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More "Infirm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trade. They may have no hold upon that class of persons who are defective in moral sensibility, just as other persons are wanting in an ear for music. But for the honest, vacillating minds, the tender consciences supported by the tremulous knees of an infirm intelligence, the timid compromisers who are always trying to curve the straight lines and round the sharp angles of eternal law, the continual debate of these living questions is the one offered means of grace and hope of earthly redemption. And thus a true, unhesitating ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... companions of Alexis, who were ready for any deeds of desperation which might place Alexis on the throne. The second son of the emperor, the child of Catharine, was an infant of but a few months old. The health of Peter was infirm and his life doubtful. It was manifest that immediately upon the death of the tzar, Alexis would rally his accomplices around him, raise the banner of revolt against the infant king, and that thus the empire would be plunged into all the horrors of a long and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... opposite side of the road from the residence of The Chobb; clusters of white roses clambered in all directions over the wall, and the little lawn in front was tastefully laid out, and the turf and shrubs kept in perfect order. Along the gravel walks of this little lawn, walked slowly, as if in infirm health, a middle-aged lady, leaning for support on the arm of a tall and graceful girl; and ever and anon she turned on her companion's suffering face a look of such love and sweetness—it was sure to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... marriage! There was everybody there in London, a'most. Sir Harvey Diggs says he is mending very slowly. In life we are in death, Mr. Newcome! Isn't it sad to think of him, in the midst of all his splendour and prosperity, and he so infirm and unable to enjoy them! But let us hope for the best, and that his health will ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Studied from that old spirit-leaved book Which starry Uranus with finger bright Sav'd from the shores of darkness, when the waves Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom;— And the which book ye know I ever kept For my firm-based footstool:—Ah, infirm! Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent Of element, earth, water, air, and fire,— 140 At war, at peace, or inter-quarreling One against one, or two, or three, or all Each several one against the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... with eyes on the infirm wheel, was very silent, and she was very limp. The buggy top was up for privacy. By and by he heard a half-spoken sound at his side, and turning saw her eyes ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... that region, except the infirm, stayed indoors to shiver by a fire. Eagle and the girls in their warm capotes breasted with me the coldest winter days. She was as happy as they were; her cheeks tingled as pink as theirs. Sometimes I thought her eyes must answer me with her old self-command; ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the Mayor and Monsieur the Commandant know that you are lame; that is easy enough to be seen. They replied at once, Eh, Monsieur Goulden, the young man is lame; why speak of him? Do not be uneasy; we do not want the infirm; we ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... forth, he broke the infirm neck and back of the old man, and crushed him. And so Westmar failed to compass his revenge: zealous to retaliate, he fell into the portion of those who need revenging; being smitten down even as those whose slaughter he ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... 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^; sickly &c (disease) 655; dull, slack, evanid^, spent, short-winded, effete; weather-beaten; decayed, rotten, worn, seedy, languishing, wasted, washy, laid low, pulled down, the worse for wear. unstrengthened &c 159 [Obs.], unsupported, unaided, unassisted; aidless^, defenseless ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... will then be proclaimed emperor in his place, and be married to you. The power which you now enjoy will then come back to you again, undiminished, and under such circumstances as will render it permanently secure to you. To accomplish this will be very easy; for the emperor, superannuated, infirm, and stupid as he is, can not protect himself against any well-planned and vigorous attempt which we may make to remove him; though, if we remain as we are, and any accidental cause should arouse him from his lethargy, we may ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... nearly half pay expenses by their handicrafts. Even they, aged and infirm as they are, can half support themselves if they have ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... attention. A person must have some tag by which he is identified, or, so far as we are concerned, he becomes one of the innumerable lost articles. There are persons who are like umbrellas, very useful, but always liable to be forgotten. The memory is an infirm faculty, and must be humored. It often clings to mere trifles. The man with the flamboyant necktie whom you saw on the 8.40 train may also be the author of a volume of exquisite lyrics; but you never saw the lyrics, and you did see the necktie. In the scale of being, the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... upon every element that has to do with the final achievement. Imagination—which is simply clairvoyant vision—discerns the ideal in the dim distance, and thought is the motive force by means of which it is achieved. To be "infirm of will" is, therefore, the greatest of misfortunes, as it inevitably produces complete failure in all the affairs of life. However hopeless a certain combination of events may look, it really is not so. Nothing is ever hopeless, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... had no feelings of resentment for his treatment. He had now leisure and quiet for self-examination, if he chose to avail himself of it. At Sing Sing there was great injustice and no redress. The infirm man was put to equal labour with the robust, and punished if he did not perform as much. The flogging was very severe at Sing Sing. He once ventured to express his opinion that such was the case, and (to prove the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was as unforgivable and stupid as to have Gay offer her a two-carat diamond ring and to have her say: "No, Bubseley; sell it and let us use the money to start a fund for heating the huts of aged and infirm Eskimos. The Salvation Army has ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... dead of night; In stillness the long rustle of my robe. So long as stand these walls I cannot leave them. Yet will I go: behold you, that stand by, A mother by her own son thrust away, Cast out—ha, ha!—in my old age, infirm, To totter ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... diverting interlude of farce, though a mere irrelevance and impediment to the action; but the boys are less amusing than their compeers in the anonymous comedy of "Sir Giles Goosecap," first published in the year preceding: a work of genuine humor and invention, excellent in style if somewhat infirm in construction, for a reprint of which we are indebted to the previous care of Marston's present editor. Far be it from me to intrude on the barren and boggy province of hypothetical interpretation and controversial commentary; but I may observe ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Sabbath day when he mounted the Cheviots. He stood on one of their summits, and leaning on his harp, contemplated the fertile dales he left behind. The gay villagers, in their best attires, were thronging to their churches; while the aged, too infirm for the walk, were sitting in the sun at their cottage doors, adoring the Almighty Benefactor in his sublimer temple of the universe. All spoke of security and happiness. "Thus I leave thee, beloved Scotland! And on revisiting these hills, may I still ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... 2850 So wild were they, could her own faith impart. She said that not a tear did dare to start From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm When from all mortal hope she did depart, Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term, 2855 And that she reached the port without one fear infirm. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... hung its purple gems beside the marble fountain, he placed a kind of mask over his mouth and nostrils, as if all this beauty did but conceal a deadlier malice; but, finding his task still too dangerous, he drew back, removed the mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm voice of a person affected with inward disease, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... olives feed! Me, lenient mallows from the simple mead! Son of Latona, grant the blessing, That, a cloudless mind possessing, And not infirm of frame, in soft decay, Cheer'd by the breathing lyre, my ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... held fast to the tail-end of the jolly marching procession, and then it had been ripped out of their feeble hands. But the procession went on. It was always there, round the corner, with its music and fluttering lights, and if one was infirm of purpose like Cosgrave, or like a certain James Stonehouse, one ran to meet it, flung oneself into it, not counting the cost, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... sat up, indignantly. "Can't you see that I'm perfectly sober? It was the merest temporary fit, and I've shaken it off. Don't you see?" He got upon his feet, staggered, but shook himself like a dog coming out of the water, and came to the door with infirm steps. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... i. 113. those which belong to self-preservation turn upon pain and danger, i. 125. nature and objects of those belonging to society, i. 125. a control over them necessary to the existence of society, iv. 52. strong ones awaken the faculties, v. 287. vehement passion not always indicative of an infirm judgment, v. 407. mere general truths interfere very little with them, vi. 326. passions which interest men in the characters ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... this ship, on their landing, appeared to be aged and infirm, the state in which they were said to have been embarked. It was not therefore to be wondered at, that they had buried twenty-five on the passage. One soldier also died. Twenty were brought in sick, and were immediately landed at ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... doubt and a promise, positively, of performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the next corner and the next. "You needn't tell me, you needn't tell me!"—this again as they ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the trial was held, was crowded with spectators. Neighbor jostled neighbor, and terrible, awe-inspiring whispers ran over the throng. Prayer was offered, and the court opened, and Rebecca Nurse, weak and sick, old and infirm as she was, was made to stand up before that tribunal to plead to the charge of witchcraft. When her son would have supported his aged mother, ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... body servants, or, indeed, domestic servants of any kind, would now scarcely be employed by anybody except on the ground of a canon of reputability carried over by tradition from earlier usage. The only exception would be servants employed to attend on the persons of the infirm and the feeble-minded. But such servants properly come under the head of trained nurses rather than under that of domestic servants, and they are, therefore, an apparent rather than a real exception ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... nor collars, but were kept warm by a scarf round the neck and by dint of forcing their fingers into the furthest inch of their pockets. Then they would slowly lift one leg after the other. Starers of infirm purpose would occasionally detach themselves from the throng and sidle away, ashamed of their fickleness. But reinforcements were continually arriving. And to these new-comers all that had been said in gossip had to be repeated ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Why, it was but two or three nights ago that two thieves went into the pasture to take old Marshall's horses, supposing he was too aged and infirm to thwart them, even if he should learn their designs; they went early in the evening, before people usually retired to rest; they caused a disturbance among the horses, which called out a couple of neighbors who chanced to be there, who went to ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... people were living yet, though infirm and feeble, and more disposed to spend the day in the armchairs, beside the blazing fire in the inglenook, than to stir abroad or carry on any active occupation at home. Jack Devenish and his wife, Eva, managed the house and farm, and brought ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... service, now dust here as the royal majesties they served are dust elsewhere. Went over to the ancient grave-digger, who was shovelling out in a weakly manner decayed coffin, skull, ribs, bones, fat earth—so fat and greasy-looking, so alive with horrible worms. He was so very old and infirm that, after a shovelful or two, he leaned against the grave side and peched like a ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the rock, and fierce the tempests rave— Thy ingots go the unconscious deep to pave! Or thunder at thy door the midnight train, Or Death shall knock that never knocks in vain. Next Honour's sons come bustling on amain; 25 I laugh with pity at the idle train. Infirm of soul! who think'st to lift thy name Upon the waxen wings of human fame,— Who for a sound, articulated breath— Gazest undaunted in the face of death! 30 What art thou but a Meteor's glaring light— Blazing a moment and then sunk in night? Caprice ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... potatoes—their only food. Two or three dim children—their number is lost in their obscurity—are cowering round the dull, dark fire, atop of one another; and on a miserable pallet beyond—a few rotten boards, propped upon equally infirm supports, and covered over with only one thin black quilt—is sitting the master of the mansion; his grizzly, unshorn beard, his lantern jaws and shaggy hair, are such as his home and family would lead one to expect. And now you have ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... "Your hand is rather unsteady—infirm of purpose; give me the blades." She took them laughingly, and snipped the green ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... raging through the town, seeking whom he might infect. It was one of the curiosities of this singular epidemic that it claimed not only those youthful and adventurous spirits who were by common consent held to be its legitimate victims, but carried off also old and infirm men, chronic invalids, and, stranger still, such shiftless, incompetent and altogether worthless cumberers of the ground as this Doctor Hanchett; thus proving itself to be, like most other contagions, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... move the Sunday-school organ about and there are windows that stick and all manner of things about a church that only a practiced mover and driver could do. You know the janitor is rather old and infirm and as for me—well, Hank, when you come down to it, that's about all we ministers are, just movers. Our business is to help find just the right and happiest places for people, to show them their part in the game of life and keep them from bruising themselves ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... would surely protect them. Savage declared that they should trust, also, to such common sense as the Lord had given them. From his certain knowledge, the company, containing as it did so large a number of the aged and infirm, of women and children, could not cross the mountains thus late in the season without much suffering, sickness, and death. He was overruled and rebuked for want of faith. “Brethren and sisters,” he replied, “what I have said I know to be true; but seeing you are going forward, I will ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... taken part were confined, according to his own romantic account in a speech in Congress, to stealing ducks and onions from the civil population; his Ministers were as ignorant in the matter as he; their military adviser, Scott, was so infirm that he had soon to retire, and it proved most difficult to replace him. Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, started with knowledge of affairs, including military affairs; he had been Secretary of War in Pierce's Cabinet and Chairman of the Senate Committee on War since then; ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... never known any tenderness, his mother having always treated him unkindly, and caring scarcely at all for him; for in country places the useless are obnoxious, and the peasants would be glad, like hens, to kill the infirm of their species. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... and are generally composed of farmers, presided over by the legal agent of the lord of the manor. The tenants of the manor attend to pay their quit rent for the preceding years, and it often happens that if the cottager has been ill, or is weak and infirm, the farmers composing the court subscribe and pay the ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... some modern Moses accommodated travellers by passing them over its bed dry-shod, when a flat-boat shot out from the jungle on the opposite bank, and pulled toward us. It was built of two-inch plank, and manned by two infirm darkies, with frosted wool, who seemed to need all their strength to sit upright. In that leaky craft, kept afloat by incessant baling, we succeeded, at the end of an hour, in crossing the river. And this, be it understood, is travelling in ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... levied for the war with the Turks, Luther himself begged the Elector not to exempt him with his scanty goods. He would gladly, he said, if not too old and too infirm, 'be one of the army himself.' In 1542 he brought out for his countrymen a refutation of the Koran, written in earlier days, that they might learn what a shameful faith was Mahomed's, and not suffer themselves to be perverted, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... before the doors. One or two women were seen among the number, and, a yet more fearful and piteous sight, a little hand, which had been lopped in the tumult of the butchery from some infant. One aged Macdonald was found alive. He was probably too infirm to fly, and, as he was above seventy, was not included in the orders under which Glenlyon had acted. Hamilton murdered the old man in cold blood. The deserted hamlets were then set on fire; and the troops departed, driving away with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the disgrace and weakness of his more early and his later days. When the successors of Mahomet unsheathed the sword of war and religion, he was astonished at the boundless prospect of toil and danger; his nature was indolent, nor could the infirm and frigid age of the emperor be kindled to a second effort. The sense of shame, and the importunities of the Syrians, prevented the hasty departure from the scene of action; but the hero was no more; and the loss of Damascus and Jerusalem, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... their calls upon our tenderness, their claims, to every thinking mind, are still higher to our admiration. Driven from house and home, despoiled of dignities and honours, abandoned to the seas for mercy, to chance for support, many old, some infirm, all impoverished? with mental strength alone allowed them for coping with such an aggregate of evil! Weigh, weigh but a moment their merits and their sufferings, and what will not be sooner renounced ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... drawing-room, but by some mistake Mrs. Fry was conducted to the Egyptian Hall, where a number of school-children were waiting to be examined. Mrs. Fry occupied a post near the platform; and after a little time the Queen, now aged and infirm, perceived her. As soon as the examination of the children was over she advanced to Mrs. Fry. Her Majesty's small figure, her dress blazing with diamonds, her courtesy and kindness as she spoke to the now celebrated Quakeress, who stood ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... mansion, for the very rats of this ancient seat are gray. Since these have not quitted it, we hope at least this house may stand during the small remainder of days these poor animals have to live, who are now too infirm to remove to another: they have still a small subsistence left them in the few remaining books ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... example; and I have known him to have them, when their time had expired, sleeping unsuspected beneath his roof, until they could get employment in the country.' So testified his son concerning him in Halifax. When too old to do any regular work, he often visited the houses of the poor and infirm in the city and beyond Dartmouth, filling his pockets at a grocer's with packages of tea and sugar before ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... intertwisted her fingers, and related how that she and Master Gammon had one day, six years distant, talked on a lonely evening over the mischances which befel poor people when they grew infirm, or met with accident, and what "useless clays" they were; and yet they had their feelings. It was a long and confidential talk on a summer evening; and, at the end of it, Master Gammon walked into Wrexby, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... death, in his absence, at the Assizes Court of La Drome, for having murdered five people, and was cast off by his own faction. For some time his wife, who was infirm and deformed, might be seen going from house to house asking alms for him, who had been for two months the arbiter of civil war and assassination. Then came a day when she ceased her quest, and was seen ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... That her uncle Mr. Weishaupt's family had been murdered; that not one member of the family had been spared—namely, Mr. Weishaupt himself and his wife, neither of them much above sixty, but both infirm beyond their years; two maiden sisters of Mr. Weishaupt, from forty to forty-six years of age, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... be as good a gauntlet as one of steel, but I, infirm of mood, turn sick even now as I think of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... man, and an aged and infirm woman, were seen walking along, with faltering footsteps, through the street which led to the prison. It was the heart-broken father and mother of this unnatural child. When they came in sight of the gloomy granite walls and iron-grated windows of this dreary abode, they could hardly ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... do Lord Privilege the justice to state that he evidently was fast verging to a state of second childhood. He was much bowed down since I had last seen him, and appeared infirm in body ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... infinitely worse, to be torn gradually off through years of growing neglect, or perhaps growing dislike! She had, like the mother, overcome that natural repugnance—repugnance which no man can conquer—towards the infirm and helpless mass of putty of the earlier stage. She had spent her best and happiest years in tending, watching, and learning to love like a mother this child, with which she has no connection and to which she has ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of seeing you unhappily married that suggested the idea of a pension to me. I know that I have no right to expect such a thing, but one can never imagine what terror is inspired by the thought of being cast into the streets penniless, old and infirm as I am!—All I want is a poor mattress in a corner, a crust of bread, and the sight of Mariette's sweet face. I am so accustomed to see her come and go in this wretched room, that if she were not there I would think myself shut up in a dark tomb. And besides, she is the only ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... As he was very infirm I went with him, more out of charity than with any hopes of profit. We pulled with the tide till we arrived a little above Deptford, where several ships were lying, and he went close to one and lowered down his grapnels. He dragged ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... to spare you that kind of annoyance at all events," she answered without hesitation, making the promise, not because she was infirm of purpose, but because she was indefinite; she had no impulse at the time to do anything, and no notion that she would ever feel impelled to act in opposition to this ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... destiny. A nation has a spiritual as well as a material, a moral as well as a physical existence, and is subjected to internal as well as external conditions of health and virtue, greatness and grandeur, which it must in some measure understand and observe, or become weak and infirm, stunted in its growth, and end in ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... was well nursed and attended. It is no uncommon, indeed I may say it is a very common thing, for the old pensioners, as they gradually decay, to have their health quite perfect when the faculties are partly gone; and there is a helpless ward established for that very reason, where those who are infirm and feeble, without disease, or have lost their faculties while their bodily energies remain, are sent to, and there they pass a quiet, easy life, well attended, until they sink into the grave. Such was the case with Peter Anderson: he was ninety-seven when he died, but ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... who had not sworn brotherhood with Sigurd. He was Guttorm, Gunnar's and Hoegni's half-brother. Brynhild went to Guttorm. He would not slay Sigurd, but Brynhild found that he was infirm of will and unsteady of thought. With Guttorm, then, she would work for the slaying of Sigurd. Her mind was fixed that he and she would no longer be ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... monthly nurse should be between 30 and 50 years of age, sufficiently old to have had a little experience, and yet not too old or infirm to be able to perform various duties requiring strength and bodily vigour. She should be able to wake the moment she is called,—at any hour of the night, that the mother or child may have their wants ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... 1827—he had occupied the bench along with the other two judges. In Hilary Term of 1828 the Court had been presided over by the same three judges, except that Chief Justice Campbell had occasionally been absent from his seat in consequence of infirm health. Immediately after the close of the last-named Term the Chief Justice, having obtained from the Lieutenant-Governor six months' leave of absence, departed for England, whence he did not return until after a long holiday. The Court of King's Bench was thus left with ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Bartholomew, on the south side of Smithfield, is contiguous to the church of Little St. Bartholomew. It was at first governed by a master, eight brethren, and four sisters, who had the care of the sick and infirm that were brought thither. King Henry VIII. endowed it with a yearly revenue of five hundred more yearly for the relief of one hundred infirm people. And since that time the hospital is so increased and enlarged, by the benefactions given to it, that it receives infirm ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... not bow willingly to what is infirm and wrong in human nature. If it yields to us, it must yield to what is divine in us. The wickedness of my neighbor cannot submit to my wickedness; his sensuality, for instance, to my anger against his vices. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... out on his forehead and, snatching the whip from its stalk on the dashboard, he belabored his aged and infirm mare into a rickety effort ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... a little farther, called him a second time: "O Brother Leo, if the Brothers Minor gave sight to the blind, healed the infirm, cast out demons, gave hearing to the deaf, or even what is much more, if they raised the four days dead, write that not in this is the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... King were all foreign ones, and under his government England was at rest. That long, quiet reign was now drawing near its close. The King had not yet sunk into the sad state of senile dementia, wherein he ended his life; but he was an infirm, tired old man, bereft of his other self, his bright and loving wife, who had left him and the world about four years earlier. He exerted himself a little at supper to make himself agreeable to the ladies, as was then held to be the bounden duty of a good knight; but after supper he ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... infirm or disabled men will remain where it has always been. This establishment has indeed been a welcome refuge to thousands who have known better days. Men of all ranks and conditions, who have experienced in the afternoon of life contrary winds too powerful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... horse!' exclaimed the infirm driver. 'Turn out, then! turn out!' was the answer, which was followed by repeated cracks and blows front the long whip of the 'grand sleigh,' with showers of snowballs, and three tremendous hurrahs ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... and lawsuits, without mentioning the grievous deep-rooted distempers, and the loss of his strength by an inward and slow poison; the stupid dullness of his mind, by the exhaustion of the nervous system; and, in fine, a premature and infirm old age. ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... weak in body, often dull of wit and infirm of temper, had yet certain old-fashioned ideas of his own as to how it behoves a ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... recover from the alarm into which this proposal had thrown him, a third speaker rejoined, "I cannot think it at all necessary; Milnwood is an infirm, hypochondriac old man, who never meddles with politics, and loves his moneybags and bonds better than any thing else in the world. His nephew, I hear, was at the wappenschaw to-day, and gained the popinjay, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "this messenger of peace visited me two years ago, for the first time. I lived near a family to whom she had brought some worsted stockings, for winter was just setting in, and so my neighbor mentioned me to her, as a poor infirm old man. She desired to see me, and had she been my own daughter, she could never have shown me more respect and kindness! She procured me a warm quilt that same evening, and on the morrow, towards ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... way was long, the wind was cold, The minstrel was infirm and old; His withered cheeks and tresses gray Seemed to have known a better day; The harp, his sole remaining joy, Was carried by an ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... arises the ineffectual character which we so complain of in life—the disappointments, failures, mortifications which form the material of so much moral meditation on the vanity of the world. Much of all this is inevitable from the constitution of our nature. The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which cannot be understood by us except with the utmost inadequacy; and the resignation to the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... upon his breast, and he stood, infirm of purpose and choking with words which he could not voice. The whirl in which his confused brain had revolved for months—nay, years—had made the determination of conduct with him a matter of hours, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... I hear what you say," replied little Marie; "but I am thinking of what my mother has always told me: that a woman of sixty is much to be pitied when her husband is seventy or seventy-five and can't work any longer to support her. He grows infirm, and she must take care of him at an age when she herself is beginning to have great need of care and rest. That is how people come to end their lives in ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... here. The basins for holy water, cut in the solid wall, were worn, like the steps of an ancient building, with countless fingers, long since turned to dust. There, also, were two old confessionals, one of which was so hopelessly infirm that it had been set aside at last, to listen to no more whispered tales of sin and sorrow. The doors of the church at first looked ancient, but wore a really modern air, when compared with the original portals, which, ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... hand, in the case of faith, both these things are subject to the free-will so that in both respects the act of faith can be meritorious: whereas in the case of opinion, there is no firm assent, since it is weak and infirm, as the Philosopher observes (Poster. i, 33), so that it does not seem to proceed from a perfect act of the will: and for this reason, as regards the assent, it does not appear to be very meritorious, though it can be as regards ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... body as infirm of purpose," he murmured. "Alas! that a name derived from old Roman ancestors should be borne by one so little qualified to do it honour! Had it pleased Heaven to preserve to me the child stolen in his infancy by the Moslem, how different ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... Spain that I can call my own. If I wish to eat or sleep, I have no where to go but to the inn or the tavern, and I seldom have wherewith to pay the bill. I have not a hair upon my head that is not grey; my body is infirm, and all that was left me, as well as to my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor. I implore your highness to forgive my complaints. I am indeed in as ruined a condition as I have related. Hitherto I have wept for ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... full meaning of the situation flashed into Donald's mind. The camp was deserted of all except the infirm and very aged. All the others—men, women, children, and even the very dogs—had gone to participate in the festivities of the up-river camps to which so many white prisoners had that day been taken. He shuddered to contemplate ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... have found him a very tractable patient. He had no faith in either physicians or physic. Mead wrote[86]to Sir Martin Stuteville: "Sir Edward Coke being now very infirm in body, a friend of his sent him two or three doctors to regulate his health, whom he told that he had never taken physic since he was born, and would not now begin; and that he had now upon him a disease which all the drugs of Asia, the gold of Africa, nor all the doctors ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... attachments to the land of my fathers, and for that branch of the Church where I was, and have been nurtured, are strong; although my aged parents lean upon me to support their trembling steps, as they descend to the tomb; although I might justly fear the influence of your climate upon an infirm constitution; yet these considerations, strengthened as they are by a consciousness of my own inability, and by the almost unanimous dissuasives of my friends, would hardly of themselves have induced me to decline your invitation, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... she added, "on account of the Duchess dowager of Portland, who is so good as to come to me in an evening, as she knows I am too infirm to wait upon her grace myself: and she wished so much to see Miss Burney. But she said she would come ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... leaning upon Christ than anything else; yet it is hard work to keep the mind disentangled from worldly cares. Things needful to me, seem the most dangerous, and what I am most liable to be ensnared by. In visiting some infirm people my soul was deeply affected, when I considered their age, and ignorance, and my own inability to instruct them. How great is the ignorance of mankind! O that God would apply some word ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... knew that it would not be right. Though he was old, and weak in body, and infirm in purpose, his judgment had not altogether left him. He was well aware that he would offend all social laws if he were to do that which he contemplated, and ask the world around him to respect as Lady Orme—as his wife, the woman who had so deeply disgraced herself. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... souls, and fix them upon him, we behold, as through some small crannies, majesty shining in his misery, power discovering itself in his weakness, even that power that made the world, and man too. He was born indeed, yet of a virgin, he was weak and infirm himself, yet he healed all others' infirmities, even by his word. He was often an hungered, yet he could feed five thousand at one time, and seven thousand at another, upon that which would not have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... absent, were about to wreak vengeance on the old man, whom they hated for the sons' sake. With this intent one of the party drew a pistol; but just as it was aimed at the breast of the aged and infirm old man, Dicey rushed between the two, and though the ruffian bade her get out of the way or receive in her own breast the contents of the pistol, she regarded not his threats, but flung her arms round her father's neck and declared she would receive the ball first, if the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... there has not been wanting a just sensibility to the merits of the American Army during the late war; but the obvious policy and design in fixing an efficient military peace establishment did not afford an opportunity to distinguish the aged and infirm on account of their past services nor the wounded and disabled on account ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... absence, and that a very old friend had arrived almost directly we left on Monday, and had departed early this morning to climb Adam's Peak, the ascent of which is a long and tedious affair, but it cannot be difficult, as thousands of aged and infirm pilgrims go every year to worship at the Buddhist or Mohammedan temples at the summit. The giant footprint has been reverenced alike by both religions from the earliest ages. Its existence is differently accounted ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... than surprise, that the chief imitators are females. The novels written by men have generally some manliness, some recollection of the higher impulses which occasionally act on the minds of men; some reluctancy in revealing the more infirm movements of the mind; and some doubts as to the absorption of all human nature in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... trifled with, and when we finally drew him forth with a forked stick, his eyes were ready to burst from his head. In what a peevish, injured tone the creature did complain of our unfair tactics! He protested and protested, and whimpered and scolded, like some infirm old man tormented by boys. His game after we led him forth was to keep himself as much as possible in the shape of a ball, but with two sticks and a cord we finally threw him over on his back and exposed his quill-less and vulnerable under side, when he fairly surrendered and seemed to say, "Now ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... father so inhuman that he will demand of the stripling, the infirm, the feminine members of his family to procure the means of support, before he has exhausted every other effort that can be made by himself and his stalwart sons? Even the insatiate Trust Magnates, were they suddenly to be reduced to penury, would ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... exchanges business for idleness, not because he has become too old or infirm to work, but because he has become rich enough to live ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... de Guildeford were infirm, and Clementia's successor, Alicia de Wynterseshull, was poisoned soon after her election, but no evidence could be produced ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... those who gained their livelihood by performing upon the stage; in a word, upon all who were affected by the misery of these. I must now speak of his treatment of the poor, the lower classes, the indigent, and the sick and infirm. I will then go on to speak of his treatment ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... blushes, Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy, Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... enjoyment; the sooner I receive {your favours}, the longer shall I have the benefit {thereof}. While there are yet some remnants of a wearied life,[43] there is room for {your} goodness; in aftertimes your kindness will in vain endeavour to aid me, infirm with old age; for then I shall have ceased to be able to enjoy your kindness, and death, close at hand, will be claiming its due. I deem it foolish to address my entreaties to you, when your compassion is so ready, spontaneously, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... showing reluctance to accept the challenge, the stranger sternly demanded compliance with the laws of the game. The card soon turned up which decided the ruin of the banker. 'Heaven!' exclaimed an old infirm Austrian officer, who had sat next to the stranger—'the twentieth part of your gains would make me the happiest man in the universe!' The stranger briskly answered—'You shall have it, then;' and quitted the room. A servant speedily returned, and presented ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... expedient; and it is evident that it was soon given up altogether, as unsuited to the ordinary circumstances of the Christian Church. But though, in a short time, the disciples in general were left to depend on their own resources, the community continued to provide a fund for the help of the infirm and the destitute. At an early period complaints were made respecting the distribution of this charity, and we are told that "there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... shaken him off, but his attempts were in vain. The vicar was firm at his post, and often successfully pleaded the cause of his parishioners, who were most of them tenants of the admiral. He was unassisted in his parochial duties by the curate, a worthy, but infirm and elderly man, fast sinking into his grave, and whom, out of Christian charity, he would not remove from his situation, as it would have deprived him of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to give up England and the English, the dear, dearest treasure of English love, is impossible, so we just linger and linger. The Boyles go to England from the press of panic, Lady Boyle being old and infirm. Ah, but your talking friend would interest you, and you might accept the talk in infinitesimal doses, you know. Lamartine has surely acted down the fallacy of the impractical tendencies of imaginative men. I am full of France just now. Are you all prepared for an outbreak in Ireland? ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... ferryman and his wife, she said they were accustomed to give her a day of their labour in digging peats, in common with others, and in that manner she was provided with fuel, and, by like voluntary contributions, with other necessaries. While this infirm old woman was relating her story in a tremulous voice, I could not but think of the changes of things, and the days of her youth, when the shrill fife, sounding from the walls of the Garrison, made a merry noise through the echoing hills. I asked myself, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... of the disquiet there entered at last an old woman, so very infirm that she had to be upheld on either hand by her husband and the hackman who had brought them, while a young girl went before with shawls and pillows which she arranged upon the seat. There the invalid lay down, and turned towards the crowd a white, suffering face, which was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Citadel Square. Even the personal attendants upon Dom Gillian were affected by the panic, and leaped over the guard-rails of the platform into the mass of humanity below. In half a score of minutes the enormous square was deserted save for a few infirm and crippled stragglers, and Constans himself thought it prudent to withdraw to the shelter of one of the guard-huts from whose doorway he could still ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the anxious state I have been in, and the fatigue I have undergone, that I shall be unfit for service. The severe gales which immediately followed the day of victory ruined our prospect of prizes; our own infirm ships could scarce keep off the shore; the prizes were left to their fate, and as they were driven very near the port, I ordered them to be destroyed by burning and sinking, that there might be no risk of their falling again ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... repent? Nay, tell me not that one thus infirm of purpose, can be strong of passion. You love me not, else would the wrongs of her you love arm you with the fiercest spirit of vengeance against him who has so deeply injured her. But, if you repent, it is but ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... more wear the disagreeable remains of it in their faces so long as they live. Thus, a fifth part of mankind either die or are disfigured by this distemper. But it does not prove fatal to so much as one among those who are inoculated in Turkey or in England, unless the patient be infirm, or would have died had not the experiment been made upon him. Besides, no one is disfigured, no one has the small- pox a second time, if the inoculation was perfect. It is therefore certain, that had the lady ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his revenge. We were disappointed, because we had taken our idea from other actors, not from the play. There is no proof there that Shylock is old, but a single line, 'Bassanic and old Shylock, both stand forth,'—which does not imply that he is infirm with age—and the circumstance that he has a daughter marriageable, which does not imply that he is old at all. It would be too much to say that his body should be made crooked and deformed to answer to his mind, which is bowed down and warped with prejudices ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the elm, and Wealth the vine, Stanch and strong the tendrils twine; Through the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm. Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... kept a college for instructing little gentlemen and ladies in the science of A, B, C, was at this time very old and infirm, and wanted to decline this important trust. This being told to Sir William Dove, who lived in the parish, he sent for Mrs. Williams, and desired she would examine Little Two-Shoes, and see whether she was qualified for the office. This ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Further, in Baptism some receive not only spiritual, but also bodily health; thus Constantine was cleansed in Baptism from leprosy. But all the infirm do not receive bodily health in Baptism. Therefore it has not an equal ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... it specially attracted me, as it happened to be one which was much in my mind during my week's stay at Norton. That remote little village without a squire or any person of means or education in or near it capable of feeling the slightest interest in the people, except the parson, an old infirm man who was never seen but once a week—how wanting in some essential thing it appeared! It seemed to me that the one thing which might be done in these small centres of rural life to brighten and beautify existence is precisely the thing which is never done, also that what really is being done ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... inaction, and gladly seized the opportunity for a different service. It was some time since they had ascended as high as Jacksonville, for their orders were strict, one vessel's coal was low, the other was in infirm condition, and there were rumors of cotton-clads and torpedoes. But they gladly agreed to escort us up the river, so soon as our own armed gunboat, the John Adams, should ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 26th of Sept., 1780, Lord Cornwallis, elated with his victory at Camden, entered Charlotte, with the confident expectation of soon restoring North Carolina to the British Crown. Patrick Jack was then an old and infirm man, having given up the chief control of his public house to his son, Captain James Jack; but neither age nor infirmity could enlist the sympathies of the British soldiery. The patriotic character of the house had become extensively known through Tory information, and its destruction was ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... the holidays. Her sole resource was in Modeste's society. Modeste—who, by the way, had never been ill, and who suffered from nothing but old age—was delighted to receive her dear young lady in her little room far up under the roof, where, though quite infirm, she lived comfortably, on her savings. Jacqueline, sitting beside her as she sewed, was soothed by her old nursery tales, or by anecdotes of former days. Her own relatives were often the old woman's theme. She knew the history of Jacqueline's family from ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... and the short of the matter was this. The Willie-goat, had, for eighteen year, belonged to a dragoon marching regiment, and, in its better days, had seen a power of service abroad; till, being now old and infirm, it had fallen off one of the baggage-carts, and got its leg broken on the road to Piershill, where it was sold to Cursecowl, by a corporal, for half-a-crown and a dram. The four quarters he had managed to sell for mutton, like lightning—this one buying a jigget, that one a back-ribs, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... told to the duke by Lady Glencora and Madame Goesler in the recesses of his grace's private room; for the duke was now infirm, and did not dine in company unless the day was very auspicious to him. But in the evening he would creep into the drawing-room, and on this occasion he had a word to say about the Eustace diamonds to every one in the room. It was admitted ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... yet sincere enough To pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuates Between me and the glorifying light That screens itself with knowledge, I discern The searching rays of wisdom that reach through The mist of shame's infirm credulity, And infinitely wonder if hard words Like mine have any ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... scales from the scarified trees, or, gathering them in their aprons, 'dumped' them into the rude barrels prepared for their reception. Preston had a kind word for each one that we passed—a pleasant inquiry about an infirm mother or a sick child, or some encouraging comment on their cheerful work; and many were the hearty blessings they showered upon 'good massa,' and many their good-natured exclamations over 'de strange gemman ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... men who had gone for Andrew were much too infirm to get close to "The Falcon." For with the daylight her work had begun, and she was surrounded on all sides by a melee of fishing-boats. Some were discharging their boxes of fish; others were struggling to get some point of vantage; others ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... about three fifths of that done by a full hand, a little increased toward the last...Pregnant women at five months are put in the sucklers' gang. No plowing or lifting must be required of them. Sucklers, old, infirm and pregnant receive the same allowances as full-work hands. The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women in confinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her during delivery. The confined ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... because I lived at a plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You may not be sorry to learn, that, though not what GREAT MERCHANTS call very rich, I was comfortable,— comfortable,—so that most of those moderate luxuries I described in my verses ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... believe men are infirm in moral purposes, as compared to women. It is only in the brutalities of life that ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... "is a truly Catholic prince, there a true defender of the faith! I expected no less of him."[1240] And Philip intended to carry his menaces into effect. On the twenty-fifth of October his secretary, Courteville, left Madrid, ostensibly on a visit to his infirm father in Flanders, but in reality intrusted with a very important commission, which, in an age when it was no uncommon thing for a messenger to be waylaid and robbed of his despatches, could scarcely be otherwise ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Charite Catholique, Paris, 1858. It is instructive to note that, while this book is very full in regard to the action of the Church on slavery and on provision for the widows and orphans, the sick, infirm, captives, and lepers, there is hardly a trace of any care for the insane. This same want is incidentally shown by a typical example in Kriegk, Aerzte, Heilanstalten und Geisteskranke im mittelalterlichen ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... years before, had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard fighting, had now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he may be called in history, he was known in camps and on the battle-field under the nickname of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to his ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... the living, the awakened, the happy, the redeemed—of those true men who know the value of existence and who labor for the glory of God and of the truth. Till then we are but babblers and chatterers, spendthrifts of our time, our faculties and our gifts, without aim, without real joy—weak, infirm, and useless beings, of no account in the scheme of things. Perhaps it is through love that I shall find my way back to faith, to religion, to energy, to concentration. It seems to me, at least, that if I could but find ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... error; so much you must allow me to say;—for the rest, I bow to your genius and your virtues: You have given to the world a very elegant composition; and I am told your manners and your mind are yet more pure, more elegant than your book. Falstaff was too gross, too infirm, for your inspection; but if you durst have looked nearer, you would not have found Cowardice in the number of his infirmities.—We will try if we cannot redeem him from this universal censure.—Let the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... sad distraction from the sorrow for the dead. The three old people, who now formed the household in the Chapel-house, went about slowly and dreamily, each with a dull wonder at their hearts why they, the infirm and worn-out, were left, while she was ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... women cannot possibly be carried to a greater excess. They are addicted to the most abominable practices; abandoning themselves in early youth to the free indulgence of their passions, they soon become debilitated and infirm; and there can be no doubt that to this monstrous depravity the depopulation of the country ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... charitable thoughts, and on good deeds intent, kissing the little children, giving a rosy apple to one, and a playful tap to another; offering a sly word of hope to the young girls, and a few kind ones to the aged and infirm,—all the village is elated; and the old maids fail not to present him with a fat fowl, or some such substantial expression of their respect. But if, alas! the good cure should appear walking with a slow ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... affair was not yet over. The offer had been made; would it be accepted? There was one difficulty in the way. Newman was now an infirm old man of seventy-eight; and it is a rule that all Cardinals who are not also diocesan Bishops or Archbishops reside, as a matter of course, at Rome. The change would have been impossible for one of his years— for one, too, whose whole ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... six weeks which succeeded last Christmas, and put a lucky end, if they had known their own interests, to such numbers of aged and infirm valetudinarians, who might have gasped through two or three mild winters more, I returned to town in February, in a condition less despaired of by myself than by any of my friends. I now became the patient of Dr. Ward, who wished I had taken his advice ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... place in the court-yard of the prison, while without the prison stood the usual armed soldier, about two dozen trucks for the baggage, and the infirm convicts, and on the corner a crowd of relatives and friends of the convicts, waiting for a chance to see the exiles as they emerged from the prison, and, if possible, to have a last few words with them, or deliver some things they had brought for ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... after this, and I became the mistress of my father's house. He was old and very infirm, and completely wrapped up in his scientific studies. I only saw him occasionally, and then my nonsense amused him. He pined after my step-mother; and very shortly followed her to the grave. I had just attained my majority when he died, and I came into ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... supervening under awful conditions, amidst the mob-like scramble. They rolled on, they rolled on again and again, they rolled on without a pause, carrying the wretchedness of the world on its way to the divine illusion, the health of the infirm, the consolation ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... must be crazy, Miriam Monfort! Why, she is eighty if she is an hour, and hobbles on a cane! I flatter myself I am not infirm yet; and, if you call a well-preserved, middle-aged, English woman, like me, old, your brains must be addled. Look at my hair, my teeth, my complexion"—pausing suddenly before me and confronting me fiercely. "See my step, my figure, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... William made a mark in Massachusetts' history. Settling in the town of Newbury, William Morse led an humble and monotonous life. When he had lived there more than forty years, and had come to be an old and infirm man, he was made to figure unhappily in the first legal investigation of New England witchcraft. This was in 1679-81, or more than ten years before the Salem witchcraft, and it constitutes a page of hitherto unpublished Massachusetts history. Mr. and Mrs. Morse resided in a plain, wooden ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... when I write these lines, old and infirm, my legs scarcely able to sustain me, my thoughts revert involuntarily to that epoch of my life when, young and vigorous, I bore the greatest fatigues, and walked day and night, in the mountainous countries which separate the kingdoms of Valencia and Catalonia from ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... he speaks mildly and remains by the facts. But I think, members of the Boule, that you clearly know what sort of men are apt to be insolent and what not. 16. For it is not likely that the poor and needy should be insolent, but those who have much more than they need; nor those who are infirm in body, but those who rely on their own strength; nor those well advanced in years, but those who are yet young and have youthful minds. 17. For the rich buy off dangers with their wealth, but the poor are forced to prudence by their lack of resources; and the young expect pardon from their ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... apparently were, if well behaved, allowed to take exercise in the corridors, where sometimes they had opportunities of converse with each other, and with the outside world. This privilege was ordered to be given to the aged and infirm by the cardinals who investigated the prison of Carcassonne, and took measures to alleviate its rigors. In the harsher confinement, or murus strictus, the prisoner was thrust into the smallest, darkest, and most noisome of cells, with chains on his feet,—in some ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... of labor upon every competent person. The Pauline injunction, "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat," would be applied in the Socialist state to all except the incompetent to labor. The immature child, the aged, the sick and infirm members of society, would alone be exempted from labor. The result of this would be that instead of a large unemployed army, vainly seeking the right to work, on the one hand, accompanied by the excessive overwork of the great mass ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... to retire. He was not infirm. With him too the life on board ship seemed to agree; but from a sense of duty, of affection, or to placate his hidden fury, his daughter always accompanied him to his state-room "to make him comfortable." ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... prisoners, which had hitherto appeared to be insuperable; and made repeated, but ineffectual efforts to remove it. General Howe had uniformly refused to proceed with any cartel, unless his right to claim for all the diseased and infirm, whom he had liberated, should ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... considerable sacrifices for the sake of it, and causing them the acutest misery when not reciprocated. In so far as profligates are selfish brutal natures, as they often are, it is true; but that is not the case with half of them. They are not unfrequently people of infirm will, strong affections, and a violent animal nature. It is selfishness, regard to personal comfort at all hazards, which is the hopeless nature, and can not be raised except ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... immense amount; and on the banker showing reluctance to accept the challenge, the stranger sternly demanded compliance with the laws of the game. The card soon turned up which decided the ruin of the banker. 'Heaven!' exclaimed an old infirm Austrian officer, who had sat next to the stranger—'the twentieth part of your gains would make me the happiest man in the universe!' The stranger briskly answered—'You shall have it, then;' and quitted the room. A servant speedily returned, and presented the officer with the twentieth part ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... industry vulgarly entitled "holidays," indolence which characterizes the present period, was left to the aged or infirm. The writer whom we have before quoted says "The youths are exercised in the summer holidays in leaping, dancing, wrestling, casting the hammer, the stone, and in practising their shields; and in winter holidays the boars prepared for brawn are set to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... looked upon her two lovely daughters in the early bloom of womanhood, the babe sleeping upon her breast, the little ones clinging to her skirts, her aged and infirm parents, all apparently doomed to a speedy, violent death—and worse than death. Her own danger was well-nigh ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... relief from the trudging anxiety of her search for work, that she went on for a whole week as if she was still living at home. Then a third secretarial opening occurred and renewed her hopes again: a position as amanuensis—with which some of the lighter duties of a nurse were combined—to an infirm gentleman of means living at Twickenham, and engaged upon a great literary research to prove that the "Faery Queen" was really a treatise upon molecular chemistry written in a peculiar and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... deterred by the gulphs that yawn beneath his feet, or the mountains that may oppose themselves to his progress. He knows that the adventurer of timid mind, and that is infirm of purpose, will never make himself master of those points which it would be most honourable to him to subdue. But he who undertakes to commit to writing the result of his researches, and to communicate his discoveries to mankind, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... advanced into the island, I saw an old man, who appeared very weak and infirm. He was sitting on the bank of a stream, and at first I took him to be one who had been shipwrecked like myself. I went toward him and saluted him, but he only slightly bowed his head. I asked him why he sat so still; but instead of answering me, he made a ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... surely protect them. Savage declared that they should trust, also, to such common sense as the Lord had given them. From his certain knowledge, the company, containing as it did so large a number of the aged and infirm, of women and children, could not cross the mountains thus late in the season without much suffering, sickness, and death. He was overruled and rebuked for want of faith. "Brethren and sisters," ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... repeated the Commandments he had reverenced as a child, and forgotten as a man. He approached the old seat; it looked cold and desolate. The cushion had been removed, and the Bible was not there. Perhaps his mother now occupied a poorer seat, or possibly she had grown infirm and could not reach the church alone. He dared not think of what he feared. A cold feeling crept over him, and he trembled violently as he turned away. 'An old man entered the porch just as he reached it. Edmunds started back, for he knew him well; many a time he had watched him digging graves in ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... means of a friend in the town, (for they were not all devils at Orange, as he emphatically assured us), he was enabled to procure a few common necessaries, to improve the scanty prison allowance of some of the more infirm; but his charitable labour soon ceased, for all were successively dispatched by the guillotine in a short space of time. In the course of three months, 378 persons perished by decree of the miscreants composing ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... lie in the coldly reasoned conclusion that the most valuable relief to a people so stricken by catastrophe that its very existence as a human group is threatened, is to let whatever mortality is unavoidable fall chiefly to the old and the adult infirm for the sake of saving the next generation on which alone the future existence of the group depends. This actual fact Hoover always clearly saw; but the thing that those close to him saw quite as clearly was that this alone accounted for but a ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... frightened. Then her courage came back the higher for its interruption. She could have escaped from her own room into the passage, easily enough, and so alarmed the house; but when she reflected that its fighting garrison consisted only of an infirm old butler—for the footman was absent on leave—there seemed little to be gained by such a proceeding, if violence or robbery were really intended. Besides, she rather scorned the idea of summoning assistance till she had ascertained ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... should have been so silly as to go a-wooing. Infirm and tottering as he is, it was the height of insanity. Down he dropped on his bended knees before the object of his love; out he poured his touching addresses, lisped in the blandest, most persuasive tones; and what was his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... is coming to us, who I know is a favourite of yours. Or is it the other way, and are you a favourite of hers? I did ask Lady Hartletop, but she cannot get away from the poor marquis, who is, you know, so very infirm. The duke isn't at Gatherum at present, but, of course, I don't mean that that has anything to do with dear Lady Hartletop coming to us. I believe we shall have the house full, and shall not want for nymphs either, though I fear they will not be of the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... when I'll need a lift and a little help that you could give. Sometimes we have to move the Sunday-school organ about and there are windows that stick and all manner of things about a church that only a practiced mover and driver could do. You know the janitor is rather old and infirm and as for me—well, Hank, when you come down to it, that's about all we ministers are, just movers. Our business is to help find just the right and happiest places for people, to show them their part in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... him a rambling,) in danger of being benighted, made the best of his way to a house he saw at some distance, where he was hospitably received by the master of it. Cremes, for that was the master's name, though but a young man, was infirm and sickly. Of several dishes served up to supper, Cremes observed that his guest ate but of one, and that the most simple; nor could all his intreaties prevail upon him to do otherwise. He was, notwithstanding, highly ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... sweat broke out on his forehead and, snatching the whip from its stalk on the dashboard, he belabored his aged and infirm mare into a rickety effort ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... her throat all drawn into strings and cords, hung with a dozen rows of perfect precious stones glittering in the glare of the lights with the constant shaking of her palsied head. [This lady continued to frequent the gayest assemblies in London when she had become so old and infirm that, though still persisting daily in her favorite exercise on horseback, she used to be tied into her saddle in such a manner as to prevent her falling out of it. She had been one of the finest riders in England, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the marching column and would ward it off. Others climbed little twigs or tufts of grass and scanned the surrounding country from these elevated and commanding positions. Others hurried up the laggards and stragglers, and even carried the weak and infirm. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... think, that, because I lived at a plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You may not be sorry to learn, that, though not what GREAT MERCHANTS call very rich, I was comfortable, —comfortable,—so that most of those moderate luxuries I described in my verses on CONTENTMENT—MOST of them, I say—were within our ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... aged and infirm and my memory not having failed me as yet," said Grant solemnly, "I ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... the house, she found the old woman making a cup of tea. There did not seem to be much of anything but tea and bread-and-butter for her dinner. She was very deaf and infirm, all her joints shook when she tried to use them, and her voice quavered when she talked. She took the plate, and her hands trembled so that the tin dish played on the plate like a clapper. "Why," said she, overjoyed, ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... away by the holidays. Her sole resource was in Modeste's society. Modeste—who, by the way, had never been ill, and who suffered from nothing but old age—was delighted to receive her dear young lady in her little room far up under the roof, where, though quite infirm, she lived comfortably, on her savings. Jacqueline, sitting beside her as she sewed, was soothed by her old nursery tales, or by anecdotes of former days. Her own relatives were often the old woman's theme. She knew the history of Jacqueline's family ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... to 18 years of age, and sickly and infirm Negro men, five dollars per month, one ration, and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... him of ten to fifty at a time. In three months he had not 4,000 men and these could by no means be termed effective. Not less than 500 horses perished from want and the severity of the season. He had often not three days' provisions in his camp and at times not enough for one day. In this infirm and dangerous state he continued from December to May, during all which time every person expected that General Howe would have stormed or besieged his camp, the situation of which equally invited either attempt. To have posted 2,000 men on a commanding ground near the bridge, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... generally known. Mr. Maule was aware, however, that there could be no success for him as long as the Duke lived. Whatever might be the nature of the alliance, it was too strong to admit of any other while it lasted. But the Duke was a very old,—or, at least, a very infirm man. And now the Duke was dying. Of course it was only a chance. Mr. Maule knew the world too well to lay out any great portion of his hopes on a prospect so doubtful. But it was worth a struggle, and he would so struggle that he might enjoy success, should success ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the safety enjoyed by the Athenaeum editor—the poverty of the press may protect him. If, however, he and other influential wizards of the broad sheet, succeed in making loyalty not a rational principle, but a mania—if, day by day, and week by week, they insist upon deifying poor infirm humanity, exalting themselves in their own conceit, in their very self-abasement—they may escape an individual accusation in the general folly. When we are all mad alike—when we all, with the editor of the Athenaeum, take our half-day's watch at the little Prince's cradle—when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the Minister of Col, whom we found in a hut, that is, a house of only one floor, but with windows and chimney, and not inelegantly furnished. Mr. Maclean has the reputation of great learning: he is seventy-seven years old, but not infirm, with a look of venerable dignity, excelling what I remember ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... RESPECTED SIRS,—- The infirm state of my bodily health would be a sufficient apology for not taking up the pen at this time, wholesome as I deem it for the mind to apricate in the shelter of epistolary confidence, were it not that a considerable, I might even say a large, number of individuals in this parish ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... voluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when they wish to be the final end, and not a means along with other means. Among men, as among all other animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; the successful cases, among men also, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that man is THE ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... solid earth of Newfoundland for his bed, but danger often lurks where least expected. Oliver Trench was not an architect either by nature or training. His bower had been erected on several false principles. The bouncing of a big man inside was too much for its infirm constitution. Its weak points were discovered by the captain. A bounce into one of its salient supports proved fatal, and the structure finally collapsed, burying its family in a compost of ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... liken the wedding-ring to an ancient circus, in which wild animals clawed one another for the sport of lookers-on. Perish the hyperbole! We would rather compare it to an elfin ring, in which dancing fairies made the sweetest music for infirm humanity. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... equal this in beauty and grace. A few weeks before the appointed time for the wedding a malignant disease stole on, spreading sorrow and anxiety over the greater part of the land. Young girls were principally its victims. It seemed to pass scornfully over the aged and infirm. Veile's daughter was also laid hold upon by it. Before three days had passed there was a corpse in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... as the smoke went up, he prayed and said, "Thou, image, hear'st me not, nor wilt thou speak, But I perchance shall know when I am dead, If this has been some goddess' sport, to seek A wretch, and in his heart infirm and weak To set her glorious image, so that he, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... Presidency. He took care, in his Message vetoing the recharter of the Bank, to employ some of the arguments which Clay had used in opposing the recharter of the United States Bank in 1811. Miserably sick and infirm as he was, he consented to stand for reelection, because there was no other candidate strong enough to defeat Henry Clay; and he employed all his art, and the whole power of the administration, during his second term, to smooth ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... to a warder who was an old acquaintance there, "how do you? I am come to be your neighbour again." Sir Thomas Palmer's rooms in the garden were assigned for his lodging. In the winter he was left without a fire, and, growing infirm, he sent a message to the Lieutenant of the Tower to look better after him, or he should give him the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... approbation of the said Jonathan Sewell; that Jonathan Sewell had advised the arrest of Messrs. Bedard, Blanchet and Taschereau, upon an unfounded pretext; that Jonathan Sewell had instigated the oppression of the old and infirm Francois Corbeil, by which the old man lost his life; that Jonathan Sewell had instigated Sir James Henry Craig to issue a proclamation causing the public to believe that Mr. Bedard had been guilty of treason, and that the province was in a state approaching to open rebellion; that Jonathan ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the missive which Mendel handed to her. It was a flattering invitation from the congregation of Odessa. "Our Rabbi is old and infirm," stated the letter, "and desires a staff in his declining years. Your reputation as a scholar has reached our people and we would consider it an honor ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... idle persons at all, that cannot give an account of their lives how they [651]maintain themselves. If they be impotent, lame, blind, and single, they shall be sufficiently maintained in several hospitals, built for that purpose; if married and infirm, past work, or by inevitable loss, or some such like misfortune cast behind, by distribution of [652]corn, house-rent free, annual pensions or money, they shall be relieved, and highly rewarded for their good service they have formerly done; if able, they shall be enforced ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... had he heard that I related my dream to any one. In after years, when I was better able to form a judgment on these matters, I thought it useless to renew the grief of my poor mother, then becoming old and infirm, by a communication of what I had witnessed on that memorable night, or by inspiring her with doubts as to the real cause of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... brain-pictures flashed out with torturing clearness, and Dale saw the criminal renewing the outrage after long years. He was quite old, shaky, infirm, and yet strong enough to consummate the final act of his infinite wickedness. And Dale saw those yellow-white hands, with their nauseating blotches, their glistening blue knobs, and their jeweled rings, as they took possession ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the Great Sun, and for all the other families, round the granary, that of the Great Sun being raised upon a mount of earth about two feet high. On the feast-day the whole nation set out from their village at sun-rising, leaving behind only the aged and infirm that are not able to travel, and a few warriors, who are to carry the Great Sun on a litter upon their shoulders. The seat of this litter is covered with several deer skins, and to its four sides are fastened four bars which cross each other, and are supported by eight men, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... suggestion; she only stood there with a dim, though not a languid smile, and with an effect of irresponsible, incompetent youth which was almost comically at variance with the faded facts of her person. She was not infirm, like her aunt, but she struck me as still more helpless, because her inefficiency was spiritual, which was not the case with Miss Bordereau's. I waited to see if she would offer to show me the rest of the house, but I did not precipitate the question, inasmuch as my plan was ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... very infirm I went with him, more out of charity than with any hopes of profit. We pulled with the tide till we arrived a little above Deptford, where several ships were lying, and he went close to one and lowered down his grapnels. He dragged for a ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... literally frantic on finding himself frustrated in expectations which formed the leading interest of his declining years. For the progress of time which had made me a man and a landed proprietor, had converted the stout active squire into an infirm old man; and it was his absorbing wish to die sole owner of the whole property to which the baronets of the Altham ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Saxish men in their communing together: "Take we six knights, wise men and active, and skilful spies, and send we to the court, in almsman's guise, and dwell in the court, with the high king, and every day pass through all the people; and go to the king's dole, as if they were infirm, and among the poor people hearken studiously if man might with craft, by day or by night, in Winchester's town come to Uther Pendragon, and kill the king with murder;"—then were (would be) their will wholly accomplished, then were they careless of Constanine's kin. Now went forth the knights ...
— Brut • Layamon
... the daughter came out, followed by her aged and infirm mother. The sight of me naturally brought to recollection the grave at which we had before met. Tears of affection mingled with the smile of satisfaction with which I was received by these worthy cottagers. I dismounted and was conducted through a ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... well as ever. Not one whole or handsome one among them, all were outcasts till Beth took them in, for when her sisters outgrew these idols, they passed to her because Amy would have nothing old or ugly. Beth cherished them all the more tenderly for that very reason, and set up a hospital for infirm dolls. No pins were ever stuck into their cotton vitals, no harsh words or blows were ever given them, no neglect ever saddened the heart of the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed with an affection which never failed. One forlorn fragment of dollanity had ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... taking place in the court-yard of the prison, while without the prison stood the usual armed soldier, about two dozen trucks for the baggage, and the infirm convicts, and on the corner a crowd of relatives and friends of the convicts, waiting for a chance to see the exiles as they emerged from the prison, and, if possible, to have a last few words with them, or deliver ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... she said, in a voice totally different to that in which she had spoken to the factor. "Best quiet in your hut. The old and infirm must be sheltered and fed; of that there is no doubt; but let the evil-doer and idle beware. On them I shall have no mercy. Sandy Redland, mark me: I will have no cruelty or oppression—remember that. The instant you receive information respecting the strange ship, let me know through ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... he should be cynical, more than other men. And the bride, in whose eyes this elderly gentleman with the tight boots appeared a rosy winged Cupid, waved her handkerchief until the vehicle had sidled round the hill, resembling in its progress a very infirm crab ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Infirm and languid visitors should get it clearly into their heads (1) that the tour of the Uffizi means a long walk and (2) that there is a lift. You find it in the umbrella room—at every Florentine gallery and museum is ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... the way up the infirm staircase. At the fourth floor she pushed open a door and showed them into a long loft-like room with high ceiling and mansard windows. There came a squawking and fluttering from somewhere above as ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... broken, a coat or two torn or bespattered with mud, a cockade rudely snatched from the wearer, little harm was done. The voters knew each other, and had come to vote, and had stayed to see the fun. For the timid, the infirm, the old, the day was a trying one; but there was an excitement and a life about the affair one misses now that the ballot has come into play, and has made the voter less of a man than ever. Of course the shops were shut up. All who could afford to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... attracted me, as it happened to be one which was much in my mind during my week's stay at Norton. That remote little village without a squire or any person of means or education in or near it capable of feeling the slightest interest in the people, except the parson, an old infirm man who was never seen but once a week—how wanting in some essential thing it appeared! It seemed to me that the one thing which might be done in these small centres of rural life to brighten and beautify existence ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... his own rings, And struck his victim, shrieking ere it went Down his strain'd throat, that open sepulchre. Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon; The hippopotamus, amidst the flood, Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer; But on the bank, ill balanced and infirm, He grazed the herbage, with huge, head declined, Or lean'd to rest against some ancient tree. The crocodile, the dragon of the waters, In iron panoply, fell as the plague, And merciless as famine, cranch'd his prey, While, from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... their old people on their hunting excurtions; but in justice to these people I must observe that it appeared to me at their vilages, that they provided tolerably well for their aged persons, and several of their feasts appear to have principally for their object a contribution for their aged and infirm persons. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... better or more full of fight in my life, sir. The scoundrels! Oh, if I had been there! But I feel hurt, Nic—cruelly hurt. You and that salt-soaked old villain, Bill Sally, hatch up these things between you. Want to make out I'm infirm. I'll discharge ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... some arrangement which their party might support, but, while Federalists waited, the threatened Republican bolt wasted itself in a fruitless endeavour to unite upon a candidate for first place. Monroe's friends would not have George Clinton, whom they pronounced too old and too infirm, and Clinton's friends declined to accept Monroe, who was objectionable, if for no other reason, because he was a Virginian. Finally, the Federalists nominated Charles C. Pinckney of South Carolina for President ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... had grown so old and infirm that one day they sent for Abe to come and put an end to his misery. Every man on the farm loved the old dog and not one of them would raise a hand to kill him. Hope and I heard what Abe was coming to do, and ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the mad, seditious cry of faction—employed to forestall public opinion, and defeat the noble and humane intentions of the government. The Democratic Societies, though infirm and tottering, joined in the clamor. One of these in Virginia exclaimed, "Shall we Americans, who have kindled the spark of liberty, stand aloof and see it extinguished when burning a bright flame in France, which hath caught it from us? If all tyrants unite against a ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... will go with me? Thank you: I shall be glad of someone to carry the lantern. We may have to do some scrambling: Narracott is infirm, and Roger,"—this was the footman—"is a chicken-hearted ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... step, smiling, and evidently full of cheerful, charitable thoughts, and on good deeds intent, kissing the little children, giving a rosy apple to one, and a playful tap to another; offering a sly word of hope to the young girls, and a few kind ones to the aged and infirm,—all the village is elated; and the old maids fail not to present him with a fat fowl, or some such substantial expression of their respect. But if, alas! the good cure should appear walking with a slow and solemn step, his hands behind his back, his eyes fixed upon the ground, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... would be so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest and pay money to procure fine breeding, and yet kept their wives shut up, to be made mothers only by themselves, who might be foolish, infirm, or diseased; as if it were not apparent that children of a bad breed would prove their bad qualities first upon those who kept and were rearing them, and well-born children, in like manner, their good qualities. These regulations, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... lamentation so strangely mixed that it might have been difficult to have said which passion preponderated. None, however, was idle. Some bore their choicest articles, others their young, and some their aged and infirm, into the forest, which spread itself like a verdant carpet of bright green against the side of the mountain. Thither Tamenund also retired, with calm composure, after a short and touching interview with Uncas; from whom the sage separated with ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... the winter at the house of his son. That he might be prepared for journeying, as he proposed to do in the spring, he took with him his light wagon, and for the winter his sleigh, which he fastened behind the wagon. He was, as I have just told you, very old and infirm. His temples were covered with thinned locks which the frosts of eighty years had whitened. His sight, and hearing, too, were somewhat blunted by age, as yours will be should you live ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... man seldom offers a woman his arm nowadays, unless she is so elderly or infirm that she needs the support. For a couple to walk arm in arm in daylight is decidedly provincial. For a man to take a woman's arm is a liberty not permissible unless she is a member of his family. He should offer his arm if holding an ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and Wealth the vine, Stanch and strong the tendrils twine; Through the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm. Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that he fears they will sacrifice the Church, and that the King will take any thing (and so he holds up his head a little longer), and then break in pieces. But Sir W. Coventry did to- day mightily magnify my late Lord Treasurer for a wise and solid, though infirm man: and among other things, that when he hath said it was impossible in nature to find this or that sum of money, and my Lord Chancellor hath made sport of it, and told the King that when my Lord ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... away the Governor and some of the other leading Egyptian officials first. I think he suspected they would intrigue; he always had more confidence in the people than in the ruling Turks or Egyptians. The oldest soldiers, the very infirm, the wounded (from Hicks's battles) were sent next, and a ghastly crew they were. But the precautions he took for their comfort were very complete, and although immediately before reaching me they had to cross a very ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... ancient Rome, Antioch, or Alexandria much exceeded what our great modern capitals can show, During this period, moreover, many remarkable improvements took place in social life and manners. There was an increasing kindliness and charity. The weak and the infirm were better treated. The education of the poor was encouraged by the founding of free schools. Wealthy citizens of the various towns lavished their fortunes on such public works as baths, aqueducts, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... them that he was going back to his village, his friends and people, whereupon the two white-headed old men very heartily wished him a good journey and abundance of comfort in seeing his friends once more. They even arose, old and infirm as they were, and tottering with exceeding difficulty to the door, were at great pains to point out to him the exact course he should take; and they called his attention to the circumstance that it was much shorter and more ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... trust to that very suspicious sort of merit which constitutes an exception in the history of mankind, and recommends itself as the total abolitionist of all previous claims on our confidence. You are not greatly surprised at the infirm logic of the coachman who would persuade you to engage him by insisting that any other would be sure to rob you in the matter of hay and corn, thus demanding a difficult belief in him as the sole exception from the frailties of his calling; but it is rather astonishing that the ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the wool and cotton which they wove and manufactured into cloth with which to clothe the family. The old people not over active and strong, like your grandmother," she would add with a smile, "together with the infirm and invalids, braided the straw with which we manufactured our hats; so that you see, petiots, we had no drones, no useless loungers in our villages, and every one ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... intoxicated, inveigled into a so-called marriage with a young but notorious girl, whose only claim was her pretty face, while her situation was hopelessly degraded. This creature, Minnie Merle, had an infirm grandmother, who, in order to save the reputation of the unfortunate girl, appealed so adroitly to Cuthbert's high sense of honour, that her arguments, emphasized by the girl's beauty and helplessness, prevailed over reason, and—I may add—decency and one day when almost mad with brandy ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... cheer up and come and see his papa. Give my love to Mrs. Cocke, Miss Mary, etc., etc. Tell Agnes, if she thinks Sallie is IN EXTREMIS, to go to her. I do not want her to pass away, but it is a great disappointment to me not to have her with me. I am getting very old and infirm now, and she had better come to her papa and ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... in the room and with equal severity reprimanded Von Buelow, and sat down at the keyboard and gave an interpretation that was infinitely superior to that of Von Buelow. It was simply a case of superiority of talent that enabled the aged and somewhat infirm Liszt to excel his ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... us a sweeper at a crossing would tolerate a rival broom. Several of these waiters upon charity might be termed literary beggars; their function is to read aloud from a large book in the hearing of the passers-by. They are often infirm, and occasionally blind, but they read just the same. Another class may be called the incurables; in England they would be kept out of sight, but here in Russia, running sores, mutilated hands and legs, are valuable as stock-in-trade. Loathsome diseases are thrust forward as a threat, distorted ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... stood to the north, and at eleven o'clock the next day, August 5th, we saw land again, at about ten leagues distant. This noon we were in latitude 25 degrees 30 minutes, and in the afternoon our cook died, an old man, who had been sick a great while, being infirm before ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... It was dark in that office when Mr. Newt first occupied the rooms, and Thomas Tray, the book-keeper, who had the lightest place, said that the eyes of Venables, the youngest clerk, were giving out. Young Venables, a lad of sixteen, supported a mother and sister and infirm father upon his ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... while they are young before they become unable to grasp the promises. I feel the more impressed to sound a warning because there are some in the home with whom we have labored again and again, but who are so aged and infirm that seemingly they can not reach a decision to seek until they find. Their unsaved condition, in view of their extreme age, puts them in a very ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... Only the infirm and the ill of the town failed to run to look as the little procession passed down the street. There were boys in khaki, the town band playing its best, volunteer firemen clad in vivid red shirts, a low, hand-drawn wagon filled with flowers, an old cannon, also hand-drawn, whose shots over ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the people, if all restraints on violence and ambition were thus removed, and a full scope given to the attempts of every turbulent innovator: that time indeed might bestow solidity on a government whose first foundations were the most infirm; but it required both a long course of time to produce this effect, and the total extinction of those claimants whose title was built on the original principles of the constitution: that the deposition of Richard II., and the advancement ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... busy antennae into everything, tumbling over the brown mould for sheer enjoyment, and running home at last without the little white paper parcel in their mouths which gives them so respectable an air. Doubtless the poor things are scolded by their infirm parents, who sit sunning themselves at the door of the house. . . . Beetles seem to me to have a pleasant life, because they, who have fed for two or three years underground upon the roots, come forth ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... in the person of this king, the same infirm and emaciated old man, that came on board the Resolution when we were off the north-east side of the island of Mowee; and we soon discovered amongst his attendants, most of the persons who at that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... of flannel could not be afforded? What do you think of a family of women and girls getting their own firing out of the woods, cutting it and backing it home, and that by the year together? What do you think of an old minister supported by the handiwork of an infirm and herself not young daughter? And I could tell you of living without books, without paper for writing, in want of calico for dresses, and muslin for underclothing, without pocket-handkerchiefs, without yarn to knit stockings or a penny to ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... son's death was a thing to be desired, for God does all justly, wisely, and lovingly? He lets me stand as an example to show others that a good and upright man cannot be altogether wretched. I am poor, infirm, and old; bereaved by a cruel wrong of my best-loved son, a youth of the fairest promise, and left only with the faintest hope of any ray of future good fortune, or of seeing my race perpetuated after my death, for my daughter, who has been ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... at work, and disgruntled military chiefs found a willing leader in the minister of war, General Desiderio Arias, a chronic revolutionist from Monte Cristi, who had for years used the popularity of Jimenez as a cloak for his own aspirations. The president, aged and infirm, was unable to meet the situation with energy, and disinclined to ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... feed! Me, lenient mallows from the simple mead! Son of Latona, grant the blessing, That, a cloudless mind possessing, And not infirm of frame, in soft decay, Cheer'd by the breathing lyre, my life ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... of terrified women, the infirm condition of the aged, and the helplessness of childhood; such as strove to provide for themselves and those who labored to assist others; these dragging the feeble, those waiting for them; some hurrying, others lingering; altogether created a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... approval from the people who voluntarily chose him as their leader in battle,—their utmost Head of affairs. Progress has demolished this ideal, with many others equally fine and inspiring; and now all kings are so, by right of descent merely. Whether they be infirm or palsied, weak or wise, sane or crazed, still are they as of old elected; only no more as the Strongest, but simply as the Sign-posts of a traditional bygone authority. This King however, here written of, was not deficient in either mental or physical attributes. His outward ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... generally express an earnest desire to be taken to their birthplace, that they may die and be buried there. If possible, these wishes are always complied with by the relatives and friends. Parents will point out the spot where they were born, so that when they become old and infirm, their children may know where they wish their bodies to be disposed of."[249] Again, some tribes in the north and north-east of Victoria "are said to be more than ordinarily scrupulous in interring the dead. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... and mutterings and had seemed indeed, the only understanding companion that the old man had ever had. The woman was, he saw, the arms-akimbo ferocious cook of the old days, but now how wrinkled and infirm!—separated by so many more years than the lapse of time allowed her from the woman of his past appearance there. There was more in her than the mere crumbling of her body, there was also the crumbling of her spirit, and he saw ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... for instance, or the fluids of a magnet which sends to a distant subject an order to traverse all Paris to rejoin it. Science has no call to contest these phenomena. On the other hand, Dr. Brown-Sequard rejuvenates infirm old men and revitalizes the impotent with distillations from the parts of rabbits and cavies. Were not the elixirs of life and the love philtres which the witches sold to the senile and impotent composed of similar or analogous substances? Human semen entered ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and—not to forget the library—on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his troubled eyes to hers. "You?" he asked. And then he tried to approach her, but he had become too infirm. ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... Had been enroll'd in such a list of heroes! If I was too infirm to serve my country, I might have prov'd my love ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... was thus established. Each house was taxed to pay a small basket of corn every full moon. All old and infirm people and also strangers were exempted from taxation. The headman of each village was responsible for the tax, and he delivered a bundle of small pieces of reed, the size of drawing pencils which represented the number of houses belonging to able-bodied ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... always was in discussions and unbelievably youthful and beautiful still, and finished in quite another key—"that you're getting positively lovelier with each ridiculous birthday—and your aged and infirm spouse more and more besottedly in love ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... young friend some interesting but not agitating distraction from certain ideas which, however admirable and transcendently important, are nevertheless too high and profound to permit their constant contemplation with impunity to our infirm natures. Besides," he added, in a lower, but still distinct tone, "I was myself unwilling to visit in a mere casual manner the scene of what I must consider the greatest event of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... some delay, through a mistake of Sherman's which the authorities in Washington reversed, but in a few days all was settled and the whole of the forces under Johnston's command laid down their arms. Twenty years later, as an old man and infirm, their leader left his Southern home to be present at Sherman's funeral, where he caught a chill from which he died soon after. Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10, near the borders of Florida. He was, not without plausible grounds but quite unjustly, suspected ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... in balancing themselves with different movements, one canting to the right, while the other canted to the left. And three worthy women showed themselves, limping, dragging their legs behind them, crippled by illness and deformed through old age, three infirm old women, past service, the only three pensioners in the establishment which Sister Saint-Benedict managed, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... man's nobility! I never shall account it marvelous, That our infirm affection here below Thou mov'st to boasting, when I could not choose, E'en in that region of unwarp'd desire, In heav'n itself, but make my vaunt in thee! Yet cloak thou art soon shorten'd, for that time, Unless thou be eked out from ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... married without confiding that step to the father to whom he owed so much. This must have been almost as trying as the awkward, ungraceful deportment of him whom he mourned. The world now left Chesterfield ere he had left the world. He and his contemporary Lord Tyrawley were now old and infirm. 'The fact is,' Chesterfield wittily said, 'Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... outrage on the representative of the British government, under whose protection he was; thus losing his territory, and bringing English troops so near the Tibet frontier. The Rajah answered that he never did anything of the kind; that he was old and infirm, and unable to transact all his affairs; that the mischief had arisen out of the acts and ignorance of others, and finally begged the Commissioner to investigate the whole affair, and satisfy himself about it. During the inquiry that followed, the Dewan threw all ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... raised in position, he passed much time with the Duc de Chartres, assisting him to prepare his lessons, to write his exercises, and to look out words in the dictionary. I have seen him thus engaged over and over again, when I used to go and play with the Duc de Chartres. As Saint Laurent grew infirm, Dubois little by little supplied his place; supplied it well too, and yet pleased the young Duke. When Saint Laurent died Dubois aspired to succeed him. He had paid his court to the Chevalier de Lorraine, by whose influence he was much aided in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... pernicious and tyrannous custom, by taking a vow to abstain from toast-drinking, or even from drinking wine at all, for a certain stated period. Readers do not need to be reminded how often young Pepys was under a vow not to drink; and the device by which the jovial admiralty clerk strengthened an infirm will and defended himself against temptation was frequently employed by right-minded young men of his date. In some cases, instead of vowing not to drink, they bound themselves not to drink within a certain period; two persons, that is to say, agreeing that they would abstain from ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Rajah why he had committed such an outrage on the representative of the British government, under whose protection he was; thus losing his territory, and bringing English troops so near the Tibet frontier. The Rajah answered that he never did anything of the kind; that he was old and infirm, and unable to transact all his affairs; that the mischief had arisen out of the acts and ignorance of others, and finally begged the Commissioner to investigate the whole affair, and satisfy himself about ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... debauchees, thieves and drunkards. There were no marriage laws. Two-thirds of the children born were destroyed. If an infant was ailing or troublesome, the mother scooped a hole in the ground, covered the child with earth and trampled out its life. The aged and infirm were taken to the brow of a precipice and pushed over. The sick were removed to such a distance that their groans could not annoy, and left to die. The insane were stoned ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... one will do to light a lamp," is mistaken. Men who occupy such a high position must be well tested, faithful men. Do they not hold in their hands the lives of emigrants seeking foreign shores for work—good successful traders, bringing home their savings to make widowed mothers, or aged and infirm fathers happy—sailor lads, for whose return fair English maidens pray with love's longing, and little children, who are to grow up into statesmen, philanthropists, and deliverers? Would it do for light-house-keepers ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... elder days, if, indeed, it did not err in an opposite spirit, by too elaborate and too calculating a tone of reciprocal flattery. But think as we may of the discussion in this respect, most assuredly it was painful to witness so infirm a philosophy applied to an interest so mighty. The whole aerial superstructure—the heaven-aspiring pyramid of geometrical synthesis—all tottered under the palsying logic of evidence, to which these celebrated mathematicians appealed. And wherefore?—From the want ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... it has not been tampered with, because "he is easily circumvented and not adroit in his business." He complains of the heat during an illness one summer, and the seigneurie give him the White Chamber in the town-hall, and when winter comes on, and he is old and infirm, they assign him the lodging lately occupied by Mathurin Cordier (famous schoolmaster Corderius, whose Dialogues were the first book in Latin of our grandfathers), because it contained a stove—a rare luxury. He thanks them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Again the answer was, "Considerable." But I am sorry to add that the two latter queries were almost uniformly answered from various parts of the country by the expressive words, "Nothing whatever." The same correspondent said, in reply to another query, that the aged and infirm did not live more than a day or two after being sent to hospital. They died of dysentery. The two following anecdotes are given on the best authority: a family, consisting of father, mother, and daughter, were starving; they were devotedly attached ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... versatile, volatile nature soon recovered the shock of her husband's violent death. The white garments of widowhood which draped her found little response either in the gravity of her demeanour or in the expression of her face. But on the Dowager Lady the effect was very different. She became an old, infirm woman all at once; but her manner was softer and gentler. She learned to make more allowance for temperaments which entirely differed from hers. There were no further efforts to repress her little grandson's ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... self-preservation turn upon pain and danger, i. 125. nature and objects of those belonging to society, i. 125. a control over them necessary to the existence of society, iv. 52. strong ones awaken the faculties, v. 287. vehement passion not always indicative of an infirm judgment, v. 407. mere general truths interfere very little with them, vi. 326. passions which interest men in the characters of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... not to be forgotten. To the Hospital of San Michele Cardinal Tosti has given a new life and vigor, and set an example worthy of his elevated position in the Church. This foundation was formerly an asylum for poor children and infirm and aged persons; but of late years an industrial and educational system has been ingrafted upon it, until it has become one of the most enlarged and liberal institutions that can anywhere be found. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the judgment of Holy Church, only begging that this her free confession might be counted in her favor and that she might hot be put to death, as she deserved, nor sent into perpetual imprisonment; because her mother-in-law according to the flesh, the Countess Godiva, being old and infirm, had daily need of her; and she wished to serve her menially as long as she lived. After which, she put herself utterly upon the judgment of the Church. And meanwhile, she desired and prayed that she might be allowed ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... uncultivated and unhealthy. The lands were low and swampy, and mostly covered with a heavy growth of yellow pines. The few remaining inhabitants were mostly women, negresses and children; now and then a disabled specimen of poor white trash, or a farmer too infirm to be of service in the rebel army, was to be met with. All were alike destitute of enterprise, and the houses upon the "plantations" were of the meanest order, raised three or four feet above the ground upon posts without the usual foundation of stone. The "plantations" ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... that by that time it may be again strengthened. But if it returns to the attempt in the eighth month and be born, it cannot live, because the day of its birth is either past or is to come. For in the eighth month Avicunus says, it is weak and infirm, and therefore on being brought into the cold air, its vitality must ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... wife, reproach softening her voice until it fell like a caress. "Why, Mr. Ambler, you bought six of Colonel Blake's last year, you know and one of the house servants has been nursing them ever since. The quarters are filled with infirm darkies." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... University seems to have bred its wealth of doctors for the express purpose of marshaling a dying world to the curative shelter of Atlantic City. The trains are encumbered with the halt and the infirm, who are got out at the doors like unwieldy luggage in the arms of nurses and porters. Once arrived, however, they display considerable mobility in distributing themselves through the three or four hundred widely-separated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the watch-towers of the Garde Doloureuse, which name the castle that day too well deserved. With difficulty the confessor mastered his own emotions to control those of the females on whom he attended, and who were now joined in their lamentation by many others—women, children, and infirm old men, the relatives of those whom they saw engaged in this unavailing contest. These helpless beings had been admitted to the castle for security's sake, and they had now thronged to the battlements, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Relief Fund.—This is the abbreviated title of a Society organized by the General Convention under the corporate name, "The Trustees of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows and Orphans {118} of Deceased Clergymen, and of Aged, Infirm and Disabled Clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, a corporation created in the year 1855 by chapter 459 of the laws of the State of New York." This is one of the most important Funds in the Church and commands the generous support of all ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... observed in him from the first a marked coldness about his marriage and other private circumstances, a coldness which he had hitherto preferred to any warmth of familiarity between them. He deferred the intention from day to day, his habit of acting on his conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every possible conclusion and its consequent act. He saw Mr. Bulstrode often, but he did not try to use any occasion for his private purpose. At one moment he thought, "I will ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Continental Congress, for their faithful discharge of that important trust; and this body are only induced to dispense with their future services of the like kind, by the appointment of the two former to other offices in the public service, incompatible with their attendance on this, and the infirm state of health ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... aboard the boat, other three of the ex-prisoners, who were too old or infirm to be any use as fighters, were hastily transferred to ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... fiction of her "father's friend" should be taken as fact by all the village, and a curious part of her character was that she never sought to ask Helmsley privately, for her own enlightenment, anything of his history. She seemed content to accept him as an old and infirm man, who must be taken care of simply because he was old and infirm, without further question or argument. Bunce was always very stedfast in his ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... name was Drusilla Elliott, to live with them as servant and companion; she was a converted person, worshipping with a kindred sect, the Bible Christians. I remember being much interested in hearing how Bess, before her marriage, became converted. Mary Grace, on account of her infirm health, slept alone in one room; in another, of vast size, stood a family fourposter, where Ann slept with Drusilla Elliott, and another bed in the same room took Bess. The sisters and their friend had been constantly praying that Bess might ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... way. "'France! France!' I cried. 'I see France!'" (he said to me) "as a child cries 'Mother!' when it is hurt." Born to wealth, he was now poor; made to command a regiment or govern a province, he was now without authority and without a future; constitutionally healthy and robust, he returned infirm and utterly worn out. Without enough education to take part among men and affairs, now broadened and enlarged by the march of events, necessarily without influence of any kind, he lived despoiled of everything, of his moral strength as well as his physical. Want ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... with the other. Porthos had laid hold of some peas which were twined round poles stuck into the ground, and ate, or rather browsed upon them, shells and all; and Planchet was busily engaged trying to wake up an old and infirm peasant, who was fast asleep in a shed, lying on a bed of moss, and dressed in an old stable suit of clothes. The peasant, recognizing Planchet, called him "the master" to the grocer's great satisfaction. "Stable the horses well, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... answered Asad sourly. "And were thine own hearing less infirm, woman, thou wouldst have heard me answer thee that thy words weigh for naught with me against his deeds. Words may be but a mask upon our thoughts; deeds are ever the expression of them. Bear thou that ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... village had been excited by the reports of those who had seen us in the morning, respecting the pale-faced strangers, and that Mowno's only object in insisting as he did, on having Barton or myself go with him, was to gratify some aged chief who was too infirm to come down to the shore to see us, or did not want to take ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... ease; but does he do it? No; he saunters up and down his room, because, probably, he has enjoyed too many of the good things of this world at his dinner. That's a happy fellow! He has neither an infirm mother, nor a whole troop of everlastingly hungry children to torment him. Every evening he goes to a party, where his nice supper costs him nothing: would to Heaven I could but change with him! How happy should ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... was my intention to make easy stages and to take with me the workmen Ascanio and Pagolo, whom I had brought from Rome. Moreover, I wanted a servant on horseback to be at my orders, and money sufficient for my costs upon the way. The infirm old man replied, upon a tone of mighty haughtiness, that the sons of dukes were wont to travel as I had described, and in no other fashion. I retorted that the sons of my art travelled in the way I had informed him, and that not being a duke's son, I knew nothing ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Gibraltar, at his neighbor of the opposite Gibraltar, and is heard to say of his wares that they are none of the best, and that while he sells sixpence a pint less, the article is a shilling a pint better. And there the two Gibraltars stand, apparently infirm, hurling their unerring missiles, and making wreck ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the lad in this cave, when we, forsooth, should have looked for him in vain. I know that every day Gluck is sent from the monastery laden with food and drink to a poor widow living up yonder over the ravine. She is infirm and bedridden, and her little grand-daughter takes care of her. Doubtless the poor soul took the sous in the basket to be the gift of the brothers, and, as her portion is not always the same from day to day, but depends ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... 'Young American' party, I would see what could be done. He had got upon the roof of the institution,—just where he could slip backward with great ease, though it took some effort to go forward. Being somewhat infirm of age, I took him gently by the hand and assisted him in, where I thought he might, if he pleased, stand upon a square platform. The General was very polite, bore strongly in his demeanor the marks of time and honor; I could not suppress the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... chief imitators are females. The novels written by men have generally some manliness, some recollection of the higher impulses which occasionally act on the minds of men; some reluctancy in revealing the more infirm movements of the mind; and some doubts as to the absorption of all human nature in one perpetual whirl ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... then attached to the hammock, (which was built for the use of the infirm and aged, but the weight of these creatures is scarce half that of men,) and sixteen of them carried me back to my captor's homestead. That night I fell asleep before it was dark enough to see the stars, and assure myself, by a glance at the Milk Dipper, that it was not all a dream; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the goods which he received in return for them, were dispensed with a liberal hand. He loved hunting because it was a manly exercise, fit for a brave; and, for the additional reason, that it gave him the means of furnishing the aged and infirm with wholesome and nourishing food. The skill of Tecumseh in the chase has already been adverted to. While residing on Deer creek, an incident occurred which greatly enhanced his reputation as a hunter. One of his brothers, and several other Shawanoes of his own age, proposed to bet ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... father, lashed, in his buffaloe robe, on a sledge, to the Colony. He appeared to be in a very weak and dying state, and has suffered much from the want of provisions. I was much pleased with this instance of filial affection and care. Sometimes the aged and infirm are abandoned or destroyed; and however shocking it may be to those sentiments of tenderness and affection, which in civilized life we regard as inherent in our common nature, it is practised by savages in their hardships and extreme difficulty of procuring subsistence for the parties who suffer, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... Brunswick, who was dangerously wounded at the battle of Auerstadt, arrived on the 29th of October at Altona.—[This Prince was in the seventy-second year of his age, and extremely infirm.]—His entrance into that city afforded a striking example of the vicissitudes of fortune. That Prince entered Altona on a wretched litter, borne by ten men, without officers, without domestics, followed by a troop of vagabonds and children, who were drawn together ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... make what inquiries you like concerning me. I have not yet attained my majority, but shall do so in five months and three days, when I shall inherit my mother's fortune. My father is wealthy, but old and infirm. From four to six in the afternoon of the next few days I will be in a carriage at the corner of the Place ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... in a quiet nook in the midst of the woods, about five miles from the pleasant seaport where I was born. The cottage was not a spacious one. It had but few rooms in it; but it was amply large for my aged grandparents, I remember. They lived happily there. My grandfather was somewhat infirm; my grandmother was a very vigorous person for one of seventy-five; this was her age at the time of my first recollection of her. She used to walk from her cottage to our home; and once I walked with her, but was exceedingly mortified that ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... and patriotism of those who will succeed us. All that has occurred during my Administration is calculated to inspire me with increased confidence in the stability of our institutions; and should I be spared to enter upon that retirement which is so suitable to my age and infirm health and so much desired by me in other respects, I shall not cease to invoke that beneficent Being to whose providence we are already so signally indebted for the continuance of His blessings ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... influence on his sensibilities. Who knows but it will succeed? I will touch him on his true character as a Briton. So I went back, with my last chance hanging on the experiment. I told him I was an American traveller, weary, hungry, and infirm of health, and would pay an extra price for an extra effort to give me a bed for the night. I did not say all this in a Romanus-civus-sum sort of tone. No! dear, honest Old Abe, you would have done the same in my place. I ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... with me? Thank you: I shall be glad of someone to carry the lantern. We may have to do some scrambling: Narracott is infirm, and Roger,"—this was the footman—"is ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... three parts: first, the soldiers and others capable of bearing arms; these he either enlisted into his armies, or slaughtered on the spot. The second class consisted of the rich, the women, and the artizans;—these he divided amongst his followers. The remainder, the old, infirm, and poor, he suffered to return to their rifled city. Such was his ordinary course; but when anything occurred to provoke him, the most savage excesses followed. The slightest offence, or appearance of offence, on the part of an individual, sufficed for the massacre of ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... renegade, born in the Palatinate; turned Catholic on a visit to Rome, and devoted his life to vilify his former co-religionists, and to invoke the Catholic powers to combine to their extermination; he was a man of learning, but of most infirm temper (1576-1649). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... believe that he sought to evade them; and there can be no doubt that the influence of such discipline was good in forming his character. He certainly honored his father and mother as long as he lived. In ripe manhood, when his parents were old and infirm, and he lived in Philadelphia, he was wont to perform frequent journeys from that city to Boston, to visit them. It was on one of these journeys that the following incident is ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... and I feel my ambition strongly excited by his belief that I CAN, and his prognostic that I shall do better hereafter. Boileau says, "Trust a critic who puts his finger at once upon what you know to be your infirm part." I had often thought and said to myself some of those things which Colonel Stewart has written, but never so strongly expressed, so fully brought home: my own rod of feathers did not do my business. I had often and often a suspicion that my manner was too Dutch, too minute; and ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Watts narrowly escaped death at the hands of a desperado there. Finally, when Watts (now Sergeant, and a man who has seen much service) was moving to Vancouver with the Division, "Fisk," who had become infirm and old, was run over by a street car in Calgary. This star-witness of many crimes, concerning which he could not speak, thus closed ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... upon this occasion there has not been wanting a just sensibility to the merits of the American Army during the late war; but the obvious policy and design in fixing an efficient military peace establishment did not afford an opportunity to distinguish the aged and infirm on account of their past services nor the wounded and disabled on ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... few weeks before the appointed time for the wedding a malignant disease stole on, spreading sorrow and anxiety over the greater part of the land. Young girls were principally its victims. It seemed to pass scornfully over the aged and infirm. Veile's daughter was also laid hold upon by it. Before three days had passed there was a corpse in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... comfort, it carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the next corner and the next. "You needn't tell me, you needn't tell me!"—this again as they proceeded, he wished ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... squads. On the morning of election the working Democrats appeared at every poll, distributing tickets bearing the name of a single candidate not before mentioned by any one. They were busy all day long spurring up the lagging and indifferent, and bringing the aged, the infirm, and the distant voters in vehicles. Their ruse succeeded. The Whigs were taken completely by surprise, and in a remarkably small total vote, McDaniels, Democrat, was chosen by about sixty majority. The Whigs in other parts ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... gathered together from every land; and they slew my many and they robbed my money and this is what they have done me." Then the trader wept in presence of King Rumzan, saying that he was an old man and infirm; and he bemoaned himself till the King felt for him and had compassion on him; and likewise did King Kanmakan and they swore that they would sally forth upon the thieves. So they set out amid an hundred horse, each reckoned worth thou sands of men, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... determined him at length to dismiss his domestics. Emily seldom opposed her father's wishes by questions or remonstrances, or she would now have asked why he did not take a servant, and have represented that his infirm health made one almost necessary. But when, on the eve of their departure, she found that he had dismissed Jacques, Francis, and Mary, and detained only Theresa the old housekeeper, she was extremely surprised, and ventured to ask his reason for having done so. 'To ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... origin entirely to the obvious advantage of thus providing for a man’s own subsistence in advanced life; and it is consequently confined almost without exception to the adoption of sons, who can alone contribute materially to the support of an aged and infirm parent. When a man adopts the son of another as his own, he is said to “tego,” or take him; and at whatever age this is done (though it generally happens in infancy), the child then lives with his new parents, calls them father ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... with the support of the vagrant poor? It is like putting additional weight on a man already sinking under the burden he bears. The landlords suppose, that because the maintenance of the idle who are able, and of the aged and infirm who are not able to work, comes upon the renters of land, they themselves are exempted from their support. This, if true, is as bitter a stigma upon their humanity as upon their sense of justice: but it is not true. Though the cost of supporting such an incredible number of the ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... answer to that question, we shall be able to estimate the value of his religious notions, and to determine the amount of hope, for his conversion, justified by their possession. The answer may be given in a few words: There is no such sentiment in the Indian character. Children leave their infirm parents to die alone, and be eaten by the wolves;[32] or treat them with violent indignity,[33] when the necessity of migration gives no occasion for this barbarous desertion. Young savages have been known to beat their parents, and even to kill them; but the display ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... ascribe that to the system which prevails here, or to any fault on the part of the men?-I can scarcely ascribe it to the fault of the men; I would say it was their misfortune. They are old and some of them infirm, and they cannot fish like ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... rather sweet." Her voice had the gentleness of water running into water. Her eyes looked at him once and left him deliberately but not as if they didn't care. It must have been a love-match in the beginning then—her eyes seemed so infirm. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Miani, at the same period founded a congregation, called the Somascan, for the education of the destitute and orphaned, and for the reception of the sick and infirm into hospitals. The terrible state in which Lombardy had been left by war rendered this institution highly valuable. Of a similar type was the order of the Barnabites, who were first incorporated at Milan, charged with the performance of acts of mercy, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... for a Tartar cap. He had no sooner done so, than De Vaux opened at once his extended mouth and his large round eyes, and Richard gazed with scarce less astonishment, while the Soldan spoke in a grave and altered voice: "The sick man, sayeth the poet, while he is yet infirm, knoweth the physician by his step; but when he is recovered, he knoweth not even his face when ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... The great d'Esgrignon, with a following of all the less infirm noblesse from the Collection of Antiquities, went to wait upon Charles X. at Nonancourt; he paid his respects to his sovereign, and swelled the meagre train of the fallen king. It was an act of courage which seems simple enough ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... and tell decisively, the circumstances in the tragedy. She would go to them. She owed this to the living; she owed it still more imperatively to the dead. She had not seen Olympia since her return. Mrs. Sprague had been too infirm to see her when she called. But she would not heed rebuffs now. In such a cause, on such a mission, she would have stood at the Sprague door a suppliant until even the obstinacy of her father would have relented. On her way across the square ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Believe me, I am rapt with admiration, To think a man of thy exterior presence Should (in the constitution of the mind) Be so degenerate, infirm, and base. Art thou a man? and sham'st thou not to beg? To practise such a servile kind of life? Why, were thy education ne'er so mean, Having thy limbs: a thousand fairer courses Offer themselves to thy election. Nay, there the wars might still supply thy wants, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... day of the month at the head of the page, she seemed to hear echoes of Harold's resonant voice vibrating with love for her. She sighed and put down her pen. If only she were less infirm of purpose. Her hesitations were interrupted by Mrs Budd bringing in a letter for Mavis that the postman had just left. It was from Mrs Trivett. It described with a wealth of detail a visit that the writer had paid to Pennington Churchyard, where she had taken flowers ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... "Is to-day an infirm old woman, a worthy object of the compassion of charitable people," continued M. Moriaz, heedless of this last interruption. "Mlle. Moriaz allows her a pension, with which I find no fault; but Mlle. Galet—I mistake, Mlle. Galard—has ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... borrowed an old cloak of the hermit, and, disguised as a beggar, gained admittance to the gate of the Women's Palace, where were gathered together on their knees many others, poor, frail, infirm. ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... other fruit or vegetable. This phosphorus is specially adapted for renewing the essential nervous "lethicin" of the brain and spinal cord. Old Scandinavian traditions represent the Apple as the food of the gods, who, when they felt themselves growing feeble and infirm, resorted to this fruit for renewing their powers of mind and body. Also the acids of the Apple are of signal use for men of sedentary habits, whose livers are sluggish of action; they help to eliminate from the body noxious ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... joy and those of lamentation so strangely mixed that it might have been difficult to have said which passion preponderated. None, however, was idle. Some bore their choicest articles, others their young, and some their aged and infirm, into the forest, which spread itself like a verdant carpet of bright green against the side of the mountain. Thither Tamenund also retired, with calm composure, after a short and touching interview with Uncas; from whom the sage separated with the reluctance that a parent would quit ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... that Judy is old and infirm, and subject, as she says, to a 'touch of the rheumatiz.' But I am sorry that she has not come to-night. She may be sick; I think I will call down and see her to-morrow," said Mrs. Ford, drawing out the table and arranging the shade on the lamp, so that the light ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... Galileo to appear before them at Rome, to answer in person the charges under which he lay. The Tuscan ambassador expostulated warmly with the court of Rome on the inhumanity of this proceeding. He urged his advanced age, his infirm health, the discomforts of the journey, and the miseries of the quarantine,[34] as motives for reconsidering their decision: But the Pope was inexorable, and though it was agreed to relax the quarantine as much as possible in his favour, yet ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... was paid out. The Captain himself was punctual in his attendance at a church in his own neighbourhood, which hoisted the Union Jack every Sunday morning; and where he was good enough—the lawful beadle being infirm—to keep an eye upon the boys, over whom he exercised great power, in virtue of his mysterious hook. Knowing the regularity of the Captain's habits, Walter made all the haste he could, that he might anticipate his going out; and he made such good speed, that he had the pleasure, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... general election, Chief-Justice Chipman, who had been in infirm health, resigned his office, and a vacancy was thus left on the bench of the supreme court of the province. In the natural course, this office ought to have gone to the attorney-general, Mr. L. A. Wilmot, but this appointment ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... the city crouched some miserable specimens of humanity: old men and women, haggard, shrivelled, and naked. These unfortunates, I afterwards learned, were the aged and infirm, too feeble to perform their share of the work of the tribe and condemned to remain at the gateway, dependent for food upon such charity as might be given them. On entering the town we passed a number of warriors, all fine, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... a faithful portrait of the times without some allusion, at least, to that woman who was as famous in her day as Madame de Montespan was during the most brilliant period of the reign of Louis XIV. I single out Madame de Pompadour from the crowd of erring and infirm females who bartered away their souls for the temporary honors of Versailles. Not that proud peeress whom she displaced, the Duchesse de Chateauroux; not that low-born and infamous character by whom she was succeeded, Du Barry; not the hundreds ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... that of Umlandela, an old and infirm Zulu, who was made chief over a large proportion of the Umtetwa tribe on the coast of Zululand. His appointment was a fatal mistake, and has already led to much bloodshed under the following curious circumstances, which are not without interest, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... a little advanced into the island, I saw an old man, who appeared very weak and infirm. He was sitting on the bank of a stream, and at first I took him to be one who had been shipwrecked like myself. I went towards him and saluted him, but he only slightly bowed his head. I asked him why he sat so still, but instead of answering me, he made a sign for me to take him upon my back, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... made a sad distraction from the sorrow for the dead. The three old people, who now formed the household in the Chapel-house, went about slowly and dreamily, each with a dull wonder at their hearts why they, the infirm and worn-out, were left, while she was taken ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... serving as a page at the court, was grown to man's estate, and capable of entering into the important concerns of life. Columbus entreated, therefore, that he might be sent out to assist him, as he felt himself infirm in health and broken in constitution, and less capable of exertion ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... old and infirm philosopher—this band of infallibles!—they bade him abjure and detest the said errors and heresies. They decreed his book to the flames, and they condemned him for life to the dungeons of the Inquisition, bidding him recite, "once a week, seven penitential psalms ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Don't you know"—he broke off to stare at her, flushed and a little breathless as she always was in discussions and unbelievably youthful and beautiful still, and finished in quite another key—"that you're getting positively lovelier with each ridiculous birthday—and your aged and infirm spouse more and more ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Hynds, Gentlewoman, being of sound Mind (though they do say I am mad) but of infirm Body, the which I am shortly to be rid of, do state and declare before God that it was I who did take the Hynds Jewells, being help'd thereto by black Shooba the witch doctor, who was my father's man before my Uncle James Bought him at the ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... after your decision," she replied. "Indeed, I do think it too effeminate for men, persons of high honour except, or them that are sick and infirm." ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... succeeded in restoring order amongst the panic-stricken inhabitants, and revived the fainting courage of the soldiers. In a short time, all the Moors capable of bearing arms were ready for defence, whilst the old and infirm, the women and children, busied themselves in collecting their scanty goods, and placing them securely on their beasts of burthen, as they anticipated the probability of a speedy retreat from their habitations. They ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... dignity of love, and seems to carry about him such a heavenly majesty as impresses the mind beyond description. But if he talks much, though in a low voice, he sinks, and you are reminded of his being dust and ashes." Though so infirm, Mr. Martyn preached every Sabbath of his visit, and his last sermon on the anniversary of the Calcutta Bible Society was afterwards printed and entitled "Christian India, or an appeal on behalf of nine hundred thousand Christians in India ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... possible under our present system. To say nothing of the exclusion of women from an expression of their will, a portion only—though it may be a large portion—of the men express theirs. The sick, the infirm, the absent, say nothing. The registration is always in excess of the vote, and the number of voters falls short of the registration. The reason is patent: many voters are absent at the time of registration, or are otherwise unable or ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... not ask me questions; do not inquire; at any rate, not at present. I will endeavour—now at least I will endeavour—to do my duty. But do not urge me by questions, or appear to notice me if I am infirm." ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... though old and infirm, preserved an understanding, which, whenever unbiassed by her affections, was sure to direct her unerringly; but the extreme softness of her temper frequently misled her judgment, by making it, at the pleasure either of misfortune or of artifice, always yield to compassion, and pliant to ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... His defence of his new Congregation of the Visitation Upon the odour of sanctity He rebukes Pharisaism Upon religious Superiors Upon unlearned Superiors Upon the founding of Convents Upon receiving the infirm into Communities Upon self pity Upon the government of Nuns by religious men That we must not be wedded to our own plans His views regarding Ecclesiastical dignities His promotion to the Bishopric of Geneva ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... native country, and being one day (as curiosity led him a rambling,) in danger of being benighted, made the best of his way to a house he saw at some distance, where he was hospitably received by the master of it. Cremes, for that was the master's name, though but a young man, was infirm and sickly. Of several dishes served up to supper, Cremes observed that his guest ate but of one, and that the most simple; nor could all his intreaties prevail upon him to do otherwise. He was, notwithstanding, highly ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... welcomed by a bronze statue of the founder of the institution, Henry VI. He endowed it in 1440. The first organization comprised "a provost, four clerks, ten priests, six choristers, twenty-five poor grammar-scholars, and twenty-five poor infirm men to pray for the king." The prayers of these invalids were sorely needed by the unhappy scion of Lancaster, but did him little good in a temporal sense. The provost is always rector of the parish. Laymen are non-eligible. Thus it happens ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... arm, Mrs. Culpeper turned slowly away. "I feel a little tired," she explained politely to Patty, "so I am sure that you won't mind yielding to an infirm old woman, and will let my son help ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... some stones that were in his way, or perhaps that had been purposely placed there. Be that as it may, the baronet fell, and a small man, of compact size and vigorous frame, was found aiding him to rise. Having helped him into the saddle, the baronet asked him, with an infirm and alarmed ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... natural subjects, and with my sons staying at your royal court? I was twenty-eight years old when I came into your Highnesses' service,[417-2] and now I have not a hair upon me that is not gray; my body is infirm, and all that was left to me, as well as to my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor. I cannot but believe that this was done without your royal ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... died when she was very young, and since then her home had been with her aunt. For the last few years Miss Hume had been so infirm that she did not feel able to undertake the journey to Kirklands, a small property in the north of Scotland, which she inherited from her father. Her winter home was Edinburgh, and Miss Hume for some years had only ventured on a short journey to the nearest watering-place, ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... of gnarled boughs and thick, sombre leaves. To the right—and some small distance away from the large house—a little hut of reeds, covered with mats, had been put up for the special convenience of Omar, who, being blind and infirm, had some difficulty in ascending the steep plankway that led to the more substantial dwelling, which was built on low posts and had an uncovered verandah. Close by the trunk of the tree, and facing the doorway of the hut, the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... consequence of the latter, no resemblance can be traced in their respective characteristics. In America all was young, vigorous, and growing,—the spring of a nation, frugal, active, and simple. In Rome all was old, infirm, and decaying,—the autumn of a people who had gathered their glory, and were sinking into sleep under the disgraceful excesses of the vintage. On the most inert mind, passing from the one continent to the other, the contrast was sufficient to excite ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... floor with intentions never carried out. One cannot help remembering Coleridge with his incomplete "Christabel," and his "Abyssinian Maid," and her dulcimer which she never got a tune out of. We all know there was good reason why Coleridge should have been infirm of purpose. But when we look at that great unfinished picture over which Allston labored with the hopeless ineffectiveness of Sisyphus; when we go through a whole gallery of pictures by an American artist ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... will ensure the health and instruction of the next generation. It will cost two millions and a half, but it will banish ignorance. He would pay the costs of compulsory education. Pensions are to be granted not of grace but of right, as an aid to the infirm after fifty years, and a subsidy to the aged after sixty. Maternity benefit is anticipated in a donation of twenty shillings to every poor mother at the birth of a child. Casual labour is to be cared for in some sort of workhouse-factories ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... The old and infirm were the most quickly affected; their weakened bodies could not withstand the ravage of the Plague as could those of younger people. An old man, walking along a large thoroughfare in Savannah, Georgia, suddenly uttered a fearful shriek and sank ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... came up to her, she would tell them what good care the old man had taken of Heidi. She also told them that he had mended her little house. These reports reached the village, of course, but people only half believed them, for the grandmother was infirm and old. She began her days with sighing again. "All happiness has left us with the child. The days are so long and dreary, and I have no joy left. If only I could hear Heidi's voice before I die," the poor old woman would exclaim, ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... the ferryman and his wife, she said they were accustomed to give her a day of their labour in digging peats, in common with others, and in that manner she was provided with fuel, and, by like voluntary contributions, with other necessaries. While this infirm old woman was relating her story in a tremulous voice, I could not but think of the changes of things, and the days of her youth, when the shrill fife, sounding from the walls of the Garrison, made a ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Instead, the pupil made a present to the master, usually at some understood rate, though some masters left the size of the fee to the liberality of their pupils. [17] The pedagogue, copied from Greece, was nearly always an old or infirm ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... rightful heritage, he was proud that he had a Pennington for a grandson. Thus I am sure that it was his will that I should have the Barton for my own. But during the last few years he had been very feeble and infirm, and thus in the hands of a clever lawyer he could easily be deceived as to what ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... nothing, however; for I feared Manucci, and should not have thought my life safe had he heard that I related my dream to any one. In after years, when I was better able to form a judgment on these matters, I thought it useless to renew the grief of my poor mother, then becoming old and infirm, by a communication of what I had witnessed on that memorable night, or by inspiring her with doubts as to the real cause of her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... secretly and silently cherishing a new faith in her bosom, amid a throng, lax and infirm of purpose, and wonderment gave way to another emotion, as his mind leaped from that past, with its covert, inner life, to the untrammeled moment when she had thrown off the mask in the solitude of the forest. Had some deeper chord of his nature been struck then? ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... He changed the plan to meet his new purpose of writing to benefit the young reader. His work was soon interrupted and was not resumed until 1788, when he was at home in Philadelphia. He was now old, infirm, and suffering, and was still engaged in public service. Under these discouraging conditions the work progressed slowly. It finally stopped when the narrative reached the year 1757. Copies of the manuscript were sent to friends of Franklin ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... now very old, monsieur, and very infirm. I have often thought, in my lonely hours, of the unhappiness of my child on her marriage with you, and have doubted the wisdom of that authority which I exercised so severely over her. The vision of that pale, agonized countenance, comes upon me like a reproach; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... case of faith, both these things are subject to the free-will so that in both respects the act of faith can be meritorious: whereas in the case of opinion, there is no firm assent, since it is weak and infirm, as the Philosopher observes (Poster. i, 33), so that it does not seem to proceed from a perfect act of the will: and for this reason, as regards the assent, it does not appear to be very meritorious, though it can be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... morning, having taken peculiar pains with my toilet, and having arrived at the inevitable conclusion that I hobbled worse than ever, and was as infirm as an old gentleman of eighty, I presented myself in the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... drivel is uttered by the Nestor of the commonwealth, an infirm old man, with one foot in the grave. In order, however, to make the course pursued by this gentleman and the next speaker intelligible to the English reader, we may explain that, by the annexation of Texas, the Southern States have ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... gentlemen, that Mr. Burnham's wife and child are now with him; but, partially because of her, his wife's, infirm health, and partially because of a most distressing and unfortunate experience in his past, our kinsman begs that no one will attempt to call at the ranch. He appreciates all the courtesy the gentlemen ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... The Council also examines infirm paupers; for there is a law which provides that persons possessing less than three minas, who are so crippled as to be unable to do any work, are, after examination by the Council, to receive two obols a day from the state for their support. A treasurer ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... "equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.'' The Socialist theory is that, in general, work alone gives the right to the enjoyment of the produce of work. To this theory there will, of course, be exceptions: the old and the very young, the infirm and those whose work is temporarily not required through no fault of their own. But the fundamental conception of Socialism, in regard to our present question, is that all who can should be compelled to work, either by the threat of starvation or ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... retain a small part of Pomerania only at the humiliating price of making peace with Napoleon and excluding British goods from all her ports, In the same year, Gustavus IV was compelled to abdicate in favor of his uncle, Charles XIII (1809-1818), an infirm and childless old man, who was prevailed upon to designate as his successor one of Napoleon's own marshals, General Bernadotte. Surely, Napoleon might hope henceforth to dominate Sweden as he then dominated ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... of ambitious intrigue, infirm of purpose, and shattered in health, had withdrawn from affairs to devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife, Archduchess Anna of Tyrol, whom at the age of fifty-four ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thousand men able to bear arms. Yet even this number is surprisingly small. Can we suppose that the kingdom is six or seven times more populous at present? and that Murden's was the real number of men, excluding Catholics, and children, and infirm persons? ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... and sacred temple soon to be destroyed were abandoned for perilous journeyings in the wilderness. The chapter that immediately follows in the history of this people is indeed pathetic. The terrible sufferings of the aged and infirm, of helpless women and children, as the shadows of the long night of winter gathered about them on their journey, can never be adequately told. But, inspired with the thought that they were the Israel of God, that Brigham Young was their divinely appointed leader, that ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... thought deficient in manly energy. He was an infirm valetudinarian, and was considered as sluggish in character, as deficient in martial enterprise, as timid of temperament as he was fragile and sickly of frame. It is true, that on account of the disappointment which he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... noise was heard on the steps, and presently in came an old arm chair that had belonged to my grandmother. It had lain in the garret covered with spider webs for years, and indeed it was quite infirm in the joints, and must have had a hard time getting ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... which had gone by since he had last seen them. Rather—he mentally corrected himself—it was the wife, Catherine, who was changed. Charles Nagle was much the same; poor Charles would never be other, for he belonged to the mysterious company of those who, physically sound, are mentally infirm, and shunned by their more ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... daughter, and she, too, was out at work. She was housekeeper to an infirm old farmer; that is to say, she superintended the dairy and the kitchen, and received hardly as much as a cook in a London establishment. Like the sons, she was finely developed physically, and had more of the manners of a lady than seemed possible ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Esmond, on his part, was conspicuous for his attachment and loyalty to the royal cause and person, and the king being at Oxford in 1642, Sir George, with the consent of his father, then very aged and infirm, and residing at his house of Castlewood, melted the whole of the family ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not to be dismayed by poverty; she was a tranquil and loving woman, who had never married; but who, as if to compensate her for the absence of nearer ties, had a simple and wholesome love of all created things. She was infirm now, but was quite content, when it was fine, to sit for long hours idle for very love, and look about her with a peaceful and smiling air; she prayed much, or rather held a sweet converse in her heart with God; she thought little of her latter end, which she knew could not be long delayed, but ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... chaos of universal doubt and of the conflicts of Reason and Faith, the great men and Seers have been but infirm and morbid artists, seeking the beau-ideal at the risk and peril ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the son of the young Catherine and the boy prince of the Asturias, died in 1454, and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King of Castile. When, after some years, Henry was without children, and with health very infirm, his young sister Isabella unexpectedly found herself the acknowledged heir to the throne of Castile. She suddenly became a very important young person. The old King of Portugal was a suitor for her hand, ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... nature. Parents ordinarily consider little the passion of their children and their present gratification. Don't fear the power of a father: it is kind to passion to give it time to cool. But their censures sometimes make me smile,—sometimes, for I am very infirm, make me angry: saepe bilem, saepe ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Indian warfare, and were new to the life of the wilderness; and they were badly armed. [Footnote: American State Papers, Indian Affairs, vol. i., pp. 104, 105; Military Affairs, i., 20.] The Pennsylvanians were of even poorer stuff than the Kentuckians, numbering many infirm old men, and many mere boys. They were undisciplined, with little regard for authority, and inclined to be ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... stamped upon her gentle features. Paulina was interested and entered into conversation with her. She learned that she was a young married woman; that her husband had gone to sea; leaving his mother, a very infirm old woman to her care. Soon after his departure, Mary left her father's more comfortable dwelling to reside in the old woman's cabin, so that she could take the better care of her. A sheep was her only fortune and she took it with her. It had two lambs, ...
— Paulina and her Pets • Anonymous
... at heart the recovery of Acadia. Yet the old and infirm King, whose sun was setting in clouds after half a century of unrivalled splendor, felt that peace was a controlling necessity, and he wrote as follows to his plenipotentiaries at Utrecht: "It is so important ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Saxony and Swabia to adopt the Formula Concordiae and so become one body. Against lax views of Socinian tendency he directed his able treatise De duabus naluris in Christo (1570). Resigning office in infirm health (1584) he survived till the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... top of the Corso, and cut down a woman who was passing by. As soon as the Corso was cleared, the gendarmes went into the different cafes along the street, and ordered all persons, who were found in them, to go home at once. In one case an infirm old man, who could not make off fast enough, had his face cut open by a sabre-blow; while the backs of the gendarmes' swords were used plentifully to expedite the departure of the cafe frequenters. The exact number of wounded it is of course impossible to ascertain. Persons who received injuries ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... large poor population, and the vicar was old and supine; he accepted gladly the volunteered services of his zealous coadjutors, and, led by his faithful Johnnie, Mr. Ferrers penetrated into the winding alleys, and carried comfort to many a sick and dying bed. And as Mr. Brabazon grew more infirm, it became a rule to Mr. Ferrers to occupy his pulpit on Sunday evenings, and it was always remarked that on these occasions the church was crowded; people would come ten or twelve miles to hear the blind clergyman from Sandycliffe. It was even mooted by ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is my belief in this thing as in other things. I have heard what he has been saying to you. It is for me that he sacrifices himself by holding these exhibitions; it is in my poor interests that his hardly-earned money is made. I am in infirm health; and, remonstrate as I may, my son persists in providing for me, not the bare comforts only, but even the luxuries of life. Whatever I may suffer, I have my compensation; I can still thank God for giving me the greatest happiness that ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... which from sickness of mind or body are not infirm, but are free, diligent, and whole in the light of Truth, I say it must be evident that the opinion of the people, which has been stated above, is vain, that is, without ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... only.... Amongst the Lhoosais when a man is unable to do his work, whether through laziness, cowardice or bodily incapacity, he is dressed in women's clothes and has to associate and work with the women. Amongst the Pomo Indians of California, when a man becomes too infirm for a warrior he is made a menial and assists the squaws.... When the Delawares were denationized by the Iroquois and prohibited from going to war they were according to the Indian notion "made women," and were henceforth ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... let tawny olives feed! Me, lenient mallows from the simple mead! Son of Latona, grant the blessing, That, a cloudless mind possessing, And not infirm of frame, in soft decay, Cheer'd by the breathing lyre, my life may ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... for ever, the guide, philosopher, and friend of my life. In short, I will say again what I said to my friend Calvisius, when my grief was fresh: "I am afraid I shall not live so well ordered a life now." Send me a word of sympathy, but do not say, "He was an old man, or he was infirm." These are hackneyed words; send me some that are new, that are potent to ease my trouble, that I cannot find in books or hear from my friends. For all that I have heard and read occur to me naturally, but they are powerless in the presence ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... where they had been long resident before the surrender of their capital. The late events seemed to have no other effect than to harden them in error; and the Spanish government saw with alarm the pernicious influence of their example and persuasion, in shaking the infirm faith of the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... more conscious, partly perhaps because she deprecated her mother's free flow—she was enough of an "improvement" to measure that—and partly because she was too distressed by the idea of leaving her infirm, her perhaps dying father. It wasn't indistinguishable that they were poor and that she would take out a very small purse for her trousseau. For Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would have had moreover greatly to change. If ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... have some tag by which he is identified, or, so far as we are concerned, he becomes one of the innumerable lost articles. There are persons who are like umbrellas, very useful, but always liable to be forgotten. The memory is an infirm faculty, and must be humored. It often clings to mere trifles. The man with the flamboyant necktie whom you saw on the 8.40 train may also be the author of a volume of exquisite lyrics; but you never saw the lyrics, and you did see the necktie. ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... forward and trust in the Lord, who would surely protect them. Savage declared that they should trust, also, to such common sense as the Lord had given them. From his certain knowledge, the company, containing as it did so large a number of the aged and infirm, of women and children, could not cross the mountains thus late in the season without much suffering, sickness, and death. He was overruled and rebuked for want of faith. “Brethren and sisters,” he replied, “what I have said I know to be true; but seeing you are going forward, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... distance. Hundreds of tents or "lodges" of buffalo-skins covered the ground, and thousands of Indians—men, women, and children—moved about the busy scene. Some were sitting in their lodges, lazily smoking their pipes. But these were chiefly old and infirm veterans, for all the young men had gone to the hunt which we have just described. The women were stooping over their fires, busily preparing maize and meat for their husbands and brothers; while myriads of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... undersigned severally with all the necessaries of life, as clothing, meat, drink, lodging, etc., for themselves and their families. And this provision is not limited to their days of health and strength; but when any of them shall become sick, infirm, or otherwise unfit for labor, the same support and maintenance shall be allowed as before, together with such medicine, care, attendance, and consolation as their situation may reasonably demand. And if at any time after they have become members of the association, the father or mother ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... the Treasury (Lord Grey) offered a private grant of L200, which Coleridge "had felt it his duty most respectfully to decline." Stuart, however, wrote to King William's son, the Earl of Munster, pointing out the hardship entailed on Coleridge, "who is old and infirm, and without other means of subsistence." He begs the Earl to lay the matter before his royal father. To this a reply came, excusing the King on account of his "very reduced income," but promising that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... one of the family who went to church the following day. Mrs. Hamlin was too infirm to climb the hill to the meeting-house, and Perez' mood was more inclined to blood-spilling than to God's worship. All day he walked the house, his fists clenched, muttering curses through his set teeth, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... of all sorts; laboratories, etc.;—all of these, erected in the best and equipped in the fittest manner possible, will afford richest opportunity for all manner of intercourse, of art and of science to achieve the highest. Likewise will the institutions for the nursing of the sick, the weak, the infirm through old age, meet ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... passion ruled, With every vice his youth had cooled; Disease his tainted blood assails; His spirits droop, his vigour fails; With secret ills at home he pines, And, like infirm old age, declines. As, twinged with pain, he pensive sits, And raves, and prays, and swears by fits, A ghastly phantom, lean and wan, Before him rose, and thus began: 10 'My name, perhaps, hath reached your ear; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Dander, to saunter. Danders, cinders. Daurna, dare not. Deave, to deafen. Denty, dainty. Dirdum, vigour. Disjaskit, worn out, disreputable-looking. Doer, law agent. Dour, hard. Drumlie, dark. Dunting, knocking. Dwaibly, infirm, rickety. Dule-tree, the tree of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Adonais is an elegy after the manner of Moschus, on a foolish young man, who, after writing some volumes of very weak, and, in the greater part, of very indecent poetry, died some time since of a consumption: the breaking down of an infirm constitution having, in all probability, been accelerated by the discarding his neck cloth, a practice of the cockney poets, who look upon it as essential to genius, inasmuch as neither Michael Angelo, Raphael or Tasso are supposed to have worn those antispiritual incumbrances. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... a secret magnetism between himself and the guineas, woke from his trance. His blindness saved him the pain that might have been fatal, of seeing the unhallowed profanation; but he heard the chink of the metal. The very sound restored his strength. But the infirm are always cunning—he breathed not a suspicion. "Mrs. Boxer," said he, faintly, "I think I could take some broth." Mrs. Boxer rose in great dismay, gently re-closed the bureau, and ran down-stairs for the broth. Simon took the occasion to question Fanny; ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
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