"Stumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since thou and I By all the seeming pride are drawn more nigh? Lo, love, our toil-girthed garden of desire, How of its changeless sweetness may we tire, While round about the storm is in the boughs And careless change amid the turmoil ploughs The rugged fields we needs must stumble o'er, Till the grain ripens that shall ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... entrie, thorow certaine thicke laths, couched slope-wise one against another, but so narrowly, as he can find no way of returne, while the streame tosseth him hither and thither, and the laths ends gall him, if he stumble on the place. ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... water he was carrying. I was in the porch. The beautiful girl who formerly made my affliction so bitter to me was passing at the moment, with her arm drawn affectionately through her father's. She saw the stumble, and sprang forward with a cry of alarm. It looked, certainly, as if my defenceless feet must receive the crash, and I attempted instinctively to withdraw them,—partially succeeding! I saw this at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... there was a living presence in that spooky dungeon struck terror to Pee-wee's very soul. He could not bring himself to move, much less to speak. But he could not stand idly where he was, and if he should stumble over a human form in that unknown blackness.... What could be more appalling than that? Was this uncanny place a prison for poor, injured captives? Was there, lying just a few feet from him, some suffering victim of those scoundrels? What ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... memory, took the veil here a century and a half ago, this house has ever been above reproach. You will tacitly allow her to slip away; and, once away, I will set matters right for her. But nothing must transpire which could stumble or scandalise the other members of the Community. The peculiar circumstances which the Knight made known to me—always, of course, without making any mention of the name of Seraphine—can hardly have occurred in ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... and expansive force of subterranean fire, or violent heat. But, that Sicily itself had been raised from the bottom of the ocean, and that the marble called Sicilian Jasper, had its solidity upon the same principle with the lava, would stumble many a naturalist to acknowledge. Nevertheless, I have in my possession a table of this marble, from which it is demonstrable, that this calcareous stone had flowed, and been in such a state of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... near, when you are to leave Saxony and go to Berlin. Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions will, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... whooping and screaming all around us; and now and then one flew against us, as if it had lost its way as well as ourselves. The road we were now following ran close to the bank of the river; so close, indeed, that a single stumble of our horse might have precipitated us into the water, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... to understand why they are determined, not only to prevent your finding it, but to learn your secret? If rumor is one-half true, the Arab buried somewhere enough ivory to finance this plan of theirs! They have been going about the search systematically, and sooner or later they feel they must stumble on it. They will not ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... alongside, ready to relieve their comrades when they should grow tired—for a large canoe is a heavy load for two men—or to assist them in unusually bad places, or to support them and prevent accidents, should they chance to stumble. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... seemed quite appropriate, however, for in this respect she was the fitting complement to her master. For poor Coonie was a cripple, scarcely able to bear his long body on his weak ankles, and when the villagers saw him stumble painfully out of his vehicle at the post-office and drag himself to the veranda, even the person outraged by his latest flight of fancy forgave and pitied him. Everyone felt that the nimbleness of his tongue was perhaps only some slight ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... half-hour, as told by Jake, would make your flesh creep. They did not dare to carry a lamp to light the gruesome task, and well as they knew the way, the possibilities of a stumble or a fall against some one of the many trees they had to pass filled them with constant terror. They did stumble once, and the low cry Jake uttered caused them new fears. Was that a window they heard flying up? No; but something moved in the bushes. They were sure of ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... had heard his words, or that she did not want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out, and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went towards the pavilion where the ladies took off ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... I didn't have no business hirin' a man thet can't ride," he said. "Why thet there Brazos pony never did stumble, an' if he'd of stumbled he'd a-stood aroun' a year waitin' to be caught up agin. I jest cain't figger it out no ways how thet there tenderfoot bookkeeper lost him. He must a-shooed him away with a stick. An' saddle an' bridle an' all ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and the pampering of their idle carcases had made shipwreck of their former faith;" but he does know that having been ejected as a Nonconformist in 1662, he had afterwards gone over to the winning side, and he fears that "such an unstable weathercock spirit as he had manifested would stumble the work and give advantage to the adversary to speak vilifyingly of religion." No excuse can be offered for the coarse violence of Bunyan's language in this book; but it was too much the habit of ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... casually as he would light a match for his cigarette, casually as he would stumble over something, casually as he would pick up a book, he met La Mielleuse on the road ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... their interest and curiosity that they might blunder into destroying the delicate fabric of the romance altogether. Hence Jane kept her own council, speculating with amusement as to how long it would be before his two solicitous but blinded relatives should stumble upon the truth. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... at Grigwhee, and others of my provinces tied, and sent up to me. I kill them, but do I ever insist on being paid for them? Some heads I order to be placed at my door, others to be strewed about the market place, that the people may stumble upon them, when they little expect such a sight. This gives a grandeur to my customs, far beyond the display of fine things which I buy; this makes my enemies fear me, and gives me such a name in the Bush.[9] Besides, if I neglect this indispensable duty, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... out thousands of single verses, which are to be found only when you seek for them; and not from rich prose only like Coleridge's own or Jeremy Taylor's, but from the poorest, like Dr Blair's or Gerald's of Aberdeen. Dryden says he cannot "but admire how some men should perpetually stumble in a way so easy"—that is, as blank verse—"into which the English tongue so naturally glides," and should strive to attain it by inverting the order of the words, to make the "blanks" sound more heroically—as, for example, instead of "Sir, I ask your pardon," "Sir, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... She had evidently forgotten it. Here was a chance to mischievously banter that habitually careful little woman! He slipped it into his pocket and quietly entered the dark but perfectly familiar hall. He reached the staircase without a stumble and began to ascend softly. Halfway up he heard the sound of his wife's hurried voice and another that startled him. He ascended hastily two steps, which brought him to the level of the half-opened transom of the kitchen. A candle was burning on the kitchen table; he could see everything that ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... And in time people ceased even to talk of the Scotch Queen and all the troublous times which had ended at her death. And a leaden weight was falling on my heart, as I wondered if I was never again to hold my friend's hand in mine; when one day I chanced to stumble on news of him ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... my footsteps the gravel felt soft, but, once I had got outside the iron gate, I found myself on ground as hard as stone. The mud formed by recent rains and the ruts hollowed by streams of convoys had frozen, and the road was a maze of furrows and inequalities which made me stumble again and again. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... a few articulate sounds answering to words; such probably was primitive man. He must have been little removed from the ape. His "self," his mind, was so small and so empty of content that we could hardly recognize him as a man, should we stumble on him in ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... more; but when we have to be trained for an office like this, to make the way of the Lord clear through all the generations, reason is that we should see everything, and learn all that man is and can be. These things are too deep for us; we stumble on, and know not till after. But now to me it ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... the very moment when I had the misfortune to stumble against your majesty yesterday, a misfortune which I shall deplore to the last day of my life, especially after the dissatisfaction which you exhibited, I remained, sire, motionless with despair, your majesty being at too great a distance ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... say you could, Harry; but we don't want to run any risks. Your head is not very strong, at present; and you might turn giddy, or you might stumble. So, at present, you will have just to do as ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... but had no time to mark The motions of their vessel; Nature's law, In them suspended, recked not of the awe Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw[nb] From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds Stumble o'er heaving plains—and Man's dread ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... true that two main bodies of two fleets may stumble against each other in the night-time, or in a fog or heavy mist. To prevent this possible occurrence, or to prevent a night attack by destroyers, no sure means has yet been found except examination before dark of a very large area around ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... any time this evening," went on the city editor. "You might stumble on some news. You wrote a very good story to-day. Try again to-morrow. We've beat the other papers on ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... by the glowing tributes paid him upon one occasion and hailed as having conquered hitherto uncontrollable steam. He stammered out words to the effect that it came in his way and he happened to find it; others had missed it; that was all; somebody had to stumble upon it. That is all very well, and we love thee, Jamie Watt (he was always Jamie to his friends), for such self-abnegation, but the truth of history must be vindicated for all that. It proclaims, Thou art the man; go up higher and take your seat there among the immortals, the inventor of the greatest ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... will have a good effect. If they can get to the scene of hostilities without everybody knowing about it, it increases by just so much their chances of success and anyone that knows anything at all is keeping mum and hoping that no British soldier will stumble over a chair and make a noise and give away the ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... life. Mrs. M'Kinnon added that Lady Margaret was quite adored in Sky. That when she travelled through the island, the people ran in crowds before her, and took the stones off the road, lest her horse should stumble and she be hurt[711]. Her husband, Sir Alexander, is also remembered with great regard. We were told that every week a hogshead of claret ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... a stranger here, so you had better go back to see what Pattmore is doing. You can stumble into his room, as if you had mistaken it for your own. Be quick!" I added, as he started, "for we must keep watch of him every minute until the inquest ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... work began on the drill-field, with its open drainage trenches yawning for our feet and its scattered mounds to stumble on. Gay work, this learning to walk in the right place, stand in the right way, toss your nine pound rifle about as if it were a straw, and all with but a moment or two for thought between the first order and the second. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... had not taken a dozen steps when a rolling stone caused him to stumble, and the rider narrowly missed taking a header over his ears. Saladin quickly recovered himself, but at the moment of doing so the youth was startled by a whistle from the other shore, instantly answered by a similar call from the bank along which ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... Cecil Brown, looking over the desert with his dark, intolerant eyes. "If one could come wandering here alone—stumble upon it by chance, as it were—and find one's self in absolute solitude in the dim light of the temple, with these grotesque figures all round, it would be perfectly overwhelming. A man would be prostrated with wonder and awe. But when Belmont ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you are out of your teens, or you may chance to be left there till you are an angel or an old maid. Trust me, my dear, I, who have tried, tell you, there is no such thing as falling in love, now-a-days: you may slip, slide, or stumble; but to fall in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... lives, on their way up into the forest.—You cannot help seeing—although you see nothing—how the ponies are ill-used, hounded and flogged. The last of the drove are lame and utterly worn out. They stumble along anyhow and one falls. Oh! it is cruel, wicked. And it is—was, really true, cousin Tom. It must have happened scores of times before old Mr. Verity, your namesake, put a stop to the iniquity by buying The Hard—I have only heard the ponies driven ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... threshold of the century we stumble upon an episode curiously indicative of the set of the tide. Czar Peter of Russia had been recently in England, acquiring a knowledge of English customs which, on his return home, he immediately began to put in practice. His ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Edith. 'By-the-bye, when I consented that the melancholy Jaques should be one of my aides-de-camp I expected him to maintain his reputation, not only for gloom but wit. I think you had better go back to the forest, Lord Eugene, and see if you cannot stumble upon a fool who may drill you in repartee. How do you do, Lady Riddlesworth?' and she bowed to two ladies who seemed inclined to stop, but Edith added, 'I heard great applications for you this moment ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Jesus stands alone in refusing to despair of the greater part of mankind. Contempt was in his eyes the unpardonable sin (Matt. 5:22). How swift and decisive is his anger with those who make others stumble! (Luke 17:2). The parable of the lost sheep reveals what he held to be God's feeling for the hopeless man; and, as we have seen, his constant aim is to lead men to "think like God." The lost soul matters to God. He sums up his ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... all his behauiours doe make their retire, To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire. His hart like an Agot with your print impressed, Proud with his forme, in his eie pride expressed. His tongue all impatient to speake and not see, Did stumble with haste in his eie-sight to be, All sences to that sence did make their repaire, To feele onely looking on fairest of faire: Me thought all his sences were lockt in his eye, As Iewels in Christall for some Prince to Buy. Who tendring their own worth from whence they were glast, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... favorable odds. contingency, dependence (uncertainty) 475; situation (circumstance) 8. statistics, theory of Probabilities, theory of Chances; bookmaking; assurance; speculation, gaming &c. 621. V. chance, hap, turn up; fall to one's lot; be one's -fate &c. 601; stumble on light upon; take one's chance &c. 621. Adj. casual, fortuitous, accidental, adventitious, causeless, incidental, contingent, uncaused, undetermined, indeterminate; random, statistical; possible &c. 470; unintentional ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... wrote accordingly to entreat his forbearance for six months longer, and, as I received no reply, concluded that all was satisfactorily arranged. Unluckily, however, as I was strolling, about a month afterwards, along the Strand, I chanced to stumble up against him. The shock seemed equally unexpected on both sides; but my tailor (as being a dun) was the first to recover self-possession; and, with a long preliminary hem!