"Tumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the grand tumble of all their little embowered incident could be neither stayed or mended. "Yes," he answered, sulkily, "I think so too." They shook hands huffily and he ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... from the river, in a little plain surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers. As we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one upon another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling, they did not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all. As the streets drew near to this presiding genius, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... called out "Halt!" In a step or two I came to a stop. A large fellow climbed over the hedge, and, coming on the road, fell, or rather stumbled over himself, into the ditch. I was afraid he was drunk, and that this tumble would add vexation to his spirits; but he was only tired and over-weighted, carrying a big knapsack and a gun, a number of articles girdled around his waist, along with too much avoirdupois. It ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... enough. His wife had twin children—one was a fine young Dahcotah, and the other was a smart active little bear, and it was very amusing to see them play together. But in all their fights the young Dahcotah had the advantage; though the little bear would roll and tumble, and stick his claws into the Dahcotah, yet it always ended by the little bear's capering off and roaring after his mother. Perhaps this was the reason, but for some reason or other the mother did not seem contented ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... fairly jumped from her seat, to Mrs. Wadsworth's wonder. So we had—lived in a world of our own. Polly reads no newspaper since the "Sandemanian" was merged. She has a letter or two tumble in sometimes, but not many; and the truth was that she had been more secluded from General Grant and Mr. Gladstone and the Khedive, and the rest of the important people, than had Brannan or Ross ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... as he stood in the entrance of his damp den, "there are worse places than my cave after all. But what I want is firewood. Lord! that flash almost blinded me. Rumble—grumble—tumble—crash—bang! Go it; never mind me. You aren't frightening me worth tuppence. I rather like a little electricity and aqua pura." In answer there was a dazzling flash, followed by a terrific clap of thunder which seemed to burst almost above Benjamin's head. "All ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... was the devil to pay. It was a rough and tumble and no grips barred—just the kind of fight Rondeau likes. Nevertheless old Duncan floored him. While he's been away somebody taught him the hammer-lock and the crotch-hold and a few more fancy ones, and he got to work on Rondeau in a hurry. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... jetsam make another class of Beachcomber by stimulating the gaming instincts. Is there a human being, taking part in the rough and tumble of the world, who can honestly make confession and say that he has completely suffocated those inherent instincts of savagedom—joy and patience in the chase, the longing for excitement and surprise, the crude selfishness, the delight in getting something ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... You are always King; Always wear a crown, Though you tumble down; Call each thing your own, Find each lap a throne; Dearest, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... A misstep backward, a tumble and a bumped head brought this sport to an end, just as Shannondale was reached, and in her attempts to soothe the little girl, Edith failed to see that the shade was lifted for a single moment, while, standing upon the platform, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... there was menace in the voice, but above all these there was fear—fear that her illusions were to tumble about her. Celia heard that note and was quelled by it. This folly of belief, these seances, were the one touch of colour in Mme. Dauvray's life. And it was just that instinctive need of colour which had made her so easy to delude. How strong the need is, how seductive the proposal to supply ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... dressed in lively colored costumes, looking graceful and pretty, and gaining added effect from the dark tones of the old gray houses around them. Advancing upward, at times at angles of forty-five degrees and more, through narrow streets crowded with picturesque houses (if they did threaten to tumble down), they at last reached the Piazza: here the squeeze commenced, crockery, garlic, hardware, clothing, rosaries and pictures of the saints, flowers; while donkeys, gensdarmes, jackasses, and shovel ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... would smash windows, break the peace, get your bones broken, tumble under carts and horses, and be locked up in watch-houses, be a Drunkard; and it will be strange if ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... tumble in the river and peril to her life had left her completely stranded, as it were, upon an unknown shore of indecision. Evidently it was just what Billie had called it, a fool stunt for her to try and row up that river ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... trouble, not in need. Our seconds in guide, but not in lead. Our thirds in tumble, not in fall. Our fourths in height, but not in tall. Our fifths in stanza, not in rhyme. Our sixths in gymnast, not in climb. Hid in these words two painters lie, Whose names and works will ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and tumble off on her piazza roof, or get Sheltie to throw me just at her gate and be taken in fainting. It's no use to try to drown myself when she is bathing. I can't sink, and she'd only send a man to pull me out. What can I do? I will see her and tell her my hopes and make her say I can act some day. Mamma ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... to me, "as an author. The saving distinctions are plainly stated in it, and I am sure nothing is wanted to make them tell, but that some kind friend should steal them from their obscure hiding-place, and just tumble them down before the public as ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... that ye could scrooch out o' bed an' hump yerself over to them? If Pether tries he's sure to tumble over, an' some one ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... in great terror, clutching Zaidee with both hands. "Don't go down there. You might tumble right through any time right on Mr. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... upon Mr. Lear's use of the following words: Runcible, propitious, dolomphious, borascible, fizzgiggious, himmeltanious, tumble-dum-down, spongetaneous. ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... attention by every means in our power, so as to induce the company to throw us halfpence to scramble for. This they would do to while away their time until their dinner was ready, or to amuse themselves and the ladies by seeing us roll and tumble one over the other. Sometimes they would throw a sixpence into the river, where the water was about two feet deep, to make us wet ourselves through in groping for it. Indeed, they were very generous ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... no commercial activity to enhance the cost of living. Househunting, under these circumstances, becomes an office of constant surprise and disconcertment to the stranger. You look, for example, at a suite of rooms in a tumble-down old palace, where the walls, shamelessly smarted up with coarse paper, crumble at your touch; where the floor rises and falls like the sea, and the door-frames and window-cases have long lost all recollection of the plumb. Madama la Baronessa is at ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... fear in him by carefully guarding and watching him, by putting him through that neurasthenic regimen so brilliantly described by Arthur Guiterman in his story of the aseptic pup. Yet he had a brother as carefully brought up as himself who became a rough-and-tumble lad, with as little likelihood to fear as any boy. So that we may only assume that F.'s training fostered fear in him; ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... cry and tink dat dey must have been poisoned. For tree days it was a terrible time. De hatches were shut down and no air could come to us, and dere we was all alone in de dark, and no one could make out why de great house on de water roll and tumble so much. We cry and shout till all breaff gone, and den lie quiet and moan, till jus' when ebery one tink he dead, dey take off de hatch and come down and undo de padlocks and tell us to go up on deck. Dat berry easy to say, ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... battle only when exhausted. That first swimming lesson and the fusillade of rocks that followed engendered animosities that involved "Al-f-u-r-d" in many rough and tumble encounters afterwards. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Chickens had feared that they would tumble off as soon as they were asleep, but they soon learned that their feet and the feet of all other birds are made in such a way that they hang on tightly even during sleep. The weight of the bird's body above hooks the toes around the branch, ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... boards taken from the tumble-down shack an extra shed had been built near the cabin, and the porch repaired and strengthened. Harlan found time to make a much larger cage for the pigeon. As he told Ellen, the bird, confined in such close quarters, might ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... "Hillo there, sleepers; tumble up. All hands shorten sail! Hurry up, my bullies, or we shall have the squall upon us before we are ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... fashion, go fight without a rest A caterwauling phantom among the winds of the west. But what are you waiting for? into the water, I say! If there's no sword can harm you, I've an older trick to play, An old five-fingered trick to tumble you out of the place; I am Sualtim's son Cuchulain—what, do you ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... "Kemp, kneel on their right side. Trudeau and I will hit them from the left and tumble them over you. Get their ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Shep, and on the instant all of the boys forgot about the tumble and each caught up his shotgun. It was indeed a deer, standing among some young trees about two ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... of ravens and crows incessantly wheel round and round in the gulfs and natural wells which they transform into dark dovecots, while the brown bear, followed by her shaggy family, who sport and tumble around her in the snow, slowly descends from their retreat invaded by the frost. But these are neither the most savage nor the most cruel inhabitants that winter brings into these mountains; the daring ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... have, however, to thank them for affording me some amusement and giving me pleasant recollections of the place. It was good to lounge in a long chair, drink in the cool air, and watch the little birds at work. I shall soon forget the tumble-down appearance of the house, its seedy furniture, its coarse durries, and its hard beds, but shall long remember the great snow-capped peaks in the distance, the green moss-clad trees near about, the birds that sang in these, the sunbeams that played among the leaves, and, above ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... sigh. "One must build for one's self. But, Emily, dear, I built Rosie's castle. I have wished for just what is happening over yonder among the pine trees, for a long long time. I have been afraid, now and then, of late, that my castle was to tumble down about my ears, but Charlie has put his hand to the work, now, in right good earnest, and I think my castle ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... took his message down to Dick Rendal; 'We're this moment passing Hurst Castle,' he announced cheerfully, 'and you may tumble out if you like. But first I'm to pack a few clothes for you; if you let me, I'll do it better than the steward. Shore-going clothes, my boy—where do you keep your cabin trunk? Eh? Suit-case, is it?