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More "Frail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saint of Poitiers, Sainte Radegonde, who is reported to have brought the great stone on her head, and the pillars which support it in the pockets of her muslin apron: one of these pillars fell from its frail hold to the ground, and the devil instantly caught it up and carried it away, which satisfactorily accounts for the stone being elevated only at one end. Unfortunately the same legend is so often repeated ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... half-submerged man parted company. The former was steered for the open sea; the latter drifted and tossed helplessly to and fro, growing hourly weaker and more and more benumbed, but always hanging on with convulsive tenacity to the friendly timber that buoyed him up, and was his last frail ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... "primitive man," according to Mr. Spencer, "the need for explanations about surrounding appearances does not occur to him". We have disclaimed all knowledge about "primitive man," but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds his belief in the lack of speculation among savages on a frail foundation of evidence. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, To strow the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou, perhaps, under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... brilliant attainments. She remembered perfectly the customs of the Ancien Regime, and she enjoyed telling about them, as well as about the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and the times that followed. Her family was ruined by the Revolution and the slight, frail, young girl undertook to earn her living by giving lessons in French, on the pianoforte—the instrument was a novelty then—in singing, painting, embroidery, in fact in everything she knew and in much that she did not. If she did not know, she learned ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... Seduce them to our party, that their God May prove their foe, and with repenting hand Abolish his own works. This would surpass Common revenge, and interrupt his joy In our confusion, and our joy upraise In his disturbance; when his darling sons, Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse Their frail original, and faded bliss— Faded so soon! Advise if this be worth Attempting, or to sit in darkness here Hatching vain empires." Thus Beelzebub Pleaded his devilish counsel—first devised By Satan, and in part ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... throne of England, turning against her from that new point of vantage all the energies of his unconquerable genius. An invalid built the Bourbon monarchy, and another invalid battered and defaced the imposing structure: two potent and daring spirits in two frail bodies, Richelieu and William ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... female unadorn'd and plain, Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, Slights every borrow'd charm that dress supplies, Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes: 290 But when those charms are pass'd, for charms are frail, When time advances, and when lovers fail, She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, In all the glaring impotence of dress. Thus fares the land, by luxury betray'd, 295 In nature's simplest charms at first array'd; But verging to decline, its splendours rise, Its vistas strike, its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... gain a chance to struggle out of water. Indeed, he might very well have hung in that equilibrium of forces until tired out, had not a slender, water-washed alder root offered itself to his grasp. This frail shrub, but lightly rooted, nevertheless afforded him just the extra support he required. Though he expected every instant that the additional ounces of weight he from moment to moment applied to it would tear it away, it ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... "that the spectators for a moment came under the spell of the hour, and were awed by something supernatural in the endurance of that frail girl." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... no longer. Thou wilt indeed render me a service in depriving me of this wretched head, hideous without, and I must fear, empty within, seeing that it hath not prevented me from wasting my life in the service of vanity and luxury. Woe to the sage who trusts his infirm wisdom and frail integrity within the precincts of a court! Yet can I foretell a time when philosophers shall no longer run on the futile and selfish errands of kings, and when kings shall be suffered to rule only so far as they obey ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... not deserve it, and that Heaven was punishing her for her error in yielding to the entreaties of the commander. One would have sworn she was sincere and that the words came from her heart. If Maitre Quennebert had not witnessed the scene with Jeannin, if he had not known how frail was the virtue of the weeping damsel, he might have been affected by her touching plaint. The chevalier appeared to be deeply moved by Angelique's grief, and while his, uncle was striding up and down the room and swearing ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... is needless to do more here than briefly recapitulate. The letter then went on: "While thus kindly treated by the family with whom nominally a governess, I was on the terms of a friend with Signor Ludovico Cicogna, an Italian of noble birth. He was the only man I ever cared for. I loved him with frail human passion. I could not tell him, my true history. I could not tell him that I had a child; such intelligence would have made him renounce me at once. He had a daughter, still but an infant, by a former marriage, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... niche some five feet from the ground, its splintered portions bearing decided witness to the dreadful struggle I had made to obtain my freedom. I advanced and examined it closely. It was a frail shell enough—unlined, unornamented—a wretched sample of the undertaker's art, though God knows I had no fault to find with its workmanship, nor with the haste of him who fashioned it. Something shone at the bottom of it—it was a crucifix of ebony and silver. That good ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... personal contrast confronted him, in the face of the lady who was dispensing the hospitalities of the table. Mr. Le Frank's plump cheeks were, in colour, of the obtrusively florid sort. The relics of yellow hair, still adhering to the sides of his head, looked as silkily frail as spun glass. His noble beard made amends for his untimely baldness. The glossy glory of it exhaled delicious perfumes; the keenest eyes might have tried in vain to discover a hair that was out of place. Miss Minerva's ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... and stiff and silent, while the other looked about her in a despairing helplessness. She was a frail-looking woman, worn with fatigue and the excited emotions with which timidity spurs itself to action. She looked as if she longed to sit down somewhere, and as if perhaps she could have more courage seated, but Charlotte made ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... time to escape another sea, which came rolling in, and committed further damage, sending fragments of the wreck floating about in the comparatively smooth water between us and the shore. We had great difficulty in avoiding the pieces of timber which were driven towards our frail raft. Every moment it seemed as if we were about to be overwhelmed. On looking towards the beach, we found that the blacks had disappeared, with the exception of one man, who stood ready to assist us in getting on shore. A few more hauls on the raft, and we, with our packs, were able to spring on ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... to touch the bloom of youth Spoils its frail complexion; Let the young grape gently grow Till it reach perfection; Hope within my heart doth glow ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... she saw him there, a straight, slim, handsome figure, with the very vanity of proud health upon him, and ambition and passionate purpose in every line of his figure, every glance of his eyes. Now—there he was, bent, frail, and thin, with restless eyes and deep discontent in voice and manner; the curved shoulder and the head grown suddenly old; the only thing, speaking of the past, the graceful hand, filled with the illusory courage of a declining vitality. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lawful profession, and that we need only sanctify our employments by a perfect spirit, and the fervent exercises of religion, to become saints ourselves, without quitting our state in the world. When we behold others, framed of the same frail mould with ourselves, many in age or other circumstances weaker than ourselves, and struggling with greater difficulties, yet courageously surmounting, and trampling upon all the obstacles by which the world endeavored to obstruct their virtuous choice, we are secretly stung ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that wing Rich regions of Romance; Love waking when the Spring Begins its first wild dance, Love redder than the rose, Love paler than the snows, Love frail as corn that tilts With morning ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... an idea of the letters that spell the word,—or, at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle, with 'Ran away from the subscriber' under it. The magic of the real presence of distress,—the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,—these he had never tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... I gathered that they had been, that morning, seized from their chteaux and were being led away to the prisons of Souilhac. They were old men, women and children, and I was wondering to myself how these frail people could present any danger to the country, when I heard several of the children asking for food. One lady begged a national guard to let her get out to go and buy something to eat. He refused her, rudely, and when the lady produced an "assignat" and pleaded with him to go ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... snow. Without some such help we could not have kept our footing for a moment, and as long as I live I shall never forget the sensation of leaving my friendly Alpenstock planted in the snow, and of seating myself on that frail sledge. Perhaps I ought to describe it here. A board, about six feet long by one foot broad, with sheet-iron nailed beneath it, and curved upwards in front; on its upper surface a couple of battens were fixed, one quite at the foremost end, and one half-way. That was F——'s ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... for the qualities of her heart than for the beauty of her person. "She was extremely good-humoured, charitable, and humane," continues Brantome "The people of France ought to pray to God that the female favourite of every chief magistrate of their country may resemble this amiable frail one." ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... thou not that the River of Death, toward which thou art rapidly moving, cannot be crossed in a bark so frail? I have seen millions who tried in vain to ride its angry currents, but they sank beneath its dark waters. Come, O mortal man, if thou hast nothing better on which to depend, listen to the voice of wisdom and come, without delay, to the ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... whether, mounted on cherubic wing, Thy swift career is with the whirling orbs, Comparing things with things, in rapture lost, And grateful adoration for that light So plenteous ray'd into thy mind below From Light himself—oh! look with pity down On human kind, a frail, erroneous race! Exalt the spirit of a downward world! O'er thy dejected country chief preside, And be her Genius called! her studies raise, Correct her manners, and inspire her youth; For, though deprav'd and sunk, she brought thee forth, And glories in thy name. She points thee out To all her ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... from the pursuing machine. A man leaped suddenly to his feet, shaking the frail craft violently as he did so, waved his arms once, twice, and ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... something superhuman. There was sufficient light to discern a being of earthly mold stealing from among the graves, apparently with a design to enter the highway. It is in vain that philosophy and reason contend with early impressions, and poor Caesar was even without the support of either of these frail allies. He was, however, well mounted on a coach horse of Mr. Wharton's and, clinging to the back of the animal with instinctive skill, he abandoned the rein to the beast. Hillocks, woods, rocks, fences, and houses flew ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... prevailed there both for and against Napoleon, but without the name of the Bourbons ever being pronounced. They were almost unknown to the new generation, forgotten by many of the old, and feared by the conventionalists; at that time they possessed only the frail support of the coteries of the Faubourg St. Germain, and some remains of the emigration. But as it is certain that the emigrants could offer only vain demonstrations and wishes in support of the old family of our Kings, they did ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... enjoyable and successful meeting. This was my introduction to Mt. Byrd, which has since afforded me a home, has stood by me through good and evil fortune, has never wavered in its devotion and fidelity, and among whose good members my frail body will rest, till it rises in the ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... ear, Each clamors for the bigger share; And whilst they clamor, climb—and, lo! Upon the margin, to and fro, Unsteady poised, one wavers slow. Stay, stay! the parents anguished shriek, Too late; for venturesome, yet weak, His frail legs falter under him; He falls—but from a lower limb A moment dangles, thence again Launched out upon the air, in vain He spread his little plumeless wing, A poor, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the passing tribute ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Lake Michigan, and from this led the two routes to the Mississippi: one by way of Green bay and the Fox and Wisconsin, and the other by way of the lake to the Chicago river. But if the trader chose to go from the Huron islands through Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, the necessities of his frail craft required him to hug the shore, and the rumors of copper mines induced the first traders to take the south shore, and here the lakes of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota afford connecting links between the streams that seek Lake Superior and those that seek ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the Everlasting. Soon the warm caresses of the sun and the rain wake the latent life in the acorn; the shell breaks and a frail little shoot of vegetable life appears, so small that an infant could crush it. Yet that weak and puny thing grows on unobserved, striking its rootlets farther into the crevice of the rock. And when there is no more room for it to ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... then the hope I shall forget At length, my lord, Pieria?—put away For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay These mortal bones against my body set, For all the puny fever and frail sweat Of human love,—renounce for these, I say, The Singing Mountain's memory, and betray The silent lyre that hangs upon me yet? Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake, Rather, from dreams of me, that at your side So many nights, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... day. I think she would scarcely recognise it at the present. Modern art has done its best, and over the whole yet lingers the mysterious charm of the Past; the dark historical legends connected with the palace and its quondam frail, fair, and, I regret to add, ferocious mistress, its—But what has all this to do with "Saint or Satan," you will ask? Where ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... a young man slipped from your memory when you became an old one. Some we have lost, some we have thrown away, some have by degrees passed out of our sight, to some we have wilfully shut our eyes. If I am to make excuses for your weakness, I must say in the first place that human memory is a frail vessel, and is not large enough to contain the mass of things placed in it; the more it receives, the more it must necessarily lose; the oldest things in it give way to the newest. Thus it comes to pass that your nurse has hardly any influence with you, because the lapse of time has set the ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... it would be hard to find the men who would venture off in such a sea as that; but if, as I believe, the wind is falling, there is yet some hope; if it goes down as rapidly as it sometimes does in summer, frail as are our boats, we may be able ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... who caused a diversion in this group of lay figures by walking to the table and helping himself to a whisky-and-soda. Austin bore very little resemblance to his grim and dominant elder brother. He had a slight frail figure, very carefully dressed, and one of those thin-lipped faces which seem, to wear a perpetual sneer of superiority over commoner humanity. The movements of his white hands, the inflection of his voice, the double eyeglass which dangled from his vest by a ribbon of black silk, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... crimp-haired. She appeared not to have comprehended what I had said. Her lips trembled and she attempted to say something to me, but the words stuck in her throat. Then, dropping her head on the piano, she began to weep with great sobs that shook her frail body. I tried to console her, and blurted out incoherent words of love, but this seemed only to increase her distress, and when I left her, she was ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... no return; and then feeling that it was the last, that the parting was over, she stood again by the side of the bed as she had done a few minutes before, in a convulsion of grief, her face bowed down and her little frame racked with feeling too strong for it; shaken visibly, as if too frail to bear the trial to which it ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... didn't know him, but, as you are aware, there was hardly a personality of mark or position that hasn't been talked about in the Pavilion before me. Of him I had only heard that he was a very austere and pious person, always at Mass, and that sort of thing. I saw a frail little man with a long, yellow face and sunken fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk. One missed a rosary from his thin fingers. He gazed at me terribly and I couldn't imagine what he might ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... singularly expressive face, Antoinette, without possessing any of those charms which imparted such an incomparable splendor to the beauty of Dolores, was very attractive. She was a brunette, rather frail in appearance and small of stature; but there was such a gentle, winning light in her eyes that when she lifted them to yours you were somehow penetrated and held captive by them; in other words, you were compelled to ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... opened, while he was staying with the daughter of an old friend at Hampton Falls, in New Hampshire—that saintly woman whom we associate with one of the most spiritual and beautiful of his poems, "A Friend's Burial." After a serious illness in the winter of 1892 he was almost too frail for any summer journeying; but with his usual wisdom and instinctive turning of the heart towards old familiar places, he thought of this hospitable house where he seemed to gain strength, and where he found much happiness and the quietness that he loved. His last ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... sweet service and the sermon was on hidden sins. Lilian wondered if hers was undue pride, the desire to rise above her station? She glanced at her mother. The tears were coursing silently down her sunken cheeks. Was she missing the love a daughter ought to give? She looked so frail and delicate that the girl's heart went out to her as it ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of dust, and feeble as frail, In thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail; Thy mercies, how tender! how firm to the end, Our Maker, ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... is frail. That seems to me a sufficient explanation of how such a proposal came to be laid before us. But honestly—for we all ought to be honest!—it seems to me that any material advantage it might bring would be more than counterbalanced by loss of esteem. (Uproar.) There has been quite a different ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... abundantly with young trees, of light wood. These they cut down, stripped off their bark, collected them by fives, and, lacking ropes, fastened them together with lianas and a tenacious kind of gum which the forest provided. A large number of small, frail, basket-like contrivances were thus made, each large enough to carry two men, with whom they would sink in the water as deep as the waist. Piperies, Lussan called them, but his description does not make it clear just ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... waves broke with ever-increasing violence on the frail bulwark the two bodies offered to their impetuous course, and it was only a question of moments when they would both be beaten down. Grylls's knees weakening under him first, down they went, Garth uppermost; and, the water seizing them, still gripped together, they were ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... James continued to prosper; he rose to be cashier in the bank, and he won a calm but certain place in Christine's regard. She had never quite recovered the shock of her long illness; she was still very frail, and easily exhausted by the least fatigue or excitement. But in James' eyes she was perfect; he was always at his best in her presence, and he was a very proud and happy man when, after eight years' patient waiting and wooing, he won from her the promise to be his wife; ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... joined by Italy—a surprising development which can only be explained on the ground of Italy's feeling that she could not hope for security at home, or for colonial expansion in the Mediterranean, so long as she remained in isolation. The Triple Alliance so constituted had a frail appearance, and it was hardly to be expected that Italy would receive strong support from partners in comparison with whose resources her own were insignificant. But the Triple Alliance has endured to the present day, the ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... friend, we return, with an air as busy and important as if we were engaged in the grave office of measuring the Pyramids, or settling the antiquity of Stonehenge, to converse with this jovial, this fat, this roguish, this frail, but, I think, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... their ruin with large checks and sharp reproofs. She had saved many homes and covered many scandals. For girls she had a special tenderness. She had never been a beautiful young girl, and she had a pathetic reverence for what was frail and fair. For them she had no reproofs, only vast mercy, and patient skill in releasing them from the traps which had caught their flurried young senses; but for those who had set the traps she ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... philosophy of success, Phoebe proceeded to initiate me into the first process of my job, which consisted in pasting slippery, sticky strips of muslin over the corners of the rough brown boxes that were piled high about us in frail, tottering towers reaching to the ceiling, which was trellised over with a network of electric wires and steam-pipes. Two hundred and fifty of these boxes remained to be finished on the particular order upon which Phoebe was working. Each must be given eight muslin ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... suitors; one quarrel already having occurred; a meeting in the dark; a renewal of the quarrel; an attack by the weaker with a cane; the blow that turned the stronger into a maddened beast and prompted him to grasp his frail rival and throw him into the sea. What was more possible? What was more probable? Jealousy had caused thousands of similar tragedies in the history of ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... to speak I had been called out of the room. It was the servant from Devonshire-terrace to tell me his child Dora was suddenly dead. She had not been strong from her birth; but there was just at this time no cause for special fear, when unexpected convulsions came, and the frail little life passed away. My decision had to be formed at once; and I satisfied myself that it would be best to permit his part of the proceedings to close before the truth was told to him. But as he went on, after the sentences I have quoted, to speak of actors having to come from scenes ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... indeed, if the bold Norsemen, the bold buccaneers who in their frail craft pillaged the west coasts of Europe and extended their voyages into the Mediterranean, should have omitted to pay a visit to the shores of the Baltic Sea. We know that they settled in England and France, and it causes no surprise when we read that the Slavs in the neighborhood ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... But his frail bark was speedily filled with water; the waves swept over it with a wild roar, and covered the whole form of the emperor with foaming, hissing spray. He still kept himself erect by dint of almost superhuman efforts; but now another even more terrible wave approached and swept, thundering and with ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Jel[vs]a, in the time of the other commandant, some of the people were interned; the young captain assured us that he would do no such thing. And one could see that he would never imitate the brutality of his predecessor, who had caused a frail old man of sixty-six, Professor Zari['c], to be pulled out of his bed in the middle of a winter's night and taken across the hills on a donkey to Starigrad, afterwards on a destroyer to Split, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Leona by the hand, and retreated inside. She shut the door, and bolted it. If it were a jaguar, what protection would that be? Such a creature could dash itself through the frail bamboo wall, or tear the door to pieces with his great claws in a moment. "If it be a jaguar," thought she, "we ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... that my husband has a younger brother, Clement, who was a brilliant scholar and a fine musician. His health had always been frail, and he overstudied in college, with the result that in the middle of his junior year he broke down altogether and was ill for a long time. Worry about his condition finally affected his mind and he became quite ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... had so long preyed on her frail body, that her end was visibly approaching; and the council, being assembled, sent the keeper, admiral, and secretary, to know her will with regard to her successor. She answered with a faint voice, that as she had held a regal sceptre, she desired no other than a royal successor. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... who leave it for the turbulent city, in the same light, half wondering, half compassionating, as that in which the ancients regarded the hardy adventurers who left the safe land and their happy homes, voluntarily to expose themselves in a frail vessel to the dangers of an uncertain sea? Here, when I look out on the green fields and the blue sky, the quiet herds basking in the sunshine or scattered over the unpolluted plains, I cannot but exclaim ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... relatives filled the vessel, while a great number of boats, of every description that could be assembled, either on Loch Tay itself or brought by land carriage from Loch Earn and otherwise, followed in the rear, some of them of very frail materials. There were even curraghs, composed of ox hides stretched over hoops of willow, in the manner of the ancient British, and some committed themselves to rafts formed for the occasion, from the readiest ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... had been accompanied throughout by dramatic action. That mixture of simplicity and refinement which he was surprised to find in a composition of the thirteenth century, is shown sometimes in the turn given to some passing expression or remark; thus, "the Count de Garins was old and frail, his time was over"—Li quens Garins de Beaucaire estoit vix et frales; si avoit son tans trespasse. And then, all is so realised! One still sees the ancient forest, with its disused roads grown deep with grass, and the place where seven roads meet—u a forkeut set cemin qui s'en vont ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... our friend. We bless and thank thee for the comfort we have found in each other, for the worldly prosperity to which virtue, trustfulness, and faith in thy care have conducted us; for the mutual esteem, confidence, and affection that sway and direct our frail natures, but, above all, for the sure and certain knowledge that when our mortal shall have put on immortality, we shall ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... with pain when he told her mother the meaning of the flushed cheeks and laboured breathing. She had been doing so well, too, and seemed in a fair way to win against the relentless foe, but now, restlessly tossing on her pillow, with a deadly catch in her breathing, what chance had such a frail little spar of ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... American union has a history of more intense interest than our own. Its early chapters, indeed, savor of the romantic rather than of the real. I do not speak of the long-ago time when Illinois forest and prairie were the house and hunting-ground of the red men, and his frail bark the only craft known to its rivers. That period belongs to the border-land age of tradition rather than of veritable history. It is of Illinois under the domination of civilized ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... outlook on life was a comfortable one, born of her own sunny nature. Its foundation was love, the keystone of its arch peace. The blood of a gentle mother had effectually subdued in her the fierce impetuosity of her father—as in life the frail little wife had dominated the boisterous husband. Tressa wanted most to be loved. It was food to her self-respect, to her easy and appealing ways, even to the laugh bubbling so readily to her rosy lips. Most of all she wanted to be loved by Adrian Conrad; her father—well, ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... sea formed lines of rocks, hardly rising above the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. It required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. The coasting trade was attracted from Arvad successively to Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, and finally to the other towns of the coast. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... seems to destroy a woman's finer intuitions. If you feel that you must marry again, go slowly, and wait until the bruised tendrils of your heart have healed and are rooted in healthy soil. Do not let them twine about any sort of a dead tree or frail reed. Run no chance ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to her was small and delicate, it lacked the sturdiness of its father and of the mother. So frail, indeed, did the little life seem at first, that grave doubts were entertained whether the babe would live to be taken ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... they are so, because they rest not on a mind consolidated by principles, and a heart glowing like a furnace with corresponding feelings. When resting on such a mind and heart, resolutions are not frail; but ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... they will drag away a corpse, and that they will scarcely care to present to Ithobal. See, I have hidden poison in my breast, and here at my girdle hangs a dagger; are not the two of them enough to make an end of one frail life? Should they dare to touch me, I shall tell them through the bars that most certainly I shall drink the bane, or use the knife; and when they know it, they will leave me unharmed, hoping to starve me out, or trusting to chance ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... precious bit o' fluff! Me own true weddid wife!...An' we're alone! She seems so frail, an' me so big an' rough— I dunno wot this feelin' is that's grown Inside me 'ere that makes me feel I own A thing so tender like I fear to squeeze Too 'ard fer fear she'll break...Then, wiv a groan I starts to 'ear a coot call, ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... haunts in my olden sprightly Hours of breath; Here I went tempting frail youth nightly To their death; But you deemed me chaste—me, a tinselled sinner! How thought you one with pureness in her Could pace this street Eyeing some ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... sure of victory. But this was very odd about the affair, that the stiffer Virginia grew, as I saw her there, the more indurate, the more ruggedly of the soil, declining battle, the more Aurelia shrank in my eyes, the less confident her call to me, the more frail her hold of my heart. Virginia stood apart like a rock and turned away her eyes from me. "Thou shalt seek me out of thine own will, Francis, for I will never come to thee again of mine!" But Aurelia's halo had slipped; her wings drooped lifeless, her glitter was ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... had fled from her frail body, they who came to prepare her for the grave looked at her face and ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that seemed like death, which had been creeping languidly through his veins for some time, darkened his eyes and sealed his lips. He could not see her, and her voice sounded far away. She called again and again upon him, but there was no answer. The deep roar of the storm on the other side of the frail wooden walls thundered continuously, and the groan of the straining planks grated upon her ear as she listened intently for one or more word from him. Was she then alone with him, dying? Was there no help, nothing that could be at least attempted for his ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... some changes. Little John's place was vacant. A sudden sharp illness, and the frail life went out, leaving a sweet and gentle memory, for John had helped in ways he did not dream of. Every one of those merry girls and boys was more thoughtful and tender for the association with him. Seeing the pleasure their companionship gave him, they learned the value of simple friendliness. ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... disgrace—of seeing the town which looked to them for help fall beneath their very eyes. That this did not occur is entirely due to the fierce tenacity and savage endurance of the disease-ridden and half-starved men who held on to the frail lines ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sung, and moralists and sages have taught, that for the frail woman there was nothing left but to die; or if more remained for her to suffer, there was at least nothing left for her to be or do—no choice between sackcloth and ashes and the livery of sin. The beatified penitents of the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... glance told the captain that the mud-bespattered figure that lay before him as if dead was none other than his own son! The great wave had caught the frail craft on its crest, and, sweeping it along with lightning speed for a short distance, had hurled it on the deck of the Sunshine with such violence as to completely stun the whole crew. Even Spinkie lay in a melancholy little heap in the ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... propped on her hands, while, so malicious was fate's decree once more to Royson, that he was then hastening through malodorous lanes and crowded slums in order to save from threatened peril the very man whose downfall offered the only visible means by which he could bend his own frail fortunes in the direction that looked best ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the tides of possibility that flow through this great city; I look at the symbols of this Republic; and I cannot believe that such is to be the result. I look back upon our history, and cannot argue such a future from such a past. A great light lay upon the wake of those frail ships that bore our fathers hither; the wake of past ages, the following of good men's prayers and brave men's deeds, the mingling currents of martyr-blood and prophet-fire. And methinks, as they struck the shore, and met the savage wilderness, a Voice saluted them; a voice not ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... don't know just what Pa could do if he were home, he seems so frail, But every time the skies grow black I notice Ma gets rather pale. An' when she's called us children in, an' locked the windows an' the doors, She jumps at every lightnin' flash an' trembles when the thunder roars. An' when the baby starts to cry, ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... in navigation. As he drew near, he found it was a large vessel, or rather raft, called balsa by the natives, consisting of a number of huge timbers of a light, porous wood, tightly lashed together, with a frail flooring of reeds raised on them by way of deck. Two masts or sturdy poles, erected in the middle of the vessel, sustained a large square-sail of cotton, while a rude kind of rudder and a movable keel, made of plank inserted between the logs, enabled the mariner to ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... no easy journey, for storms swept the lake. The waves tossed their frail canoes hither and thither so that they were often in danger of drowning. They were harassed, too, by unfriendly Indians. At length, worn out by fatigue, starving with cold and hunger, they reached the appointed place to await the ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... of Katy looking so frail and delicate, but so beautiful withal, had awakened all the olden intense love she had felt for her darling, and she could not wait much longer without seeing her "in her own home ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... original, her freshness, frankness, and truthfulness impressed me much, and after much experience since in the ways of frail ones, I believe now that what she told me was mainly true, and am sure she was delighted to get a confident in me, to whom she could unbosom ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... fruit of their good and evil deeds! Do thou listen to the regulations on this subject! Man with his subtle original body created by God lays up a great store of virtue and vice. After death he quits his frail (outer) body and is immediately born again in another order of beings. He never remains non-existent for a single moment. In his new life his actions follow him invariably as shadow and, fructifying, makes his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was the last thing for a man held by the leg in several ways to contemplate. And yet there it was. He had entered again into youth and was rushing along on the river that buoys up even a leaf for a time and feels so strong against the leaf's frail texture that every voyaging fibre trusts it joyously. The summer air felt sweet to him. There were wild perfumes in it and the smell of water and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... a curve, that curve does not deepen itself into a vast abyss as it does at the horseshoe up above. This smaller fall is again divided; and the visitor, passing down a flight of steps and over a frail wooden bridge, finds himself on a smaller island in ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... F. Robinson. Attracted by her lovely verse, the intellectual companionship ripened into love, and for his half-dozen final years he enjoyed her wifely aid and sympathy in what seems to have been an ideal union. The end, when it came, was quick and painless. Always of a frail constitution, stunted in body from childhood, he died in harness, October 19th, 1894, his head falling forward on his desk as he wrote. The tributes that followed make plain the enthusiastic admiration James Darmesteter awakened in those who knew him best. The leading Orientalist of his generation, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... over me, a terror froze my veins; I reeled back, and leaned for support against the wall. Roland had passed his arm round Fanny, and she, frail and trembling, clung to his broad breast, looking fearfully up to his face. And never in that face, ploughed by deep emotions and dark with unutterable sorrows, had I seen an expression so grand in its ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... would have furnished, if she had dared; but the Judge looked sternly at her, and unwilling to incur his resentment, yet unable to contain her anger, she threw herself out of the room with a toss of the body that nearly separated her frail ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... her rheumatic old feet resting on the warm brick hearth, sits Aunt Betty Cofer. Her frail body stoops under the weight of four-score years but her bright eyes and alert mind are those of a woman thirty years younger. A blue-checked mob cap covers her grizzled hair. Her tiny frame, clothed ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... made her start and then turn away quickly from the sight of a mother's grief as she clung to a frail daughter for support, sobbing with utter abandon, while the daughter kept begging her to "be ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... was now becoming quite frail. She had in the early part of the winter contracted a severe cold, which, having settled on her lungs, congestion had ensued. She, after a protracted illness, was now convalescent, yet it was evident she was not ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... injurious to her honour and {158} subversive of all her rights.[15] The solicitation remained fruitless. The great American Republic was too intimately connected with France and England to intervene on behalf of Greece. The small states knew too well from their own experience how frail are the foundations upon which rest the honour and the rights of weak ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... between the penitent, sinner and his God, and the priest is elevated to the position of the dispenser of pardon, holding in his hand the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now it is indeed flattering to the frail heart of the minister (for we are all mere men) to find himself elevated to such an exalted post, to stand (as the Papists say of their priest) in the place of God, and have his whole congregation look to him for the pardon of sin, in private confession and the sacraments; and this may possibly ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... attention to his daughter Clara, who was his only child. Throughout her childhood she was under the care of one of his five sisters, all of whom except the one who lived with him and managed his household being comfortably married. His own wife had been a somewhat frail woman, but his daughter had ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... upon Shaw and his school which it would require a separate book adequately to study. By descent Nietzsche was a Pole, and probably a Polish noble; and to say that he was a Polish noble is to say that he was a frail, fastidious, and entirely useless anarchist. He had a wonderful poetic wit; and is one of the best rhetoricians of the modern world. He had a remarkable power of saying things that master the reason for a moment by ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... little distance is as primeval as when the first humans climbed in their frail canoes through the unknown and terrible stretches of ocean, and saw Tahiti shining in the sunlight. A mile or two from the lagoon the fertile land extends as a slowly-ascending gamut of greens as luxuriant as a jungle, and forming a most pleasing foreground ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... driven, they make rapid progress, and before midnight the Milky Way is behind them and out of sight. But, though they breathe more freely, they are by no means out of danger—alone in a frail skiff on the still turbulent ocean, and groping in thick darkness, with neither moon nor star to guide them. They have no compass, that having been forgotten in their scramble out of the sinking ship. But even ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... laughing when he came by, the maids of Springhaven smiled at him. This quite righted him in his own opinion, yet leaving him the benefit of the doubt which comes from a shake in that cradle lately. He made a good dinner, and shouldered his adze, with a frail of tools hanging on the neck of it, and troubled with nothing but love—which is a woe of self-infliction—whistled his way to the beach, to let all the women understand that he was not a bit ashamed. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... limply into the rawhide-bottomed chair under the awning in front of the big board shanty which was on stilts beside the airy flume, and gazed on down the long, gleaming, tragic, watery way to the next steep slide. Then I looked at the frail little flume-boat which had borne Oram Sheets and me thus far on our hazardous journey to the valley. Perhaps I shivered a bit at the prospect of more of this hair-raising adventure. At any rate, Oram, the intrepid flume-herder, laughed, dug his picaroon ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in one corner of the room a little rosewood-table, so frail that it could be crushed by the weight of a man's hand. On this table was a piece of embroidery and a crystal vase filled with flowers. Suspended over this table was a copy of Camille Roqueplan's picture: "The Lion in Love." In the recess near the window was a piano open, and ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... saint, and he's getting old and frail; and I've got a sister engaged; and three little sisters to whom I'm supposed to set a good example. Then, I've no money, and I can't do anything for a living, except serve in a shop. I shouldn't ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have had reason for, had she been prevailed upon by giddy or frail motives, for which one man, by importunity, might prevail, as well ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... heads up one by one, he kissed them o'er and o'er; And aye ye saw the tears run down, I wot that grief was sore. He closed the lids on their dead eyes, all with his fingers frail, And handled all their bloody curls, and kissed ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... temptation she had felt to lead him back to their past memories, and feel for some means of putting him in possession of the truth. As the tension of her mind grew less, she became aware this would have been no easy thing to do. Then, as she sat holding the old hand, and wondering that anything so frail could still keep in bond a spirit weary of its prison, drowsiness crept over her once more, all the sooner for the monotonous rhythm of the heavy breath. Consciousness gave place to a state of mysterious discomfort, complicated with intersecting ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... appearance when he grew up, but at this time of his life the historians and biographers who saw and knew him say that he was quite a pretty boy, though puny and weak. His face was handsome enough, though his form was frail, and not perfectly symmetrical. Those who had charge of him tried to strengthen his constitution by training him to the martial exercises and usages which were practiced in those days, and especially by accustoming him to wear the ponderous armor ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as so hideous, so degraded, and sometimes so vicious and criminal, do they gain their end, and is that end as salutary as they would wish? We dare not pronounce judgment. They may answer that they terrify the unjust rich man by pointing out to him the yawning pit that lies beneath the frail covering of wealth; just as in the time of the Dance of Death, they showed him his gaping grave, and Death standing ready to fold him in an impure embrace. Now, they show him the thief breaking ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... explained; and Marie's earthly fate lay in Don Luis Garcia's hands! The Grand Inquisitor read in that glance that he was known; and for a brief minute a strange, an incomprehensible sensation, thrilled through him. It could scarcely have been fear, when one gesture of his hand would destine that frail being to torture, imprisonment, and death; and yet never before in his whole life of wickedness, had he experienced such a feeling as he did at that moment beneath a woman's holy gaze. Anger at himself for the sensation, momentary as it was, increased the virulence of other passions; but ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... have gone especially well with me for many years, indeed, much more so perhaps than I really deserve. Though this world often requires much care and toil from us frail mortals, it also yields many blessings for which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... beforehand, across the opening through which the animals had entered, and over these poles hung robes, so as entirely to close the opening. The buffalo will not dash themselves against a barrier which is entirely closed, even though it be very frail; but if they can see through it to the outside, they will rush against it, and their great weight and strength make it easy for them to break down any but a heavy wall. Mr. Hugh Monroe tells me that he has seen a pis'kun built of willow brush; ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... likely spot where the captain thought that the precious shells might be found; here we anchored, and the divers quickly got to work. I ought to have mentioned that we carried a large whale-boat, and about half-a-dozen frail little "shell" boats for the use of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... suits him. He has his own theory about inspiration which will not always come,—especially will not come if wine-cups overnight have been too deep. All this has ever been odious to me, as being unmanly. A man may be frail in health, and therefore unable to do as he has contracted in whatever grade of life. He who has been blessed with physical strength to work day by day, year by year—as has been my case—should pardon ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... was that, try as she might, she could not make Switzerland a success. When she went down to the table d'hote, people saw that instead of growing stronger she was growing more frail, and the exertion of coming down the long flight of stairs tried her more than it had seemed to do that first day. Sometimes she had a soft, lovely, dangerous color on her cheeks, and her eyes looked almost translucent; and then again the color was gone, her skin was ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as they have to kites and fisticuffs. I should have remembered that girls—" His memory gave up the stories of his mother's precocity. But this child, who was so startlingly like the dead woman, was far less fitted to carry such burdens. So sensitive an intelligence in so frail a body might suddenly flame too high and fall to ashes. He resolved to place her in classes of other little girls at once, and to keep her in the fields as much as possible. None knew better than he how close the highly strung unresting brain could ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... eh?" cried Merrill, looking at him. "Look at him vaunting his beastly fitness over the frail and weak. I say, men, did you ever behold such condition! See that clear eye, that velvety skin, that—Oh, I ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... to the top of the enclosing levee-rim, the flat country behind it lies low—representing the bottom of a dish— and as the boat swims along, high on the flood, one looks down upon the houses and into the upper windows. There is nothing but that frail breastwork of earth between the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that spread out in ceaseless rotation, forming floating, fiery rings. His wrath had set his nerves on edge; the final thrust made sleep impossible. He felt restless, wide-awake after this cruel shock to his pride. He thought that in his bed, close to him, he had his worst enemy. He hated that frail form that he could touch with the slightest movement, as if it contained the rancor of all the adversaries he ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... has a frail child, with which the ordinary milk in the market does not agree. To build up its health, he buys a country place and a good cow. The child thrives. In his practice, he sees many other frail children, and it occurs to him that they, too, can be benefited ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... had explained it by saying it was "when his heart was bad." And now it seemed, by these gloomy abstractions, that "his heart was bad" very often. And then the long withheld rains came one night on the wings of a fierce southwester, beating down their frail lodge and scattering it abroad, quenching their camp-fire, and rolling up the bay until it invaded their reedy island and hissed in their ears. It drove the game from Jim's gun; it tore the net and scattered the bait of Li Tee, the fisherman. Cold and half starved in heart and body, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... all it entails, Chopin might have been moderately happy, perhaps even have continued to enjoy moderately good health, if body and soul had been well matched. This, however, was not the case. His thoughts were too big, his passions too violent, for the frail frame that held them; and the former grew bigger and more violent as the latter grew frailer and frailer. He could not realise his aspirations, could not compass his desires, in short, could not fully assert ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... That our young Edward might bequeath the crown Of England, putting by his father's will. Yet I stood out, till Edward sent for me. The wan boy-king, with his fast-fading eyes Fixt hard on mine, his frail transparent hand, Damp with the sweat of death, and griping mine, Whisper'd me, if I loved him, not to yield His Church of England to the Papal wolf And Mary; then I could no more—I sign'd. Nay, for bare shame of inconsistency, She cannot pass her traitor ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and, shaking her hand, paddled his frail craft out into the stream. Looking up, she saw Jim coming down the bank, with the ax swinging in one hand and a new pole over his shoulder. He unfastened the ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... creatures birds, bees, butterflies—give glad animation and help to make all the air into music. Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... women with frail bodies, like Rose Standish and Katherine Carver, but there were strong physiques and dauntless hearts sustained to great old age, matrons like Susanna White and Elizabeth Hopkins and young women like Priscilla Mullins, Mary Chilton, Elizabeth Tilley ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... Bromo at the narrow rail. They called them "Night-Blooming Lilies," and sure enough they blanketed the rugged pathway that night like so many tiny white Fairies. Indeed there was something beautifully weird in their white wonder against the night. They looked like frail, earth-angels playing in the star-light, sending out a sweet odor which mingled strangely with the odor of sulphur ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... amid the dead leaves that had lain there all the winter through—the first harbinger of spring, smiling up at her a friendly greeting, despite the wintry cold of February. She knelt down and gently cleared away the dry leaves and grass about it, carefully broke the frail little stem, and returned to de Sigognac's side with her treasure—more delighted than if she had found a precious jewel lying hidden among ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the floor; there was a rusty stove at one end, but no lamp or fuel, and the hay and blankets had been removed from the wooden bunk. Still, as George was warmly clad and had space to move about, he could pass the night there. The roar of the wind about the frail building rendered the prospects of the return journey strongly discouraging. He might, however, be detained all the next day by the snow; but what chiefly urged him to face the risk of starting for the homestead was his inability to read his letters. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... perhaps, or among the hills where Bruenhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two children of London wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He sighed, and looked again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna must have condensed out of the white ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... this dream of lustrous blue. Slowly we advanced towards the Muir; very slowly, for these shining bergs carried death with them if they should graze hard against the steamer's side, and, cautiously, steered with infinite pains, the little boat crept on, zigzagging between them. A frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... sputtered protestingly and Val thought of trying to leap ashore. But stubbornly the outboard fought on. If there ever were a sturdy ship, fit to be named with Columbus' gallant craft or Hudson's vessel, it was that frail outboard which buffeted the rising waters of a Louisiana bayou ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... [Fr.]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile^; impotent &c 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c v.; sapless, strengthless^, powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic^, asthenic^; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate^, womanly. frail, fragile, shattery^; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy^; drooping, tottering &c v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... soldiers exhausted itself, the violence of the tempest increased. The floods of rain and the blasts of the hurricane at last terminated the affray. The Spaniards, fairly conquered, were compelled to a retreat, lest the rapidly rising river should sweep away the frail and trembling bridge, over which they had passed to their unsuccessful assault. The English and Netherlanders remained masters of the field. The rising flood, too, which was fast converting the meadows into a lake, was as useful to the conquerors as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a search immediately. When Andy and his followers had removed this cover, to substitute the frail one of slender sticks, quilted with dead leaves and a scattering of soil to deceive the eye, they could not have ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... worst of it. I want her, Grant. When I'm with her I can't tolerate the idea of giving her up. But how in the mischief can I marry HER? I'm too strong a dose for a frail, delicate ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... will never be upright, unless I bend his legs." A fifth said—"He will not be able to think, unless I press his brain." "Stop!" said the traveller. "Whatever God does, is well done; do not pretend to know more than He; and as He has given organs to this frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to strengthen themselves by ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... these scenes by whatever name it will; we have no desire to change the appropriateness, nor to lessen the moral tenor of southern society. It nurtures a frail democracy, and from its bastard offspring we have a tyrant dying by the hand of a tyrant, and the spoils of tyranny serving the good growth of the Christian church. Money constructs opinions, pious as well as political, and even changes the feelings of good men, who invoke heaven's ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... was much in Eva's room. The child suffered much from nervous restlessness, and it was a relief to her to be carried; and it was Tom's greatest delight to carry her little frail form in his arms, resting on a pillow, now up and down her room, now out into the verandah; and when the fresh sea-breezes blew from the lake,—and the child felt freshest in the morning,—he would sometimes walk with ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Frith, and soon left the Bass and the May behind us. I must confess, I was a little afraid, when, for the first time, I was out of sight of land. It is a dismal thought to have nothing but sea and sky around, and only a frail plank between us and the fathomless depths of ocean. This was my first voyage; but many a day and month and year have I spent on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... to me as it came to you; but I had married before that day; married, not, like the rest of you, for what a wife could bring, but for sentiment and true passion. This, in my case, meant a loving wife, but a frail one; and while we lived a little while on the patrimony left us, it was far too small to support us long without some aid from our own hands; and our hands were feeble and could not work. And so we fell into debt for rent and, ere long, for ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... wisdom. I erred in breaking the whip. I erred in doubting my own prescience, which told me that the smiles I could not woo were given freely to another ... and perhaps the kisses. At least I can set these poor frail human doubts at rest." ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... dimpled cheeks. She was beautiful, but her whole frame was the prey of a hereditary disease. The tears in her eyes glistened like small specks. Her balmy breath was so gentle. She was as demure as a lovely flower reflected in the water. Her gait resembled a frail willow, agitated by the wind. Her heart, compared with that of Pi Kan, had one more aperture of intelligence; while her ailment exceeded (in intensity) by three degrees ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... mother will have neither house nor hame. I'm crying to you for't, Kaytherine; hearken and you'll hear my cry across the cauldriff sea." It was a call from the heart which transported Katherine to Thrums in a second of time, she seemed to see her mother again, grown frail since last they met—and so all was well for Meggy. Tommy did not put all this to himself but he felt it, and after that he could not have written the letter differently. Happy Tommy! To be an artist is a great ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... the West Abbey! there we see How frail a thing is royalty! Where crowns and sceptres worms supply, And kings and queens, like lumber lie. The Tombs themselves are worn away, And own the empire of Decay, Mouldering like the royal dust, Which to preserve they have in trust. Nor has the Marble ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... spiritual crown which men put on when they go into the kingdom of heaven. This is what we urge as the last and finishing excellency of the youthful female character. The cultivation of this is what we press as conferring mortal perfection of character, or as great perfection as frail, sinful creatures can put on below ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... travelling companion, of course, having failed to get my dear old lady to undertake the voyage, so I thought it could do no harm. I went to see her, and found her pretty and frail and sad. She made a piteous appeal to me, and though I was not greatly taken with her, I decided she would do as well as any one for ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... escape, The tall ships passed the stormy cape; For thee in foreign lands remote, Beneath a burning, tropic clime, The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat, Himself as swift and wild, In falling, clutched the frail arbute, The fibres of whose shallow root, Uplifted from the soil, betrayed The silver veins beneath it laid, The buried treasures ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... New France, had he been honest as he was clever; but he was unprincipled and corrupt: no conscience checked his ambition or his love of pleasure. He ruined New France for the sake of himself and his patroness and the crowd of courtiers and frail beauties who surrounded the King, whose arts and influence kept him in his high office despite all the efforts of the Honnetes Gens, the good and true men of the Colony, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... others of less note, came one frail Form, A phantom among men, companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... were reported concerning you at that time,' said I, 'and all were astonished that a man of your wisdom, the Locman of his time, the Galenus of Persia, should have embarked in so frail and dangerous a commodity as a Curdish maid, one of the undoubted progeny of the devil himself, whose footsteps could not be otherwise than notoriously unfortunate; who, of herself, was enough to bring ill luck to a whole empire, much more to a ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... her has a mother of little girls! And there is no escape, not even in common sense. A woman considered sensible in the very highest degree will dress her little girl like other little girls, or perish in the attempt. How many do thus perish, or are helped to perish, we shall never know. A frail, delicate woman said to me one day, "Oh, I do hope the fashions will change before Sissy grows up, for I don't see how it will be possible for me to make her clothes." You observe her submissive, law-abiding ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... care what they'd think," she returned feverishly, her frail fingers plucking nervously at the arms of her chair. "I must go—I ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... bubble endure so long as earth; and shall I leave the rocks about me silent on the King of Glory, at whose word they were, and at whose breath they shall be dust? Nay, but these stones shall speak to weary wayfarers of eternal peace, and of the Lamb, whose frail and afflicted yet ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... childless; and no great political sagacity was required to foresee the probable fate of the country if such a moment was chosen for a French and Scottish invasion. The very worst disasters might be too surely looked for, and the hope of escape, precarious at the best, hung upon the frail thread of a single life. We may therefore imagine the dismay with which the nation saw this last hope failing them—and failing them even in a manner more dangerous than if it had failed by death; for ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... and sentiment in the other. Both are absent and self-involved, both live out of themselves in a world of imagination. Hamlet is abstracted from everything; Romeo is abstracted from everything but his love, and lost in it. His 'frail thoughts dally with faint surmise', and are fashioned out of the suggestions of hope, 'the flatteries of sleep'. He is himself only in his Juliet; she is his only reality, his heart's true home and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... was soon dashing in fury against the roof of the hut. The frail structure trembled beneath the blows of the wind, and the clamor of the beating rains made all interior sounds inaudible. The prisoner knew that the outlaws were sitting before the fire in the outer room, probably jesting and ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... deepest slumber, Evil thoughts may come in dreams; And the senses list the murmur, Though the frail ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the necessity of lightness, the weight of the various elements had to be kept at a minimum, and the factor of safety in construction was therefore exceedingly small, so that the machine as a whole was delicate and frail and incapable of sustaining any unusual strain. This defect was to be corrected in later models by utilising data gathered in ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... against the ship. The sailors were already lowering the boats, and she could hear the sound of the captain's speaking-trumpet as he shouted his orders above the noise of the storm. Were they indeed to trust themselves to the mercy of that terrible sea? Gipsy watched with alarm as the first frail-looking boat was successfully ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... mosquitoes from far inland is based on the supposition that these insects are capable of long-sustained flight, and a certain amount of battling against the wind. This is an error. Mosquitoes are frail of wing; a light puff of breath will illustrate this by hurling the helpless creature away, and it will not venture on the wing again for some time after finding a safe harbor. The prevalence of mosquitoes during a land breeze is ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... of a London boarding-house in the neighborhood of Russell Square—one of those grim shelters, the refuge of Transatlantic curiosity and British penury. The girl—she represented the former race was leaning against the frail palisading, with gloomy expression and eyes set as though in fixed contemplation of the uninspiring panorama. The young man—unmistakably, uncompromisingly English—stood with his back to the chimney a few feet away, watching his companion. The silence between them was as yet unbroken, ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Squire, I can take freedoms with you; but perhaps the concomitant gentleman, your friend here, would be pleased to take my stool. Indeed, I always use a chair, but the back of it, if I may, be permitted the use of a small portion of jocularity, was as frail as the fair sect: it went home yisterday to be mended. Do, sir, condescind to be sated. Upon my reputation, Squire, I'm sorry that I have not accommodation for you, too, sir; except one of these hassocks, which, in joint considheration with ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... promise of a good third. Yet hardly could a slighter person display to advantage the famous Gwilt-Athelstan jewels. The rope of pierced diamonds with pigeon-blood rubies strung between them, which she wears wound over her corsage, would assuredly overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have clasped becomingly a figure that was svelte—or "skinny," as the great lady herself is frank enough ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... try as she might, she could not make Switzerland a success. When she went down to the table d'hote, people saw that instead of growing stronger she was growing more frail, and the exertion of coming down the long flight of stairs tried her more than it had seemed to do that first day. Sometimes she had a soft, lovely, dangerous color on her cheeks, and her eyes looked almost translucent; ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... charge to be partial for republics, avows that despotism is incompatible with the Christian religion, because the Christian religion commands meekness, and despotism claims arbitrary power to the whims and passions of a frail mortal; and still it is more than 1,500 years since the Christian religion became dominant, and through that long period despotism has been pre-eminently dominant; you can scarcely show one single truly democratic republic ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... alert he hovered behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers, so that they only grew becomingly as low as his ears. His rather large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But still a gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the possibilities of a pad of green parrots' tail-feathers, or of a few yards of pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women would pinch the thick, exquisite old ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... so he could watch the other without cramping his neck, for he saw that something like a struggle was taking place, the masked man seemingly holding some object helpless in the bottom of the frail craft. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... senses were aware of what was at my feet, kneeling there, face buried in clasped hands, too soft, too small, too frail to hold a man's whole destiny. And, as I bent to kiss them, I scarce dared clasp them, scarce dared lift her to my arms, scarce dared meet the frightened wonder in her eyes, and the full sweetness of them, and the love breaking ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... where the captain thought that the precious shells might be found; here we anchored, and the divers quickly got to work. I ought to have mentioned that we carried a large whale-boat, and about half-a-dozen frail little "shell" boats for the use ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... ill, unsound, worn, diseased, fainting, sick, wasted, worn down, emaciated, fragile, unhealthy, weak, worn out. exhausted, frail, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... found. We approached the range just before sunset, much tired, with two Wonga-Wongas and three iguanas at our saddles. I had just informed my Blackfellow, that I wished to encamp, even without water, when some old broken sheets of bark, remains of the frail habitations of the natives, caught my eye; a dry water-hole, though surrounded with green grass and sedges, showed that they had formerly encamped there, with water. This water-hole was found to be one of a chain of ponds extending along the edge ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... was but just after nine, the early omnibus had gathered its tribute of toiling or shopping worms, and was too prevalent in Park Lane for my peace of mind. There were also enormous drays, which looked, as our frail bark passed under their bows, like huge Atlantic liners. The hansoms were fierce black sharks skimming viciously round us, and there were other monsters whose forms I had no time to analyse: but into the midst of ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a distant course, Filled full of far-fetched wares his frail ship's hold: At home, the strong bull stood unyoked; the horse Endured no bridle in the age ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... frail that he was frightened. Surely, too, she'd be very angry with him for letting her ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... by one frail woman, a woman not of noble birth, with only beauty, sweetness of disposition, amiability, goodness, and brilliant accomplishments as her weapons! It was not a case of the moth and the flame, but the operation of a wise philosophy, the precepts of which were decently, moderately and carefully ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... qualities can be proved, any more than the nature of a man can be ascertained if all goes smoothly and easily with him. Therefore, let no one venture to put confidence in himself, till he has been tossed about by the storms of life, and by that time he will have learned that he is weak and frail under all circumstances, unless sustained by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is alone able to keep him from falling. Ben and Tom had crept up to near where Mr Martin was standing. He saw them ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... during all this period was so frail, and his mind, especially at certain times, was so feeble, that he was almost as helpless as a child. There was an hereditary taint of insanity in the family, which made his case still ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... people describe only the weak, surly and frail as sinners? And every one when he advises others to describe only the strong, healthy, and ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... does not greatly trouble me, senor. I am no frail reed fearing a puff of air. I merely seek that duty which seems most fair to all concerned. Pray tell me then what it is you would ask at my hands. Nay, wait; before we go into this business be seated here, so we may ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and in an Instant put out the Candles. But he cry'd to her, 'In vain, O too indiscreet Fair One, in vain you put out the Light; for Heaven still has Eyes, and will look down upon my broken Vows. I own your Power, I own I have all the Sense in the World of your charming Touches; I am frail Flesh and Blood, but—yet—yet I can resist; and I prefer my Vows to all your powerful Temptations.—I will be deaf and blind, and guard my Heart with Walls of Ice, and make you know, that when the Flames ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... they carried the frail craft to a place of safety, each fellow proud to be counted ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... dear father's a saint, and he's getting old and frail; and I've got a sister engaged; and three little sisters to whom I'm supposed to set a good example. Then, I've no money, and I can't do anything for a living, except serve in a shop. I shouldn't be free, either; so what's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... permanent, and which swept the finest and most beautiful things away the soonest. The garland that blooms at night withers by morning; and the strength of man and the beauty of women are no longer-lived than the frail anemone, the lily and violet that flower and fall.[2] Sweetness is changed to bitterness; where the rose has spread her cup, one goes by and the brief beauty passes; returning, the seeker finds no rose, but a thorn. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... was perfect union. We were no longer two. Therese had disappeared like a drop of water lost in the immensity of the ocean; Jesus alone remained—He was the Master, the King! Had not Therese asked Him to take away her liberty which frightened her? She felt herself so weak and frail, that she wished to be for ever united ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... to all, his love of his own fatherland, and that you would not disgrace him. Besides, Charley, there's not an humble hearth for many a long mile around us, where, amidst the winter's blast, tempered not excluded, by frail walls and poverty,—there's not one such but where poor Godfrey's name rises each night in prayer, and blessings are invoked on him by those who never ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... The De Peyster people, by reason of the advantage of their placid lagoon, had no reason to risk their lives in the surf in this manner, and so, naturally enough, they were not nearly as skilful in the management of their frail canoes when they had to face a sweeping sea on ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... flutingly sang of his experience. The wonders of this morning's wind and sun and clouds were expressed in a flow of words so right and sentences so perfectly balanced that they would have seemed pedantic had they not been clearly as spontaneous as the wordless notes of a bird in song. The frail, sweet voice rose and fell, lingered, quickened, in all manner of trills and roulades. That he himself could not hear it, seemed to me the greatest loss his deafness inflicted on him. One would have expected this disability to mar the music; but it didn't; save that now and again ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... national treasury, and they are in evidence at official dinners and all palace entertainments. They read and recite; they dance and sing; they become accomplished artists and musicians. They dress with exceptional taste; they move with exceeding grace; they are delicate in appearance, very frail and very human, very tender, sympathetic, and imaginative." But though they are certainly the prettiest women in Korea, move in the highest society, and might become concubines of the Emperor, they are not allowed to marry men of good class (Angus ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... into praise of my lover. However, I will not attempt to complete my argument; for if you do not understand me from what I have already said, the further you follow the wider you will wander. The truth, in short, is this: I practically believe in the doctrine of heredity; and as my body is frail and my brain morbidly active, I think my impulse towards a man strong in body and untroubled in mind a trustworthy one. You can understand that; it is a plain proposition in eugenics. But if I tell you that I have chosen this common ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... certainly no hint of things oriental about her—an English woman and of the people, in dull homely clothing, grave of aspect and of bearing; yet behind whose statuesque and sternly patient beauty a great flame seemed to quiver, offering sharp enough contrast to the frail glintings of the rain-washed sunset amid ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... prove their foe, and with repenting hand Abolish his own works. This would surpass Common revenge, and interrupt his joy In our confusion, and our joy upraise In his disturbance; when his darling sons, Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse Their frail original, and faded bliss— Faded so soon! Advise if this be worth Attempting, or to sit in darkness here Hatching vain empires." Thus Beelzebub Pleaded his devilish counsel—first devised By Satan, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... resign to lawless power, Nor think it worth the purchase of an hour; But Envy ne'er shall fix so foul a stain On the fair annals of a Brunswick's reign. 340 If, slave to party, to revenge, or pride; If, by frail human error drawn aside, I break the law, strict rigour let her wear; 'Tis hers to punish, and 'tis mine to bear; Nor, by the voice of Justice doom'd to death Would I ask mercy with my latest breath: But, anxious only for my country's good, In which my king's, of course, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the enthusiasm, what use in imposing on the whole body a task which the vast majority are not qualified to perform? Would it not be well to recognise the fact which we cannot alter, and to abstain from demanding from frail human nature what human nature cannot render? Would it not be well for the Church to impose upon its ordinary members only ordinary duties? When the Bernard or the Whitefield appears let her by all means find occupation for him. Let her in such cases boldly ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Mrs. Donegan's troubles this time which summoned her, although that excitable old woman met her, crying and wringing her hands. It was for a neighbor's misfortunes that she invoked Mary's aid. Dena Barowsky, a frail girl in the room above hers, who supported a family by her work in the factory, had had a ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of woman and of her equal powers. Ariosto treated women like spoiled children; the humanists delighted to rake up the old jibes at them in musty authors; the divines were hardest of all in their judgment. "Nature doth paint them forth," says John Knox of women, "to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel and void of the spirit of council and regimen." "If women bear children until they become sick and eventually die," preaches Luther, "that does no harm. Let them bear children till ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Assured that the frail wooden fortress is provided with water, wood and food, he gives himself up to the indolences of winter quarters, smoking pipes innumerable while the women-folk are busy with the evening meal. The cold snaps the nails in the plank walls with reports like pistol-shots; the stove crammed with ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... Tacitus sublimely expresses himself at the close of his admired biography of Agricola: "I do not mean to censure the custom of preserving in brass or marble the shape and stature of eminent men; but busts and statues, like their originals, are frail and perishable. The soul is formed of finer elements, its inward form is not to be expressed by the hand of an artist with unconscious matter; our manners and our morals may in some degree trace the resemblance. All of Agricola that gained our love and raised our admiration ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was kept a close prisoner by the Inquisition, and not allowed either to set foot outside his own door, or to receive visits from non-Catholics. In the spring of 1639, however, he was allowed to go back to his villa at Gioiello, near Arcetri, and Milton obtained admission to him, old, frail, and blind, but in full possession of his mental faculty. There is observable in Milton, as Mr. Masson suggests, a prophetic fascination of the fancy on the subject of blindness. And the deep impression left by this sight ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... bar at its best was never very safe for navigation, and this evening it was in its element, as with every storm it presented one boiling, seething mass of foam. The inhabitants of the island saw the frail small boat from the ship securely inside the bar, and prophesied some dire calamity should the captain and the two sailors venture to return to the ship that night. But the captain and his companions, having secured sufficient provisions, decided (as far as I can remember the story), ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... terrify them on the earth, without troubling themselves about the sky. No man's property, liberty, or life was safe for a moment unless he were a devout servant of holy Church; and even in that case he held them by a frail tenure, for private spite might accuse him of heresy, and then for him there was little hope of mercy. One after another, the few who had hitherto remained staunch either fled from England, fell from the faith, or suffered at ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the form of amiable prepossessions. A vast mass of mystic and traditional lumber still enters into the foundations of Conservatism, and if all this "wood, hay, and stubble" were to be burnt up it would fare ill with the frail fabric overhead. The practical policy of Conservatism would not alter, and could not be altered much, but its pretensions would have to be pitched in a lower key, and the excessive modesty of the part which alone remains ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... hairy backwoods person quite wretchedly gotten up, even for a wilderness. Our host himself, I was quick to observe, was vogue to the last detail, with a sense of dress and equipment that can never be acquired, having to be born in one. As he stepped from his frail craft I saw that he was rather slight of stature, dark, with slender moustaches, a finely sensitive nose, and eyes of an almost austere repose. That he had much of the real manner was at once apparent. He greeted the Flouds and ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... say, had birth In that blest ground but it was play'd about With its peculiar glory. Then I rais'd My voice and cried "Wide Afric, doth thy Sun Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair As those which starr'd the night o' the Elder World? Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?" A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light! A rustling of white wings! The bright descent Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and look'd into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs, So that with hasty motion ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... start to tears a female auditor, than any preacher in the land. From boyhood he seemed to have the key to every heart he desired to unlock. Fatal gift! and terribly fatal did it prove to many a victim, and especially to that gifted but frail girl—Margaret Moncrief. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the chain. The club rose as Miki's head came through. In another instant it would have beaten his head to a pulp—but Nanette was between it and the dog like a flash, and the blow went wild. It was with his fist that Le Beau struck out now, and the blow caught Nanette on the shoulder and sent her frail body down with a crash. The Brute sprang upon her. His fingers gripped ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... man in the eye, secretly idolise the men of masterful qualities. It is like the sick man Stevenson writing stories of rugged out-door activity. I heard a student say once that he was sure Marlowe was a little, frail, weak man physically, and that he poured out all his longing for virility and power in heroes ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... of the assembled craft, and leisurely pulled her way in and out amongst them. The decorated boats delighted her, some agleam with Chinese lanterns—giant glow-worms floating on the water, others with phantom sails of frail asparagus fern lit by swaying lights like dancing will-o'-the-wisps—dream-boats gliding slowly over ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... placed; and in this I fear I have sometimes, perhaps often, been mistaken. I am sure it is well to have this sifted and searched into, and none of the pains which must attend such a process are in vain. When we have learned more fully what and how frail we are, then we can better appreciate the help that is offered, and the abundant blessing of peace when it does come. The depth of our own capacity for suffering is known to few of us; and when we have ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... that thought should sustain a person," she remarked; "yet all tortures must be hard for poor, frail human bodies to bear." ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... wooden frame and osier work lined with leather, after the model of those used in the Channel among the Britons and subsequently by the Saxons, to be prepared in the camp and transported in waggons to the point where the bridges had stood. On these frail barks the other bank was reached and, as it was found unoccupied, the bridge was re-established without much difficulty; the road in connection with it was thereupon quickly cleared, and the eagerly-expected supplies were conveyed to the camp. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... bed I watch the moonbeams cast a trail So bright, so cold, so frail, That for a space it gleams Like hoar-frost on the margin of my dreams. I raise my head, — The splendid moon I see: Then droop my head, And sink to dreams of thee — ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... to her feet, but the unwonted strain upon her nerves and frail body had been greater than she knew. She made a step forward, felt the room whirl round her and then seem to collapse beneath her feet, and, clutching at her chair, sank back ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... said Harry; but Fred felt nervous; it was all new to him, and he could hardly summon up courage to cross the frail bridge over the foaming waters that rushed down the sluice, and formed a cataract on the other side—the waters plunging down in a muddy torrent, and then boiling up in the maddest way. But he grasped his cousin's hand tightly, and, crossing the bridge, walked round the mill to the other side. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... for some lazy assistance from her father's other foot. She further brought a pair of her uncle's furred slippers, while Reiter Hugh proceeded to dangle one of the boots in the air, expatiating on its frail condition, and expressing his intention of getting a new pair from Master Matthias, the sutor, ere he should leave Ulm on the morrow. Then, again, came the dreaded subject; his daughter must go ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Love retained me at his hest, And to his sway hath so accustomed me, That as at first he cruel used to be, So in my heart he now doth sweetly rest. Thus when by him my strength is dispossessed, So that the spirits seem away to flee, My frail soul feels such sweetness verily, That with it pallor doth my face invest. Then Love o'er me such mastery doth seize, He makes my sighs in words to take their way, And they unto my lady go to pray That she to give me further grace would please. Where'er she sees me, this to me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Would it be believed, said Sir Robert to the House, that one chain fixed round her body, had been weighed, and was found no less than twenty-eight pounds weight!"—From what I have heard of the generous turn of the Prince Regent, his sympathetic heart would be moved to compassion for these two frail mortals, the one very old, the other very young. But what are we to think of his master, the magnanimous John Bull? I believe a soldier feels more of the martial spirit when in uniform, than in a loose drab coat. The same feeling may extend to a judge in his robes, and to a parson ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... "civilization"—there is surely nothing quite so "poor," so woefully devoid of practical protection, and, in its exceptional helplessness, so weakly gushed over and little understood as the child of frail humanity. ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... upon the face and become the pupil of that illustrious Chinese pilgrim, who had seen Buddha Land. Later on, other monks crossed to the land of Sinim, until we find that in this and succeeding centuries, hundreds of Japanese in their frail junks, braved the dangers of the stormy ocean, in order to study Sanskrit, to read the old scriptures, to meet the new lights of learning or revelation, and to become versed in the latest fashions of religion. We find the pilgrims returning and founding new sects or sub-sects, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... view to westward, I thought of Dante. For Dante in this castle was the guest of Moroello Malaspina, what time he was yet finishing the "Inferno." There is a little old neglected garden, full to south, enclosed upon a rampart which commands the Borgo, where we found frail canker-roses and yellow amaryllis. Here, perhaps, he may have sat with ladies—for this was the Marchesa's pleasance; or may have watched through a short summer's night, until he saw that tremolar della marina, portending dawn, which afterwards he ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... ancient people, With the happy harmless faces, Dreaming till the purple twilight In their flowery garden-places, Finding every year the sunshine And the wind a little colder, Growing, tho' they hardly guessed it, Very gradually older, Till at last they grew so frail That to their gardens they were carried, Very feeble and exhausted, Weak ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... moderately happy, perhaps even have continued to enjoy moderately good health, if body and soul had been well matched. This, however, was not the case. His thoughts were too big, his passions too violent, for the frail frame that held them; and the former grew bigger and more violent as the latter grew frailer and frailer. He could not realise his aspirations, could not compass his desires, in short, could not fully ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... hail, And our cedars proudly wave; We forget their tenure frail, With the bounteous hand ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... wiser than he, early determined the future course of Master William Cullen Bryant. He was not to be a doctor, but a poet. A poet, that is, if he lived to be anything; for the chances were against his living at all. The lad was exceedingly frail, and had a head the immensity of which troubled his anxious father. How to reduce it to the normal size was a puzzle which Dr. Bryant solved in a spring of clear, cold water, which burst out of the ground on or near his homestead, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... from a little distance is as primeval as when the first humans climbed in their frail canoes through the unknown and terrible stretches of ocean, and saw Tahiti shining in the sunlight. A mile or two from the lagoon the fertile land extends as a slowly-ascending gamut of greens as luxuriant as a jungle, and forming a most pleasing foreground to the startling amphitheater ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the cold glimmering sun sank behind the Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out behind ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... post-horses was at the door, and a servant, who looked like a foreigner, was in waiting with his master's cloak. As I saw Lord Castleton step into the street, and wrap himself in his costly mantle lined with sables, I observed, more than I had while he was in the room, the enervate slightness of his frail form, and the more than paleness of his thin, joyless face; and then, instead of envy, I felt compassion for the owner of all this pomp and grandeur,—felt that I would not have exchanged my hardy health and easy humor and vivid capacities of enjoyment ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... future years, thy babes Should o'er this frail memorial bend, (For first affection rarely fades!) And boast that I was once ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... instead of 'have went?'" As she talked Agatha rumpled Adam's hair, pulled off his string tie, upon which she insisted, even when he was plowing; laid her hard little face against his, and held him tight with her frail arms, so that Adam being part human as well as part Bates, held her closely also and said these words: "You bet your sweet life I will!" And what is more he did. He followed a furrow the next day, softly muttering over to himself: ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Island (Naura), two isolated spots just under the equator, surpass them all in the art of catching jackshark. It was the fortunate experience of the writer to live among these people for many years, and to be inducted into the native method of shark-catching. In frail canoes, made of short pieces of wood, sewn together with coco-nut fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out with rude but ingeniously contrived wooden hooks, and capture sharks of a girth (not length) that no untrained European would dare to attempt to kill from a well-appointed ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... right, my son. She won't refuse to meet a friend of yours." He led the way as he spoke to the point of vantage occupied by Mrs Crow, followed, with plain reluctance, by her son. She was a frail-looking old woman, with a knitted shawl pinned tightly across her chest, and her bonnet, in the course of commercial activity, pushed so far back as to be ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... than those that have vanished, but all in the green quiet of the untested future. They shall be standing by the time the captive sons come back. It is a game at which they play for the sake of the blinded mother; she listens smilingly, nodding her old head, her frail ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... was more grinding of the gunwale of the boat amongst the boughs, the water came swishing in over the side, and directly after the frail vessel partly turned over, with her keel lying sideways ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... your heart would break in this way. You are a strong-minded young woman with proper principles. I do not venture to say that mine would; it has suffered, and, it must be confessed, survived. But there are some souls thus gently constituted, thus frail, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... challenged his right to live. But in that tense moment when he thought that it was all over, the lithe form of Thalma reached his side and in a frenzy of terror pulled him away. But even then the sloping belly of the onrushing beast tore him from her frail hands and ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... her in time, his strong arms grasping the frail, bent figure as it sank to the floor. As he lifted her bodily from her feet, intent upon carrying her to the open air, her bony fingers sank into his arm with the grip of death, and—could he believe his ears!—a low, mocking laugh came ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... obliterate the difference between them, so as to reduce them to one absolute essence? Then the whole superstructure of Pantheism falls along with the Idealism on which it depends; and it is found to be, not a solid and enduring system of truth, but a frail edifice, ingeniously constructed out of the mere ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... remained in the service of the Lord; you have understood the divine mission which had been reserved for you; you have been unwilling to step over the profane threshold and to enter the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant of what I have learned. Happy friend, whose eyes have not yet measured the abyss into which ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... since you saw her," answered the priest; "she was always rather frail, but I do not see that ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... you mean to say that you do all your travelling on these crooked cow paths? Why, it is a matter of scientific observation that even on the open prairie a cow path loses nearly a quarter of its headway by constant winding in and out, merely to avoid frail bushes and infinitesimal stones. Now if you and Jeff would spend a little of your leisure in cutting trails, as they do in forestry, you would more than save yourselves the time and ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... according to Mr. Spencer, "the need for explanations about surrounding appearances does not occur to him". We have disclaimed all knowledge about "primitive man," but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds his belief in the lack of speculation among savages on a frail foundation ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... pale-faced, beautiful girl, with black brows arching in a thin line, with purple-black eyes like somber pools. She was no more than five feet tall, and slim and frail. But, like her companion, there was about her a queer aspect of calm, quiet power and force of personality—physical vitality merged with ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... behind, Frail bark! I loose my anchored mind And large, before the prosperous wind Desert the strand - A new Columbus sworn ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... relation of things to the empire of thought." Religion and ethics agree with all lower culture in degrading Nature and suggesting its dependence on Spirit. "The devotee flouts Nature."—"Plotinus was ashamed of his body."—"Michael Angelo said of external beauty, 'it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which He has called into time.'" Emerson would not undervalue Nature as looked at through the senses and "the unrenewed understanding." "I have no hostility to Nature," he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... daughter Nora; but at the present moment he was in danger. In the barn, too, he was in much greater danger than he had been when in the safe seclusion of the Castle. It would be possible for any one to creep up to the barn at night, to push open the somewhat frail windows or equally frail door, and to accomplish that deed which had already been attempted. Nora knew well that she must act, she must do something—what, was the puzzle. Squire O'Shanaghgan was one of the most generous, open-hearted, and affectionate of men. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... as she had perceived Robert Browning's poetic greatness, Elizabeth Barrett discerned his personal worth. He was essentially manly in all respects: so manly, that many frail souls of either sex philandered about his over-robustness. From the twilight gloom of an aeesthetic clique came a small voice belittling the great man as "quite too 'loud,' painfully excessive." Browning was manly enough to laugh at all ghoulish cries of any kind whatsoever. Once in a way the lion ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... wear when he plays king, is not difficult to grant. At the present writing crowns in the Orient are not fashionable. As I look out of my window, the salmon-pink walls of the Forbidden City rise in the dusty distance. Under the flaming yellow roof of the Palace is a frail and frightened little six-year-old boy—the ruler of millions—who, if he knew and could, would gladly exchange his priceless crown for freedom and a bag ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... marble statue, Valentine stood on the bank of the river, watching the frail bark which was carrying her lover away. It flew along the Rhone like a bird in a tempest, and after a few seconds appeared like a black speck in the midst of the heavy fog which floated over the water, then was ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... to get in. It rushes across the turnpike road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no signal: nothing but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted 'WHEN THE BELL RINGS, LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE.' On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... see before you a frail sinner, who will soon appear before a greater and more awful tribunal than yours. I am not here, my Lord, to defend an act to which I was prompted by—may I be permitted to say so—by my very virtues. Some men, my Lord, we ruined by excellent qualities, and some by those which ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... clearly, We're frail backsliding mortals merely, Eve's bonny squad, priests wyte them sheerly For our grand fa'; But stilt, but still, I like them dearly— ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... publisher. The book sold, sold every copy of the small first edition, and in due time the publisher's statement came. I did not think my half of the profits was very great, but it seemed a fair division after every imaginable cost had been charged up against my poor book, and that frail venture had been made to pay the expenses of composition, corrections, paper, printing, binding, advertising, and editorial copies. The wonder ought to have been that there was anything at all coming to me, but I was young and greedy then, and I really thought ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sin and pain Her pure, exalted soul, Unjustly, for thy partial good detain? No—rather strive thy grov'ling mind to raise Up to that unclouded blaze, That heav'nly radiance of eternal light, In which enthron'd she now with pity sees, How frail, how insecure, how slight, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Groups—are all expert shark fishermen; but the wild people of Paanopa (Ocean Island) stand facile princeps. I have frequently seen four men in a small canoe kill eight or ten sharks (each of which was as long as their frail little craft) within ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... night, wherewith now ariseth The red moon through the garden boughs frail, overladen, O faint murmuring tongue of the dream-tide triumphant, That wouldst tell me sad tales in the times long passed over, If somewhat I sicken and turn to your freshness, From no shame it is of earth's tangle and trouble, And deeds done for nought, and change that forgetteth; But ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... have contracted in the midst of this miserable and naughty world, through the lusts of the flesh or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before thee. And teach us who survive, in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality, to see how frail and uncertain our own condition is; and so to number our days, that we may seriously apply our hearts to that holy and heavenly wisdom, whilst we live here, which may in the end bring us to life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, thine ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... himself, but for his wife, who was very frail and delicate in health, and ill fitted to bear ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... woeful sight indeed—frail cab- bages all rent, Turnips mangled, little carrots all in one red burial blent, Parsnips ruined, lettuce shattered, torn and wilted beet and bean, And a black and grinning gap where once ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... breathing that it seemed as if she were already dead. Martin removed the covering, and one glance at that gentle, care-worn countenance sufficed to convince him that his old aunt lay before him! His first impulse was to seize her in his strong arms, but another look at the frail and attenuated form caused him to ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Locker, for it is by this name, and as the author of 'London Lyrics,' that he will be best remembered, devoted his attention almost exclusively to English literature, although of late years he had devoted as much attention as his frail health would allow to the formation of a section of rare books in French literature. It would be impossible to describe in this place all the many book rarities at Rowfant; we must be content, therefore, with indicating a few of the more interesting ones: Alexander ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... heard of the couple there during this brief absence. In the course of a few hours some young men testified to having seen such a man and woman rowing in a frail hired craft, the head of the boat kept straight to sea; they had sat looking in each other's faces as if they were in a dream, with no consciousness of what they were doing, or whither they were steering. It was not till late that day that more tidings ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... correct, I could never under any imaginable circumstances marry my cousin, Bishop Douglass. Although I trust and reverence him beyond all other men, 'I love my cousin cousinly, no more,' and he is too much absorbed by his holy office and its solemn responsibilities, to waste thought on the frail, sweet, rosy garland of any woman's love. Fret yourself no longer in casting ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... wanted to meet him. But I never could. The youths used to murmur: "Oh! It's no use you meeting him." They were afraid he was not spectacular enough. Or they desired to keep him to themselves, like a precious pearl. I pictured him as very frail, and very positive in a quiet way. He was only about thirty when ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... heard on the stairs, and an old man, tall and frail, odorous of pipe smoke, with shaggy, unkept grey hair and a dingy beard, tobacco stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly up to the coffin and stood rolling a blue cotton handkerchief between his hands, seeming ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... wisdom—when the art of healing shall be lost and absorbed in the one universal medicine when sages shall become monarchs of the earth, and death itself retreat before their frown,—if this blessed consummation of all things can be hastened by the slight circumstance that a frail, earthly body, which must needs partake corruption, shall be consigned to the grave a short space earlier than in the course of nature, what is such a sacrifice to the advancement ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Middleton. He was not afraid of a burst of helpless weeping when she came. She was gentle, yielding, delicate, but there was something of the old squire's obstinacy in her, and in a supreme emergency it came out as firmness. She looked old and frail as she stepped into the passage and closed the door after her. Her hand shook, but her eyes met his bravely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... of the "Spell of Cadboll" Norman received the hearty and unanimous congratulations of the circle. The frail old bard, pulling himself together, got up, went across the room, and shook him heartily with both hands. This special honour was a most unusual one. It was clear that Alastair was just in the mood when a little persuasion would suffice to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... will suffice. Scurvy, which often claimed a death-roll of from forty to eighty per cent in a single winter; famine such as that which followed the failure of ships from home to arrive at the opening of navigation; the storms which drove the frail shallop on the rocks and shoals of Norumbega; the risk of mutiny; the chances of war, whether against the Indians or the English; the rapids {145} of the wilderness as they threatened the overloaded canoe on its swift descent; the possible treachery of Indian guides—such is a partial catalogue ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... sight to see that fair young mother, still a child in years, and in her exhausted state of wavering consciousness, alive only through her fond affections; gleams of perception, and momentary flashes of life, called forth only by her husband, or by the moanings of the little frail babe, which seemed to have as feeble and precarious a hold of life as herself. The doctors told John that they were haunted through the day by the remembrance of her face, so sweet, even in insensibility, and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forever, like coral reefs encircling a lagoon in the Pacific seas. Only by remembering the years that had been before, and the years that should follow after, could the reluctant mind convince itself that this seeming eternity was frail; that whoso lingered too long among the splendors of September would be surely overtaken by treacherous frost, and biting winter winds; that there was but one way to escape the revolting decline from this pinnacle of life—to die. That was my secret. I alone, of all who shivered at approaching ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... already too late; and the invalid herself opposed the project with gentle obstinacy. Thin and pale in the great armchair, where the insidious and obscure nervous malady made her appear smaller and more frail every day without effacing the smile of her eyes or the charming grace of her wasted face, she clung to her native land and wished to breathe her native air. Nowhere else could she expect to get well so quickly, nowhere else would it be so easy for ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... the delicate fibre of woman's heart, ye will not in very sooth believe that such events as those we have described—such tempests of passion—fierce winds of woe—blinding lightnings of tremendous joy and tremendous grief—could pass over one frail flower and leave it all unscathed. No! Grief kills as joy doth. Doth not the scorching sun nip the rose-bud as well as the bitter wind? As ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Here along the beach were shells, exquisitely tinted like a sunset sky, cast on shore by the cruel waves. Tender mosses and fragile sea-weed lay upon the sand revealing the infinite tenderness of these frail children of the boundless deep. Looking upon the seething, surging mass of water that rolled on the troubled sea only last night, who would have thought it the home of such delicate beauty? "Truly," we said, as we gazed in admiration and wonder at the fair scene before us, "the sea as well ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... at Lad's first charge, had stepped back. But, at once she had caught up again the stick and belabored the sow with all her frail muscular might. She might as well have been beating the side of a concrete wall. Heedless of the flailing, the sow ignored her; and continued her maddened assault on Lad. The maids, attracted by the noise, crowded ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... to Mr Brandram telling of his arrival in Madrid, "begging pardon for all errors of commission and omission," and confessing himself "a frail and foolish vessel," that had "accomplished but a slight portion of what I proposed in my vanity," Borrow proceeded to disprove his own assertion. He found the affairs of the Bible Society in a far ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... was in your place," I tells her, "I'd drink coffee, and if your furnishings is all as frail as that chocolate set you're featurin', you better grab hold of the ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... himself on the St. Andrew's cross, asking with a resigned smile that they would make his sufferings as short as possible. As soon as his head was covered, the executioner gave the signal. One would have thought a very few blows would have finished so frail a being, but he seemed as hard to kill as the venomous reptiles which must be crushed and cut to pieces before life is extinct, and the coup de grace was found necessary. The executioner uncovered his head and showed the confessor that the eyes were closed ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... over-bold, they may say that I was frail; They may tell I dared too much and was doomed at last to fail; They may talk my battle o'er and discuss it as they choose, But I did no brother wrong—I'm the ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... journey for you,' said the landlady, compassionately regarding my diminutive stature and frail aspect. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... very great. But beyond any other sensation, came the thought that Starr, his beautiful Starr, was out there on that wide vast ocean, tossing in a tiny boat. For now the great steamer that had seemed so large and palatial, had dwindled in his mind to a frail toy, and he was filled with a nameless fear for her. His little Starr out there on that fearful deep, with only that cold-eyed mother to take care of her. A wild desire to fly to her and bring her back possessed him; a thrilling, awesome something, he had ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... hither Having neither wit nor wisdom, Having neither art nor power, Wanting in ancestral knowledge, Lacking prudence of the fathers, That thy watch-dogs may devour me. "My devoted mother washed me, When a frail and tender baby, Three times in the nights of summer, Nine times in the nights of autumn, That upon my journeys northward I might sing the ancient wisdom, Thus protect myself from danger; When at home I sing as wisely ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... "It looks a little frail, compared to the big RED CLOUD, Tom," answered the eccentric man, "but I'm going up in her just the same; bless my ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... that were glad and fleet and strong, Shall Silence take you in her net? And shall Death quell that radiant song Whose echo thrills the meadow yet? Burst the frail web about you clinging And charm Death's cruel heart with singing Till with strange ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... cakes, the said shepherds courteously entreated them to give them some for their money, as the price then ruled in the market. For here it is to be remarked, that it is a celestial food to eat for breakfast hot fresh cakes with grapes, especially the frail clusters, the great red grapes, the muscadine, the verjuice grape, and the laskard, for those that are costive in their belly, because it will make them gush out, and squirt the length of a hunter's staff, like the very tap of a barrel; and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... some shape is clearly seen. The curtains were not quite drawn, and a plane-tree branch with leaves still hanging, which had kept them company all the fifteen years they had lived there, was moving darkly in the wind, now touching the glass with a frail tap, as though asking of him, who had been roaming in that wind so many hours, to let it in. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... manage that, now. But, Lord bless 'ee! thee'll never make no hand of it." He chose out saw, hammer, plane and auger, and packed them up in a carpenter's frail, with a few other tools. "Don't 'ee talk about payment, now; naybors must be nayborly. Only, you see, a man must ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... those who contend that the United States is so far from Europe as to be safe from attack by a European fleet; because the intervening distance was frequently traversed then by British and French fleets of frail, slow, sailing ships, which were vital factors in the war. Without the British war-ships, the British could not have landed and supported their troops. Without the French war-ships the French could not have landed and supported their troops, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... thrown a little pale blue shawl round her shoulders, and held the pretty baby in her arms. She was a remarkably good-looking woman, a really young-looking woman for her age, but weakness was written all over her—the weakness of a frail although loving spirit, and the weakness of extreme bodily illness, for she was ill, far more ill than her children knew. The greatest anxiety of the honest doctor's life was connected with his ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... and climbed out onto the vault. Never before had Bobby failed to hear that well-known tap-tap-tapping on the graveled path, nor failed to trot down to meet it with friskings of welcome. But now he lay very still, even when a pair of frail arms tried to lift his dead weight to a heaving breast, and Tammy's cry of woe rang through the kirkyard. In a moment Ailie and Mistress Jeanie were in the wet grass beside them, half a hundred casements flew open, and the piping voices of tenement ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... could carry her when empty for three or four miles without resting. They had no small canoe on this voyage. Their hopes, and, it may be truly said, their lives, were dependent on this solitary and frail conveyance. ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... an angry flush upon her face. Betto gently drew me into an adjoining bedroom, and, with a troubled face, implored me not to give way to angry feelings. 'Be gentle to her,' she said; 'poor thing, she's as frail as an eggshell. Wait till she is well, master, and then—I pray God may bring some ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... pale, and in poor health. Still, his eyes retained all their lustre. My affection for him was increased by a knowledge of his extreme weakness and sufferings. He felt for me in the same manner; we saw by how frail a tenure hung the lives of both, and that one must ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... for sick and dying, Knew neither friend nor foe, She spent her strength in trying To heal a neighbor's woe. For deeds by love inspired The Kaiser's vengeance fell On form so frail and ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... an American and an Englishman had visited Jel[vs]a, in the time of the other commandant, some of the people were interned; the young captain assured us that he would do no such thing. And one could see that he would never imitate the brutality of his predecessor, who had caused a frail old man of sixty-six, Professor Zari['c], to be pulled out of his bed in the middle of a winter's night and taken across the hills on a donkey to Starigrad, afterwards on a destroyer to Split, from where—but for the intervention of the American ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... admiring the enormous oaken beams, their ends carved into fantastic figures, which crown with a black bas-relief the lower floor of most of them. In one place these transverse timbers are covered with slate and mark a bluish line along the frail wall of a dwelling covered by a roof en colombage which bends beneath the weight of years, and whose rotting shingles are twisted by the alternate action of sun and rain. In another place blackened, worn-out window-sills, with delicate sculptures now scarcely discernible, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... the place of the roofs;—grass- grown alleys ravined by rains;—fruit-trees strangled by lianas; —here and there the stem of some splendid palmiste, brutally decapitated, naked as a mast;—petty frail growths of banana- trees or of bamboo slowly taking the place of century-old forest giants destroyed to make charcoal. But beauty enough remains to tell what the sensual paradise of the old days must have been, when sugar was selling ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... more to Royson, that he was then hastening through malodorous lanes and crowded slums in order to save from threatened peril the very man whose downfall offered the only visible means by which he could bend his own frail fortunes in the direction that looked ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... a tiny pink rose, no larger than the nail of my little finger. Stalk and leaves were there, and golden pollen lay in its delicate heart. Each fairy-petal blushed with June fire; the frail leaves were exquisitely green. Withal it was as hard and unbendable as a thing ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... rooms with the intention of putting up chest-expanders for exercise, but he found them too small, and the woodwork too frail, for any ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... him an Emperor's crown to wear when he plays king, is not difficult to grant. At the present writing crowns in the Orient are not fashionable. As I look out of my window, the salmon-pink walls of the Forbidden City rise in the dusty distance. Under the flaming yellow roof of the Palace is a frail and frightened little six-year-old boy—the ruler of millions—who, if he knew and could, would gladly exchange his priceless crown for freedom and ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... smoothed down the curls upon her neck. She was beautiful to him—too beautiful to die there in mid ocean, with none but rude men to shed great tears over her silent form. How he wished that Bertha was there, to watch over that frail little form, and ward off the grim tyrant that was struggling to possess it! She would not fear the pangs of the pestilence; she would be an angel in the little state-room, and bring down peace and hope, if not life, to the ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... be put up for hugging. If a man puts his arm around a seven-teen-year-old girl of the present day, and sort of closes in on the belt, he expects to hear something break. Many a humane man lets go before he has got a girl half hugged because the girl looks so frail that he is afraid he will break ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... part of the public. The idea prevalent at our seaside resorts that a land breeze brings swarms of mosquitoes from far inland is based on the supposition that these insects are capable of long-sustained flight, and a certain amount of battling against the wind. This is an error. Mosquitoes are frail of wing; a light puff of breath will illustrate this by hurling the helpless creature away, and it will not venture on the wing again for some time after finding a safe harbor. The prevalence of mosquitoes during a land breeze is easily explained. It is usually only ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... time that the girl had been out of her room for over two weeks, and she looked frail as a snowdrop, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... sir," she said, addressing me, "is an old frail man, little used to the company of strangers; but in former days he has had kindness from members of your house, and it would be a satisfaction to him, I think, to have the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... things, especially women; Ben Legend a sea-dog who cannot speak without a nautical metaphor; Jeremy an idealised comic servant; and Foresight grotesque farce. Angelica is a shrewd but hearty 'English girl,' and Miss Prue a veritable country Miss; while Mrs. Frail and Mrs. Foresight are broadly skittish matrons. There is nothing in the play to strain the attention or to puzzle the intellect, and it is full of laughter: no wonder it was a success. It is, intellectually, on an altogether ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... careful of what you write in sending them. You have seen pictures of Cupid—so healthful, so chubby and rosy, and such promise of long life. It is a mistake; I know of no greater invalid—none of the gods whose health is so frail. I have known a cold word to give him a fatal chill. I have seen him fly, never to return, from a mere scent—a cigarette breath. I have known him taken incurably ill at the bad fit of a Jersey or the set of an overcoat. And I have seen him lie down and die without a word and nobody ever ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... Too frail to keep the lofty vow That must have followed when his brow Was wreathed—'The Vision' tells us how— With holly spray, He faultered, drifted to ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... and daughter. Cara is the only one with whom he has no trouble. She is mild and beautiful. Her head is turned also, but in another, a more agreeable direction. She is greatly attached to him, the dear child! She is frail. He must speak to the doctor about her. Perhaps send her to Italy. With whom? With her mother? He would never permit that. The child is his. He will go himself with Cara. But in that case what ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... reached the churchyard, And stood by the old church door, But the oak was tough And had bolts enough, And her strength was frail and poor; So she crept through a narrow window, And climbed the belfry stair, And grasped the rope, Sole cord of hope, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... dumbly and the room seemed to quiver around her. Finely as she had held herself in control hitherto, she was now thoroughly unnerved. She covered her face with her hands, and her frail figure shook with dry sobs. Foyle waited patiently for the outburst to pass. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and faced ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... covered them doubled in carrying room by their widely overhanging freight guards, were hid by the wilderness of goods on shore. Hid also were their furnaces, boilers, and engines on the same deck, sharing it with the cargo. But all their gay upper works, so toplofty and frail, showed a gleaming white front to the western sun. You marked each one's jack-staff, that rose mast high from the unseen prow, and behind it the boiler deck, high over the boilers. Over the boiler deck was the hurricane roof, above that the officers' rooms, called the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... woman of an understanding heart, that diligently nursed and tended that hapless man my lord, she took him in her arms in the hour when his mother bare him. She will wash thy feet, albeit her strength is frail. Up now, wise Eurycleia, and wash this man, whose years are the same as thy master's. Yea and perchance such even now are the feet of Odysseus, and such too his hands, for ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... it would be folly to endeavour to attempt the further descent of the pit by their frail support, and he ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... so long as earth; and shall I leave the rocks about me silent on the King of Glory, at whose word they were, and at whose breath they shall be dust? Nay, but these stones shall speak to weary wayfarers of eternal peace, and of the Lamb, whose frail and afflicted yet happy servant ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... saved her, had I? Yes, there was no doubt of that. Never would I lose the memory of that unparalleled journey to Montmorency Fall, as I toiled on, dragging with me that frail, fainting, despairing companion. I had sustained her; I had cheered her; I had stimulated her; and, finally, at that supreme moment, when, she fell down in sight of the goal, I had put forth the last vestige of my own strength in bearing her to a ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... thou with fear and grief Wouldst, on a sick-bed laid, recall, In youth and health eschew them all, Remembering life is frail and brief. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... oft there dwell, in temples frail and mortal, Souls that partake immortal life the while; Nor wait till death unbar heaven's pearly portal, For heaven's own ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... talk so horribly?" The horrible talk, however, evidently possessed a potent magic for my friend; and his imagination, checked a while by the influence of his kinsman, began again to lead him a dance. From this moment he ceased to steer his frail bark, to care what he said or how he said it, so long as he expressed his passionate appreciation of the scene around him. As he kept up this strain I ceased even secretly to wish he wouldn't. I have wondered since that I shouldn't have been annoyed ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... arrest the flowing river in its course. She is also a child of the air, and with the swiftness of the chamois she can reach the snow-covered mountain tops, where the boldest mountaineer has to cut footsteps in the ice to ascend. She will sail on a frail pine-twig over the raging torrents beneath, and spring lightly from one iceberg to another, with her long, snow-white hair flowing around her, and her dark-green robe glittering like the waters of the deep Swiss lakes. "Mine is the power to seize and crush," she cried. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... them by the roadside," she said as he stumbled to his feet and drew the frail blossom through his buttonhole with ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... took her knitting to the fire, and before she began to ply the needles, looked thoughtfully at her hands. They had been soft and shapely before the days of toil. A frail but comely woman she was, with pale face, and dark eyes, and hair ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... and gave us a general benediction. Then the Pope passed slowly down the line, offering his hand to each of us, and radiating a charm so gracious and so human that few failed to respond to the appeal of his engaging personality. There was nothing fleshly about Leo XIII. His body was so frail, so wraithlike, that one almost expected to see through it the magnificent tapestries on the walls. But from the moment he appeared every eye clung to him, every thought was concentrated upon him. This effect I think he would have produced even if he had come among us unrecognized, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... climax came when he appeared in a box at the Theatre Francais, to witness a performance of the latest of his tragedies, and the whole house rose as one man to greet him. His triumph seemed to be something more than the mere personal triumph of a frail old mortal; it seemed to be the triumph of all that was noblest in the aspirations of the human race. But the fatigue and excitement of those weeks proved too much even for Voltaire in the full flush of his eighty-fourth year. An overdose of opium completed what Nature had begun; and the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... future was of course far ahead. Elsie had rather taken it for granted that she should marry when the proper time came, as girls did in books, as her grandmother and mother had done, and as Aunt Ellen would have done had she not been so frail. Once it had even occurred to her that it would be rather appropriate if she should marry some one named Pritchard, though she realized that to be only a remote possibility. In any event, she didn't know why going to New York should necessarily make ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... pity sounds very clearly in the pathetic description of the deserted 'daughter of Zion.' Jerusalem stands forlorn and defenceless, like a frail booth in a vineyard, hastily run up with boughs, and open to fierce sunshine or howling winds. Once 'beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth,... the city ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... of Glen Echo, a frail, gentle old lady was taking leave of this world one April day, in the year 1912. She was greatly beloved and many friends from every state in the Union sent her words of comfort and cheer. They praised her noble work and called her "The ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... a strange sensation standing out thus, on a comparatively frail craft, shooting along at fifty miles an hour over a mile above the earth. The cabin broke the force of the wind, and there was really little discomfort. The Abaris sailed so steadily that there was scarcely a perceptible motion. Larry made ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... is le commencement de la fin," returned John Effingham. "The destruction is already so great, as to threaten to bring down with it the usual safe-guards against such losses, and one pin knocked out of so frail and delicate a fabric, the whole will become loose, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... me soar so high, For pardon, lady, for this fault I cry, And wiser still I grow remembering it. Yea, will I see what folly 't were to think That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven, Could e'er be paid by work so frail as mine! To nothingness my art and talent sink; He fails who from his mental stores hath given A thousandfold to ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... gifts, bring your Phoenician stuffs, and do you, fleet-footed nymphs, bring offerings, Illyrian iris, and a branch of shrub, and frail-headed poppies. ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... she were a man she would attempt all this, and perhaps might succeed; why, then, did heaven make the mistake of placing that manlike soul in that frail and delicate body? ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... describe only the weak, surly and frail as sinners? And every one when he advises others to describe only the strong, healthy, and ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... stormy night. The rain cascaded upon the canvas in torrents, with the dull, drum-like sound familiar to dwellers in tents. As the whooping blasts charged upon it the frail structure shook and swayed and strained at its confining ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... succeeded so well before, when we had no ships but frail canoes, no compass but our eyes; when we had no roads but eternal snows, virgin forests and trackless deserts; when we had no guide save faith, and hope, and God—if even then we succeeded so well in carrying the Gospel to the confines of the earth, how much ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... which more than two centuries ago was taken by Jacques Marquette who, in the spring of 1673, with Joliet for his chieftain, and five other Frenchmen, embarked at Mackinaw in two frail ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... creation. So far from supposing man to be even approximately coeval with it, the emphatic reproof of human presumption is couched in the remarkable words, "Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of the earth?" In majestic contrast with the frail human race, Moses glances at the primeval monuments of God's antiquity, as though by them he could form some faint conceptions even of eternity, and sings, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the universe, even from everlasting to everlasting ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... an invalid, and his hair and beard were both white; not like snow, for snow is cold and heavy, but like something feathery, or even fierce; rather they were white like the white thistledown. I came up quite close to him; he looked at me as he put out his frail hand, and I saw of a sudden that his eyes were startlingly young. He was the one great man of the old world whom I have met who was not a mere statue over his ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... haughty, resentful, unwilling to brook reproof even from me. But I do not attempt to exonerate myself. I will open my heart to you and my friend will read aright and interpret the broken words. You know that I cared for Claude Drew; you guessed perhaps how strong was the hold upon me of the frail, ambiguous, yet so intelligent modern spirit. It was to feel the Spring blossom once more on my frosty branches when this young life fell at my knees and seemed to find in me its source and goal. Mine was a sacred ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the workhouse, and his mother died the same night. Not even a promised reward of L10 could produce any information as to the boy's father or the mother's name. The woman was young, frail, and delicate—a stranger ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Bourgogne, had followed him to the grave a few months later. Prince Philip had renounced his right to the French crown when he accepted that of Spain; and, between her husband and the throne there was now but one frail life, that of the three-year-old Duc d'Anjou, a child so delicate that he might easily not survive his great-grandfather, Louis, whose hand was already relaxing its grasp of the sceptre ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... careless ministry, Have served what seemed the voice; and unprofane Have dedicated to melodious ends All of myself that least ignoble was. For though of faulty and of erring walk, I have not suffered aught in me of frail To blur my song; I have not paid the world The evil and the insolent courtesy Of offering it my baseness for a gift. And unto such as think all Art is cold, All music unimpassioned, if it breathe An ardour ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... in his arms, and strode out of the hall and down to the shore, where he deposited his precious burden in a skiff which an old one-eyed boatman brought at his call. He would fain have stepped aboard also, but ere he could do so the boatman pushed off and the frail craft was soon lost to sight. The bereaved father then slowly wended his way home, taking comfort from the thought that Odin himself had come to claim the young hero and had rowed away with him ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the chart-house and, exploding, swept the frail structure overboard in a thousand fragments. The old skipper, hit by a splinter of wood, fell inertly upon the bridge; but the next instant he staggered to his feet, bawling to the crew to get the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... In this frail craft sat the giant Ziffak, propelling it across the furious swirl with such prodigious power that though the spume dashed over it, the boat was driven by the sheer power of his mighty arms under, ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... work perishes, so there the world acquired by merit perishes' (Ch. Up. VIII, 1,6); 'That work of his has an end' (Bri. Up. III, 8, 10); 'By non-permanent works the Permanent is not obtained' (Ka. Up. I, 2, 10); 'Frail indeed are those boats, the sacrifices' (Mu. Up. I, 2, 7); 'Let a Brahmana, after he has examined all these worlds that are gained by works, acquire freedom from all desires. What is not made cannot be gained by what is made. To understand this, let the pupil, with fuel in ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... be looking at things in a new light, and to see her position as it affected others. She was young and brave; surely it was her part to shoulder the family burdens, to shield the frail little mother who grew less and less able to cope with difficulties, to hold out a strong helping hand to the younger brothers and sisters, and so justify her existence on this planet. It had not before occurred ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... who came down the ladder and entrusted herself to Gerhardt's escort, was very young-looking for an anchorhold: slim, fair, and frail in appearance, with some timidity of manner. They ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... strange indeed, if the bold Norsemen, the bold buccaneers who in their frail craft pillaged the west coasts of Europe and extended their voyages into the Mediterranean, should have omitted to pay a visit to the shores of the Baltic Sea. We know that they settled in England and France, and it causes no surprise when we read that the Slavs in the neighborhood ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... when God made His pretty world He had certain things exceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only to whisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which we sometimes deafly lean until they break and ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... and I spoke at the door," said she, extending her frail hand with dignity. "If you were on the drive, Mr. Newmark, you must have been one of the High Privates in this dreadful ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... a Chinese who was once sailing in a canoe, either upon the river Pasig, or that of St. Mateo, suddenly perceived an alligator making for his frail bark, which it immediately capsized. On his finding himself thus plunged in the water, the unfortunate Chinese whose only prospect was that of making a meal for the ferocious animal, invoked the aid of St. Nicholas. You, perhaps, would not have done so, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... Frail mortals are too weak to resist, and in a few moments we are seated in Ida's stylish new phaeton; and Gabrielle's irrepressible ponies, under the guidance of Tourbillon herself, are dashing away at a pace that terrifies our sober ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... her, their lips moving in death to excoriate her. It was not too late to tell him the truth; not too late to stop the attack. Her head had sunk; she trembled and swayed and a kind of moan escaped her. She seemed utterly frail and so distraught that Westerling, in an impulse of protection, laid his hands on her relaxed shoulders. She could feel the pressure of each finger growing firmer in its power, while a certain eloquence possessed him ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... November; and the cold glimmering sun sank behind the Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out behind ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Man sa'nter out in de bushes en cut 'im a hick'ry, en he let in on Mr. Lion, en he frail en frail 'im twel frailin' un 'im wuz a sin. En down ter dis day," continued Uncle Remus, in a tone calculated to destroy all doubt, "you can't git no Lion ter come up whar dey 's a Man a-maulin' rails en put he paw in de split. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... say then: "He is no longer a baby." This is what should happen and we await it: the day will come when he will no longer believe these stories. But if this maturation takes place, we ought to ask ourselves: "What have we done to help it? What support did we offer to this frail mind to enable it to grow straight and strong?" The child overcomes his difficulties in spite of our endeavor to keep him in ignorance and illusion. The child overcomes himself and us. He goes where his internal force of development and maturation lead him. He might, however, say to us: "How ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... from the artistic public of that city which he had a right to anticipate. Leaving Vienna, he repaired to Paris, which was henceforth to be the scene of his brilliant triumphs. His constitution, being frail and delicate, could not long sustain the rude shocks of life unscathed, and we accordingly find Chopin at the age of thirty with rapidly declining health; and for the next decade, his existence was only a continued succession of the alternations of disease. At last, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Into this swift water the Indians push their canoes. It requires great skill and dexterity for this. The fishing canoe is of small size. It is steered by a man in the stern. The fisherman takes his stand in the bows, sometimes bestriding the light and frail vessel from gunwale to gunwale, having a scoop-net in his hands. This net has a long slender handle, ten feet or more in length. The net is made of strong twine, open at the top, like an entomologist's. When the canoe has been run into the uppermost rapids, and a school of fish is seen below ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... not accustomed to the motion of a canoe; for, now they rose lightly to the top of the wave and anon sank with a swash into the trough, splashing and dashing the water over their bows. Gradually, however, as they became more used to their frail barks, their anxiety lessened, and they began to enjoy the beautiful prospect before them, and to inhale with ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... was still playing his flute on the platform he had built in the corkwood tree, when the women came in sight. He was alarmed for the safety of his frail platform, when he saw these many people advancing, and he cried, "Come not up into the tree. Remain below, ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... English flowers. Margaret and he stooped lovingly over them, and it was wonderful to see how Peter's face softened, and how gently the great rough hands, that had been all day handling smoked geese and fish, touched these frail, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... sincere earnestness, for the small, frail creature beside him, her Dresden-china prettiness all faded and eclipsed, her coquetry extinguished, roused in him a sense of ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... for health had achieved its purpose. Bill Sewall, the woodsman who had introduced the young Roosevelt to the life of the out-of-doors in Maine, and who afterward went out West with him to take up the cattle business, offers this testimony: "He went to Dakota a frail young man, suffering from asthma and stomach trouble. When he got back into the world again, he was as husky as almost any man I have ever seen who wasn't dependent on his arms for his livelihood. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... just one year later was sunk while trying to beat her own record of nine hours and two minutes from New York to Albany. She required eleven hours on our trip. Under conditions then obtaining, it took me a day and a half more to reach Lake Ontario. Here, happily, I picked up a frail steam craft, owned by an adventurous soul who was not unwilling to risk his life and that of others on the uncertain and ice-filled waters of Ontario. With him I negotiated to carry me with others down the St. Lawrence. At that time, of course, the Lachine Canal ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... and Pleasant Island (Naura), two isolated spots just under the equator, surpass them all in the art of catching jackshark. It was the fortunate experience of the writer to live among these people for many years, and to be inducted into the native method of shark-catching. In frail canoes, made of short pieces of wood, sewn together with coco-nut fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out with rude but ingeniously contrived wooden hooks, and capture sharks of a girth (not length) that no untrained European would dare to attempt to kill ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... myself the guard of your frail state, And yet I come to-night a helpless guest, Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings, Against the pallor of ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... clamors for the bigger share; And whilst they clamor, climb—and, lo! Upon the margin, to and fro, Unsteady poised, one wavers slow. Stay, stay! the parents anguished shriek, Too late; for venturesome, yet weak, His frail legs falter under him; He falls—but from a lower limb A moment dangles, thence again Launched out upon the air, in vain He spread his little plumeless wing, A ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... news came that they were all fast in the clutch of that foul barbarian, Sapor—-and stood a silent and astonished witness of a love, such as I never saw in any other, and which seemed so great as to be a necessary seed of death to her frail and shattered frame? Of thee especially have I heard her descant as mothers will, and tell one after another of all thy beauties, nay and of the virtues which bound her to thee so, and of her trust ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... responded, caressing the hand she had laid on the sleeve of his ragged jacket. Somehow it struck Fred right then and there that mutual suffering must have drawn these two frail looking beings closer together than ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... He was much pleased at the interest and good-will shown him, and brightened up more and more every minute; for the boys came to pay their respects, the little girls fussed about him with stools and cushions, and Teddy watched over him as if he was a frail creature unable to do anything for himself. They were still sitting and standing about the steps, when a carriage stopped at the gate, a hat was waved from it, and with a shout of "Uncle Teddy! Uncle Teddy!" Rob scampered down the avenue as fast as his ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... organisation seemed perfect. None of the ancient aristocratic or democratic forms remained; everything was subordinated to the interests of the trusts. This environment gave rise to what anthropologists called the multi-millionaire type. The men of this type were at once energetic and frail, capable of great activity in forming mental combinations and of prolonged labour in offices, but men whose nervous irritability suffered from hereditary troubles which ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Protestant, Arminian or Calvinistic, I have not failed to thank him, and to respect him, too, if he has declared his opinions with becoming diffidence and moderation. You know that nothing so sorely grieves me as dogmatical arrogance, in a being who will always be frail and capricious, let him think and act as he please. On a Sunday evening I usually devote a few hours to my theological studies—(if you will allow my sabbath-meditations to be so called) and, almost ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... catalogue, which of itself is a valuable work of reference. Mr. Locker, for it is by this name, and as the author of 'London Lyrics,' that he will be best remembered, devoted his attention almost exclusively to English literature, although of late years he had devoted as much attention as his frail health would allow to the formation of a section of rare books in French literature. It would be impossible to describe in this place all the many book rarities at Rowfant; we must be content, therefore, with indicating a few of the more interesting ones: Alexander Pope's own copy of ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... you need draw the line at nothing, gambling, drink, fornication, nor adultery; the last you should boast of, whether truly or not; make no secret of it, but exhibit your notes from real or imaginary frail ones. One of your aims should be to pass for a pretty fellow, in much favour with the ladies; the report will be professionally useful to you, your influence with the sex being accounted for by ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... describe the incidents of the trip across the lake, the apprehensive flinching of the fat president whenever the canoe lurched, and his fear of breaking through the bottom of the frail shell. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... never made for such work, inasmuch as she could never endure to see blood or wounds; yet was it in this tending of the sick that I had reason to mark and understand how strong was the spirit of this frail, slender flower. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dramatic figure. He came on to the scene suddenly and with much uproar, in a way that would have made his fortune in a transpontine drama. I shall always regret I have not got that man's portrait, for I cannot do him justice with ink. He dashed up on to the verandah, smote the frail form of Mr. Glass between the shoulders, and flung his own massive one into a chair. His name was Obanjo, but he liked it pronounced Captain Johnson, and his profession was a bush and river trader on his own account. Every movement of the man was theatrical, and he used to look ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... said my lady, with a flash of her eye, "but he must e'en bring himself to catch my words as they drop like pearls from the top of the tower. Summon the archers, Walter, and let them stand behind me for a bodyguard: no man need know how old and frail they be, if they are high enough up, and keep somewhat in the background. And thou, Marian, attend me, for 'tis not fitting that the Countess of Dunbar and March should speak with a strange knight in her husband's absence, without ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... every word, every act of his returned to her now in the light of the truth. Love at first sight! He had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts. And now a blind, sweet, shuddering ecstasy swayed her. How weak and frail seemed her body—too small, too slight for this monstrous and terrible engine of fire and lightning and fury and glory—her heart! It must burst or break. Relentlessly memory pursued Ellen, and her thoughts whirled and emotion ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... cynic. It is inevitable. He has standards, and, granted that he is intelligent, he cannot fail to see how far mankind falls below those standards. The result is cynicism, and if he is truly intelligent, the cynicism is kindly. Having learned that man is frail, he expects little of him; therefore, if he judges at all, his judgment is tempered either with humor or ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... the ladder to see if it was firm, then he put his leg over the balustrade and placed his foot on the first step. Nothing can describe the anguish of the prisoner at this moment, placed between a frail silk cord on the one hand and his brother's cruel menaces on the other. But as he stood there he felt the ladder stiffened; some one held it. Was it a friend or an enemy? Were they open arms or armed ones which waited for him? An irresistible ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... speed, free and joyous, through the glowing sunlight on the stream; sometimes, he would wander along the coast, questioning the sailors, chatting with the ravageurs, or junk gatherers, or stretched at full length amid the irises and tansy he would lie for hours watching the frail insects that play on the surface of the stream, water spiders, or white butterflies, dragon flies, chasing each other amid the willow leaves, or frogs asleep on ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... floating edge following the line of the nymph's divided hair, so that the maiden seems more like a flower itself than a flowerbearer. However, she has the sculptural solidity necessary for her location and resembles not some frail, wind-blown blossom, but the robust and buxom California blooms that flourish in ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... him to press his hot lips to hers, and, accompanying him to the door, saw him jump into the frail open-topped buggy. Wildfire plunged and sprang off in his usual style, and, with a crack of the whip and wave of his hat, Hugh ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... will set them off again: Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow, Scatt'ring the wild-briar roses into snow, Their little limbs increasing efforts try, Like the torn flower the fair assemblage fly. Ah, fallen rose! sad emblem of their doom; Frail as thyself, they perish while they bloom! Though unoffending innocence may plead, Though frantic ewes may mourn the savage deed, Their shepherd comes, a messenger of blood, And drives them bleating from their sports and food. Care loads his brow, and pity wrings his ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... my astonishment was extreme on finding my little bark in the midst of a shoal of enormous sharks. If I came in contact with one of them I was lost, for the frail boat would certainly be upset and as Jackson had assured me, if ever I allowed these monsters to come near enough, one snap of their jaws, and there would be an end of the Little Savage. I thought of the warning of Mrs Reichardt, and was inclined to think I had better ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... say, he made a great fight. But though his heart was big enough, his body was too frail. As they say on the sea, he ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... attention to the home surroundings of our little ones. The overheated rooms of the average American home I am sure have more to do with the growing tendency of weak eyes than we feel like admitting. Look at these frail hot-house plants, and can any one believe that such bodies nourished in almost pestilential atmosphere can nourish such delicate organs of vision, and keep them ready for the enormous amount of work each little eye performs daily? The brain developing so rapidly wills with an ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... buying her child a toy: even the poorest mother can afford it; for the price of the toys sold in a temple court varies from one-fifth of one sen [3] or Japanese cent, to three or four sen; toys worth so much as five sen being rarely displayed at these little shops. But cheap as they are, these frail playthings are full of beauty and suggestiveness, and, to one who knows and loves Japan, infinitely more interesting than the costliest inventions of a Parisian toy- manufacturer. Many of them, however, would be utterly ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... shown signs of giving way, but because she was frail some of the solicitous sisters held her with self-congratulatory care, relieving each other now and then, that each might have a turn in the rejoicings. But as the preacher waded out deeper and deeper into the spiritual stream, Cassie's efforts to make her feelings ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... borne The trackless trade winds. Tui Tua Kau, "King of the Reefs," had ventured over far From Tonga's shore. Caught by a wanton gale, His idle racing, lengthened in a whim To cheat his laughing mates, grew a wild flight. The frail canoe seemed, on the angry sea, A sweet rose petal blown across the night. Yet wisely now the winds had mind to crown Their joyous undertaking, and upon The shores of Fiji's isles they drew their prize. ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... beauty. In spite of his inward anger, his condemnation, his disappointment—and they were all very great—the good looks of Percival Elster struck him forcibly with a sort of annoyance: why should these men be so outwardly fair, so inwardly frail? Those good looks had told upon his daughter's heart; and they all loved her, and could not bear to cause her pain. Tall, supple, graceful, strong, towering nearly a head above the doctor, he stood, his pleasing ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... feeble, bent with years and suffering, one who but waiteth for the time when my grievous sin shall be atoned for and God, in His sweet clemency, shall ease me of this burden of life. Yet do I tell thee there was a time when this frail body was strong and tall, well-nigh, as thine own, when this white hair was thick and black, and these dim eyes bold and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... with the planks, and fortunately found them of the length that would reach across the narrowest part of the fosse. Our little bridge was made without delay, and Lafontaine led the way, followed by the count and Julie, I waiting to see them safe across, before I added my weight to the frail structure. But I was not yet fated to escape. The sentinel, whose vigilance I had startled by my lantern in the cell, had given the alarm; and, as I was setting my foot on the plank, a discharge of fire-arms came from the battlement above. I felt that I was struck, and a stunning ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... into the Kohleren valley. They zigzagged along a rapidly falling path until they reached the first of a series of falls, roaring into a deep gorge surrounded by a dense forest. Bessie leaned against the frail handrail and gazed into the depths, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... sometimes—never a lad who would seize one of those little hands to smother it with kisses, and who would persist in holding it, thereby sadly interfering with the progress of your making? Was not your frail existence often put in jeopardy by this same clumsy, headstrong lad, who would toss you disrespectfully aside that he—not satisfied with one—might hold both hands and gaze up into the loved eyes? I can see that lad now through the haze of the flickering twilight. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... a short, flaxen blond, with calm, clear, gray eyes. A strong, frank, sonorous voice came from this frail-looking boy and, at the first words, quickly changed the opinion which had been formed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... I have something within that 'passeth show.' It is for him who made it to prolong that spark of celestial fire which illuminates yet burns this frail tenement.... In the mean time I am grateful for some good, and tolerably patient under certain evils, grace a Dieu ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... are always good form. Gentlemen are expected to wear gloves while dancing, since their ungloved hands would not only soil the delicate tints of the lady's gloves, but the slightest pressure of a warm, uncovered hand is liable to discolor the frail gauzes, or pale silks of their ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... two along the face of some dizzy precipice by means of a ledge only a foot or two in width, anon clambering some hundreds of feet up or down an almost vertical rock face, where a slip or a false step meant instant death; now crossing some ghastly chasm by means of a frail and dilapidated suspension bridge constructed of cables of maguey fibres and floored with rotten planking, which swung to the tread until the oscillation threatened to precipitate the entire party into the terrible abyss that yawned beneath them, and perhaps half ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... divisions, and wander in its dark labyrinths, is the employment of the philosophy in vogue. But surely the energies of intellect are more worthy our concern than the operations of sense; and the science of universals, permanent and fixed, must be superior to the knowledge of particulars, fleeting and frail. Where is a sensible object to be found, which abides for a moment the same; which is not either rising to perfection, or verging to decay; which is not mixed and confused with its contrary; whose flowing nature no resistance can stop, nor ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... room, vacated at that season, to be lent to the nursery, and another little house was taken for the month. How Ponnamal kept all four houses going in an orderly fashion, how she kept her nurses together through that time of almost panic, and how she herself, frail and delicate as she is, kept up till all was over, we cannot understand from any point of view but the Divine. She only broke down once. It was when her dearest child, our merry, beautiful little Heart's Joy, who, having ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... window in a rather muddy riding-habit, and she was speaking in her sharp, short tones to her twin sister Hester, who lay back in the depths of a large armchair, a novel open in her lap. Sitting by the cheery wood fire was the youngest of the sisters, a frail and delicate invalid. She was turning her face anxiously towards the speaker, and now put in ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... which our hero at first failed to overcome; and it was not until he had performed a considerable amount of crab-catching, that he was enabled to steer himself in the proper direction. Charles Larkyns had taken his seat in an outrigger skiff (so frail and shaky that it made Verdant nervous to look at it), and, with one or two powerful strokes, had shot ahead, backed water, turned, and pulled back round the tub long before Verdant had succeeded in passing ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... sister was tucked away in the old rocking-chair in a corner, safely out of the way of the line of march of her wild brothers. She was a frail, small mortal, with long, smooth, yellow hair and anxious blue eyes, just the apple of everybody's eye in the ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... was perfectly muffled. The stream was with them. It was a swift and silent progress. For all his knowledge and experience Kars had difficulty in recognizing their course. Then there were possible submerged boulders and other "snags" and their danger to the frail craft. But these things were quite undisturbing to the scout. His sight seemed to possess something of feline powers. His sense of locality, and of danger, were something almost uncanny on the water. He had made their present journey once ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... through the leaden hail. O'er dyke mid timbers frail, With hearts that never fail They ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... lost on Daphne, for just then, to Mrs. Stimpson's surprise and secret dismay, the entrance was formally announced of the Court Godmother, whom she had imagined to be at least moribund, if not dead. She came in, looking frail and feeble, but still with much of the energy and vitality that had seemed to ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... that any children grew up through all the exposures and hardships that we suffered in those days! The frail teepee pitched anywhere, in the winter as well as in the summer, was all the protection that we had against cold and storms. I can recall times when we were snowed in and it was very difficult to get ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... ca'lyx fail'ure fra'cas high'land cha'os faith'ful gate'-way mo'hair dai'ly frail'ty name'sake oak'um dai'sy game'ster stra'tum poul'tice bea'dle neat'ly mea'sles trea'cle bea'ver clear'ance peo'ple trea'tise drear'y cre'dence le'gion treat'ment ea'ger flee'cy re'gion twee'zers ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... enduring great privations and suffering, and encountering the extreme dangers to which their frail barks were necessarily exposed from the surges which roll in perpetually from the broad Atlantic Ocean upon the coast of Spain and into the Bay of Biscay, they arrived safely on the shores of Britain. They landed and explored the interior. They found the island robed in the richest drapery of ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... back, and twice over I was able to go and tell my father of the success on our side, Hannibal following close behind me; but these checks were only temporary. The Indians literally swarmed about the frail stronghold, and as fast as they were driven back in one place, they seemed to run along the sides of our defences and begin a fresh attack somewhere else, while our men's firing, being necessarily very ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... proud vessel, now a moral wreck—And view'd their Captain's fate with piteous eyes; While others scoff'd his augur'd miseries, Sneer'd at the prospect of his pigmy sail, And the slight bark so laden and so frail. ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... "Tout le deux se disent! But let us think of the Holy Father!—he who, after long years of patient and sublime credulity, is now, for all we know, bracing himself to take the inevitable plunge into the dark waters of Eternity! Poor frail old man! Who would not pity him! His earthly home has been so small and cosy and restricted,—he has been taken such tender care of— the faithful have fallen at his feet in such adoring thousands,—and now—away from all this warmth and light and incense, and colour of pictures and stained-glass ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... it be hopeless to sway the mind of Lady Ogram? If that were deemed impossible, they had but to wait. Lady Ogram would not live till the autumn. To be sure, she looked better since her return to Rivenoak, but she was frail, oh very frail, and sure to go off at a moment's notice. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... aground. Mountains of surf dash on the rocky coast, seeking to tear the frail craft to pieces. In the perspective behold the sea of many years, studded with the crafts of those friends of my former good ship Prosperity. How many I see that owe to me, some only a pennant, many a sail or two, and others the stanch deck ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... frigidly haughty dignity, his mocking smile, the mute shrug of his shoulders, caused Monsieur Jausion frequent annoyance. But there were times when, carried away by impatience, he interrupted the judge outright, and attacked, boldly and eloquently, the frail yet indestructible structure ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the sounds of their voices, and then his face breaking into a broad grin, that showed a great mouth filled with white teeth, he called to them in an unknown tongue and in a voice that seemed to fairly shake the frail tent. ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... Tartar cataclysm had threatened to engulph it. The Tartars themselves were already becoming an object of curiosity rather than of fear, and soon became an object of hope, as a possible help against the old Mahomedan foe. The frail Latin throne in Constantinople was still standing, but tottering to its fall. The successors of the Crusaders still held the Coast of Syria from Antioch to Jaffa, though a deadlier brood of enemies than they had yet encountered was now coming to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... fame; whilst Learning has bent from her lofty heights to bow at the lowly cross. The constant friend of man, she has stood by him in his hour of greatest need. She has cheered the prisoner in his cell, and strengthened the martyr at the stake. She has nerved the frail and shrinking heart of woman for high and holy deeds. The worn and weary have rested their fainting heads upon her bosom, and gathered strength from her words and courage from her counsels. She has been the staff of decrepit age and the joy of manhood in its strength. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... best days was this ravishing, ambitious, frail, but sincere woman, who in her elevation remained good, faithful (I love to believe) in her sin, obliging, so far as she could be, but vindictive when driven to it; who was quite one of her own sex after all, and, finally, whose ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... whose interpretations of the inner meaning of Christianity place her in the foremost rank of modern mystics, was caught up to God by the beauty of the mountains. Her friend and biographer, Edward Maitland, describes their effect on one in whom a fiercely artistic soul did combat with a frail and suffering body. It was whilst near the mountains that she conceived her ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... was a spotless cloth upon the board, Thin bread-and-butter was upon me pressed, And China tea in a frail cup was poured— Then I rushed forth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... was measured in his lean-lined face, his wrinkled forehead, his hollowed temples, and his deep-sunk eyes. From his thin legs, fragile-looking as windstraws, the bones of which were sheathed in withered skin with apparently no muscle padding in between—from such frail stems sprouted the torso of a fat man. The huge and protuberant stomach was amply supported by wide and massive hips, and the shoulders were broad as those of a Hercules. But, beheld sidewise, there was no depth to those shoulders and the top of the chest. Almost, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... exercise a peculiar brotherly love and faithfulness toward one another, as having one Father in heaven and one inheritance, and in the bond of Christianity being of one faith, united in heart and mind. None may despise another. Them among us who are still weak, frail and eccentric in faith and morals, we are to treat with gentleness, kindness and patience. They must be exhorted, comforted, strengthened. We should do by them as do the brothers and sisters of a household toward the member who is weak or frail or in need. Indeed we cannot otherwise ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... which digs and digs into human nature, without having heard philosophers opine that, in matters of the heart, women have no illusions at all, and that it is only men who go blindfold into the tortuous ways of love. But he was too practical a man to build up a false hope on so frail a basis as a theory applied ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Felice," he said, "that love is like the seed in the ground, which comes up a little frail and tender plant; but through storm and sunshine grows into a great tree. We must ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... nor any blight. The sun always shines there, and purple flowers are waving in the wind. No real garden will ever be so beautiful, because it will never quite be bathed in the tender light, never wave with quite the loveliness of those fair, frail gardens of our dreams. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fist down with such a crash on the frail table that it cracked right across, and Clara was sickeningly alarmed when she saw his huge hands grip the table on either side and rend it asunder. There was something terrible and almost miraculous in his enormous physical vitality, and his waste of it ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... told me, spun of fancies luminous and frail as threads of glass. She could not speak without betraying her deep learning in sciences rejected and forgotten by the modern world. Alchemy, astrology, geomancy furnished her speech with allusions blank to my ignorance; which she most gently ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... across the blank of my young experience, never to return. The first time I saw him he was sitting at the table in his library, and Mrs. Tennyson, her very slender hands hidden by thick gloves, was standing on a step-ladder handing him down some heavy books. She was very frail, and looked like a faint tea-rose. After that one time I only remember her lying ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... mothers, others of children, neighbors and friends; frantic efforts were made to rescue the victims of the flood, render aid to those who were struggling against death, and mitigate the terrors of the horrible disaster. There were noble acts of heroism, strong men and frail women and children putting their own lives in peril to save those of their ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... feeble as any new-born thing. When it stirred, and uttered little elemental sounds—"my fault, my fault"—she forgot the wrong he had done her, in seeing the wrong he had done himself.... "Oh, my Maurice—my Maurice!" But most of the time she did not hear this frail cry of the sense of sin! She thought entirely and angrily of herself; she said, over and over, that she was going to leave him. She was absorbed in hideous and poignant imaginings, based on that organic curiosity which is experienced only by the woman who ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... together! In the next place, supposing that we have found the preponderating utility of our aspheterising in Wales, let us by our speedy and united inquiries discover the sum of money necessary. Whether such a farm with so very large a house is to be procured without launching our frail and unpiloted bark on a rough sea of anxieties? How much money will be necessary for "furnishing" so large a house? How much necessary for the maintenance of so large a family—eighteen people—for a ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... I walked down to the bridge leading to Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar, my emotions overpowered me, a choaking sensation rose to my throat, a thrill rushed through my veins, "my blood ran rippling to my finger's ends." This was the climax ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... think that a robust organization is any warrant of long life, nor that a frail and slight bodily constitution necessarily means scanty length of days. Many a strong-limbed young man and many a blooming young woman have I seen failing and dropping away in or before middle life, and many a delicate and slightly constituted person outliving the athletes and the beauties ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of the enthusiasm, what use in imposing on the whole body a task which the vast majority are not qualified to perform? Would it not be well to recognise the fact which we cannot alter, and to abstain from demanding from frail human nature what human nature cannot render? Would it not be well for the Church to impose upon its ordinary members only ordinary duties? When the Bernard or the Whitefield appears let her by all means ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... The two frail wrists were released with unparalleled ease; the sergeant's powerful hands were caught and rendered useless; and Don ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the success of Du Maurier's book only on the hypothesis that "like takes to like"—that the world is full of frail Trilbys and half-baked duffers like Little Billee, who, Narcissuslike, worship their own image. They don't mind the contradictions and absurdities with which the book abounds; in fact, those who read up-to-date French novels are seldom gifted with ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... nature hold their reign O'er man throughout her whole domain. The monarch of long regal line Possesses dust as frail as mine: Nor can he any more than I Fever or restless pains defy. Nor can he, more than I, delay The ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... order from The Genesis to The Revelation. Sometimes, when she found herself face to face of a night with a purely genealogical chapter, Phyllis of Philistia had difficulty in crushing down her unworthy desire to turn to some chapter that seemed to her frail judgment to contain words of wider comfort to the children of men than a genealogical tree of the Children of Israel; but she had never yielded to so unworthy an impulse. Who was she that she should suggest that one part of the Sacred Book was calculated to be more profitable than another? ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... raspings of the choir, a bass with a cold, and two boys who snivelled began their liturgical chants: "Inviolata," that languishing and plaintive Sequence, with its clear and drawling tune so weak, so frail, that it would seem as if it should only be sung by voices in a hospital; then the "Parce Domine," that antiphon so suppliant and so sad; lastly, that scrap, detached from the "Panga Lingua," the "Tantum ergo," humble ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... said the princess; "it is very unfortunate for him; it would really be a good deed to free him from his frail existence; and, indeed, when I think how often people take the part of the lower class against the higher, in these days, it would be policy to put him out ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... fatal mistake in saying to her sister, "He will never come again," and so depriving her of the last frail plank of hope, and letting her sink in the waves of despair. Perhaps, after all, suspense is not the worst of all things to bear; for in suspense there is hope, and in hope, life! Certain it is that a prop seemed withdrawn from Nora, and from this day she rapidly sunk. She would not take to her ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... lengthened but strengthened. There are many instances of frail, feeble children who have developed into exceptionally strong men and women. One of the most noted is Von Humboldt, the great scientist, who as a child was very weak physically, and, he himself says, was mentally below ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... whispered somethin' in my ear which was a dead secret. Even Father didn't know it yet, she said. Of course I was as pleased as she was, almost—and a little frightened too, although I didn't say so to her. She was always a frail little thing, delicate as she was pretty; not a strapping, rugged, homely body like me. We ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... handed it to Piet, with instructions that he should fill it and his own at the brook, and return to me with all speed; and while he was gone I pulled off my jacket and wrapped the frail, senseless form in it. For I saw at once that this creature had not been accustomed, like the native women with whom I had thus far come in contact, to go about in such a state; the rags which still clung to her attenuated form ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... sovereignty, the beautiful boy seemed to possess the supreme command; and as the sentiment of loyalty is always the strongest when the object which calls for the exercise of it is most helpless or frail, Alan found his power very much increased when he had this beautiful boy to exhibit as the true and rightful heir, in whose name and for whose benefit all his ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of an uncle, with whom at the age of nine he went to reside in Rome. In the house of this bachelor uncle the poor little orphan pined away. Fever succeeded fever, until his guardian felt that companionship with boys in play and study was the only chance of saving so frail a life as Gabriello's. Accordingly he placed the invalid under the care of the Jesuits in their Collegio Romano. Here the child's health revived, and his education till the age of twenty throve apace. The Jesuits ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... stopped in a large jewelry store where Norah had left her watch to be repaired, and while she waited she saw Wayland Leigh bending in an absorbed manner over a collection of fans,—delicate mother-of-pearl and lace trifles, as frail as they were pretty. What business had he with such expensive things? she wondered. It was quickly forgotten, however, in the difficulties involved in making headway past the show windows, James Mandeville wishing to exhaust the beauties of each ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... river in its course. She is also a child of the air, and with the swiftness of the chamois she can reach the snow-covered mountain tops, where the boldest mountaineer has to cut footsteps in the ice to ascend. She will sail on a frail pine-twig over the raging torrents beneath, and spring lightly from one iceberg to another, with her long, snow-white hair flowing around her, and her dark-green robe glittering like the waters of the deep Swiss lakes. "Mine is the power to seize ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... but once more recoil ineffectual? The King's Treasury is running towards the lees; and Paris 'eddies with a flood of pamphlets.' At all rates, let the latter subside a little! D'Orleans gets back to Raincy, which is nearer Paris and the fair frail Buffon; finally to Paris itself: neither are Freteau and Sabatier banished forever. The Protestant Edict is registered; to the joy of Boissy d'Anglas and good Malesherbes: Successive Loan, all protests ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... "Hippodrome" at the corner of Cranbourn Street and Charing Cross Road. Let us inspect their vaudeville offerings. Let us snoop into their wares. At these theatres, equipped with numerous and eminently available cafes, women, frail and fair, sit and walk about on the promenades and generously waive introductions when the young gentlemen evince a desire to speak to them. But there is no romance here. These promenades are even without illusion. Here, among the theatres, is where London tries to be Paris. Just ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... be fair, and yet not fond, Or that their love were firm, not fickle still, I would not marvel that they make men bond By service long to purchase their good will; But when I see how frail those creatures are, I muse that men forget ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... like the still small angelic voice. Davos pondered these problems, pondered Chopin's celestial touch and the weaving magic of his many-hued poems; Chopin—Keats, Shelley, and Heine battling within the walls of a frail tender soul. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... instinctively turned for counsel. A child in the material things of this world, he was a giant in spiritual development—broad-minded and tolerant, his religion spiced with a sense of humour and deepened by a sympathetic understanding of frail human nature. And it was to him that Ralph Quentin, when on his death-bed, had confided the care of his motherless little daughter, Diana, appointing him her sole guardian ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... and restless. Somehow or other, Margrave got into my head, mixed up in some strange way with Sir Philip Derval. I heard the dogs howl, and at the same time, or rather a few minutes later, I felt the whole house tremble, as a frail corner-house in London seems to tremble at night when a carriage is driven past it. The howling had then ceased, and ceased as suddenly as it had begun. I felt a vague, superstitious alarm; I got up, and went to my window, which was unclosed (it is ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I can take freedoms with you; but perhaps the concomitant gentleman, your friend here, would be pleased to take my stool. Indeed, I always use a chair, but the back of it, if I may, be permitted the use of a small portion of jocularity, was as frail as the fair sect: it went home yisterday to be mended. Do, sir, condescind to be sated. Upon my reputation, Squire, I'm sorry that I have not accommodation for you, too, sir; except one of these hassocks, which, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... for the sailors would not believe him. Here, reader, I beg you will pause and reflect that you must die; and may your departure be like that of our worthy captain of marines, who died as he lived, in charity with all his frail fellow men. His loss was much regretted by nearly all on board. His messmates declared they could have spared another man, looking hard at the purser whilst they uttered it; but "Nip-cheese" would not take the hint, and lived to return to England, where he took unto himself a better ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... Madam de Warrens, they would not have been less tender, though infinitely more tranquil. But is it possible for man to taste, in their utmost extent, the delights of love? I cannot tell, but I am persuaded my frail existence would have sunk under the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... could. The youths used to murmur: "Oh! It's no use you meeting him." They were afraid he was not spectacular enough. Or they desired to keep him to themselves, like a precious pearl. I pictured him as very frail, and very positive in a quiet way. He was only about thirty when he ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... might see the youth prevail, (In vain are eloquence and wit,) The boy persists, Apollo's frail; Wisdom to nature ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... still endure! Alas! the sermon of the rose we will Not wisely ponder; nor the sobs of grief Lulled into sighs of rapture; nor the cry Of fierce defiance that again is still. Be patient—patient with our frail belief, And stay it yet a ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... contracted and loosened larva skin. We once experimented on a larva which had just completed its cocoon, to learn how much silk it could produce. On removing its cocoon it made another of the same thickness; but on destroying this second one it spun a third but frail web, scarcely concealing its form. A minute Ichneumon parasite, allied to Platygaster, lays its eggs within those of this moth, as we once detected one under a bunch of eggs, and afterwards reared a few from the same lot of eggs. ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... types of creation. Here along the beach were shells, exquisitely tinted like a sunset sky, cast on shore by the cruel waves. Tender mosses and fragile sea-weed lay upon the sand revealing the infinite tenderness of these frail children of the boundless deep. Looking upon the seething, surging mass of water that rolled on the troubled sea only last night, who would have thought it the home of such delicate beauty? "Truly," we said, as we gazed in admiration and wonder at the fair scene before ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... ter stay home en do de wuk I put 'im at, en he all de time runnin' off here ter git somfin' ter eat. I gwine frail de life outen 'im, ef he ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... slim naked girl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long fingers of the lute-player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free among the silver poplars of France. In eternal twilight they move, those frail diaphanous figures, whose tremulous white feet seem not to touch the dew-drenched grass they tread on. But those who walk in epos, drama, or romance, see through the labouring months the young moons wax and wane, and watch the night from evening unto morning star, and from sunrise unto sunsetting ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... was awaiting her. Bessie had a thirst for knowledge. She was doing well in school and wanted to do better. Instead of taking exercise during the daily intermissions, she often spent them in hard study. Her system, naturally frail, could not stand the strain. She contracted a fever and for three months despaired of life. In the third month dropsy of the chest set in; and, on account of smothering spells, she had to be bolstered ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove; Thou who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe; From vain temptations dost set free, And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity! ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... cathedral nave of lofty trees. At least eight feet in height, its stem rose straight and slender, green and bare for two-thirds its length, and then burst into a shower of snow-white waxen bells. There were hundreds of these blossoms, all from the one stem, delicately poised and ethereally frail. Daylight had never seen anything like it. Slowly his gaze wandered from it to all that was about him. He took off his hat, with almost a vague religious feeling. This was different. No room for contempt and evil here. This was clean and fresh and beautiful-something ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Can praise be simply said of such as he! Needs must the soul unlock All gates of eloquence to sing of these. Such periods, Such epic melodies, As holds the utterance of the earlier gods, The lords of song, one needs To sing the praise of these! No feeble music, tinklings frail of glass; No penny trumpetings; twitterings of brass, The moment's effort, shak'n from pigmy bells, Ephemeral drops from small Pierian wells, With which the Age relieves a barren hour. But such large ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... apposite, and the history of mankind renders the application familiar. But it must be obvious, that the case of nations, and that of individuals, are very different. The human frame has a general course: it has in every individual a frail contexture and limited duration; it is worn by exercise, and exhausted by a repetition of its functions: but in a society, whose constituent members are renewed in every generation, where the race seems to enjoy perpetual youth, and accumulating advantages, we cannot, by any parity of reason, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... I'm sorry. But it can't be helped now, can it? And I'll forget it if you will." He looked at the worn, frail form, and knew that Comstock was right and that little Jimmie Clayton was lying in the valley of the shadow of death. So he added, his voice very low and very gentle, "I'll even shake ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... intended for the refined and delicate Josephine? Occasionally, however, James Gillray descended to a lower depth, as in his Ci Devant Occupations (of 20th February, 1805), in which we see this delicate woman, with the frail but lovely Spaniard, Theresa de Cabarrus (Madame Tallien), figuring in a manner to which the most infamous women of Drury Lane would have hesitated to descend. Josephine de la Pagerie, as we all know, was anything but blameless; ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... her two dimpled cheeks. She was beautiful, but her whole frame was the prey of a hereditary disease. The tears in her eyes glistened like small specks. Her balmy breath was so gentle. She was as demure as a lovely flower reflected in the water. Her gait resembled a frail willow, agitated by the wind. Her heart, compared with that of Pi Kan, had one more aperture of intelligence; while her ailment exceeded (in intensity) by three degrees the ailment ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... back exhausted, and at that moment a gust of wind, fiercer than any which had gone before, leapt down the mountain gorges, howling with all the voices of the storm. It caught the frail hut and shook it. A cobra hidden in the thick thatch awoke from its lethargy and fell with a soft thud to the floor not a foot from the face of the dying man—then erected itself and hissed aloud with flickering ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... for the coming of the uncle, feeling quite uncertain whether to expect a frail old broken man, or to find themselves absolutely deluded, and made ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... thought of his harshness, and Arthur's words, "make not her coming alone harder by one word or look," his grief became so violent and excessive that Charles was quite nonplussed, and went to consult Ada as to what should be done. In accordance with their plan, Ada took the frail little piece of humanity, and, approaching Lord Barrington, as he bent in sorrow over the corpse, said softly, "You have lost Arthur, and Arthur's wife, but you still have Arthur's child," and she laid the babe in ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... greatest imaginative restorer of the past, the greatest historical interpreter of the soul of ancient France, was born in 1798 in Paris, an infant seemingly too frail and nervous to remain alive. His early years gave him experience, brave and pathetic, of the hardships of the poor. His father, an unsuccessful printer, often found it difficult to procure bread or fire for his ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... all ready for some occupant, for whom it seemed to be waiting. Quaint old four-poster bedsteads stood in three rooms—dimity curtains and spotless linen—old oak chests and mahogany presses; and, opening drawers in Chippendale sideboards, I came upon beautiful frail old silver and exquisite china that set me thinking of a beautiful grandmother of mine, made out of old lace and laughing wrinkles and ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Marville, speaking of the Count, whom no one imagined would survive to middle age, says: "Nature, which gave him so delicate a body in such perfect form, also gave him a delicate and perfect intelligence." This frail and delicate invalid, lived, however, until the age of eighty years, and was always grateful to Ninon for her tenderness. He never missed a reception and sang her praises on every occasion. Writing to Saint-Evremond to announce his death, Ninon, herself very aged, says: "His mind had retained ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... was indeed better; but for the next three nights she suffered from severe attacks of the croup. Her sisters had not known how they loved her till she showed her frail side, and they saw how slender was the thread which bound her to earth. When she was strong, and roguish, and wilful, they forgot that she was only a tender flower after all, and might be nipped from ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... Cibber says that though he spent some time at the Temple, "he so little followed the Law there that his neglect of it made the Law (like some of his fair and frail admirers) very often follow him." As he had an uncommon share of social wit and a handsome person, with a sanguine bloom in his complexion, no wonder they persuaded him that he might have a better chance of fortune by throwing such accomplishments ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... finish; her tears choked her. Oh, God! I saw her there on her knees, her hands clasped on the rock; she swayed in the breeze as did the bushes about us. Frail and sublime creature! she prayed for her love. I raised her ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... heretic as one who had that within him to which a preacher might appeal. Thus they became Dogmatists; that is, men who assert a truth so fiercely, as to forget that a truth is meant to be used, and not merely asserted—if, indeed, the fierce assertion of a truth in frail man is not generally a sign of some secret doubt of it, and in inverse proportion to his practical living faith in it: just as he who is always telling you that he is a man, is not the most likely to behave like a man. And why did this befall them? Because they forgot ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... winged creatures birds, bees, butterflies—give glad animation and help to make all the air into music. Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... light and beauty round me, and remain Dead to its power, while on the lighted plain The humblest weed looked up in love, and spread Its leaves before it! The vast sea doth wed The simple brook; the bold lark soars on high, Bounds from its humble nest and woos the sky; Yea, the frail ivy seeks and loves to cling Round the proud branches of the forest's king: Then blame me not;—thou wilt not, canst not blame; Our sorrows, hopes, and joys have been the same— Been one from childhood; but the dream is ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... have something within that 'passeth show.' It is for him who made it to prolong that spark of celestial fire which illuminates yet burns this frail tenement.... In the mean time I am grateful for some good, and tolerably patient under certain evils, grace a Dieu et a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... white house, which, as is the case with most continental houses, looked to an English eye frail, ramshackle, and absurdly frivolous, more like a pagoda in a tea-garden than a place where one slept. The garden called urgently for the services of gardener. Bushes waved their branches across the paths, and the blades of grass, with spaces of earth between them, could ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and brakes That humor interposed too often makes;{7} All this still legible in memory's page, And still to be so to my latest age, Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay Such honors to thee as my numbers may; Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here. Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours, When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers, The violet, the pink, and jessamine, I pricked them into paper with a pin (And thou wast happier than myself ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... twenty-eight hundred yards along a narrow way rough with rocks and now slippery with rain. One of the canoes was lost here by being driven out into the strong current, where the force of the water was so great that it could not be held by the men; the frail skiff drifted down the rapids and disappeared. They now had two canoes and two periogues left, and the loads were divided among these craft. This increased the difficulties of navigation, and Captain Lewis crossed over to the south side of the river in search ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... a bubble, and the life of Man Less than a span: In his conception wretched,—from the womb, So to the tomb; Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears. Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns on water, or but ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... could charge to be partial for republics, avows that despotism is incompatible with the Christian religion, because the Christian religion commands meekness, and despotism claims arbitrary power to the whims and passions of a frail mortal; and still it is more than 1,500 years since the Christian religion became dominant, and through that long period despotism has been pre-eminently dominant; you can scarcely show one single truly democratic republic of any power which had ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... she were already dead. Martin removed the covering, and one glance at that gentle, careworn countenance sufficed to convince him that his old aunt lay before him! His first impulse was to seize her in his strong arms, but another look at the frail and attenuated form caused him to ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... an exhausted and dying society is given us in the person of the precocious but decrepit child, the sole fruit of a sad marriage. Destined from its birth, to an early grave, its excitable imagination soon consumes its frail body. Nothing could be more exquisitely tender, more true to nature, than the portraiture of this unfortunate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cell. The obstacle to be pierced is the natural diaphragm, a yielding partition two or three millimetres[6] thick. Some free themselves; others cannot. The less valiant ones succumb, stopped by the frail barrier. What would it be if they had to pass through a ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... superior. A hot-headed young Lord of the Admiralty resigned his office in a huff, and was not without difficulty persuaded to return to office as Commissioner of the Treasury. The breach between Fox and North was bridged over, but the bridge was frail. The two men eyed each other with disfavor. Fox asserted his independence by occasionally voting against the minister, by consorting with Burke. After the death of Lord Holland, North revenged himself by dismissing Fox from office in a letter famous for its insolent brevity. For a time Fox still ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... eyes, who had been a servant at Archdeacon Heathcote's, and had since had great troubles. She did teach the Catechism, reading, and work when the children were tolerably good and obeyed her, but boys were a great deal too much for her, and she had frail health, and such a bad leg that she never could walk down the lane to the old Church. So, after Sunday School, the children used to straggle down to Church without anyone to look after them, and sit on the benches in the ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what must she be, in that linen habit? And she's so little and frail—" He pulled himself together. "I must stop worrying like this—of course, I'll find her,—alive and unharmed. Some things are too dreadful—they just can't happen. I've got to have a chance to beg her forgiveness for all I've ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... is to destroy all sense of high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark, under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder must strike down the conscience of the slave before ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... life is like the autumn leaf Which trembles in the moon's pale ray, Its hold is frail, its date is brief, Restless, and soon to pass away; Yet when that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree will mourn its shade, The wind bewail the leafless tree; But none shall breathe a sigh ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... an affirmative reply, he ordered a number of women to come. Then pointing to a spot of ground he said to the women, "There you must build a house for the missionary." In half an hour the structure was completed, in appearance something like a bee-hive. In this frail house, of sticks and native mats, Moffat lived for nearly six months, being scorched by the sun, drenched by the rain, exposed to the wind, and obliged often to decamp through the clouds of dust; in addition to which, any dog wishing for a night's lodging could force its way through ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... in the interests of the Women themselves. For, although they can inflict instantaneous death by a retrograde movement, yet unless they can at once disengage their stinging extremity from the struggling body of their victim, their own frail bodies are liable ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... McDonnells' hut in which we had sheltered and went down to the little harbour in the bay. The long Atlantic waves thundered in from the west as if they would bar our passage, and I wondered much at the peril of crossing that angry channel in so frail a craft. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... of perfect speculation, To imp the wings of thy high-flying mind, Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation, From this dark world, whose damps the soul do blind, On that bright Sun of glory fix thine eyes, Cleared from gross mists of frail infirmities." ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... long a Minister of August the Strong, but quarrelled with August, owing to some frail female it is said, and had withdrawn to Berlin a few years ago. He shines there among the fashionable philosophical classes; underhand, perhaps does a little in the volunteer political line withal; being a very busy pushing gentleman. Tall of stature, 'perfectly handsome ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... I saw a pale hand feebly grasping the rim of the magical caldron, which lay, hurled down from its tripod by the rush of the beasts, yards away from the dim, fading embers of the scattered wood pyre. I saw the faint writhings of a frail, wasted frame, over which the Veiled Woman was bending. I saw, as I moved with bruised limbs to the place, close by the lips of the dying magician, the flash of the rubylike essence spilled on the sward, and, meteor-like, sparkling up from ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Ontario the fleet of frail barks boldly ventured, crossed it safely, and landed on the shore of what is now New York State. Here the Indians hid their canoes. Now they were on the enemy's soil and must move cautiously. For {136} four days they filed silently through the woods, crossing the outlet ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... world, through the lusts of the flesh or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before thee. And teach us who survive, in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality, to see how frail and uncertain our own condition is; and so to number our days, that we may seriously apply our hearts to that holy and heavenly wisdom, whilst we live here, which may in the end bring us to life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, thine ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... lunch with me with pleasure, he said, and at one next day arrived in my sitting-room. He looked just as he used to do at first, but soon I noticed his gayety was gone. He seemed frail and older. He had deeply grieved ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... unsteady world, and the ingratitude of man. I thought it would be easier going to the Promised Land if Jordan did not roll between. Rolling had long ceased to be a pleasant figure of speech with me. How frail are all things here below, how false, and yet how fair! My mind is naturally picturesque. In the midst of my sadness the force of nature compelled me to grope after an illustration. I could only think that my own foothold was frail, that the Jane Moseley ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... and is that end as salutary as they would wish? We dare not pronounce judgment. They may answer that they terrify the unjust rich man by pointing out to him the yawning pit that lies beneath the frail covering of wealth; just as in the time of the Dance of Death, they showed him his gaping grave, and Death standing ready to fold him in an impure embrace. Now, they show him the thief breaking open his doors, and the murderer stealthily watching his sleep. We confess we cannot understand how ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... perhaps, no more than justice, for the cook was paid well; but there was one man in the assembly to whom this did not altogether appeal. The victim was frail and helpless, a watery-eyed, limp bundle of nerves, with, nevertheless, a pitiful suggestion of outward dignity still clinging to him, though his persecutors would have described him aptly as a whisky tank. The former fact ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... between the two, on which was erected a house for the stowage of provisions; above this rose a platform surrounded by a railing, forming the deck of the vessel. It had been built by Tongans in the Fijis, where suitable timber could alone be procured. These vessels, frail and unwieldy as they appear, are navigated in the face of the trade wind between two and three hundred miles, the Tongans making voyages to Fiji and also to Samoa. We were told that six years are required to build one. The sail, formed of matting, is triangular, spread on a long yard. The ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... perhaps too capital a part amongst the devotees, I hastened to the inn, luckily hard by, and one of the best I am acquainted with. Here I soon fell asleep in defiance of sunshine. 'Tis true my slumbers were not a little agitated. St. Anthony had been deaf to my prayer, and I still found myself a frail, infatuated mortal. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... hold on the bully now, and was gradually forcing him backward toward the frail railing that inclosed ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... sole inhabitant of one rather bare office in the Cardigan Block. Buck had fully resolved to give him a retainer of a thousand dollars, or even more, if he asked for it, but after one look at Henry he cut the appropriation to two hundred and fifty dollars. Young Mr. Poundstone was blonde and frail, with large round spectacles, rabbit teeth, and the swiftly receding chin of the terrapin. Moreover, he was in such a flutter of anticipation over the arrival of his client that Buck deduced two things—to ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... suggested by the reflection that an all-powerful God will not leave unpunished the transgressors of his commands; or the same word might signify the sense of reverence and unbounded veneration, with which the frail creature must feel almost overwhelmed when thinking of its exalted Creator, who knows all, sees all, and governs all. The former originates in the intellect, the latter in the heart. It is obvious that the fear of punishment ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... through the world spread far and wide. Upon them all is seen his name, And ev'ry one admits his claim; Even the image of the Lord Is not with greater zeal ador'd. Strange fancy of the human race! Half sinner frail, half child of grace We see HERR WERTHER of the story In all the pomp of woodcut glory. His worth is first made duly known, By having his sad features shown At ev'ry fair the country round; In ev'ry alehouse too they're found. His stick is pointed by each dunce "The ball would ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... punishments to which the convulsionists submitted, as if by inspiration, so that no one might doubt, as Montgeron has it, that it was easy for the Almighty to render invulnerable and insensible bodies the most frail and delicate, would induce us to believe, if the contrary were not so conclusively established, that a rage for homicide and suicide had taken possession of the greater part of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... seen her sitting there! And now he would not see her any more. And only three days ago she had been sitting in the basket chair. How well he remembered her words, her laughter, and now ... now; was it possible he never would hear her laugh again? How frail a thing is human life, how shadow-like; one moment it is here, the next it is gone. Here is her work-basket; and here the very ball of wool which he had held for her to wind; and here is a novel which she had lent to him, and which ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... place in the seat usually occupied by Andy. His face was grave, for he knew what risks they were running. But surely the lad who had piloted the frail craft through so many perils ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... have sprung up from a long slumber, and to be looking with wide happy eyes upon the fresh marvels Nature is preparing for it. Rather naked she stands as yet, rubbing her sleepy lids, having just cast from her her coat of snow, and feeling somewhat bare in the frail garment of bursting leaves and timid grass growths, that as yet is all she can find wherein to hide her charms; but half clothed as she is, she ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... not so great, so wise, so strong, as some are prone to suppose: and when, cut off from Christ and His people, from the Bible and prayer, he trusts in his own resources, he is poor, and weak, and frail in the extreme. There are no errors, no extravagances, no depths of degradation, into which the lawless self-reliant man may not fall. When I had lost my faith in Christ, and had freed myself from all restraints of Bible authority ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the headland, my astonishment was extreme on finding my little bark in the midst of a shoal of enormous sharks. If I came in contact with one of them I was lost, for the frail boat would certainly be upset and as Jackson had assured me, if ever I allowed these monsters to come near enough, one snap of their jaws, and there would be an end of the Little Savage. I thought of the warning of Mrs Reichardt, and was inclined to think I had better have taken ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... Ney's last desperate charge with the formidable battalions of the Old Guard, he saw the advance of the Prussians closing in on the French right, he galloped to the sea-shore, and, crossing the Channel in a frail boat, reached London twenty-four hours in advance of the news of the battle,[65] but long enough for him to clear several millions from off the panicky state of the money market. Marshal Massena, one of Napoleon's bravest generals, the defender of Genoa and ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... things have gone especially well with me for many years, indeed, much more so perhaps than I really deserve. Though this world often requires much care and toil from us frail mortals, it also yields many blessings for ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... have too much respect for the world's opinion,—let us wait with patience,—time may rectify that impetuosity of character, which is now, I own, my dread; think of it, Charles, and beware; for affection is a frail flower, reared by the hand of gentleness, and perishes as surely by the shocks of violence as by the more ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... Dr. Kenear had been summoned from New Orleans showed as plainly as the message itself that his mother's condition was more serious than he had supposed. She was alone with many responsibilities upon her frail shoulders, and she was calling for her son. There was but one thing ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... want him to go down with me: but he thinks it would be too expensive. So I have engaged to collect what matter I can for him on the spot. At the beginning of October I expect to be back in East Anglia for the winter. Frail is human virtue. I thought I had quite got over picture dealing, when lo! walking in Holborn this day I looked into a shop just to shew the strength of my virtue, and fell. That accursed Battle Piece—I have bought it—and another picture of dead chaffinches, which ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... school went on with regularity and success. There was, however, an occasional interruption. Once a furious squall came over the lake, and shook the frail building so much that Philip threw open the door and sent out all the children, the little ones and girls first, and then the boys, remaining himself to the last like the captain of a sinking ship; but he was not so much of a fool to stay ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... pushed the tiller across and the Dragon swept straight down upon her. A shout of dismay rose from the Danes, a hasty volley of arrows and darts was hurled at the Dragon, and the helmsman strove to avoid the collision, but in vain. The Dragon struck her on the beam, the frail craft broke up like an egg-shell under the blow, and sank almost instantly under the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... followed by two dark, handsome little boys. The girl, who was very tiny, blonde like her mother, and exceedingly frail, he carried in his arms. The boys came up and said good morning with an ease and cheerfulness uncommon, even in well-bred children, but the little girl hid her face on ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... and became at once conscious of an extraordinary throbbing and commotion which was going on inside. The walls of his chest seemed to thrill and quiver as a frail building would do inside when some powerful engine was at work. In the silence of the room I could hear a dull humming and buzzing noise which proceeded from the ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this divine discontent that has made man what he is to- day, let us glorify and envy it, pitying the while the frail mortal vessels it consumes with its flame. No adulation can turn such natures from their goal, and in the hour of triumph the slave is always at their side to whisper the word of warning. This discontent is the leaven that has raised ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... to know What words of love were impotent to show. Time made my heart, aforetime, meekly bow Unto the mastery of love; but now Time hath, at last, revealed love to be Far other than it once appeared to me; And Time the frail foundation hath made clear Whereon I purposed, once, my love to rear— To wit, your beauty, which but served as sheath To hide the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... four-oared boat, despite the dismal prognostications of our worthy host. A pleasant row that was, at one moment covered over with salt-water—the next riding on the top of a wave, ten times the size of our frail conveyance—then came a sudden concussion—in veering our rudder smashed into a smaller boat, which immediately filled and sank, and our rowers disheartened at this mishap would go no farther. The return was still rougher—my face smarted dreadfully from the cutting splashes of the salt-water; ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... perhaps. Long ago we were no less than now. When we reached a hand in the darkness and grasped that of our fellow, the love and the strongly frail human abandon were no less. We have not grown in heart's munificence, perhaps. It is one of the illusions only. But the hope is ours. For ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... paddle and his knees raw from the rasp of the craft's bottom as he swung with the weary blade. Hour by hour the rain beat on them, and the pines that crawled out of it went very slowly by, while it was almost a relief to stand upright now and then, and with strenuous effort drive the frail shell up against the swirl of the slower rapids with long fir poles. At times they were swept down sideways before the poles could find hold again, and fought, gasping and panting, for minutes to regain what they had lost ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... if there was any to be found. We approached the range just before sunset, much tired, with two Wonga-Wongas and three iguanas at our saddles. I had just informed my Blackfellow, that I wished to encamp, even without water, when some old broken sheets of bark, remains of the frail habitations of the natives, caught my eye; a dry water-hole, though surrounded with green grass and sedges, showed that they had formerly encamped there, with water. This water-hole was found to be one of a chain of ponds extending along the edge of the scrub which covered ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... the magic of Alcina's spell) She every ancient passion dispossessed; And in his bosom, there alone to dwell, The image of her love, and self impressed. So witched, Rogero sure some grace deserves, If from his faith his frail affection swerves. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... distinguished for their height than for their diversity and their volumes of water. The principal arm of the river is divided at the point of decline into two equal falls by a little island of rock. A long narrow suspension-bridge leads to this island, and hangs over the fall; but it is such a weak, frail construction, that one person only can cross it at a time. The owner of this dangerous path keeps it private, and imposes a toll of about ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... a little girl eleven years old scream in terror and drop her pail of slops, spilling most of it on her feet; and seize it in a clutch of frail child's fingers, and stagger, sobbing and shaking, past the Fiend—one hand held over her contorted face to shield her from the Awful Thing of Things—to the head of the stairs, where she collapsed, and was half-carried, half-dragged by one of the older ones to the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... about surrounding appearances does not occur to him". We have disclaimed all knowledge about "primitive man," but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds his belief in the lack of speculation among savages on a frail foundation ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
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