—a mute, but expressive compound of remonstrance, apology, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... perfectly natural; and the cropped head was so suspicious, that it was no wonder that at the first station, the old gentleman gathered up his umbrella, with intense courtesy squeezed gingerly to the door, carefully avoiding any stumble over perilous toes, and made his escape—entering another carriage, whence he no doubt signed cautions against the lunatic and his keeper, since no one again ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that very little light penetrated into the space below. Of course at night, even in moonlight, the place was pitch dark. Into this retreat the accountant led his companions, and bidding them stand still for a minute lest they should stumble into the fireplace, he proceeded to ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... those men said about him," went on Joe. "To think that we would stumble on the wreckers right at work. We can lead the police to the very place where they have set up ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... as I have said, and they were scrofulous; one of them was disfigured by the small pox; they had glimmering eyes, red, like the eyes of ferrets, and scarcely half open; and they did not walk so much as stumble along. There, you have the worst of them. Now, hear something on the other side. What first won my pity was, their affection for each other, united to their constant sadness; secondly, a notion which had crept into my head, probably ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... streak in me also. But what I can't understand is why you return and put your head in the lion's mouth. The police will stumble on something. I tell you frankly that if you are arrested I could do little or nothing for you. The United States protects only harmless political outcasts. Yours is a crime such as nullifies your citizenship, and any government would be compelled, according ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... moment that followed, the wild cheer and onward dash, the race over blood-stained snow-patches, the stumble over falling forms (some friend, some foe), the ripping and slashing at fire-spitting lodges, in which some of the band had sought refuge, the agonized screaming of children, the appalling shrieks of the squaws—of all this it was difficult later to give clear account. Geordie only knew ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... you have come hither through the gloom of night and over rough places, led by a faithful guide, whom you followed without doubt or fear. You will have your reward. The darkness, the stones that made your feet to stumble, what are these but symbols of your spiritual state? In your blindness, you sought one blind as yourselves, to follow whom was to walk in darkness eternal. But a beneficent Power has watched over you, guiding your steps in the better ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... and over the calm serene mockery of Hermes' smile the grey nets of the spiders' webs had been woven to and fro, across and across, with the lacing of a million threads, as Fate weaves round the limbs and covers the eyes of mortals as they stumble blindly from their birthplace to their grave. All things, the damp and the dust, the frost and the scorch, the newts and the rats, the fret of the flooded waters, and the stealing sure inroad of the mosses that everywhere grew from the dews and the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... own glad life: the plea Were like a wrangling babe's that fain would be Free from the help its hardy heart contemns, Free from the hand that guides and guards it, free To take its way and sprawl and stumble. See! Have we not here enough of diadems Hung high round portals pillared smooth with stems ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... background of my own consciousness, and abolished into black nonentity by the first question which recalled me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come down in front of it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in the darkness of the unlighted vestibule. Presently, however, a light was seen to glimmer through the partially closed blinds, and then John Burrill crept cautiously nearer, and feeling his way carefully, lest some obstacle at his feet should cause him to stumble; he gained the window, pressed his face close to the shutters ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... haven't been; I am perfectly certain that in a hundred ways I could have done better. Why, there is nothing that I could not have improved upon if I had tried. So by our own confessions what right have you and I to stumble over not being able to be perfect, so long as we have not begun to be as ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... regulations. But don't you suppose, fellows, that officer was hazed, and did some hazing on his own account, when he was a cadet midshipman here years ago? Of course! And that's why the officer didn't question us any more closely than he did. He was afraid he might stumble on something that would oblige him to report the whole crowd for hazing. He didn't want to do it. That officer, I'm certain, knew that, if he questioned us too closely, he'd find a lot more beneath the surface that he simply didn't want ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... by contrary winds and other accidents, had laid aside his preparations. The Norman armament, proceeding in great order, arrived without any material loss, at Pevensey, in Sussex; and the army quietly disembarked. The duke himself, as he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country. And a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... indeed, needed not to look to the right or the left, for the path of the iron rails led them directly on. Now and again clods of new-broken earth caused them to stumble as they hobbled loosely along. If the foot of either struck against the rail, its owner sprang aside, as though in fear, toward the middle of the track. Slowly and unevenly, with all the zigzags permissible within the confining inches of the irons, they came on up toward the squat ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... a burial cave up there. Don't you know the difference yet in the openings? Now, be a good fellow. It doesn't follow that because we have drawn all the rest blank, you won't stumble across a good find for ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... occasions of sin, he said: "There are evil spirits who go to and fro in desert places quite as much as in cities; if grace does not hold us up everywhere, everywhere we may stumble. Lot, who in the most wicked of all cities was holy and just, when in solitude fell into the most dreadful of sins. Men carry themselves about with them and find themselves everywhere, and frailty can no more be got rid ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... ears said, "We listened for the breathing of the hounds"; and his legs said, "We ran away with you." Then he asked his tail what it had done, and it said, "Why, I got caught in the bushes or made your leg stumble; that is all I could do." So, as a punishment, the Fox stuck his tail out of his den, and the hounds saw it and caught hold of it, and dragged the Fox out of his den by it and ate him all up. So that was the end of Master ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... got in from the west just in time to stumble on that gang of rats," he flared. "That's how your men came to see me. The chase happened to come in my direction, ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... boy, his eyes aglow, and his arms raised, rushes toward the bed. His curls, escaping from the nightcap covering his head, float on his forehead. His long, loose night-shirt, catching his little feet, increases his impatience, and causes him to stumble at every step. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... following a slight depression in the ground reached a point within 150 yards of where the savages rested in fancied security. To prevent the possibility of arousing them by any accidental noise, we had dismounted some distance back, and carefully led our horses by the head, lest a stumble or neigh might discover us to the enemy. It was yet dark when we reached a spot opposite the camp, and standing at our horses' heads, impatiently awaited the dawn. Streaks of light soon began shooting through the eastern sky, but it seemed an eternity before ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... errand struck me hard as I felt the city surging round me. Without a clew to work on, I was utterly unlikely to find the two women, and even if I should stumble upon them, in what way could I explain my conduct in following them? I was visited also by the discouraging thought that New York might not, after all, be ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... exerted ourselves to the uttermost, for we must reach it before we sank with thirst and exhaustion. A number of poplars grew in a hollow. "Let us dig here; it is a long distance to the woods"; but the spade again slipped out of our hands, and we could only stumble and crawl on eastwards. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... scarcely less important, in that of the steward, generally a sable one, but not the less expressive; the accurate, but rapid glance of measurement thrown round the little state-rooms; another at the good or bad arrangement of the stair-case, by which you are to stumble up and stumble down, from cabin to deck, and from deck to cabin; all this, they only can understand who have felt it. At length, however, this interesting affair was settled, and most happily. The appearance promised ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... a proportion of readers stumble at the threshold. In so vast a mansion there were sure to be back stairs and kitchen offices where no one would delight to linger; but it was at least unhappy that the vestibule should be so badly lighted; and until, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stumble in the hall but he did not hear her exclaim hurriedly when a door across the way opened: "Oh, Mrs. Rawson, will you take Jenny Lind for a minute? I'll be right back for her." She pushed the hook of the cage into the hands of the startled ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... he could decide the point for himself. They were, both of them, and Martin knew them. Good enough. He stood by while Martin greeted the one who spoke and then saw the other wake suddenly at the sound of his friend's voice, stumble to her feet and go forward with a ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... rises from his chair, after a couple of hours, he has only enough strength left to stumble across the room. He sinks down on his bed and lies there as if Death held him in his clutches. It is not invigorating sleep which has closed his eyes, but a stupor, a long fainting fit during which he remains conscious, tortured by the horrible thought that his ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.—Colton. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... life, and I have power to take it again'; and yet, even in this tremendous instance of self-assertion, He remains the obedient Son, for He goes on to say, 'This commandment have I received of My Father.' If these claims are just, then it is vain to stumble at the miracles which Jesus did in His earthly life. If He could strip it off and resume it, then obviously it was not a life like other men's. The whole phenomenon is supernatural, and we shall not be in the true position to understand ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... lay down some way farther off from the fire than usual, and Fenton, pretending to stumble as he passed, threw himself down by his side. Their guards, taking no notice of this, allowed them to remain where they were, while they set themselves to cooking part of a deer they had shot during the day. The Indians, who had been ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... Morena would have been a blood-curdling and nerve-shattering experience. Often she had to guide her mule along a rough path barely a couple of yards wide, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet on one side, a path where a stumble or a false step on the part of the animal would have meant ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the Great Lakes. The boys run across some Canadian smugglers and stumble on the secret of a ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... 475; situation (circumstance) 8. statistics, theory of Probabilities, theory of Chances; bookmaking; assurance; speculation, gaming &c 621. V. chance, hap, turn up; fall to one's lot; be one's fate &c 601; stumble on light upon; take one's chance &c 621. Adj. casual, fortuitous, accidental, adventitious, causeless, incidental, contingent, uncaused, undetermined, indeterminate; random, statistical; possible &c 470; unintentional &c 621. Adv. by chance, accidentally, by accident; casually; perchance &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... would return to his work, saying, "The water is rising in the well again!" Though disease had fastened on his lungs, and was spreading there, and though suffering from a distressing cough, he went on lecturing as usual. To add to his troubles, when one day endeavoring to recover himself from a stumble occasioned by his lameness, he overstrained his arm, and broke the bone near the shoulder. But he recovered from his successive accidents and illnesses in the most extraordinary way. The reed bent, but did ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... heard that it was said, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery:' but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... camp and grabbed his gun and sprang out into sight again—and there, off to the right, was another deer. It was a huge buck, with wide-spreading antlers, rising out of the bushes where it stood. It saw Thyrsis, and started away; and in a flash he raised his gun and fired. He saw the deer stumble, and he fired the other barrel; and then he started ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the sword of the wilderness. Our skin becomes hot like an oven, Because of the glowing heat of famine. They ravish the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah. Princes are hanged up by the hand, The person of the elders is not honored. The young men bear up the mill, And the children stumble under the wood. ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... his conception of her beauty. But Don Quixote was determined that they were intolerant blasphemers who simply had to be thrashed. So he suddenly charged with such vehemence and fury that, if luck had not interfered and made his gentle steed stumble, the trader might have been killed. As Rocinante went down, our gallant hero went over his head, and after he had struck the ground he rolled for some distance. But when he tried to rise he could not: he was so weighted down with armor, helmet, spurs, buckler ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... are incomplete, 25 Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... of their being so, as they were ignorant of Christ and His commandments, and placed their hope of salvation on outward forms and superstitious observances, which were the invention of Satan, who wished to keep them in darkness that at last they might stumble into the pit which he had dug for them. I said repeatedly that the Pope, whom they revered, was an arch deceiver, and the head minister of Satan here on earth, and that the monks and friars, whose absence they so deplored, and to whom ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... at the end of the hour, we were awfully enthusiastic about reading character. The first thing Robbie Belle did was to stumble over the threshold. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... until He inspired Laplace, and Galileo, and Copernicus, and Darwin to contradict the teachings of the previous fifty thousand years. He asks us to believe that God muddled men's minds with a mysterious series of revelations cloaked in fable and allegory; that He allowed them to stumble and to blunder, and to quarrel over these "revelations"; that He allowed them to persecute, and slay, and torture each other on account of divergent readings of his "revelations" for ages and ages; and that He is still looking on while a number of bewildered and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... whatever power it be that wills the nature of the end of man, turned aside the death with which he already seemed to grapple. At the very moment when the flash rose from the havoc-dealing gun, he chanced to stumble over the dead body of a soldier, and fell flat upon his face. Scarcely had he touched the ground when he was again upon his feet; but even in that short space of time he alone, of those who had entered the ditch, had been left unscathed. Before him came bellying ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... descent of the hill road as he saw a man walking unsteadily toward him. Moving to one side he watched the drunken fisherman stumble on, heard the low mumbling of his voice. Then the moonlight fell ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Sam! all his hopes for life now brought down to this: to depend on the wind and pluck of an unconscious horse. One stumble now, and it were better to lie down on the plain and die. He was in the hands of God, and he felt it. He said one short prayer, but that towards the end was interrupted by the wild ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... all sails set. tras prep. behind, after; —— de behind. traslado m. likeness, imitation. trasmontar sink beyond, set. trasparente adj. transparent, clear. traspasar pierce. traspi m. slip, stumble; dar ——s stumble, reel. trastornar disorder, confuse, upset. trastorno m. disorder, confusion, disturbance. trasunto m. likeness, copy. trato m. agreement, bargain, treatment. trecho m. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... wild. The trail was broken with mudholes and crossed by fallen logs. With a superb disdain Tish rode across all obstacles, not even glancing at them. But Aggie and I got off at the worst places and led our horses. At one mudhole I was unfortunate enough to stumble. A horse with a particle of affection for a woman who had ridden it and cared for it for several days would ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... journey we could hear the river running near us for miles in the pitch darkness, and although my brother walked bravely on in front, I knew he was afraid of the water, and no doubt in fear that he might stumble into it in the dark. We were walking in Indian file, for there was no room to walk abreast in safety, while in places we had absolutely to grope ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord God of Hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee. And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... leaves that covered the darkening forest floor, and for several minutes he lay gripped in the sickening spasm that rioted through his veins and robbed him of all reason. When it passed he rose dizzily to stumble on under the trees, which reached up toward a sky glorious with the flaming reds and deep pinks that mark the passing of a hot day over ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... then the Irish pair and child; then Mario, leading his two younger boys, and Celeste, with her daughter asleep in her arms; and for rear-guard papa with one of us on each arm, and Joseph with his precious burden. The wind and the irregularities of the ground made us stumble at every step. The rain lashed us in the face and extorted from time to time sad lamentations from the children. But, for all that, we were in a few minutes at the door of ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Leotychides. There was an oracle of Apollo, he urged, which said "Beware of the lame reign." But Diopethes was met by Lysander, who in behalf of Agesilaus demurred to this interpretation put upon the language of the god. If they were to beware of a lame reign, it meant not, beware lest a man stumble and halt, but rather, beware of him in whose veins flows not the blood of Heracles; most assuredly the kingdom would halt, and that would be a lame reign in very deed, whensoever the descendants of Heracles ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... greatest office ever held by a Negro in America—greater than Douglass or Bruce or Lynch had held—a landmark, a living example and inspiration. A man owed the world success; there were plenty who could fail and stumble and give multiple excuses. Should he be one? He viewed the other side. What must he pay for success? Aye, face it boldly—what? Mechanically he searched for his mail and undid the latest number of the Colored American. He was sure the answer stood ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a disinterested ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... else—it was a dangerous reality. She liked Susan; in her intelligence and physical charm were the possibilities of getting far up in the world; it seemed a pity that she was thus handicapped. Still, perhaps Susan would stumble upon some worth while man who, attempting to possess her without marriage and failing, would pay the heavy price. There was always that chance—a small chance, smaller even than finding by loose living a worth while man who would marry you because you happened exactly to suit him—to give him ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Rabbit! Away jumped the Monkey! Away leaped the Jack who lived in a Box. At the far end of the toy counter the Bold Tin Soldier and his men had placed some sofa cushions from the upholstery department. That was in case either of the three might stumble ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... scramble up steep places, and to slide down; even through the towns the colt trots after its mother, and soon becomes accustomed to all kinds of sights and sounds: so that Syrian horses neither shy nor stumble. ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... circle with them, dancing and singing around the smouldering fire, while the chief Koneco, a noble-looking fellow, sitting at one side, with a patriarchal expression, monotonously drummed an accompaniment with a willow root on the bottom of one of the camp-kettles. When any of us would stumble on a stick they were all convulsed with laughter. The blankets they had were beautiful, and Jacob possessed one valued at $40, which had taken seventy days to make. After the Navajos had gone to rest we listened to some Mormon ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... in the Live Green Book that one may not stumble upon one of its secrets without at the same discovering something about others quite as fascinating and worth exploring. This is a wise and blessed law, which the angels of the Little Peoples are always trying to have enforced. Peter Champneys suspected the Red Admiral ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... recollect a single instance of having seen a horse ill-treated on the Continent. In fact, you hardly ever see a horse on the Continent that is not in good working condition: you never meet the miserable, lame, blind, and worn-out animals that you do in England, which stumble along with their loads behind them till they stumble into their graves. If any one would take the trouble to make friends with their horses, they would be astonished at the intelligence and affection of this noble animal; but we ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... umbrella, patiently waiting for a cab. He has made up his mind to take the first that goes by. There can be no question of discrimination. Anything will be welcome. Yes, anything, even one of those evil-smelling antiquated hackneys drawn by a decrepit brute who will doubtless stumble and fall before having dragged you the first five hundred yards, thereby bringing down the pitiless wrath of his aged driver, not only on his own, but ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... to look for their hats, but so awkwardly and with such evident preoccupation of mind that it was not at first discovered that the Judge had his already on. This raised a laugh, as did also a clumsy stumble of Union Mills against the pork barrel, although that gentleman took refuge from his confusion and secured a decent retreat by a gross exaggeration of his lameness, as he limped after the Right ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... bought 314 and a half acres of beautiful land in the bush behind Apia; when we get the house built, the garden laid, and cattle in the place, it will be something to fall back on for shelter and food; and if the island could stumble into political quiet, it is conceivable it might even bring a little income. . . . We range from 600 to 1500 feet, have five streams, waterfalls, precipices, profound ravines, rich tablelands, fifty ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ends of the earth; Their blind and their lame together, The mother-to-be and her who hath borne. In concourse great back they come hither. With weeping forth did they go,(637) 9 With consolations(638) I bring them, I lead them by(639) streams of water, On an even way, They stumble not on it](640) ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and that no arts or offices of kindness ever won their forbearance. We listened to her statements more than half disposed to credit them, yet we adhered to our original determination, nevertheless, of joining the first gypsy camp on which, during the course of our tour, we might stumble. ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... from the north country. A short-sighted clergyman of what is known as the "old school" was preaching one winter afternoon to a slumberous congregation. Dusk was falling, the church was badly lighted, and his manuscript difficult to decipher. He managed to stumble along until he reached a passage which he rendered as follows: "Enthusiasm, my brethren, enthusiasm in a good cause is an excellent—excellent quality, but unless it is tempered with judgment, it is apt to lead us—apt to lead us—Here, Thomas," handing the sermon to the clerk, "go to the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... startled you and your friends," began the man. "I had no idea of sneaking into your workshop, but I had just arrived here, and seeing the doors open I went in. I heard no one about, and I wandered to the back of the place. There I happened to stumble over a board—" ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... and grass on either side o' her, and tearing them up with th' crackling noise that a horse makes when 't grazes. But no sound escapes her, whether a sigh or a groan. Well, well, comrade, I cry thee patience if I do stumble here a bit: I cannot think on 't now without a tightness i' my throat, any more than a man can think o' th' day his first child was born to him without his heart leaping hot in 's throat like the flame to th' bellows. Well, well! Fill up, I say; fill up. Remember th' old days, when ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... order to lead the sufferers back to Nature's ways. Our minds are far enough beyond our bodies to lead us to help ourselves out of mistaken opinions; although often the sincere help of others takes us more rapidly over hard ground and prevents many a stumble. ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... I take things to heart that belong to the head alone, while father says that, to his mind, feeling is much more of a need to-day than logic; so what can I do but still stumble along ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings. He shall recount his worthies: they shall stumble in their walk; they shall make haste to the wall thereof, and the defence shall be prepared. The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... black, none bears a rod so heavy, none with hand so inexorable draws the novice so sternly to his task, and forces him with authority so resistless to its acquirement. It is by your instructions alone that man or woman can ever find a safe track through life's wilds; without it, how they stumble, how they stray! On what forbidden grounds do they intrude, down what dread ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Quintana's whole gang is in these woods, somewhere, hunting for you, and they might stumble on us here, at any moment." And, to the two men in front: "Lie down flat on your faces. Don't stir; don't speak; or it's you for the sink-hole.... Lie down, I tell you! That's it. Don't move ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... York's financial center with the Levant. It is less than fifty feet through this tiny thoroughfare from the back doors of the great Broadway office buildings to Greenwich Street, where the letters on the window signs resemble contorted angleworms and where one is as likely to stumble into a man from Bagdad as from Boston. One can stand in the middle of it and with his westerly ear catch the argot of Gotham and with his easterly all the dialects of Damascus. And if through some unexpected convulsion of Nature 51 Broadway should topple over, Mr. Zimmerman, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Helen hastily and a trifle impatiently, 'can't you ever learn, even after you have been bitten? If you do stumble on anything, I should think you would remember and not talk ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... stumble awkwardly down the stairs, heard her pause at the foot. Next came a moment of silence, of waiting as tense above as below. Then came a burst of Rosie's jolly laughter. She came running up to them, her cheeks like roses, her ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... all ready for me?" asked the young inventor, as he took up his curious weapon, and followed Ned out into the yard. It was so dark that they had fairly to stumble along. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton |
