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More "Ladder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extending their caps towards you for an alms. On the floor rose a stack of rush-bottomed chairs, as high as a two-storey house,—as if the priests, dreading an emeute, had made preparations by throwing up a barricade. A carpenter, mounted on a tall ladder, was busied, with hammer and nails, suspending hangings of tapestry along the nave, in honour, I presume, of some saint whose fete-day was approaching. The dim light could but feebly illuminate the many-pillared, long-aisled ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... soul. Yet pray Lest ye grow proud in such exalted worth. Let no man reckon he excels. I say The laws of compensation compass earth, And no man gains without some equal loss: Each ladder round of fame becomes a rod, And he who lives must die upon a cross. The stars are far, but flowers bless the sod, And he who has the least of man has ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the pleading of faith, and the confession of utmost need. How strong "Rock of Ages" seemed to me again that night; the hymn, "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds," was to me a very schedule of treasure; my soul mounted on the words, like the angels on Jacob's ladder; the top of the ladder was in heaven, if the foot of it was on a very rough spot of earth. That night I sang hymns, in the high-wrought state of my feelings, which the next day I could not have sung. ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... She looked very handsome with her flushed cheeks and bright eyes. She raised her voice to be heard above the din. Mrs. Murray's new bonnet nodded its red roses and black ostrich tips among the lace handkerchiefs and embroidery of the fancy table—she being enthroned on the step-ladder for lack of other seat—and her delighted eyes ran from her daughter to the voting blackboard. She waved a spangled fan and smiled buoyantly at every familiar face, whether turned towards her in recognition or not. Mrs. O'Brien, who had slipped away from the kitchen to be sure the lamps were not ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... was trying her best to cudgel her cow into going up a ladder to eat the grass. But the poor thing was afraid and durst not go. Then the old woman tried coaxing, but it wouldn't go. You never saw such a sight! The cow getting more and more flustered and obstinate, the old woman ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... from the clefts of rocky sorrow; to harmonize our instinctive longings for the definite and the infinite, in the ideal Perfect; to read creation as a human book of the heart, both plain and mystical, and divinely written: such is the office fulfilled by best-loved poets. Their ladder of celestial ascent must be fixed on its base, earth, if its top is to securely rest ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... immense solidity, and surrounded by a massive stone wall:—a tower in which ten men could hold their own against five hundred. The look-out sentry, sighting the detachment afar off, gave the word to his companions, who lowered the ladder that served them for staircase; and when Desmond's party drew rein the door in the wall ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... "three mothers," as the baron called his relatives, was to see how much he had grown, and for this purpose they made little notches in the casing of the drawing-room door, showing his progress from month to month. This ladder was called "Poulet's ladder," and was an ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... his native woods the parrot recognizes nothing but color that is worthy of his imitation. But in the habitations of man, surrounded by taste, which is the most precious of all gifts, his ambition begins to grow, his ignorance becomes a shame. He places his foot on the first rung of the educational ladder. His bright colors fade, perhaps; the eyes of his mind are turned toward brighter and more ornamental things. What creature but a parrot devotes such long hours to the acquirement of perfection in each ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... portion of her ambition. In Riversborough it seemed as if she was the first writer of the age; and though in London she had not won one of those extraordinary successes which place an author suddenly at the top of the ladder, she was steadily climbing upward, and was well known for her good and conscientious work. The books she wrote were clever, though cynical and captious; yet here and there they contained passages of pathos and beauty which insured a fair amount of favor. Her work was always welcome ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... naturally have watched for wings, and none might come or go, while she was using her feet instead. She returned in the same way; flying to the top, or part way up her sapling, she ran down to her nest as glibly as she had run up. The walnut-trunk was the ladder which led to the outside world. This pretty little scene was many times repeated, in the days that we spent before the castle of our Carolinians; the male announcing himself afar with songs, and approaching ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Mr. Hatch entwined his doeskin pants around the burnt ridge-pole of the roof, hung on to a rafter with his teeth, and chopped shingles, and the pipemen kept him wet, and he looked like a bundle of damp stuff in a paper mill. Mr. Spence was on the top of the ladder, and Mr. Drummond was next below him. In falling, Mr. D. caught hold of one tail of Mr. Spence's swallow hammer coat, and stretched the tail about two feet longer than the other. Mr. Foote was as dry as a bone, until the pipeman saw him, and they nailed him up against the wall with ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... notoriety. Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling; and to crown all, Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan down a d——d corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however crooked, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... five children, all girls, the three eldest of whom were hard at work with their mother in matting chair-bottoms, and the fourth, though a mere child, was nursing the youngest; while the poor carpenter himself was confined to his bed, in consequence of a fall from a ladder while working at Violet-Bank, by which he was covered with wounds and contusions, and an object of misery ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... the harvest of the olive yard.[102] You should pick by hand, rather than beat from the tree, all the olives which can be reached from the ground or from a ladder, because this fruit becomes arid when it has been struck and does not yield so much oil: and in picking by hand it is better to do so with the bare fingers rather than with a tool because the texture of a tool not only injures the berry but barks the branches and leaves them ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... trouble lies beneath the surface. If a superior class accept service at all, it is with the intention of quickly getting money enough to do something better. With them service is merely the means to an end. A first step on the ladder! ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... for you in this city, but in your native State you can become almost what you please. If, for instance, with your splendid health you entered upon the study of law and mastered it, I have influence and wealth enough to advance you rapidly, until by your own grip you can climb to the top of the ladder. You can then eventually marry into one of the best families in the State, and thus at the same time secure happiness and ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... upon the sweet full lips. For this she had studied relentlessly; to this end she had looked; with this in view her four years' course had been pursued with pluck and determination. The picture of Joanna Baker, as young as herself, climbing easily to the topmost round of the ladder, had fired and stimulated her, and she had allowed it to be known that her life was dedicated to ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... blind in love you could not see a hole in a ladder or tell the signs on a woman's face. Denas be 'fraid of her own self. Let her be. Let her be. If you do say a word now about your love she will run back and hide herself in an old love—that be a woman's way. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... receiving the order, came on board to look over the ship. He then went on shore for a sufficient force to carry out the seizure. After he was gone the captain heard of the fate which was intended for him. The mayor returned with two boatloads of soldiers, stepped up the ladder, touched the captain on the shoulder, and told him he was a prisoner. The Englishmen snatched pike and cutlass, pistol and battleaxe, killed seven or eight of the Spanish boarders, threw the rest overboard, and flung stones on them as they scrambled into ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... order to another. In speaking of different 'orders,' we do not commit ourselves to any sudden breaks or leaps in evolution. The organic may be linked to the inorganic, soul to the lower forms of life, spirit to soul. But whether the 'scale of perfection' is a ladder or an inclined plane, new categories are necessary as we ascend it. And unless we admit an inner teleology as a determining factor in growth, many facts even in physiology ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... he might not be recognised, and handed him a cutlass and pistol. Whether the appearance of two, when he only expected one, or whether the natural dread with which he always, despite himself, regarded his captain, overpowered Jeromio, we may not guess; but as the Buccaneer strode up the ladder, his penetrating look steadily fixed upon the wily Italian, his quick eye perceived that twice he attempted to level a pistol; while his more cowardly accomplices crowded behind him. Had the villain possessed courage enough to fire as Dalton was ascending, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... way up the ladder, and as they filed, one after the other, on to the quarter-deck, the ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... up the bogey, and almost tipped out as old Sanders brought the boat round. When the windows were screwed and everything was all right, I shut the valve from the air-belt in order to help my sinking, and jumped overboard, feet foremost—for we hadn't a ladder. I left the boat pitching, and all of them staring down into water after me, as my head sank down into the weeds and blackness that lay about the mast. I suppose nobody, not the most cautious chap in the world, would have bothered about a look-out ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... end of the billet, with a ladder leading up to it, was a sort of grain bin, with a door in it. This place was the headquarters of our guests, the rats. Many a stormy cabinet meeting was held there by them. Many a boot was thrown ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... a nation where all receive blows and desire to give them to those lower down. The kick that the Kaiser gives is transmitted from back to back down to the lowest rung of the social ladder. The blows begin in the school and are continued in the barracks, forming part of the education. The apprenticeship of the Prussian Crown Princes has always consisted in receiving fisticuffs and cowhidings from ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... acting in the humble capacity of a sowar; a mirza gets his title from his ability to write letters; the precise social status of a mudbake is more difficult to here determine, but his proper roosting-place is several rungs of the social ladder below either of the others. They are to take me through to the Khan of Grhalakua, the first Afghan chieftain beyond the desert, and to take back to the Ameer a receipt from him for my ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... it. I thort at fust that the cyprus wa'n't climable no how; but jest then I seed a big fox grape-vine, that, arter sprawlin' up another tree clost by, left it an' sloped off to the one whar the baldies had thar nest. This war the very thing I wanted,—a sort o' Jaykup's ladder; an', 'ithout wastin' a minit, I shinned up the grape-vine. The shaky thing wobbled about, till I war well-nigh pitched back to the groun'; an' thar war a time when I thort seriously o' ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... replied Mr. Markland, "to make my own terms with the world. Standing at the foot of the ladder, I must accept the first means of ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... The school is under the management of a director who is assisted by a competent staff of civilian teachers, as well as by a number of the inmates themselves. Some of the prisoners, being illiterate, have to commence their education at the very bottom of the ladder. Others, according to the education they have received, enter the course at higher points. In the case of foreigners much of their education consists in teaching them the English language and instructing ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... They took her thus into the court called Cour de Justice, where there was a scaffold and which was crowded with spectators. On a platform, raised about eight feet, was a post garnished with iron rings, and with a ladder to mount to it. This place was surrounded with soldiers. When she appeared, cries of "Here she is!" mingled with much abuse, were heard from the crowd. Numbers of the partisans of M. de Rohan had assembled to hoot her, and cries of "A bas la Motte, ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... upon a double line of stiff ropes formed in Cyprus of the long twisted wands of myrtle, which are exceedingly tough, and are substitutes for willows in basket-work. When completed, the chain resembles a rope ladder, with the numerous jars sufficiently close together to represent spokes separated by about sixteen inches. This is suspended over the edge of the wheel, and hangs vertically; the lower portion of this necklace-like arrangement being about three feet below the water, or ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... she answered softly, thinking of his kiss. 'How did you get up to the loggia? Have you a ladder?' ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... seemed to reach around the world, lingered a pale, white light, as of a universal dawn. The weary wind brought up to them the heavy odors of the cornfields. The music of the dance sounded faintly from below. Eric leaned on his elbow beside her, his legs swinging down on the ladder. His great shoulders looked more than ever like those of the stone Doryphorus, who stands in his perfect, reposeful strength in the Louvre, and had often made her wonder if such men died forever with the ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... companionship with Martyrs. Therefore, a weary climb heavenward was before him, and a great trial of his fidelity. On his patience, daring and fortitude depended all his future in the Order. He was marched to a ladder and bidden ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... down the western sky and was laced with red like a bloodshot eye, with a Jacob's Ladder of rainbow shafts streaming down from it to the water, when we turned inland; and after several small minor stops, while the automobile caught its breath and had the heaves and the asthma, we came to Pompeii ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... will send you our detailed proposals; tonight let us speak of our responsibility to redefine government's role: not to control, not to demand or command, not to contain us, but to help in times of need and, above all, to create a ladder of opportunity to full employment so that all Americans can climb toward economic power and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... quantity, and from this some may generally be found on the dump, or, in the vein of chlorite which I mentioned as a locality for the dogtooth spar, considerable may be obtained in it and on its western edge near the ceiling. A ladder about thirteen feet long is used for attending the lights, and may generally be borrowed, and access to the remainder of this pocket thus gained. Datholite is also very characteristic in appearance, and can only be confounded with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... of the church, there were formerly thirteen effigies, supposed to represent our Saviour and his apostles. These, harmless and beautiful as they were, happened to provoke the wrath of a praying weaver in Gattonside, who, in a moment of inspired zeal, went up one night by means of a ladder, and with a hammer and chisel, knocked off the heads and limbs of the figures. Next morning he made no scruple to publish the transaction, observing, with a great deal of exultation, to every person whom he met, that he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... It's a ladder rising from bottom round to topmost. It means to be persuaded that a thing is true; then to place confidence in it, to trust. And trust always contains the idea of risk. The heart-meaning always is that you risk something very precious to you, risk it to the point ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... carried to the extent it afterwards reached. Innes was a clergyman, but a disgrace to his cloth. As soon as he fixed his eye on our Formosan, he hit on a project; it was nothing less than to make Psalmanazar the ladder of his own ambition, and the stepping-place for him to climb up to a good living! Innes was a worthless character; as afterwards appeared, when by an audacious imposition Innes practised on the Bishop of London, he avowed himself ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... yoke of a religious life. He determined, therefore, to set himself free from it, and procured some secular habits, pistols, and a horse. Just as he was about to escape over the walls of the monastery by means of a ladder, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... a moment as if he had not quite taken in his father's words, then, leaving his supper untouched, he rose slowly, and without a word climbed the ladder to the loft. The mother followed him a moment with her eyes, and then once more turning to Billy Jack, held him with calm, steady gaze. Her immediate fear was for her eldest son. Thomas, she knew, would in the mean time simply suffer what might be his lot, but for many a ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... return to its old moorings. The past has told upon it. It has accumulated some wealth of knowledge, of experience, of character, which, as the centuries roll, brings it farther on in its career. It is true that a nation, like a man, may have lapses by which it may fall down a step or more in the ladder of its upward progress. But this cannot be a necessity of its nature or a relentless ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... ship, near her nose, a large blister made of six-inch clear crystal indicated the radar bridge. Twelve feet below it, six round window ports showed the position of the control deck. Surrounding the base of the ship was an aluminum scaffold with a ladder over a hundred feet high anchored to it. The top rung of the ladder just reached the power-deck emergency hatch which was swung open, like a giant plug, revealing the thickness of the hull, ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... not matter what you say in between. I have heard the Premier speak lots of times, and they go crazy over him and think he is a wonderful speaker. He tells how he was once a farmer's boy and wandered happily over the pasture fields in his bare feet, and then how he climbed the ladder of fame, rung by rung—that is fine stuff, every one likes that; and whenever he got stuck he told about the flag of empire that waves proudly in the breeze and has never known defeat, and the destiny of this Canada of ours, and the strangers ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... might have been climbed, but it would have been dangerous, and I had to make my way up the steep earth banks, where there is nowhere any looting for man, only for trees, which made the rounds of my ladder. I was near the top of this climb, which was very hot and steep, and the pulses were buzzing all over my body, when I made sure there was one external sound in my ears, and paused to listen. No mistake; a sound of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Brick Lane Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association were held in a large room, pleasantly and airily situated at the top of a safe and commodious ladder. The president was the straight-walking Mr. Anthony Humm, a converted fireman, now a schoolmaster, and occasionally an itinerant preacher; and the secretary was Mr. Jonas Mudge, chandler's shopkeeper, an enthusiastic and disinterested vessel, who sold tea to the members. Previous ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Todge, however, was not imaginative, and when night fell, he lay down upon his bed and slept without fear; that is, he slept until his bed began to float, then he awoke and groped his way neck deep in water until he found his ladder and managed by it to climb up into his loft, where he sat shivering, till suddenly he felt the cabin give a lurch, and the water rushed in. It had been lifted clear off the piles, and when it should ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... of the realm in his robes!" whispered Eve, who was much amused with the elaborate toilet of the subject of their remarks, who descended the ladder supported by a sailor, and, after speaking to the master, was formally presented to his late boat-companion, as Sir George Templemore. The two bustled together about the quarter-deck for a few minutes, using eye-glasses, which led them into several scrapes, by ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... filling my ears and firing my heart with the architectural details of her coveted 'castle in Spain.' Glenbeigh is her cousin. The ladder of his preferment is set up before my eyes, and his Excellency springs up the rounds, from Governor to Senatorship, thence to a place in the Cabinet, certainly to an important foreign embassy; where, in the eternal fitness of things, somebody, somebody with tender brown ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... their faces; but little cared they for wind or snow as they hurried on their road, eager for revenge. At last they reached Kotsuke no Suke's house, and divided themselves into two bands; and Chikara, with twenty-three men, went round to the back gate. Then four men, by means of a ladder of ropes which they hung on to the roof of the porch, effected an entry into the courtyard; and, as they saw signs that all the inmates of the house were asleep, they went into the porter's lodge where the guard slept, and, before the latter had time ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Oriental pessimism, whose aim is the extinction of life, mental and physical, and reabsorption into that void whence, it is said, misfortune has brought us forth to troublous consciousness. The Christian contemplative knows no ascent to God but by the ladder of creatures; he goes to the book of Nature and of human life, and to the book of Revelation, and turns and ponders their pages, line by line and word by word, and so feeds and fills the otherwise thin and shadowy conception of God in his ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... just come from turning over the grass. Sometimes he would have an ox-goad in his hand, and you would have said he had just unyoked his weary oxen. Now he bore a pruning-hook, and personated a vine-dresser; and again, with a ladder on his shoulder, he seemed as if he was going to gather apples. Sometimes he trudged along as a discharged soldier, and again he bore a fishing-rod, as if going to fish. In this way he gained admission to her again and again, and fed his passion ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of the paper nautilus, or argonaut, are the most delicate and beautiful. The next table (22) displays the shell of the curious carrier, that embodies all kinds of foreign substances with its shell; the slipper shell, and the rose bud. Upon the next table (21) are the Screws; the curious ladder shells from China; and upon table 20, are the varieties of fresh water Clubs. The next two tables (18, 19) display some curious and beautiful shells, including Venus's ear, the pagoda shell, and varieties of Snails, including the apple snails. Proceeding on his ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... chicken ladder, kicked his chubby legs through the aperture, hung suspended on his fat little middle for an instant, and finally, with much panting and tugging, wriggled his plump, round body into the hen-house. He walked over where a lonesome looking hen was sitting patiently ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... was getting at home in New York. The atmosphere of a large town, thoroughly commercial, was just fitted to his nature. He had certainly every reason to be satisfied with the rapidity with which he had mounted towards the top of the Wall-Street ladder. He was already cheek-by-jowl with certain heavy men of the place; he walked down Broadway of a morning with "Mr. A. of the Ocean," and up again of an afternoon with "Mr. B. of the Hoboken;" he knew something of most of the great men of the commercial world; and as for ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... refreshings of the Lord's spirit, which she did then feel. This she spake aloud, so that all about could hear, whereat Captain Oliver bid the drums to beat and drown her voice. Now, when they did come to the gallows ladder, on each side of which the officers and chief people stood, the two men kept on their hats, as is the ill manner of their sort, which so provoked Mr. Wilson, the minister, that he cried out to them: 'What! shall such Jacks as you come before authority with your hats on?' To which one of them ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... blasting the rock and the liberation of the King. He was so tame now that at Stas' order he seized him with his trunk and placed him on his neck. He also had become accustomed to bearing things which Kali pulled on his back over a bamboo ladder. Nell insisted that he was too heavily burdened, but in truth to him it was like a fly, and only the luggage inherited from Linde could form a respectable load for him. With Saba, at the sight of whom in the beginning he displayed uneasiness, he became quite friendly, and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... cried the knight, and, snatching a step-ladder from the hands of his trusty attendant, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... anywhere, Jess. We'll get round to it all in due time," laughed Peggy from her perch upon a small step-ladder where she was fastening up some hat-bands of the Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Olympia and the ships which had comprised the summer practice squadron, the girls all gathered about her asking forty ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... measures 35.5 feet long, 4 feet broad, and 1.5 foot deep. It has a square stern with a movable board, two grasping holes near the stem, and three round perforations (2 inches in diameter) in its bottom. On the north-west border of the log-pavement a massive ladder of oak was found, one end resting on the margin of the log-pavement and the other projecting obliquely into the timberless zone between the former and the outer woodwork. It is thus described in the Proceedings of the Glasgow ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... a young painter, a man of talent, who saw in art nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step-ladder which helped him to work at a large high painting, now nearly finished. Criticising himself, honestly admiring himself, floating on the current of his thoughts, he then lost himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... went for the policeman. The boy with the shaking came back to consciousness, rubbed his eyes, and got back on his feet. What do you think he did? He staggered, half-blind, up the stairs. He climbed the ladder. He got on to the roof of the house. He gathered up his tools, put them into his basket, took them down, and when he got to the ground again ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... sought came down through the smoky air like a Jacob's ladder, and he stood at the foot of it like a little prodigal angel that wanted to go home again, but feared it was too much inclined for him to manage the ascent in the present condition of his wings. But all he ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... her bidding, and fetching a ladder with rungs about two feet six apart, placed it against a lemon-tree at the back of ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the wheel, where he suffered the greatest agony during an hour and a half. His lieutenant was condemned to the gallows for having been the medium of his communication with the Spanish Government; although, even as he was ascending the fatal ladder, he continued to declare that he had always been ignorant of the contents of the packets which he was charged to deliver, and could ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the old man heard her demand they went out hunting, and before evening they had killed three-score cattle. They made quarters of them, as the Eagle told them, and then the old man asked her to lie down, till they would get it all heaped up on her back. First of all, though, they had to get a ladder of fourteen steps, to enable them to get on to the Eagle's back, and there they piled up the meat as well as they could. Then the old man told the Irishman to mount, and to remember to throw a quarter of beef to her every time she looked ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... morning early, Romeo and Juliet were married at Friar Laurence's cell, and parted with tears and kisses. And Romeo promised to come into the garden that evening, and the nurse got ready a rope-ladder to let down from the window, so that Romeo could climb up and talk to his dear ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... The ladder used by one of the party being too short, the young man placed himself on the wall, as if in a saddle, to have a better opportunity of taking aim; when one of the wolves, the largest, strongest, and most exasperated, suddenly bounded at the wall, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... field its increase, and no more. But by this time my glebe was not the only land on which I could plant my foot and say, Lo, thou art mine! for I had so prospered in the five years during which I had held a ladder for my pupils to the tree of knowledge, that much golden fruit had fallen to my share (being kicked down, as it were, by their climbing among the branches); so that I had purchased the fee-simple of the estate of my ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... jointly hired a peripatetic dominie to give us youngsters lessons in Bible history and the three R's. At noon hour I initiated Rebecca into all the thrilling dangers of Indian warfare, and many a time have we had wild escapes from imaginary savages by scaling a rope ladder of my own making up to the high nursery window. By-and-bye, when school was in and the dominie dozed, I would lower that timid little whiffet of a Puritan maid out through the window to the turnstile. Then I would ride her round till our ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... send you more. It is good to go up a ladder of Bible verses when one is afraid—or foolish," he said gently and answering her smile. "One end of it always rests on earth, within reach of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... said, "started in life with hardly a cent in the world. We began at the lowest round of the ladder, but the Lord has been good to us and we have worked up—we have prospered. We bought a little farm and raised good crops. We have a good home and a nice family of children, and," he added with much emphasis, "I am ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... ladders against the walls, they reached the battlements, and were struck down by English swords and axes. Cannon-balls and great stones and arrows rained on them. "Fight on!" cried the Maid; "the place is ours." At one o'clock she set a ladder against the wall with her own hands, but was deeply wounded by an arrow, which pierced clean through between neck and shoulder. Joan wept, but seizing the arrow with her own hands she dragged it out. "Yet," says Dunois, "she did not withdraw from the battle, nor took any medicine ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... won something," resumed the elder, calmly, "when a person of your excitable nature can play so well the sombre, taciturn character of Cromwell. You have mounted several rounds, and the whole ladder lifts itself up before you. You have mastered several languages, while I know but one, and that imperfectly. You have studied the foreign drama, while I have not even read all the plays of Shakespeare. I can do a hundred parts conventionally well. You will, some day, do a great part ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... this blessing," said Content, as he aided the half-unconscious Ruth to mount the ladder, yielding himself to a feeling of nature that said little against his manhood. "If we have lost one, that we loved, God ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... down to get a pitcher of hot water, and I heard Miss Sniffen's voice in the dining-room and so went in that way. Mrs. Nobbs was up on the step-ladder in front of the placard, so I didn't see it at first, but when I did it muddled me so I just stood there and stared. Miss Sniffen turned round and said, 'What do you want?' sharp as could be, just as if I had no business there. She felt guilty all right! You could see that! Well, if you'll ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... one day descending a ladder, when one of the rounds of the latter broke and his body received a nasty jerk. He placed his hand on his heart and muttered. "I have felt something, I have felt something here." Two days afterwards ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... all these dangers Jeanne was constantly close to the English walls and her white standard always rose where the fighting was hottest. When a scaling ladder was placed against the wall she was the first to mount and was half way to the top when an English crossbowman, taking careful aim, fired an arrow with such force that it pierced right through her steel coat of mail and stood ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... the stable ladder as the first twilight of the dawn was slowly pouring up from beneath into a lake of light and colour in the east, as water gushes from a ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... is the idea of perfection in your mistress, the idea that has been shattered. But when you understand that the first idea itself was human, small and restricted, you will see that it is little more than a round in the rotten ladder of human imperfection. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... down the basement steps through the cellar into the area, and with clenched teeth was looking up the monstrous sheer of red-brick wall cut into long strips by the lessening perspective of perpendicular iron ladders. Under each window each ladder opened out into a little, a very little, balcony. The rest was straighter than a ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... fixed in the room, leading to a trap-door in the ceiling. Up this ladder the old gentleman trotted, and in half a minute had disappeared, shutting the trap ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... leader of the first magnitude had appeared, and that methods which differentiated all moral principles had been introduced. For ten years William Marcy Tweed had been sachem or grand sachem of Tammany and chairman of its general committee. In climbing the ladder of power he had had his ups and downs. He endured several defeats, notably for assistant alderman, for re-election to Congress after a service of one term, and for sheriff of New York County. But his popularity suffered no eclipse. Ever since he led the ropes ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... As soon as he had scraped together a little money, he lent it to some poor devil with a hard landlord, at twenty per cent., and made him take half the loan in umbrellas or bamboos. By these means he got his foot into the ladder, and climbed upward and upward, till, at the age of forty, he had amassed L5,000. He then looked about for a wife. An honest trader in the Strand, who dealt largely in cotton prints, possessed an only daughter; this young lady had a legacy, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... angels; such, at least, they seem to be by the splendour of their youth and the aerial lightness of their movements; and these also bear, as if in triumph, other emblems of the divine expiation—the column, the ladder, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... long years Johnson hid in dingy courts and alleys, ill-clothed, ill-fed, an uncouth Apollo in the service of Admetus Cave and his kind, while the marvellous actor was climbing daily higher and higher on the ladder of an actor's fame, the friend of the wealthy, the favored of the great, the admired, the applauded, the well-beloved. Garrick deserved his fame and his fortune, his splendid successes and {43} his shining rewards; but the grand, rough writer of books did not deserve his ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... two, so that two ships should be in case to attack one tower; for they had perceived that day how only one ship had attacked each tower, and that this had been too heavy a task for the ship, seeing that those in the tower were more in number than those on the ladder. For this reason was it well seen that two ships would attack each tower with greater effect than one. As had been settled, so was it done, and they waited thus during ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... effects of an upstairs shout the morning before, he decided to see what a down one would do; accordingly, he mounted the stairs and climbed the sort of companion-ladder that led to the servants' attics, where he kept a stock of gibbeys in the rafters. Having reached this, he cleared his throat, laid his head over the banisters, and putting an open hand on each side of his mouth to direct the sound, exclaimed with a loud ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... The whole Hall, was joyfull thereat, as well as themselves, and now they begin to talk loud of the King. To-night I am told, that yesterday, about five o'clock in the afternoon, one came with a ladder to the Great Exchange, and wiped with a brush the inscription that was on King Charles, and that there was a great bonfire made in the Exchange, and people called out "God bless King ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... suitable cord. There was a seven-pound weight, but that would not pass the wires! He remembered an old eight-day clock on a back stair, which was never going. He got out its heavier weight, and carried it, with the cord and the ladder, to his own stair—at the foot of which was lady Arctura—waiting ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Lord Stephen of Amboise on the ditch's brim, And on a ladder high, Clotharius died, From back to breast an arrow pierced him, The other was shot through from side to side: Then as he managed brave his courser trim, On his left arm he hit the Flemings' guide, He stopped, and from ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... appointment itself, for, since the morning in Kessin, when Crampas had bidden him farewell with that look which still haunted him, he had grown somewhat sceptical of such things as climbing higher on the ladder. Since then he had measured with a different measure and viewed things in a different light. Distinction—what did that amount to in the end? As the days passed by with less and less of joy for him, he more than ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... loggia, with its vanishing frescoes, I looked down an avenue barred by a ladder of cypress-shadows to the ducal escutcheon and mutilated vases of the gate. Flat noon lay on the gardens, on fountains, porticoes and grottoes. Below the terrace, where a chrome-colored lichen had sheeted the balustrade as with fine laminae of gold, vineyards stooped ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... alongside the ladder suspended a few yards aft of the ship's waist. The first lieutenant, having sent word to the Captain, hurried forward to receive our distinguished guest, who climbed heavily on his Secretary's arm. Arriving thus at the sally-way, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting. Among the many dangers of this sort which now threatened Ratcliffe, there was one that, had he known it, might have made him more ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... they decided to sleep. The floor was in good condition, with a bit of hay piled up in one corner. But the loft overhead was in such bad condition that in many places the flooring was broken down completely. As there was no ladder or stairway to reach it, the boys concluded there was no use in examining it—no one would be ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... not," rapped Smith decisively. "I know my man, and I'll swear she did not. There were no marks in the mud of the road to show that a ladder had been placed there; moreover, nothing of the kind could have been attempted whilst the boy was sitting in the doorway; that was evident. In short, she did not descend into the roadway and did not come out by ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... He entrusted everything to the man who had promised to save him. He was led up two flights of stairs, when they came to a ladder reaching to an attic, and they went up this attic ladder to a chamber, where there was a narrow bed, with soft, clean sheets and pillows, the first the prisoner had seen in the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... somewhat short in stature) that this uncertainty of disposition strengthened and increased with her temporal prosperity; and divers wise men and matrons, on friendly terms with the locksmith and his family, even went so far as to assert, that a tumble down some half-dozen rounds in the world's ladder—such as the breaking of the bank in which her husband kept his money, or some little fall of that kind—would be the making of her, and could hardly fail to render her one of the most agreeable companions in existence. Whether they were right or wrong in this conjecture, certain ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... present, at least, and perhaps forever; so I want you to engage in something where your opportunities for advancement will not be limited as mine have been. No matter if you have to commence at the very bottom of the ladder; you can build yourself up by hard and ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... when the fire is lit for the next meal. A very few sticks will thus serve for cooking a large number of the simple native meals. Opening from the kitchen was the front door, leading to the ground by a flight of stairs or a ladder. Thanks to the United States Mariveles is supplied with abundant water, piped from some miles up in the mountains, and some of the better houses of the barrio have a private faucet on the back porch, ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... appropriate courage and renewed energy grappled with the difficulties and mystories of the telegraph business, then entirely new, having no books or rules to refer to, and without the experience of others to guide him, and having, as it were, to climb a ladder, every round of which had to be invented as he progressed. But nothing daunted him. Through perseverance and system he succeeded, not only in supplying the United States in the most rapid manner with better and cheaper telegraphic facilities than has been afforded any other country on the globe, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... was born at Zurich in 1867 in the Cafe Litteraire, of which his father was lessee, and among whose habitues Gottfried Keller was reckoned. He took up the paternal business, beginning at the bottom of the ladder as a waiter in Geneva, Genoa, and Hastings, and in 1883 joined his father, who had meanwhile taken a lease of the railroad restaurant at Goeschenen. At the last stop before entrance into the darkness of the Gotthard tunnel many a traveler ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... momentary touches of the eternal. The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited,—to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... ship-keeper—whether the same who had been described to us by Mr. Powell, or another, I don't know. Possibly some other man. He, looking over the side, saw, in his own words, 'the captain come sailing round the corner of the nearest cargo-shed, in company with a girl.' He lowered the accommodation ladder down on to the jetty . ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... find out whether there is any gold at the end of the rainbow, please walk up the ladder, get into the hopper, and be ground down to a proper size." He hissed out the word size, drawing it as long as his breath ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... moment of steadiness before negotiating the three steps of the inside ladder from rail to deck; and the watchman, taught by experience, would forbear offering help which would be received as an insult at that particular stage of the mate's return. But many times I trembled for his neck. He was a ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... jovial meetings there about the beginning of this century?" Was it his mistresses' secret boudoir when the Intendant's lady visited the chateau, like the Woodstock tower to which Royal Henry picked his way through "Love's Ladder?" Quien sabe? Who can unravel the mystery? It may have served for the foundation of the tower which existed when Mr. Papineau visited and described the place fifty years ago. The heavy cedar rafters, more than one hundred years old, are to this day sound: one has been ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... inner room; there he lies down flat on his stomach and peeps through a crevice in the rafters. Then he arises, creeps on tiptoe to the chimney and knocks at the partition wall three times, then he climbs down from his loft by means of a ladder, withdraws the ladder from the opening, and whistles to the watch-dog to come forth. One can hear how the chained beast scratches his neck, and growling and sniffing lies down before the door ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... altar, while further on is a procession of dignitaries following a troop of rams led by a priest to be sacrificed; another scene represents two individuals in the attitude of worship, wearing short loin-cloths, and climbing a ladder whose upper end has an uncertain termination, while a third person applies his hands to his mouth in the performance of some mysterious ceremony; beyond these are priests and priestesses moving in solemn file as if in the measured tread of some sacred dance, while in one corner ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... in the open cordial way common to all Dr. May's children, Aubrey was at once recognized, and the old man came down a step-ladder in the interior to welcome him, and answer his question where he ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which lie the golden eggs. And I climb and climb, but the trunk is so thick and smooth, and it is so far to the first branch. But I know that if I could only reach that first branch, then I should go right on to the top as on a ladder. I have not reached it yet, but I am going to, if it only be ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... your third, the certainty, though not fully, noting some of the minor events. Everything has changed from your present thinking. You have climbed the ladder to some public recognition by the influence of friends. You have yet much to achieve—will become a real benefactress. So I read by the people before you. The two stars yet beyond, and the sword which belongs ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... tree of forbidden fruit. She listened with eager curiosity to all the old artist had to tell her. And he knew much; for the eccentric old man had travelled for a long time over the world, and observed man on every step of the social ladder. He had been a favorite artist at the court of Vienna; he had had several of his operas brought out in Italy; and he had been admitted to the best society in Paris. At night, therefore, while sipping his coffee, his ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... Towler," said the hostler, "just run up the ladder into the loft and put some hay down into this horse's rack, will you? only ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father's wealth on the voyage home. This rescue would certainly make him a hero among his friends for life. He hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows sat on a step that led up to the quarter-deck. The swell had passed in the night, ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... begin at the bottom of the ladder once more," he said to Joe. "It's my own fault, and I won't complain. But what a fool I have been! I might have gone home by the next steamer if I hadn't gambled away all ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... opening that gives access to the chamber, but in the framing of the roof, as is shown elsewhere, some distinction between door and chimney is observed. The roof-hole is made double, one portion accommodating the ingress ladder and the other intended to serve for the egress ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... attitude of the entire body. To him they were, one and all, eloquently revealing. Behind each little gesture loomed a yet larger one, the scale increasing strangely, till his thoughts climbed up them as up a ladder into the region where her ideas lay naked before casual interpretation clothed them. Those, he reflected, who are rich in ideas, but find words difficult, may reveal themselves prodigally in gesture. Expression of one kind or another there must be; yet ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... change was that had come over Aloysia it is impossible to tell. The first thought is that, having risen to prominence by Mozart's tuition and assistance, she spurned the ladder that had uplifted her. But Nohl's theory that her head was turned by her admission to the favour that quickly surrounds the successful prima donna is hardly to be held, in view of the fact that in rejecting ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... are, when you refuse to pass under a ladder, or to begin a voyage on a Friday," Fil's mother answered. Then I realized that every person, every race, and every nation, and every color of mankind have their faults as well as their virtues, weak points as well as ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... have at least Faith, faith in God and faith in his art; for it is Faith that disposes him to learn, and by his learning to raise himself higher and higher on the ladder of Being, up to his goal, which ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... garden to the back; and again above that, the pile of dingy buildings rearing its frontage high into the night. A peculiar object lying stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his eyesight; but at length he had made it out to be a long ladder, or series of ladders bound into one; and he was still wondering of what service so great an instrument could be in such a scant enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by the noise of some one running violently down the stairs. This was ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... despairingly upon the smooth-bark tree, which rose, like a column, full twenty feet, without branch or twig. "What is to be done?" said I, appealing to two or three neighbors. At last, at the recommendation of one of them, a ladder was raised against the tree, and, equipped with a shirt outside of my clothes, a green veil over my head, and a pair of leather gloves on my hands, I went up with a saw at my girdle to saw off the branch on which they had settled, and lower it ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... tame pleasures; she would often climb The steepest ladder of the crudded rack Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, And like Arion on the dolphin's back Ride singing through the shoreless air;—oft-time 485 Following the serpent lightning's winding track, She ran upon the platforms of the wind, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... picket left on the street. The crowd was clearly obstructing the traffic, but no attempt was made to move them back or to protect the women, some of whom were attacked by sailors on their own doorsteps. The two police officers present watched without interference while three sailors brought a ladder from the Belasco Theater in the same block, leaned it against the side of the Cameron House, the Headquarters, climbed up to the second floor balcony, mounted the iron railing and tore down all banners and the American flag. One sailor administered ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... the three-hundred-year-old time when the great sea-battle was fought in the channel and many ships of the Armada wrecked along this Devonshire coast. And always coming back to sleep in the fascinating little "New Inn," as old as the hills, built on both sides of the one rocky ladder street of Clovelly, the street so steep that no horses can go in it, and at the bottom of whose breezy tunnel one sees the rolling floor of the sea. In so careless a way does the Inn ramble about the cliff that when I first went to my room, two flights up from the front, I caught ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... is set against the gate of Neis is called Eteoclus by name. He driveth a chariot with four horses, in whose nostrils are pipes making a whistling noise, after the fashion of barbarians. And on his shield he hath this device: a man mounting a ladder that is set against a tower upon a wall, and with it these words, 'NOT ARES' SELF SHALL DRIVE ME HENCE.' See that thou set a fit warrior ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... our look at the house wall opposite, a sound of shouting came up from below. A dozen children were sliding on barrel staves down a slope of heaped-up snow. They had been engaged in this sport all the afternoon and were our witnesses later that no one had made a hazardous escape by means of the ladder of the fire-escape, running, as I have said, at an almost ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... buxom young wife descended suddenly from the upper deck by the forecastle-ladder, like Nemesis from a thunder-cloud, and, seizing upon the small warbler, to whom she administered a preliminary shake which must have sadly changed the current of his ideas, drove him ignominiously ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Morlaix with the shadows of night. Despising the omnibus, we went down Jacob's Ladder, rejoicing and revelling in all the old-world atmosphere about us, and on our way passed our Antiquarian. He was still at his doorway, evidently watching for our arrival, and might have been motionless as a wooden sentry ever since we had left him ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... to be admirals. Those who object to promotion otherwise than by mere seniority should reflect upon the elementary fact that no business in private life could be successfully managed if those who enter at the lowest rungs of the ladder should each in turn, if he lived, become the head of the firm, its active director, and retire after he had held the position a few months. On its face such a scheme is an absurdity. Chances for improper favoritism can be minimized by a properly formed board; such as the board of last June, which ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... it, that the passage close to the bottom of your staircase terminated at the barred window in the street behind. Two of my men undertook to cut the bars. It was no easy matter, for there were sentries outside, and one came along the back every two or three minutes. The men had a light ladder and, directly he had passed, ran across the street, placed it in position, and fell to work. But the constant interferences by the passing of the sentinel annoyed them, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding the Civil War,—pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This style still holds the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... with Redworth through the park to the House of Commons, discoursing of Rails and his excellent old friend's rise to the top rung of the ladder and Beanstalk land, so elevated that one had to look up at him with watery eyes, as if one had flung a ball at the meridian sun. Arrived at famed St. Stephen's, he sent in his compliments to the noble patriot and accepted an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the edge of a quarrel with them, and especially with what he called the "Greeley faction," a good part of the time. He never liked them, but he was a shrewd man—a born politician—and was too sagacious to discard the principal round in the ladder by which he had climbed to eminence. He managed to keep in touch with the Anti-Slavery movement through all its steady advancement, but, as elsewhere stated, it was as a follower rather ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... are right!" the Marquis replied. "If I succeed, I will make you rich, and place you so high on the social ladder that the greatest names in France ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... ambulance, the steam fire engine, the hose cart, the hook and ladder company, the police patrol, the police officer on the street corner, the letter carrier gathering the mail, the district messenger boy, the express company, the delivery wagon of the stores, have all come in since Washington died. In his day the law required every householder in ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... that you? Excuse me; I was reading the news. Everybody ought to keep up with what's happenin'. The higher up we gits on the ladder of human intelligence, the more news we have—we ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... rely upon his unworthy lieutenant to do his honourable best," he gravely answered; and the next moment was "honourably" descending the bridge ladder to the deck. My miserable attempt at jocularity had absolutely missed fire; the dear, innocent fellow had accepted my speech ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Southern woman, she had soon ceased to feel a sense of discomfort in her changed surroundings. The instinct of class she had never had, and this lack of social reverence had helped her not a little in her ascent of the ladder. It is difficult to suffer from a distinction which one does not admit—and her perfect unconsciousness of inferiority to Mrs. Gay had placed her, without her being aware of it, in the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... merchant repeated in surprise, stopping in his passage up the rope ladder, which had been lowered for him. "Why, how is that? But never mind that now. First tell me what is ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... Betty, together, brought the step ladder and set it up on the piazza. Then Billy climbed up, and Betty reached up the flag on the broom so Billy could hook it into place. It was done at last. The wind took it, and the Stars and Stripes blew out over the lawn just as they ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... training its scholars as it trained its soldiers; the big businesses were the stronger for manufacturing mind as they manufactured material. English education was made compulsory; it was made free; many good, earnest, and enthusiastic men laboured to create a ladder of standards and examinations, which would connect the cleverest of the poor with the culture of the English universities and the current teaching in history or philosophy. But it cannot be said that the connection was very complete, or the achievement so thorough as the German ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... other eye, however, Mr. Diggs caught a glimpse of a step ladder, which he immediately lowered through the trap, and drawing a murderous looking revolver from his pocket, commanded Bunch to come up ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... (Amphitheatrum) prayer, work and perseverance lead to eternal wisdom by the mystical ladder of the seven theosophical steps. Perfect wisdom consists in the knowledge of God and his Son, in the understanding of the holy scriptures, in self knowledge and in knowledge of the great world and its Son, the Magnesia of the philosophers or the Philosopher's Stone. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... don't come nearer," called Jeffreys, as he approached; "there's a ladder there, where Scarfe ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... and began his search, Stokoe made no remark whatever, merely sat where he was, smoking. The gauger's search was very thorough; everything was topsy-turvy before many minutes had passed, but nothing could he find. There remained the loft, to which access was given by a ladder somewhat frail and dilapidated. Up went the gauger, and began tossing down into the room below the hay with which the place was filled. Quite a good place in which to hide contraband articles, thought he. And still Stokoe said never ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... act we find our friend Fritz as guest in the house of his tenant. Susel is sedulously engaged in selecting flowers and cherries for her {104} landlord, who, coming down into the garden, is presented by her with flowers. Soon she mounts a ladder, and plucking cherries, throws them to Fritz, who is uncertain which are the sweeter, the maiden's red lips or the ripe cherries, which she offers him. In the midst of their enjoyment the sound of bells and cracking of whips is heard, Fritz's friends enter. He soon takes them off ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... more in this than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not see." He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as early as six o'clock, that we might have the advantage of the morning sun upon the waters. We came to the guide's house at the appointed hour, and disencumbered ourselves of such garments as we did not wish to have wetted; descending the circular ladder, we followed the course of the path running along the top of the debris of the precipice, which I have already described. Having pursued this track for about eighty yards, in the course of which we were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... time I had not courage even to think that Papa could die, without being terrified. One day he was standing on a high step-ladder, and as I was close by he called out: "Move away, little Queen; if I fall I shall crush you." Instantly I felt an inward shock, and, going still nearer to the ladder, I thought: "At least if Papa falls I shall not have the pain of ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... Rezonville, we halted just beyond the village; there a fire was built, and the King, his brother, Prince Frederick Charles, and Von Roon were provided with rather uncomfortable seats about it, made by resting the ends of a short ladder on a couple of boxes. With much anxiety and not a little depression of spirits news from the battle-field was now awaited, but the suspense did not last long, for presently came the cheering intelligence that the French ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... terrible was the ferment among the hostage crew. And following David Bond's last visit to the stockade, had used extra precautions. The officers' families never entered the sliding-panel now, but climbed a ladder and viewed the Indians from the safe height of the board walk. An armed escort went with the rations on issue days. The sentry beats were halved, and the number of watchers thus doubled. And every night a detail entered and rigidly searched each lodge, to see ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... first planks of the deck the day before yesterday," said Allan, flying off to the new subject in his usual bird-witted way. "There's just enough of it done to walk on, if you don't feel giddy. I'll help you up the ladder, Mr. Brock, if you'll only ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... little square hatch the head and shoulders of Mr. Bartholomew McGuffey, chief engineer; first, second and third assistant engineer, oiler, wiper, water-tender, and coal-passer of the Maggie, appeared. He was standing on the steel ladder that led up from his stuffy engine room and had evidently come up, like a whale, for a breath of fresh air. "The way you ruin them bonnets o' yourn sure is a scandal," Mr. McGuffey concluded. "If I had a temper as nasty as yourn I'd take ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... he was a good-natured man. So we all climbed up on the ladder, one after another, and while we were waiting for the man to carry it around to the back of the sign we all sat in a row on top. Right underneath us were painted the words "Always on top." I made a picture of that sign with all of us sitting on the top of it. The one in the ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... New York were outclassed from the start. Two weeks after the season opened it was apparent they were doomed to fight it out for the last round on the ladder. That the Browns finally escaped the cellar in the closing days of the race was due largely to the efforts of Stovall, who was made manager to succeed Wallace near the ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... is an iron or zinc roof, supported by iron pillars, and in the centre of this is the watch tower. The only approach to the fort is by a movable ladder, which hangs over the side like the gangway of a ship of war, and can be raised by those on the inside by means of a rope suspended over a wheel in the roof. The opening in the wall at the head of the ladder is closed at the time of an attack by an iron platform, to which ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... of the rays, but is not equal in power to those which reflect them. It wastes a diamond placed in the focus, but causes no diminution of pure gold. Of the rubies, exposed to its action, one was made more vivid, the other paler. To see the glass, I climbed up stairs to the garret, and then up a ladder to the leads, and talked to the artist rather too long; for my voice, though clear and distinct for a little while, soon tires and falters. The organs of speech are yet very feeble, but will, I hope, be, by the mercy of God, finally restored: at present, like ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... STEP-LADDER.—We have had lots of clever inventions for saving room in small houses, but the most original is certainly this combination of a bed and a step-ladder. It should prove a very useful article where ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and looked dubiously at the town—a row of perhaps seventy iron-walled and palm-roofed houses set on high palm-trunk poles, each with its ladder dropping from the doorway to the one muddy street. Then spoke the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... more I'll stand and hold the ladder For reverend gentlemen to mount. Ah me! Few memories make me madder, Though merrier ones I may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 26, 1891 • Various
... the reluctant witness, delivering weighty opinions on the bearing of testimony, and making all respect him as a marvel of conservatism, dignity, and wisdom. This was to be one of the most important and pleasurable days of his life, the rung in a ladder of preferment which reached as ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... were often more impressed than the people in the rooms below. This seems due to the construction of the house; the attics are more approachable than the rooms from the staircase. The electricity follows the track of a person far better on a stair than on a ladder, it may be remarked. Thick walls, high window-sills, a commanding position, and a murmuring brook, are great securities against hypnotism, and these would be found in older Scotch castles. Another element of safety, the purling brook, is here mentioned; all noise is a good antidote; it ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... where I had not been for years, I found two members asleep, and, to my surprise, William on a ladder dusting books. ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... be of some use," replied he. "Wait a moment. I will provide some." He went away. The Baron F——— and I opened a window opposite the pavilion we had left. We fancied we heard two persons whispering to each other, and a noise like that of a ladder applied to one of the windows. This was, however, a mere conjecture, and I did not dare affirm it as a fact. The Russian officer came back with a brace of pistols, after having been absent about ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... it off so defiantly (as if Love himself went in for a degree at the University) Bruno developes, under the mask of amorous verse, all the various stages of abstraction, by which, as the last step of a long ladder, the mind attains actual "union." For, as with the purely religious mystics, union, the mystic union of souls with each other and their Lord, nothing less than union between the contemplator and the contemplated—the reality, or ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... have faced them and died fighting but fierce strokes battered me to my knees, fierce hands wrenched and tore at me, and grown faint with blows I was overborne, my hands lashed behind me, and thus helpless I was dragged along the gangway and so up the ladder to the poop where, plain to all men's sight, a whipping-post had been set up. Yet even so I struggled still, panting out curses on them, French and Spanish and English, drawing upon all the vile abuse of ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... then approached the rear of the house on tiptoe. Alexina followed in the same stealthy fashion, feeling no older at the moment than her niece. The verandah did not extend as far as the music room, which had been built a generation later, and the windows were some eight feet from the ground. A ladder, however, abridged the distance, and Alexina, obeying a gesture from Joan, climbed as hastily as her narrow skirt would permit and peered through the outside shutters, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... girl of fourteen or fifteen, formerly a pupil in the Kindergarten, was washing windows and paint. Well dressed, she was poised on a step-ladder, polishing a large pane of glass with a chamois skin. Her pail of suds stood on the shining floor, with a bit of oil-cloth under it, that not a drop of water should touch the varnish. I involuntarily looked ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... the Spanish ladder, it is a tall pine tree notched on the sides for steps, and the stump of a branch left or a peg inserted at considerable intervals, for hand supports to assist in raising the weight ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... crock of yellow meal down on a wooden box in the barn, and then climbed up the ladder ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... shore in her island. Ramsgate was a favourite resort of the Duchess's. The little Thanet watering-place, with its white chalk cliffs, its inland basin of a harbour, its upper and lower town, connected by "Jacob's Ladder," its pure air and sparkling water, with only a tiny fringe of bathing-machines, was in its blooming time of fresh rural peace and beauty when it was the cradle by the sea of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... a ladder Wrought out of scarlet silk and sewn with pearls Will come to meet me. White foot after foot, Like ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... until he is led up to two curious houses. The first of these was the house of Apuleius, where in a subtle and brilliant system of ideas it seemed as if a ladder had been set up from earth to heaven. But Marius discovered that what he wanted was the thing itself and not its mere theory, a life of realised ideals and not a dialectic. The second house was more curious still. Much pains is spent upon the description of ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... front of me gave a violent yaw, turning, perhaps, through twenty degrees; and almost at the same moment one shout followed another from on board; I could hear feet pounding on the companion ladder; and I knew that the two drunkards had at last been interrupted in their quarrel and awakened to a sense of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... rise the round pillars which support the dome and inclose the three great pipes already mentioned. Graceful as these look in their position, half a dozen men might creep into one of them and lie hidden. A man of six feet high went up a ladder, and standing at the base of one of them could just reach to put his hand into the mouth at its lower part, above the conical foot. The three great pipes are crowned by a heavily sculptured, ribbed, rounded dome; and this is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... took from a tree a ladder that he had used in nailing that day, set it under the window, and ascended half-way, hoodwinking his conscience by seizing a nail or two with his hand and testing their twig-supporting powers. He soon heard enough ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... pretty close to the sky—not as close as you would think to look at it, for it seems right against it; it is really about a mile off—a mile and ten feet, exactly, I believe, or at least that was the length of my eighty-second great-grandfather's ladder, though, of course, that had to slant some. My grandparent built that ladder when our folks got together and decided that we were getting too thick and something must be done about it. My ancestor said the sky was just the thing. He had never been there, but he had a beautiful imagination, ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... laughing. "I don't believe he could climb a ladder to save his life. Think of his pretty hands and his sweet ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... early Methodism, the strength whereof lay in its marvellous capacity of adapting religion to the needs and use of everyday life, and of bringing the infinite into the region of the homely and commonplace. We, with our added culture and our maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at a Jacob's Ladder formed according to the domestic architecture of the first half of the nineteenth century; but the people to whom the other world was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous in an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of angels, had grasped a truth ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... young, at best, only tolerate us. We are but the platform they dance on,—the ladder they ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... to assist Strickland in his work, hut I took the loading-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a gardener's ladder from the veranda and set it against the side of the room. The snake tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy cloth. Strickland took ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... ladder is the Humorous Ballad. The "Comic Ballad" we have had with us from the days of Robin Hood, but W. S. Gilbert in his "Bab Ballads" reached heights before his time unsuspected. By the use of catchy stanzas and unusual rhymes he made the type a thing of ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... steps, but an iron ladder leading down from the butcher's apartment to a dark passage, where he turned on ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... me out of my bunk like a shot from a gun. I ran past him, scrambled up the fo'c's'le ladder, and gained the deck in time to see Miss Belcher emerge from the after-companion upon the dawn, her hair in a "bun," her bare feet thrust into loose felt slippers, her form wrapped in a Newmarket overcoat closely buttoned over her ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... know what to do with a grassy slope which seems to have stretched part way up the hill. As I approached, I looked for the tower which the author was fabled to climb into at sight of the coming guest, and pull the ladder up after him; and I wondered whether he would fly before me in that sort, or imagine some easier means ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... four of them at the first blow; then, hurled back by the rolling, it cut in two an unfortunate fifth man, and struck and dismounted one of the guns of the larboard battery. Hence the cry of distress which had been heard. All the men rushed to the ladder. The gun-deck was empty in the twinkling of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... architecture of the villages and houses also drew their admiration. Taken as a whole, the circles of houses resembled the cells of a wasp's nest, of which the upper stories were reached on a crude ladder. Entrance could be gained only through a small opening in the roof, not even the sides facing the streets containing doors. A few heavily grated windows served as port-holes for their arrows. These peculiar constructions of baked clay are still fashionable in such old towns ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... no less than 65 feet in depth. It is called the Gargas Oubilettes. Its mouth is from 15 to 24 inches in diameter, and scarcely gives passage to a man (Fig. 1). Mr. Borderes, in the hope of discovering a new grotto, was the first to descend into this well, which he did by means of a rope ladder, and collected a few bones that were a revelation to me. Despite the great difficulty and danger of excavating at this point, I proceeded, and found at the first blow of the pick that there was here a deposit of the highest importance, since all the bones ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... in the little triangular fo'c'sle of the Anna Maria the men of the port watch were waiting for their dinner. The daylight which entered by the open hatch overhead spread a carpet of light at the foot of the ladder, which slid upon the deck to the heave and fall of the old barque's blunt bows, and left in shadow the double row of bunks and the chests on which the men sat. From his seat nearest the ladder, Bill, the ship's inevitable Cockney, raised his flat ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... two levels. He looked in the upper ones and found them deserted. The squads were on duty somewhere. He ran for the ladder to the lower level, took the wrong one, and ended up in a snapper-boat port. He had trained in the deadly little fighting rockets, and they never failed to interest him. But there wasn't time to admire them ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... fine, well-grown young woman with a splendid constitution—who had never had a day's illness in her life—became a white-lead worker. Convulsions seized her at the foot of the ladder in the works. Dr. Oliver examined her, found the blue line along her gums, which shows that the system is under the influence of the lead. He knew that the convulsions would shortly return. They did ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... American citizens never kick down the ladder by which we climbed up. Let us never forget the foundation upon which all permanent ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... wisdom. The world found it and began to be puffed up, thinking itself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom it became presumptuous and boasted it would attain the highest wisdom. And it made itself a ladder of the face of creation.... Then those things which were seen were known and there were other things which were not known; and through those which were manifest they expected to reach those that ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... alas! these things appear in their hearts to the damned too late; as also do all things else. This will be but like the repentance of the thief, about whose neck is the halter, and he turning off the ladder; for the unfortunate hap of the damned will be, that the glory of heavenly things will not appear to them till out of season. Christ must now indeed be shewed to them, as also the true nature of faith and all grace; but it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... this name who applied to the Committee for assistance, was a mulatto of medium size, with a prepossessing countenance, and a very smart talker. With only a moderate education he might have raised himself to the "top round of the ladder," as a representative of the down-trodden slave. Seeking, as usual, to learn his history, the subjoined questions and answers were the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... exercises designed to develop the telepathic power. It has been found by centuries of experience that the student who develops telepathic power, in a systematic way, will gradually unfold and evolve the clairvoyant and psychometric power. It constitutes the first rungs on the ladder of psychic development. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... priest, Judas kissing Jesus, Judas' money-bag, the Veronica"—this is immediately above the place of the cross on the reredos—"the Saviour's coat, with the Cross, crown of thorns, nails, hammer, pillar, scourges, reed, sponge, lance, sword with the ear of Malchus upon it, lanthorn, ladder, cock, dice, etc." Under the tower the vaulting is of wood, dating from 1634. Before this year the choir-lantern was visible from below, with its striking late Norman stonework divided into two tiers. It has been proposed to re-open the lantern, but this would necessitate the removal ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... have written this sentence the cloud has again dissolved itself, like a nasty solution in a bottle, with miraculous and unnatural rapidity, and the hills are in sight again; a double-forked flash—rippled, I mean, like the others—starts into its frightful ladder of light between me and Wetherlam, as I raise my eyes. All black above, a rugged spray cloud on the Eaglet. (The 'Eaglet' is my own name for the bold and elevated crag to the west of the little lake above Coniston mines. ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... voice to be heard above the din. Mrs. Murray's new bonnet nodded its red roses and black ostrich tips among the lace handkerchiefs and embroidery of the fancy table—she being enthroned on the step-ladder for lack of other seat—and her delighted eyes ran from her daughter to the voting blackboard. She waved a spangled fan and smiled buoyantly at every familiar face, whether turned towards her in recognition or not. Mrs. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... kitchens and domestic offices. The building was only some four hundred yards from the road, so I turned in to get a light for my pipe. I noticed, as I was getting near, that a man was standing on a step-ladder, apparently doing some painting. He looked down on me from his ladder as I approached. Then I saw that instead of painting he was engaged in tarring the roof of the building. He was evidently an amateur tar-man. The bucket which held the tar was tied on to the ladder below ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... slide up and down a rope," answered Uncle Wiggily. "I have a strong cord fastened to the chimney, and I crawl up it, just like a monkey-doodle, and when I want to come down, I slide down. It's better than a ladder, and I can climb a rope very well, for I used to be a sailor on a ship. See, ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... thus consoling himself with illusory suppositions, Boxtel was not able to resist the burning curiosity which was devouring him. In the evening, therefore, he placed a ladder against the partition wall between their gardens, and, looking into that of his neighbour Van Baerle, he convinced himself that the soil of a large square bed, which had formerly been occupied by different plants, was removed, and the ground disposed ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a few yards from the huge gymnasium. I climbed up breathless at full speed, and reached the wide plank at the top; when there I unfastened the rope ladder, but, as I could not raise the wooden ladder, by which I had ascended, up to me, I unfastened the rings. The wooden ladder fell and broke, making a great noise. I then stood up wickedly triumphant ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... and ripe experience is Antonio Scotti. His operatic career has been rich in development, and he stands to-day at the top of the ladder, as one of the most admired dramatic baritones ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... to put it away from me. Perhaps the same thought was causing anguish to the heart of my friend. I was thankful when we got alongside the corvette; our fears would be relieved, or we might know the worst. The accommodation ladder was lowered and manned to do us honour, and the captain, an Englishman by his appearance, stood ready to receive us. He put out his hand as Captain Bland stepped on deck, ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... burning, so as to cut off all communication, endeavour to escape by means of a trap-door in the roof, a ladder leading to which should always be ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... on the safety bars of the ladder leading down to the lounge. He pulled himself toward it and as he was descending, the magnetism of the electroparalytic bolt loosed its hold and he fell headlong. Picking himself up, he hurried into ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... mean down-ladder—part of the barn was fun too, especially for Pincher. There was as good ratting there as you could wish to see. Martha tried it, but she could not help running kindly beside the rat, as if she was in double harness with it. This is the noble bull-dog's gentle and affectionate nature ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... on the ladder, and I confess that I felt no little anxiety for the issue. I sat upon one of the lockers, still wearing the skipper's coat and hat. It was rather dark in the cabin, and I was not surprised that he did ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... Handsell? I think not! You are one of the first to whom I should have looked for help in this matter. You owe it to us. We have a right to demand it. For myself personally I have no life now outside the life political. I am tired of being in opposition. I want to hold office. One mounts the ladder very slowly. I see my way in a few months to going up two rungs at a time. We want Mannering. We must have him. Don't force me to make ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the billet, with a ladder leading up to it, was a sort of grain bin, with a door in it. This place was the headquarters of our guests, the rats. Many a stormy cabinet meeting was held there by them. Many a boot was thrown at it during the night to let them know that Tommy Atkins objected to the matter under discussion. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... impetuous spirit, and soon began to chafe under the yoke of a religious life. He determined, therefore, to set himself free from it, and procured some secular habits, pistols, and a horse. Just as he was about to escape over the walls of the monastery by means of a ladder, the prior entered ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... 16 feet in diameter, nearly circular, and are entered through a hole at the top which appears to answer the double purpose of a chimney and a door. from this entrance you decend to the floor by a ladder. the present habitations of these people were on the surface of the ground and do not differ from those of the tribes of the rapids. their language is the same with that of the Chilluckkittequaws. these people appeared very friendly. some of them informed us that ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... educate him would be to open his eyes, to cause him to think and to prevent his being camouflaged. They knew that to educate him would be to make him dissatisfied with his lot at the bottom of the ladder. They knew that to educate him would introduce the leaven of divine discontent into his being. They knew that to educate him would cause him to aspire to something higher than hard labor or menial service. They knew that to educate ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... gave us a very comfortable supper, and soon afterwards she asked me if I would like to go to bed. Not liking to show any distrust of my hosts, I assented with apparent readiness, and followed the old woman into a hall, and up a rude ladder, which I should have found it very difficult to mount had it not been for my early exercise in this kind of gymnastics, when searching for hen's eggs in the barn, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... breast; unconsciously giving expression by outward gesture to the inward torture which he felt. Was he to give up all at once—all for which he had bartered his soul, rank, wealth, position—to begin life again on the lowest round of the ladder, with the brand of disgrace, the burden of shame upon him? Could he endure to appear in the presence of Maccabeus, to sue from him the place of hewer of wood and drawer of water; to exchange the pride of power and pomp ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... and then instantly burst forth again as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and main till every stomach in the party was laden with all it could carry. And when the new-comers ascended the ladder to their comfortable feather beds on the second floor—to wit the garret—Mrs. Hawkins was obliged ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... glad you have heard it. I was wondering how best to tell you. I thought Garafield's might be a stepping-stone, these hard times, but it may prove the veritable ladder itself. Only"— ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... fall, down, spiraling, weightless, off the cliff as in a dream, off the ladder, the tree, he was a child and his toes were tingling as he stood too near the edge of the cliff, ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... king told his dream,—that he seemed to see a high ladder, upon which he went so high in the air that heaven was open: for so high reached the ladder. "And when you awoke me, I was come to the highest step ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... tarpaulins from the main hatch, and broke it open. With the lamp in his left hand, the skipper descended into the hold by way of the stationary iron ladder. ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... them while she repented very hard. Mother had said that very day that she never felt troubled about the baby when Betty had care of him, and that very day she had recklessly taken him up into the barn loft, climbing behind him and guiding his little feet from one rung of the perpendicular ladder to another, teaching him to cling with clenched hands to the rounds until she had landed him in the loft. There she had persuaded him he was a swallow in his nest, while she had taken her fill of the delight of leaping from the loft down into the bay, where she had ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... followed, and another, a broadside of deafening reports. The terrifying sounds came racing aft. They reached the bulkhead nearest them, and tore through the fire-room, bringing unmasked fear to every man of the watch. The crew stood for a moment awed, then broke, and, rushing for the ladder, fought for a chance to escape this new, unknown ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... traditionally, in the intelligence of the crowd. American social history is a glaring instance of how the theory of equal dignity for all men can entangle itself with caste distinctions, snobbery, and the power of wealth. American economic history betrays the pioneer helping to kick down the ladder which he himself had raised toward equal opportunity for all. American literary history—especially contemporary literary history—reflects the result of all this for the American mind. The sentimental in our literature ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... far less a matter of private venture, than formerly. More and more we have come to see that the State and the Municipality, in their respective areas, have something to say on the matter. The idea of the Golden Ladder, having its base in the Elementary Schools and its top rung in the highest honours of the University, has taken hold of the public mind, and has passed out of the region of abstractions into practical life. Institutions of Local Government ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... now; they may serve him to gang up the Lawnmarket [Footnote: The procession of the criminals to the gallows of old took that direction, moving, as the school-boy rhyme had it, Up the Lawnmarket, Down the West Bow, Up the lang ladder, And down the little tow.] in, the scoundrel!' Mr. Glossin then demanded to see the packet, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... keeping a rule which is the arbitrary exactment of God. It might just as well be some other rule. That is, in their minds, the practice of the spiritual life has no immediate ends; it is not productive of spiritual expansion; it is not a ladder set up on earth to reach heaven on which they are climbing ever nearer God, and on the way are catching ever broader visions of spiritual reality as they ascend. The knowledge and the love of God are to them phrases, not practical goals, invitations to paths of spiritual adventure. Hence, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... head, so that he fell dead upon the ground. And when Capaneus assaulted the city, crying that not even the Gods should stay him, there came upon him the wrath which he defied; for when he had mounted the ladder and was now about to leap upon the battlements, Zeus smote him with the thunderbolt, and there was no life left in him, so fierce was the burning heat of the lightning. But the chiefest fight was between the two ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... these lay a fox's tail, mounted on an antique silver handle, wherewith, as often as he had occasion to take down a book, he gently brushed the dust off the upper leaves before opening it. I think I have mentioned all the furniture of the room except a sort of ladder, low, broad, well carpeted, and strongly guarded with oaken rails, by which he helped himself to books from his higher shelves. On the top step of this convenience, Hinse of Hinsfeldt, (so called from one of the German Kinder-maerchen,) a venerable tom-cat, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and bewildered, was seeking a reply, she passed quickly to the next group, going from one to another, and watching with interest the placing of the bouquet on the summit of the hut. One of the men brought a ladder and fastened the flowers to a spike. When they were securely attached and began to nod in the air, he waved his hat and shouted: "Hou, houp!" This was the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... of the shot, and then darted to the companion-ladder, to hurry down into the cabin so as to see what the consequences of the heavy report had been there, for in the hurry and excitement of the preparations he had for the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... vhen I say dat all of Miss Dorothy's lessons vill go for naught, if she does not seek a time und place to exploit her talents. There is open for her a career of great prominence—of dat I am very sure, but to attain de pinnacle of success, she must first go a few steps above de middle rounds of de ladder. Mr. Ludlow has a good proposition to make to her, und one dat meets with my hearty approval. I beg of you, Mrs. Calvert, listen carefully to vhat he has to say, und deliberate before you give him ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... strengthened the suspicions of Lalande, who, ceasing his questions, ordered her to be taken to the gallows and hanged. The old woman walked to the place of execution with such a firm step that the general began to think he would get no information from her, but at the foot of the ladder her courage failed. She asked to be taken back before the general, and having been promised her life, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... elastica, a Euphorbiaceous tree; but in Central America the tree that yields it it is a species of wild fig (Castilloa elastica). It is easily known by its large leaves, and I saw several whilst ascending the river. When the collectors find an untapped one in the forest, they first make a ladder out of the lianas or "vejuccos " that hang from every tree; this they do by tying short pieces of wood across them with small lianas, many of which are as tough as cord. They then proceed to score the bark, with cuts which extend ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... charge of the basket of food, and Miss Chuff drew a small rope ladder from a locker under the driver's seat. This she threw deftly up to the top of the wall, hooking it upon the iron spikes. Bleak politely ascended first, and they scaled the wall, dropping down into ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... each fireman began to interfere with his neighbor; a series of quarrels arose as couplings were made or broken; then, after an interminable delay, water began to flow, as if by a miracle. But except in rare instances it failed to reach the flames. A ladder-truck, drawn by another excited company, now rumbled upon the scene, its arrival adding to the general disorder. Meanwhile, the steady tradewind fanned the blaze to ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... fortified towns, were provided with shields, under cover of which they made their approaches to the place to be attacked. In their attack they advanced under cover of the arrows of the bowmen, and instantly applied the scaling-ladder to the ramparts. The testudo, a wooden shelter, was also used, large enough to contain several men. The battering-ram and movable towers resembled those of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... it, recognised the column which had been shown him in his dream, and he calculated that it was thirty-two cubits high. He went to the neighbouring village, and ordered a ladder of that height to be made; and when the ladder was placed against the pillar, he ascended, knelt down on the top, and ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... man. Now, anything which brings in Sir John Ramorny touches a much greater man—I think Simon Glover told as much to Sir Patrick Charteris. If it be as I guess, I have reason to thank Heaven and all the saints I stabbed him not upon the ladder when I made ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... "Right up that ladder there." The Solar Guard captain pointed to the ladder leading to the radar deck. "Manning's on duty now and will take care of ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... themselves in the matter of arches, there being one at every hundred yards almost. At San Francisco the crowd was greater than at Tayug; and here was set out for us another sumptuous tiffin, in a house built the day before for this very purpose, of bamboo and nipa palm. Access to it was had by a ladder and we sat down at a table, while the senoras of the place waited on us, every inch of standing-room being occupied by people who had crowded in to see the performance of the Governor-General and of his comitiva! And perform we did—we had to! ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... cold that at fust I thought I'd give up the idea. The longer I stood on the edge looking at the mud the colder it looked, but at last I turned round and went slowly down the ladder. I waited a moment at the bottom, and was just going to step off when I remembered that I 'ad got my boots on, and I 'ad to go up ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... not struck you yet," cried the other, "but, by the Virgin, if I have more of this I will come down the ladder ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lean against it. The wood of which the chairs are made is mahogany, walnut, or cedar. The large round or oval table which stands in the middle of the room is of the same wood, and so are the card-table, the Davenport, the chiffonier, and that Jacob's-ladder-like what-not in the corner. In some houses the upholsterer has stuffed the room with useless tables. Of course there is a fender and fire-irons, and probably a black doleful-looking grate, which during two-thirds of the year is stuffed with ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... charming, and soon singing herself into the good graces of a large audience; ditto, M. COSSIRA, "than which," as the Prophet NICHOLAS would say, "a more competent Romeo—though perhaps a trifle full in the waist for balcony-scaling by moonlight." If he had really trusted himself to that gossamer ladder in the Fourth Act, he would never have got away to Mantua, especially as Juliette, with the thoughtlessness of her age and sex, omitted to secure it in any way. Fortunately it was not a long drop, and ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... e.g., arbitrary changes in regulations, numerous rigorous inspections, retroactive application of new business regulations, and arrests of "disruptive" businessmen and factory owners. A wide range of redistributive policies has helped those at the bottom of the ladder; the Gini coefficient is among the lowest in the world. Because of these restrictive economic policies, Belarus has had trouble attracting foreign investment, which remains low. Growth has been strong in recent years, despite the ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... the scaffolding where I had seen Mr. Lambe and his friends retreating, and in my way I nearly overturned several of the Rump. I assured the High Bailiff that a poll would be demanded, and with great difficulty I was just in time to seize the tail of Mr. Lambe's coat, as he was walking down the ladder of the scaffold. In doing this I was obliged to jostle Mr. Lambton, who appeared excessively indignant at the shake which he received from me. I, however, kept fast hold of Mr. Lambe's coat, and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... a few minutes later up the ladder of the steamer had not the appearance of one who has performed a heroic action. His clothes had shrunk upon his body, and the sea water was oozing from him in all directions. His face was blue with cold ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Warfield was talking with Mrs. Hawkins while her husband saddled two horses. Mrs. Hawkins lived within her four walls and called that, her "spere," and spoke of her husband as "he." You know the type of woman. That Senator Warfield was anything less than a godlike man who stood very high on the ladder of Fame, she would never believe. So she related garrulously certain incoherent, aimless utterances of Lorraine's, and cried a little, and thought it was perfectly awful that a sweet, pretty girl like that should be crazy. She would have made an ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... much more time for examination of the delicate lines traced upon the sky by the yards and cordage, for the boat was cleverly run close up, the oars tossed on high, and as the bowman hooked on to a ring-bolt the boat was drawn beneath a side ladder. ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... their means with their desires. But I, who took myself for a man of genius, must needs feel attracted by these very she-coxcombs. So, as I cherished ideas so different from those generally received; as I wished to scale the heavens without a ladder, was possessed of wealth that could not circulate, and of knowledge so wide and so imperfectly arranged and digested that it overtaxed my memory; as I had neither relations nor friends in the midst of this lonely and ghastly desert, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... more than half the thickness of the walls on either side of it. This cross wall is still 6 feet high on the side nearest the cliff, but there is no evidence of a doorway or opening through it. The back rooms must have been reached by a ladder in front, thence over the roof of the room. The cliff entrance was a narrow doorway left in the front wall. The ends of the walls on either side were smoothly finished, as ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... ended at a wide ladder, coiling in slow curves into gloom below and shadows above. He sensed that he was in a building of some size. He was afraid to go down, for even looking in that direction almost finished his sense of ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... glad you could come," cried Mrs. Applegate, as Phil and Mr. Payton climbed the short ladder preparatory to helping the women folk on board. "The Dickensons and Archie Blackstone—we came over with them, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... gunner, whose name was John Mondle; a man of very indifferent morals. This man's cabin was between the decks, exactly over where I lay, abreast of the quarter-deck ladder. One night, the 20th of April, being terrified with a dream, he awoke in so great a fright that he could not rest in his bed any longer, nor even remain in his cabin; and he went upon deck about four o'clock in the morning extremely agitated. He immediately told those on the ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... ten feet in height, admitted of a rope- ladder being distended {174a} between the beacon and the building. By this 'Jacob's Ladder,' as the seamen termed it, a communication was kept up with the beacon while the rock was considerably under water. One end of it being furnished with tackle-blocks, was fixed to ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... individual, I was put into a waterman's boat with my chest and bed, and was sent on board. On reporting myself, I was told by the commanding officer not to bother him, but to go to my mess, where I should be taken care of. On descending a ladder to the lower deck, I looked about for the mess, or midshipmen's berth, as it was then called. In one corner of this deck was a dirty little hole about ten feet long and six feet wide, five feet high. It was lighted by two or three dips, ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... and Anne met me coming from my room to inquire what was the matter, and told me—indeed her face told me! Lovell was up and ready—most active and judicious. Thirty men were assembled; water in abundance. Frank Langan indefatigable and most courageous. The long ladder was put up against the house near the pump; up the men went, and bucket after bucket poured down, Mulvanny standing on the top of the chimney. Meantime the great press, next the maid's room, was torn down ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... boat pushed out instantly, in answer to the hand, from the garden next to the one in which I stood. The waterman, pulling to the schooner, talked with the man for a moment, evidently settling the amount of his fare. After the haggling, my gentleman climbed into the boat by a little rope-ladder at the stern. Then the boatman pulled away upstream, going on the last of the flood, within twenty yards ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... accordance with the chief mate's instructions, and the lookout on the topgallant forecastle had responded with the usual cry of "All's well!" one of the forecastle hands came slouching along aft, and, ascending the poop ladder with a certain suggestion of haste and ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... run and a jump to reach the piece of root that was the bottom rung of a natural ladder ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... met a native in the woods whom they brought on board. "He was a little elderly man, strait made, and spoke not one syllable that was intelligible." His legs and arms bore no proportion in length to the rest of his body, and his manner of ascending the ship's ladder was remarkable and proved that he was much accustomed to climbing. His method was "to stretch out his arms as far as he could reach and then bring his feet to the same place with a jerk." Grant says: "He spoke a jargon of simple sounds as I particularly observed only a few words that ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... Corporal Sam, taking it up, screamed it again and again. In the darkness, behind and below, the sergeant heard Captain Archimbeau calling to his men to hurry. One ladder-bearer came clattering up; but the ladders were in six-foot lengths, and a single length was useless. Nevertheless, in his rage of haste, Corporal Sam seized it from the man, and was bending to clamp it over the pit, when from the parapet to the right a sudden ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... was about to speak, the American leaped from his side, made the companion-ladder, and fairly tumbled below, Approaching Captain Evans, ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... other guests. "And there, Captain Bluteau, you will hear about Napoleon. We shall find a few old cronies who will set Goguelat, the postman, to declaiming about the people's god. Nicolle, my stable-man, was to put a ladder by which we can get into the hay-loft through a window, and find a place where we can see and hear all that goes on. A veillee is worth the trouble, believe me. Come, it isn't the first time I've hidden in the hay to hear the tale of a soldier or some peasant yarn. But ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Register had been most earnest in its desire for a better system of public education. The late Mr. John Howard Clark, its then editor, wanted some articles on the education of girls, and he applied to me to do them, and I wrote two leading articles on the subject, and another on the "Ladder of Learning." from the elementary school to the university, as exemplified in my native country where ambitious lads cultivated literature on a little oatmeal. For an Adelaide University was in the air, and ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... and sometimes the attitude of the entire body. To him they were, one and all, eloquently revealing. Behind each little gesture loomed a yet larger one, the scale increasing strangely, till his thoughts climbed up them as up a ladder into the region where her ideas lay naked before casual interpretation clothed them. Those, he reflected, who are rich in ideas, but find words difficult, may reveal themselves prodigally in gesture. Expression of one kind or another there must ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... have got to the windows up there without a ladder," decided Rand, after a study of the situation. "And you say the windows ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,— By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... house in Finland stands a large wooden ladder, tall enough to reach to the top of the roof, for fire is very common, and generally ends in everything being demolished by the flames. Buckets of water, passed on by hand, can do little to avert disaster, when the old wooden ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... climbed one of the ladders. He returned with a blanketed figure that gazed on Rhoda non-committally. At a sign, Kut-le lifted Rhoda, and the little group moved noiselessly toward the dwelling, clambered up a ladder, and disappeared. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... sir, you must rise by degrees, first 100 being the servant of some common Lady or Knights wife, then a little higher to a Lords wife; next a little higher to a Countesse; yet a little higher to a Duchesse, and then turne the ladder. 105 ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... he be mighty much erblige, en no sooner is he say dat dan Brer Rabbit snatched off he coat en lipt up de ladder, en sot in dar en put on mo' shingles in one hour dan Brer Fox kin put ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... hands' bladed fall Why make ye much ado, and boast withal Your armourers' engines? See, these palms were bare That caught the angry beast, and held, and tare The limbs of him! ... Father! ... Go, bring to me My father! ... Aye, and Pentheus, where is he, My son? He shall set up a ladder-stair Against this house, and in the triglyphs there Nail me this lion's head, that gloriously I bring ye, having slain him—I, even I! [She goes through the crowd towards the Castle, showing the head and looking for a place ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... tool-house, saws were in demand, and Gem was deputed to confiscate all the hammers and nails in the house for the use of the builders; the work went bravely on, and by noon the walls of the fortification were up, and the roof well advanced towards completion. A ladder brought from the barn, took the workmen half-way up the trunk; but the old tree was lofty, and a long space intervened between the end of the ladder and the lowest branches, which must of necessity be ascended in that squirming ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... Person, the Light of the World, the very Godhead itself. Thus there is earthy, airy, etheric gold; gold as intellect, gold as love, gold as truth; from the curse of the world, the cause of a thousand crimes, there ascends a Jacob's Ladder of symbols to divinity itself, whereby men may learn that God works by sacrifice: that His universe is itself His broken body. As gold in the purse, fire on the forge, sunlight for the eyes, breath in the body, knowledge in the mind, love in the heart, and wisdom in the understanding, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... ice had fallen from the rigging on to the deck above my cabin. Every one starts up and throws on some extra garment; those that are taking an afternoon nap jump out of their berths right into the middle of the saloon, calling out to know what has happened. Pettersen rushes up the companion-ladder in such wild haste that he bursts open the door in the face of the mate, who is standing in the passage holding back 'Kvik,' who has also started in fright from the bed in the chart-room, where she is expecting her confinement. On deck we could discover ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... clearness of conception of a Divine Person that turns to us with love and tenderness in His heart, apart from Christ and His teaching! If you take away from civilised men all the knowledge of God that they owe to Jesus Christ, what have you left? The ladder by which they climbed is kicked away by a great many people nowadays, but it is to Him that they owe the very conceptions in the name of which some of them turn round ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... out with him and trotted down the staircase, Mr Venus attending to open the street door. Mr Sloppy's instructions had been to deposit his burden in the road; but, a scavenger's cart happening to stand unattended at the corner, with its little ladder planted against the wheel, Mr S. found it impossible to resist the temptation of shooting Mr Silas Wegg into the cart's contents. A somewhat difficult feat, achieved with great dexterity, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... floor swept clean and the wooden shutters opened for light, where the minister preached against a mixed background of fanners, corn measures, piles of sacks, and spare implements of the finer sort; and the congregation, who had come up a ladder cautiously like hens going to roost—being severally warned about the second highest step—sat on bags stuffed with straw, boards resting on upturned pails, while a few older folk were accommodated with chairs, and some youngsters disdained not the floor. It was pleasanter in the ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... and he went softly down the ladder to see what the sound really was. But that was not so easy, for it proved to be below decks; but he saw a light glimmering through a small scuttle abaft the mate's cabin, and the sounds were in the neighborhood ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... in it; and ye hae preached Mr Harry awa to the prison; and ye hae preached twenty punds out o' the Laird's pocket that he likes as ill to quit wi'; and sae ye may haud sae for ae wee while, without preaching me up a ladder and down a tow. Sae, come awa, come awa; the family hae had eneugh o' your testimony to mind ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to do her bidding, and fetching a ladder with rungs about two feet six apart, placed it against a lemon-tree at the back of the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... without any risk of falling. Now, a steeple is much more securely fixed than a stool; its top is as broad as a table; and there is nothing to prevent anybody from standing upon it as long as he pleases, if he only will not think he is going to fall. You go up half-a-dozen steps of a ladder without fear, and then persuade yourself you can go no farther; but there is nothing more dangerous in the next half-dozen, so far as they are themselves concerned; nor in the next hundred, nor the next thousand, for that ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... have had lots of clever inventions for saving room in small houses, but the most original is certainly this combination of a bed and a step-ladder. It should prove a very useful article where the occupant of the bed is a light sleeper and doesn't mind having to get up when the step-ladder is needed. It might also be useful in very large families where chairs were scarce. By day it could be stood upright, and the children ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... strong place," Cuthbert said, "and difficult to take by surprise. A watch no doubt is always kept over the entrance, and there we can hope for no success. The only plan will be to scale the wall by means of a ladder; but how the ladder is to be got to so great a height, I own at present passes my comprehension." After much thought, Cuthbert went on, "It might, methinks, be practicable for an archer to approach the walls, and to shoot an arrow over the angle of the castle so that it would ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... circus performance. No; of course they don't climb up on a rope ladder as if they were starting a ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... kindness I owe my escape. She obtained from her lover, a servant in the castle, that assistance which gave me liberty. One night when Carlo, who had been appointed my guard, was asleep, Nicolo crept into his chamber, and stole from him the keys of my prison. He had previously procured a ladder of ropes. O! I can never forget my emotions, when in the dead hour of that night, which was meant to precede the day of my sacrifice, I heard the door of my prison unlock, and found myself half at liberty! My trembling limbs with difficulty supported ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... the sound of a piano and of youthful voice and laughter, and then he was in the library. The thought of one man owning all those books overpowered him. There they were, in stately rows, from the floor to the high ceiling, and a portable ladder with which to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that no one could enter the Professions who had no money. No need to write up 'None but the sons of gentlemen may apply.' Very many sons of gentlemen, in fact, had to turn away sorrowfully after gazing with wistful eyes upon that ladder which they knew that they, too, could climb, as well as a Denman or an Erskine. As for the sons of poor parents, they could not so much as think of the ladder: they hardly knew that it existed: they ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... I descended a ladder into a cellar ten feet below the gun level, where some of the gunners were lying on a thick carpet of perfectly ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Faustus, having resolved to pass a jovial evening, took some of his old college-companions, and invited them to make free with the archbishop of Saltzburgh's cellar. They took a ladder, and scaled the wall. They seated themselves round, and placed a three-legged stool, with bottles and glasses in the middle. They were in the heart of their mirth, when the butler made his appearance, and began to cry thieves with all his might. The doctor at once conjured ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... from an agrarian economy dependent on concessionary British market access to a more industrialized, free market economy that can compete globally. This dynamic growth has boosted real incomes (but left behind many at the bottom of the ladder), broadened and deepened the technological capabilities of the industrial sector, and contained inflationary pressures. While per capita incomes have been rising, however, they remain below the level of ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... invalid lady somewhere in City Road. A total stranger. Place: A shop. Room: At the tip-top of the house. The last part of the staircase was exceedingly narrow and steep, the stairs themselves little broader than a ladder. Tableau: A lady in bed, the only occupant of the room; a young minister, nearly all head and shirt collar, the rest of him a mere detail; the minister very shy and, as it were, "struck all of a heap" by the novelty of his position. The young minister, nervously shy, sat down, and the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the Bontoc culture area which are built directly on the ground. Most of them are raised on posts several feet from the earth. Some few have side walls extending to the ground, but even those have a floor raised 2, 3, or more feet from the ground and which is reached by means of a short ladder. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... said Springall, in a mournful tone. "And did ye bring me ashore, and up that devil's rope-ladder, to leave me ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... story. It is so," chuckled Nell. "But I suppose that was why they asked him to amuse and entertain the little folks at one session of the Union. Father talked for fifteen minutes, all about Jacob's ladder, and those old stories. And not a kid ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... Essex was to seek a ladder for his ambitions, and to find, as others before and after him have found, the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... earnestly, and in a low voice which the click of the billiard balls prevented Stafford from hearing. "It is for him! For my boy, Mr. Howard! It's for him that I have been working, am still working. For myself—I am satisfied—as he said; but not for him. I want to see him still higher up the ladder than I have climbed. I have done fairly well—heaven and earth! if anyone had told me twenty years ago that I should be where and what I am to-day—well, I'd have sold my chances for a bottle of ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... stones, covered with birch boughs, the leaves of which gave out an agreeable smell, and a large tub of water. The floor was strewn with straw, and under the roof was a platform extending across one end of the building. This was covered with soft hay, and reached by means of a ladder, for the purpose of getting the full effect of the steam. Some stools, and a bench for our clothes, completed the arrangements. There was also in one corner a pitcher of water, standing in a little heap of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... pranks of men who make a figure in the world. The career of Turton promised to be a brilliant one; and had he not offended against the moral feeling of the country, and lost his position, he would have mounted to the highest step in the ladder of fortune. At Eton he showed himself a dashing and a daring boy, and was looked upon by Dr. Goodall, the then head master, as one of his best classical scholars; by his schoolfellows he was even more highly regarded, being the acknowledged "cock of the school." Amongst the qualities that endeared ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host's invitation. The more so, since, with an untimely caprice of punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest's preceding him up the ladder leading to the elevation; where, one on each side of the last step, sat for armorial supporters and sentries two of the ominous file. Gingerly enough stepped good Captain Delano between them, and in the instant of leaving them behind, like ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... forced the constable up against the square oaken post which was part of the framework of the building, and which formed one side of the perpendicular ladder that led to the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... of him, however, and he awaited his turn nervously. When he left the shop an old lamplighter was going down the street with torch and ladder, leaving a double line of twinkling lights in his wake, as he disappeared down the wide "Paris road." Jules watched him a moment, and then ran rapidly on. For many centuries the old village of St. ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... must have at least Faith, faith in God and faith in his art; for it is Faith that disposes him to learn, and by his learning to raise himself higher and higher on the ladder of Being, up to his goal, which ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... cleansing. His theory was that everything would "do" indefinitely. He passed much of his time in making things "do." His confidence in the theory that things could indeed be made to "do" was usually justified, but the steps from the painting-shop—a gimcrack ladder with hand-rail, attached somehow externally to a wall—had at length betrayed it. That the accident had happened to himself, and not to a lad balancing a plankful of art-lustre ware on one shoulder, was sheer luck. And now the odd-man, with the surreptitious air of one engaged ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... was a straight, sinewy fellow with shrewd, kindly gray eyes and "sandy" hair. He was clad like a frontiersman and the moment the colonel saw him he exclaimed, "By all that's good an' glorious, Zeb, I've seen ye in my dreams followin' me up the ladder at the barrier, but I never expected to see ye in the flesh again. Where's yer Fidus—what's his ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... still, as he passed down the ladder, the spectators observed that he cast a lingering anxious look at the horizon to windward and the land to leeward, and then disappeared with concern strongly expressed in every ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... was speedily beaten down, but their leader desperately defended the ladder leading to the poop. He was struck by two arrows, and fell on one knee, and Edmund was about to climb the ladder when the door of the cabin in the poop opened, and a Norse maiden some sixteen years old sprang out. Seeing her father wounded ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... discovered Sofia saw a ladder of several slimy steps washed by black, oily waters that sucked and swirled sluggishly round spiles green with weed ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... they gave light just as if it had been oil. Visitors were attracted by the report of his sanctity. Once a countryman came from a distance (com feorran sum ceorl) to see a man of whom so much was said. When he came into the church, Constantius was on a ladder trimming the lamps. He was an under-grown, slight-built, shabby figure. The countryman inquired which was Constantius; and, being told, was so shocked and disappointed, that he spoke sneeringly, "I expected to see a fine man, and this is not ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Continental express. Mrs. Beverley and Irene were to share one, and Mr. Beverley and Vincent the other. The beds were arranged like berths on board ship, and Irene, who occupied the upper one, found, much to her amusement, a little ladder placed in readiness for her ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... He mounted the ladder to the bridge and gave the instructions to the Captain, and early that evening the Dragonfly was piloted into the harbour of Alicante. Hillyard and Fairbairn went ashore. They had some hours to get through before they could take the journey they intended. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... futurity; 'Satan,' said he, 'laid hard at me to beat me out of heart.' At length he came to the determination to venture his eternal state with Christ, whether he had present comfort or not. His state of mind he thus describes—'If God doth not come in (to comfort me) I will leap off the ladder, even blindfold, into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell. Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; I will venture all for thy name.' From this time he felt a good hope ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and, although they could not see him, they knew by his voice that their arrival was welcome. 'Wait a moment,' he continued; 'the gate is barricaded, but I will lower a ladder to you. Here you are!' he called down a minute later, and on looking up they saw him lowering from the top of the wall a long bamboo ladder. When it touched the ground they planted ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the crowd in this hushed suspense. But fifty yards along the staithe they passed five or six girls with flushed faces and careless attire, who had mounted a pile of timber, placed there to season for ship-building, from which, as from the steps of a ladder or staircase, they could command the harbour. They were wild and free in their gestures, and held each other by the hand, and swayed from side to side, stamping their feet in time, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... estate, in the neighbourhood of Mitchelstown. The first I shall mention is a cave at Skeheenrinky, on the road between Cahir and that place. The opening to it is a cleft of rock in a limestone hill, so narrow as to be difficult to get into it. I descended by a ladder of about twenty steps, and then found myself in a vault of a hundred feet long, and fifty or sixty high. A small hole on the left leads from this a winding course of I believe not less than half an Irish mile, exhibiting a variety that struck me much. In some places the cavity in the rock is ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... down for a moment and watch the fish trying to leap up the falls. There is a clear jump of about ten feet, and above that an apparently impossible climb of ten feet more up a ladder of twisting foam. A salmon darts from the boiling water at the bottom of the fall like an arrow from a bow. He rises in a beautiful curve, fins laid close to his body and tail quivering; but he has miscalculated his distance. He is on the downward curve when the water strikes ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... what we can do," said Paul, with a happy thought. "We can take this coil of rope we have here and make a narrow ladder of it! That will be easy for him to catch, ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... could not see; and the dinghy was borne round, away from the yacht's side. He half rose, catching with both his hands at an object projecting from the yacht, and hastily knotting a rope. Jenny saw a short ladder hanging over the side, and a ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... we went to was a housewarming. We went about seven miles with the ox team. I thought I would die laughing when I saw the girls go to their dressing room. They went up a ladder on the outside. There were two fiddlers and we danced all the old dances. Supper was served on a work bench from victuals out of a wash tub. We didn't have hundred dollar dresses, but we did have red cheeks from the ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... is a cardiopathy" because many athletes are affected with heart disease. For him, "the essential elements of genius are judgment and will." Following this definition, he establishes the following hierarchy of men of genius: At the highest rung of the ladder are those in whom judgment and will are equally powerful; men of action who make world-history (Alexander, Cromwell, Napoleon)—these are masters of men. On the second level are found the geniuses of judgment, with no hyper-development of will—these are masters of matter (Pasteur, Helmholtz, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... and gallop round to the bottom of the garden. Roblado himself was to lead this party, whose duty would likely be of most importance. As the leader well knew, the garden walls could not be scaled without a ladder, and the cibolero, if found within the garden, would attempt to escape by the bridge at the bottom. Lest he might endeavour to get through the avenue and off by the front of the house, the girl Vicenza was to conduct Gomez with several men on foot through the ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... flagrant system of disorganization is instituted by the law. Step by step, in the hierarchy of Government, power has slipped downwards, and henceforth belongs by virtue of the Constitution to the authorities who sit at the bottom of the ladder. It is not the King, or the minister, or the directory of the department or of the district who rules, but its municipal officers; and their sway is as omnipotent as it can be in a small independent republic. They alone have the "strong hand" ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... feared on the other. The result showed that the aristocracy feared and distrusted Caesar; and he used the people only to advance his own ends,—of course, in the name of reform and patriotism. And when he became Dictator, he kicked away the ladder on which he climbed to power. It was Imperialism that he established; neither popular rights nor aristocratic privileges. He had no more love of the people than he had of those proud aristocrats ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Missouri Mounted Volunteers, charged the northern wall. As soon as the troops above mentioned had established themselves under the western wall of the church, axes were used in the attempt to breach it, and a temporary ladder having been made, the roof was fired. About this time, Captain Burgwin, at the head of a small party, left the cover afforded by the flank of the church, and penetrating into the corral in front of that building, endeavoured to force the door. In this ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... boys, come out to play, The moon doth shine as bright as day; Leave your supper and leave your sleep, And come with your playfellows into the street. Come with a whoop, come with a call, Come with a good will or not at all. Up the ladder and down the wall, A halfpenny roll will serve us all. You find milk, and I'll find flour, And we'll have a pudding in ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... thought was troubling Bob, she found, when after supper she went out to the barn and climbed the loft ladder to see him. She had brought him some bread and water, the latter contributed by the Peabody pump and the bread saved from ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... dream,—that he seemed to see a high ladder, upon which he went so high in the air that heaven was open: for so high reached the ladder. "And when you awoke me, I was come to the highest step ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... at the Window and watched the scene. The tall man who had personally assailed him seemed to lead the band in all except their clamour, working eagerly, directing in undertones. They had brought a ladder from the shore, apparently provided for such an emergency, and placed it against the wall, with a view to an escalade. A stream of steaming water shot down upon the first who ventured upon the rounds, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... law or no law. If their existence, in the light of authority, is 'less than a legal fiction,' they come to be regarded, or make themselves felt in the world as practical facts. They are quite as apt to be at the top, as at the bottom of the ladder, notwithstanding what 'Blackstone says' about their legal position. There is, doubtless, a good deal of abuse of authority on the part of husbands, but the women get their share of the good that is going in the world, as a general thing. If the law is against them, they manage to ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... floor with his forehead three times. It is a large, rambling old house, and fully thirty servants were bustling about in the daidokoro, or great open kitchen. I took a room upstairs (i.e. up a steep step-ladder of dark, polished wood), with a balcony under the deep eaves. The front of the house upstairs was one long room with only sides and a front, but it was immediately divided into four by drawing sliding screens or panels, covered with opaque ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... the ladder, and I'll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won't know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she'll be going down to see would he be floating from ...
— Riders to the Sea • J. M. Synge
... interfere with the peace of the spirits of the departed whilst they rest in the house, and on their journey to the tomb. All the men after they have performed this ceremony are given a drink of rice-beer known as 'iad nonglieh. Another cock is sacrificed, and a small bamboo ladder of three rungs is prepared for the use of the spirits when climbing into the tomb. Rice is then thrown outside the door. The next morning they perform further sacrifices, which need not be detailed here, and let loose a bull whose horns have been ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... exertions, the complex fabric was slowly hoisted to the perpendicular, looking very like a ladder, up which nine scarecrows were clambering. However, no matter what it looked like now, as Wally ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... would go, we perceive at once that we are in the thirteenth and not in the nineteenth century. The punishments which the King inflicted for swearing were most cruel. At Cesarea, Joinville tells us that he saw a goldsmith fastened to a ladder, with the entrails of a pig twisted round his neck right up to his nose, because he had used irreverent language. Nay, after his return from the Holy Land, he heard that the King ordered a man's nose and lower lip to ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... to you by an unbreakable mnemonic tie. Mark that it is not claimed that "weight" will of itself suggest "scales," and "scales" "statue of Justice," etc., but that, having once passed your attention up and down that ladder of ideas, your mental tendency will be to take the same route, and get to the same goal again and again. Indeed, beginning with the weight of $1,000,000, "image of law" will turn up in your mind without your consciousness of any intermediate station on the way, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... of Man who is the King, and whose life is the perfect mirror of manhood, restless homelessness is our lot, if we are His disciples. Ay! and it is our blessing. It is better to sleep beneath the stars than beneath golden canopies, and to lay the head upon a stone than upon a lace pillow, if the ladder is at our side and the face of God above it. Better be out in the fields, a homeless stranger with the Lord, than huddling together and perfectly comfortable in houses of clay that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... him, with vivacious gestures commanded his attendance. As a brother in good standing, one could hardly do less than humour her gracefully; so Lanyard trotted up to the companion ladder, and Liane, resting a hand of sisterly affection upon his arm, besought him to make clear to her feminine stupidity Swain's hopelessly technical explanation of the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... way to obtain entrance is, I think, by one of the upper windows," replied the man whose very life was occupied by the investigation of mysteries. "In the laundry I noticed a ladder. Let ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... rose at early dawn, By soaring meditation drawn, To breathe the fragrance of the day, Through flowery fields he took his way. In musing contemplation warm, His steps misled him to a farm, Where, on the ladder's topmost round, A peasant stood; the hammer's sound Shook the weak barn. 'Say, friend, what care Calls for thy honest labour there?' 10 The clown, with surly voice replies, 'Vengeance aloud for justice cries. This kite, by daily rapine ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... small opening above the window, which, until that moment, had escaped their notice. The sight was, indeed, not the most encouraging to weak nerves. Clumsily lowered the legs, the feet making a ladder of cleets of wood nailed to the window, until the burly figure of the wrecker, encased with red shirt and blue trousers, stood out full to view. Over his head stood bristly hair in jagged tufts; and as he drew his brawny hand over the broad disc of his sun-scorched ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... voice was heard shouting down the companion-ladder: "Carr! I say, Carr, you are wanted!" and in another moment some one ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... sovereigns of England always sit when the crown of England, Scotland, and Ireland is placed upon their heads. It is said to have been the very stone that Jacob used for a pillow on the night that he saw, in his dream, angels ascending and descending on the ladder that reached from earth ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... diver is all ready to descend, a man at the pump begins supplying him with air, and down he goes, first on an iron ladder at the vessel's side, then on long ladders of rope, with heavy weights at ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... the mercy of the waves, was saved by the boat of a merchant ship, after he had sustained himself in the sea a full hour by swimming. Captain Payton, who was the second in command, remained upon the quarter-deck as long as it was possible to keep that station, and then descending by the stern ladder, had the good fortune to be taken into a boat belonging to the Aklerney sloop. The hull of the ship, masts, and rigging, were now in a blaze, bursting tremendously in several parts through horrid clouds of smoke; nothing was heard but the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... trick upon the king. He requested the gift of a town, in order, as he explained, that he might there build a ladder by which they might both reach heaven. The king, in the rather credulous fashion of the times, granted his request, and waited to see the ladder. St. Eloi promptly built a monastery. If the monarch did not choose to avail himself of this species of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... were they alongside and up the ladder, than Captain Brown's voice was heard rapidly giving orders, as if no ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... without a single green leaf—but with thousands of arm-thick stems petrified into the rock, and covering it as with a trellice. She felt her baby on her neck—and with hands and feet clung to that fearful ladder. Turning round her head, and looking down, she saw the whole population of the parish—so great was the multitude—on their knees. She heard the voice of psalms—a hymn breathing the spirit of one united prayer. Sad and solemn ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... husband, Constantine Monomachus, puts him in prison; but Saint Olaf still protects his mauvais sujet of a brother, and inspires "a lady of distinction" with the successful idea of helping Harald out of his inaccessible tower by the prosaic expedient of a ladder of ropes. A boom, however, across the harbour's mouth still prevents the escape of his vessel. The Sea-king is not to be so easily baffled. Moving all his ballast, arms, and men, into the afterpart of the ship, until her stem slants up out of the sea, he ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... gone home, De little baby gone home, De little baby gone along, For to climb up Jacob's ladder. And I wish I'd been dar, I wish I'd been dar, I wish I'd been dar, my Lord, For to ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... just in time, my son." Mother McNeil beamed warmly at the uninvited visitor. "When a man can be of service, it's let him serve, I say, and if you will get that step-ladder over there and fix this angel on the top of the tree it will save time. Jenkins has gone for more tinsel and more bread. We didn't intend at first to have sandwiches and chocolate—just candy and nuts and things like that—but it's so cold and snowy Frances thought ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... to L7 a ton in England. The bat-guano is said to be richer as a manure than that derived from the swifts. To ascend to the top of Gomanton, one has to emerge from the Simud Putih entrance and, by means of a ladder, reach an overhanging ledge, whence a not very difficult climb brings one to the cleared summit, from which a fine view of the surrounding country is obtained, including Kina-balu, the sacred mountain ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... forward; followed through a little door in the wall into a room about fifteen feet square, occupied by a small stove, a pile of wood, and a ladder. He plunged through another even smaller door, into a bleak rectangular place, where I was confronted on the left by a large tin bath and on the right by ten wooden tubs, each about a yard in diameter, set in a row against the wall. "Undress" commanded the spectre. I did so. "Go ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... receiving and recognizing a stimulus from without—would seem to come first; we must be acted on before we can re-act; but priority confers no supremacy. We can look at it another way. Perceiving is the first rung on the ladder that leads to action, feeling is the second, action is the topmost rung, the primary goal, as it were, of all the climbing. For the purpose of our discussion this is perhaps the simplest way of looking at ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... here? Is the doorkeeper asleep?" cried I, approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Middle Ages, are a standing witness to what in this field a far poorer community thought fit to do. Their systems of scholarships and exhibitions, no less than their courts and towers, deserve our notice. For these were designed to form what we now call "a ladder" by which talent could climb from the humblest origins to the callings which then seemed the summit either of ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... quite different with the man who causes the wound. Lotze has rightly called attention to the fact that in mounting a ladder with elastic rungs one perceives clearly the points at which the rungs are fastened to the sides. The points at which an elastic trellis is fastened is felt when it is shaken, and the resistance of the wood when an axe is used on it. In the same way the soldier senses clearly ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to talk with her; but Barbara did not listen. While following her guide, it seemed as though the steps her light foot trod were a heavenly ladder, and at their end the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mire. There as I lay and weltered,—'Take that, Madam, For all your selfish hypocritic pride Which thought it such a vast humility To wash us poor folk's feet, and use our bodies For staves to build withal your Jacob's-ladder. What! you would mount to heaven upon our backs? The ass has thrown his rider.' She crept on— I washed my garments in the brook hard by— And came here, all ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... FIRE LADDER.—Johan Blomgren, Galesburg, Ill.—The main feature in this invention is a telescopic tube, expanded or closed by a coil fitting within it, and worked by ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... orders, and he would henceforward repose the most implicit confidence in my fidelity. Well, I shall think of it; the idea is a good one, and worthy of being matured. I shall form a scheme to make the good and munificent Archduke John the ladder by which I shall rise. I must conquer, and if I can do it only by pulling down others, it is the duty of self-preservation for me not to shrink from the task. I will now go to the chancery and wait there for the emperor's return. Ah, how his old limbs trembled when he heard of Napoleon's ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... not even drop a boat to send aboard a crew. She steamed right up beside the submarine, put out a ladder for her captain, and then sent a hawser aboard for the German crew to fasten. She would tow her prize to port without risking any of her own crew aboard the ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... iron ladder reached to the eaves of the building. Two men galloped up its length, dragging behind them another ladder with a pair of ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... which took a whole year to do," and he pointed self-consciously to a thick bound volume of manuscript. "I wrote it all with my own hand," he continued. "Sit down, Boris, and read out the names. I will get on the ladder, and show you the books; they are arranged according to ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... VALERIAN, or JACOB'S LADDER.—Is also a beautiful perennial, and claims the notice of the gardener. Its variety, with white flowers, is also ornamental. It is raised from seeds, which are sold ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... gates of her heart, to have gathered silver flowers in the fairy gardens of her dreams. I had followed her white-robed spirit across the moonlit meadows of her fancy, and by her side had climbed the dewy ladder of the morning star, and then suddenly I had been whirled up again to the daylight through the magic fountains of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... whisper in my ear, perhaps a touch of her hand on mine, but I shall know that she is with me.' And at last, worn out with waiting and watching, I went to my bed and said she will come to-morrow. And the next night and the next it was the same. Sometimes I would go up the ladder, always standing against the gable so that one could go up, and standing on the roof, look out over the plain and see where our horses were grazing. There I would sit or lie on the thatch for hours. And I would cry: 'Come to me, my mother! I cannot live without ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... and other accidents thanks to which, as you pause to look down them and to penetrate the deepening shadows that accompany their retreat, they resemble little corridors leading out from the past, mystical like the ladder in Jacob's dream; so that when you see a single figure advance and draw nearer you are half afraid to wait till it arrives—it must be too much of the nature of a ghost, a messenger from an underworld. However this may be, a place paved with such ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... but thickly and as if muffled by cotton wool. One of the two men came running, halted amidships, lifted out a panel of the bulwarks, set in a slide between two white-painted stanchions, and let down an accommodation ladder. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to be sure, ma'am. Don't you mind the man that was mending the church-window when you and your intended husband walked up to be made one; and the clerk called me down from the ladder, and I came and did my part by ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... hoisted up by the men behind. At last, panting and breathless, they stood on the summit of the rock, on a narrow ledge, with the castle wall rising in front of them. They had, with enormous difficulty, brought up a light ladder with them. This was placed against the wall. Francus was the first to mount, and was followed by Sir Andrew Grey, whom Randolph had invited to be of the party, by Archie Forbes, and by the earl. Just as the latter stepped ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... from the duke her father, and told him, that, despairing of ever being able to obtain his consent, he had prevailed upon Silvia to leave her father's palace that night, and go with him to Mantua; then he showed Proteus a ladder of ropes, by help of which he meant to assist Silvia to get out of one of the windows of the palace after ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the upper rooms there was a bamboo ladder and trap leading on the roof, which was flat, and it occurred to me to ascend and look round. It was quite dark, and there was little to be seen beyond the limits of the street. Distant illuminations marked the positions of the forts on the surrounding heights. The seaward ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... to us as in the beginning of our youth and the approaches of our age." Alcidalis, deceiving the jealous vigilance of the duke, makes the tour of a promontory in a boat by night, climbs to a window by means of a rope-ladder, and in the second visit gains the favour of the duchess, who was not at all the lady whom he thought to find. "Ye gods! do I again behold the fair Zelinda? cries Alcidalis in his joy (a very pertinent question, for it is to be remembred there was ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... glimpse of England on the 14th. Off Eddystone Light the pilot came on board. He was a very large portly man and very nervous about being dropped into the sea. I should judge he weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. The ladder he had to climb was made of rope with the rungs woven in, and he made them heave him a line which he fastened about ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... as by a ladder, and there's a soul that soars naturally as a lark. I don't know that it matters which they do, so long ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... he, "let me conduct you to a room where you can rest and sleep, undisturbed and undiscovered." After climbing a ladder and walking through a narrow passage, they came to a secret door which opened into a bedroom. Alfred Banford looked about him, and was startled when he saw in a mirror the reflection of such a pale, hungry-looking ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... rope ladder in view of descending from the castle, he ordered Francis de Rochefort, his page, to get into his bed and feign sleep. Then he descended by the rope, the Baron of Arros and a valet following him. In the morning, when ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... is regularly marked around in deep cuts, which begin close to the branches and go down almost to the roots. A ladder is used to mount to the upper part of the trunk, and the cuts, or incisions, are made with a long knife or with an axe. Then they strip off the sheets of cork between the circles. This operation is a very delicate ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... Linden to himself, as he paced the narrow limits of his apartment, "I do not see what better plan I can pursue; but let me well consider what is my ultimate object. A high step in the world's ladder! how is this to be obtained? First, by the regular method of professions; but what profession should I adopt? The Church is incompatible with my object, the army and navy with my means. Next come the irregular methods of adventure and enterprise, such as marriage ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... manliness among those who, forsaking for a time their hermeneutics and homilies, gave themselves to the outdoor sport. Our club included a number of law-students and a young instructor or two; among the latter Charles W. Eliot, then with his foot on the first round of the ladder which he has climbed so high. Eliot pulled a capital stroke; my place was at the bow oar where a rather light weight was required who at the same time had head and strength enough to steer the boat among the perplexing currents. Our excursions were sometimes long. Once we went down ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... instead of exciting any of the soft sensibility of the other sex, a great unruly man, who held the handle of the ship, bid me lay hold of a companion, and when I sought his arm for protection, he introduced me to a ladder, down which I ascended into the cabin, one of the most curious places I ever beheld—where ladies and gentlemen are put upon shelves like books in a library, and where tall men are doubled up like bootjacks, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... they got all th' people out but wan; an' she was a woman asleep on th' fourth flure. 'Who'll go up?' says Bill Musham. 'Sure, sir,' says Clancy, 'I'll go'; an' up he wint. His captain was a man be th' name iv O'Connell, fr'm th' County Kerry; an' he had his fut on th' ladder whin Clancy started. Well, th' good man wint into th' smoke, with his wife faintin' down below. 'He'll be kilt,' says his brother. 'Ye don't know him,' says Bill Musham. An' sure enough, whin ivry wan'd give him up, out comes me brave Clancy, as black as a Turk, with th' girl in his arms. ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... parts of the houses were built, they became the kitchens and domestic offices. The building was only some four hundred yards from the road, so I turned in to get a light for my pipe. I noticed, as I was getting near, that a man was standing on a step-ladder, apparently doing some painting. He looked down on me from his ladder as I approached. Then I saw that instead of painting he was engaged in tarring the roof of the building. He was evidently an amateur tar-man. The bucket which held the tar was tied on to the ladder below him. The ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... a third, by a fourth—O Heavens! there is no saying how far the horrid man might go in his unreasonable demands upon me. I groaned under the weight of his expectations; and, if I laid but the first round of such a staircase, why, then, I saw in vision a vast Jacob's ladder towering upwards to the clouds, mile after mile, league after league; and myself running up and down this ladder, like any fatigue party of Irish hodmen, to the top of any Babel which my wretched admirer might choose to build. But I nipped the abominable system of extortion in the very ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... that had come over Aloysia it is impossible to tell. The first thought is that, having risen to prominence by Mozart's tuition and assistance, she spurned the ladder that had uplifted her. But Nohl's theory that her head was turned by her admission to the favour that quickly surrounds the successful prima donna is hardly to be held, in view of the fact that in rejecting a ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and, above it, a rifle whose unusual length proclaimed its ownership; the strings of dried herbs and red pepper pods—few, to be sure, and dusty with age—suspended from the rafters; and, in one corner, a crude ladder ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... need of talk was urgent, but to no avail. Magee hurried to the cellar, and with the aid of a box of matches found a ladder leading to a door cut in the floor above. He climbed through dust and cobwebs, unfastened the catch, and pushed cautiously upward. In another minute he was standing in the chill little card-room. Softly he opened the card-room door ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... with you, Mr Vandean, sir," cried Tom Fillot; and without a word Mark drew a deep breath, stepped in on the ladder, and descended, the light being shut out directly by ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... case Leonard's masculine superiority, emphasised by the few years between their age, his sublime self-belief, and, above all, his absolute disregard for herself or her wishes or her feelings, put him on a level at which she had to look up to him. The first step in the ladder of pre-eminence had been achieved when she realised that he was not on her level; the second when she experienced rather than thought that he had more influence on her than she had on him. Here again was a little ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... kinds tried, the once famous Gaertner, Moore's Diamond, the Green Mountain or Winchell, and so on. And currants, too, acres of them set under and between the rows of grapes, and Bartlett pears, and peaches. As I write, a picture comes to mind of Father up in a peach tree, on a high step-ladder, picking peaches, and of some girls with cameras taking his picture and all laughing and the girls exclaiming; "At the mercy of the Kodakers"— and Father enjoying the joke and picking out soft peaches for them. He liked to pick peaches. The big ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... companions, who formed a rearguard for him; while he, entering the house, tried to kill the innocent man who was asleep. It was at midnight, the time that he thought most opportune. He left those who accompanied him at the foot of the house, while he mounted the ladder. At the entrance of the room of the gospel minister, a venerable old man accosted him and asked him in his own tongue: "Where art thou going? Seest thou not that I am watching this man who is asleep, and who is my son?" Notwithstanding that, the Indian persisted in his evil intent ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... could lose ourselves in love again; and he must have guessed what troubled me, for he spoke at once: "Don't worry. I know now you love me. That's all I want. Till you give me the right to something more, I'll stand where I stood half an hour ago, down on the ladder of friendship. But give me the rest of the hour here—if you trust me as ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... pictured to himself the frightful predicament of all hands—himself included—should my suggestion prove true; then, without a word, he hastened forward to the hatchway, with me at his heels, and went stumbling down the steep ladder. As he reached the bottom I flung myself upon him, clasping him round the body and arms, and lifted him off his feet, at the same time singing out to Hardy to gag him; and in another minute we had him securely bound, hand and foot, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... side of corolla of foxglove there are some fine hairs, but these seem of not the least use (701/5. It has been suggested that the hairs serve as a ladder for humble bees; also that they serve to keep out "unbidden guests.")—a mere purposeless exaggeration of down on outside—as I conclude after watching the bees at work, and afterwards covering up some plants; for the protected flowers rarely set any seed, so that the hairy lower part of corolla ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... stream; but a part of the little finger sticks in his shoe. When he afterwards has to choose between the ogre's daughters with his eyes shut, he recognizes his love by the loss of her little finger. The giant's daughter, in a West Highland tale, makes a ladder with her fingers for her lover to climb a tree to fetch a magpie's eggs; and, in the hurry, she leaves her little finger at the top. This accident arises sometimes, as in the Marquis of the Sun, from the dropping of a piece of flesh on the ground when the hero cuts up his beloved; or, according ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Irishwoman's management and encouragement of them, amid poverty and trouble, the characters of the boys themselves, their cheerfulness, courage, and patience, and the firm grip which they take upon the lowest rounds of the ladder of success, are told simply ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... led to Dr. Trescott's. The whole town flowed towards one point. Chippeway Hose Company Number One toiled desperately up Bridge Street Hill even as the Tuscaroras came in an impetuous sweep down Niagara Avenue. Meanwhile the machine of the hook-and-ladder experts from across the creek was spinning on its way. The chief of the fire department had been playing poker in the rear room of Whiteley's cigar-store, but at the first breath of the alarm he sprang through the door like a man escaping ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... Beals hard at work in the rain with his decorations. With a ladder he had strung flags around our bedroom balcony, and thence around to the porte-cochere, which was elaborately flagged; thence the flags of all nations were suspended from a line which stretched past the greenhouse to the limit of our grounds. Against each of the two trees on the mound, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... well-to-do.—Rich men's houses were, of course, more substantially and comfortably built. Real mortar made of lime was used in the walls. There were several rooms, including perhaps a cool "summer house" on the roof, making a kind of second story. One climbed up to these upper rooms by a ladder on the outside. The roof was solidly built and surrounded by a railing, so that on a hot summer evening the family could sit there and enjoy the cool evening breeze. There were windows also, covered with wooden lattice work, which let in ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
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