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More "Brink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the stunted cedar that leans forward from the brink, you may drop a plummet into the river below, where the catfish and the turtles may plainly be seen gliding over the wrinkled sands of the clear and shallow current. The cliff is accessible only from the south, where a man may climb up, not without difficulty, by a steep ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... strange pastimes. The recreation to which Jack and Dick were bidden was a visit to the melancholy shambles where the heterogeneous mass of unclassified prisoners were detained. It was a long, gabled building on the brink of the river, from whose low, grated windows the culprits could catch glimpses of the James, tumbling over its sedgy, sometimes rocky bed. A few yards from it arose the grim walls of what had been a tobacco-factory, now the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... enterprises of Blacklock & Co. I could have spoken a dozen words, and he would have been floundering like a caught fish in a basket. There are men—a very few—who work more swiftly and more surely when they know they're on the brink of ruin; but not Joe. One glimpse of our real National Coal account, and all my power over him couldn't have kept him from showing the whole Street that Blacklock & Co. was shaky. And whenever the Street begins to think a man is shaky, he must be strong indeed to escape the fate of the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a partisan of Wyat, had escaped into France, after the defeat and capture of his leader, whence he was still plotting the overthrow of Mary's government. By the connivance or assistance of that court, now on the brink of war with England, he was at length enabled to send over one Cleberry, a condemned person, whom he instructed to counterfeit the earl of Devonshire, and endeavour to raise the country in his cause. Letters and proclamations ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... oligarchic restoration with its terrors, and above all the whole body of new burgesses—both those who had been withheld by the Julian law from taking part in the insurrection, and those whose revolt a few years before had brought Rome to the brink of ruin. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... which skirted near the river's brink Is thrown down by the sudden inundation 190 Of the Euphrates, which now rolling, swoln From the enormous mountains where it rises, By the late rains of that tempestuous region, O'erfloods its banks, and hath ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... replied her aunt, "I don't feel safe with any child that does not obey me. This time no harm was done, because the grass happened to be dry; but farther on there was a brook. I might have told you not to go near the brink of the brook for fear of your falling in. Then you might have gone, notwithstanding, if you thought there was no danger, just as you went out upon the grass because you thought it was not wet, notwithstanding my saying that you must keep in the path. So you ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... mountains; it is, indeed, an animal that loves the great hills. The Welsh goats are white; they are very active, and walk on the brink of precipices, and take the most wonderful leaps. The scent of a goat is unpleasant, but it is thought ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... cracked and granulated by the drying up of the annual flood. The character of the vegetation is inhospitable. Thorn-bushes, bristling like hedgehogs and thriving arrogantly, everywhere predominate and with their prickly tangles obstruct or forbid the path. Only the palms by the brink are kindly, and men journeying along the Nile must look often towards their bushy tops, where among the spreading foliage the red and yellow glint of date clusters proclaims the ripening of a generous crop, and protests that Nature ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... confidentially. Mawg, then, had gone over to the Bow-legs! Grom's forehead wrinkled. A-ya had been right. He ought to have killed the traitor. He writhed himself into a dense covert, and presently, over the broken brink of a vine-draped ledge, was able to command a ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... spot be easily reached. It is hard to climb the western side, impossible to clamber up the southern face. Settlement creeps down from the north, and has partially ascended the eastern acclivity, but can never reach the brink. Scattered patches of soil are too thin to tempt cultivation, and the rock is too craggy and steep to allow occupation. An active and flourishing manufacturing industry crowds up to its base; but a considerable ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the atomic theory, which asserts that atoms and space alone exist; and which became more refined when it recognized that atoms are only mathematical points; and still more so when it considered them as mere centres of force. The brink of Buddhism was ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... century, with whom I chanced to be somewhat in touch, and it is for me only to note a bit of the scintillation which I saw brilliantly diffused. He was frequently under my gaze, a low-statured, nimble figure, a vivacious, always cheerful face with a pronounced chin, seemingly ever on the brink of some outburst of merriment. I have heard him described as an "incarnate pun," but that hardly did him justice; punster he was, but he had a wit of a far higher kind and moods of grave dignity. His literary fame in those ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... cannot be reclaimed, and would be no use if he could, and they will spend their time and sympathy over some creature bedraggled in the slums, whose only hope can be death, and that as soon as possible, yet not one of them will lift a finger to save a fellow creature from going over the brink of ruin. They will turn their noses in the air when a word from them would do some good, and then they will spend their time fussing and weeping over somebody that ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... times, moreover, when it is not only permissible to suspend the tension, but when, by so doing, a great artist can produce a peculiar and admirable effect. A sudden interruption, on the very brink of a crisis, may, as it were, whet the appetite of the audience for what is to come. We see in the Porter scene in Macbeth a suspension of this nature; but Shakespeare used it sparingly, unless, indeed, we are to consider as ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... existence and judges it soberly. Hitherto he had scarcely so much as shaken off the spell of the fresh and gracious influences that envelop a childhood in the country, like green leaves and grass. He had hesitated on the brink of the Parisian Rubicon, and in spite of the prickings of ambition, he still clung to a lingering tradition of an old ideal—the peaceful life of the noble in his chateau. But yesterday evening, at the sight of his rooms, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... reaching their journey's end they arrived at the brink of a river which they expected to find frozen over; but they found it full of floating ice instead. Without boat or bridge, there seemed no chance of getting across; but after a while they managed to make a rude raft, and upon ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... Lord Houghton was too far gone to appreciate the jest. Indeed, he was on the brink of the grave. A few days later he left for Vichy, where he died on August 11th. His remains were brought to Fryston, and Burton and Arbuthnot ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... waits for your answer. Swear to me that you will help His people. Give up father and mother and love, and go down as Christ did. Help me to give liberty and truth and Jesus' love to these wretches on the brink of hell. Live with them, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... of mercy, oft longing I've stood On the brink of thy wonderful, life-giving flood! Once more I have reached this soul-cleansing sea, I will not go back till ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... be," remarked Susie, dropping a pebble over the brink and listening to the hollow echoes it awoke as it bounded from timber ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... May, by watching the mother bird, he found the nest again. It was in a marshy place, several acres in extent, in the bottom of a valley, and thickly grown with hardback, prickly ash, smilax, and other low thorny bushes. My friend took me to the brink of a low hill, and pointed out to me in the marsh below us, as nearly as he could, just where the nest was located. Then we crossed the pasture, entered upon the marsh, and made our way cautiously toward it. The ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the precipice there lay a long hollow log, which had been probably dragged there with the intention of making a bridge across the chasm. Overton dismounted, led his horse to the very brink, and pricked him with his knife: the noble animal leaped, but his strength was too far gone for him to clear it; his breast struck the other edge, and he fell from crag to crag into the abyss below. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the poet's offence vastly exaggerated. Certain it is that he became deeply incensed against not only the lady, but her husband as well, to whom he considered he owed no apology whatever. Matters were only made worse by his unworthy verses, and it was not till he was almost on the brink of the grave that he and Mrs. Riddell met again, and the old friendship was re-established. The lady not only forgot and forgave, but she was one of the first after the poet's death to write generously and appreciatively of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe—I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor old man, now on the brink of a grave into which he can take nothing, would sacrifice your life and mine to have possession of those guilders, the whole of which I would barter ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... solitude. Weary and hungry, he lay down at the foot of a great tree, and passed the night in broken slumbers. The next day he wandered onward in the same blind helplessness, reaching, in late afternoon, the waters of a forest pond, shadowed by thick pines, and with water-fowl on its brink. One of these he shot, kindled a fire and cooked it, and for the first time since his misadventure tasted food. At night there came on a cold rain, drenched by which the blanketless wanderer was forced to seek sleep in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Yale forwards ground their way through the Princeton defense, making a breach through which the mighty Butterworth, Bronc Armstrong and Brink Thorne might ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... keeping up the shrill noise all the while. The man's curiosity became excited, and as soon as he started to follow her, she went off in the direction of a miry place that had been left unguarded, and stopped upon its very brink. Hurrying on as fast as he could, the man found the colt lying dead, suffocated in the mud and water. The poor mare had unfortunately been unable to procure his help—though she tried her best—in time ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... The tragic sock and the mask enhanced them. What mystery lay behind Manuela's sidelong eyes? What sin or suffering? What knowledge, how gained, justified Esteban's wizened saws? These two were wise before their time; when they ought to have been flirting on the brink of life, here they were, breasting the great flood, familiar with ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... the piles on which it is raised, such boats as are not in daily use are stored. Round about the house, and especially on the space between it and the brink of the river, are numerous PADI barns (Pl. 40). Each of these, the storehouse of the grain harvested by one family, is a large wooden bin about 10 feet square, raised on piles some 7 feet from the ground. Each pile carries just below the level of the floor of the bin a large disc of wood ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... with no less cheeriness. He led them boldly to the brink of abysses which were merely channels in the ice, and amid towering pinnacles which seen, close at hand, were mere blocks shoulder high. And at last the guide at the tail of the rope heard from far away ahead Simond's voice ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... her promise to communicate it to somebody, and if the telegram contained news of no more consequence, a good man might command his patience, might indulge in a reasonable caution, might hesitate on the brink of Black Cliff with the sanction of his self-respect. But if Elizabeth Luke lay ill and in need, a passage of Scalawag Run might be challenged, whatever came of it. And both Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl knew it ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... Venoni's grief brought him to the brink of the grave. They say, that his senses were disordered for a time. But it is certain that he only exchanged the bed of sickness for a cell in St. Mark's monastery, where he shortly ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... upon that garden as the very concentration and symbol of Italy. All the Italian elements, the Italian magics were there. Along its topmost edge ran a vast broken wall, built into the hill; and hanging from the brink of the wall like a long roof, great ilexes shut out the day from the path below. Within the thickness of the wall—in days when, in that dim Rome upon the plain, many still lived who could remember the voice and the face of Paul of Tarsus—Domitian had made ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... some more men also stooping; I fired into the foremost, and he likewise fell back, but I do not know that I hit him. I then fired into a third man at close quarters, who also receded, possibly uninjured, though I cannot say. I was now close to the brink of the rising-ground, entirely surrounded by men, when I placed the muzzle of the Dean & Adams against the breast of the largest man before me, and pulled the trigger, but pulled in vain; the cylinder would not rotate; I imagine a ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... nay, what are lips? Coral beneath the ocean-stream, Whose brink when your adventurer slips, Full oft ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... pain that he felt his mind wavering, while on the brink between this and the future world. He made a strong effort to compose himself to devotional exercises, and unequal, during that fearful strife of nature, to arrange his own thoughts into suitable expressions, he had, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... soul was a tenuous, tremulous, pale membrane. He would keep its sensibility intact and virgin as long as he could. Cautiously he crept out by a side door and made his way down towards the park. His soul fluttered as he approached the noise and movement of the fair. He paused for a moment on the brink, then stepped in ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... lying across the vinegar keg and pushing it about the room with our feet. We came to the top of the steep stairway that ended against the chamber door, a foot or more above the kitchen floor, and I suppose we thought it would be fun to take the stairway on the keg. At the brink of that stairway my memory becomes a blank and when I find myself again I am lying on the bed in the "back-bedroom" and the smell of camphor is rank in the room. How it fared with Jane I do not recall; the ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Sheba, out of Flaubert, held her fantastic hand with its long, gilded finger nails on his shoulder; and he was leaning forward over the brink of life. But the image was vague, like a shadow cast on ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... council and if the March Hare sensed that its reputation had trembled on the brink of ruin it gave no sign. Gayly ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... to the ravine and descended the deep shadowy hollow, they parted company, Prescott following the opposite brink, because Wandle would have to cross it lower down to regain the south trail. Once or twice he left it for a while when the gorge twisted in a big loop away from him, but he could see nothing of his companion. They had commanded a wide sweep of plain when ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... sisters looked at each other for a second as if hesitating on the brink of anger, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... to write it, and thanking for it God and the saints, this is what befell thy Gerard. Yestreen I wearied of being shut up in litter, and of the mule's slow pace, and so went forward; and being, I know not why, strangely full of spirit and hope, as I have heard befall some men when on trouble's brink, seemed to tread on air, and soon distanced them all. Presently I came to two roads, and took the larger; I should have taken the smaller. After travelling a good half-hour, I found my error, and returned; and deeming my company had long passed by, pushed ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... earth and east again, What sees he? First the lion at earth's brink With head down to the stream of stars to drink; And then, arising to his zenith ken, Sees that which makes his high, warm spirit sink— The blight to spring, blown here from ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... reputation. We were pronounced a 'capital hand.' O! the conceits that we varied upon red in all its prismatic differences!... Then there was the collateral topic of ankles, what an occasion to a truly chaste writer like ourself of touching that nice brink and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something 'not quite proper,' while like a skilful posture master, balancing between decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line from which a hair's breadth deviation is destruction.... ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... woes. His Celtic soul peers from behind cloudy curtains of alarm. Old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago fume in the smoke of his pipe. His girded spirit sees agrarian unrest in the daffodil and industrial riot in a tin of preserved prunes. He sees the world moving on the brink of horror and despair. Sweet dalliance with a baked bloater on a restaurant platter moves him to grief over the hard lot of the Newfoundland fishing fleet. Six cups of tea warm him to anguish over the peonage of Sir Thomas Lipton's ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... kid-spotted fawns that were seen, With their bleating, that sweetly arose by thy side, I love thee, O wild rock of refuge! of showers, Of the leaves and the cresses, all glorious to me, Of the high grassy heights and the beautiful bowers Afar from the smooth shelly brink of the sea! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... my youngest (a fine child, sir, but a female), I have bent over my littered desk driving a jibbing pen, comforted and encouraged simply and solely by the vision of my labour's object and attainment. I have seen at such moments the brink of a river, warm with the sun's rays, though sheltered in part by the rustling leaves of an alder, and thereon, sprawling at great ease, chin in the cups of the hand, stomach to earth, and toes tapping the ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... failed; When I saw my fruit of the vine Foam in the Olympian cup, Or in that broader chalice shine Blood-red, a sacramental drink, With stars for bubbles, lifted up, Through the universal night, Up to the celestial brink, Up to that quintessential Light Where God acclaimed you for the wine Crushed from those poor grapes of mine; O, you'll understand, no doubt, How the poor vine-dresser fell, How a pin-prick can let out All the bannered hosts of hell, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... urged that "the preaching of the gospel answers all the ends of the law," Wesley replied: "This we utterly deny. It does not answer the very first end of the law, namely, the convincing men of sin, the awakening those who are still asleep on the brink of hell." The apostle Paul declares that "by the law is the knowledge of sin;" "and not until man is convicted of sin, will he truly feel his need of the atoning blood of Christ.... 'They that be whole,' ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Bean to the brink of the icy pool and skilfully flayed him of the flowered gown. He was thorough, the waster. He'd known chaps to pretend to get in by making a great splashing with one hand, after they were left alone. He overcame a few of the earlier exercises in ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the brink of the modern world; though his style is that of his own time, his matter belongs to the future: he looks forward into the Renaissance. At the opposite end of the social scale from this rich and powerful diplomatist, VILLON gave utterance in language of poignant beauty to the deepest ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... combat, which remained long undecided, the former, overcome by the difficulty of the ground, and hard pressed by the enemy, began first to relax their vigour, then to retreat; and confusion was spreading among the ranks, when William, who found himself on the brink of destruction, hastened with a select band to the relief of his dismayed forces. His presence restored the action; the English were obliged to retire with loss; and the duke, ordering his second line to advance, renewed the attack with fresh forces, and with redoubled ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... curious—the alleyway seemed suddenly to be revolving around and around, and it seemed to bring her a giddiness and a faintness. The Adventurer was standing there before her, but she did not see him any more; she could only see, as from a brink upon which she tottered, a gulf, abysmal in its horror, that yawned ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... standing on the brink of authorship. The very title of his first book, De Malo Recentiorum Medicorum Medendi Usu, gives plain indication of the humour which possessed him, when he formulated his subject and put it in writing. With his temper vexed by the persistent neglect and insult cast upon him by the Milanese doctors ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... wants to be an anchel, and wiss the anchels stand—holding sings in his hands and on his head! He's too good for this wile world. He'd linger shifering on the brink and fear to launch away all his durn life—if some one didn't push him ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... time the Go Ahead Boys were chiefly interested in the fantastic figures cast by the flames and in the marvelous tints of the clouds as the moonlight was shining through them. Nearby was the bottomless gulf. They were unable to see the mighty chasm, but the knowledge that they were near its brink produced a feeling all ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... Presently he saw the son of Tydeus, noble Diomed, standing by his chariot and horses, with Sthenelus the son of Capaneus beside him; whereon he began to upbraid him. "Son of Tydeus," he said, "why stand you cowering here upon the brink of battle? Tydeus did not shrink thus, but was ever ahead of his men when leading them on against the foe— so, at least, say they that saw him in battle, for I never set eyes upon him myself. They say that there was no man like him. He came once to Mycenae, not as an ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... "You are on the brink of making an idiot of yourself," Duncombe answered quickly. "You were mad to bring that blundering English detective over here. What the French police cannot or do not choose to discover, do you ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... day when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above high-water mark. The stranger, who was a native of some inland town, and utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of the tide just as a "landing" was coming off. It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman, but also to dazzle and surprise. At sea, just beyond the billows, lay the vessel, well moored with anchors at stem and stern. Between the ship and the shore boats, laden to the gunwale, passed ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... and strength encircling man, alike Within him and without, that the foul breath Of pestilent corruption touch him not. Some are there who have loved and suffered much For earth, as a fond mother doth who sees Her babe die in her bosom; who have traced Man to the precipital brink of ruin, With open arms to charm him back from death, Rejected and despised; who on the scroll Of conscience, as with words of living light, Stamp the pure precepts of a holy lore, That sin obliterates and sets ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... seven years I held daily intercourse with what purported to be my mother's spirit. I am now fully persuaded that it was nothing but an evil spirit, an infernal demon, who, in that guise, gained my soul's confidence, and led me to the very brink of ruin. We read in Scripture of demoniac possession, as well as abnormal spiritual action. Both facts exist, provable to-day; I am positive the former does. A. J. Davis and his clique of Harmonialists say there are no evil spirits. I emphatically deny the statement. Five of my friends destroyed ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... could not measure less than twenty feet across, and the current whirled through it far below—thirty feet perhaps. He eyed his companions. Barboux leaned on his gun a few paces from the brink, where the two Indians stood peering down at the dim waters. John dropped on one knee, pretending to fasten a button of his gaiters, and drew a long breath while he watched for his chance. Presently Muskingon ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was presently followed by a similar discharge on their rear, and then succeeded by destructive vollies from every side. In the darkness neither the position nor the numbers of the Indians could be ascertained. Dalzell was slain early, and his whole detachment was on the brink of irretrievable confusion and ruin when Captain Grant, the next in command, perceiving that a retreat, now the only resource, could only be accomplished by a resolute attack, promptly rallied the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... thorny hedge before you which seems impassable. But strike it thrice with this wand, saying each time, 'Please, hedge, let me through,' and it will open a pathway for you. Then, when you come to a well, sit down on the brink of it; do not be surprised at anything you may see, but, whatever you are asked ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... here no want of trees, among which the most common were the tallow-tree and the camphor, cedars, firs and the tall and majestic arbor vit. Groves of oranges, citrons and lemons were abundantly interspersed in the little vales that sloped down to the brink of the river; and few of the huts were without a small garden and plantation of tobacco. The larger plains were planted with the sugar-cane. We had thus far passed through the country without having seen a single plant of the tea-shrub, but here we found ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... to be just as Bandy-legs said, if one could judge from the tremendous amount of splashing that came to their ears, Steve being shut out from their view temporarily by a thick clump of alders that grew on the brink of a little trickling stream emptying into the pond ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... She stood upon the brink of the pool, and the minister descended the steps at its edge till the soles of his shoes were moistened with the water. He turned to the young candidate, but she did not follow him: instead of doing so she remained ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... is a believer in force, and a believer in the utilization of all the Empire's resources; but he sees that these things are not enough. Why, man, humanly speaking, we stand on the brink of ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... a thing is to be, it is best over. It is never any good to sit on the brink shivering before man plunge in. So, if I must needs write, be it done. Here is a dozen of parchment, and a full inkhorn, and grey goose-quills: and I need nothing else save brains; whereof, I thank the saints, I have enough and to spare. And indeed, it is as well I should, for in this world—I ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... close to the mowers on the meadow-field as to scent the fragrance of the hay; to hear the song of the Boblink, or the rhythmic whetting of the scythe; or passes the ends of those primitive, those pilgrim-fences of post and rail, that enter the brink of the river to mark the boundaries of the small, paternal, and though frequently sterile, the much loved fields into which this ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... his reeking hide They stretched the cataract beside, Whose waters their wild tumult toss Adown the black and craggy boss Of that huge cliff whose ample verge Tradition calls the Hero's Targe. Couched on a shelf beneath its brink, Close where the thundering torrents sink, Rocking beneath their headlong sway, And drizzled by the ceaseless spray, Midst groan of rock and roar of stream, The wizard waits prophetic dream. Nor distant rests the Chief;—but hush! See, gliding slow through mist and bush, The hermit gains yon ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... noise he hears, Which suddenly along the forest spread; Whereat from out his quiver he prepares An arrow for his bow, and lifts his head; And, lo! a monstrous herd of swine appears, And onward rushes with tempestuous tread, And to the fountain's brink precisely pours, So that the giant's join'd by all the boars. Morgante Maggiore ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... rebellion: the country trembled on the brink of civil war; of authority there was none save in the strong hand; every man did that which seemed right in his own eyes. Bands of armed ruffians paraded the streets, robbing and murdering as they pleased; the soldiers quarrelled among themselves; ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... cloudy day, and had begun to "spit snow"; and as it drew toward noon, they stopped beside the road at a place where a large pine and several birches leaned out from the brink of the deep gorge through which the Little Androscoggin flows to join the larger stream. Here they fed their horses on the last of the three bagfuls of hay, but had nothing to cook or eat in the way of food ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... ten, twenty, and at length a hundred voices; and thereupon there was a running and trampling, and hurrying and scurrying, an agitation in our big floating inn as if the boilers were on the brink of bursting, and giving us a passage into eternity in the midst of their scalding contents. Louise started up, and dragging me with her, hurried breathless through the two saloons, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... is simply an immense opening in the ground covering about one half of an acre, and about 80 feet deep. It has an incline running down into it, by which the ore is hoisted to the surface. Standing on the brink of this opening and looking down, we could see the men at work, some drilling, others filling and running the cars to the incline to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... huge gantor, gulping a drink from the bank, snorted and went trumpeting away at the grotesque sight of him—flying without wings!—and once too, on rising cautiously above the treetops to reconnoiter, Carse saw life far more perilous to him: a small party of men, stooping over a swamp-brink and plucking the ripe isuan weed. At this he dived steeply and fled on; and he knew he had gone unobserved, for there came no outcry of discovery ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... and even were they visible, as the water then stretches from bank to bank, there would only be one vast monotonous fall. But after the heavy monsoon floods are over, the river above the falls-shrinks back as it were into a long deep pool which lies at a distance of several hundred yards from the brink of the precipice, and from this pool the water of the river then escapes by four distinct rapids which have cut their way to-the brink of the precipice, and fall over the cliffs in four distinct ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... Brother Rabbit breathed more at ease. Then he went to the brink of the well, but when he looked in the water the tar-doll seemed to look in too. He could see her reflection in the water. This made Brother Rabbit so mad that he grew red ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... brink of the giant hollow and clapped their hands for the very joy of seeing it all; and there—a little man stepped up to them and doffed his cap. The queen wanted them—she was waiting for them by the throne that very minute; and the little ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... of wellnigh complete degeneracy offered by the roister-doistering slough brethren of the Vale of Tears gave Herr Carovius a new lease on life. He had a really affable tendency to associate with men who were standing just on the brink of human existence. He always drank a great deal of liqueur. The brand he preferred above all others was what is known as Knickebein. Once he had enjoyed his liberal potion, he became jovial, friendly, companionable. In these moods he would venture the hardiest of assertions, not merely ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... oaks, the linden, the locusts on the hill and the solitary old honey-locust down by the river's brink are as yet unresponsive to the smiles of spring. The plum, the crab apple, the hawthorn and the wild cherry are but just beginning to push green points between their bud scales. But the elms are a glory of dull gold; every twig is fringed with blossoms. The maples have lost their fleecy white softness, ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... clear of the speeding komatik, pitching over and over, and finally sliding to a stop, dazed and bewildered, but in time to see the komatik, bottom up, at the very brink of the chasm. Toby was sprawling just above it. The dogs, with traces taut, stood above him bracing themselves to hold the ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... attention. The sketches of American life and tendencies, both Northern and Southern, are given with discrimination and truth. The dying scene, which closes the First Part, seems to us nobly wrought. The "death-bed hymn" of the slaves sounds a pathetic wail over an abortive life shivering on the brink of the Unknown. In the Second Part we find less of the color and music of a poem, and more of the rapid movement of a drama. The doom of Slavery upon the master now comes into full relief. The characters of Herbert ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... acquainted, and this seemed more important to him than abstract schemes for the improvement of the race in general. He was a man of peace and wished all others to be at peace; the confusion and irritation that accompanies reform was most disagreeable to him. Many a Harvard student who trembled on the brink of an abyss, far from home and left to his own devices, afterwards looked back to Doctor Peabody's helping hand as to the hand of a beneficent providence held out to save him from destruction; and those whom he was unable to save thought of ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... Which liked you so well, that in short space The way to the hot bath anon ye left it, And took the straight way to the foul pit. And ever ye looked continually Upon that same bitch, and so much her eyed, That ye came to the foul pit-brink suddenly, Like to have fallen in, and to have been destroyed, Which when I saw, anon then I cried, Starting in my sleep, and therewith did awake; That yet for fear, methink, my body doth quake. Was not this a fearful dream and marvellous? I pray you, daughter, what ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... little channels by which one could drop down behind the islands while the main stream made an impassable fall; the precise height of the water at which it was safe to run the Rapide Gervais; the point of rock on the brink of the Grande Chute where the canoe must whirl swiftly in to the shore if you did not wish to go over the cataract; the exact force of the tourniquet that sucked downward at one edge of the rapid, and of the bouillon that boiled upward at the other ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... willingly give a thousand millions, for the scales would then descend in her favor and victory indubitably be hers. For consider the consequences of interruption in that stream of traffic. Britain herself on the brink of starvation, her troops in France, in Egypt, in Salonica, cut off without food, without ammunition, unable to return to their homes. But for this fleet that bridges the seas, Britain could not send or use a single soldier ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... was performed. After hymns had been sung the minister went down into the water, and the candidate appeared dressed in a long white robe very much like a night-gown. The dear sister, during a short address, stood on the brink of the tank for a few moments, and then descended into it beside the minister, who, taking her by the neck and round the waist, ducked her fairly and completely. She emerged, and walked dripping into the vestry, where it was always said that ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... had dropped last night, and the hills round Lewes stood in mellow sunlight; the atmosphere was full of light and warmth, that tender glow that falls on autumn days; the trees in the court outside stood, poised on the brink of sleep, with a yellow pallor tinging their leaves; the thousand pigeons exulted and wheeled ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the Rhine and the Continental system,—terms synonymous with all the evils which have brought Germany and Europe to the brink of destruction,—will in future have no other signification in the vocabularies of the writers on political economy than that interval of severe probation when Germany seemed to be annihilated, but yet rose from her ruins with renewed energies, and, united more ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... She arranged the sovereigns in neat little piles on the table. "That's enough to take you to Paris and set you going." Ted started, and his face fell a little. "It's positively my only dream that ever came true. Picture it, think of it, just on the brink of it. You can start next week, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... more they threaded their way, cautiously between these beautiful traps. Then, they found themselves on the brink of a gully a hundred yards in width; and Payne, driving ahead at full speed, cried out in anguish as he realized how they ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... have been MUCH more than thirty-five years her senior; and, as he lived on two hundred rupees a month and had money of his own, he was well off. He belonged to good people, and suffered in the cold weather from lung complaints. In the hot weather he dangled on the brink of heat-apoplexy; but it ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... expectantly. What would she say? Surely not that tame old yarn anent this world being merely a place of probation, wherein we were allowed time to fit ourselves for a beautiful world to come. That old tune may be all very well for old codgers tottering on the brink of the grave, but to young persons with youth and romance and good health surging through their veins, it is most boresome. Would she preach that it was flying in the face of providence to moan about my appearance? it being one of the greatest blessings ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... cried Miss Wilmot, 'how very near have I been to the brink of ruin! But how great is my pleasure to have escaped it! Ten thousand falsehoods has this gentleman told me! He had at last art enough to persuade me that my promise to the only man I esteemed was no longer binding, since ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... sabre-toothed felis. Its thick skin served as an impervious shield, protecting it from the most powerful blows of the fiercest animals. It is quite probable that packs of hyenas and wolves learned to take advantage of precipices, and that they frightened the rhinoceros over the brink, thus disabling him so that ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... remonstrance from the guide, he shot the canoe ahead, gave vent to another reckless shout, and flew, rather than glided, down the stream. On seeing this, the guide held back, so as to give him sufficient time to take the plunge ere he followed. A few strokes brought Charley's canoe to the brink of the fall, and Harry was just in the act of raising himself in the bow to observe the position of the rocks, when a shout was heard on the bank close beside them. Looking up they beheld an Indian emerge from the forest, fit an arrow to his bow, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the placing of his palace at Greenwich, which I would have had built between the river and the Queene's house, so as a large cutt should have let in ye Thames like a bay; but Sir John was for setting it in piles at the very brink of the water, which I did not assent to and so came away, knowing Sir John to be a better poet than architect, tho' he had Mr. Webb (Inigo ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... hand, he led him with caution to the brink of the Lynn; and then, folding him in his arms, dashed with him through the tumbling water into the cavern he had chosen for his asylum. Halbert sunk against the rocky side, and putting forth his hand to catch some of the water as it fell, drew a few drops to his ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the same as Timothy," she'd give out, and I to stoop my shoulders the time the sun would prey upon my head. "He that is as straight and as clean as a green rush on the brink of the bog." ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... to the last; with me, Miss Wharton, America and her liberties were my earliest passion, and—" Again she paused, and Frances thought it was the struggle of death that followed; but reviving, she proceeded, "Why should I hesitate, on the brink of the grave! Dunwoodie was my next and my last. But," burying her face in her hands, "it was a love ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... one of those calendars with whom Mr. Galland has made us acquainted in his elegant tales. These gentlemen, you will remember, were for ever falling in with extraordinary incidents; and I was myself upon the brink of one so astonishing that I protest I cannot explain it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thunders, here and there a philosopher proses against the money struggle. But they might as well whisper at the brink of Niagara. And often the preacher changes his thundering when a RICH church calls him, often the philosopher grasps the first chance to forget ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... hears, Which suddenly along the forest spread; Whereat from out his quiver he prepares An arrow for his bow, and lifts his head; And, lo! a monstrous herd of swine appears, And onward rushes with tempestuous tread, And to the fountain's brink precisely pours, So that the giant's join'd by all the boars. Morgante ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... I am at the brink of the last page, and I have said nothing of the Apollo, the Invalides, or Les Sourds et Muets. What shall I do? I cannot speak of everything at once, and when I speak to you so many ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... death sets not free, The hurt, misrepresented names, who come At each year's brink, and cry to History To do them justice, or ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... and gone, the graceless Girl! And robbed my failing years; My blood before was thin and cold But now 't is turned to tears;— My shadow falls upon my grave, So near the brink I stand, She might have stayed a little yet, And led me by ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... sun begins to sink, And soon is on the very brink Of setting in the quiet sea; The ploughing horses leave the lea, The weary workman homeward goes Thinking of supper and repose; And darkness closes o'er the scene, Where late the murderous sport had been: The moon, with pale and pitying looks, Shines on the slaughter-field of rooks: The ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... together, the injured lying moaning and ghastly beneath the overhanging shelf of rock, and the girl, who possessed all the patient stoicism of frontier training, resting in silence, her widely opened eyes on those far-off stars peeping above the brink of the chasm, her head ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... maternal tradition and kept on bringing himself up like a toy Pom. He did not know what else to do. Then, when he was five-and-twenty, he found himself at the edge of the world gazing in timorous starkness down into the abyss of the Great War. Something kicked him over the brink and sent him sprawling ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Lord George was wedded to the country. They had on the whole behaved well to each other in the matter. The husband, though he feared that his wife was surrounded by dangers, and was well aware that he himself was dallying on the brink of a terrible pitfall, would not urge a retreat before the time that had been named. And she, though she had ever before her eyes the fear of the dullness of Cross Hall, would not ask to have the time postponed. It was now ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... a grey-haired man, trembling upon the brink of eternity, there came a vision in the solemn hours of night, and the form of Amy, wan as some marble statue, breathed again in his ear the last words she ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... walked with slow deliberation down to the river's brink. The trapped prisoner had shied halfway around, stretching out his arms to find a firmer grip on some rock large and heavy enough to anchor him. After his first startled cry he had made no sound, but now, as he sighted Rynch, his eyes widened ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... rule concerning the mote in thy neighbor's eye and the beam in thine own eve. Your worst pessimist is, after all, an optimist with regard to himself. We are quick to recognize the gravity of ill health in somebody else, yet we ourselves may be on the very brink of death without realizing it. It is a special phase of selfishness. We are loath to connect the idea of a catastrophe with our own person. Max, who saw a mote in the eye of everybody else's wife, failed to perceive the beam in the eye of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... is a wide diversity in social situations, from rock-ribbed stability, to entire communities teetering on the brink or plunging over the brink into the maelstrom of revolution. Such diverse situations have existed again and again ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... one, struck a congenial chord in the father's heart. It connected him with her by a mute and unceasing sympathy. Templeton had felt so deeply the alarm and pain of illicit love, he had been (as he profanely believed) saved from the brink of public shame by so signal an interference of grace, that he resolved no more to hazard his good name and his peace of mind upon such perilous rocks. The dearest desire at his heart was to have his daughter under ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... where mighty things are resolving, to lonely groves; to thy own abodes where thou dwell'st; gay and pleas'd among the rural swains in shady homely cottages; thou hast brought me to a grove of flowers, to the brink of purling streams, where thou hast laid me down to contemplate on Sylvia, to think my tedious hours away in the softest imagination a soul inspir'd by love can conceive, to increase my passion by every thing I behold; ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... that the New China ought to be judged, their opinion is the one which will finally be accepted as authoritative. The situation is admittedly dangerous; and it is imperative that a speedy remedy be sought; for the heirs and assigns of an estate which has been mismanaged to the brink of bankruptcy must secure at all costs that no public receivership ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Run, run! Oh, stay her! fly; Bring her back hither! [Exit PYLADES. I shudder! She is still His mother, and he must have pity on her. Yet only now she saw her children stand Upon the brink of an ignoble death; And was her sorrow and her daring then As great as they are now for him? At last The day so long desired has come; at last, Tyrant, thou diest; and once more I hear The palace all resound ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the acknowledged "freaks" at the brink of insanity, who are but the extreme form of the unstable, and who, after having wasted haphazard much useless imagination, end in an insane asylum or ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... they were even diaries of travel. Since the hero strayed from place to place, it did not seem unreasonable that the story should stray from subject to subject. This is true of the bulk of the novels up to and including David Copperfield, up to the very brink or threshold of Bleak House. Mr. Pickwick wanders about on the white English roads, always looking for antiquities and always finding novelties. Poor Oliver Twist wanders along the same white roads to seek his ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... destination; he knew not that his sister had left England, and after writing again and again, and receiving no reply, he ceased altogether from writing. During the first years of his sojourn in California, he was unfortunate, and was several times brought to the brink of the grave by sickness. After a time fortune smiled upon his efforts, till he at length grew immensely rich, and finally left the burning skies of California to return to England. He landed at New York and intended, after visiting ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... his men true, Came linking up the brink, man; The Hogan Dutch they feared such, They bred a horrid stink then. The true Maclean and his fierce men Came in amang them a', man; Nane durst withstand his heavy hand. All fled and ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... alternately; at one time almost imbecile, at others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe—I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor old man, now on the brink of a grave into which he can take nothing, would sacrifice your life and mine to have possession of those guilders, the whole of which I would barter ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "Good-bye for ever" was written on each face and echoed in each heart. Words could not soothe that suffering which turned this common sorrow into an individual torture, which each must bear unaided and alone; and so they stood silent and with outward calm, knowing that on that brink of woe the quiver of an eye might overthrow their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the accession of George III, the state of Ireland was almost as miserable as before. Trade and manufactures being nearly crushed out, want of employment brought the people in the towns to the brink of starvation. In the country, although the middle classes were on the whole becoming more prosperous, the condition of the labourers and cottiers was wretched in the extreme. It is not to be wondered at therefore ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... decked with figures and where the mind sees phantoms of accumulated and accumulating work, waiting, waiting like Fate. Stories have been told of criminals carrying the body of a victim around on their backs until they stood on the brink of insanity. Hundreds of bankboys know what it is to feel the weight of corpse-like figures on their backs. One cannot get away from the horrible burden, it clings until the heart is sick and the stomach nauseated. And these ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... the mask enhanced them. What mystery lay behind Manuela's sidelong eyes? What sin or suffering? What knowledge, how gained, justified Esteban's wizened saws? These two were wise before their time; when they ought to have been flirting on the brink of life, here they were, breasting the great flood, familiar with death, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... midnight the bearers swung sharply at the brink of the cliff and plunged down the steep narrow road cut along its face. Brinnaria felt the dampness of the lake ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... was no easy matter. They were in utter darkness, and (as they had already found by groping about) on the brink of a chasm of unknown depth. The ledge upon which they had been cast was evidently very narrow, and almost as slippery as ice; and Jack, being encumbered with the loaf, and Pierre badly bruised against the rocks, they were not in ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... concluded, as they four stood at the river's brink, looking out at the long line of the scows swinging in the rapid current of the Athabasca, "that's the first lesson. What do you think of our boat, the ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... that stood on the bank of the river, waiting for the water to run by, that he might cross over dryshod!'' And then he continues, with solemn emphasis and pity: 'All I have to say is this, that if a nation, trembling on the brink of anarchy and ruin, is so dead that it will not hear a plea to redress wrongs which the whole people admit call for reform, God in mercy pity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pitying derision as he remembered his recklessness. He had not been in love with life. In his gloomy moods he had often thought life was hardly worth the living. What sickly sentiment! He had been on the brink of the grave, but he had been snatched back from the dark river of Death. It needed but this to show him the joy of breathing, the glory of loving, the sweetness of living. He resolved that for him ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... little," said Tom, sharply, as he set his teeth; for he knew that they were on the brink of a hand-to-hand encounter. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... was perilous sport for Sharon Whipple. Day after day, looking into the whirlpool, he was—in a moment of madness—himself to leap over the brink. On an afternoon had come his brother Gideon and Rapp, Senior, elated pupils of John McTavish, to play sportingly for half a ball a hole. They ignored certain preliminary and all-too-pointed comments of the watcher. They strode gallantly ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... sole consideration was for his friend Sah-luma, whom he entwined with one arm as he sprang down from the position they had hitherto occupied on the brink of the fountain, and made straight for the nearest of the six broad avenues that opened directly into the Square. Sah-luma looked pale, but was apparently unafraid,—he said nothing, and passively allowed himself to be piloted by Theos through the madly raging multitude, which, oddly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... began for Undine. The Princess, chained her mother's side, and frankly restive under her filial duty, clung to her new acquaintance with a persistence too flattering to be analyzed. "My dear, I was on the brink of suicide when I saw your name in the visitors' list," she explained; and Undine felt like answering that she had nearly reached the same pass when the Princess's thin little hand had been held out to her. For the moment she ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the pears, the four bottles of claret; and her fury broke forth like a cord that is overstrained, and she was on the verge of tears. She made terrible efforts at self-control, drew herself up, swallowed the sobs which choked her; but the tears rose nevertheless, shone at the brink of her eyelids, and soon two heavy drops coursed slowly down her cheeks. Others followed more quickly, like water filtering from a rock, and fell, one after another, on her rounded bosom. She sat upright, with a fixed expression, her face pale and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sank with a certain foreboding of evil. He found himself on the brink of an abyss, and felt the ground crumbling beneath him. First came a mad impulse to fly, to escape and hide himself; and he had almost carried it out. His hand was on the door, but he hesitated, turned back, and walked the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... blessing of chance, Lucien, standing on the brink of the precipice over which he was destined to fall, heard warnings on all sides. D'Arthez had set him on the right road, had shown him the noble method of work, and aroused in him the spirit before which all obstacles disappear. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... kneeling upon the brink of the spring, her sleeve pushed up to her shoulder, her hand and arm in the water, dipping for the fragment ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... details came to view, and accustomed as he was to marvels of pageantry, the Prince exclaimed: "These are not men, but devils fleeing from the wrath of God!" and involuntarily he went nearer, down to the brink of the height. It seemed the land was being inundated with camels; not the patient brutes we are used to thinking of by that name, with which domestication means ill-treatment and suffering—the slow-going burden-bearers, always appealing ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... what is given. "Crossing a bare common," says Emerson, "in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear." ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... change spread to himself. His cheeks took on a ruddier hue, the sparkle of his black eyes mellowed into a calm and steady radiance. There was no trace of feverish elation which, in solitude, recoiled to the brink of despair. He sang to himself evenings in his dormitory, clearly and with joy. His step was as elastic as that of any school-boy. I often thought upon this change, and meditated how beautiful an illustration of confession's blessings it furnished. Frequently we were ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... Livingston strove to protect their monopoly, and the two States were brought to the brink of war. In the end the courts settled the difficulty by establishing the exclusive control of navigable waters by ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... her eyes as if on the brink of an abyss. In the long silence that followed was heard all over the park the falling of the leaves in the breeze, some still heavy with sap, dropping in bunches from bough to bough, others stealing down with a scarcely audible sound, like the rustling of a dress. Round the little hut, under ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... strange circumstances, I was destined to play my part, amid stirring scenes of Indian war, and in surroundings that would test my courage and manhood to the utter-most; yet, although I heard it not, the hour had already struck, and I stood on the brink of a tragedy beyond ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... as a man cultivates independence and autocratic ideas, just so in proportion is he nearing the brink over which many have fallen to destruction. When an independent man has a fall, his enemies glory and loud are the shouts that arise from them, and if we listen closely we will hear the multitude say: "Serves ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of the same Church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (cure) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... of incantation resorted to to reclaim children from the Fairies, which was as follows:—The mother who had lost her child was to carry the changeling to a river, but she was to be accompanied by a conjuror, who was to take a prominent part in the ceremony. When at the river's brink the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... pausing on the brink, "that it flows towards the sea in the direction we have come from. Now step into the water and ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ray, snatched back again, and bearing her to safety. Ray has already scrambled from the shallow breach where his brother alone found bottom; waiting hands assist Beltran; but as she lingers that moment shivering on the brink, blindly remembering the double movement of that arm beneath the ice, she silently asks, with a thrill, if he suffered Ray to save himself because he was a boy, and could, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... taken her goods to a poor market. Norris Vine is on the brink of ruin. If I turn the screw to-morrow, he must ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which the excavations were propped up, in the year 1678 the surface of the ground fell in, forming a vast pit of above 180 feet in depth, 1200 feet long, and 600 feet broad, with precipitous and sometimes overhanging walls, so that the spectator appears to be standing on the brink of an enormous crater. The bottom is filled with masses of rubbish and the remnants of ancient shafts, and thick beams of wood are seen protruding in all directions. A broad and convenient wooden staircase has, however, ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... United States would never go to war with Germany, "because the German-Americans would revolt." That was one of Zimmermann's hobbies. Zimmermann told other American officials and foreign correspondents that President Wilson would not be able to bring the United States to the brink of war, because the "German-Americans were ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... nations with wonderful ease; nor was there any particular necessity for it if society at large was reconstructed on the new basis. The object of Jesus was to reconstruct the kingdom of heaven in Israel, and he was crucified. All Israel had the same object in view, and stood at the brink of dissolution. If the basis and principles of the kingdom of heaven became the postulate of society at large, Jesus is resurrected in the world, and Israel is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... loved children in a kindly, detached way, but she had never appropriated them. But now she could not forget the feeling of that small, downy head that for a day or so nestled on her breast while the young mother's feet all but slipped over the brink. She remembered the strange look in the child's deep eyes the night it died. The lonely, aged look that, in passing, seemed trying to fix one familiar object. And when the dim light went out in the little face and only a dead baby lay in her arms, maternity ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... the scene painter and dramatist which tries to depict a real battlefield. For battlefield I felt this was, and my overstrained nerves no longer holding my imagination in check, I could already see human forms writhing in agony, and hear the moaning of souls on the brink of Eternity. As though to vivify this hallucination, the dying moon suddenly plunged behind a cloud, lighting the landscape but by strange lugubrious streaks, and in the distance behind us a long low rumble warned me that my dream might soon be a ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... striven, And all earth's pleasures overleaps. He shall through life's wild scenes be driven, And through its flat unmeaningness, I'll make him writhe and stare and stiffen, And midst all sensual excess, His fevered lips, with thirst all parched and riven, Insatiably shall haunt refreshment's brink; And had he not, himself, his soul to Satan given, Still must he ...
— Faust • Goethe
... fires my brain, Caught from Old England's fine time-hallowed drink; I snatch the pot again and yet again, And as the foaming fluids shrink and shrink, Fill me once more, I say, up to the brink! This makes strong hearts—strong heads attest its charm— This nerves the might that sleeps in ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... undergrowth teems with darting wings. All the town troops out to see the country in its gala dress. The very poorest have a favorite nook, a recollection of the bygone year to be revived and renewed; a sheltered corner that invited sleep, a glade where the shade was grateful, a spot beside the river's brink where the fish used to bite. Each one says, "Don't you remember?" Each one seeks his nest like a home-coming swallow. Does it still hold together? What havoc has been made by the winter's winds, and the rain, and the frost? Will it welcome us, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Another editor was reading "The Hearer of Truth," and a publisher was hovering on the brink of venturing "The Higher Cannibalism"; and so the two had new hopes to lure them on. When the spring-time had come, they would once more escape from the city, and would put up their tent on the lake-shore! They spent long afternoons picturing just how they would live—what they would eat, and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... 1454, for it does not read like the work of a very young man. Professor Logeman was, perhaps, influenced in proposing this date by a desire to get in front of the critics of English literature (including ten Brink), who have assigned the English play to the reign of Edward IV., i.e. not later than 1483. As in the Miracle Plays, so in the Moralities, an original purely didactic purpose was gradually influenced by a desire to render the didacticism more palatable to a popular ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... recesses of the heart. And I know also that a passion, dominating or tyrannical, invading the whole man and subjugating all his faculties to its own unique end, may conduct him whom it spurs and drives, into all sorts of adventures, to the brink of unfathomable dangers, to the limits of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... content. I am happy, Justin. Believe me, I am happy. What has my life been? Dissipated in the pursuit of a phantom." He spoke musingly, critically calm, as one who already upon the brink of dissolution takes already but an impersonal interest in the course he has run ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... strange fascination about these river uplands; no place was so dear to Nan, and yet she often thought with a shudder of the story of those footprints which had sought the river's brink, and then turned back. Perhaps, made pure and strong in a better world, in which some lingering love and faith had given her the true direction at last, where even her love for her child had saved her, the mother had been still taking ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... room whom should Richard meet but Storri. The Russ was on the brink of departure. At that meeting Richard's face clouded. Dorothy was alone with Storri; her mother had been called temporarily from the room. At sight of Dorothy's flower-like hand in Storri's hairy paw, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... in 1999. Real GDP contracted by more than 6%, with poverty worsening significantly. The banking system also collapsed, and Ecuador defaulted on its external debt later that year. The currency depreciated by some 70% in 1999, and, on the brink of hyperinflation, the MAHAUD government announced it would dollarize the economy. A coup, however, ousted MAHAUD from office in January 2000, and after a short-lived junta failed to garner military support, Vice President Gustavo NOBOA took over ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... down the stairs as far as she dared,—almost to the very brink of the water. There she was near enough to see and hear what was doing. The tree was an apple-tree; and though the ripest apples were gone, a good many were left, which would be a treat when cooked. The boys ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... was. Hung with millions of electric bulbs, crowned and diademed, and laced with jewels of white flame, she signaled to them out of the mystery and immensity of the night. For a moment they were dumb, they stood still, as if they paused on the brink and struggled, protesting against this ravishing of their souls by the Exhibition. Straight in front of them, monstrous yet fragile, its substance withdrawn into the darkness, its form outlined delicately in beads of light, in brilliants, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... are the heather and the flowers and the birds. There are the folk enjoying themselves upon the golf-links and the laborers yonder cutting the corn. You tell us that they and we may be upon the very brink of destruction—that this sunlit day may be that day of doom which the human race has so long awaited. So far as we know, you found this tremendous judgment upon what? Upon some abnormal lines in a spectrum—upon rumours from Sumatra—upon some curious personal excitement which we have ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... close to the house, but, considering that a bold effort was the only one likely to succeed, he walked out straight to the moat, hesitated a moment as to whether he should leap in and swim or wade across, and ended by walking sharply along its brink till it turned off at right angles, and he now saw a sandstone bridge facing the entry of a large, old-fashioned hall, that had evidently gone to ruin, and which, from the outside aspect, seemed to be uninhabited, ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... twelve years I have lived in silence; and now, as I wait at the brink of the grave for the stroke that will cast me into it, I will candidly own to you that this silence is beginning to weigh heavily upon me. I have borne my sorrows alone for twelve years; I have had none of the comfort that friendship gives ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... light and heard the baying of dogs. They had found an Indian village, and here they rested well, and had plenty of food and drink. Upon this new river they were charmed to see the deer come feeding down to the water's brink, and Raleigh describes the scene as though it reminded him of his own park at Sherborne. They were alarmed at the crowds of alligators, and one handsome young negro, who leaped into the river from the galley, was instantly devoured in ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and the millions advanced, as it were over the brink of Eternity, towards London. But the reinforcements never came. Every transport that steamed out of Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, Antwerp, Brest or Calais, vanished into the waters; for now the whole squadron of twelve Ithuriels ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... any man at all speak lies at the very brink of death, or hold any secret in his heart? It was at that time he had done with deceit, and he showed where his thought was, and had no word at all for me that had left the whole world for his sake, and that went wearing out my youth, pushing here and there as far as the course of the stars ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... with one of our party to view the cataract by moonlight. I took my favourite seat on the projecting rock, at a little distance from the brink of the fall, and gazed till every sense seemed absorbed in contemplation. Although the shades of night increased the sublimity of the prospect and "deepened the murmur of the falling floods," the moon in placid beauty shed her soft influence upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... strong redoubt on the bank of the river, opposite New Orleans, around which was a fosse twenty-five feet in width, the earth from which was thrown up to form a steep glacis, from the summit of the wall serving as a parapet to the brink of the fosse. Here a battery of two twenty-four pounders commanded at once the road and the ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... ditch. To the very edge the horse galloped,—too fast, indeed, if he meant to take the bank as Chiltern's horse had done,—and then stopping himself so suddenly that he must have shaken every joint in his body, he planted his fore feet on the very brink, and there he stood, with his head down, quivering in every muscle. Phineas Finn, following naturally the momentum which had been given to him, went over the brute's neck head-foremost into the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... book of yours WE think You've double damned yourself to scorn; We warned you whilst yet on the brink 485 You stood. From your black name will shrink The ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... are still there expiating their ghostly pranks. An old farmer was so troublesome to his survivors as to require seven clergymen to secure him. By their means, however, he was transformed into a colt; and a servant boy was directed to take him to Cranmere Pool. On arriving at the brink of the pool, he was to take off the halter, and return instantly without looking round. Curiosity proving too powerful, he turned his head to see what was going on, when he beheld the colt plunge into the lake in the form of a ball of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... this aged pilgrim, who for more than eighty years had trod the uneven and often toilsome journey of life, would soon be forever at rest. The Widow Green remarked to my aunt one day in a mysterious whisper, "that she was sure grandma was drawing near the brink of the dark river, and the bright expression of her countenance was but a reflection of the happiness in store for her on the other side." Strong and self-reliant as was my aunt, the death of her mother was something ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... thorough reconstruction of our whole social organism will suffice. Palliative philanthropy is, as the author says, "like standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing snow balls ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... with eager hands and eyes, The beautiful blue damsel-flies That fluttered round the jasmine stems, 70 Like-winged flowers or flying gems: And, near the boy, who, tired with play, Now nestling 'mid the roses lay, She saw a wearied man dismount From his hot steed, and on the brink 75 Of a small imaret's rustic fount Impatient fling him down to drink. Then swift his haggard brow he turned To the fair child, who fearless sat, Though never yet hath daybeam burned 80 Upon a brow more ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... are forever thinking you are on the brink of nothingness, when the true horizon-line is too far for you ever to reach in your ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dazzled eyes; the sun itself seemed to join in the dance, while the sea burned like a furnace, like all Vesuvius a-light, with flowing lava beneath. The horses broke loose from their stalls in terror—a herd of cattle, panic struck, raced down to the brink of the cliff, and blinded by light, plunged down with frightful yells in the waves below. The time occupied by the apparition of these meteors was comparatively short; suddenly the three mock suns united in one, and plunged into the sea. A few seconds afterwards, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... decided that Cora should not attend that ball, or any other place of amusement, for a long time. And he was just on the brink of discovering the impertinent interference of Fate in human affairs, and especially ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... somebody else, Mary, whom you've kept on tenter-hooks ever so long? Are you sure he is not walking up and down under the limes on the brink of despair?' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as soon as they were alone, rising up from her chair and coming over toward him tenderly, "I was horribly afraid you were going to break out before those two young men on the cliff to-day. I saw you were just on the very brink of it. But you resisted bravely. Thank you so much for that. You're a dear good fellow. I was so pleased with you and so proud ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... the earth, our planet was forced out of its orbit, according to Worlds in Collision. For a time, the world was on the brink of destruction. Quoting many authentic ancient records, including the Quich manuscript of the Mayas, the Ipuwer papyrus of the Egyptians, and the Visiddhi-Magga of the Buddhists, Dr. Velikovsky describes the cataclysm that took place. "The ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... present poverty and her own filial piety: it was, that her salary should be paid weekly—she would not accept it in advance—avowedly for her parent's necessities, who, poor exile! and tears stood in Eugenie's dark lustrous eyes as she spoke, was ever trembling on the brink of the grave from an affection of the heart with which he had been long afflicted. Mademoiselle de Tourville, I should state, spoke English exceedingly well as far as the rules of syntax and the meanings of words went, and with an accent ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and extravagant; but, to balance that, every nation has some pleasure in being heartily abused by one of its own number; and the English nation has always had a special delight in being alarmed, and in being clearly convinced that it is and ought to be on the brink of ruin. With such advantages in the worthy doctor's favor, he might have kept the field until some newer extravaganza had made his own obsolete, had not one ugly turn in political affairs given so smashing a refutation to his practical conclusions, and called forth so sudden a rebound ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... sunshine as it was reflected off some bright surface, and with the inspiration of the moment I stepped into the opening at my feet and fell noisily through amid a small avalanche of rubble. Picking myself up, I looked out from the darkness, and saw, as I expected, Weems standing at the brink above nervously fingering ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... wrote it would go to Glacier Park. I am not a vindictive woman, but I know one or two places where I would like to place him and make him swallow that orange. I'd like to see him on a horse, on the brink of a canon a mile deep, and have his horse reach over the edge for a stray plant or two, or standing in a cloud up to his waist, so that, as Aggie so plaintively observed, "The lower half of one is in a snowstorm while the ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... interest me," said the Prince; "the more so as I gather that here in Gruenewald we are on the brink of revolution. Pray, since these have been your special studies, would you augur ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... green knoll and descended upon what I may call a very big and flat meadow beside the river. It was here that Eucalyptus stood; and from the knoll, which was really the beginning of the town, I had my first good view of it—one long street of low wooden houses running eastward to the river's brink, where a few decayed mills and wharves straggled to north and south—a T, or headless cross, will give you roughly the shape of the settlement. From the knoll you looked straight along the main street; with a field-gun ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Cortez and his companions for a moment bore back the foe; but, pressed by those behind, they swept aside resistance, and bore back the Spaniards to the edge of the canal. Cortez and his companions plunged in and swam across. Alvarado stood on the brink, hesitating. Unhorsed and defenseless, he could not make his way across the gap, which was now crowded with the canoes of the enemy. He set his strong lance on the bottom of the canal and, using it as a leaping pole, sprang across. ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... had little education, but a knowledge of men and motives that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the common woman was she endowed with intrepid rashness, with a love for the pursuit of adventure to the brink of danger, and with desire for the pleasures of life. Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb; she was Eve after the fall, but before the bitterness of it was felt. She wore life as a ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... two birds with me on coming into the balloon—one of these was now dead, the other appeared stupefied. After having placed it upon the brink of the gondola, I tried to frighten it to make it take to flight. It moved its wings, but did not leave the spot; then I left it to itself, and it fell perpendicularly and with great rapidity. Birds are certainly not able to ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... white flaxen hair, reversing the usual lights and shadows of the human countenance, give so strange and foreign a look to his flat and comic features. This hobgoblin, Jack Rapley by name, is May's great crony; and she stands on the brink of the steep, irregular descent, her black eyes fixed full upon him, as if she intended him the favour of jumping on his head. She does: she is down, and upon him; but Jack Rapley is not easily to be knocked off ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... o'clock of a dark and rainy March evening. "Any statement you would like to make?" One stands upon the brink of the living world, facing the darkness and silence, and hears ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... of very gradual downward slope brought us suddenly and unexpectedly to the brink of a magnificent canyon, the densely populated valley of Cotahuasi. The walls of the canyon were covered with innumerable terraces—thousands of them. It seemed at first glance as though every available spot in the canyon had been either terraced or allotted to some compact ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... upon the store, had never frittered his heart away. This woman, strange and unusual as it may seem, was absolutely the first whose glance or voice had ever stirred his blood. His passion for her had grown slowly; for years it had been growing, ever since the grey-eyed girl on the brink of womanhood had conducted him to his castle home. It was no fancy, no light desire to pass with the year which brought it. Owen had little imagination, that soil from which loves spring with the rank swiftness of a tropic bloom to fade at the first ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... Near the brink of the Falls, beneath an aged pine, reclined a well- guarded, sorrowful, but haughty band. Their fine symmetry, noble height, and free carriage, were especially attractive. They were all young warriors, whose white paint presented emblems of peace: their plumes were ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... Tondo they have the residence [colegio] of Santa Cruz, lately admitted as such, which is jointly a ministry of Sangleys, mestizos, and natives; the village and ministry of San Miguel, on the river brink; and about one legua above, the residence and novitiate of San Pedro Macati, with a ministry of natives. In the mountains, the village and capital of Antipolo, with the village and ministry of Bosoboso, where the natives of two mountain missions, called ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... better go yourself, if you think water will do him good." I had by this time somewhat recovered my exhausted powers, and, taking the can, I bent my steps as fast as I could to the pit; arriving there, I lay down on the brink, took a long draught, and then plunged my head into the water; after which I filled the can, and bent my way back to the dingle. Before I could reach the path which led down into its depths, I had to pass some ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... dinner-party of thirteen. Where am I going? To that 'Sea of Serenity' which astronomers tell us is located in the left eye of the face known in common parlance as the man in the moon. Where am I going? To Western Ross-shire, to pitch my tent and smoke my cigar in peace, on the brink of that blessed ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... standing, and among them chestnut-trees, which, from their enormous girth and vast apparent age, we may suppose to have survived from the era of the Caesars. The melancholy and sequestered lake of Nemi, deep set in a hollow of the surrounding woods, with the village on its brink, still preserve ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and forced his way through the shrubbery, it was positively marvelous to see how the foliage turned yellow behind him, as if the autumn had been there, and nowhere else. On reaching the river's brink, he plunged headlong in, without waiting so much as to ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... whispering back from all sides, making Tom shiver; but he recovered himself directly, and taking a piece of greasy newspaper from his pocket he loosely crumpled it together, knelt down close to the brink of the abyss, lit the paper, and then threw it from him to blaze out brightly, and fall down—down rapidly—as it burned lower, and lower, and lower, till at a vast depth it burned out, but without illuminating anything. We saw no reflection from rocky ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Papa on the brink of—let us say, his twentieth precipice, it was next necessary to stay a few days longer and reconcile him to the hardship of being rescued in spite of himself. You would have been greatly shocked, if you had seen how he suffered. ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... touch, she had enough good sense to know that a mutual confession, that is, taking it for granted Brandon loved her, as she felt almost sure he did, must be avoided at all hazards. It was not to be thought of between people so far apart as they. The brink was a delightful place, full of all the sweet ecstasies and thrilling joys of a seventh heaven, but over the brink—well! there should be no "over," for who was she? And who was he? Those two dreadfully stubborn facts ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... actually lies about the 'object, and is most closely related to it, puts such knowledge within our grasp. Ether- waves and your anger, for example, are things in which my thoughts will never PERCTEPTUALLY terminate, but my concepts of them lead me to their very brink, to the chromatic fringes and to the hurtful words and deeds which ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the brink, looping the bands ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... quickly, glad to be ahead of Ian with news. Then she found herself confronting an unexpected difficulty. "Mrs. B. M. trying new play small towns; will open Edinburgh in five or six days." With something like a gasp, Aline stopped on the brink of reading the telegram aloud. Who ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he spoke, the great staghound made a dash at Max, who avoided the risk by leaping sideways, and getting as far as he could from the unprotected brink. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... strength of certain marked similarities of style and diction to the signed poems of Cynewulf, the earlier editors of the Andreas assigned the poem to him, and were followed by Dietrich, Grein, and Ten Brink. But Fritsche (Anglia II), arguing from other equally marked dissimilarities, denies its Cynewulfian authorship, and is sustained in his position by Sievers, though vigorously opposed by Ramhorst. More recently Trautman (Anglia, Beiblatt VI. 17) reasserts the ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... he said, dropping into the cane-seated chair she had brought out of the cabin and placed between the flat stone at the doorstep and the well-brink, on which the yellow rooster stood spreading his wings. But Aunt Mehitable had returned to the cabin, and when she reappeared she was holding out to him a cracked saucer on which there was a piece of preserved watermelon ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... over the Wabash at Terre Haute, into St. Louis by the Eads bridge, through Kansas City, across the Missouri, along the corn-fields of Kansas, and then on—on—on with the Sante Fe Railway, across vast plains and past the brink of the Grand Canyon, to Pueblo and the lofty city of Denver. Twenty-five hundred miles along a thousand tons of copper wire! From Bunker Hill to Pike's ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... exaggerating her woes, making her feel herself misunderstood, unloved, unwanted ... oh, I don't know what you said, what passed between you, but this I do know. You saw that child shivering on the brink, as it were, of a dreadful precipice, and not only did you refrain from pulling her back from the edge, but I'm horribly afraid that yours was the hand which sought to push ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... could collect my thoughts and analyse my feelings; but when I recalled all my misdeeds—my departure from that path of virtue, so often and so clearly laid down by my affectionate parent—I was overwhelmed with grief, shame, and repentance. I considered how often I had been on the brink of eternity; and had I been cut off in my sins, what would have been my destiny? I started with horror at the dangers I had escaped, and looked forward with gloomy apprehension at those that still awaited me. I sought in vain, among all my actions since I left my mother's care, one single ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with another—of loving your wife—of contributing with her to your happiness—my imagination made me forget that we are made of clay. Suddenly all these visions were dispelled—the fairy palace was overthrown, and I found myself awake, and on the brink of the abyss—you loved me, and in the moment of that fatal confession, the mask dropped from my soul, and I felt that you had become too dear to me. Be silent still, I implore you. I do not tell you of the emotions, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this. The hearts were full to the brink—to speak was to interfere with their consummate joy. The doctor was the only one who made the attempt, and he, after a very ineffectual endeavour to be jocose, held his peace. The Bible was produced. The servants of the house appeared. A chapter was read ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... side were the Southern dash, daring, and vigor; on the other, the Northern firmness and determination. The Federals slowly yielded, but for twelve hours obstinately disputed every inch of the way. At last, pushed to the very brink of the river, Grant massed his artillery, and gathered about it the fragments of regiments for the final stand. The Confederates, to meet them, had to cross a deep ravine, where, struggling through the mud and water, they melted away under the fire of cannon and musketry from above, and the shells ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... out of the spring The little maid Margaret ran; From the stream to the castle's western wing It was but a bowshot span; On the sedgy brink where the osiers cling Lay a dead man, pallid ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... to speak with a gentleman again. I—I had almost begun to believe there were none left in the world. You give me courage to go on, to acknowledge everything. Mr. Craig, I was a soul tottering on the brink when I met you out yonder; a desperate, disheartened girl, tempted to the point of surrender. I had lost hope, pride, all redeeming strength of womanhood. I scarcely cared whether death, or dishonor, claimed me. I do not know what fateful impulse moves me now, but I can look into ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... of this celebrated Captain, on the brink of a war with France, was an admission of the desperate strait to which the English interest had been reduced. And if the end could ever justify the means, Henry V., from his point of view, might have defended ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... changed her soft looks into daggers to stab me with. Her bloom became blight; her lips oozed out poison, and she dabbled in corrupt things. I tracked her footsteps from my sacred couch as they led to the very brink of the grave. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of Hayes' visit the people were in sore straits, and on the brink of actual starvation, for although there were fish and turtle in plenty, they had not the strength to catch them. A few months before, a cyclone had destroyed nearly all the coconut trees, and an epidemic followed it, and carried off ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... suffered for my King, the testimonies of a good conscience were my support and my reward. And may the favours of a grateful monarch enable my Eustace to enjoy those noblest privileges of greatness for which I pined with ineffectual desire! I am now old and helpless, tottering on the brink of eternity, a blank, as far as respects this world. May I then divest my soul of those passions which will unfit it for the abodes of peace! The injuries of Walter De Vallance are not irremediable. Still do I clasp ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... things that aroused our childish fantasy, when Balint Orzo and I were boys, but none so much as the old tower that stands a few feet from the castle, shadowy and mysterious. It is an old, curious, square tower, and at the brink of its notched edge there is a shingled helmet which was erected by one ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Upon the brink of that abyss of shame into which his father had just tumbled, he thought he could see, not the inevitable woman, that incentive of all human actions, but the entire legion of those bewitching courtesans who possess unknown crucibles wherein to swell fortunes, and who have secret filtres to stupefy ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... white is the New Jersey tea. Those spreading, pointed fingers of coral with a background of dazzling white are the topmost twigs of the red osier dogwood. The strip of shrubs with graceful spray, now bowed in beauty by the river's brink, is a group of young red birches, and this bunch of downy brown twigs, two feet above the snow, sparkling with frost particles, is the downy viburnum. The great tangle of vine and lace work mixed with snow is ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Sophia, in the distant hope of discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret; and, as Andronicus felt himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the brink of the abyss which had been so treacherously dug under his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly convened to debate this important question: the rashness of these clandestine anathemas was generally condemned; but as ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of clouds. The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purity. The river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who had always continued blind be told by his guide that after he has advanced so many steps he shall come to the brink of a precipice, or be stopped by a wall; must not this to him seem very admirable and surprizing? He cannot conceive how it is possible for mortals to frame such predictions as these, which to him would ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... which I have passed, I have retained possession of it. See, I press my lips to it, and solemnly swear that I never committed forgery in my life, and that I was innocent of crime until after I was transported. I have but a short time to live, and do you think I would commit perjury upon the brink of the grave? Do you believe ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... sketches of American life and tendencies, both Northern and Southern, are given with discrimination and truth. The dying scene, which closes the First Part, seems to us nobly wrought. The "death-bed hymn" of the slaves sounds a pathetic wail over an abortive life shivering on the brink of the Unknown. In the Second Part we find less of the color and music of a poem, and more of the rapid movement of a drama. The doom of Slavery upon the master now comes into full relief. The characters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... might have led to a request for his recall. He knew that his constant presence, close to the English Government, was vital to our cause. Russell and Palmerston were by turns insolent and shifty, and once on the very brink of recognizing the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech at Newcastle, virtually did recognize it. You will be proud of Mr. Adams if you read how he bore himself and fulfilled his appallingly delicate ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... slowly get ahead, Even when the right is visibly unclouded, That if all men are classed as quick and dead, The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded. Pray Jove that when they're actually crowded On Styx's brink, and Charon rows in sight, His bark ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... character to lose, an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessings of liberty at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse." Even now across the century these words come with a grave solemnity to our ears, and we can feel as he felt when he alone saw that he stood on the brink of a great crisis. It is an awful thing to know that the life of a nation is at stake, and this thought throbs in his words, measured and quiet as usual, but deeply fraught with much meaning to him and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... rushed and roared in their strong surges over the ledges that made the Falls of St. Anthony; the long logs that had been, but a few months before, proud monarchs of the pine forests, sailed along toward this brink like sticks, then with their long ends balancing out over the rushing fall would tilt over and down into the rushing, curling, foaming torrent out of sight. But little else was thought of just then for we who were near were ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... firmly, with his foot against a solid spur of rock, held through the trying ordeal. Fred in a short time was clambering over the brink, delighted beyond measure at the chance to once more find himself on the ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... first Row with a wooden Ladder, and so with a Ladder still from every Story up to that above it, there being no way to ascend. The Plain on the first Precipice may be so wide, as to have room both for a Row of Houses that stand all along on the Edge or Brink of it, and a very narrow Street running along before their Doors, between the Row of Houses and the foot of the next Precipice; the Plain of which is in a manner level to the tops of the Houses below, and so for the rest. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... placed upon any other dangerous product. Just here we inevitably meet the cry of paternalism, but we shall always be confronted by the question to what extent the government should stand aside and see its citizens follow the bent of their appetites and passions over the brink of destruction. It is the inherent right of government to maintain its own integrity, and this it can do only through the conservation of the powers of its citizens. If paternalism is necessary to this end, then paternalism is a governmental virtue. Better, by far, some ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... didn't say anything, the Cirissin closed the door. "Batter blan," he announced. "Wheeze india buck terth. Cup girlish ear. Torch herf youdon brink high dragon bump." ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... who have turned the page on a dark preface, and have before them still the long bright volume of life. The girl has her arm linked in the man's, but as they walk she breaks often away from him, to dart into copses, to gather flowers, or to peer over the brink where the gulls wheel and oyster-catchers pipe among the shingle. She is no more the tragic muse of the past week, but a laughing child again, full of snatches of song, her eyes bright with expectation. They talk of the new world which lies before them, and her voice is happy. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
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