"Precarious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... getting on the verge of the moors. Still he was entirely ignorant as to the direction. The clouds then burst with a violence which their threatening aspect had long foretold, and in an instant Smyth was drenched to the skin; the ground became slippery, and the footing was precarious. Still he burst wildly onwards; he fancied he heard the noise of running water—he redoubled his now slackening speed, and in another instant came to the banks of what appeared a small river. He dashed into the rapid stream, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... his wife to Scotland to visit his parents his health was so precarious that he had to hurry abroad before the winter, and he and his wife and stepson went to Davos where they met and formed a pleasant friendship with Mr J. A. Symonds and his family. On their return it was hoped that the climate of the south of England ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... authorities, and the prisoners at Camp Douglas were transported to Vicksburg. The doctors declared that Alfred was not in a state to be removed, and was left at the hospital. His condition at that time was very precarious. One of the balls that had entered his body could not be found, and the wound was kept open with the view to discovering where it had lodged. His agony of mind at the failure of his attempt to escape had retarded his recovery in a great degree, and when the information came ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... no repetition of this scene. She most ward off similar mishaps by whatever measures she could force or cajole her conscience into adopting. Rosa's state was more precarious than her account had led her friend to believe, or than the nurse's experienced eye had seen at their meeting. The main hope of her recovery was in the warmer climate and assiduous attendance. Above all, she should not be allowed to exhaust herself by talking, or hysterical paroxysms. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... dollars and a half, which he said he had put into the hands of the porter of the hospital, and which he wanted to get back. Several times he expressed his wish to return to America (of which he was not a native), and, on the whole, I do not think he had any real sense of his precarious condition, notwithstanding that he assented to the doctor's hint to that effect. He sank away so much at one time, that they brought him wine in a tin cup, with a spout to drink out of, and he mustered strength to raise himself in his bed ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... terms with the two Treaty officials, though all such intimacies are precarious; with the consuls, I need not say, my position is deplorable. The President (Herr Emil Schmidt) is a rather dreamy man, whom I like. Lloyd, Graham and I go to breakfast with him to-morrow; the next day the whole party of us ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... various ties in life, occupying such divergent positions in the social scale, had grown by contact and sympathy into a warm friendship toward each other. Their daily intercourse was now to be broken up, the moment of adieu drew nigh, and the prospect of future meeting was, to say the least, precarious. Was it strange that some sharp pangs of regret ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... Heaven, fair Alice," said the King, "that your objections to the suit which I am urging, not in jest, but most seriously, as that on which my happiness depends, rested only on the low and precarious station of Louis Kerneguy!—Alice, thou hast the soul of thy family, and must needs love honour. I am no more the needy Scottish page, whom I have, for my own purposes, personated, than I am the awkward lout, whose manners I adopted on the first night of our acquaintance. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... inferior beef of the lowland ox. In the glades and park-like openings that diversify the great forests of the interior, the spotted Axis troops in herds as numerous as the fallow deer in England: but, in journeys through the jungle, when often dependent on the guns of our party for the precarious supply of the table, we found the flesh of the Axis[2] and the Muntjac[3] a sorry substitute for that of the pea-fowl, the jungle-cock, and flamingo. The occurrence of albinos is very frequent in troops of the axis. Deer's horns are an article of export from Ceylon, and ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... he now though the path was dangerously narrow and rocky, overhanging unfathomable abysses of dark water. But Christina was in mortal terror, both for herself and Andrew. She did not dare to call his name, lest, in the sudden awakening he might miss his precarious foothold, and fall to unavoidable death. She found it almost impossible to follow him nor indeed in her ordinary frame of mind could she have done so. But the experience, so strange and thrilling, had lifted her in a measure above the control of ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... our Creator intended that we should be affected with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Margaret," the Rajah said, after Dick had left the room, "is a very precarious one. When Hyder Ali marched down here, eight years ago, he swept the whole country, from the foot of the hills to the sea coast. My father would have been glad to stand neutral, but was, of course, bound to go with the English, as the Nabob of Arcot, his nominal ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... A man of education, accustomed to easy means, would suffer tortures unspeakable if he were made to live in a single room of a populous and squalid tenement, and had to subsist upon a wage at once niggardly and precarious. He would be tormented with that memory of happier things, which we are told is a 'sorrow's crown of sorrow.' But the man who has known no other condition of life is unconscious of its misery. He has ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... the German craft was caught off his guard. He dashed upon the hydroplane. But as he neared it he swerved to the left to avoid a collision. It was what Jack had expected. Standing up in his precarious position, Jack took a snap shot at the pilot as ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... himself just as unhappy as the needy wretch who has not wherewith to cover his nakedness. The civilized nations of the present day were in their origin savages composed of erratic tribes,—mere wanderers who were occupied with war; employed in, the chace; painfully obliged to seek precarious subsistence by hunting in those woods which the industry of their successors has cleared; which their labour has covered with yellow waving ears of nutritious corn; in time they have become stationary: they first applied themselves ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... and his jaw fell as he asked the question, for he suspected that matrimony would render his situation at Girnington much more precarious than during the jolly days of his ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... was peremptory. He had other views for his buxom daughter, his only child, who would in God's good time become the owner of "The Fisherman's Rest," than to see her married to one of these young fellows who earned but a precarious ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... regards to their own country, further than upon account of the revenues they receive from it: I say, whether such persons may not be prevailed on to recommend others to vacant seats, who have no interest here, except a precarious employment; and consequently can have no views, but to preserve what they have got, or to be higher advanced: This, I am sure, is a very melancholy question, if it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... was soon, therefore, fast asleep. Just before I closed my eyes I saw the Indians sitting round the fire smoking their pipes, and eagerly discussing some subject or other—probably, what they should do with me—but, in spite of my precarious position, I never slept so soundly in my life as I did for some hours. When I at length awoke, I saw that a few embers alone of the fire remained. One of the Indians was walking up and down, acting as sentry; ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... stilts. A canoe would be tied to a toy jetty, and on the jetty a sad woman and several naked children would stand, with no show of emotion, to watch us go by. Behind them was the impenetrable foliage. I thought of the precarious tenure on earth of these brown folk with some sadness, especially as the day was going. The easy dominance of the wilderness, and man's intelligent morsel of life resisting it, was made plain when we came suddenly upon one of his little shacks secreted ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... one of the southern barriers of Paris, a palace was built during our Henry the Sixth's brief and precarious possession of French royalty, by the Bishop of Winchester. It was known by the name of Winchester, of which, however, the French kept continually clipping and changing the consonants, until the Anglo-Saxon Winchester dwindled into the French appellation of Bicetre. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... slave trade had increased twenty-five per cent. during the preceding ten years. Slavery was rapidly extending itself in the tropics, and could not be arrested but by the suppression of the slave trade. The foothold of the Christian missionary was yet so precarious in Africa, as to leave it doubtful whether he could sustain ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... have swelled the tide of prejudice until it has almost revolutionized public sentiment, which has given birth to severe legislative enactments in some of the States, and almost ruined our interests and prospects in others, in which, in the opinion of your Committee, our situation is more precarious than it has been at any other period ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... in restoring the top of the landau to a precarious stability. Dieppe handed the lady down from the box-seat and into the interior. The driver mounted his perch; the lady leant out of the window to take ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... distasteful Ingredients of the other. Our Houses are not so with GOD, as they once were, as we once expected they would have been, but he hath made with us an everlasting Covenant, and these are the Tokens of it. Blessed be his Name, we hold not the Mercies of that Covenant by so precarious a Tenure as the Life of any Creature. It is well ordered in all things and sure: May it be all our Salvation, and all our Desire[d]; and then it is but a little while, and all our Complaints will cease. GOD will wipe away these Tears from our Eyes[e], our peaceful and ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... enviable time of it. Their foothold in the hive is very precarious. They look like the giants, the lords of the swarm, but they are really the tools. Their loud, threatening hum has no sting to back it up, and their size and noise make them only the more conspicuous marks for ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... should make. This required some time as they had been much dispersed after the defeat of the 20th of August, and the great devastation committed on their crops and provisions by the American army, had driven many to the woods, to procure a precarious subsistence by hunting. Still however, to such abject want and wretchedness were they reduced, that exertions were immediately made to collect them in general council; and as this was the work of some time, it was not effected until midsummer ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... considerably ahead of the other, and in another minute it had approached within fifty feet of the ledge. The Inca in the center stood with legs spread apart and his spear poised above his head; I made no movement, thinking that on such precarious footing he would have difficulty to hurl the thing at all. Wherein I underrated his skill, and it nearly ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... great rapidity, and she was mistress of the situation almost as soon as she saw the Deacon alighting from his sleigh. He was not the sort of man to be a casual caller, and his manner bespoke an urgent errand. She had a pension of six dollars a month, but over and above that sum her living was precarious. She made coats, and she had never known want, for she was a master hand at dealing with the opposite sex. Deacon Baxter, according to common report, had ten or fifteen thousand dollars stowed away in the banks, so the situation would be as simple as possible under ordinary ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the former full of yawning cracks and holes, the party pushed on, subsisting on precarious pools of muddy water and fast-sinking native wells; until, on the 3rd of September, Flood, the stockman, who was riding ahead, held up his hat and called aloud to them that a large creek was ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... face. She had cherished a hope, born in the early days of their return to Craven Towers and maintained in the face of seeming improbability of fulfilment, that had grown to be an ardent desire. In the realization of that hope she thought she saw his salvation. With the knowledge of her own precarious hold on life she clung even more closely to what had become the strongest wish she had ever known. She had never deluded herself into imagining the consummation of her wish imminent, she had frankly acknowledged to herself that his inscrutability was impenetrable, and now hope ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... turned. Instead of thrusting Gates back upon the river, he would surely be forced there himself, in a few hours, at most. Instead, even, of dealing Gates such a blow as would favor a retreat, Burgoyne's situation was now more precarious than ever: it was more than precarious; it was next ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... persons about the Durbar, are such as few can or ought to submit to; and I certainly would not advise any one to enter such a service. Under whatever pledge or whatever influence they might enter it, their tenure of office and their pay would be altogether precarious, and the Resident would be unable to assist them in retaining the one ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... of any other country with which I am acquainted. The estates of Mr. Brown are the finest on the Island; and the hospitality of their proprietor is unsurpassed. Of late years, the profits of spice-plantations have become somewhat precarious, as the supply in the European markets has exceeded the demand. This has turned the attention of several of the leading people on the Island to the sugar-cane, which thrives here well, and is now to be seen covering large tracts which very recently were lying ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... 18th—spite of management that forced him to subsist on precarious captures—Longstreet reached the enemy's advanced lines, at Knoxville; drove him into the city and completely isolated him from communication. Capitulation was a mere matter of time; but disastrous news from the main army drove the Confederate ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... entirely upon relatives and friends, was practically exhausted. But fortunately on March 3, 1893, Congress appropriated a sum of money to defray the expenses of constructing an experimental submarine. Invitations to inventors were extended. So precarious was Holland's financial condition at that time that he found it necessary to borrow the small sum of money involved in making plans which he had to submit. It is claimed that he succeeded in doing this in a manner ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... 210. Honey, largest yield obtained by doubling colonies. The process, 211. May be done at swarming time. Bees recognize each other by smell, 213. Importance of following these directions illustrated. Process of uniting swarms simplified by the new hive, 214. Very rapid increase of colonies precarious. Mode of effecting the most rapid increase, 215. Nucleus system, 217. Can a queen be raised from any egg? Two sorts of workers, wax workers and nurses, 218. Probable explication of a difficulty, 219. Experimenting difficult work. Swarming season best time for artificial ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... in love, are not often discreet in matters connected with their devotion to their mistresses. I presume Drewett saw the boom placed so favourably as to tempt him, and he fancied it would be a thing to mention to carry a lady her work-box across a bridge that was of so precarious a footing. Had the spar lain on the ground, it would certainly have been no exploit at all to for any young man to walk its length, carrying his arms full of work-boxes; but it was a very different matter when the same feat had to be performed on a sloop's boom in its place, suspended ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... ago I had an attack of measles, which left my health in a precarious condition. I was placed under the treatment of a good physician who did all in his power to restore my health, but all in vain. I had dyspepsia and could not eat meat, vegetables nor fruit of any kind. I suffered alternately from cold and heat. At times my feet and knees would feel like ice to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... reward of obedience, as a dogma of belief, that doctrine is not their boast, but their burden and difficulty; inasmuch as they could never defend it. They could never justify it on independent grounds of deduction, nor produce their warrant and authority to teach it. In such precarious and unauthenticated principles it may pass for a conjecture, or pious fraud, or a splendid phantom: it cannot wear the ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... very moment when Miliukov announced the passing of the supreme power from the Tsar to Grand Duke Michail, when his words were answered by angry shouts in favor of a democratic republic, the position of the party became precarious. They had either to revise their own program and to catch up with the rush of the progressive current, or else to find themselves in the role of inundated rocks over which the waters flow. The announcement that the party would support a demand ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... of funds appropriated for the sustenance of the colony had been largely embezzled by those having the matter in charge, the people were soon out of provisions. Fishing and the chase were now the only sources, and as these were precarious, the colonists were soon on the verge of starvation. As the summer drew near the atmosphere became stifling, and the exhalations from the steaming soil, added to other causes, wrought death among the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... between places of business remotely situated from each other. Upon the railroad the regular progress of commercial intercourse is not interrupted by either high or low water, or freezing weather, which are the principal difficulties that render our future hopes of water communication precarious and uncertain. Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad through our country may be; however high our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of it—there is always a heart appalling shock accompanying the account of its cost, which ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... Lincoln. It was a definite plan designed to meet actual conditions and, had he lived, he might have been able to carry it through successfully. Not a theorist, but an opportunist of the highest type, sobered by years of responsibility in war time, and fully understanding the precarious situation in 1865, Lincoln was most anxious to secure an early restoration of solidarity with as little friction as possible. Better than most Union leaders he appreciated conditions in the South, the ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... instantly obeyed it is probable that the cable would have been dragged from its precarious fastening below. Then he instantly set the engines at work, and strove to turn the Ark so as to keep it near the point of descent. At first they succeeded very well, but the captain knew that the wind was swiftly increasing in force, and that he ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... which the young wives of America display, in bending themselves at once and without repining to the austere duties of their new condition, is no less manifest in all the great trials of their lives. In no country in the world are private fortunes more precarious than in the United States. It is not uncommon for the same man, in the course of his life, to rise and sink again through all the grades which lead from opulence to poverty. American women support these vicissitudes with calm and unquenchable energy: it would seem that their desires contract, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... treading on the nests and breaking the eggs. On this Island there is an old deserted cottage, sometimes used as a shelter by the lessees of the Island, who go over there to shoot a few wretched rabbits which pick up a precarious subsistence by feeding on the scanty herbage; on the roof of this cottage several of the Lesser Black-backs perched themselves in a row whilst I was looking about at the eggs, and kept up a most dismal screaming at the top of their voices. The ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... be made secure. For her to hide behind a wall, denotes that she will form connections that she will be ashamed to acknowledge. If she walks beside a base wall. she will soon have run the gamut of her attractions, and will likely be deserted at a precarious time. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... and it is thought, like all other, lotteries, there are more blanks than prizes; yet is it not made more precarious than it ought to be, by our neglect of that degree of precaution which we would be ridiculed for omitting in conducting our every-day concerns? Is not the standard of matrimonial felicity placed too low? Ought ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... upon a very laudable principle, but failed in the very beginning of their process. For, as I have before taken notice, the question should not have been about the time when these persons lived, but whether they ever existed. The fathers proceeded upon very precarious grounds, and brought their evidence to a wrong test. They indeed state things very fairly, and have authorities for all that they advance. But the traditions of the Greeks were not uniform. And if any Gentile writer, instead of carrying the aera of Inachus and Phoroneus, or of Dionusus ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... by a long unbroken habit of gay and affectionate intimacy with those younger than himself; indulged in without a suspicion on the part of any concerned that it was in its very nature transitory and precarious. For the first time he was led to doubt whether his scheme of life was indeed a wise one; or, rather, he began to be aware that he had never laid out any scheme of life at all. But with that unselfishness which was the key to his character and to much of his career, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... in it and paid the penalty, in spite of many temperate acts intended to conciliate people. It was not particularly his nature to behave that way, but since on account of Vitellius his prospects were in a somewhat precarious state, he did not wish to alienate the bulk of ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... of Scott himself only those who were actually on watch were on deck during this precarious time, for the hour was early, and the majority were asleep in their bunks below, happily oblivious of the possible dangers before them. And the fact that they were not aroused is a proof that a fuss was rarely made in the Discovery, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... minutes' wait before his ruse was rewarded. Being on the "fence" was a pastime compared to this precarious test of his muscles. The two men who had followed the first footprints tired of waiting before the house. One of them determined to investigate the other steps, which led into the house of their vigilance, from the other dwelling. And so he followed on, to the vestibule where he rang the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... precarious situation of the settlers, as well as desiring the cession, Congress urged North Carolina to amend the repealing act and execute a conveyance of the western ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... Division, and the 6th Division now held a rectangular strip 2,500 yards by 7,000 yards, with the head at Cantaing and Noyelles, and the rear in the Hindenburg Main Line. The 29th Division had a precarious hold of the ground across the canal on the right, and the Guards Division was having hard fighting at ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... have protected himself from gradual defeat by digging fresh trenches and switch lines and putting out new wire in rear wherever his front line was threatened. No doubt there were reasons prohibiting an attempt to rush the enemy on a grand scale from his precarious salient between Arras and Peronne other than fear of being 'let down' by the weather; though perhaps the latter consideration alone, from a Supply standpoint, constituted ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... of those precarious ladies who make uncertain incomes by writing full-bodied storyettes. In the most dismal circumstances she enjoyed a buoyancy bordering on the indecent; which always amused old Heythorp's cynicism. But of his grandchildren Phyllis and Jock (wild as colts) he had become fond. And this chance of getting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... property also may be taken away, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have no certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and learned men will be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theater for the contentions of politics. Party and faction will be cherished in the places consecrated ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... listen to me, for it's the last chance you'll have. I have you absolutely at my mercy. I've caught you! You are trapped!" There was no doubting that the girl believed what she said, and the Senator's affairs were in a sufficiently precarious state to ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... unofficial immigration agents by telling what they had beheld. And so the tide of humanity began to flow over the plains towards the setting sun. This means that the buffalo were gone for all time and that game generally would become a precarious means of existence, that the ranch and the farm would supersede the open plain, that settlers would need much guidance as well as protection, that the Indians would have to be taught to stay on their reserves and make a living ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... I shall have in my return; and that is, in my Nancy's recovered health; which was so precarious when I ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... did indeed appear precarious. The increased speed acting through the inclined aeroplane had caused the vessel to rise sharply, and the rope had raised the ring by which it was attached to the pole until it came in contact with the steel ball at the top, when it could rise no farther. Here the iron ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... garden, they went in to see Madame Hebert and Therese, who was making lace. Then M. Destournier preferred his request that they would take Rose for a while. He did not hint at any disagreement. Madame Destournier's health was precarious, and she had little idea of what was necessary for a girl, having been convent-trained herself. Now that Madame de Champlain had gone there was no real companionship for Rose, who was surely ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... districts, in the villages and smaller towns, the liquor traffic is absolutely unknown; no such thing as a liquor-shop exists there, either open or secret. The traffic lingers secretly only in the larger towns and cities, where it leads a precarious and troubled life—only among the lowest and vilest part of our foreign population. Nowhere in the State is there any visible sign of this horrible trade. The penalties of the law, as they now stand, are sufficient to extinguish the traffic in all the small ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... and hands outside China, a pile of golden hair above the face of a pink-and-white doll. Staring from this face, however, were two of the loveliest, most unscrupulous of eyes, and those eyes did more for Lady Charlotte's precarious income than any other of her resources. She wore her expensive clothes quite beautifully, and gave lovely little lunches and dinners; no really merry house-party was complete ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... have tempted me to spend the evening-time of study and recreation where I had spent it yesterday. My alley, and, indeed, all the walks and shrubs in the garden, had acquired a new, but not a pleasant interest; their seclusion was now become precarious; their calm—insecure. That casement which rained billets, had vulgarized the once dear nook it overlooked; and elsewhere, the eyes of the flowers had gained vision, and the knots in the tree-boles listened like secret ears. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... been the holders of temporary and precarious power, there are not many instances where they have held secure and absolute dominion," says Dr. William W. Ireland in his famous "Blot ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... himself up with the instinctive pride and self respect that comes of fresh clean clothes against the skin. Then he placed his absurd round hat on his head at what he considered a fetching angle, though precarious, and sallied forth on the streets of Chicago in search of amusement ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... House was abandoning itself to reckless mischief-making, Washington was striving to arrange matters by negotiation. The perplexities of his situation were great and varied. As a military man he knew that American jurisdiction was precarious so long as Great Britain held the interior. The matter had been the subject of prolix correspondence between Jefferson and Hammond, but the American demands that Great Britain should surrender the frontier ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... to the Ancre, and the Crown Prince, reduced to the position of a pawn in Hindenburg's game, maintains a precarious hold on the remote suburbs of Verdun. Well may he be sick, after nine months of futile carnage, of a name which already ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... we have no clue to guide us with certainty to the causes of their rupture. In after-life they were reconciled, though the intimacy of early friendship never appears to have been restored between them. (49) Scott says of Walpole, that , his temper was precarious;" and we may, perhaps, affirm the same of Gray. At all events, they were persons of such different characters, that their not agreeing could not be surprising. What could be more opposite than "the self-sequestered, melancholy Gray," and the eager, volatile ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... after another within a few days of their birth, as if his family were under a blight. When the Queen had advanced to an age which precluded hope of further offspring, and the heir presumptive was an infirm girl, the unpromising aspect became yet more alarming. The life of the Princess Mary was precarious, for her health was weak from her childhood. If she lived, her accession would be a temptation to insurrection; if she did not live, and the King had no other children, a civil war was inevitable. At present such a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... through a bamboo door.... Ah! Have matters gone badly with the Danna in Iwa's absence?" Mobei shook his head in dissent. "Alas! Ito[u] Sama, Akiyama or Kondo[u] San, has misfortune come to them, without a word of condolence from Iwa? Perhaps Cho[u]bei San, in his precarious life...." The poor isolated world of the thoughts of this homely creature was limited to these friends ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... troubles since she had left school. He related the story of his own precarious fortunes; and as they lay dreaming of each other, the sound of horse's hoofs ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... when Mauriri led him over the summit of the Big Rock, David Grief understood why he could not have done it in the night. Despite the accustomed nerve of a sailor for height and precarious clinging, he marvelled that he was able to do it in the broad light of day. There were places, always under minute direction of Mauriri, that he leaned forward, falling, across hundred-foot-deep crevices, until his outstretched hands struck a grip on the opposing wall and his legs could ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... that it is a division terminal, and at all division terminals train crews must reckon with that element in our leisure class which declines to pay railroad fare and elects to travel on brake-beams rather than in Pullman sleepers. Having been unceremoniously plucked from his precarious perch, the dispossessed hobo, finding himself stranded in a desert town where the streets are not electrically lighted, follows the dumb dictates of his stomach and the trend of his abnormal ambition, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Frenchmen were no longer executed for heresy in the reign of Louis XVI., they still were persecuted. The property of Protestants was unsafe, their marriages invalid. Their children might be taken from them. Such toleration as existed was precarious, and the Church of France was constantly urging the temporal government to take stronger measures for the extirpation ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the chaste connubial state precarious, And jestest with the brows of mightiest men: Caesar and Pompey, Mahomet, Belisarius,[166] Have much employed the Muse of History's pen: Their lives and fortunes were extremely various, Such worthies Time will never see again; Yet to these four in three things ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... falling, and the darkness was intense. In the sky beyond the crest of a hill toward which I groped my way along precarious plank sidewalks and across miry, unpaved streets I could see the faint glow of the city's lights, but behind me nothing was visible but a single window of Moxon's house. It glowed with what seemed to me a mysterious and fateful meaning. I knew it was an uncurtained aperture in my friend's ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... seen nestling beside the road, struggling for a precarious existence, frail wild flowers of delicate shades, surrounded by vigorous ferns and creeping vines, showing that Nature has her poetic moods even among these deserted regions. Now we came upon a crystal stream of water, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... how it had been administered, whether by accident, purposely, or with suicidal intent, it was impossible to say; and apparently the only man who could throw any light upon the subject was Doctor Chartley himself, who was now lying in a precarious state, perfectly insensible from the pressure of bone upon the brain, and too feeble for an ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... overseers, and the brutal surveillance of a company of Libyan or negro mercenary troops. The least political disturbance in Egypt, an unsuccessful campaign, or any untoward incident of a troubled reign, sufficed to break up the precarious stability of these remote establishments. The Bedawin at once attacked the colony; the workmen deserted; the guards, weary of exile, hastened back to the valley of the Nile, and all was ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... affair," went on the head master, "I have received a visit from Mr. Appleby. He states to me that some kind of chemical poison was administered to all his horses after his men had fed them In the evening. One of the animals has since died, and the others are in a precarious state. If they recover it will be some time before they are fit for service. Now comes ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... done loyally to strike his father? For he had struck him—defied him twice over and before a cloud of witnesses—struck him a public buffet before crowds. Who had called him to judge his father in these precarious and high questions? The office was usurped. It might have become a stranger; in a son—there was no blinking it—in a son, it was disloyal. And now, between these two natures so antipathetic, so hateful to each other, there was depending an unpardonable affront: and the providence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nettle-grown corner of a ruinous quarter, lay hidden till yesterday the Chapel of the Tombs: the last emanation of pure beauty of a mysterious, incomplete, forever retrogressive and yet forever forward-straining people. The Merinid tombs of Fez have fallen; but those of their destroyers linger on in precarious grace, like a flower on the edge ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... hell-fire. 'You know the Black Country, my friends,' he had declaimed,' you have seen it, at night, flaring with a thousand furnaces, in the lurid incandescence of which myriads of unhappy beings, our fellow-creatures (God forbid!), snatch a precarious existence—you have seen them silhouetted against the yellow glare, running hither and thither, as it seemed from afar, in the very jaws of the awful fire. Have you realised that the burdens with which they thus run hither and thither are molten iron, iron to which such a stupendous heat has ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... heart-rending scene to witness the lamentations of these slaves, all of whom had grown up together on the old homestead of Mr. Graves, and who had been treated with great kindness by that gentleman, during his life. Now they were to be separated, and form new relations and companions. Such is the precarious condition of the slave. Even when with a good master, there is not certainty of his happiness ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... and pressed on into Bavaria. Munich itself surrendered to the Austrians on the coronation day of Charles VII. At the close of this first act of the campaign the French, under the old Marshal de Broglie, maintained a precarious foothold in central Bohemia, menaced by the main army of the Austrians, and Khevenhueller was ranging unopposed in Bavaria, while Frederick, in pursuance of his secret obligations, lay inactive in Silesia. In Italy the allied Neapolitans and Spaniards had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... mongrel, to whom a painless death would be a blessing, is left to get a precarious living as best he may from the garbage boxes, and spread pestilence from house to house, but the setter, the collie, and the St. Bernard are choked into insensibility with a wire noose, hurled into a stuffy cage, and with the thermometer at ninety in the shade, are dragged through the blistering ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... hampered by those rules, traditions or scruples which limit the activity of British joint stock banks. They are free to launch into speculations which, to the sober judgment of our own financiers, must seem wild and precarious, but to which success has affixed the hall-mark of approval. Each of the six banks is a centre of German home industries and also of the foreign transformations of these. To mention an industry is almost always to connote some one of the six. Before the war broke out one had but to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... inherently degrading and repulsive. Yet no shadow of the sense of sin seems to have brooded over that bright and clear Greek life, the elements of which, except in the regions which our morality condemns, seem so intensely desirable and ennobling. In ages, too, when life was more precarious, and men were so much less sensitive to the idea of human suffering, one finds a light-hearted cruelty practised which is insupportable to modern ideals. Those wars of extermination among the Israelites, when man and woman, boy and girl, were ruthlessly and sternly slain, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been received as an atonement for the guilty confiscations by which it was procured. He had quarrelled with them, or they with him; his present possession was a narrow independence; and his prospects were founded upon literary success, always precarious, and then connected with circumstances of personal abasement, which rendered it almost disreputable. A noble family might be allowed to regret, that one of their members was chiefly to rely for the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... this swaggerer Mme. de Vaubadon received a certain Ollendon, a Chouan of doubtful reputation, who was said to have gone over to the police through need of money. Mme. de Vaubadon, since her divorce, had herself been in a precarious position. She had dissipated her own fortune, which had already been greatly lessened by the Revolution. She was now reduced to expedients, and seeing closed to her the doors of many of the houses in Bayeux to which her presence had formerly given tone, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... He realized that on his care might now depend the life of the girl he loved. So, he moved downward with increasing slowness, as the curve of the rock grew more pronounced. At each step, he made sure that his feet still clung. Then, when still two yards from the edge, he found the footing too precarious for further walking, even with the rope. A glance over his shoulder showed that Uncle Dick had halted a rod above. He looked closely and saw that the brim of the cliff was smooth a little to the right. To save the rope as much as possible, he moved in this direction, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... odds. But this did not worry Helen. Bo had changed much for the better, especially in that she devoted herself to Helen and to her work. Helen knew that all would turn out well in the end, and so she had been careful of her rather precarious position between these two ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... chief caused him and his neighbor of Daguao to burn their villages and take to the mountains in revolt. Many other natives had found a comparatively safe refuge in the islands along the coast, and added largely to the precarious situation by pouncing on the Spanish settlements along the coast when least expected. Governor Mendoza undertook a punitive expedition to Vieques, in which the cacique Yaureibo was killed; but the Indians had lost that superstitious dread of the Spaniards and ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... attempt at resistance he might make the young officer. But he hesitated a moment. Desborough was a lord, high in the confidence of Governor Dunmore, and a man of great influence; his own position was too precarious, the game was not worth the candle, and the risk of opposition was ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... wavering, precarious, undecided, irresolute; questionable, involved; ambiguous, enigmatical, problematical, equivocal, vague, indefinite. Antonyms: certain, implicit, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... such, for instance, as relate to the authority and genuineness of the books, and the persons, and characters of authors, and witnesses, require more application, and understanding, than falls to the share of the bulk of mankind; or else are very precarious in themselves, since we know that in the first centuries there were numberless forged Gospels, and Apocryphal writings imposed upon the credulous as apostolic and authentic; and there were in the Apostles times, as many, and as great heresies and schisms as perhaps ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... somewhat precarious; constant traveling had undermined it. They remained in Paris quietly, till the year 1826, when they started on a second tour of French cities till Marseilles was reached, where the young ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... still weak and nervous. The doctor advised that she be taken to the sea coast for a time. She protested, saying she was getting stronger, but I knew she was only saying it to cheer her father and myself. I could plainly see her condition was precarious. After a long consultation with the doctors, Don Julian decided he would take her to Truxillo, their former home. After considerable pleading, she consented to go. I was ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... right of a tenant to what his own labour created. The Ulster custom has done for Ulster, industrial as well as agricultural, more than is generally perceived. It gave in some degree recognition to efficiency. Tenure was there less precarious, less dependent on the landlord's pleasure; men were freer, work had more rights. There was less room for impulse, perhaps less appeal to affection; but when a business relation is based on impulse and affection, where rights are not solid and defined, the sense of obligation ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... religious houses, still in a great part of the North, West, and South of Ireland the law had not been enforced, and even in the districts where the English held sway several of the monasteries enjoyed a precarious existence, partly owing to the kindness of certain noblemen, partly also to royal exemptions. But with the gradual subjugation of the country during the reign of Elizabeth more determined measures were taken for the suppression of such institutions. According ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... had been the regular course of things, that any knowledge can be formed of what is afterwards to happen; but, having observed with accuracy the matter of fact, and having thus reasoned as we ought, without supposition or misinformation, the result will be no more precarious than any other subject of human understanding. To those who thus exercise their minds, the following remarks may furnish a subject for some speculation. Now, though to human policy it imports not any thing, perhaps, to know what alterations ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... buy such a business, got swindled in the most clever way, and lost every farthing I possessed in the world! I had to make my plight known to old friends who all either gave or lent me money. Still my position was a very precarious one. I tried an insurance agency, one of the last resources of the educated destitute, but soon found out that I was unfitted for work in which impudence is a prime factor. Then an extraordinary stroke of good fortune took place; almost simultaneously ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of hogs and cows is true also of hens. The common opinion that the farm-raised hen that has free range is healthier or happier than her sister in a well-ordered hennery is not based on facts. Freedom to forage for one's self and pick up a precarious living does not always mean health, happiness, or comfort. The strenuous life on the farm cannot compare in comfort with the quiet house and the freedom from anxiety of the well-tended hen. The vicissitudes ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... pleasantly in Assuan, though at length Mac thought they had about exhausted most of its possibilities. There were mosques, temples and bazaars; there was a wild race of desert Bisharin, whose living was precarious in those days of war, since they had existed by dancing weird, wild dances for the enlightenment of tourists; there was a museum, rather a mouldy place like their kind, where were relics of ages untold, and, much to Mac's amusement, a mummified sheep. He thought ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... something. I cannot say myself exactly what it is I am wanting in.... I am wanting, certainly, in something without which one cannot move men's hearts, or wholly win a woman's heart; and to sway men's minds alone is precarious, and an empire ever unprofitable. A strange, almost farcical fate is mine; I would devote myself—eagerly and wholly to some cause,—and I cannot devote myself. I shall end by sacrificing myself to some folly or other in which I shall not even ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... round. Then the gift-shadowing Christmas tree sheds its divine brilliance down the path of the coming year; or stockings are hung for Santa Claus (St. Nicholas) to fill during the night. Then the mistletoe becomes a precarious shelter for maids, and the Waits—descendants of the minstrels of old—go through the snow from door to door, singing their mellow old carols, while masquerades and the merry Christmas game of Snapdragon ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... Washington's spirit and recklessness increased. In a slight skirmish, M. de Jumonville, the French commander, was killed. Fry died of disease and Washington took his place as commander. Perceiving that his own position was precarious, and expecting an attack by a large force of the enemy, he entrenched himself near Great Meadows in a hastily built fort, which he called Fort Necessity, and thought it possible to defend, even with his own ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... except by the transmission of treasure, which made him eager to procure gold from the natives: But the pressure of this tribute was so intolerable upon the Indians, that many of them abandoned their habitations and roamed about the island, to avoid the tax which they were unable to pay, seeking a precarious subsistence in the woods. In the sequel, finding this tribute could not be paid, its amount was lessened ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... comfort me I prepared to enter. My first care was the jewels, so, feeling them precarious in my shirt, I twined the collar round my neck and clasped it. The snake-clasp was no flimsy device of modern jewellery, and I had no fear but that it would hold. I held the pistol between my teeth, and with a prayer to God slipped into the ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... situation was sufficiently precarious, even before Fenella's ungovernable passions threatened to ruin the only plan which he had been able to suggest. What she wanted with him—how far the fate of the Earl and Countess might depend on ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... you are to keep accounts. Our affairs are in a precarious condition, and in case of a liquidation, accounts are necessary, or one is liable to ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... easy stages from place to place, I at length arrived at the important town of Jarra, which is situated in the Moorish kingdom of Ludamar. The greater part of the inhabitants are negroes, who prefer a precarious protection from the Moors, which they purchase by a tribute, rather than continued exposure to their predatory hostilities. Of the origin of these Moorish tribes nothing further seems to be known than that before the Arabian conquest, about the middle of the seventh century, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... terror is the spirit of philosophical unbelief. Similar views are perpetually repeated in the eloquent but declamatory pages of "The System of Nature." But the remedy proposed seems to be subject to grave suspicion, as one that may be utterly powerless, or at the best, exceedingly precarious; for, first of all, the fears which are supposed to have generated Religion must have been anterior to it, and must have arisen from some natural cause, which will continue to operate even after Religion has been disowned. They spring, in fact, necessarily out of our present condition ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... deliverance seemed to grow more distant. Her father apparently was declining in energy and health, and his income was very small. She worked long hours over her fancy work, but the prices paid for it at the shops were so small that she felt with a growing despondency it was but a precarious means of support. Their first month in the old mansion was drawing to a close, and they had been compelled to draw slightly on the small sum of ready money still remaining after paying for their summer's board. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... in these houses varied greatly as the house was richly, or poorly endowed. At some of the smaller ones, the inmates would seem to have depended almost, if not entirely, on the precarious contributions of the charitably disposed for their very sustenance. At Beccles, in Suffolk, one of the Lepers of S. Mary Magdalene's, was by a royal grant empowered to beg on behalf of himself and his brethren. ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... went inside again to see who was doing all the whooping. The chief whooper, he discovered, was Bill Kennedy, the man whom he had very nearly thrashed. Mary Hope was looking her Scotch primmest. Lance measured the primness, saw that there was a vacant space beside her, and made his precarious way toward it, circling the dancers who swung close to the benches and trod upon the toes of the wall flowers in their enthusiasm. He reached the vacant space and sat down just in time to receive Bill Kennedy in his lap. But Bill was too happy just then to observe ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... figure, and marks of gentility in his limbs, and shapely brow and large, gentle eyes, poorly consorted with ragged clothes, bare feet, and absolute dependence on chance employment, the latter becoming more precarious as his age and stature made more demands for ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... has it all this time been withheld from nations even more in need of it than those to whom it was given? Are we to suppose that the salvation of these myriads was a matter of indifference to their Creator, or that Heaven preferred the slow and precarious working of the missionary to the instantaneous action of its own fiat? This is the question which scepticism asks, and which the great author of the "Analogy of ...
— The Religious Situation • Goldwin Smith
... she beamed, rising to her feet and holding her offspring clutched at a precarious angle to her shoulder. She stood with one hand resting on the doorpost and in her eyes expectancy. "Won' you-all ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... missionary, for England was then pronounced by all the Parisian authorities to be on the verge of a revolution. Though, I believe, Jonathan had the preference, for the double reason, that the love of Jean Francais for John Bull is of a rather precarious order, and that the American Revolution was an egg hatched by the warmth of the Gallic bird itself; a secondary sort ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Melissa, was the next object. I consulted with Alfred how this should be done.——"My sister, he said, (in our private circles he always called me by the tender name of sister,) I am determined to see you happy before I relinquish the business I have undertaken: letters are a precarious mode of communication; I will make a journey to Connecticut, find out Alonzo, visit your friends, and see how the plan operates. I am known to your father, who has ever treated me as a relative. I will return as speedily as possible, and we shall then know what measures ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, among the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of life in New York are so different from those of London that a story of this kind calls for a little explanation. There are several million inhabitants of New York. Not all of them eke out a precarious livelihood by murdering one another, but there is a definite section of the population which murders—not casually, on the spur of the moment, but on definitely commercial lines at so many dollars per murder. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... swirl and foam of the mighty waters the boat beat round to the leeward of the ship, and I then saw that the men on the keel were my two cousins and brother. They could all swim, and seeing that my father and I were ready with ropes, quitted their precarious seat on the keel, and struck out towards the ship. My brother and cousin Phillipe, after a terrible struggle, were drawn aboard, but Gabriel, who could not swim so strongly, presently became exhausted and cried out for a rope. The distance appeared too far to fling it, but with ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... the evil consequences that must ensue from the continuance of this practice,—since, by suffering the principal officers of the government to depend for the support of their dignity on the precarious fund of perquisites, they in a manner oblige them to pursue oppressive and corrupt measures, equally injurious to the country and the Company; and they accordingly assigned twelve lac of rupees for the maintenance and support of the said Mahomed Reza ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... simple flask of wine which they would have carelessly quaffed at one draught, were viewed both by parent and child as the saving and invigorating sustenance of many days. After having consumed as much as they dared of their precarious supply, the remainder was carefully husbanded. It was the last sign and promise of life to which they looked—the humble yet precious store in which alone they beheld the earnest of their security, for a few days longer, from ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... will not prevent the dismemberment of England. Home Rule, such as it is for England, means at best a totally different thing from Home Rule for Ireland. In the case of England it means a limited and precarious control of legislation for Great Britain by British members of Parliament. In the case of Ireland it means the real and substantial and exclusive government of Ireland by an Irish Ministry and an ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... the private stable to the trucking stable, and from the trucking stable to the last remaining decrepit boarding and liveries of the remote West Side. The tragedy of the horse is the tragedy of all who loved them. Danny was one of these tragedies, but he still picked up a precarious living by doing odd jobs at Mulqueen's and acting as a veterinary when called upon, and he could generally be found either loafing in the smelly little office or smoking his T D ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... chose our boys the other day—chose two out of a crowd of thirty or more that presented themselves. The disappointment of the others was pitiable. Competition is keen, and it means much to these boys to know they have an assured income rather than haphazard, precarious employment. My boy is called Kwong, and is a wonderful little runner, much ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... mother country was precarious and uncertain by reason of the war and the blockade of the Gulf by the English cruisers. Hence the good fortune and daring of the gallant Captain Martiniere in running his frigate, the Fleur-de-Lis, through the fleet of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the sleuth-hound of the sea tore towards the Hoorn, for such she was. Rounding under her squat counter, and reversing engines, the Capella brought up within fifty yards of the submarine before the astonished Germans could realize their precarious plight. ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... it, the more sincerely that his pupil had shown such aptitude. This sympathy for their grief, on the part of a stranger, attached them to him; and one day, when the young man was complaining of the precarious future of artists, Albert du Rocher proposed to him to use his influence to procure him a place at the government library. Buvat jumped with joy at the idea of becoming a public functionary; and, a month afterward, Buvat received his brevet as employe at ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... which no man but he would have held it on, neither submitting to the Queen, nor complying with his friends. He would not, or he could not, act with us; and he resolved that we should not act without him as long as he could hinder it. The Queen's health was very precarious, and at her death he hoped by these means to deliver us up, bound as it were hand and foot, to our adversaries. On the foundation of this merit he flattered himself that he had gained some of the Whigs, and softened at least the rest of the party to him. By his secret negotiations ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... nothing amongst us but our writings to distinguish us from the worst of barbarians." But to become an "Author by Profession," is to have no other means of subsistence than such as are extracted from the quill; and no one believes these to be so precarious as they really are, until disappointed, distressed, and thrown out of every pursuit which can maintain independence, the noblest mind is cast into the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... sent to take their places. Then Dunn himself fell, and immediately afterward Lieutenant Benjamin and his first sergeant met the same fate. The riflemen in the arches repelled sallies; but Quitman's position was precarious, till night terminated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the rider turned and saw that Willard and the occupants of the buckboard were watching him. The color in his cheeks grew deeper and his embarrassment increased, for he noted that the girl had faced squarely around toward him, had forgotten her precarious position; her hands were clasped as though she were praying for his safety. The aunt and uncle, too, were twisted in their seat, leaning toward him in rigid attitudes, and Willard, safe on his bank, was ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Washington, suddenly, giving a mighty spring of desperation. Alas! he missed his calculation, if he had time to make any, and disappeared from the eyes of the children into the dark depths of the well. Cricket, forgetting her own precarious position, involuntarily gave a little grasp after him, thus losing her own hold, lost her balance, and over she went,—and if she had fallen that fifteen feet to the hard ground below, it might have brought to a sudden end her summer ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... was hollow and the rest precarious, but the mere cessation of hostilities was not without its influence. As Nicenes and conservatives were fundamentally agreed on the reality of the Lord's divinity, minor jealousies began to disappear when they were less busily encouraged. The ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Lavilette, the present head of the house, had not married well. At the time when the feeling against the English was the strongest, and when his own fortunes were precarious, he had married a girl somewhat older than himself, who was half English and half French, her father having been a Hudson's Bay Company factor on the north coast of the river. In proportion as their fortunes ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... owed him money,—more than he could spare conveniently,—but that troubled him less than the thought of Dresser's folly. It was likely that he had thrown up his position—he had chafed against it from the first—and had taken to the precarious career of professional agitator. Dresser had been speaking at meetings in Pullman, with apparent success, and his mind had been full of "the industrial war," as he called it. Sommers recalled that the man had been allowed to leave Exonia College, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... minister, not his colleague. You are to make your way up the ladder by pretending to agree whenever agreement is demanded from you, and by voting whether you agree or do not. And what is to be your reward? Some few precarious hundreds a year, lasting just so long as a party may remain in power and you can retain a seat in Parliament! It is at the best slavery and degradation,—even if you are lucky ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... is added the necessity of frequent recoaling, allowing the hostile navy time to come up, it is evident that the active use of a "fleet in being," however perplexing to the enemy, must be both anxious and precarious to its own commander. The contest is one of strategic wits, and it is quite possible that the stronger, though slower, force, centrally placed, may, in these days of cables, be able to receive word and to corner its antagonist before the latter can fill his ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan |
