"Brink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it was now swollen by heavy rains and by the melting of the snow on the sides of Mount Olympus; and it thundered so loudly and looked so wild and dangerous that Jason, bold as he was, thought it prudent to pause upon the brink. The bed of the stream seemed to be strewn with sharp and rugged rocks, some of which thrust themselves above the water. By and by an uprooted tree, with shattered branches, came drifting along the current and got entangled among the ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... a terrified consciousness that they were in for it. In their blindness to realities earlier in the year, they were like that brilliant host of camp followers which, as Thackeray puts it, led the army of Wellington dancing and feasting to the very brink of Waterloo. And now the day of reckoning had come. An emotional reaction carried them from one extreme to the other; from self-sufficient disregard of their adversaries to an ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... parterred clear to the water's brink. Horses enough to stock a king's equerry. Grooms and postilions in full rig. Wine cellars enough to make a whole legislature drunk. New York finances and New York politics in his vest pocket. He winked, and men in high place fell. He lifted his ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... containing 7,000 signatures. These were of course only legitimate modes of expressing the wants of the people; but, unhappily, quite independent of the action of the popular leaders, the country in some parts was so disturbed, so closely on the brink of insurrection, that ministers found themselves obliged twice during the course of the year to resort to the almost unprecedented measure of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, on the first occasion at the end of February, and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... had fallen into contempt, at least for the present. Even "our fellows" would not have spirit enough to strike the blow; besides, the terrible gulf from which Shuffles had just escaped was too vivid in his mind to permit him to place himself on the brink of another. So far the reaction ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... party burns so hot in them that it needs but a breath to kindle a conflagration. That spirit, whose excesses had, several times in the past, brought the fundamental principles of the Constitution into question, and the country itself to the brink of ruin, was once again at work. Former friends had become deadly enemies: the community was rent with dissensions and poisoned with suspicions. Preposterous falsehoods were freely scattered and readily snatched at on both sides: the side ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Eulalie's ambassador, with her royal message. "If it is at all serious, Elvira will go home at once. If it isn't, I would like to keep her a while. She has refused the man of the mills, but I think he is trembling on the brink of another proposal, from which I hope ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... continued, "there exists a horrible secret which my mother confided to me on the brink of the grave, of which my father himself is unaware, and that no man in the world must learn. You are different, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Owyn to have been incalculable, enumerates a few instances of the misery he caused: Montgomery deflourished, (as Leland expresses himself,) Radnor partly destroyed,—"and the voice is there, that when he won the castle he took threescore men that had the guard, and beheaded them on the brink of the castle yard." "The people about Dinas did burn the castle there, that Owyn should not keep it for his fortress." The Haye, Abergavenny, Grosmont, Usk, Pool, the Bishop's castle and the Archdeacon's house at Llandaff, with ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... although I had been for some days wavering upon the brink of these conclusions in a quiet way, I found the old keen ardor of the sportsman still burning too strongly, and I had started out with a breech-loader, intent upon doing much of the Gondwana route gun in hand. It was not long before a thoughtless shot operated to bring my growing convictions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... stood on the brink of the stream and after poking about this as usual, the German stood upon tiptoe, apparently looking down into it, then kneeled at its base while Tom watched ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... former glorious Deliverances) had almost brought the Earl to the Brink of Despair; and to increase it, the Earl every Day receiv'd such Commands from the King within the Place, as must have sacrificed his few Forces, without the least Probability of succeeding. Those all tended to his forcing his Way into the Town; ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... occupied by the work of the Commission; and now yet another six were to pass in extorting from him the means whereby the recommendations of the Commission might be actually carried out. But, in the end, the thing was done. Miss Nightingale seemed, indeed, during these months, to be upon the very brink of death. Accompanied by the faithful Aunt Mai, she moved from place to place—to Hampstead, to Highgate, to Derbyshire, to Malvern—in what appeared to be a last desperate effort to find health somewhere; but she carried that with her which made health ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... that, there are inns of accommodation the whole distance on the different roads.... The provisions I would purchase in the same manner [that is, from the farmers along the road]; and by having two or three camp kettles and stopping every evening when the weather is fine upon the brink of some rivulet and by kindling a fire they may soon dress their own food.... This manner of journeying is so far from being disagreeable that in a fine season it is extremely pleasant." The immigrant once at ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... emerged from the woods, and Frank found himself on the brink of a rocky chasm, which stretched away to the right as far as his eye could reach, and seemed to extend down into the very bowels of the earth. It was so deep that his head grew dizzy, as he looked into it. On his left, and directly in front ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... on the brink of a deep ravine, almost precipitous, and heard the sound of rushing water beneath her. Large, gloomy trees outspread their brawny arms on each side of this gorge and lovingly embraced above it, so that the rays of the sun were again thwarted ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running water and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two minutes' further walking brought her to the brink of the river. Further up it came tumbling through the valley, leaping the rocks in a churning torrent of foam, a cloud of delicate up-flung spray feathering the air above it; but here there were long stretches of deep, smooth water where no boulder broke the surface into ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... kinds of native craft, carrying on commerce between the city and the country, and the ashes of the dead are cast between them upon the sacred waters from a flight of stone steps which leads to the river's brink. There is no more objection to a stranger attending the burning ceremonies than would be offered to his presence at a funeral in the United States. Indeed, friends who frequently accompany the bodies of the dead feel flattered at the attention ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... five o'clock, resolving to ford the creek, resume the turnpike, and reach Long Bridge at noon. Passing over some dozen fields in which my horse at every step sank to the fetlocks, I travelled along the brink of the stream till I finally reached a place that seemed to be shallow. Bracing myself firmly in the saddle, I urged my unwilling horse into the waters, and emerged half drowned on the other side. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... sprites and their nameless chief, and, as was supposed, accepting gold and silver from them; and blamed still more for not sharing his fortune with his poor parents. There were those who had seen him, on the brink of the mere, holding converse with the Evil One; they had actually witnessed the passing of the glittering coin, 'which fell into his hands like rain drops.' Clare's poor old father and mother did not believe these stories; yet even they shuddered when their son entered the ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... tastes and pursuits rendered more interesting to him than to me—I strolled on up the hill to the edge of the cliff from which the storming party of the Allies was thrown by the Russian gunners. No traces now remain of the bloody struggle which took place upon the brink of this precipice. Moss covers with its green carpet the ground which was torn up in the death grapple; and the nodding bluebell, as it bends to the fresh sea-breeze, tells no story of the last desperate rally, the hand to hand conflict, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... making a vivid contrast with its pale yellow, purple-red, and orange hues, leaned far out over the bluff. A mighty chestnut grasped with gnarled roots deep into the broken cliff. Dainty plumes of goldenrod swayed on the brink; red berries, amber moss, and green trailing vines peeped over the edge, and every little niche and cranny sported fragile ferns and pale-faced asters. A second cliff, higher than the first, and more heavily wooded, loomed above, and over it sprayed a transparent film ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the cottage, closing the window through which she had entered, and turned her steps towards the Mountain; and approaching the brink of the precipice, she took the apparel that she had worn from the village in making her escape, and which she had also taken with her on her departure from the cottage, and casting it into the waters beneath the Mountain, ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... go to Spielberg,' said the Prince; 'let him think of his family, of his adored wife, of his own talents, of his future career, which was on the brink of being blotted out as completely as if he were dead!' Confalonieri was worthy of his race, of his class, of himself; he stood firm, and next morning, almost with a sense of relief, he started for ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... reason, the old man, my father, sent me to tend his flocks. One night I arrived at the brink of the river to water the flock. There I discovered that a sheep was missing. I was heartbroken over this, and, not wishing to return home without my little sheep, I searched everywhere, but in vain. The sheep could not be found. I sat down and began to weep. ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... must not have heard. For Tom, hurrying along, his face crimson, saw the bird rise once more and flutter over the brink—and then, over the same brink, ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... we left reclining in the shade within a few steps of the accident, were immediately on the spot. Fortunate it was that they were so near, else the mother would have jumped in after her child, and both been lost. Several of the men approached the brink, and were on the point of springing in after the child, when the sight of the sharp rocks crowding the channel, the rush and whirl of the waters, and the want of any knowledge where to look for the boy, deterred them, and they gave up ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290 He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust. 295 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink. And gave the leper to eat and drink; 'T was a moldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'T was water out of a wooden bowl,— Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 And 't was red wine he drank ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... our whole destiny be affected by the mood of an idle moment; by some superficial indecision, mere fruit of a transient unrest. We lightly debate, we hesitate, we yawn, unconscious of the brink. We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly accept from sheer ennui, and "life," as I have read in a quite meritorious poem, "is never the same again." It was thus I now toyed there with my fate in my hands, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... rushed and roared in their strong surges over the ledges that made the Falls of St. Anthony; the long logs that had been, but a few months before, proud monarchs of the pine forests, sailed along toward this brink like sticks, then with their long ends balancing out over the rushing fall would tilt over and down into the rushing, curling, foaming torrent out of sight. But little else was thought of just then for we who were near were watching, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... very great fault in those who govern, if they do not care whether there be disorder in their States or not. The fault is still greater if they wish and even desire disorder there. If by hidden and indirect, but infallible, ways they stirred up a sedition in their States to bring them to the brink of ruin, in order to gain for themselves the glory of showing that they have the courage and the prudence necessary for saving a great kingdom on the point of perishing, they would be most deserving of condemnation. But if they ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... art, that the good-night kisses of the sinking sun might enrich her rosy cheeks and golden tresses, I sent her strolling down the winding walk hedged in by hawthorn and hyacinth to the water's brink. Here I gave her a cushion of blue-grass, and with the rising moon pouring its shimmering sheen upon the ripples at her feet, I sent her voice floating away on the evening air singing: "Roll on silver moon, guide the traveler ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... published, and were often quoted. He was a scholar and a gentleman, upright in all ordinary dealings, and strongly impressed with a sense of duty to God. Yet he had been deeply concerned in the plot for blowing up King, Lords, and Commons, and had, on the brink of eternity, declared that it was incomprehensible to him how any Roman Catholic should think such a design sinful. The inference popularly drawn from these things was that, however fair the general character of a Papist might be, there was no excess of fraud or cruelty of which he was not ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dodges and ways of thinking such as these that will gradually cultivate in you the ability to "stand and deliver," as they say in the decorative arts. For, speaking now to the amateur (if any such, picture-painter or student, are hesitating on the brink of an art new to them), you must know that these arts are not like picture-painting, where you can choose your own times and seasons: they are always done to definite order and expected in a definite time; and that brings me to speak of the very ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... love back to belief in love. It was a great thing to do, and Carey set about doing it in a strange way. He cast himself down in his degradation at the feet of this woman whom he was resolved to help, and he said, "Help me!" He came to this woman who was on the brink of self-destruction and he ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... cleverness in seeing one point after another, he began to quake within himself before the dawning realization that he had seen none of them, that he had been carried along exactly as Rosenthal had intended that he should be, and that if luck had not intervened, he had been on the brink of signing his name to an agreement that would have implied a score of concessions he would have bellowed like a bull at the thought of making if he had known ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in its descent to the brink of the fall, is separated into half a dozen distorted channels which have zig-zagged their passage through the cement formation, working it into spires, pinnacles, towers and many other capricious ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... them your own, your slaves, you have no idea of the power that is in them—hunger, that shows lights beckoning beyond the grave; thirst, that fills with mingled ice and fire; passion, love, loneliness, revenge, and—" He paused for a minute, and though I knew we were on the brink I was powerless to hold him. " . . . and fear," he went on—"fear . . . I think that death from fear, or madness from fear, must sum up in a second of time the total of all the most awful sensations it is possible for a ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... gasped, with a paper white face and fluttering eyelids. Jasper Penny ejaculated sharply, "How much, Essie?" In a moment, he judged, familiar with a potential hysteria, she might faint, scream; there were clerks, people, in the next rooms. On the brink of collapse she hesitated, twisting her purple ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the letter. And indeed, when they showed it to him, he could not deny it; but for all they could say or show, he would say no more than at first. Those who had him in charge thereupon brought him to the brink of the river, and put him into a sack, declaring that he had lied to God and to the Queen, contrary to proven truth. But he was minded to die rather than accuse his master, and asked for a confessor; and when he had eased his conscience as well as might ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... I just sit in the skiff, there, and I write what I see, on the machine: A big sandbar, a flock of geese, a big oak tree just on the brink of the bank half the roots exposed and going to fall in a minute or a day—everything ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... As has been seen, the Canadian political community was demanding both responsible government, and the admission of the French to a share in office. Sydenham had exhibited the most wonderful skill in working an anomalous system of government, and he had found himself on the brink of failure. His Council, which Bagot had inherited, "might be said to represent the Reform or popular party of Upper Canada, and the moderate Conservatives of both provinces, to the exclusion of the French and the ultra-conservatives of ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... then began to look backward, to see his life as a completed whole. He could now see life in its true light; for life does not appear the same when we look back upon it from the end as it does when our gaze is turned forward in the busy hurry of the days of health. When one is brought to the brink of the grave, life takes on a different aspect; it appears in its true perspective. We are usually so absorbed in the present that the past and the future have little place in our thoughts. Most lives are lived, not according to any plan or purpose, but according to the fleeting ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... White on a verge's mount, That swelled to show its burden dear, she lay; A sighing mist that partly filled the fount, And o'er the brink sought tenderly to stray, For her fair body pillowed soft the ground, Growing glad upward arms to clasp her round And of each grace take ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... beams. The level "bench" through which the stream meandered, the billowing slopes to the north and south, were bare of foliage and uninviting to the eye, yet keen and wary eyes were scanning their bald expanse, studying every crest and curve and ridge in search of moving objects. Only at the very brink of the flowing waters, and only in far-scattered places along the stream, little clumps of cottonwood-trees gave proof that nature had not left the valley utterly without shade and refuge when the summer's sun beamed ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... entirely different from its manner a moment before on approaching the nest with a cherry or worm, it is certain to be engaged in this office. One may observe the social sparrow, when feeding its young, pause a moment after the worm has been given, and hop around on the brink of the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... precipice there lay a long hollow log, which had been probably dragged there with the intention of making a bridge across the chasm. Overton dismounted, led his horse to the very brink, and pricked him with his knife the noble animal leaped, but his strength was too far gone for him to clear it; his breast struck the other edge, and he fell from crag to crag into the abyss below. This over, the fugitive crawled to the log, and concealed himself under it, hoping that he would ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... a crowd, as usual when Suleyman was with us. His voice attracted people like a drum, and the matter of his talk had power to hold them. It was a weighty voice of studied modulations, which promised wisdom on the brink of laughter. He generally chose some moral or religious subject for discourse, and illustrated it by what we call 'nawadir' (rare things) selected from his vast experience of life. By his own account he had journeyed to the world's rim, and had associated not alone with ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... had in reality been farther away than it had seemed. For several minutes it advanced, the tongues of flames towering in the air. A moment the livid wall paused as it reached the brink of the river, while jets of fire reached out as though striving to clutch the men who had escaped. Then seemingly bent on overtaking them, the flames leaped over the edge, devouring the brush and grass to the water's edge, where, loath to admit ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... man standing on the edge of some precipice, and peeping over the brink to the profound beneath, and feeling his head beginning to swim. He clutches at the strong, steady hand of his guide, knowing that unless he is restrained, over he will go. 'Keep Thou back ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... speed away, Has seen his oak and birk-land shrink, Where teeming cities on its brink Crowd in on Sherwood ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... the turning was there and he had reached it. Deep, deep down in his heart the man thanked God for His kindness. And as he read the letter once more, he wept tears of joy, for he felt that his deliverance was at hand. At last, at last, when well on the brink of failure, of despair, perhaps of starvation, this great ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... moments they walked along in utter silence—until they had reached the brink of the dark pool, which lay quite at the further ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... troubles in the world Were traced back to their start, We'd find not one in ten begun From want of willing heart. But there's a sly, woe-working elf Who lurks about youth's brink, And sure dismay he brings alway— The ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... though his lips moved, most probably in prayer. It was a melancholy sight to see a man in the vigour of his manhood, whose voice was strong, and whose heart was still beating with vigour and vitality, standing, as it were, on the brink of a precipice, down which all knew he was to be so speedily hurled. But the decree had gone forth, and no human skill could arrest it. Shortly after the confession and lamentation we have recorded, the decay reached the vitals, and the machine of clay ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... resolved to wrest the crown from you, in order to get it for himself and his descendants. The Queen, your mother, full of heroic resolution, herself had energy enough to resist the cabal; but more than once her feet touched the very brink of the precipice, and more than once she nearly fell ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... my own car and chauffeur over in half an hour, and you keep him as long as you need him," Cappy piped. "Only tell Sam Daniels he's faltering on the brink of the grave and send ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... few miles southwest of Cavite. Each morning twenty of the captured Spaniards were to be marched out to this pit and made to slide down a bamboo pole into it. The Filipino soldiers, armed with their newly-captured rifles, were then to stand around the brink of this pit and use these half-starved Spaniards for living targets. Marie gloated over her new enterprise. What sport! How she enjoyed it! The Filipino's marksmanship was poor and many of their unfortunate prisoners were shot over a dozen times before they were stilled in death. This bloody practice ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... Spring of the Huisache the song of the dove was all of joy. A youthful Indian brave of rare enchantment came into their lives and brought love and treachery, and the assassin's knife felled the Indian youth on the brink of the Huisache. "Flower of Pity," coming to the spring, found the lifeless form of the young warrior and snatched the knife from the wound and plunged it into her own heart. A little later "Flower of Gladness" found her sister and the Indian brave dead by the water's edge and straightway ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... been strictly observed, would not have produced a sum equal to the public expenditure. It was therefore necessary to devise other measures for the prosecution of the war. During the distresses which brought the army to the brink of dissolution, these measures were under consideration. So early as December, 1779, congress had determined to change the mode of supplying the army from purchases to requisitions of specific articles on the several states. As preliminary to this system, commissioners ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... nor any noise, nor saw they none issue forth, and much marvelled they that none should come after them. They rode until they came to the head of the forest and caught sight of the sea that was nigh enough before them, and saw that there was a great clashing of arms at the brink of the sea. A single knight was doing battle with all them that would fain have entered into a ship, and held stour so stiffly against them that he toppled the more part into the sea. They went thither as fast as they might, and when they drew ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart to see how quick a bound Nature has set to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... up their position along the brink of the hill and stood in a straight line about ten or fifteen yards from each other. It was a fine sight. At a given signal they started on their skees, holding in one hand their sticks to be used as rudders to guide them. They slid down at tremendous speed; suddenly I saw them ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... the same day their trusted leader, Sir Edward Packenham, arrived to take command in person, and his presence gave new life to the whole army. A battery was thrown up during the two succeeding nights on the brink of the river opposite to where the Carolina lay; and at dawn a heavy cannonade of red-hot shot and shell was opened upon her from eleven guns and a mortar. [Footnote: Gleig, 307. The Americans thought the battery consisted of 5 18- and 12-pounders; Gleig says 9 field-pieces (9—and 6-pounders), ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... tears are not for Nina; she's so glad, for she is almost home. She'll go down to the river brink with your arms and Arthur boy's around her. Precious Miggie, nice Arthur. ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... in the Baptist chapel, of which Rev. Mr. Kingdon is pastor. The chapel, which is a part of Mr. K.'s dwelling-house, is situated on the summit of a high mountain which overlooks the sea. As seen from the valley below, it appears to topple on the very brink of a frightful precipice. It is reached by a winding tedious road, too rugged to admit of a chaise, and in some places so steep as to try the activity of a horse. As we approached nearer, we observed the people climbing up ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 'I am tired of kings,'" he muttered. "But I shall keep my pledge; I shall do Austria a service," he said; and then laughed a little to himself. "To think that it may be for me to say!" And with this he walked quite to the brink of the chasm and laid his hand upon the iron cable from which ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... whom his love of learning had acquired the name of Apollo, falling in love with Daphne, pursued her to the brink of the river Peneus, into which, being accidentally precipitated, she perished in her lover's sight. Some laurels growing near the spot, perhaps gave rise to the story of her transformation; or ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... turn, and I confess, as I neared the dyke, I heartily wished myself well over it, for the very possibility of a "mistake" was maddening. Sir Roger came on at a slapping pace, and when within two yards of the brink, rose to it, and cleared it like a deer. By the time I had accomplished this feat, not the less to my satisfaction, that both ladies had turned in the saddles to watch me, they were already far in advance; they held on still at the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... heaven with the glad triumphant Gloria in Excelcis: she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of her church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (cure) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical view; certain weeds mark poverty in the ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... stones and obstructing tree trunks. Headlong they pushed downward. But fortune was with them and neither a broken bone nor a strained ligament resulted, though more than once each lad slipped and fell. Presently they reached the bottom of the slope and came to the very brink of the run. Almost frantically they flung themselves on ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... dear,—not the real thing. And afterwards when she saw the prince—so young and so strong and so handsome, her heart burned for him as with a flame, and she was not ashamed; the wicked, wicked princess, she didn't know. And so they walked together one night right up to the brink of the bad place, dearie—right up to the brink; and the princess shuddered back, and saved the prince. Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette, Jeanette," sobbed the woman, in the girl's arms, "right in this room, in this very room, which was your mother's ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... headway with a single oar— Clutched in despair and madly wrenched away By drowning souls the other. Firm and cool Paul stood unscathed; then fell a sudden shower That broke his bended oar-stem at the blade. Down to the brink we crept and stretched our hands, And shouted, 'Overboard, Paul! ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... doubt the existence of Efreets," continued Cairn, "but neither you nor I can doubt the creative power of thought. If a trained hypnotist, by sheer concentration, can persuade his subject that the latter sits upon the brink of a river fishing when actually he sits upon a platform in a lecture-room, what result should you expect from a concentration of thousands of native minds upon the idea that an ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the stunted cedar that leans forward from the brink, you may drop a plummet into the river below, where the catfish and the turtles may plainly be seen gliding over the wrinkled sands of the clear and shallow current. The cliff is accessible only from the south, where a man may climb up, not without difficulty, by a steep and narrow passage. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... was communicated by a friar deputed for the purpose to Almagro. The unhappy man, who all the while had been unconsciously slumbering on the brink of a precipice, could not at first comprehend the nature of his situation. Recovering from the first shock, "It was impossible," he said, "that such wrong could be done him, - he would not believe it." He then besought Hernando Pizarro to grant him ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... one grand desire of her heart since her son's marriage had been that he should become a Knight of the Order of the Garter, and now, by the recent death of a famous peer, the desire was on the eve of accomplishment; but if, on the very brink of success, it were known that he had left all his duties, his home, his wife, to dance attendance on a singer, even though she were the first singer in Europe, it would be fatal to him. It would spoil his career. My lady had carried ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... successors. When war came, then, we were utterly unable to prosecute it with success or honour. We were driven out of Germany, of Italy, of the Low Countries. We could not sustain the war, or resolve to make peace. Every day led us nearer and nearer the brink of the precipice, the terrible depths of which were for ever staring us in the face. A misunderstanding amongst our enemies, whereby England became detached from the grand alliance; the undue contempt of Prince Eugene for our generals, out of which arose the battle of Denain; saved us from the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... among the dogs. The sled jerked forward, and commenced to move at tremendous speed. A slight wind created a funnel-like opening in the dense white cloud before her. She gave one long shriek of horror at the sight which met her eyes. The sled was on the very brink of a precipice! It hovered there for a moment—just long enough for her to fling herself sideways against the wall; then it, and the team, vanished over the side, taking a mass of snow down, ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... sufficient of themselves to have decided him to leave his home, and battle his way through the world (he cared not where or how, so long as he battled it freely), but for one consideration. Reckless as he was, that consideration stayed his feet on the brink of a sacred threshold which he dared not pass, perhaps to leave it behind him for ever—the threshold ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the diligence for Geneva on the 28th Sept. and found it exceedingly cold on ascending the mountain called the Cerdon; the scenery is savage and wild, and the road in many parts is on the brink of precipices. We stopped at Nantua for supper and partook of some excellent trout. There is a large lake near the town, and 'tis here that the Swiss landscape begins. Commanding a narrow pass stands the fort of L'Ecluse. The Austrians lost a great many ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... as Bandy-legs said, if one could judge from the tremendous amount of splashing that came to their ears, Steve being shut out from their view temporarily by a thick clump of alders that grew on the brink of a little trickling stream emptying into ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... ocean-hasheesh, or wholesome aliment, I never knew, but certain it is that, from the moment its juices passed my lips, a strange and delightful quietude stole over my weary senses, fast lapsing, as these had seemed, into, unconsciousness when I left my place to seek the ocean's brink. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... we stood on the brink of war without the people knowing it and without any preparation or effort at preparation for the impending peril. I did all that in honor could be done to avert the war, but without avail. It became inevitable; and the Congress at its first regular session, without party ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... had received a gunshot wound, which had raked him badly and then penetrated the leg. He had plugged the wound carefully with clay, evidently to stop the bleeding, and then had covered the broken skin with sticky mud from the river's brink, to keep the flies away from the wound and give it a chance to heal undisturbed. It is noteworthy here that the bear uses either gum or clay indifferently, while the beaver and muskrat seem to know enough to avoid the clay, which ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... confidentially. Mawg, then, had gone over to the Bow-legs! Grom's forehead wrinkled. A-ya had been right. He ought to have killed the traitor. He writhed himself into a dense covert, and presently, over the broken brink of a vine-draped ledge, was able to command a ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the walls, while on the floor texts would be picked out in pebbles. Plants and flowers would hang from the roofs of the grottos, and beside them the rivulets would broaden into basins where real frogs and fish would gaze with surprise at their stone companions on the brink. Here and there the stream would be dammed up into a lake covered with tiny islands, and filled with forget-me-nots and water-lilies and pretty yellow irises, and at the next turn of the path the visitor would be delighted by a beautiful statue half hidden by a grove of trees. Catching ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... Which thick and fast leapt through the welkin down Before his feet, blazing with fearful flames. And Ares saw, and knew the stormy threat Of the mighty-thundering Father, and he stayed His eager feet, now on the very brink Of battle's turmoil. As when some huge crag Thrust from a beetling cliff-brow by the winds And torrent rains, or lightning-lance of Zeus, Leaps like a wild beast, and the mountain-glens Fling back their crashing echoes as it rolls In mad speed on, as with ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... of gold Too huge for me to hold, What peaches with a velvet nap, Pellucid grapes without one seed: Odorous indeed must be the mead Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink, With lilies at the brink, And ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... conclusion of the discourse in which Dante, speaking by the mouth of Virgil, has set forth this ethical system, the poets move forward along the brink of the pit until they arrive at a spot where they can reach the lower level. The descent is rendered possible by a steep and broken slope of loose rock, which Dante compares to the great landslip between Trent and Verona, known ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... would have been dashed to pieces against the sharp points of the craggy rock, but with a steady hand and firm foot he gained the depth in safety, seized the prize; then, with great difficulty, and not without a few wounds and bruises, he climbed up again, and stood triumphant on the brink of a really frightful precipice. If the young lady had known where her clasp was to be found, she certainly would not have asked him to look for it; but he was himself well pleased to have encountered any danger for her sake, and in thoughtful mood he returned to the cottage, ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... (Lebwin), the English apostle of the Frisians and Westphalians (d. c. 773); and the Bergkerk, dedicated in 1206, which has two late Romanesque towers. The town hall (1693) contains a remarkable painting of the town council by Terburg. In the fine square called the Brink is the old weigh-house, now a school (gymnasium), built in 1528, with a large external staircase (1644). The gymnasium is descended from the Latin school of which the celebrated Alexander Hegius was master in the third quarter of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... or Mariposa lily, a unique genus of many species, something like the tulips of Europe but far finer. Most of them grow on the warm foothills below the Valley, but two charming species, C. coeruleus and C. nudus, dwell in springy places on the Wawona road a few miles beyond the brink ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... and days amidst vast forests and hills without the slightest sensation of pleasure or sense of admiration for the scene, till suddenly your path leads you out on to the dizzy brink of an awful precipice—a sheer fall, so exaggerated in horror that your most stirring memories of Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, and the hideous arete of the Pitz Bernina, sink into vague insignificance. The gulf that divides ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... very often on the brink of hating myself. So much thoughtlessness of others; such callousness to sorrows not my own: my hard heart has often reproached thee for sparing a sigh or a wish from me; that every gloom has not been dispelled by my presence, was ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... was in no haste with his opinion; he was looking out for Caen, that ancient and famous town of the Norman duke who conquered England. He had been reading up the guide-book and musing over history, while Bessie had been letting the poplars weigh her mind down to the brink ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... these patient toilers in the deep of midnight sin succeed in dragging from the brink those that have but dipped their feet in its dark waters. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus—no one becomes altogether filthy in an hour—runs the old Roman saying, which is as true to-day as it was 2,000 years ago, ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... have been born with overwrought nerves, and in his passionate desire to excel, he was often led to the brink of some rash step; and yet, having resolved upon such a step, when the moment arrived, he invariably proved too sensible to take it. He was ready, in the same way, to do a base action in order to obtain his wished-for object; and yet, when the moment came to do it, he found that ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of constantly dwelling on the idea that tranquillity was death, and if punishment were the end in view other tortures than death must be invented, he began to reflect on suicide. Unhappy he, who, on the brink of misfortune, broods over ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... He told me that he had acquainted Mr. Conniston with his intentions, so it is no secret. No, I did not slap him for that. But you, father, and you, too, Mr. Conniston, since you are one of us in our work, ought both to know what he threatened. He says that we are upon the very brink of failure; that Swinnerton has almost sufficient strength to ruin us and our hopes. And he threatened, if I did not marry him, to turn his back upon us and join the opposition. And ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... could these triflers with sacred love—these wanderers on the brink of a fearful abyss—have seen the look of her face then, they would have fled from each other for ever, rather than to have dared the desperation of ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... covered with stones. Some of these platforms of masonry are thirty or forty feet long, twelve or sixteen broad, and from three to twelve in height; which last in some measure depends on the nature of the ground; for they are generally at the brink of the bank facing the sea, so that this face may be ten or twelve feet or more high, and the other may not be above three or four. They are built, or rather faced, with hewn stones, of a very large size; and the workmanship is not inferior to the best plain piece of masonry we have in England. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Cupples's last words uttered from the brink of the pit into which his spirit was sinking, and probably forgotten straightway, Alec knocked at his door upon the Sunday evening, and entered. The strange creature was sitting in the same position as before, looking ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... to this rock, between it and the brink of the fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth of fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come to shore alive if ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... glide Thro' fruits and flowers that fringe the grassy side. The playful murmurings of its windings seem Soft, as the far-off music of a dream, Over our heads the trees their blossoms shed, Flowers on the brink their mingled odours shed. Beauty around, above us, Hope within; Eager we grasp each dazzling charm to win. But hurried on and on, we ne'er can stay Our little bark to anchor or delay. For now, how full, how deep, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... thirst, And so, to get a drink, He cut an opening in the ice, And lay down on the brink. Says he, "I'll dip my nose right in, And sip ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... on the very brink of dissolution. The Irish Church Bill is the immediate cause, Stanley and Graham standing out against the majority of the Cabinet with regard to the Appropriation clause. Stanley, they think, would have knocked under if Graham had not been ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... myself to be enticed into it. But what a humiliation when any one standing beside me could hear at a distance a flute that I could not hear, or any one heard the shepherd singing, and I could not distinguish a sound! Such circumstances brought me to the brink of despair, and had well-nigh made me put an end to my life: nothing but my art held my hand. Ah! it seemed to me impossible to quit the world before I had produced all that I felt myself called to accomplish. And so I endured this wretched life—so truly ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the wild-rose scrub glowed blood-crimson in the hollows; and the aspen bluffs, touched with frost, were as yellow as saffron. The wild and beautiful panorama was made complete in their eyes by a great golden eagle perched on the brink of the immediate foreground and, like themselves, gazing over. Though but a hundred yards or so distant, he contemptuously disregarded their arrival. When Garth, full of curiosity, came closer, he spread his vast wings and drifted indifferently out ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... night, I had forgotten his warnings. Neglecting everything a man should do to his gun when he is finished with it for the day, I had left two cartridges in it, left the trigger on the hair-brink of eternity, and other enormities for which Charlie presently, and quite rightly, abashed me with profanity; in short, my big toe tripped over the beast as it stood carelessly against the wall of my cabin, and, as it fell, I received the contents in the fleshy ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... think you," he finally said, "are ye contending? with an old man on the brink of the grave? No! with Truth,—Truth which is stronger than you, and will overcome you."(120) So saying, he withdrew from the assembly, and not one of his adversaries attempted to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the vessels of milk into the hut, and came out again with two other vessels and a small cup. These she bore down to the river-side; and one of the vessels she filled by means of the cup from the water at the brink of the stream, but the other vessel she bore out into the middle of the stream and there filled it from the deepest of the running water. After this she took a sickle and began cutting rushes by the river-side, and Cormac saw that when she cut a wisp of long rushes she would put it ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the mountains racing along each bank of the Cumberland had sent out against each other, by mutual impulse, two great spurs. At the river's brink they stopped sheer, with crests uplifted, as though some hand at the last moment had hurled them apart, and had led the water through the breach to keep them at peace. To-day the crags looked seamed by thwarted passion; and, sullen with firs, they made fit symbols of the human ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... seemed more important to him than abstract schemes for the improvement of the race in general. He was a man of peace and wished all others to be at peace; the confusion and irritation that accompanies reform was most disagreeable to him. Many a Harvard student who trembled on the brink of an abyss, far from home and left to his own devices, afterwards looked back to Doctor Peabody's helping hand as to the hand of a beneficent providence held out to save him from destruction; and those whom he was unable to save thought of ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... going to happen, it turns into ghastly tragedy. I am overwhelmed in grotesque disaster—it is the only word. Instead of creating happiness all around me, I have played havoc with human lives. I stand on the brink and look back and see that it is all one gigantic devil-jest at my expense. I thank God I am going to die. I do die—for practical purposes. I come back to life and—here I am. Can I be quite the same person I was a ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Can take no chances with her fate; A subtle creature, finely spun, Her body and her soul are one. And now this erring woman wept The soul she murdered while it slept. She felt too stunned with pain to think. She seemed to stand upon a brink; Behind her loomed the sinful past, Below her, rocks, beyond her, vast And awful darkness. Not one ray Of sun or star to show the way! She drew a long and shuddering breath; "There is no other path but death For me to tread," ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... brink of all this desolation, it is small wonder if we recalled the accounts of the disasters which had overtaken so many others in the canyon below us. Many who had escaped the water had climbed out on to this death trap, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... rushed to the edge of a precipice. He was just about to leap over the edge when his Driver caught hold of his tail and did his best to pull him back: but pull as he might he couldn't get the Ass to budge from the brink. At last he gave up, crying, "All right, then, get to the bottom your own way; but it's the way to sudden death, as ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... ALARM.] On reaching the brink of a most frightful precipice, we were instructed to crawl down by means of some rude steps cut in the surface of a sloping buttress or inclined plane of rock, which appeared to extend to the bottom. The sight of this horrible den acted as a "pretty considerable" ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... on the brink of a precipice. That suspicion, that fear, not to be banished by action, added to the curiosity, as about an ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... with our architectural respectability, unless the newness of some of the buildings gave illusion of this; and, though the streets of Dublin were not at all cared for, and though every house on the main thoroughfare stood upon the brink of a slough, without yard, or any attempt at garden or shrubbery, there were many cottages in the less aristocratic quarters inclosed in palings, and embowered in the usual suburban pear-trees and currant-bushes. These, indeed, were dwellings of an elder sort, and had clearly been inherited from ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... did not mean to be caught. Being a fast runner for a boy of his size, he bade fair to outdistance his pursuer. But directly in his path was an excavation of considerable size and depth. Ernest paused on the brink to consider whether to descend the sloping sides or to go round it. The delay was fatal. The tramp saw his advantage, and pushing forward seized ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... Tibullus, Terence and Juvenal, Catullus, Martial, and all ye wits beside, On Pegasus expert to ride; Numa, good king, surnamed Pampilius, And Tullus, eke 'yclept Hostilius— Kings, Consuls, Imperators, Lictors, Praetors, the whole world's former victors, Who sleep by yellow Tiber's brink; Ye mighty names—what d'ye think? The Pope has sanctioned Railway Bills! And so the lofty Aventine, And your six other famous hills Will soon look down upon a 'Line.' Oh! if so be that hills could turn Their noses up, with gesture antic, Thus would the seven deride and spurn A Roman work so ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... man surveys the whole course of existence and judges it soberly. Hitherto he had scarcely so much as shaken off the spell of the fresh and gracious influences that envelop a childhood in the country, like green leaves and grass. He had hesitated on the brink of the Parisian Rubicon, and in spite of the prickings of ambition, he still clung to a lingering tradition of an old ideal—the peaceful life of the noble in his chateau. But yesterday evening, at the sight of his rooms, those scruples had vanished. He had learned what it was to enjoy ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... feelings of Colonel Clifford; but as for Robert Bartley his very character was shaken to the foundation by his crime and its terrible consequences. He was now like a man who had glided down a soft sunny slope, and was suddenly arrested at the brink of a fathomless precipice. Bartley was cunning, selfish, avaricious, unscrupulous in reality, so long as he could appear respectable, but he was not violent, nor physically reckless, still less cruel. A deed of blood shocked him as much as it would shock an honest man. Yet now through following ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... last, and Joshua almost simultaneously. Two or three minutes brought them to the brink of the stream. At first they could see nothing in the water, though it was not so deep nor the night so dark but that their father's light kerseymere coat would have been visible if he had lain at the bottom. Joshua ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... spoken after this. The hearts were full to the brink—to speak was to interfere with their consummate joy. The doctor was the only one who made the attempt, and he, after a very ineffectual endeavour to be jocose, held his peace. The Bible was produced. The servants of the house appeared. A chapter was read ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... willingly expend millions to restore the forests again."] There is every reason to believe that the dunes of the Netherlands were clothed with trees until after the Roman invasion. The old geographers, in describing these countries, speak of vast forests extending to the very brink of the sea; but drifting coast dunes are first mentioned by the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and so far as we know they have assumed a destructive character in consequence of the improvidence of man. [Footnote: Staring, Voormaals en ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... and the devil a coin in my pocket. In short, I was for all the world like one of those calendars with whom Mr. Galland has made us acquainted in his elegant tales. These gentlemen, you will remember, were for ever falling in with extraordinary incidents; and I was myself upon the brink of one so astonishing that I protest I cannot ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bluewater, thoughtfully—for the march of events, at that moment, must necessarily brink on a crisis in his own career. "Sir Gervaise sent her to ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... waste it as they had done before. Desirous of retrieving their former error in this respect, they were as steady as veterans now, and advancing in line, firing deliberately and with careful aim, they cleared the ground in front, and fought back to the brink of the nullah where the enemy had broken their ranks, and re-captured the guns, the First Brigade moving up at the same time on their right. Savage with the idea that they had been forced to retire and leave their ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... they left not an inch of it unsearched. At last one was seen to approach the trap of the ant-lion. Curiosity brings it to the very edge of that terrible pit-fall. It protrudes its head and part of its body over the brink—it is not such a terrible gulf to look into—if it should slip down, it ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... as I came to the brink of the river, I looked back and saw the wolf close at my heels, so I dropped suddenly, and the wolf tumbled right over me into the water, but next moment it came up in the shape of another monster with a fish's ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... of it, the incomprehensibility of it, the utter newness and strangeness of this sharp pain that now left behind a dull pang, made her forget Stewart, her surroundings, everything except to search her heart. Maybe here was the secret that had eluded her. She trembled on the brink of something unknown. In some strange way the emotion brought back her girlhood. Her mind revolved swift queries and replies; she was living, feeling, learning; happiness mocked at her from behind a barred door, and the bar of that door seemed to be an inexplicable ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... stepping to the brink, and looking sheer To where the slope ceased in the level stretch Of country, I sat down to lay my head Backwards into a single ivy-bush Complex of leaf. I lay there till the wind Blew to me, from a church seen miles away, Half ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... they, and to this day they have not been put in a tomb, but are left here to warn men to take good heed how they come too near the brink of ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... nine to nine is galley-slavery, but I hope it is but temporary. Your endeavour at explaining Fox's insight into the natures of animals must fail, as I shall transcribe the passage. It appears to me that he stopt short in time, and was on the brink of falling with his friend Naylor, my favourite.—The book shall be forthcoming whenever your friend can make convenient to call ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... password is the following bit of song taken from the story of Hiiaka, sister of Pele. She is journeying with the beautiful Hopoe to feteh prince Lohiau to the court of Pele. They have come by a steep and narrow path to the brink of the Wai-lua river, Kauai, at this point spanned by a single plank. But the bridge is gone, removed by an ill-tempered naiad (witch) said to have come from Kahiki, whose name, Wai-lua, is the same ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... are so dear to me.—At least, 0 Lord, permit me to stay until I shall have finished my task! Onward! A few days, for mercy's sake, only a few days! Onward! I leave these whom I am protecting on the very brink of an abyss! Onward! Onward!! And the wandering star is launched afresh on its perpetual course. But her voice traversed through space, calling me to the assistance of my own! When her voice reached me I felt that the offspring ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sun set and as darkness enveloped the scene, it became more awful than ever. We retired a little way from the brink to breathe some fresh air, and to try and eat the food we had brought with us; but this was an impossibility. Every instant a fresh explosion or glare made us jump up to ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... have seen far down the flickering, ghostly forms of great fish—fish, as it seemed to me, such as naturalist never knew, and which my imagination transformed into the genii of that desolate bay. Once, as I stood by the brink of the waters upon a quiet night, a great cry, as of a woman in hopeless grief, rose from the bosom of the deep, and swelled out upon the still air, now sinking and now rising, for a space of thirty seconds. This I heard with my ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he who had probably lost the most, and who certainly had been on the brink of losing the greatest part of what he possessed, was the only ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... light, and partial liberty. Me he mark'd out his own. He nurst and cur'd, He lov'd and made his friend. I liv'd by him, And in my heart he liv'd, till, when exchang'd, Duty and honour call'd me from my friend.— Judge how my heart is tortur'd.—Gracious heaven! Thus, thus to meet him on the brink of death— A death so infamous! Heav'n grant my prayer. [Kneels. That I may save him, O, inspire my heart With thoughts, my tongue with words that move to pity! [Rises. Quick, Melville, shew me where ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... of the scintillation which I saw brilliantly diffused. He was frequently under my gaze, a low-statured, nimble figure, a vivacious, always cheerful face with a pronounced chin, seemingly ever on the brink of some outburst of merriment. I have heard him described as an "incarnate pun," but that hardly did him justice; punster he was, but he had a wit of a far higher kind and moods of grave dignity. His ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... shook thrice over the whole heaven and left it dark with one heavy, impenetrable shade. The sun was setting; it plunged towards the horizon like a redhot ball. The roar of the Golden River rose on Hans's ear. He stood at the brink of the chasm through which it ran. Its waves were filled with the red glory of the sunset; they shook their crests like tongues of fire, and flashes of bloody light gleamed along their foam. Their sound came mightier and mightier on his senses; his brain grew giddy with the prolonged ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... others, now find yourself adrift because of your own act. You are a young man. If you are honest in what you now say, there is still hope for you. Fight those overpowering ambitions which have brought you to the brink until you have them properly controlled, then guide your undoubted abilities along lines ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... crystal creek; At night or morn the pard, with stealthy tread, Crept softly out upon the boughs o'erhead; A wanderer from rocky realms remote, Here laved the mountain bear his shaggy coat; And birds, bright-mirrored on the sedgy brink Of darkling pools, here paused ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... tinkling Of the sprinkling By her wanton curvets made; Never pauses she to think Of the brink Where her wrapper ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... swing when Kennedy, stripped to the waist, with a heavy bag of money in his left hand and a knife in his right, took a long farewell of his house and stepped out into the silent groves of coco-palms. A short walk brought him to a salt lagoon. On the brink he stood and waited, until a trembling, voiceless figure joined him from out the depths of the thick mangroves. Hand-in-hand they fled along the narrow, sandy path till they reached the beach, just where a few untenanted thatched huts stood on the shingle. Between these, covered over with ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... grew stronger. Then I raised myself in bed and looked round. The space between the sash of the window and the curtains—my shutters were not closed—allowed one narrow stream of moonlight to enter and lie across the floor. Near this, standing on the brink of it, as it were, and rising dark against it, was a shadowy figure. Nothing was clearly outlined but the face; that I saw only too distinctly. I rose and remained up for at least an hour before it vanished. I heard the clock outside strike the hour twice. I was ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... Aengus, son of Ere Derg (Ere the Red), son of Brian, de quo Ui-Honach, presented his house to Patrick; and Imlech-Onon was its name at that time: Ailfinn, moreover, [is its name] this day; from the ail (rock) taken out of the well which was made by Patrick in the fair green, and which is on the brink of the well, the place has been named. Et dixit illi Patricius: "Thy seed shall be blessed, and the palm of laics and clerics shall be of thee for ever, and the inheritance of this place shall belong to them." Et posuit ibi Assicum et Bite filium fratris Assicus (Assici?) et Cipiam matrem ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... best and most intimate friends. He died in November, 1853, while I was upon a Home visit. He left a message for me that he looked forward to resuming our most pleasant friendship in Heaven. What a reality of voice has this hope when it comes thus from the brink of the grave! What a strength of resistance to that tendency of modern science, which, as interpreted by some even of its greatest chiefs, is to abolish the hope of the life beyond the grave, and to class us all with "the beasts ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth |
