbishop, and from him on similar default to the crown. If a bishopric becomes vacant after a lapse has accrued to it, it goes to the metropolitan; but in case of a vacancy of a benefice during the vacancy of the see the crown presents. Until the right of presentation so accruing to a bishop or archbishop is exercised, the patron can still effectually ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... and I heard the anchor let go. This was late in the watch, at the time when I was in the habit of going to bed; but hearing great movement and business on the deck I sat still, waiting for what should come; and after the lapse of an hour or more I found that we were moving very slowly again, and with but occasional movements of the screw. I opened my port, and could hear loud shoutings from above, and although there was no light of the moon, I could ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... down to the river-road. Allen stood fixed and motionless, gazing at the light, graceful form until the blue dress vanished behind the hill, and leaned long on his spade, unconscious of the lapse of time. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... essences have time to return into the body, he shall grind them to a powder, and mixing the powder with a portion of rice, consume it. After seven days he must repeat the observance, and yet again a third time, after another similar lapse. Let him, then, return for further guidance; for the present the matter interests this person no further." At these words the youth departed, filled with a new and inspired hope; for the wisdom of the sagacious Poo-chow was a matter which did not admit of ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... the situation. 'The principle of equality of races was,' he said, 'essential for South Africa. The one State where inequality existed kept all the others in a fever. Our policy was one not of aggression, but of singular patience, which could not, however, lapse into indifference.' Two days later Kruger addressed the Raad. 'The other side had not conceded one tittle, and I could not give more. God has always stood by us. I do not want war, but I will not give more away. Although ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... which is entered on the north and south sides, through fine and lofty arches supported by clustered columns. The bases of all these columns, like those of many others about the remains of this abbey, are covered with soil which the lapse of years has caused to accumulate around them; this of course much diminishes the height of each shaft. This beautiful gateway is flanked at its angles by square turrets, each ornamented, as also is the apex of the gable, with a fine niche, which has within it a figure of an ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips

... meet our subscribers again after such a long lapse of time, and we hope that they will patronise us in the same kind and indulgent manner as ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... he found the watch on his wrist ticking away as callously as though its owner had not experienced a prolonged lapse of consciousness. It told him that Eve would leave the chateau ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... may at all merit the public respect, the writer will take the trouble (though not at all in the best situation for it) to produce the proofs in support of it. He finds, indeed, that, of the persons whom he recollects to have been present on these occasions, few have survived the intermediate lapse of four and twenty years. Yet he trusts that some, as well as himself, are yet among the living; and he is positively certain, that no man can falsify any material fact here stated. He well remembers, indeed, that there were then, as there ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... With the lapse of years, Anna, too, had greatly improved. The extreme delicacy of her figure was gone, and though her complexion was as white and pure as marble, it denoted perfect health. With John Jr. she was still the favorite sister, the one whom he loved the best. "Carrie was too stiff and proud," ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... lapse of more than a century since the author's death, the Works of Dryden are now, for the first time, presented to the public in a complete and uniform edition. In collecting the pieces of one of our most eminent ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... usurped by a particular faction or pre-eminent families; then it was called an OLIGARCHY. And this form of aristocracy appears generally to have been the most immediate successor to royalty. "The first polity," says Aristotle [154], "that was established in Greece after the lapse of monarchies, was that of the members of the military class, and those wholly horsemen," . . . . . "such republics, though called democracies, had a strong tendency to oligarchy, and even to royalty." ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sky. In the civil-war my old home was destroyed; Of my flesh and blood many are scattered and lost. North of the River, and South of the River— In both lands are the friends of all my life; Life-friends whom I never see at all,— Whose deaths I hear of only after the lapse of years. Sad at morning, I lie on my bed till dusk; Weeping at night, I sit and wait for dawn. The fire of sorrow has burnt my heart's core; The frost of trouble has seized my hair's roots. In such anguish has my whole life passed; Long I have envied the people ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various

... religion of art. Thus she remains cold and chaste in private life, never permitting her heart to become inflamed by the ardent passions wherewith she glows upon the stage. She told me that she could never comprehend the lapse from virtue of Mademoiselle R——, a woman of such lofty talent: 'To fail thus in what was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... this was that Rex was once more growing dissatisfied with his life. Had he felt sure of Greif's future he would have gone away and would not have returned until a long lapse of time, and a constant change of scene, had obliterated what was so disagreeable to himself. His prudence warned him, however, that he should stay until all was settled, and Greif was married to Hilda. After that, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... preserve his sanity, he said to himself, for the sake of the child. Otherwise it would be good to lose all remembrance, to forget, to dream, to lapse into the nothingness of the vacant eye, the down-drooping lid ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... in accordance with an awful necessity, so that it is never in a sinner's power to promise himself 'It is only this one time that I will do the wrong thing. Let me have one lapse and I will abjure the evil for ever after.' We have to reckon with the tremendous power of habit, and to bethink ourselves that a man may never commit a given sin, but that if he has committed it once, it is all but impossible that he will stop there. The incline is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... had was that the General had turned up at Havre, and was about being married to the daughter of a wealthy banker, and carried a commission as Major-General from the Governor of Maine! And then, after a lapse of two years, that he had been travelling with a British nobleman, whose baggage he had run away with,—that he was arrested for the offence, and tried in Malta, I do not know with what result; but I have now before me a supplement of the Malta Times ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... mutton, beef and a mixture of gelatine and sugar have been put in separate vessels, these made air-tight and exposed for a long time to a heat of as much as three hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, so as to be quite sure that all living germs were destroyed. Yet after the lapse of weeks in some cases and of months in others, living beings were developed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... of these, by a curious lapse falls into the vulgar error of believing Purbeck marble to be an artificial product melted and poured into moulds, says: "The cathedral is paramount of its kind, wherein the doors and chapels equal the months, the windows the days, the pillars and pillarets of fusile marble (an ancient art now ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... SEA DEPOSITS. Remembering the vast amount of material denuded from the land and deposited offshore, we should expect that with the lapse of time sea deposits would have grown to an enormous thickness. It is a suggestive fact that, as a rule, the profile of the ocean bed is that of a soup plate,—a basin surrounded by a flaring rim. On the CONTINENTAL SHELF, as the rim is called, the water ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... Secretary, as called for in the charter, and subscription books were duly opened. There was no disposition on the part of moneyed men to subscribe for the stock and it was only owing to a few public-spirited men coming in and taking the two thousand shares that the Charter did not lapse. When the necessary stock had been subscribed, a meeting of the stockholders was held in New York City, in October, 1863, at which a Board of Directors were to be elected,—a strange situation confronted them, there being no man or ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey

... wish to marry anybody. She could well afford to allow the question of her fortune to lapse; she had at least five years in which to make up her mind, as to how she felt toward Frank Doughton. She liked him, there was something especially invigorating and wholesome in his presence and in his very attitude towards ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... great over all others on earth and to all ages of time? Ancient Greece, with her indented coast, inviting to maritime adventures, from her earliest period was the mother of heroes in war, of poets in song, of sculptors and artists, and stands up after the lapse of centuries the educator of mankind, living in the grandeur of her works and in the immortal productions of minds which modern civilization with all its cultivation and refinement and science never surpassed and scarcely equalled. And why in the three hundred years ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... with extraordinary or unjustifiable rigor. In this respect he supposed the condition of others, bound like himself to mercantile service, to resemble his own; yet every engagement was irksome, and every hour tedious in its lapse. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... a lapse of nearly two hundred years have his ashes remained undisturbed, and it is to be hoped no sacrilegious hand will ever be found to violate the sacred repository."—History of Stratford-upon-Avon, by R. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various

... occasionally expressed himself with a dignity and energy worthy of the greatest orators. Before he had been many days in Parliament, he incurred the bitter dislike of Pitt, who constantly treated him with as much asperity as the laws of debate would allow. Neither lapse of years nor change of scene had mitigated the enmities which Francis had brought back from the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence for virtue, nursed it, as preachers tell us we ought to nurse our good dispositions, and paraded it, on all occasions, with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... such forgetfulness is contrary to nature), and at the same time deprive us of the only assistance which nature affords, the being accustomed to them? For that, though it is but a slow medicine (I mean that which is brought by lapse of time), is still a very effectual one. You order me to employ my thoughts on something good, and forget my misfortunes. You would say something worthy a great philosopher if you thought those things good which are best suited to the dignity ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero



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