— best leather, nickel locks—no, silver, as I'm a sinner! Hallo, my young friend!'—here ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the men clung to the boat, but he attempted to gain the shore by himself. I was about to tumble the pigs out of my boat, and to go off in her to his assistance, when three of the natives darted out through the foaming seas towards where he was struggling. Every instant I expected he would disappear, but they quickly reached ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... of no use asking myself this question now. There I was, on Joe's back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the ditches like a hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman nose, and to keep up with us. The soldiers were in front of us, extending into a pretty wide line with an interval between man and man. We were taking the course I had begun with, and from which I had diverged in the mist. Either the mist was not out again yet, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... centipede—glanders, botts, greased hoofs, heaves, blind staggers, it makes no odds. My universal, self-acting, double compound elixir of equestrian ointment will perform a cure in each and every case. It is cheap! It is sure! It is patented! It is the best, and it is here. You may roll up, you may tumble up, you may walk up, any way to get up, or send your money up, and you will receive a two-quart bottle of this precious liquid, of which I am the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... American, "but it had to tumble some time. You often hear that in the woods: they go on growing and growing for hundreds of years, and then they stop from old age and overgrowth, and begin to rot and rot, till all at once, night or day, the top's too heavy for the bottom, and down they come. We'll go and have a look at that ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... truth, I never had, and never desired to have, any capacity for the rough-and-tumble of politics. I greatly respect many of the men who have gifts of that sort, but have recognized the fact that my influence in and on politics must be of a different kind. I have indeed taken part in some stormy scenes in conventions, meetings, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... serenades and suppers and much gallantry among the myrtles overhead; and meanwhile the foundation shudders underfoot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and at any moment living ruin may leap sky-high into the moonlight, and tumble man and his merry-making in the dust. In the eyes of very young people, and very dull old ones, there is something indescribably reckless and desperate in such a picture. It seems not credible that respectable married people, with umbrellas, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I'm concerned; and I don't think there need be much with you neither, if you wouldn't mind changing your rig and shiftin' into some togs of mine, so as these chaps of the Francesca, won't recognise you. Then, when the next boat comes from the ship, we'll tumble down into her and offer to give two of the others a spell; they'll be only too glad of the chance to get a little relief from the job of pullin' backwards and for'ards and the handlin' of a lot of stuff, and, once aboard the ship, we can stow ourselves out of sight until they ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... his violet stockings, supported by his clerical secretary, and followed at a respectful distance by his two attendant footmen with their threadbare liveries. At last, out of the dreary waste, at the end of the interminable ill-paved sloughy road, the long line of the grey tumble-down walls rises gloomily. A few cannon-shot would batter a breach anywhere, as the events of 1849 proved only too well. However, at Rome there is neither commerce to be impeded nor building extension ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... cylinder which, in wholesale operations, is revolved by the factory's general power plant or by a separate motor. The cylinder is equipped on the inside with sets of reverse-screw mixing flanges that tumble the beans around until they are thoroughly blended; and there is usually a fan attachment to remove dust. This operation serves also to smooth down and to polish the surfaces of the beans, which adds to the style of the coffee when roasted. The ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... filled. After a certain time, when the moulds are cool, the excess of tallow is poured off at one corner, and then cleaned off altogether, and the ends of the wick cut away. The candles alone then remain in the mould, and you have only to upset them, as I am doing, when out they tumble, for the candles are made in the form of cones, being narrower at the top than at the bottom; so that what with their form and their own shrinking, they only need a little shaking, and out they fall. In the same way ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... in upon in this manner, swags and sways, threatening to tumble pell-mell upon the right wing; which latter has its own hands full. No Chotusitz or point of defence to hold by, Prince Karl is eminently ill off, and will be hurled wholly into the Brtlinka, and the islands and gullies, unless he mind! Prince ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the wheels had waked little Vi, and as in a flash she had seen the whole—the horrible apparition in its glistening, rattling robes, step out from behind a tree and fire, and the tumble of its victim into the dusty road. Then she had sunk down upon the ground ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... some of these offenders against the law, taking with me interpreters, for the great majority of them were foreigners. In many of these homes poverty had done its worst. Every surrounding influence favored undesirable citizenship; every turn presented flagrant violations of the law; the tumble-down stairways, the defective plumbing, the overflowing garbage boxes, the uncleaned streets and alleys, all suggested that laws were not made to be enforced. Many of the unfortunates whom I saw there regarded the law as a revengeful monster, a sort of Juggernaut that would work fearful ruin ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... places seemed to murmur: "Ah, this is nothing! Come back at the right weeks and see the sky above us almost black with its excess of blue, and the new grass already deep, but still vivid, and the white roses tumble in odorous spray and the warm radiant air distil gold for the smelting-pot that the genius loci then dips his brush into before making play with it, in his inimitable way, for the general ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... then he sped after the apparition. Only for the evidence of that undignified tumble, he would have doubted the reality of this flying Venus and considered her some creature of his imagination. There she lay, however, a thing of flesh and blood, bruised, broken, helpless; apprehensively he pictured himself staggering back to town ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... him into a gambol. The old dog would keep on for a long time with imperturbable solemnity, now and then seeming to rebuke the wantonness of his young companions. At length he would make a sudden turn, seize one of them, and tumble him in the dust, then giving a {p.185} glance at us, as much as to say, 'You see, gentlemen, I can't help giving way to this nonsense,' would resume his gravity, and jog on as before. Scott amused himself with these ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... him assistance, thinking him hurt. But the vigorous old man was upon his feet again, brushing the dust from his clothes, and after thanking those who came to his aid, said that he had had a very complete tumble, and that it was owing to a cause no horseman could well avoid or control—that he was only poised in his stirrup, and had not yet gained his saddle when the scary animal sprang from ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... good thing that we army fellows are called upon, occasionally, to tumble a few of them about ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... pleasant day of leisure, after a walk to see that magnificent pile, the Houses of Parliament, I was sauntering along, without thought of where I was going, until I found myself in a perfect labyrinth of filthy streets and tumble down buildings and presenting all the other evidences of vice and poverty; the very neighborhood in short of "Tom Allalone's" lair. Fortunately I met a policeman who guided me into a respectable part of the city. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... no attention to him (except Carver, he was a friendly feller, Carver was, kept a lookout he didn't tumble himself off the platform) and when Denver sung out things was ready, and Santa Fe sung out back for the Friendly Aiders to haul away, the boys all grabbed onto the rope together—and up Shorty went a-kicking into ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... travelling minstrel-comedians). Just as the French fabliaux inspired Chaucer's coarser tales, so the French farce stimulated the natural inclination of the English taste to broad humour and rough-and-tumble buffoonery on the stage. Held in some restraint by the dominant religious element, it grew stronger as the latter weakened. Thus, in Like Will to Like a certain Hance enters half-intoxicated, roaring out a drinking song until the sudden ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... faulty, and also imperfect: how then should remission be extended to us for the sake of that? But now the righteousness of Christ is perfect, perpetual and stable as the great mountains; wherefore he is called the rock of our salvation, because a man may as soon tumble the mountains before him, as sin can make invalid the righteousness of Christ, when, and unto whom, God shall impute it for justice; Psalm xxxvi. In the margin it is said to be like the mountain of God; to wit, called Mount Zion, or that Moriah on which the temple ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting—tumble?' ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... Treffy," said Christie, "it's only me. I was listening to your organ, I was, and I heard you tumble, so I came in. Are you better, ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... seemed to shrink a little as it hissed under the torch of the long silver spear of water. He kept his finger along the nozzle of the pipe to ensure the aim, and attended to no other business, knowing only by the noise and that semi-conscious corner of the eye, the exciting incidents that began to tumble themselves about the island garden. He gave two brief directions to his friends. One was: "Knock these fellows down somehow and tie them up, whoever they are; there's rope down by those faggots. They want to take away my nice hose." The other was: "As soon as you get a chance, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... 'ave knocked about a middlin' little bit, you bet I 'ave, And I ain't what Barber BIDDLECOMBE would call "a heasy shave"; But these Sanitary codgers give me beans, and no mistake. I am fly to most all capers, but don't tumble to their fake. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... sir; bit of a tumble, that's all, sir. Don't you be skeared. I arn't going to make no row about it. No, no, sir, please," continued the boatswain, "not yet. I don't feel fit to be boarded. Just you go and give your orders to make that there boat safe, and then I'm ready for you. ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... restaurant, and the polite expectant weariness of the priests and acolytes, all showed that the hour was in fact not quite three—an hour at which such interiors have invariably the aspect of roses overblown and about to tumble to pieces. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... extinguished. Then I remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when my fingers came ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... climber to scale Long's Peak. The top is fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty-nine feet above the sea, is almost level, and, though rough, is roomy enough for a baseball game. Of course if the ball went over the edge, it would tumble a mile or so before stopping. With the top so large, you will realize that the base measures miles across. The upper three thousand feet of the peak is but a gigantic mass, almost destitute of soil or vegetation. Some of the rocks are flecked ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... could ever hold and guide another as it held and guided his little sister. "But guide? — she'd never let him guide her!" — said Winnie in a great fit of sisterly indignation. And her thoughts would tumble and toss the matter about, till her cheek was in a flush; she was generally too eager to cry. It wore upon her; she grew thinner and more haggard; but nobody knew the cause and no one could reach ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... How menny hed ov cattle From Egypt's ranches Moses drove; I never fit a battle On p'ints that frequently gave rise Tew pious spat an' grumble, An' makes the brethren clinch an' yell In spiritooal rough-an'-tumble. ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... woes so petty!" Fulke d'Arnaye slipped from his horse, and presently stood beside the gray mare, holding a small, slim hand in his. "I thank you," he said, simply. "You know that it is impossible. But yes, I have loved you these long years. And now—Ah, my heart shakes, my words tumble, I cannot speak! You know that I may not—may not let you do this thing. Why, but even if, of your prodigal graciousness, mademoiselle, you were so foolish as to waste a little liking upon my so many demerits—" He gave ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to know it—say no more, old fellow, for I can give a pretty good guess how it turned out. Come, tumble into your blankets and get some of your beauty sleep. There's another day coming, when I hope all of these twists and misunderstandings may be smoothed out and everything look bully. Now, crawl in and feel for your nest—it's on the side to the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... his investigations by paying calls on Bentinck-Major and Canon Foster. Bentinck-Major lived at the top of Orange Street, in a fine house with a garden, and Foster lived in one of four tumble-down buildings behind the Cathedral, known from time immemorial as ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... daughter, somewhat short in stature) that this uncertainty of disposition strengthened and increased with her temporal prosperity; and divers wise men and matrons, on friendly terms with the locksmith and his family, even went so far as to assert, that a tumble down some half-dozen rounds in the world's ladder—such as the breaking of the bank in which her husband kept his money, or some little fall of that kind—would be the making of her, and could hardly ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... madam, what accidents? He has not had a fall or a tumble, has he? He is not coming ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... "Tumble up quicker'n you ever did in your life!" he exclaimed, his big brown beard wagging almost in Cosmo's ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... on to the stage, and was received with effusion by the widow and Augustus, and especially by Isabella, who was a minx, and set herself to captivate the old gentleman. In vain the luckless Augustus tried to ingratiate himself with his rich relation; he was unfortunate enough to tumble over the gouty leg and make several other most exasperating mistakes, which ended in Uncle Cashbags wrathfully repudiating him as his heir, and announcing his intention of marrying Isabella himself, finally hobbling away with the ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... Goodkin replied. "You know, that nightshirt thing they wear is about the stupidest idea for a storm-troop uniform I ever saw. Natural target in a gunfight, and in a rough-and-tumble it gets them all tangled up. Ah, there go a couple of coppers to talk to them; that's what they've been waiting on. Now they can beat it without looking like they been ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... however strong that person might be. In such a case there would certainly have been a scuffle, and as the daughter of the murdered man heard his cry for help—which was what Sylvia did hear—she would certainly have heard the noise of a rough-and-tumble struggle such as Norman would have made when fighting for his life. But that single muffled cry was all that had been heard, and then probably the brooch had been pinned on the mouth to seal it for ever. Later the man had been ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... and the tongue at last denies Expression to the wonders that are wearing out the eyes, Then the splendor it will wane like a dream that haunts the brain, Or the swift dissolving beauty of the bow above the rain; And the summer domes of pleasure that bubble up the sky Will tumble into legends in the twinkling of an eye; But the art of man endureth, and the heart of man will glow With reanimated ardor as the ages come and go. The pageants of the present are but pledges of a time When strifes shall be forgotten in a cycle more sublime When ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Happiness" was rich in stunts that would have made even Battling Nelson turn to tatting with a sigh of relief. Five gangsters, sicked on to their work by the villain, waylaid our hero on the stairs, and in the rough-and-tumble that followed, it was his duty to beat each and every one of them into a state of coma. He performed his task so conscientiously that his hands were swollen for a week, not to mention his eyes and nose. As for the five extra men who posed as the gangsters, all came to the ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... Brothers never referred to the incident of the rotted trapeze rope, and Joe did not know whether to believe them guilty or not. At most, he thought, they only wanted to give him a tumble that might make him look ridiculous, and so discourage him from continuing the work. In that case their deposed partner might get a chance. But Joe did not give up, and he kept a sharp lookout. He redoubled his vigilance regarding ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... annoyed with him, began to dislike him, grew to hate him. She looked on him as a painter might upon a picture, or a poet, upon a poem, which he had only succeeded in getting into an irrecoverable mess. In the hearts of witches, love and hate lie close together, and often tumble over each other. And whether it was that her failure with Photogen foiled also her plans in regard to Nycteris, or that her illness made her yet more of a devil's wife, certainly Watho now got sick of the girl too, and hated to know her ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... lost his temper and tried bullying the thing. The bicycle, I was glad to see, showed spirit; and the subsequent proceedings degenerated into little else than a rough-and-tumble fight between him and the machine. One moment the bicycle would be on the gravel path, and he on top of it; the next, the position would be reversed—he on the gravel path, the bicycle on him. Now he would ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... little, delicate, fair girl of his. For all he had spoken of her marriage, the very idea of confiding her to any other man than himself made him furious. Especially the idea of some rough school-boy, who knew little else than to tumble about in a football game and was not his girl's mental equal, irritated him. He went over in his mind all the boys in her class. The next morning, going to New York, Edwin Shaw, who had lost much of his uncouthness and had divorced himself entirely from his family in the matter of English, was ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of one insane with jealous, murderous rage. The icy floe rocked beneath them. They slipped to and fro on the treacherous ice. The sharp snow beat their faces. Water washed under their feet. At times they reached, in their frightful struggle, the very edge of the floe, and seemed about to tumble into the seething sea. Ootah felt Maisanguaq trying to force him into the watery abyss—but he fought backward . . . time and time again . . . They constantly fell over the unconscious woman on the sledge. About them the darkness roared; ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... all the while it grew hotter and hotter, They swam just as if they were hunting an otter. 'Twas a glorious sight to behold the fair sex All wading with gentlemen up to their necks, And view them so prettily tumble and sprawl In a great smoking kettle as big as our hall; And to-day many persons of rank and condition Were boil'd, by command of an ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... dropped the letter over them in doing so, tumbled into the passage in such a fury and fright that he looked like a madman, tore his hat off a peg, and rushed out. I just heard him say his daughter should come back, if he put a straight waistcoat on her, as he passed the door. Between his tumble, his passion, and his hurry, he never thought of coming back for the letter he had dropped over the bannisters. I picked it up before I went away, suspecting it might be good evidence on our side; and I was ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... stick or a hand to help at awkward corners, and being young and active the party managed to scale the side of the ravine and regain the summit of the mountain without any accidents, though Delia confessed afterwards that she had fully expected to tumble backwards and roll into the lava, a fear which Miss ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... a halfpenny apiece, and the boat almost too much crowded for standing-room. This part of the river presents the water-side of London in a rather pleasanter aspect than below London Bridge,—the Temple, with its garden, Somerset House,—and generally, a less tumble-down and neglected look about the buildings; although, after all, the metropolis does not see a very stately face in its mirror. I saw Alsatia betwixt the Temple and Blackfriar's Bridge. Its precincts looked ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was a tumble-down affair, and sorely needing attention, as, indeed, was the case with the ranch and all its belongings. A team of horses showing signs of hard work and poor care, with harness patched with rope and rawhide thongs, were waiting in the stable. Even to Kalman's ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... a slender German of five and twenty, with the massive forehead of a scholar and the tumble-home chin of a degenerate, did not trouble to reply. He was busy emptying powdered quinine into a cigarette paper. Rolling what was approximately fifty grains of the drug into a tight wad, he tossed it into his mouth and gulped it down without ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... fear. When they wish to ask a question, they kneel down and kiss the border of our coats, as in the days of the serf system. We are stationed here in Poland, about eight kilometers from the so-called road, in a so-called village far from all civilization. The village consists of a number of tumble-down cottages, with rooms which we should not consider fit for stables for our horses. The rain is streaming down unceasingly, as if Heaven wished to wash away all the sins of the world. Our horses sink into the mud up to ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... state of the land and the laborers. Think of Kit Downes, uncle, who lives with his wife and seven children in a house with one sitting room and one bedroom hardly larger than this table!—and those poor Dagleys, in their tumble-down farmhouse, where they live in the back kitchen and leave the other rooms to the rats! That is one reason why I did not like the pictures here, dear uncle—which you think me stupid about. I used to come from the village with all that dirt and coarse ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... again! If ye take a tumble in my line o' fire, for the love o' Mike stay down till I shoot! I come so near drillin' ye when ye hopped up that I'm sweatin' ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... of the tall chimneys tumble into the streets and pirouette backward and forward in black eddies, giving to the city an aspect forbidding to even the manner-born. George Harpwood feels no mist. He sees no smoke. It is the tide of industry. It is the earnest of ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... into the inn without more ado, and I crossed the road towards the gates. They were locked, but the little entrance by the tumble-down cottage stood open, and passing through this I started up the drive. It was a perfect afternoon; the sunshine straggled in through the leafy canopy overhead and danced upon my path. To the right were the thick fastnesses of the preserves; while on my ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... size. The outer coat is thin and fragile and at maturity peels off, leaving an inner coat firm, papery, and elastic, just such a coat as is suitable for the dispersion of its spores. Leaving its moorings at maturity, it is blown about the fields and woods, and with every tumble it makes it scatters some of its spores. It may take years to accomplish this perfectly. The species of the Lycoperdon do not leave their moorings naturally; their spores are dispersed through an apical mouth by a collapse of the walls of the peridium, ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... he remarked; "let us go aboard. Most likely we shall find Maxwell there.—Hi, you fellows, show a light!—Lazy dogs, aren't they? Mind your foot there, and don't tumble into the harbour; you won't get to Valparaiso that way.—That you, Maxwell? I have brought a couple of friends who are so charmed with your boat that they want to make a trip in her. Where do you keep your cabin? Let's go down there; we can't talk ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... there on a grand sofa, I think we ought all to go home. If we greet at that, what'll we do when true sorrow comes across us? How would you be now, dame, if the boy there had broke his neck when he got the tumble?' ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... grasping the falling flowers or confetti. From a balcony, some wealthy forestiero ('Ugh! how rich they are!' grumbles the coachman) scatters baiocchi broadcast, and down in the dirt and mud roll and tumble the little ragamuffins, who never have muffins, and always have rags—and 'spang!' down comes a double handful of hard confetti on Caper's head, as he rides by in an open carriage. He bombards the window with a double handful of white buckshot; but a woman in ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cliffs yonder away to the nor'-east? Weel, there are great masses o' ice that have been formed against them by the melting and freezing of the snows of many years. When these become too heavy to stick to the cliffs, they tumble into the sea and float away as icebergs. But the biggest bergs come from the foot of glaciers. You ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... and distrust, which, but for the good sense maturer years brought to bear against such early impressions, would have rendered her unhappy for life. Propped up by pillows, she sat at a small table amusing herself by building little card houses, and then seeing them tumble down with all the kings and queens of her little city, when she heard her name mentioned in accents of pity by an old lady who had come to pay her aunt a ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... hill,—down, down, down, Under the streets of the town, town, town, Then in the pipe, up, up, up, I tumble right into ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... He was over-modest, making light of his skill if he ever spoke of it, and had no ear for a compliment. While our elders were dancing, I and others of my age were playing games in the kitchen—kissing-games with a rush and tumble in them, puss-in-the-corner, hunt-the-squirrel, and the like. Even then I thought I was in love with pretty Rose Merriman. She would never let me kiss her, even though I had caught her and had the right. This ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... for the room where it was in readiness. The Widow had managed it well; everything was just as she wanted it. Dudley Venner was between herself and the poor tired-looking schoolmistress with her faded colors. Blanche Creamer, a lax, tumble-to-pieces, Greuze-ish looking blonde, whom the Widow hated because the men took to her, was purgatoried between the two old Doctors, and could see all the looks that passed between Dick Venner and his ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... occasion exerted themselves in such a manner as in that country was altogether without example. For they were rather animated than deterred by the flames and falling buildings amongst which they wrought, so that it was not uncommon to see the most forward of them tumble to the ground on the roofs and amidst the ruins of houses which their own efforts brought down with them. By their boldness and activity the fire was soon extinguished, to the amazement of the Chinese, and the building being all on ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... mile back on the road to Wantage, whilst he himself intimated his intention of proceeding for more help to the Farm; and the obedient Frenchman—who, notwithstanding the derangement which his coeffure might naturally be expected to have experienced in his tumble, looked, Susan thought, as if his hair were put in paper every night and pomatumed every morning, and as if his whole dapper person were saturated with his own finest essences, a sort of travelling perfumer's shop, ...
— Town Versus Country • Mary Russell Mitford
... intrigues the ear, and by supplying an harmonic scheme that awakens no brain-recognition and cannot in consequence be understood? Well, the conventional suburbanite may gush over such indeterminate and invertebrate music, saying, "Yes, isn't it just too lovely," but the rough and tumble individuals who make up most of the world will plump for the "tune" every time. Give him what he wants, and then induce him to want something better, but avoid the mistake of trying to turn him into a musical ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... were night it would be all right. But this was no place for a man with an ounce of sense in broad daylight. The sharpshooters would see him in that tall tree sure. They couldn't take him prisoner up there—they would shoot him like a squirrel just to see him tumble and, by the Lord Harry, ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... a busy wriggling conceit, or of the most bare-faced plagiarism, or even through the simple immensity of its assumptions." These fraudulent reputations he undertook, "with the help of a hearty good will" (which no one will doubt) "to tumble down." He admitted that there were a few who rose above absolute "idiocy." "Mr. Bryant is not all a fool. Mr. Willis is not quite an ass. Mr. Longfellow will steal but, perhaps, he cannot help ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... break their hips they can't 'feel' anything else but their hips! Perhaps it breaks their imaginations. Anyway, Amelia's dead, my dear. Sometimes I think mebbe I'd ought to be, too—a lone little woman like me, without a chick or a child. Old women with children can afford to tumble downstairs, but not my kind of old women. John is real good. He wants me to stay here, but I can't—I can't, I can't, my dear! I've got to be where I can limp out to the old pump and the gate and the orchard, on my crutches—I've got to see ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... musically; no outlet from these impregnable walls into the pastoral country on the other side. We must go back by the way we have come, first having penetrated to the heart of the valley by a winding path, and watched the silvery waters tumble down from the grey rocks that seem to ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to examine most severely all that had been done in the taking out any with or without order, without respect to my Lord Sandwich at all, and that he had been doing of it, and find him examining one man, and I do find that extreme ill use was made of my Lord's order. For they did toss and tumble and spoil, and breake things in hold to a great losse and shame to come at the fine goods, and did take a man that knows where the fine goods were, and did this over and over again for many days, Sir W. Berkeley being the chief hand ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... next cut to the line a b c d, Fig. 1, the widest part being, not on deck, but along the line c d, as there is some "tumble home" from ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... tumble to what you mean," replied the other. "I had a touch of it myself when I first came to these queer parts. You feel as if you were ramblin' ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... were small, tumble-down cottages, inclosure's planked round, gardens, green shutters, wine-trade signs painted in red letters, acacia trees in front of the doors, old summer arbors giving way on one side, bits of walls dazzlingly white, then some straight rows of manufactories, brick ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Governor-elect prematurely into the rough- and-tumble of "politics as she is," not always a dainty game. As I review in retrospect this famous chapter of state history, which, because of the subsequent supreme distinction of one of the parties to the contest, became a chapter in national history, I realize the almost pathetic ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... time, until they are past their senses, is such a continued horrible noise of cursing, blasphemy, lewdness, scurrility, and brutish behaviour; such roaring and confusion, such a clatter of mugs and pots at each other's heads, that Bedlam, in comparison, is a sober and orderly place: At last they all tumble from their stools and benches, and sleep away the rest of the night; and generally the landlord or his wife, or some other whore who has a stronger head than the rest, picks their pockets before they wake. The misfortune ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... way to Domodossola, I saw a pretty dark-eyed young woman, with a cherubic baby in her arms, standing in the doorway of a tumble-down cottage. Evidently she was waiting to greet her husband when he should come home, weary with his long day's work. Quickly I made a decision and with the same abruptness I had used in urging Molly to ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... remained in the possession of our assailants. They held a short consultation, and then opening the hatches, a boatswain pulled out his whistle, and in a tremendous voice roared out, "All hands ahoy!" which was followed by his crying out, "Tumble up there, tumble up!" As we understood this to be a signal for our appearance on deck, we obeyed the summons. When we all came up, we found out that if we had had any idea that they were enemies, we might have beaten them off, as they were only fifteen in number ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the top of a little rise in the road, Anita put her hand on my arm. 'Stop,' she said; 'look down there! That is what I like! It is a cot and a rill. You see that cot—not much of a house, to be sure, but it would do. And there, just near enough for the water to tumble over rocks and gurgle over stones to soothe one to sleep on summer nights, is the rill—not much of a rill, perhaps, but I think it could be arranged with a shovel. And then, all the rest is enchanting. I had ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton |
