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More "Prop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for Theophilus to bring around his box of ants, I reckon," he observed, and added seriously after a moment, "Yes, there's no use trying to prop up a fallen tree, Ben. I've had a long life and a good life, and I am willing to draw out. It's a losing game any way you play it, when it comes to that. I've thought a lot about it, my boy, these last weeks, and I tell you the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... her husband, and his consequent conviction that she regarded the marriage as a mistake, the ceremony itself loomed up as a grim fact, one not to be brushed aside by ingenious arguments. Behind it, as a prop to its stability, was the strict tradition of Christianity, an inheritance of peculiar influence with both the participants in the strange mistake. There was no cause for divorce which either of their respective churches recognised ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... should make such an offer as this puzzled me, but his reason for wanting to prop the bank up was no business of mine, and there was no doubt if he could get fifty or sixty thousand pounds' worth of mortgages taken off our hands, it would enable us to hold on for some time. He did, in fact, get one batch of twenty thousand pounds' worth transferred, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... enter into these governments, and, by persuasion, by numbers, and by new laws, to establish a new State. Comrades, do not follow this line of march, for we would perish in following it in Belgium or in France as elsewhere. Rather let us leave these governments to rot away and not prop them up with our morality. This is the reason: the International is and must be a State within States. Let these States march on as they like, even to the point where our State is the strongest. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... shall stir them up—" He pointed to the prisoners asleep in their beds. "They will give me away, and I shall be transferred to the cell in the upper floor. I know my way from there. What I want you for is to unscrew the prop in the door of the mortuary." "I can do that. But ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... all around foresees,—but doubles ill. Each prop thou hast is but a sword to pierce; If Polyeucte hold their heart, the people fierce Will ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... farewell. The Melancholy Tale of Me, he calls them, perhaps because they are not in the least melancholy—a good and sufficient reason. Yet Mr. Sothern strangely neglects the subject of sundials in his book, although they were his prop in how many a play back in the golden Nineties!—the golden, promise-laden, contradictory Nineties, that fin-de-siecle decade when Max Nordau thundered that we were going to the dogs of degeneracy, and we youngsters knew that we were headed not alone ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... take my life and all; pardon not that: You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life, When you do take ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Bessie put out her arm for the bowl, "you prop up his head. I've got a steddyer hand: you'd just spill it all over ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... pendulum as a standard of measure, and to establish the third part of the seconds pendulum (then supposed to be every where of equal length) as a 'pes horarius', or general measure, that might be recovered at any age and by all nations, is to be found in Huygens's 'Horologium Oscillatorium', 1673, Prop. 25. A similar wish was afterward publicly expressed, in 1742, on a monument erected at the equator by Bouguer, La Condamine, and Godin. On the beautiful marble tablet which exists, as yet uninjured, in the old Jesuits' College at Quito, I have myself ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... sitting propped up against the stump of the tree, and that for the best of reasons. A length of his own infallible fishing line was twisted and tightened twice round his throat and then twice round the wooden prop behind him. The leading investigator ran forward and touched the fisherman's hand, and it was as ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... came to a stop after running a few yards further. But finding that no lives were lost, it put on steam and disappeared on its course, and Zene and his trembling assistant were trying to prop up one corner of the wagon when Grandma Padgett brought her spectacles to bear ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... look to the letter and not the spirit; admit the thing, but repudiate the name. Les farceurs! Arnal, of course, follows the fashion of the times, although too sensible a fellow, we suspect, to care a rush about the matter. For the last twenty years he has been the chief prop of the Vaudeville, where he performs for ten months out of the twelve, at a salary of fourteen hundred pounds, with feux or allowances of twenty francs for every act he plays in. His first appearance was in the tragic character of Mithridates, in which he convulsed his audience ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... all he saw for the benefit of his timid homekeeping countrymen, and giving careful measurements of everything measurable—the masts of the steamers, the length of the wharves, the height of the Arc de Triomphe, as if in some mysterious way statistics could prove a prop to the faint-hearted. Of the four lads in the "experiment," two afterwards filled high diplomatic posts. A certain Fang I was made Charge d'Affaires in London and later Consul-General in Singapore, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... Provence, by the highway. They are surrounded with high stone-walls, or ditches, planted with a kind of cane or large reed, which answers many purposes in this country. The leaves of it afford sustenance to the asses, and the canes not only serve as fences to the inclosures; but are used to prop the vines and pease, and to build habitations for the silkworms: they are formed into arbours, and wore as walking-staves. All these gardens are watered by little rills that come from the mountains, particularly, by the small branches of the two sources which I have described ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... prop up his credit for a little time longer. The name he made use of was the name of his patron. In doing this, he believed—as all men who commit crime believe—that he had the best possible chance of escaping consequences. In the first place, he might get the long-expected ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... catastrophe, which seemed, in the opinion not only of the victors, but of the vanquished, to have given the finishing stroke to the American Revolution, Lee's force, augmented by the junction of the troops marching down to join him, was the sole prop and stay of the cause ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... and weather-beaten. The front windows, some of them, were shattered and open, and others were boarded up. Trees and shrubbery were growing neglected, so as quite to block up the lower part. There was an aged barn near at hand, so ruinous that it had been necessary to prop it up. There were two old carts, both of which had lost a wheel. Everything was in keeping. At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a decrepit and infirm old man at the angle of the house, its fit occupant. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of Macedon have always been thought to love their kings, but now, as if some main prop had broken, and the whole edifice of government fallen to the ground, they gave themselves up to Aemilius, and in two days constituted him master of the entire kingdom. This seems to confirm the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... obliged to give myself up for lost and every hope of escaping my horrible fate forsook me. I could no longer shout but it would have been useless, for the ever-increasing din would have prevented others, and me, from hearing anything else. I managed to prop myself up against a rock and with all the strength that was left me, I clung to it with one hand whilst with the other I turned up the collar of my thin, linen jacket and ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... little flock, the loveliest and the last, 'Tis sweet to dream what thou may'st be, when long, long years have past; To think when time hath blanched my hair, and others leave my side, Thou may'st be still my prop and stay, my blessing and ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... over with dust, removing the dust and inspecting them at intervals. Discovering nothing amiss, we returned to the old temple, and at its doorway met the mountaineer, Japhet, who throughout all these proceedings had been our prop and stay. Indeed, without his help and that of his authority over the Abati the mine could never have been completed, at any ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... letting go a good secure, In hope of future gain, Is but imprudence pure. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small addition. A certain wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The dog his leanness ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Leipzig; he could not put his finger on a single person remaining with whom he had had a nearer acquaintance. No one was left to comment on what he did and how he lived. And this knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense of propriety. He ceased to face the trouble that care for his person implied, just as he gave up raising the lid of the piano and making a needless pretence of work. Openly now, he took up his abode in the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he spent the long, idle days stretched on the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... God is nigh, my faith is strong, His arm is my almighty prop: Be glad, my heart; rejoice, my tongue, My dying flesh shall rest ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... They own teown prop'ty somewhars, and they own all the Neck here, and lays areound on her through the summer. Why, Note's father—he 's dead neow—he and I uster stand deown on the mud flats when we was boys, a-diggin' clarms tergether, barefoot; 'tell he cruised ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... at her with awakened curiosity. This agreement was an unexpected prop for him. "You, too, think it a perfect likeness?" he asked her. Her old blue eyes, old in the antique tranquillity of their regard, yet still of such a vivid, unfaded turquoise, turned on him and again he had that impression ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... completed the confusion of the wearied ones of Slade—and they of the Schools, accustomed to the culture of Colvin, whose polished scalp I with difficulty collected, ceasing to distinguish between the quick and the dead, will probably prop up our late 'Arry as professor, long to remain undetected ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... would see that he was right in trusting her; Nell would discover that there was no one so clever as Polly; Mrs. Power would cease to defy her; Alice would obey her cheerfully; in short, she would be the mainstay and prop ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... Canada {146} had her share in it. As a demonstration of general British superiority in manufactures the Great Exhibition was a great success; but as heralding an era of universal peace it was a mournful failure. Three years later England, France, and Sardinia were fighting Russia to prop the rotten empire of the Turk. Then came the Great Mutiny; then the four years of fratricidal strife between the Northern and Southern States; then the war of Prussia and Austria; then the overthrow of France by Germany. All these events ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... troth Like a maternal angel strain The sinful and the sinless child At once on either breast, and there In peace and promise reconciled Unite them: nor could Nature's care With subtler sweet beneficence Have fed the springs of penitence, Still keeping true, though harshly tried, The vital prop of human pride. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and never deign to grieve. Ye, sunny shores of France! behold them start Nor shed one teardrop, as your ships depart. Ye love-charmed bowers of Spain! your Houris' eyes Are rayless now—for brighter lustre vies! Ye, boundless plains, and giant hills, that rise In craggy pride, and prop Columbia's skies, Ye view your maddened sons, with guilty haste, Roll from your shores and tempt the watery waste— Forgotten every claim that Virtue knows, Despised the scenes, where early childhood rose, Swift to the land of gold, they, joyful, flee, Nor care the sacred joys of home again to ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... here, the constable shall take my horse, and I will drive; and then I can look after you, and you can use me for a prop, if you feel weak; but before we start, I must insist on your taking a sip of ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... details, however, he said, would be matter of future deliberation. The object he had in view was, in the words of Mr. Fox, "not to pull down, but to work upon our constitution; to examine it with care and reverence; to repair it where decayed; to amend it where defective; to prop it where it wanted support; and to adapt it to the purposes of the present time, as our ancestors had done from generation to generation, and always transmitted it not only unimpaired, but improved, to posterity." The measure was supported by Mr. Hobhouse, and opposed by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that it was of no use for us to enlarge our markets unless other countries did so also at the same time and in the same way; and in condemning all reduction of import duties that was not based on "reciprocity," he certainly added all the weight of his authority to prop up a system whose injurious influence has affected the very vitality of our social state, and whose overthrow will yet require no small amount ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... and tears. A prop had been rudely pushed from beneath the empire. The young Emperor would stumble and sway, and fall without this strong guide beside him. Men said this was the first sign of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... thousand arms extended over the necks of both sovereigns and people. It had become a mighty power in the world, inseparably connected with the education and the religion of the age, the prime mover of all political affairs, the grand prop of absolute monarchies, the last hope ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... than merely helpful. I would lecture for a school when I would not for a distressed author; and would have helped De Marvy to perfect his invention, but not—unless I had no other object—his widow after he was gone. In a word, I like to prop the falling more than to feed ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Under shelter of ancient authority, of which he retrospectively took possession, he boldly invoked the highest reasons and the most venerated names, in order to justify an arbitrary resolution, and the grasping selfishness which swayed his mind. It was the practice of the French Revolution to prop up its violent and despotic proceedings by the loftiest principles; the Emperor Napoleon had not forgotten ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... up all their lives are seldom good for anything in a crisis. When misfortune comes, they look around for somebody to lean upon. If the prop is not there down they go. Once down, they are helpless as capsized turtles. Many a boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were knocked out from under him and he ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... about the purchase of some old furniture in London he wrote: "There is a chair (without a bottom) at a shop near the office, which I think would suit you. It cannot stand of itself, but will almost seat somebody, if you put it in a corner, and prop one leg up with two wedges and cut another leg off, The proprietor asks L20, but says he admires literature and would take L18. He is of republican principles and I think would take L17 19s. 6d. from ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and Pteris in abundance. Hymenophyllum, Davallia atrata, Diplazium, Begonia Malabarica? Bambusa spiculis hispidis, Hypni sp. spinivenio prop. Dicranum glaucum, etc. etc. A fine Alpinia occurred ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... milk, gleaming along the wall of Herons' Holt, drew every stray cat within a radius of two miles. Beneath, each armed with a clothes-prop, toiled Mr. Fletcher and Frederick under the ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... luxurious vine, Unless to virtue's prop it join, Firm and erect, tow'rd heaven bound, Tho' it with beauteous leaves and pleasant fruit be crown'd, It lies deform'd, and rotting ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... if I had lost a stay or prop," replied Mrs. Seagrave. "So accustomed have I been to look to him for advice since we have been on this island. Had he not been thus snatched from us - had he been spared to us a few years, and had we been permitted to surround his death-bed, and close his eyes in peace—" and Mrs. ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... I should have been, and with no guidance or direction, with that problem of keeping soul and body together, which, after all, is the thing with which all of us are naturally obliged to cope all through our lives. I lived here and there, most of the time looking to Eben Sproule as a prop and support, as a boy must look to some one, or fall into bad and dangerous ways—and even ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... monarchy's fixt, By making on't mixt, And by non-resistance o'erthrown; And preaching obedience Destroys our allegiance, And thus the Whigs prop up ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... very well that Kate was merely propping her hope with the statement, but she was glad enough to accept the prop for her own hopes. So they talked desultorily and with that arms-length amiability which is the small currency of polite conversation between two strange women, and Mrs. Singleton Corey laid aside her dignity with her fur-lined ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... going to the restaurant. I am after all this time weary of the waiters, Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces, Dark beer and make us so confused That we cannot find our home And we must Use the foolish street lights To prop ourselves up with weak hands. Today I have bigger things in mind— Ah, I shall find out the meaning of existence. And in the evening I shall do some roller skating Or go at ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... Quality; And when any comes hither they are won by my complemental and genteel Discourse; my comely presence brings in many a Guest into the House, besides particular Acquaintance: So that I may well affirm I am the Prop of the House. If I didn't introduce Gentleman into your Company, I wonder what you'd do; you might e'en sit still, and be forc'd to make use of a Dildo, before any Body would come to you if ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... breast; a hooded kirtle girded around him reaching down to his calves; a straightsword with ornaments of walrus-tooth on his left thigh." "But who might he be?" [LL.fo.98b.] asked Ailill of Fergus. "I know him indeed," Fergus made answer. "He is the prop of battle; [2]he is the wild heat of anger; he is the daring of every battle;[2] he is the triumph of every combat; he is the tool that pierces, is the man who comes thither. Connud macMorna, from the Callann in the north, is the ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... cause could be found in the fact that Lawyer Temple had run through what little money his father and grandmother had left him; additional wise-acres were of the opinion that some out-of-town folks had bought the place and were trying to prop it up so it wouldn't tumble into the street, while one, more facetious than the others, had claimed that it was no wonder it was falling down, since the only new thing Temple had put upon ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... abolish religion, that it "would try to put laziness, thriftlessness, and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift, and efficiency, that it would strive to break up not merely private property, but, what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... that to be created does not belong to composite and subsisting things. For in the book, De Causis (prop. iv) it is said, "The first of creatures is being." But the being of a thing created is not subsisting. Therefore creation properly speaking does not belong ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Tournanche. We set off early on the next morning, and got to the summit of the pass without difficulty. It gave me my first experience of considerable slopes of hard, steep snow, and, like all beginners, I endeavored to prop myself up with my stick, and kept it outside, instead of holding it between myself and the slope, and leaning upon it, as should ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... just now when, for the moment, I was alone. I felt that all my hopes and prospects were dashed; still I could pray, and God was not far off. I was comforted. Man might fail me, but God would not. If anything, it was good to feel every earthly prop give way, and to cling alone to ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... can carry messages to the engineer and translate them into Spanish." I ran to and fro, stumbling up or down, forgetting every time I passed that a certain part of the ship had a raised ledge. The effort was to prop the boat with spars that it might not tip as it crunched and settled down upon the coral reefs. We could hardly wait until daylight to measure the predicament. When the light grew clear so that I saw the illuminated waters, ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... Which England, aeroplaning, now, lets drop By day and night, in bank, press, church and shop, Timed to the minute that it is to burst. List to Demosthenes, if not to Hearst, Sublime Republic! Lest thy great heart stop, Shocked by the blast of Freedom's every prop, And bats and owls in dwellings, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... was so dreadful but that it would be somewhat alleviated by the fact of his presence: just the sight of him, standing beside her, put her in some vague way out of Ray's power to harm. Exhausted, reeling, he was still the prop of her ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... in his mother's grief a sufficient prop in the crisis through which he was passing. Besides, what is the affection of others to the egoism of passion ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... most uncomfortable lodging, it being a perfect swamp; and we had nothing to cover us, though it rained very hard. The Indians were little better off than we, as there was no wood here to make their wigwams; so that all they could do was to prop up the bark they carry in the bottom of their canoes with their oars, and shelter themselves as well as they could to leeward of it. They, knowing the difficulties that were to be encountered here, had provided themselves with some seal; but we had not the least morsel ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... head, then slowly and painfully sank to his heart, and was chill as a stone. And so again, again deceit; no, worse than deceit—lying and baseness... and life shattered, everything torn up by its roots utterly, and the sole thing which he could cling to, the last prop, in fragments too. In Litvinov's soul rose, like sudden gusts of wind before a storm, momentary ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... shorewise, as shores. 'Schore, undur settynge of a ynge at wolde falle.' P. Parv. Du. Schooren, To Under-prop. Aller eschays, To shale, stradle, goe crooked, or wide betweene the feet, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... he answered, "if my Lord Protector were the only prop of the Gospel, it had fallen long ago. The prop of the Gospel is not my Lord or thy Lord, but the Lord of the whole earth. His strength is enough to ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... of wooden tenements. Some of them were built on piles, and seemed to stand on stilts, holding their draggled skirts out of the mud of their untidy yards: some sagged on rotting sills, leaning shoulder to shoulder as if to prop one another up. From each front door a shaky flight of steps ran down to the unpaved sidewalk, where pigs and children and hens, and the daily tramp of feet to and from the Maitland Works, had beaten the earth into a ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... my beloved son, he whose birth made all my happiness, whose infancy and growing years were all my occupation, whose youth was my pride and consolation, and who would, as I hoped, be the prop of my old age, no longer lives. He has been taken from us in the midst of completed happiness, and of the happiest prospects of the future, whilst each day he gained in virtue, in understanding, in wisdom, following the footsteps ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... could not prop their faith: and yet Many I had known: with all I sympathized; And though struck speechless, I did not forget That what was mourned for, I, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... three classes: the sporting fraternity, whose business it was to despoil and betray; the business men, drawn more or less into the vortex of dissipation; the miners from the creeks, the Man with the Poke, here to-day, gone, to-morrow, and of them all the most worthy of respect. He was the prop and mainstay of the town. It was like a vast trap set to catch him. He would "blow in" brimming with health and high spirits; for a time he would "get into the game;" sooner or later he would cut loose and "hit the high places"; then, at last, beggared and broken, he would crawl back ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... one of our Judges of the Admiraltry, & seconded by another—there is also the Solicitor General (a Wedderburne in Principle but not equal to him in Ability) the Advocate General &c &c. The whole Design of these Addresses is to prop a ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... illustrated this proposition. The former had been all his life a good son, and was now a trustworthy partner, to his father, who justly relied no less on his character than on his brains. The latter, since her parents' early death had left her to her aunt's care, had been the comfort and prop of Miss Bussey's life. It is difficult to describe good people without making them seem dull; but luckily nature is defter than novelists, and it is quite possible to be good without being dull. Neither Mary nor John was dull; ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... upon the pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of all proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... me were from persons who had once occupied privileged positions (I thus designate those in which people receive more from others than they give), who had lost them, and who wished to occupy them again. To one, two hundred rubles were indispensable, in order that he might prop up a failing business, and complete the education of his children which had been begun; another wanted a photographic outfit; a third wanted his debts paid, and respectable clothing purchased for him; a fourth needed a piano, in order to perfect himself and support his family by giving lessons. ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... individually than in the mass. If they are giants, few of them are giants who can stand on their own legs. They prop one another up. There are not more than a dozen Elizabethan plays that are individually worth a superlative, as a novel by Jane Austen or a sonnet by Wordsworth is. The Elizabethan lyrics are an immensely more precious possession than the plays. The best of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Glasgow and Dumfries, I don't know any other Scotch towns concerned in that traffick. In other respects, I conceive the Scots were losers by the union. — They lost the independency of their state, the greatest prop of national spirit; they lost their parliament, and their courts of justice were subjected to the revision and supremacy ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... in a voice so commonplace that he jumped to hear it, 'the kind creatures have left us half a bottle. One glass, Mr. Armstrong, will do you good. You dress with Berry; hell help you with your make-up. Don't be nervous. You've got the book to prop you till the very end, and there you'll be as right as rain. Here's luck to your ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... plants thirty times magnified. But the mournful looking trees along the coast and all about Hilo are mostly the Pandanus odoratissimus, a spreading and branching tree which grows fully twenty-five feet high, supports itself among inaccessible rocks by its prop-like roots, and is one of the first plants to appear on the newly-formed Pacific islands. {62} Its foliage is singularly dense, although it is borne in tufts of a quantity of long yucca-like leaves on the branches. The shape of the tree is usually circular. The mournful look is ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... marriage-settlements are eminently useful, as searching character and testing affection, before an irrevocable step be taken; and again, that when two very young persons are joined together in matrimony, it is as if one sweet-pea should be put as a prop to another. The essay on Wisdom is elevated and thoughtful, like most of the essayist's papers, but somewhat too heavy for miscellaneous readers. With his wonted clearness he distinguishes Wisdom from understanding, talents, capacity, ability, sagacity, sense, &c. and defines ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... accident had happened. The dainty roof was crushed in, and the poor little egg, for which such loving preparations had been made, lay pathetically on the ground outside the door. My comrade crept carefully up, raised the tiny roof to place, and with deft fingers put a twig under as a prop to hold it, then gently laid the pretty ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... slipping till it could be more permanently fixed. The derrick, or upright spar used for carrying the tackle to raise the first beam, was placed in such a position as to become useful for supporting the upper end of it, which now became, in its turn, the prop of the tackle for raising the second beam. The whole difficulty of this operation was in the raising and propping of the first beam, which became a convenient derrick for raising the second, these again a pair ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remote home he found himself, at a very early hour in the morning of the next day, condemned to set forth on foot. He was a young man of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body; bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses. In happier days he would have chartered a cab; but these luxuries were now denied him; and with what courage he could muster he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old gentleman had been led tottering into the adjacent parlor, which was fitted up as his bedroom, and placed comfortably on a high prop of pillows, Marcus drew out his watch, made an amiable pretence of very important business down town, and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... historians. This puts me in mind of what happened at Sinope. {20a} When the Corinthians heard that Philip was going to attack them, they were all alarmed, and fell to work, some brushing up their arms, others bringing stones to prop up their walls and defend their bulwarks, every one, in short, lending a hand. Diogenes observing this, and having nothing to do (for nobody employed him), tucked up his robe, and, with all his might, fell a rolling his tub which he lived in up and down the Cranium. {20b} "What are ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... play has to do with building character in him Froebel has told us. Through it, he showed us, the child "first perceives moral relations," and he made that the basis of the kindergarten and all common-sense education. That prop was knocked out. New York never had a children's playground till within the last three years. Truly it seemed, as Abram S. Hewitt said, as if in the early plan of our city the children had not been thought ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... man shakily heaved himself into a hammock under the trees in that broad backyard wherein, as Valentine Corliss had yesterday noticed, the last iron monarch of the herd, with unabated arrogance, had entered domestic service as a clothes-prop. The young man, who was of delicate appearance and unhumanly pale, stretched himself at full length on his back, closed his eyes, moaned feebly, cursed the heat in a stricken whisper. Then, as a locust directly overhead violently shattered the silence, and seemed like to continue ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Anderson was revived, and it became manifest that the prop upon which she had leaned had been slipped from under her. The spirit which had made her strong to endure the death of her boy failed when the sordid bald truth of a miserable and horrible waste of life gave the lie to the ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... plur. of 'Akkar prop.aromatic roots; but applied to vulgar drugs or simples, as in the Tale of the Sage ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... I've known 'im from a lad; 'Twas me as taught 'im ridin', an' 'e rides uncommon bad; And he says—But 'ark an' listen! There's an 'orn! I 'eard it blow; Pull the blind from off the winder! Prop me up, and ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thank you," said he, "but my time here is very short, and your well-meant efforts for my relief are not only useless, but they also increase my suffering. You are, I presume, from some ship which has come up with us since those fiends left. Kindly prop me up a little higher on the sofa, gentlemen, if you please, and I will endeavour to tell you what has happened ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... found to hold good with respect to thin plates of a denser medium, which is, indeed, not improbable, it will be necessary to adopt the connected demonstrations of Prop. IV., but, at any rate, if a thin plate be interposed between a rarer and a denser medium, the colors by reflection and transmission may be ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... that individuals are nothing in the sight of God. Six emperors have succumbed to the immutable laws of Nature, but the house of Hapsburg is still erect. What, then, if I meet with reverses? The Lord has given me a son, who, if I should be unfortunate, will prop up our dynasty, and ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... champion of the men of Ireland, their prop in the middle of the fight; you were the head of every battle; your ways were glad ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... self-satisfaction, what gives one, like the rich fool, the sense of false security of goods stored up for the years? We are set in life to feel insecure, or at all events to gain stability and security of soul, not to prop up our failing and timid senses upon the pillows of wealth and ease and circumstance. The man whom I entirely envy is the man who walks into the dark valley of misfortune or sickness or grief, or the shadow of death, with a curious and inexpressible zest for ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ambition at this particular crisis was irreparable. One after one, all the agents and tools by whom he could hope to work upon the counsels of the Klosterheim authorities had been removed. Losing their influence, he had lost every prop of his own. Nor was this all; he was reproached by the general voice of the city as the original cause of a calamity which he had since shown himself impotent to redress. He it was, and his cause, which had drawn upon the people so fatally trepanned the hostility of the mysterious ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... all ideas of world affairs; and having retired into the obscurity of the river Yuan (in Honan), I had no appetite for the political affairs of the country. As the result of the revolution in Hsin Hai, I was by mistake elected by the people. Reluctantly I came out of my retirement and endeavoured to prop up the tottering structure. I cared for nothing, but the salvation of the country. A perusal of our history of several thousand years will reveal in vivid manner the sad fate of the descendants of ancient kings and emperors. What then could have ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... of the wood the track became worse and worse. The rough-hewn runners constantly sank into snow-drifts and the sledge canted over, so that the poor man, trembling with fear and cold, had to prop it up with all his strength. If his twisted foot gave way, there was an end to him ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... everything will go. The opposition needs only something like this. Besides, the GG is the one bit of insanity I can depend on in a practical world, the prop for ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... lavished rings in largesse, When the fights' red rain-drips fell, Bright of face, with heart-strings hardy, Hogni's father met his fate; Then his brow with helmet shrouding, Bearing battle-shield, he spake, 'I will die the prop of battle, Sooner die than yield an inch, Yes, sooner ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... greater the truth.' Take that with you. A lie must, somewhere, have a truth to prop it. In the heart of every big successful lie you will find some reality. Of course you cannot build a house on nothing. A pyramid cannot be constructed in the air. Now a lie is nothing, the very definition of nothing. It is what is not. So, of course, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... bed in the mornings, drummed her lessons into her, formed her opinions, and generally dominated her school career. Fauvette was one of those girls who all their lives lean upon somebody, and at present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... kinds of ovens used for baking bread and roasting meat in outdoor life. The simplest way is to prop a frying pan up in front of the fire. This is not the best way but you will have to do it if you are travelling light. A reflector, when made of sheet iron or aluminum is the best camp oven. Tin is not so satisfactory because it ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... curls—yellow curls that wound so softly around her mother's fingers that you would think that they were not curls at all but golden dreams of curls that had for the moment come true and would fade back into fairyland whence they came. And the passing year had to prop the child at a window while the dusk came creeping into the quiet house. There she sat waiting, watching, hoping that the proud, handsome man who came at twilight down the way leading to the threshold, would smile at her. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... be found a convenient position from which to build a support that shall reach up underneath the volute or under turn of the scroll. Having well tried the parts as to the fitting, the support or prop may be secured or glued in roughly to the lower surface of the peg-box—presuming of course that the pegs have all been removed—and left to dry hard. When so the parts had better be tried for fitting ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... stands, as you say, beside the throne, once your father is again seated there. We can afford to bide our time, and assuredly it will not be long before a party is formed against Warwick. Until then we must bear everything. Our interests are the same. If he is content to remain a prop to the throne, and not to eclipse it, the memory of the past will not stand between us, and I shall regard him as the weapon that has beaten down the House of York and restored us to our own, and shall give him my confidence and friendship. If, on the other hand, he ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... road that tumbles down to some Cotswold village. Let an inn parlour lie behind red curtains, and a table be drawn toward the fire. Let there be a loin of cold beef, an elbow of yellow cheese, a tankard of dog's nose. Then may we prop our Bacon's Essays against the pewter and study those mellow words: "Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." Haec studio, pernoctant ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... chair, pale as ashes. All was lost, then. Cora had betrayed him! But he resolved not to commit himself. Perhaps Madeline had only verbal information. While he was trying to frame a speech, however, she knocked this last prop from under him. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... serve an invalid's breakfast with a refinement of care which Diana herself before that would not have known how to give another, though she appreciated it and took her lesson. Then nobody could so nicely and deftly prop up pillows and cushions so as to make her rest comfortably for the taking of the meal; no one had such skilful strength to enable a weak person to change his position. For all other things, Diana saw no difference in him; nothing told ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... thatch of hair upon his shrunken skull, and harsh was the thin voice that came from his straight, colourless lips. He walked with a cane, and seldom without the patient, much-berated Wade at his elbow, a prop against the dreaded day when his legs would go back on him and the brink would appear abruptly out of nowhere at his very feet. And there were times when he put his hand to his side and held it there till the look of ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... again, the sufferers telling themselves that it would be madness to go to sleep. But, madness or no, Nature said they must; and almost simultaneously, after seating themselves in the bottom of the boat, so as to prop themselves in the corners between the thwart and side, they glided lower and lower, and at last lay prone in the most profound of slumber, totally unconscious of everything but the great need which would renew with fresh vigour ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... that sort of thing a rarity? 'Most every window in our house is like this. I prop mine with ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... pretty nearly the truth. Speedily dismounting, he told the servants to prop him up. "Uncle Hsueeh," he laughed, "you daily go in for lewd dalliance; but have you to-day come to dissipate in a reed-covered pit? The King of the dragons in this pit must have also fallen in love with your charms, and enticed you to become his son-in-law that you've come and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was abruptly and finally closed; when Death, immediate and unavoidable,—Death, the extinction of existence, the cessation of sense,—stood bare and hideous before him, his genius seemed at once to abandon him to his fate, and the inherent weakness of his nature to gush over every prop and barrier ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... again. But thank goodness out of Fayoum dust, and in desert sand for lunch! Prop up tent with our backs, leaning against the blast. However, we have now a special clothes-brush for the bread, and a moderately clean bandanna for the fruit. Plates, we blow upon without a qualm. Scarabei gambolling in the sand around our feet we pass unnoticed. This is ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... heard this mad resolution, he thought the house was falling about his ears; his colour came and went, but as soon as he recovered himself and could speak, he said, "My son, the life of my soul, the core of my heart, the prop of my old age, what mad-brained fancy has made you take leave of your senses? Have you lost your wits? You want either all or nothing: first you wish not to marry, on purpose to deprive me of an heir, and now you are impatient to drive ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the roll. Filled with this affectionate and touching sorrow, he had solemnly confided her to his son Sampson as an invaluable auxiliary; and from the old gentleman's decease to the period of which we treat, Miss Sally Brass had been the prop ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... because of the great pity I have for him. He is weak and helpless, almost child-like in his dependence on me. I am the prop which holds up the last shreds of his self-respect. If I left him, he would drift lower and lower, I know it. Sometimes I pass some awful creature staggering along the sidewalks. He is dirty and uncared for. Long matted hair falls across his bleared and sunken eyes. I say to myself: 'But for you, ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... we take of the universe, a real woe, a veritable experience of suffering, amidst this boundless benificence, reaching as deep as the heart's core, is this old and common sorrow;—the sorrow of woman for her babes, and of man for his helpmate, and of age for its prop, and of the son for the mother that bore him, and of the heart for the hearts that once beat in sympathy, and of the eyes that hide vacancies with tears. When these old stakes are wrenched from their sockets, and these intimate cords are snapped, one begins to ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... when made fast to a neighbouring tree, they could be restored to the perpendicular, after enlarging the hole left by the roots, making the ground firm again round the tree, and placing a strong sloping prop to take the weight on the weak side; good yields would then often continue for ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Robert Seymour. The projector, proprietor, and editor, was Mr. Gilbert a Beckett, whose name—with those of men of vastly superior literary attainments—was associated in after years with the early fortunes of Punch. The literary part of the performance was indeed sorry stuff,—the main stay and prop of the paper from its very commencement was Seymour, whose drawings however suffered severely at the hands of the engraver and paper maker. An eccentricity of the publication perhaps deserves notice. It professed to look with sovereign ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... you have given us ALL, and your prop has been taken away, you are justly entitled ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... officer; and she was not sorry to see that the dapper young Senator from Iowa came at once and stood in the open space before the president's desk to exhibit his feet as soon as she entered the gallery, whereas she had early learned from common report that his usual custom was to prop them on his desk and enjoy them himself with a selfish disregard of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... very happy day to Honora; there was a repose and trust to be felt in Humfrey's company, such as she had not experienced since she had lost her parents, and the home sense of kindred was very precious. Only women whose chief prop is gone, can tell the value of one who is still near enough to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... between New York and S——, trying to re-adjust the disturbed balance of things. The result was as Mr. Wallingford had anticipated. There was too much at stake for the house of Floyd, Lawson, Lee, & Co., to let matters fail for lack of Judge Bigelow's endorsements. Some other prop must be substituted ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... the sufferers telling themselves that it would be madness to go to sleep. But, madness or no, Nature said they must; and almost simultaneously, after seating themselves in the bottom of the boat, so as to prop themselves in the corners between the thwart and side, they glided lower and lower, and at last lay prone in the most profound of slumber, totally unconscious of everything but the great need which would renew with ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... When poor, men mutter, but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one prop, Which helped to hold our ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... into the car and laid him back on the cushions; the boys rolled up the rugs, and their coats to prop him up. Again he ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... fifty-five is a dangerous age," said the doctor gravely. "Do you have a cough? Heartburn after dinner? Prop up on pillows at night? Just as I thought! And no checkup for ten years!" He ...
— An Ounce of Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... Deity. Very well. Let me, in passing, recommend our rulers to give their serious attention, regularly twice every year, to the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of Samuel, that they may be constantly reminded of what it means to prop the throne on the altar. Besides, since the stake, that ultima ration theologorum, has gone out of fashion, this method of government has lost its efficacy. For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... fitted in a pair of bits in the deck, through which ran a piece of horizontal timber, on which they worked; so that they could be raised or depressed at pleasure. The after pole was shorter than the others, and served as a prop to them. When the pirates intend to board an enemy, they allow this mast to fall over the bows, and it serves them as a ladder to climb on to her decks. They were steered in a curious way, by two broad-bladed ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... irrepressible. A laughing greeting for every one he met, Mexican or Indian, was his habit, one that might have begotten a measure of contempt in the beholder, had the Father not possessed a sternness, latent for the most part, it is true, but which could, on occasion, be evoked to prop up the apparently tottering respect due him. Father Uria was fond, too, of company, not only for its own sake, but because it gave him an excuse for the pleasures of the table, and, in especial, for enjoying the delights of the wine made at Mission San Gabriel, and which was in demand by ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... Ives, and his daughter; I believe it was in the postscript; and that I was immediately going to—Pshaw! I am beginning my story now at the wrong end. It is throughout exceedingly whimsical. Listen, and let amazement prop ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Amursana, and partly to secure the restoration of China's authority. Amursana, however, considered that the presence of this force detracted from the dignity of his position. Having risen to the greatness he coveted, Amursana meditated casting aside the prop by which he had risen; but before he took an irretraceable step he resolved to make use of the Chinese forces for extending his authority south of the Tian Shan range into Kashgaria. With some hesitation Panti lent him ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place was not very visible. The two ladies were squeezed into this, and they crouched together, Sadie's ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... said, of course, by miracle) a spring upon the rock. Now and then brethren came to visit him. And what did man need more, save a clear conscience and the presence of his Creator? Certainly not Cuthbert. When he asked the brethren to bring him a beam that he might prop up his cabin where the sea had eaten out the floor, and when they forgot the commission, the sea itself washed one up in the very cove where it was needed: when the choughs from the cliff stole his barley and the straw from the roof of his little hospice, he had only to reprove them, and they ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... heavily with the flat of his massive hand. "You'll work another period, sewer rat, if I have to prop you up!" ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... "Then we'll prop the canvas up to let air inside the tent, and then you'll drive me to the Hotel Pleasant as ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... my unfortunate old age, whose prop And only staff is gone, dead ere I die! These should have been his tears, and I have been That ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... witnesses appear to me to maintain their integrity. We might have preferred them more simple and shorter, we could wish that they had reached us without details which awake all sorts of suspicions,[8] but it is very seldom that a witness does not try to prove his affirmations and to prop them up by arguments which, though detestable, are appropriate to the vulgar audience to which he ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... both got hold of bits of the truth! In the end we must win through for ourselves, but surely, in preparation for the battle, we can give each other some help. Some natures seem made to stand, and others to lean. A prop is not of much account, but it may serve to keep a plant straight while it is gathering strength. The big oaks need no props; they are so strong that they can't understand; they ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a lovely and fertile valley, where, quite unexpectedly, we came upon Bylands Abbey, the rival of Rievaulx, but far more fallen into decay. It stood alone in the midst of the wide valley; no caretaker hindered our steps to its precincts and no effort had been made to prop its crumbling walls or to stay the green ruin creeping over it. The fragment of its great eastern window, still standing, was its most imposing feature and showed that it had been a church of no mean architectural pretension. The locality, it would seem, was ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... "I only mention it so that you can get hold of the general principle. You can make very good bread in a frying-pan. You must mix the dough up stiff so that when the pan is nearly upright it won't tumble out. You fix the pan up with a prop behind it so that the dough faces the fire, quite close, and you draw some more fire behind it so that the back is warmed as well. When it burns a good crust on both sides it ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... 1646 & the half of the Customes for the Same yeare." It was ordered by the court, "that ye half of that yeares Customes as far as it hath not already been received by Capt. Hill shall be paid unto him by the Ld Prop^rs Attorny out of the first profitts which shall be receivable to his Ldp * * * his Ldps Receiver shall accompt & pay unto Cap^t Edward Hill or his assignes the one halfe of his Ldps rents due at Christmas next in Lieu of the S^d rents of the yeare 1646 which were otherwise ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... greatest Gallant I meet give me the Wall, as if I were a Person of Quality; And when any comes hither they are won by my complemental and genteel Discourse; my comely presence brings in many a Guest into the House, besides particular Acquaintance: So that I may well affirm I am the Prop of the House. If I didn't introduce Gentleman into your Company, I wonder what you'd do; you might e'en sit still, and be forc'd to make use of a Dildo, before any Body would come to you ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... of you he places stone on stone; He scatters seed: you are at once the prop Among the long roots of his fragile crop. You manufacture for him, and insure House, harvest, implement and furniture, And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... of writing, vainly, so long as it was completely exposed, but upon being covered with a silk handkerchief it plainly rose and wrote. It could be distinctly seen moving beneath the cloth. Sir William Crookes had a similar experience, except in his case he saw the pencil move, prop itself against a ruler, and try three times to write—all in the light. I have seen letters form on an exposed surface of a slate, I have had hands appear through a curtain and write in the light, but the power must always ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... your mind run out after help in times of trouble; it is like putting to sea in a storm. Sit still, and feel after your principles; and, if you find none that furnish you with somewhat of a stay and prop, and which point you to quietness and silent submission, depend upon it you have never yet learned Truth from the Spirit of Truth, whatever notions thereof you may have picked up from this and the other ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... your letter, my dear fellow. It's less pessimistic than I expected, and gives me the impression that I may regard you as a Prop. I shall follow your advice rigidly, though I must juggle some of the details, as Caspian has taken advantage of the poor little girl's love for her father, and practically (from what I understand) blackmailed her into promising to marry him. Mrs. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... hundred years after Wyckliff, in 1582, laws were still fulminated against "divers false and perverse people of certain new sects," for Protestant England would support but one form of religion as the moral prop of the state. She regarded all innovations as questionable, or wholly evil, and their authors as dangerous men. Chief among the latter was Robert Browne. But before Browne's advent and in the days of Henry the Eighth, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... of one's library, and wearing a rich carpeting, green at all seasons, of fruits and verdure, ran out till it touched the horizon. On the north rose the Alps, a magnificent wall, of stature so stupendous, that they seemed to prop the heavens. On the south were the gentler Apennines. Between these two magnificent barriers, this goodly plain—of which I know not if the earth contains its equal—stretches away till it terminates in the blue line of the Adriatic. On its ample bosom is many a celebrated spot, many ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... reply. He pursed his lips for a meditative whistle, thought better of it, took the frying-pan from its prop, and sounded the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... performance, honour that As won, which aye love worketh at! It is but as the pedigree Of perfectness which is to be That our best good can honour claim; Yet honour to deny were shame And robbery: for it is the mould Wherein to beauty runs the gold Of good intention, and the prop That lifts to the sun the earth-drawn crop Of human sensibilities. Such honour, with a conduct wise In common things, as, not to steep The lofty mind of love in sleep Of over much familiarness; Not to degrade its kind ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... With fables of Achilles' love: he bore To Aulis and the dark ship-clutching shore, He held above the altar-flame, and smote, Cool as one reaping, through the strained throat, My white Iphigenia.... Had it been To save some falling city, leaguered in With foemen; to prop up our castle towers, And rescue other children that were ours, Giving one life for many, by God's laws I had forgiven all! Not so. Because Helen was wanton, and her master knew No curb for her: for that, for that, he slew My daughter!—Even then, ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... and cried, "Thy will be done!" But, oh! the father no such solace found— Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round; He was a stranger to the Christian's hope, And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean; Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene— Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul— Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control; For though a grounded faith he ne'er had known, He was no prayerless man; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... only half as high as it is wide, but the pointed arch may have a great diversity of proportions. The development of the Gothic style was greatly forwarded by the invention of the "flying buttress." By means of this graceful outside prop it became possible to lighten the masonry of the hitherto massive walls and pierce them with great windows which let a flood of light ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... way o' dyin' an' leavin' prop'ty, hit mought suit white folks, but it don't become our complexioms, some way; an' de mo' I thought about havin' to die ter give de onlies' gran'son I got de onlies' prop'ty I got, de miser'bler I got, tell I ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... wind blows hard.— (Frontenac au Ministre, 15 Septembre, 1692). A misunderstanding with the Intendant, who had control of the money, interrupted the work. Frontenac writes the next year that he had been "obliged to send for carpenters during the night, to prop up the chateau, lest he should be crushed under the ruins." The wall of the fort was, however, strengthened, and partly rebuilt to the height of sixteen feet, at a cost of 13,629 francs. It was a time of war, and a fresh attack ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... attention. Her husband, her children, are no more!—one, one only comfort remains—one friend, one solace in adversity—one ray of light in the dark hour! Amidst universal desertion, RUTH has not forsaken her; but is become her joy in sorrow, her companion in solitude, her prop in decrepit age! Can we wonder that she wishes to discard a name which awakened such recollections, and only recalled the dream of happiness? "Call me not Naomi,—call me Mara; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... 'is legs, which was natural considering the shape of 'em. Ginger Dick nearly lost 'is temper with 'im, and it was all old Sam could do to stop himself from casting 'im off forever. He was finished at last, and arter Peter Russet 'ad slipped downstairs and found a bit o' broken clothes-prop in the yard, and 'e'd been shown 'ow to lean on it and make a noise, Ginger said as 'ow if Ted Reddish got 'im for a 'undered pounds 'e'd get 'im ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... Sand wood school, and brought them home of an evening to add lightness and gaiety to the cottage life. Jennie, through her growing appreciation of Vesta's fine character, became more and more drawn toward her. Lester was gone, but at least she had Vesta. That prop would probably sustain her in the face of ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... the "Settler's ellum"—— Last of its timber—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an ax had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin, too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through"—— "There!" ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... in the car try to sleep. Their heads try to make use of the window panes for pillows. Or they prop their chins up in their palms or they are content to nod. There are several young men whose eyes are reddened. A young woman in a cheap but fancy dress. And several middle-aged men. All of them look bored and tired. And all of them ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... banquette which ran along the inside of the embattled parapet of the platform, and murmuring to herself, "He is gone for ever!" abandoned herself to the extremity of grief. One hand grasped unconsciously the weapon which she held, and served, at the same time, to prop her forehead, while the tears, by which she was now for the first time relieved, flowed in torrents from her eyes, and her sobs seemed so convulsive, that Rose almost feared her heart was bursting. Her affection and sympathy dictated at once the kindest course which Eveline's ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... in this district, generally pulled by oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles; and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach to prop it up. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been preserved in which the unfortunate courier complains that, during fourteen hours, ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... nearly the truth. Speedily dismounting, he told the servants to prop him up. "Uncle Hseh," he laughed, "you daily go in for lewd dalliance; but have you to-day come to dissipate in a reed-covered pit? The King of the dragons in this pit must have also fallen in love with your charms, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a wonderful prop to a anxious 'eart!" said Mrs. Trapes, leaning over the banisters to greet him as he ascended. "Mr. Geoffrey, my hands has been lifted in prayer for ye this night as so did me behoove, and here you are safe back with—that b'y. A prayer prayed proper, and prayed ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... Protestant Religion vow, That did that vowing disallow? For Privilege of Parliament, In which that swearing made a rent? And since, of all the three, not one 175 Is left in being, 'tis well known. Did they not swear, in express words, To prop and back the House of Lords, And after turn'd out the whole House-full Of Peers, as dang'rous and unusefull? 180 So CROMWELL, with deep oaths and vows, Swore all the Commons out o' th' House; Vow'd that the red-coats ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... when Tom returned, "is to break that stick about in half and prop the doorr just wide enough open so's we can crawl in. Then we can spread the vines all overr the top just like it was beforre and overr the opening, too. What ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... you don't!" she cried. "You may flout our beliefs,—but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with an endorsement by the wife of a clergyman! It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You can't prop up your wild-eyed theories against the good black of one minister's coat. Not by any means! I think myself that you have probably stumbled on the truth about Willem's mother; but that doesn't prove there's anything in all your ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... deeds, even against Edward and Edward's blood. But no, I have the king's solemn protestations of repentance; his guilty passion has burned into ashes, and he now sighs—gay Edward—for a lighter fere. I cannot join with Clarence, less can I join with the Lancastrians. My birth makes me the prop of the throne of York,—to guard it as a heritage (who knows?) that may descend to mine,—nay, to me! And, mark me well if Warwick attempt a war of fratricide, he is lost; if, on the other hand, he can submit himself to the hands of Margaret, stained ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... PROP. 1. Throughout the paper he confounds together what I had distinguished, namely, the city of Gadara and the vicinage attached to it, not as a mere pomoerium, but ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... change his position sometimes and let him lie on his stomach for awhile. Of course this exercise cannot be taken after a meal and before the fourth month. Take a large clothes basket, put a blanket and some large pillows in it and prop baby up in a half sitting position for a little while each day, beginning with fifteen minutes, then one-half hour, and you can also at this time (fourth month) play with baby for a short time every day, but never just before ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... has announced himself as the enemy of Greece, and the prop of the Ottoman Empire. At the subscription ball given at the Opera in Berlin, did he not walk arm-in-arm with Ghalik Bey, the Turkish Ambassador, and authorise him to telegraph to the Sultan that, under existing conditions, he might count upon his sense of justice and his good-will? Does ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... detail? Partly because it guarantees the fact of His Death, partly because of its bearing on the evidences of His Resurrection. 'And that He rose from the dead according to the Scriptures.' Great fact, without which Christ is a shattered prop, and 'ye are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... kind, you might know," declared Thankful. "No weights nor nothin'. We'll have to prop it up with a stick. You wait where you are and I'll go get one. There's what's left of a woodpile out back here; that's where that crate ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... appeared The heads of noble Rhodians, which had struck A general sorrow 'mongst the knights. All look Who next the lists should enter; each desires The task were his, but honour now requires A spirit more than vulgar, or she dies The next attempt, their valour's sacrifice; To prop whose ruins, chosen by the free Consent of all, Argalia comes to be Their happy champion. Truce proclaimed, until The combat ends, the expecting people fill The spacious battlements; the Turks forsake Their tents, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... from her bosom. Up to this time she had entertained a feeble expectation that her husband might be kept away from some other cause than the one she so dreaded; but now that prop became only as a broken reed, to pierce her ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... an' whar's yer promise' lan'? Little you know 'bout Scripter when you say he secon' Moses. Don' want no more sich Moseses in dis town. Dey wouldn't lebe a brick heah ef dey could take dem off. He'n his tribe got away wid 'bout all ole Missus' and young Missus' prop'ty in my 'pinion. Anyhow I feels it in my bones dey's poah, an' I mus' try an' fin' out. Dey's so proud dey'd starbe fore dey'd ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... would restore her to home and friends, they were vile miscreants, destining her to a fate no better than that which now surrounded her, and removed still further from the possibility of succor. For a little time she clung to the hope that Dick would hold out in her behalf; but this last prop was taken away, and she felt that there was no help from any quarter, and that self-dependence was ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... strong, do more than prop up existing institutions. These themselves were rotten. Despotism cannot save a state. The reign of Louis XIV. was one of the most brilliant in modern annals. But no reign ever more signally undermined the state. It is the patriotism of soldiers that saves, not their ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... The higher a virtue is, the greater the number of things to which it extends, as stated in De Causis, prop. x, xvii. Wherefore from the very fact that wisdom as a gift is more excellent than wisdom as an intellectual virtue, since it attains to God more intimately by a kind of union of the soul with Him, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... private apartments; of Victoria, that she reads aloud, in a distinct voice and agreeable manner, her addresses to Parliament on certain solemn days, and, yearly, that she presents to the nation some new prop of royalty. These ladies have, very likely, been trained more completely to the puppet life than any other. The queens, who have been queens indeed, were trained by adverse circumstances to know the world around them ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... an item in the general failure of Allied policy to pass over without mention. From the very nature of the case the main Allied effort was the formation and organisation of a new Russian army. Our policy was not to prop Russia on her feet, but to enable her to stand by herself. Major-General Knox had been sent out by the War Office to accomplish this purpose, and no more able or competent officer could have ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the christenin', he took a pal or two round to the same bar to stand treat. That time the two halves of the door were closed, an' any ass could see that the letters stood for 'No Smoking.' Well, the other fellows told me his language was so sultry that his prop ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Honan), I had no appetite for the political affairs of the country. As the result of the revolution in Hsin Hai, I was by mistake elected by the people. Reluctantly I came out of my retirement and endeavoured to prop up the tottering structure. I cared for nothing, but the salvation of the country. A perusal of our history of several thousand years will reveal in vivid manner the sad fate of the descendants of ancient kings and emperors. ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... you, Mr. Wells?" said Wyngate, with affected politeness; "or possibly your uncle may have been English, and a title goes with the 'prop,' and you may be Lord Wells, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... hope died. Then and there I had a nervous chill. I was compelled to prop my chin on my hand to keep my ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fighting edge by a little judicious pessimism now and then, and rumors of the popularity of Purplevein among the hard drinkers. Day after day Quimbleton and Miss Chuff, after a little psychic communing, would prop the editor among cushions in the big gray limousine and spin him about the city and suburbs to bow, smile, say a few automatic words and pass on. Over the car floated a big banner with the words: Let Bleak Do Your ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... How is this, Pamela—you the solace of all our misfortunes, the prop of our old age, our ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... once or twice. Another was to place her pillow half-way down the bed, that she might be within reach of the foot of it—and then to rest her own foot on a lower rail and tie it there. Another was to prop herself into a sitting position and fold her hands across her chest, that by sleeping badly she might not ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... exclaimed Fulk. "Thou art a youth of promise, and wilt well be a prop to our grandson's English throne. Thou shalt take knighthood from mine own hand as thy prowess well deserveth. And thou, fair damsel, here is one whom we could scarce hold back from rushing with single hand to deliver his betrothed. Sir Raymond of Courtwood, you are balked ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and "knowing, dare maintain." They do not, it is true, enrich the science of jurisprudence with any large or wise additions, but we do not look for such luxuries as justice, reason, and beneficence in ordinances devised to prop up iniquity, falsehood, and tyranny. Ghastly caricatures of justice as these offshoots of Slavery are, they are still dictated by the nature and necessities of the system. They have the flavor of the rank soil whence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... say he'll push me off," said Lynn. "I'm only trying to teach him to talk prop'ly. This morning he asked Larkin to come and look at his lee lowing in the lound. And I had to explain that he meant 'tree growing ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. consequently, i must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... and green, show their status to the initiated eye through the sequence of colour by which the pajongs form a complete system of heraldry. In the dusky angle of a mossy wall, four elephants, used in State processions, feed upon bundles of bamboo and sugar-cane. Mud huts and bamboo sheds prop themselves against tiled eaves and windowless houses. Open doors afford glimpses of squalid interiors, crowded with slatternly women and dirty children, the hereditary retainers and hangers-on of this effete and moribund ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... thousand-and-one wise men, able and willing to direct his Majesty's Ministers on all matters of importance regarding Church or State. One thing, however, I trust I ken, and that is, my duty to my King as his loyal subject, to old Scotland as her unworthy son, and to my family as their prop, support, and breadwinner;—so I shall stick to all three (under Heaven) as long as I have a drop of blood in my precious veins. But the truth is—and I will let it out and shame the de'il—that I could not help ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... a moment too soon, for an instant later the old bear gave a furious growl and flung herself against the door, making it fairly crack; it seemed as if the door would be broken in. Sullivan and Jason hurriedly knocked their slab bed to pieces and used the slats and heavy sides to prop and strengthen the door. The bears kept surging and clawing at the door, and while the prospectors were spiking the braces against it and giving their entire attention to it, they suddenly felt the cabin shake and heard the logs strain and give. They started back, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... and the Bible deserve our allegiance because they are worthy of it; from them we can learn the secrets of man's true welfare. Morality is, indeed, older than religion. It develops to a certain point, and in some cases very highly, without the concept of God. It has an and needs no supernatural prop. Religion is not the root of morality, but its flower and consummation. The finest ideals, the loftiest heights of morality, merge into religion; but even these spiritual ideals have their ultimate root in the common soil of human welfare, and are rational ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... madman have taught me that I am not made for such work and such sights. I could never be at home in that trade. Face swords and the big guns and death? It isn't in me. No, no; count me out. And besides, I'm the eldest son, and deputy prop and protector of the family. Since you are going to carry Jean and Pierre to the wars, somebody must be left behind to take care of our Joan and her sister. I shall stay at home, and grow old ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... to the "melancholici qui laudat vitam incultem et agrestem" (iv Prop., 35, note), that men can provide for their needs better by society than by solitude, hardly meets the higher criticism of the State. Yet it anticipates Fichte's retort to Rousseau. Spinoza, if this were written circa 1665, has in view, perhaps, the Trappists, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... of and plan out details for which most men would have needed a week's preparation, yet I have completed all in twelve hours. I believe nothing has been forgotten, nothing neglected. And can it be that my prop will fail ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the work we discern most distinctly in the constant, often—most decidedly, doubtless, in the case of the Aquitanian expedition (III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility)— not successful, justification of every single act of war as a defensive measure which the state of things had rendered inevitable. That the adversaries of Caesar censured his attacks on the Celts and Germans above ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the rest was luxury, which the "Good-intent line" did not bargain for; so we were left to trim ship to our liking. Contrary to all my experience, I insisted that the heaviest part of our cargo should be stowed at the bottom, for to have had my countryman's eighteen stone of solid stuff to prop up, for twenty miles, would have required the shoulders ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... is something about thy Isis," exclaimed Heru, as though amused at my perspicuity. "Here, halfway down this chapter of earth-history, it says," and putting one pink knee across the other to better prop ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... been away so long it seems like I can't have you close enough." Another thought presented itself, and he manifested sudden excitement. "I tell you! I'll get a new sign painted, too! 'Tom and Bob Parker. Real Estate and Insurance. Oil Prop'ties and Leases.' Gosh! It's a great idea, son!" His smile lingered, but a moment later there came into his eyes ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... come near him, leaning on one arm and trying to set up. The other arm hung loose and helpless. Half setting up that-away he made a feel at his belt with his good hand, as I come near. But that good arm was his prop, and when he took it off the ground he fell back. His hand come away empty ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... angles to the main series. The sill of the doorway by which this room communicates with an adjoining one is raised about 18 inches above the floor, and is provided with a rudely mortised door in a single panel. Alongside is a small hole through which the occupant can prop the door on the inside of the communicating room. The subsequent sealing of the small hand-hole with mud effectually closes the house against intrusion. The unusual height of this door sill from the floor has necessitated the construction ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... rather than merely helpful. I would lecture for a school when I would not for a distressed author; and would have helped De Marvy to perfect his invention, but not—unless I had no other object—his widow after he was gone. In a word, I like to prop the falling more than ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... superabundance of ornament, is a monument in masonry to the successful mining jobber on a small scale. The solemn-looking, solid dwelling, standing in its own grounds, where every flower bush has its individual prop, where the lawn is trimmed with mathematical exactitude, and not one vagrant leaf is allowed to stray, speaks with a kind of brick-and-mortar eloquence of virtue that has never grasped the sublime fulness of the Scriptural text which saith: "The way of transgressors is hard!" That is the home of ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... Slink, who used to smoke short-sixes and get acquainted with the little circus boys, is popularly supposed to be the proprietor of a cheap gaming establishment in Boston, where the beautiful but uncertain prop is nightly tossed. Be sure, the Army is represented by many of the friends of my youth, the most of whom have given a good account of themselves. But Chalmerson hasn't done much. No, Chalmerson is rather of a failure. He plays on the guitar and sings love songs. Not that he is a bad ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Life, who is said to inhabit that spot. The Spirit of Life appears; also Death—uninvited. They are (supposably) invisible. Death, tall, black-robed, corpse-faced, stands motionless and waits. The aged couple pray to the Spirit of Life for a means to prop up their existence and continue it. Their prayer fails. The Spirit of Life prophesies Zoe's martyrdom; it will take place before night. Soon Appelles arrives, young and vigorous and full of enthusiasm: he has led a host against the Persians and won the battle; he is the pet of fortune, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... where Doctor Rack was guide, His only daughter was the boast and pride - Wise Arabella, yet not wise alone, She like a bright and polish'd brilliant shone; Her father own'd her for his prop and stay, Able to guide, yet willing to obey; Pleased with her learning while discourse could please, And with her love in languor and disease: To every mother were her virtues known, And to their daughters as a pattern shown; Who in her youth had all that age requires, And with ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... leaves the stalk. This prevents rain soaking down inside the leaf sheath, but lets it run down the outside to the root where it is needed. As the plant gets older and taller, new roots come out from the node next above the root and sometimes from the second node above. These prop-roots are needed for support as the stalk lengthens, and they also ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... with a partner's obligations. To desert Mortimer would not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary bachelor quarters, with none of the comforts and little luxuries he intensely loved, but it would also deprive him of his surest social prop. People had accepted him and liked him as well as they liked the totally uninteresting of the good old stock; but many would drift into the habit of not inviting him to anything but large dances, if his wife were absent. Alexina knew that her invitations to all important and many small dinners, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... owes (and pays you too) so much, Yet Europe doubtless owes you greatly more: You have repair'd Legitimacy's crutch, A prop not quite so certain as before: The Spanish, and the French, as well as Dutch, Have seen, and felt, how strongly you restore; And Waterloo has made the world your debtor (I wish your bards would sing ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... scrutinies. More intently than ever she gazed into my eyes; rested her ear against my heart, and listened to its beatings. And love, which in the eye of its object ever seeks to invest itself with some rare superiority, love, sometimes induced me to prop my failing divinity; though it was I myself who had ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the Cedar proud and tall, The Vine-prop Elm, the Poplar never dry, The Builder Oak, sole King of Forests all. The Aspine good for Staves, the Cypress Funeral. The Laurel, Meed of mighty Conquerors, And Poets sage; the Fir that weepeth still, The Willow worn of forlorn Paramours, The Yew obedient to the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... at all, save the moon and the empty sky. He had heard the rush of the prop-wash, but he had seen nothing, heard nothing else. Incredible as it seemed, the pilot was flying a plane that had attained not merely invisibility but complete ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... tenderness better than any bonds. At first, Helen seemed unconscious of it, as she stood rigid and motionless, with her wild eyes dumbly imploring help of earth and heaven. Suddenly both strength and excitement seemed to leave her, and she would have fallen but for the living, loving prop that sustained her. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... of the common native habit (not one to be imitated by Europeans learning the language) of inserting in a sentence words which have no meaning to fill a temporary hiatus while the speaker is thinking of his next word. These prop-words or pillow-words, to borrow a Hindustani phrase,[2] are numerous in Malay and vary in different localities. Anu, bahasa-nia, misal[3]-nia, and kata-kan are some of ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... Lowell reckons on; rather, if one may trust the manner of his setting to work, he would propound his doctrine to the class. Always to be found, of spirits instructed up to a certain height and there resting—vines that run up a prop and there tangle and grow to a knot—which want supplying with fresh poles; so the provident man brings his bundle into the grounds, and sticks them in laterally or a-top of the others, as the case requires, and all the old stocks go on growing again—but here, with us, whoever wanted ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... and fantasies that the worthy Miss Deacon used to write to him, and how he had grinned at her words of reproof, admonition, and advice. She had once instigated Dolly fils to pay him a visit, and that young prop of respectability had talked about the extraordinary running of Bolter at the Scurragh meeting in Ireland; and then, glancing at Lucian's books, had inquired whether any of them had "warm bits." He had been kind though patronizing, and seemed to have moved freely in ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... positions (I thus designate those in which people receive more from others than they give), who had lost them, and who wished to occupy them again. To one, two hundred rubles were indispensable, in order that he might prop up a failing business, and complete the education of his children which had been begun; another wanted a photographic outfit; a third wanted his debts paid, and respectable clothing purchased for him; ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... Paul, who was like iron with mob and mutiny, was pitiably helpless before such a prop of the aristocracy. He flew into a rage, and rated the landlord in Scotch and English, and I was fain to put my tongue in my cheek and turn my back that my laughter might ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... craving than any natural appetite can be, requires a most powerful moral effort. In such an undertaking he needs every moral support and influence that can possibly be brought to his aid and thrown around him. And not only so, but every moral prop should be taken from whatever argument might rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding. When he casts his eyes around him, he should be able to see all that he respects, all that he admires, all that he loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... could be found in the fact that Lawyer Temple had run through what little money his father and grandmother had left him; additional wise-acres were of the opinion that some out-of-town folks had bought the place and were trying to prop it up so it wouldn't tumble into the street, while one, more facetious than the others, had claimed that it was no wonder it was falling down, since the only new thing Temple had put upon ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Well, what of that! There's one weed bears a goodly crop; And this exception, then, 'tis flat, Doth give that rule a firmer prop. Tobacco brings the genial mood, Warm heart, shrewd thought, and while we reap From this poor weed such harvest good, We'll hold more boasted ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... ignorant of his connexions, they dreaded a revolution in the ministry, which might fill the kingdom with clamour and confusion. But the greatest shock occasioned by his decease was undoubtedly among our allies and fellow-subjects in Germany, who saw themselves suddenly deprived of their sole prop and patron, at a time when they could not pretend of themselves to make head against the numerous enemies by whom they were surrounded. But all these doubts and apprehensions vanished like mists before the rising sun; and the people of Great Britain enjoyed the inexpressible ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... over-sociable, and I felt rather afraid of their proximity. One of them did not hesitate to thrust a book into my hands, saying, "Give that to that fellow over there, will you?" while another of them exclaimed as he pushed past me, "By your leave, young fellow!" and a third made use of my shoulder as a prop when he wanted to scramble over a desk. All this seemed to me a little rough and unpleasant, for I looked upon myself as immensely superior to such fellows, and considered that they ought not to treat me with such familiarity. At length, the names began to be called out. The gymnasium men walked ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... smite him, as was the case with a certain gallant captain renowned in song? Neither the one nor the other. The simple fact was, that Sir Francis Levison was in a state of pecuniary embarrassment, and required something to prop him up—some snug sinecure—plenty to get and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I saw those of Hepatica and the Skeptic and the Philosopher drop, although they made haste to prop their countenances up again. ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... New Year. We all wore our every-day clothes (with Peter's most carefully pressed and sponged by the intriguing Struthers) and the Twins were put asleep up-stairs in their old nursery and Dinkie was given a place at the table with two sofa-cushions to prop him up in his armchair (and acted like a little barbarian) and Peter nearly broke his neck to make himself as pleasant as possible, chattering like a magpie and reminding me of a circus-band trying to make the crowd forget the bareback rider who's ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... rings in largesse, When the fight's red rain-drops fell, Bright of face, with heart-strings hardy, Hogni's father met his fate; Then his brow with helmet shrouding, Bearing battle-shield, he spake, "I will die the prop of battle, Sooner die than yield an inch. Yes, sooner die ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent brightness—the window-glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop all wreathed about with climbing flowers—nothing but its air of a well-tended, smiling veteran, sitting, crutch and all, in the sunny corner of a garden, marked it as a house for comfortable people to inhabit. In poor ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Spinoza has left unsolved must have occurred to him. "But some may object that if we understand God to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply that in so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be a passion (Prop. 3, pt. 5), that is to say (Prop. 59, pt. 3) it ceases to be a sorrow; and therefore in so far as we understand God to be the cause of sorrow do we rejoice." The third proposition of the fifth part which he quotes merely proves that in so far as we understand passion it ceases to ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... wound so softly around her mother's fingers that you would think that they were not curls at all but golden dreams of curls that had for the moment come true and would fade back into fairyland whence they came. And the passing year had to prop the child at a window while the dusk came creeping into the quiet house. There she sat waiting, watching, hoping that the proud, handsome man who came at twilight down the way leading to the threshold, would smile at her. She was not old enough to hope he would take her in ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... had to remind him that though he might be only answerable to himself at St. Kitt's, killing became murder upon the high seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ov as fine childer as onnybody need set e'en on, an' if they are a bit wild, what can yo expect when ther's soa monny on 'em. But aw mun get these clooas dried wol ther's a bit o' druft. Wi' ta leean me that clooas prop o' thine agean?" ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... direction, were liable to mislead amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging—in situations in which not unfrequently, want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism—the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows, that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence—that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "Mu'allim," vulg. "M'allim," prop. teacher, master esp. of a trade, a craft. In Egypt and Syria it is a civil address to a Jew or a Christian, as Hajj ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... quem appetamus fruimur, corpus ex ea fruitione novam acquirat constitutionem, a qua aliter determinatur, et aliae rerum imagines in eo excitantur," etc. Spinoza, Ethices, Pars III, Prop. lix. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... for the frying-pan. That controversy made it plain That letting go a good secure, In hope of future gain, Is but imprudence pure. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small addition. A certain wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The dog his leanness pled; ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Ministry, indicates a tremendous flaw; the speech of Sir Robert Peel betrays an irreparable bulge; the sudden conversions to free-trade principles of officials and place-holders show a general outpouring at opening rents and crannies: depend on it, Protectionists, your dam-dyke, patch or prop it as you please, is on the eve of destruction; yet a very little longer, and it will be ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... children, are no more!—one, one only comfort remains—one friend, one solace in adversity—one ray of light in the dark hour! Amidst universal desertion, RUTH has not forsaken her; but is become her joy in sorrow, her companion in solitude, her prop in decrepit age! Can we wonder that she wishes to discard a name which awakened such recollections, and only recalled the dream of happiness? "Call me not Naomi,—call me Mara; for the Almighty ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... exhausted. The next day, she is dead. The eggs are dabbed in a continuous layer, at the entrance to the throat, at the root of the tongue, on the membrane of the palate. Their number appears considerable; the whole inside of the gullet is white with them. I fix a little wooden prop between the two mandibles of the beak, to keep them open and enable me to ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... propriety of at once fixing the Chilian Government upon a base not to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but their result is inevitable; unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the stain of labouring in any such work, and, having finished all which you ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... shirt, stockings and napkin; change his position sometimes and let him lie on his stomach for awhile. Of course this exercise cannot be taken after a meal and before the fourth month. Take a large clothes basket, put a blanket and some large pillows in it and prop baby up in a half sitting position for a little while each day, beginning with fifteen minutes, then one-half hour, and you can also at this time (fourth month) play with baby for a short time every day, but never just before bedtime, and the best time is just ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... they dreaded a revolution in the ministry, which might fill the kingdom with clamour and confusion. But the greatest shock occasioned by his decease was undoubtedly among our allies and fellow-subjects in Germany, who saw themselves suddenly deprived of their sole prop and patron, at a time when they could not pretend of themselves to make head against the numerous enemies by whom they were surrounded. But all these doubts and apprehensions vanished like mists before the rising sun; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... This prop is not found in the natural character of man, who, being selfish and violent, directs his energies rather to the destruction than to the preservation of society. Nor is it found in his moral character, which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... too, but we've got to prop up feeling with a power of work and patience and danger, and it's likely too, Will, that it will be a long time before we reach the end of ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... stated that Socialism means to abolish religion, that it "would try to put laziness, thriftlessness, and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift, and efficiency, that it would strive to break up not merely private property, but, what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... adaptability, Calvinism was the form in which Protestant religion could be best transplanted; and it struck root and flourished in awkward places where Lutheranism could obtain no foothold, in the absence of a sufficient prop. Calvanism spread not only abroad but at home, and robbed Luther of part of Germany, of the Palatinate, of Anhalt, of the House of Brandenburg, and in great part of Hungary. This internal division was a fact of importance later on. It ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... negligible spectator. I presume he missed Johnny's hand in Albert's, and Johnny's pressure on Albert's shoulder—the one with the stain; and I hope he did. It was the hand of the stronger, taking possession. "My prop, my future mainstay!" said ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... superiority in manufactures the Great Exhibition was a great success; but as heralding an era of universal peace it was a mournful failure. Three years later England, France, and Sardinia were fighting Russia to prop the rotten empire of the Turk. Then came the Great Mutiny; then the four years of fratricidal strife between the Northern and Southern States; then the war of Prussia and Austria; then the overthrow of France by Germany. All ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... distributed that which was therein among his officers and prayed for Kanmakan's return, that he might draw his heart to him with fair usage and bounty and make him commander of those troops that remained faithful to him, hoping thus to prop his [falling] power. The news of this reached Kanmakan by the merchants; so he returned in haste to Baghdad, riding on the aforesaid stallion, and the news of his coming reached King Sasan, as he sat perplexed ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... "shortened," I would prop her up in her cot while I sang "Sally" to her; or if that did not serve, and her little lip continued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my skirts and waltzing to the tune of "Clementina" while the kettle hummed over the fire and the bricklayer's kitchen ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... had found a home; and freshly all Its beautiful affections overgrew Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening dew And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife Found on a hard cold breast the dew and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... White Frands ofered 2 thousen Dollers to Redem him but they would not short three thousen. I am in Canada and it is a Dificult thing to get a letter to any of my Frands in Maryland so as to get prop per infermation abot it—if you can by any means get any in telligence from Baltimore City a bot this Event Plese do so and Rit word and all so all the inform mation that you think prop per as Regards the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... an' complain, An' you prop dat gate up right; But you notice right nex' day Dat hit's in de same ol' plight. So you fin' dat hit's a rule, An' daih ain' no use to blow, W'en de gals is growin' up, Dat de front gate will ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... literature: there is no more wholesome course for the mind. Not that I hold the literary productions of the ancients to be irreproachable; but I think that they have some especial merits, admirably calculated to counterbalance our peculiar defects. They are a prop on the side on which we are ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... about four hours, this marvellous excursion came to an end. A wall of superb rocks, in an imposing mass, rose before us, a heap of gigantic blocks, an enormous, steep granite shore, forming dark grottos, but which presented no practicable slope; it was the prop of the Island of Crespo. It was the earth! Captain Nemo stopped suddenly. A gesture of his brought us all to a halt; and, however desirous I might be to scale the wall, I was obliged to stop. Here ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... individuals are nothing in the sight of God. Six emperors have succumbed to the immutable laws of Nature, but the house of Hapsburg is still erect. What, then, if I meet with reverses? The Lord has given me a son, who, if I should be unfortunate, will prop up our dynasty, and avenge ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... and I'll prop it up," requested Hippy. The guide did so, and Lieutenant Wingate dropped the stone beside it, after straightening up the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... goes on!" said the man, changing the steel headpiece for a cuirass. "There won't be no trouble. First time your father gets a sight of the mob of tailors, and shoemakers, and tinkers, with an old patch-work counterpane atop of a clothes-prop for their flag, he'll ride along the front of his ridgement of cavaliers, and he'll shout to 'em in that big voice of his as I've followed many's the time; and 'Don't draw, gentlemen,' he'll say; 'ride the scum down, and make the rest run;' and then they'll all roar with laughing loud enough to ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... good for man to be alone," says Holy Writ. It is certainly deplorable, for one who desires to make his way, to find himself without a prop, without a counselor, ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... comes. And in the weakness consequent on protracted suffering, she had begun to fancy that the loss of Phemy was a punishment upon them for deserting the conventicle. Also the schoolmaster was under an interdict, and that looked like a judgment too! She must find some prop for the faith that was now shaking like a reed in the wind. So to the Baillies' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... seconded and backed by known parallels or by experience, we do not so passively acquiesce in them; there is an exertion of confidence in depending upon them and assuring ourselves of their force. The inward energy of the reason has to be evoked, when she can no longer lean upon the outward prop of custom, but is thrown back upon herself and the intrinsic force of her premisses. Which reason, not leaning upon custom, is faith; she obtains the latter name when she depends entirely upon her own insight into certain grounds, premisses, and evidences, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... life and all, pardon not that: You take my house, when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life, When you do take the means whereby ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... spoke, "Little Soul, it is no joke, "For as sure as Jacky Fuller loves a sup, sup, sup, "I will tell the Prince and People "What I think of Church and Steeple. "And my little patent plan to prop them up, up, up, "And my little patent plan ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Bobbie found a suitable prop, the stem of a buttercup. The flower tipped a little to one side so that Maya could see him perfectly as he raised himself on his hind legs and looked up at her. She thought he had a nice, dear, friendly face—but not so ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... not apt to have ideals,' said Albinia; 'nor do I think Maria will be so trying. Do you remember that creeper of Lucy's, all tendrils and catching leaves, which used to lie sprawling about, entangling everything till she gave it a prop, when it instantly found its proper development, and offered ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was still sitting propped up against the stump of the tree, and that for the best of reasons. A length of his own infallible fishing line was twisted and tightened twice round his throat and then twice round the wooden prop behind him. The leading investigator ran forward and touched the fisherman's hand, and it was as cold as ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... considering Moses a Schlemihl in comparison with many a fellow-immigrant, who brought indefatigable hand and subtle brain to the struggle for existence, and discarded the prop of charity as soon as ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in mind this middle row of spines it is impossible to mistake the leaf of the pandan for that of the pineapple or maguey, which it resembles more or less in form and shape. Another very prominent feature of pandans is the presence of air or prop roots which grow from the stem above the ground and are helpful to the plant in various ways. The veins of the leaves always run parallel and in a longitudinal direction. The leaves are never borne on a petiole, but are attached directly, in winding corkscrew fashion, ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... in the mouths of men: first, the plebiscite; secondly, the conspiracy to murder the Emperor—which the disaffected considered to be a mere fable, a pretence got up in time to serve the plebiscite and prop the Empire. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... here and there to take the hire of chairs, and break the hum of couples, talking profane and sacred love; around and above all, the Cardinal's grand palace lifting its multitudinous pilasters, and seeming to prop ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... itself, repeatedly sacked, was a heap of ruins. No reconstruction had taken place. Gardens and villas were as desolate as the ruined palaces, which were the abodes of owls and spiders. The immortal creations of the chisel were used to prop up old crumbling walls. The costly monuments of senatorial pride were broken to pieces in sport or in caprice, and those structures which had excited the admiration of ages were pulled down that their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... who were standing on the defensive. The heir, too, had a strong sense of property, as was natural, and the disarrangement of the room struck him in that point of view, especially as Miss Wodehouse continued to prop herself up against the St Agnes in the back of her chair. Wodehouse looked from the wall to the table, and saw what appeared to him a clear case of intended spoliation. "By Jove! they didn't mean to go empty-handed," said the vagabond, who naturally judged according ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the famous Marble Soap. Jowett spent on advertising every year a quarter of a million, it was said. Jowett was the stay and prop of periodical literature. New papers that secured the Marble Soap advertisement lived and prospered; the new paper to which it was denied languished and died. Jowett, and how to get hold of him; Jowett, and how to get round him, formed the ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... fellow. Had he been sound in wind and limb he would have cared little; for a brave and a strong man naturally feels that he can fight a stout battle for life in all or any circumstances. But part of this prop (namely, strength) having been removed by his recent accident, he felt like a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the father, and then he recounted his experience of the night before. "I had hoped she would not fall in love, but be a prop and comfort to me now that I am alone. I am dismayed at the ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... appear by no means to be their tails, those long feathers growing not from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... of God's Essence surpasses the nature not only of man, but also of every creature, as was shown in the First Part (Q. 12, A. 4). For the natural knowledge of every creature is in keeping with the mode of his substance: thus it is said of the intelligence (De Causis; Prop. viii) that "it knows things that are above it, and things that are below it, according to the mode of its substance." But every knowledge that is according to the mode of created substance, falls short of the vision of the Divine Essence, which infinitely surpasses all created ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the sword what was no longer to be obtained through constitutional and legal means. Marius, a great general but no politician, could only break down and destroy. Sulla, a sincere but narrow-minded statesman, could do no more than prop up the structure— already tottering—of senatorial rule. Pompey soon undid that work and left the constitution to become again the sport of rival soldiers. Caesar, triumphing over Pompey, gained a position of unchallenged supremacy. After Caesar's death, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... like saber thrusts. But when a man finds the walls of his house about to fall on him he is apt to clutch blindly at anything which promises to prop the tottering structure. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Leaping and running, At the tipsy-topsy Tunning Of Mistress Eleanor Rumming! How for poor Philip Sparrow Was murdered at Carow, How our hearts he does harrow Jest and grief mingle In this jangle-jingle, For he will not stop To sweep nor mop, To prune nor prop, To cut each phrase up Like beef when we sup, Nor sip at each line As at brandy-wine, Or port when we dine. But angrily, wittily, Tenderly, prettily, Laughingly, learnedly, Sadly, madly, Helter-skelter John Rhymes serenely on, As English poets should. Old John, you ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... own devices. The soldiers of my guard reined up and drew aside. The pony dashed off in the direction of the Pombo and, as I passed close to him, a man named Nerba (private secretary of the Tokchim Tarjum), knelt down, and, taking aim with his matchlock resting on its prop, deliberately fired ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Weasel into the car and laid him back on the cushions; the boys rolled up the rugs, and their coats to prop him up. ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... of China's authority. Amursana, however, considered that the presence of this force detracted from the dignity of his position. Having risen to the greatness he coveted, Amursana meditated casting aside the prop by which he had risen; but before he took an irretraceable step he resolved to make use of the Chinese forces for extending his authority south of the Tian Shan range into Kashgaria. With some hesitation Panti lent him 500 Chinese soldiers, and with their aid the Eleuth ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Exclusit: reuocat, redeam? non si obsecret. Ecce Seruus non Paulo sapientior: Here, qu res Nec modum habet, neque consilium, ratione modque Tractari non vult. In amore, hc sunt mala, bellum, Pax rursum: hc si quis tempestatis prop ritu Mobilia, et cca fluitantia sorte, laboret Reddere certa, sibi nihil plus explicet, ac si Insanire ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... from Iowa came at once and stood in the open space before the president's desk to exhibit his feet as soon as she entered the gallery, whereas she had early learned from common report that his usual custom was to prop them on his desk and enjoy them himself with a selfish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... son," cried the old man in despair, "how cruel is the fate that has robbed me of you, the only prop of my declining years! Oh, my boy, my boy, would that I had not sent you on so perilous a journey! Who now will look after my ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... best fits a little Shrine, A little Prop best fits a little Vine, As my small Cruse best fits ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... but that, under the blessing of the Most High, those countries would amply repay the undertaking, and that you would end by obtaining the sovereignty of at least Palestine. That the present attempt to prop up the Turkish Empire as at present constituted is a miserable failure, we who see what is going on around us must at once acknowledge. What turn events will take no one can possibly tell, but of this I am perfectly certain ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... stone unturned towards effecting the overthrow of their common enemy. Vanquished at home, Madame de Chevreuse centred all her hopes in foreign lands. She revived the friendly relations which she had never ceased to cherish with England, Spain, and the Low Countries. Her chief prop, the centre and interposer of her intrigues, was Lord Goring, our ambassador at the French Court; who, like his ill-starred master, and more especially his royal mistress, belonged to the Spanish party. ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... my faith is strong, His arm is my almighty prop: Be glad, my heart; rejoice, my tongue, My dying ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... for others' woes, Herself on shore; 465 To friendless Virtue, gasping on the strand, Bare her warm heart, her virgin arms expand, Charm with kind looks, with tender accents cheer, And pour the sweet consolatory tear; Grief's cureless wounds with lenient balms asswage, 470 Or prop with firmer staff the steps of Age; The lifted arm of mute Despair arrest, And snatch the dagger pointed to his breast; Or lull to slumber Envy's haggard mien, And rob her quiver'd shafts with hand unseen. 475 —Sound, NYMPHS OF HELICON! the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... as well as punish injuries. The story of Rhoecus proves this. Rhoecus, happening to see an oak just ready to fall, ordered his servants to prop it up. The nymph, who had been on the point of perishing with the tree, came and expressed her gratitude to him for having saved her life, and bade him ask what reward he would have for it. Rhoecus boldly asked her love, and the nymph yielded to his desire. She at the same time charged him to be ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... more—disband your Rebel Troops, And strait with me to Abdelazer's Tent, Where all his Claims he shall resign to you, Both in my self, the Kingdom, and the Crown: You being departed, thousands more will leave him, And you're alone the Prop to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... amid groans and tears. A prop had been rudely pushed from beneath the empire. The young Emperor would stumble and sway, and fall without this strong guide beside him. Men said this was the first sign of an imperious ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... sly and persuasive old dog, Colonel Mapleson. Nilsson had but one rival, and she was Mme. Patti. Her Colonel Mapleson had secured; not only her, but, report said, Scalchi, Tremelli, and Tamagno also. Mme. Scalchi had been a strong prop of the first Metropolitan season, and Tremelli and Tamagno, though they had not been heard in America, had names to conjure with. Tremelli never came, and it was not until 1890, when Mr. Abbey was again in the traces of an Italian opera manager, and was exploiting ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... portrait which your husband carried. Into whatever danger he was ordered, you went—you accompanied him in the most real sense: he carried you in his heart. From time to time I got glimpses of you. When he thought no one was looking, he would prop your portrait against the walls of dug-outs with a candle lighted before it, as if you were a saint whom he worshiped. You were the inspiration of his steadfastness to duty. What he did, he did for you. His courage was your courage; his kindness was your kindness. He was striving every minute ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... none. Only after a moment he said, "If you take away one prop, old chap, you must provide another. A broken thing can't stand alone. But need we discuss it now? As I told you, she is coming out presently, and this glorious air is bound to make a difference to her. It tastes ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... and reached for a tent prop. The next moment his hand was at the Indian's throat. With a quick twist of his collar band he shut off the Siwash's wind, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... not much of a center, Miss Dawes alighted from the buggy and entered a building bearing a sign with the words "Metropolitan Variety Store, Joshua Atwood, Prop'r, Groceries, Coal, Dry Goods, Insurance, Boots and Shoes, Garden Seeds, etc." A smaller sign beneath this was lettered "Justice of the Peace," and one below that ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pluralities subside to one; Church, state, and faction wrestle in the dark, Tossed by the deluge in their common ark. Shorn of her bishops, banks, and dividends, Another Babel soars—but Britain ends. And why? to pamper the self-seeking wants, 650 And prop the hill of these agrarian ants. "Go to these ants, thou sluggard, and be wise;" Admire their patience through each sacrifice, Till taught to feel the lesson of their pride, The price of taxes and of homicide; Admire their justice, which would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... times, than attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always under ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... favor," laughed the monarch. "I ever prefer sober manhood to callow youth about me. The one is a prop, stanch, tried; the other a reed that bends this way and that, or breaks when you press ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... mirth, And sorrow, as a flood, o'erflows the earth. Here one, by sad misfortune followed fast, In hopeless indigence is plunged at last. Another, by disaster thrown aside, Has got a crippled limb to prop his side. There, death has made a breach, and left forlorn The widowed mother, and the babe unborn. Here, weeps the father o'er his orphan child, Who thinks it strange, for formerly he smiled: Oh! who can tell the sorrows of his breast? 'Tis sad experience ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... get you along," said Adam. "Or, will you sit down a bit longer, on my coat here, and I'll prop y' up. You'll perhaps be better in a minute ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... feller. He raised himself slow as I come near him, leaning on one arm and trying to set up. The other arm hung loose and helpless. Half setting up that-away he made a feel at his belt with his good hand, as I come near. But that good arm was his prop, and when he took it off the ground he fell back. His hand come ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... ill in all around foresees,—but doubles ill. Each prop thou hast is but a sword to pierce; If Polyeucte hold their heart, the people fierce Will gather fiercer courage ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... Leon, so celebrated in the history of the ninth century as one of the upholders of Breton independence, and known to tradition as 'the Prop of Brittany,' is the subject of a remarkable series of ballads or hero-tales in the Barzaz-Breiz which together constitute what is almost an epic. These tell of his life, death, adventures, travels, and the marvellous feats of derring-do he accomplished. In some measure ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... where a tree grew up to the height of about two hundred cubits. As it bent on one side towards the southeast, the king, fearing it would fall, propped it with a post eight or nine spans around. The tree began to grow at the very heart of the prop, where it met the trunk; a shoot pierced through the post, and went down to the ground, where it entered and formed roots, that rose to the surface and were about four spans round. Although the post was split in the middle, the outer portions kept hold of the shoot, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Two hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands sent the same rays of light through the spectrum of his poetic mind, and a bank was an institution of such abiding grace that, having once established a connection with it, one possessed forever a stout prop in time of need. I was sure indeed that Miss Caroline had defined these limitations of Clem as a financier. It was one of those enjoyable topics which we had been free to discuss. That she had discovered ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... there isn't any longer. Mrs. Wiltshire was the main social prop of the old rector. And the annual concert of the St. Luke's Guild has always been held at her house, down at Shawport, you know. Awfully poky! But it was the custom since the Flood, and no one ever dared to hint at a change. Now the concert was to have been next week but one, and she's ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... preparation and the sounds of Christmas cheer but made him lonelier. For years, flying from the Furies, he had immersed himself in work and so, in part, had forgotten his troubles; but the removal of this prop let him ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... forward to slack out the cable as the heavy boat slowly creeps up out of the water. The men from other craft, already beached, lend a hand too and a score of stout fellows breast the long oars which serve for capstan bars. A little higher still. Now prop her securely and make all snug and ship-shape, and make fast the blade of an oar to one of the forward tholes, with the loom on the ground, for a ladder. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... The great prop of society (which upholdeth the safety, peace, and welfare thereof, in observing laws, dispensing justice, discharging trusts, keeping contracts, and holding good correspondence mutually) is conscience, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... report. It wouldn't astonish me, if they should pronounce the whole apparatus of the State rotten from top to bottom, and only kept from falling to pieces by all sorts of ingenious contrivances of an external and temporary nature,—here a wheel, or pivot, or spring to be replaced,—there a prop or buttress to be set up,—here a pipe choked up,—there a boiler burst,—and so on, from one end of the works to the other. However, the machine keeps a-going, and many persons think it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... sound of friendly voices, the changed room, and the strange looks of all around me. The passage was terrible to me; but I had yet more to undergo. I was recovered just in time to witness the poor wretch, whose prop and consolation I had undertaken to be, carried, exhausted and in nerveless horror, to the ignominious tree—his head drooping on his breast, his eyes opening mechanically at intervals, and only kept from fainting and utter insensibility by the unused ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... compass, one other compass, and a number of other things which were absolutely necessary. The rest of the baggage I left at that spot. I begged the men to take special care of the packages. All I asked of them was to prop them up on stones so that the termites and ants should not destroy my possessions, and to make a shed with palm leaves so as to protect the packages as much as possible from the rain. The men promised to do all this faithfully. We drew lots as to who ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... back to the savages. While this clashing of one object against another could not be called the beginning of music, and while it could not be said to originate a musical instrument, it did, nevertheless, bring into existence music's greatest prop, rhythm, an ally without which music would seem to be impossible. It is hardly necessary to go into this point in detail. Suffice it to say that the sense of rhythm is highly developed even among those savage tribes which stand the lowest in the scale of civilization to-day, for instance, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... later and their heritors in sorrow are crying still. Now it is a bed-ridden mother bewailing her only son, "the principal prop and stay of her old age"; again a wife, left destitute "with three hopeful babes, and pregnant." And here, bringing up the rear of the sad procession—lending to it, moreover, a touch of humour in itself not far ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... off his boots outside, so as not to awaken his friend, entered softly, knocked away the prop, and prepared to turn in. But the noise of pounding on the rail had aroused the householder, and so great was the feeling of relief induced by the relaxation of the maxillary muscles, that he unconsciously ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the lamp, Paul replaced it on his cap, and doubling his line, made one end of it fast to an old timber prop or support of the gangway roof that stood a short distance from the shaft. Knotting the loose end about his body, and bidding the boys place one of the old logs close to the edge of the shaft and hold it there to prevent the rope from ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience. Then I scooped that awful thing up in th' spade. I had a sight o' trouble doin' it. It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn't bear Ev'n to touch it with my foot to prop it, But I done it somehow. Then I carried it off be'ind the barn, Clost to an old apple-tree Where you couldn't see from the house, An' I buried it, Good ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... light-headed. I now am calm, but sadly taken down, and flat. I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all her former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me, and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like a [fool, ber]eft of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I [should think] wrong; so used am I to look up to her [in the least] and the biggest perplexity. To say all that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... is seen in operation in Eucl. XII. 1-2, 3-7 Cor., 10, 16-18. Props. 3-7 Cor. and Prop. 10 prove that the volumes of a pyramid and a cone are one-third of the prism and cylinder respectively on the same base and of equal height; and Archimedes expressly says that these facts were first proved ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... food is insects and grubs, which they get by boring in trees, and from under the bark, clinging to the sides of trunks or the under side of branches with their strong curved nails, aided by the tail, for a prop. They are largely ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... steel swords; and was by no means anxious to murder a single Russian or German, for the sake of the honour of the thing, or for the good of his country. His power resting only on his adroitness in civil affairs, was therefore not on the surest foundation; and a prop to it was accordingly wanted. Such a prop had never been seen before, with such sunny looks, and such a happy musical laugh. The looks and the laugh between them, converted the atmosphere of Stockholm into the climate of Italy; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... vanquish'd. I grant it rather should have pass'd through Caesar, But we must follow where his fortune leads us; All provident Princes measure their intents According to their power, and so dispose them: And thinkst thou (Ptolomy) that thou canst prop His Ruines, under whom sad Rome now suffers? Or 'tempt the Conquerours force when 'tis confirm'd? Shall we, that in the Battail sate as Neuters Serve him that's overcome? No, no, he's lost. And though 'tis noble to a sinking friend To lend a helping hand, while there is hope ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... half a sob, half a sigh, escaped the lawyer's lips. "A spirit like hers needs no other prop than ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... cares! Well, what of that! There's one weed bears a goodly crop; And this exception, then, 'tis flat, Doth give that rule a firmer prop. Tobacco brings the genial mood, Warm heart, shrewd thought, and while we reap From this poor weed such harvest good, We'll hold more boasted ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... have these staves henceforth to prop Thy roaming to and fro. Take thine own way! Since thou hast chosen to thwart thy nearest kin,— Beneath whose orders, though a royal man, I act herein,—and thine own native land. The time will surely come when thou shalt find That in this ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... answered calmly. "I like law, especially Equity law; it is so subtle, and there is such a mass of it built upon such a small foundation. It is like an overgrown mushroom, and the top will fall off one day, however hard the lawyers try to prop it up. Perhaps you ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... "got out" with a few further remarks uncomplimentary to American women, and the damage was done. Ernestine could not be made to see that with the departure of the pastry-cook, the last substantial prop to Milly's fairy ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... down to Wharton Bixler's by stage time to-morrow, Hiram, an' be ready to take th' stage to Brown's Corner. I'll go with ye that far, an' ye c'n deed me th' prop'ty before a notary, so's I won't be obliged to foreclose. Then I'll come back an' pay yer bill at Bixler's, an' ye'll have one hundred dollars to take ye down to Frisco. Will ye be at th' ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... would be sure to follow them, in order to make an attempt to recover their captives. Several times before Joe had tried to kidnap an attractive smart child whom he could train to be a sort of golden prop upon which his laziness could lean, but hitherto he had always been balked in his purpose. He would be furiously angry, Bambo knew, when he discovered that, just when a life of ease and idleness such as he had longed for seemed certain in the near future, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... lift up anybody's morals, and prop 'em up strong, to see how much attention is paid to education and trainin' right from the nursery up—devolipin' ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... I took yer that night, Master Nic, and then work your way up for a hour or so, and all under they tree-ferns you'll find pools and pools with lots o' fish in 'em; but I don't know how you're going to get on with that long thin clothes-prop of a thing. But, there, you're a gen'leman, and ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... And Nan settled herself more comfortably against the governess' knee quite as if that person were, in reality, her prop and stay, instead of being only some one she "sort of liked ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... because I saw that the powers of the performers were being relaxed by eternal repetition, and it was now evident that I must trust to my own ability to pull the matter quickly through as I thought best. But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... as if I had lost a stay or prop," replied Mrs. Seagrave. "So accustomed have I been to look to him for advice since we have been on this island. Had he not been thus snatched from us - had he been spared to us a few years, and had we been permitted to surround his death-bed, and close his eyes in peace—" and Mrs. ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... inevitably be broken, did not a ligament, which the Indians call a drop of water—goutte d'eau—fall from the tree and take root in the earth; there it swells, and grows in proportion with the size of the branch, and acts to it as a living prop. Besides which, around the trunk, and at a considerable distance from the ground, are natural supports, which rise up in points or spirals to about the middle of the trunk. Has not the Grand Architect of ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... sheen and shone and the sun arose with rays a-low- land strown, he sent to summon Ibn Ibrahim; and, when they set him between his hands, he adjured him saying, "O thou! by the rights of the God unique in his rule for Unity; by Him who set up the skies without prop and stay and dispread the Earths firmly upon the watery way, unless thou inform me and apprise me rightly and truly I will order thy head to be struck off this very moment." So the cup-companion related to the King the whole affair of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Meyrick—he had been daringly christened after Holbein—felt himself the pillar, or rather the knotted and twisted trunk, round which these feeble climbing plants must cling. There was no want of ability or of honest well-meaning affection to make the prop trustworthy: the ease and quickness with which he studied might serve him to win prizes at Cambridge, as he had done among the Blue Coats, in spite of irregularities. The only danger was, that the incalculable tendencies in him might be fatally timed, and that his good intentions ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... if I could help. "Yes, if you can carry messages to the engineer and translate them into Spanish." I ran to and fro, stumbling up or down, forgetting every time I passed that a certain part of the ship had a raised ledge. The effort was to prop the boat with spars that it might not tip as it crunched and settled down upon the coral reefs. We could hardly wait until daylight to measure the predicament. When the light grew clear so that I saw ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... together and there's nobody by. They may mean to be straight enough, but before they knows where they are, nature's took hold of them, and there they are.... But even supposin' that 'asn't happened, I don't know as I'm much better off. That girl was the very prop of my business; she's gone, never to return, accordin' to her own account. As to this marryin' business, that may seem to you, Archdeacon, to improve things, but I'm not so sure that it does after all. You may be all very 'igh and mighty in your way, but I'm thinkin' of myself and the business. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... urgent wants indeed, Mrs. Haller has relieved; but whether she has or could have given as much as would purchase liberty for the son, the prop ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... that at such a time any other husband and wife would have been at once in each other's arms. And at the moment she thought of all that they had lost. To her her child had been all and everything. To him he had been his heir and the prop of his house. The boy had been the only link that had still bound them together. Now he was gone, and there was no longer any link between them. He was gone, and she had nothing left to her. He was gone, and the father was so alone in the world, without ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... in reply. He pursed his lips for a meditative whistle, thought better of it, took the frying-pan from its prop, and sounded the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... toward them hatless, but trailing a stick that had been the prop of his later convalescence. His blue serge coat, a negligee shirt and duck trousers had been drawn a few days before from the trunks brought by Oscar from the bungalow. He was clean-shaven for the first time since ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... intellectual peculiarities of the different authors. Jay's "INQUIRY" and Mrs. Child's "APPEAL" abound in facts—are dispassionate, ingenious, argumentative. The "BIBLE AGAINST SLAVERY," by the most careful and laborious research, has struck from slavery the prop, which careless Annotators, (writing, unconscious of the influence, the prevailing system of slavery throughout the Christian world exercised on their own minds,) have admitted was furnished for it in the Scriptures. "Wythe" by a pains-taking and lucid adjustment of facts in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a high-backed chair and stretched her eyes wide open. For hours and hours she sat there, growing more sleepy every minute. Towards morning she began to nod; she could hardly keep her eyes open, though she tried to prop the lids with her finger tips. Finally, whether she would or no, she fell fast asleep, poor little Tourtourelle, worn out with her ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... of the work we discern most distinctly in the constant, often—most decidedly, doubtless, in the case of the Aquitanian expedition (III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility)— not successful, justification of every single act of war as a defensive measure which the state of things had rendered inevitable. That the adversaries of Caesar censured his ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... at this very time so conscious of the weakness of their title to the sovereignty of Ireland, that they were continually striving to prop up their claims by the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Situated as Bacon was, it was scarcely possible for him to shape his course so as not to give one or both of his employers reason to complain. For a time he acted as fairly as, in circumstances so embarrassing, could reasonably be expected. At length he found that, while he was trying to prop the fortunes of another, he was in danger of shaking his own. He had disobliged both the parties whom he wished to reconcile. Essex thought him wanting in zeal as a friend: Elizabeth thought him wanting in duty as a subject. The Earl looked on him as a spy of the Queen; the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... master Governor! your slave! The prop! the pillar of our family! To whom, at my departure hence, I gave My son ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... says Babbitt, tryin' to prop up his wilted collar. "I'd just give him his first dose for the day, and I'd dodged the glass, when somethin' catches me from behind, throws me into the tea-wagon, and off I goes. But that dose counts, don't it, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York. But the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a fruitful theme, and Undine, called on for the first time to view her own progenitors as a subject of conversation, was struck by their lack of points. She had never paused to consider what her father ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... and, by persuasion, by numbers, and by new laws, to establish a new State. Comrades, do not follow this line of march, for we would perish in following it in Belgium or in France as elsewhere. Rather let us leave these governments to rot away and not prop them up with our morality. This is the reason: the International is and must be a State within States. Let these States march on as they like, even to the point where our State is the strongest. Then, on their ruins, we will place ours, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... refined, those who have the courage of their feelings, believe themselves at the top of the tree; they are mistaken! In our actual order of things the Philistine, the vulgar, common, flabby, and at the same time cruel man of routine, reigns supreme. He, and no one else, is the prop of existing things, and against him we all fight in vain, however noble our courage may be; for unfortunately all things are in this slavery of leathern custom, and only fright and trouble of all kinds can turn the Philistine into a man ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... and elsewhere, the eyes of the flowers had gained vision, and the knots in the tree-boles listened like secret ears. Some plants there were, indeed, trodden down by Dr. John in his search, and his hasty and heedless progress, which I wished to prop up, water, and revive; some footmarks, too, he had left on the beds: but these, in spite of the strong wind, I found a moment's leisure to efface very early in the morning, ere common eyes had discovered them. With a pensive sort of content, I sat down to my ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... how my theme doth rise; Nor wonder, therefore, if more artfully I prop the structure. Nearer now we drew, Arrived whence, in that part where first a breach As of a wall appeared. I could descry A portal, and three steps beneath, that led For inlet there, of different color each; And one who watched, but spake not yet a word, As more and more mine eye did stretch ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... her to a sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her knees, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Alger, Smith, Guy, Ingersoll, and others, that, "Interjections are words thrown in between the parts of a sentence," I had not only excluded from my grammars, but expressly censured in them. It was not, therefore, to prop any error of the old theorists, that I happened to set one interjection "where" according to this new oracle, "it never belonged." And if any body but he has been practically misled by their mistake, it is not I, but more probably some ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Paulinus, and is thy nature turn'd? Have I so long in vain thy absence mourn'd? Wilt thou, my glory, and great Rome's delight, The Senate's prop, their oracle, and light, In Bilbilis and Calagurris dwell, Changing thy ivory-chair for a dark cell? Wilt bury there thy purple, and contemn All the great ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... since 1982. The government currently is encouraging foreign investment in tourist facilities. Other investment priorities include sugar, basic foods, and nickel. The annual $4 billion Soviet subsidy, a main prop to Cuba's threadbare economy, may be cut in view of ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... played and the ware of the buffet clattered, the joyous voices of the overwhelming majority gave Senator Corson to understand that he was the idol of his people and the prop ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Promulgation publikigado, sciigado. Prone (inclined to) inklina, ema. Prone (downward) terenkusxa. Proneness emo, inklino. Prong forkego. Pronominal pronoma. Pronoun pronomo. Pronounce elparoli. Pronunciation elparolado. Proof (for press) presprovajxo. Proof pruvo, provo. Prop subtenajxo, subteno. Propaganda propagando. Propagandism propagandismo. Propagate propagandi. Propel antauxen pusxi, irigi. Propensity emo, inklino. Proper (exact) gxusta. Proper konvena. Property ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Yea, while she mourned a daughter and a son, She looked to heaven, and cried, "Thy will be done!" But, oh! the father no such solace found— Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round; He was a stranger to the Christian's hope, And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean; Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene— Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul— Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control; For though a grounded faith he ne'er had known, He was no prayerless man; but ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... destined spot And prop and babes unpacked; They ran about, and stuff'd, and cramm'd, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... could be more permanently fixed. The derrick, or upright spar used for carrying the tackle to raise the first beam, was placed in such a position as to become useful for supporting the upper end of it, which now became, in its turn, the prop of the tackle for raising the second beam. The whole difficulty of this operation was in the raising and propping of the first beam, which became a convenient derrick for raising the second, these ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... push me off," said Lynn. "I'm only trying to teach him to talk prop'ly. This morning he asked Larkin to come and look at his lee lowing in the lound. And I had to explain that he meant ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... the broad and sweeping wing! Thy home is high in heaven, Where the wide storms their banners fling, And the tempest clouds are driven. Thy throne is on the mountain top; Thy fields, the boundless air; And hoary peaks, that proudly prop ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... dear," he said, "so you are leaving. Well, I don't blame you, nor wish you to remain. After all, it is no use trying to tinker up our rotten system, or to prop up society with such wretched supports as our friend here," and he pointed at Short. "What we need is to get round them by our insidious means, and then go in for ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... badly without him," muttered Joshua. "He's the very prop and pillar of the place, is Peter; if a wall's strong enough to hold the roof up, you don't ask if it's made ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... sat his master, with the glittering Fox's head before him. Having made a sort of scratch bow, Tom proceeded to stand at ease, as it were, on the left leg, while he placed the late recusant right, which was a trifle shorter, as a prop behind. No one, to look at the little wizen'd old man in the loose dark frock, baggy striped waistcoat, and patent cord breeches, extending below where the calves of his bow legs ought to have been, would have supposed that it was the noted ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... foot, has completely disappeared. The change in the hind foot has gone still further. The hind leg in many animals evolves more rapidly than the front. The heavy work of running is always done by the hind feet, while the front feet serve rather as a prop to keep the animal from falling than as the actual means of locomotion. Hence the hind feet and the muscles of the hind quarters are almost always heavier than the front. Possibly on the front foot the little ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... "for now I will call you so, your grief, though deep and poignant, will pass away in time, but mine will abide with me whilst I stay here. That period, however, will not be long; the prop of my existence, the source of my happiness, is gone; and I will never know what happiness is until I rejoin her and her blessed mother. Good-by, my daughter; I will have neither reply nor remonstrance, nor will I be moved by any argument from this ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... serue in stead of stones to make walles and vautes: for being once colde they will neuer dissolue or breake, except they be cut with some iron toole, and the vautes that are made of them are so light that they need no sustentacle, or prop to holde them vp, and they will endure continually very faire and whole. By reason of these great commodities, the Fryers haue made there so many buildings and walles that it is a wonder to see. The couerts or roofes of their houses for the most part ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... desire to possess her, than by the dogged male determination to over-ride all obstacles, whether feminine or financial. And pretty Belinda Bolingbroke, being alone and unsupported by other suitors at the instant, had entwined herself instinctively around the nearest male prop that offered. It had been one of those marriages of opposites which people (ignoring the salient fact that love has about as much part in it as it has in the pursuit of a spring chicken by a hawk) speak of with sentiment as "a triumph of love over differences." Even ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... he will recover. Just imagine, general; he was found by the road, and brought home with a dagger in his breast, like a prop ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... soul to which it inevitably leads! One man trusts in riches, another in glory, another in the esteem of men; one leans upon his friends and companions, another upon his relatives—all forgetful of the frail and unsubstantial nature of every earthly prop. Frequently they never awaken to the peril of their state until they find themselves face to face with their doom and the awful disillusionment. The crash may be delayed, but the day must come sooner or later for all of us, who have advanced but a little beyond maturity, when all ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... with care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of Time has method only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... say this: True friendship is a goodly thing and a rare in this world, and, therefore, to be treasured; 'tis thing no man may buy or seek, since itself is seeker and cometh of itself; 'tis a prop—a staff in stony ways, a shield 'gainst foes, a light i' the dark. So do I love friendship, Robin, and thou'rt my friend, yet must leave ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... you let your mind run out after help in times of trouble; it is like putting to sea in a storm. Sit still, and feel after your principles; and, if you find none that furnish you with somewhat of a stay and prop, and which point you to quietness and silent submission, depend upon it you have never yet learned Truth from the Spirit of Truth, whatever notions thereof you may have picked up from this and the other description ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... day away! She shrank and trembled at the prospect of relying upon herself alone for six long days. Every prop had been taken away from her. Even the dubious prop of the strange, unsatisfactory Keith. For had he not failed her? She had said, "must" and "at once"; and he had responded with three ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... all as with one voice Conspiring, may attest his bright design. Nor even then, dismissing as performed His pleasant work, may he suppose it done. Few self-supported flowers endure the wind Uninjured, but expect the upholding aid Of the smooth-shaven prop, and neatly tied Are wedded thus, like beauty to old age, For interest sake, the living to the dead. Some clothe the soil that feeds them, far diffused And lowly creeping, modest and yet fair; Like virtue, thriving most where little seen. Some, more aspiring, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... a bob-tailed pinto, saddle-galled, cast in th' near eye, Star Diamond brand, white stockin' on th' off front prop, with a habit of scratchin' itself every other minute?" went ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... had been prying, the cart might have been a prop to take up as soon as he came out. On the other hand, what could she in her technical ignorance make of such ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... there is little foundation for the theory that it is part of a semi-religious rite, on the analogy of the Freemasons' special handshake and the like. Nor do I altogether agree with the authorities who allege that man, when standing up, needs something as a prop or support. There is a shadow of reason, I grant, in this supposition, but after years of keen observation I am inclined to think that the umpire keeps his bat by him, firstly, in order that no unlicensed hand ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... think of following your meteoric career in the papers! As I nibble at my toast of a morning I prop the New York Herald against the water giraffe and read, spilling my coffee down my neck: 'The life of the party was Right Tackle Thayer. Seizing the elongated sphere and tucking it under his strong left arm, Thayer dashed into the embattled line of the helpless ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... thoughts and aspirations of mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory beliefs; and they have persisted for all time, although ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the prop, lowered the board, and kneeling, stroked the hen, and talked softly to her. She slipped a hand under the hen, and lifted her to see the eggs. Dannie staring at Mary noted closer the fresh, cleared ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... smiled,—"Charley, stop that awful racket and let Heine go out for his scraps. Well, I brought you your breakfast—Virginia isn't feeling very well—and I hope you're going to be all right. No, get right back into bed and I'll prop you up with pillows; Charley's got a hundred or so. I declare, it's a question which can grab the most; old Charley or Stiff Neck George. Every time anyone moves out—and sometimes when they don't—you'll see those two ghouls hanging around; and the minute ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... life and all; pardon not that: You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life, When you do take the means whereby ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... a very happy day to Honora; there was a repose and trust to be felt in Humfrey's company, such as she had not experienced since she had lost her parents, and the home sense of kindred was very precious. Only women whose chief prop is gone, can tell the value of one who is still near enough to disapprove ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I had lost a stay or prop," replied Mrs Seagrave. "So accustomed have I been to look to him for advice since we have been on this island. Had he not been thus snatched from us—had he been spared to us a few years, and had we been permitted to surround his death-bed, ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the use of his limbs. He accordingly had him carried into a little room, where he desired the gentleman to attempt to stand. 'That is impossible,' answered the patient, 'for I have not been able to use a leg these three years.' 'Prop yourself, then, upon your crutches, and lean against the wall to support yourself,' answered the physician. The gentleman did so, and the doctor went abruptly out, and locked the door after him. He had not been long in this situation before he ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... turned her attention to the room which was kitchen and dining-room in one. From a neat chest of drawers she drew her best and only white table-cloth and spread it on the table. The table was a little rickety in one leg, but several folds of newspaper acted as a splendid prop, and quite removed the difficulty. Her supply of china and silver was scarce, but it would do with washing between courses. Four chairs were all she had, but they were quite enough as her guests numbered four. An empty soap-box concealed beneath the table-cloth, and drawn out only ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... this, to enter into these governments, and, by persuasion, by numbers, and by new laws, to establish a new State. Comrades, do not follow this line of march, for we would perish in following it in Belgium or in France as elsewhere. Rather let us leave these governments to rot away and not prop them up with our morality. This is the reason: the International is and must be a State within States. Let these States march on as they like, even to the point where our State is the strongest. Then, on their ruins, we will ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... originality or the insight or the temperamental courage to adopt a definitely reactionary philosophy; whereas in France we have Huysmans, Barres, Bourget, Bordeaux, and many others, whose persuasive and romantic role it is to prop up tottering altars; in England we have ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... Lay not a leaden loade of foule reproach Upon so weake a prop; what's done is past recal. If ought is done, unfitting to be done, The worst is done, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... "Props," has charge of the furniture, rugs, pianos, telephones, everything of this nature, as well as of all hand-props, such as bric-a-brac, books, flowers, fruit, food for stage banquets, table silver and china, everything in fact that the play requires—even to a prop baby or any animals required. It is his duty to see that all props are in place for each act, ready to the hand of each player as the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... lances, pikes, halberts, brown bills, batterdashers, bucklers, and the modern colivers and petronils (in King Charles I.'s time) turned into muskets and pistols. Then were entails in fashion, (a good prop for monarchy). Destroying of manors began temp. Henry VIII., but now common; whereby the mean people live lawless, nobody to govern them, they care for nobody, having no dependance on anybody. By this method, and by the selling of the church-lands, is the ballance of the Government quite ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... Scarlett she s'anter ter de winder wid 'er gun sort o' hangin' loose, an' holler: 'Adam! Come outer dem bushes 'fo' I pickle yo' hide! You my witness ob dis ruffian trispassin' on my prop'ty an' cussin' an' seducin' a ol' woman widout 'er consent,' she says. 'Has I retched my age,' says ol' Mis' Scarlett, 'to have his fowls ruinin' my gyardin', an' him whut's a dunghill rooster himself flyin' ovah ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... sons: his devotion was something more than theirs. How should it be otherwise? In him, and in him alone, the father saw the zealous guardian of his lawless rule, the champion of his old age, the sole prop of tyranny. If grief did not kill him on the spot, despair, I knew, must do so; there could be no further joy in life for him when his protector was slain. Nature, grief, despair, foreboding, terror,—these were my allies; with these ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... found in the fact that Lawyer Temple had run through what little money his father and grandmother had left him; additional wise-acres were of the opinion that some out-of-town folks had bought the place and were trying to prop it up so it wouldn't tumble into the street, while one, more facetious than the others, had claimed that it was no wonder it was falling down, since the only new thing Temple had put upon ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... expression of wifely pride and womanly tenderness in the fine old lady, who forgot her own gifts, and felt only humility and gratitude to the man who had found in her a comrade in intellectual pursuits, as well as a helpmeet at home and a gentle prop for ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... THE INVOLUCRUM.—Any kind of wrapping or propping condition of leafage at the base of a flower may properly come under this head; but the manner of prop or protection differs in different kinds, and I will not at present give generic names to these ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... everlasting covenant,—resting sweetly on the bosom, and the work of Jesus,—to Him committing thine eternal all. My soul! stay thyself on God, that so this blessed peace may be thine. Thou hast tried the world. It has deceived thee. Prop after prop of earthly scaffolding has yielded, and tottered, and fallen. Has thy God ever done so? Ah! this false and counterfeit world-peace may do well for the world's work, and the world's day of prosperity. But test it in ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... Christian congregations; that, instead of the saving morality of the Gospel of Christ, which rests upon revealed mysteries and supernatural gifts, it is offering us that same old array of the natural virtues or qualities which helped, for a while, like rotten pillars, to prop up the heathen nations of old. It must, then, be evident to every man of common sense that the reading of the Bible alone, though it be the Word of God, will not counterbalance the results of Pagan education. Indeed the reading of the Bible alone ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... said the man, changing the steel headpiece for a cuirass. "There won't be no trouble. First time your father gets a sight of the mob of tailors, and shoemakers, and tinkers, with an old patch-work counterpane atop of a clothes-prop for their flag, he'll ride along the front of his ridgement of cavaliers, and he'll shout to 'em in that big voice of his as I've followed many's the time; and 'Don't draw, gentlemen,' he'll say; 'ride the scum down, and make the rest run;' and then they'll all roar with laughing loud enough to ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... attention, though always mentioned with respect. The same may also be said of another attempt to smooth obvious difficulties in the way of accepting either of the two extremes or the middle course proposed by Yang Hsiung. The famous Han Yu, to be mentioned again shortly, was a pillar and prop of Confucianism. He flourished between A.D. 768 and 824, and performed such lasting services in what was to him the cause of truth, that his tablet has been placed in the Confucian temple, an honour reserved only for those whose orthodoxy is beyond suspicion. Yet he ventured upon ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... extended over the necks of both sovereigns and people. It had become a mighty power in the world, inseparably connected with the education and the religion of the age, the prime mover of all political affairs, the grand prop of absolute monarchies, the last ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... mistook it for the application of drumsticks to the head of an empty barrel. This uncommon speed, however, was attended with a misfortune; he chanced to overlook a small defect in one of the steps, and his prop plunging into a hole, he fell backwards, to the imminent danger of his life. Tom was luckily at his back, and sustained him in his arms, so as that he escaped without any other damage than the loss of his wooden leg, which was snapped in the middle, by the weight of his body in ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... klinai placed in the sitting-rooms, lying on which, in a half-reclining position, people used to read, write and take their meals. They were covered with soft blankets of gorgeous colors, while one or more cushions served to support the body in its half-sitting position, or to prop the left arm. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the bed with flowers, they brush away the dark soft hair, they array her in a dainty embroidered night-robe, and prop her up with pillows. There is the fever fire on her wan cheeks, the fever fire in her shining eyes. But she is unutterably happy—you have but to look into her face to see that. Death is ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the old medicament, Whose fusty vials have long dried impotent, Why prop ye meretricious things, Denounce the sane as vicious things, And call outworn factitious ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Mr. Wells?" said Wyngate, with affected politeness; "or possibly your uncle may have been English, and a title goes with the 'prop,' and you may be Lord Wells, or ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... and the law has Convicted and Sentanced him to the Stats prison for 10 yeares his White Frands ofered 2 thousen Dollers to Redem him but they would not short three thousen. I am in Canada and it is a Dificult thing to get a letter to any of my Frands in Maryland so as to get prop per infermation abot it—if you can by any means get any in telligence from Baltimore City a bot this Event Plese do so and Rit word and all so all the inform mation that you think prop per as Regards the Evant and the best mathod to Redeme ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... extensive plain of anguish. "How am I to be sustained through this dreary journey of life?" she exclaimed. Upon this question she felt, more poignantly than ever, her loss of innocence: innocence would have been her support, but, in place of this best prop to the afflicted, guilt flashed on her memory every time she flew for ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... let me put you next, son: there's more 'isms and 'pathys and 'ists floatin' around these days, than any one head can keep track of. I don't know much about the lot; but this Toodleism's a punk proposition. Besides leavin' me with a game prop, it come near bu'stin' ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... then spoke, "Little Soul, it is no joke, "For as sure as Jacky Fuller loves a sup, sup, sup, "I will tell the Prince and People "What I think of Church and Steeple. "And my little patent plan to prop them up, up, up, "And my little patent plan to prop ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the wood, and we might see either emigrants to California moving west, or the post to one of the forts, and thus obtain assistance. Obed and I soon got up the tent. I sat down, and he made his shoulders serve as a prop while I stuck in the pole, and thus in a few minutes we had a comfortable roof ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... king, the highly-puissant son of Vasudeva (Krishna) also addressed him. Knowing the king, the son of Pritha, afflicted in mind, and bereft of his relatives and kinsmen slain in battle, and appearing crest-fallen like the sun darkened eclipse, or fire smothered by smoke, that prop of the Vrishni race (Krishna), comforting the son of Dharma, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... your own; yet, if you must know it, the Eustis and the Wheelwright families, from whom you are descended, are among the most substantial and influential of New England. Their reputation, however, is not a prop for you to lean on. They are on the Atlantic coast, you on the Pacific; so your future depends upon your own merit ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... a mighty bad patch, Nan," he said abruptly. "Ef things kep hittin' their present gait, why, I don't jest see wher' we're to strike bottom. The pinch ain't yet, but you can't never kick out a prop without shakin' the whole darned buildin' mighty bad. An' that's how the Obar's fixed. Ther's a mighty big punch gone plumb out o' Jeff's fight, an', well, I guess we're needin' all our punch to fix the things crowdin' ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... Socialism means to abolish religion, that it "would try to put laziness, thriftlessness, and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift, and efficiency, that it would strive to break up not merely private property, but, what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... silently—for the husband whose life was ebbing away; for the son over whose heart she seemed to have so little control; for herself, soon to be left alone in the world, with only her daughter for her prop and stay. She was not a weak or helpless creature. She had been in her husband's confidence, and had been his helpmeet throughout their married life. She was well able to carry on single-handed the course of action he had pursued through ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with her head drooping, as if the blackmailer's words had taken away the last shoring prop of her ambition and hope. After a while she raised ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... to do with building character in him Froebel has told us. Through it, he showed us, the child "first perceives moral relations," and he made that the basis of the kindergarten and all common-sense education. That prop was knocked out. New York never had a children's playground till within the last three years. Truly it seemed, as Abram S. Hewitt said, as if in the early plan of our city the children had not been thought of at all. Such moral relations as Jacob was able to make out ran ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... reined up and drew aside. The pony dashed off in the direction of the Pombo and, as I passed close to him, a man named Nerba (private secretary of the Tokchim Tarjum), knelt down, and, taking aim with his matchlock resting on its prop, deliberately fired a ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... shock. My feelings were in a tumult difficult to describe. My philosophy, my self-command, my hard sense and scepticism were scattered to the winds, I had fought against the awful fear, and was still fighting when my neighbor called; but her visit had knocked every prop from beneath me. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... prevent it from slipping till it could be more permanently fixed. The derrick, or upright spar used for carrying the tackle to raise the first beam, was placed in such a position as to become useful for supporting the upper end of it, which now became, in its turn, the prop of the tackle for raising the second beam. The whole difficulty of this operation was in the raising and propping of the first beam, which became a convenient derrick for raising the second, these again a pair of shears for lifting the third, and the shears ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hot blood gets together and there's nobody by. They may mean to be straight enough, but before they knows where they are, nature's took hold of them, and there they are.... But even supposin' that 'asn't happened, I don't know as I'm much better off. That girl was the very prop of my business; she's gone, never to return, accordin' to her own account. As to this marryin' business, that may seem to you, Archdeacon, to improve things, but I'm not so sure that it does after all. You ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... is attributed the apophthegm: "Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and with my own weight I will move the world." This arose from his knowledge of the possible effects of machinery; but however it might astonish a Greek of his day, it would now be admitted to be as theoretically possible as it is practically impossible. Archimedes would have ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... her on additionally in the midst of all this was the remembrance of the cardinal. What must the mistrustful, restless, suspicious cardinal think of her silence—the cardinal, not merely her only support, her only prop, her only protector at present, but still further, the principal instrument of her future fortune and vengeance? She knew him; she knew that at her return from a fruitless journey it would be in vain to tell him of her imprisonment, in vain to enlarge upon the sufferings ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... uncomfortable lodging, it being a perfect swamp; and we had nothing to cover us, though it rained very hard. The Indians were little better off than we, as there was no wood here to make their wigwams; so that all they could do was to prop up the bark they carry in the bottom of their canoes with their oars, and shelter themselves as well as they could to leeward of it. They, knowing the difficulties that were to be encountered here, had provided themselves with some seal; but we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the floor of one's library, and wearing a rich carpeting, green at all seasons, of fruits and verdure, ran out till it touched the horizon. On the north rose the Alps, a magnificent wall, of stature so stupendous, that they seemed to prop the heavens. On the south were the gentler Apennines. Between these two magnificent barriers, this goodly plain—of which I know not if the earth contains its equal—stretches away till it terminates in the blue line of the Adriatic. On its ample bosom is many a celebrated ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... foolish— Today I am not going to the restaurant. I am after all this time weary of the waiters, Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces, Dark beer and make us so confused That we cannot find our home And we must Use the foolish street lights To prop ourselves up with weak hands. Today I have bigger things in mind— Ah, I shall find out the meaning of existence. And in the evening I shall do some roller skating Or go at some point ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... fulminates, gold is the worst, Which England, aeroplaning, now, lets drop By day and night, in bank, press, church and shop, Timed to the minute that it is to burst. List to Demosthenes, if not to Hearst, Sublime Republic! Lest thy great heart stop, Shocked by the blast of Freedom's every prop, And bats and owls in dwellings, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... "Just you prop yourself up in the corner an' rest a while," advised the Texan, with forced cheerfulness, "I can handle it all right, now." Wearily, the girl obeyed. At the bow and stern of the square-ended boat, the bottom curved upward so ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... And when any comes hither they are won by my complemental and genteel Discourse; my comely presence brings in many a Guest into the House, besides particular Acquaintance: So that I may well affirm I am the Prop of the House. If I didn't introduce Gentleman into your Company, I wonder what you'd do; you might e'en sit still, and be forc'd to make use of a Dildo, before any Body would come to you if it wan't ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... reached him from the kitchen where she had been attending to the fastenings of the back door. Fortunately her light had survived the gusty attack and she was able to help her husband to his prop. ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... Berlin amid groans and tears. A prop had been rudely pushed from beneath the empire. The young Emperor would stumble and sway, and fall without this strong guide beside him. Men said this was the first sign of an imperious ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... me in mind of what happened at Sinope. {20a} When the Corinthians heard that Philip was going to attack them, they were all alarmed, and fell to work, some brushing up their arms, others bringing stones to prop up their walls and defend their bulwarks, every one, in short, lending a hand. Diogenes observing this, and having nothing to do (for nobody employed him), tucked up his robe, and, with all his might, fell a rolling his tub which he lived in up and down the Cranium. {20b} "What are you ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... army, however strong, do more than prop up existing institutions. These themselves were rotten. Despotism cannot save a state. The reign of Louis XIV. was one of the most brilliant in modern annals. But no reign ever more signally undermined the state. It is the patriotism of soldiers that ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... to a sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her knees, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... with these," urged Eph, placing the tray on the cabin table. "Wait a minute. I'll prop you up and put a pillow ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... attitudes of rigid attention, shoulder to shoulder, while Penrod Schofield, facing them, was apparently delivering some sort of exhortation, which he read from a scribbled sheet of foolscap. Concluding this, he lifted from the ground a long and somewhat warped clothes-prop, from one end of which hung a whitish flag, or pennon, bearing an inscription. Sam and Herman and Verman lifted their right hands, while Penrod placed the other end of the clothes-prop in a hole in the ground, with ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... letter, my dear fellow. It's less pessimistic than I expected, and gives me the impression that I may regard you as a Prop. I shall follow your advice rigidly, though I must juggle some of the details, as Caspian has taken advantage of the poor little girl's love for her father, and practically (from what I understand) blackmailed her into promising to marry him. Mrs. Winston is in her confidence, though ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not infrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and the guaranty of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... furious: for the third time I approached the hand with my own: I clasped it, and at the same instant I tried to rise, to draw this dead body towards me, and be certain of the hideous crime. But, as I strove to prop myself on my left elbow, the cold hand I was clasping became alive, and was withdrawn—and I knew that instant, to my utter astonishment, that I held none other than my own left hand, which, lying stiffened on the hard floor, had lost ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... temper with 'im, and it was all old Sam could do to stop himself from casting 'im off forever. He was finished at last, and arter Peter Russet 'ad slipped downstairs and found a bit o' broken clothes-prop in the yard, and 'e'd been shown 'ow to lean on it and make a noise, Ginger said as 'ow if Ted Reddish got 'im for a 'undered pounds 'e'd get ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... whitewood, that cut like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"— Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... the constable shall take my horse, and I will drive; and then I can look after you, and you can use me for a prop, if you feel weak; but before we start, I must insist on your taking a sip of brandy ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... degree of strength that England derived from her colonies, which he described to be her very vitals, and which could only be reached by a powerful navy. He designated them as the sheet anchor of Great Britain—the prop that supported her maritime superiority—the strongholds of her power. "Deprive her of her colonies," said Talleyrand. "and you break down her last wall; you fill up her last ditch."—Fas est et ab ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... gallant youth, whose form is so perfect, whose spirit is so noble, and whose life so pure; while I, the last of a line that is lost in the obscurity of time, the wealthiest of my land, and the chosen of my peers, am accursed with an outcast, a common brigand, a murderer, for the sole prop of my decaying house—with this Il Maledetto—this ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... while her heart sank to a deeper dejection. Not only had she lost Franklin; she had lost herself. She embarked on the dangerous and often demoralising search for a definite, recognisable personality—something to lean on with security, a standard and a prop. With growing dismay she could find only a sorry little group of shivering hopes and shaken adages. What was she? Only a well-educated nonentity with, for all coherence and purpose in life, a knowledge of art and literature and ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... him, although I did not choose that he should know me. I asked him, as carelessly as I could, how the old miller was now? He told me he was dead. This realization of the worst apprehensions caused by his long silence shocked me inexpressibly. It seemed as though every prop gave way from under me. I had been talking to Amante only that very day of the safety and comfort of the home that awaited her in my father's house; of the gratitude which the old man would feel towards her; and how there, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... as good a light as the poor place can give," he said, and dragged forth the rickety-legged chair that he might prop it against its back, for the moment looking less drunk and less a vagabond in his eagerness to do his work justice; there lurking somewhere, perhaps, in his besotted being, that love which the artist soul feels for the ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 3d of March, 1754, Mr. Pelham, the Prime Minister, died, and, had Murray's ambition soared in that direction, he might at once have stepped into the vacant office. He had long been the prop of the Ministry in the House of Commons, and was by far the most sagacious member of the Government. Throughout his Parliamentary career, what has happily been called his "clear, placid, mellow splendor" had suffered no tarnish, and had not been obscured by a single ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... and go to bed. Gradually I got my hand on her thighs, how could she help it?—a woman who had been fucked by me a lot of times. But she was firm in refusing me. I lifted my night-shirt, my prick stood up, the shirt hanging at the back of it like clothes on the hook of a prop,. Finding that useless, I threatened to frig myself and began the operation. She said I ought to be ashamed of myself, that she would leave if I did not desist, and turned to go, when I pulled her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... causes it to see, hear, and decide. The government is convinced that it depends for its salvation wholly on them, that it is sustained because they uphold it, and that the day on which they cease to support it, it will fall like a manikin that has lost its prop. They intimidate the government with an uprising of the people and the people with the forces of the government, whence originates a simple game, very much like what happens to timid persons when they visit gloomy places, taking for ghosts their own shadows and for strange ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... her back was fetching from the clothes-prop a waterglobe upon its stand; she set it down on the table before the rush-light, moving on tiptoe, for to her the writing of a letter was a sort of necromancy, and she was distressed for Katharine's sake. She ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... unaccompanied by any music. For three hours the child sang, acted, and danced in the suffocating stable, lighted by two petroleum lamps. The next day I saw Mignon sitting on one of the shafts of the caravan and gnawing the 'drumstick' of a fowl. The child-actress was the prop of her mother and the donkey; her talent also kept the youth, who began to agitate the nerves of Beynac with his diabolical rataplan hours before ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... time since, Endeavour'd vainly to convince A hungry fisherman Of his unfitness for the frying-pan. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small addition. A certain wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The dog his leanness pled; "Your lordship, sure," he said, "Cannot be very eager To eat a dog so meagre. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... supreme example; their anchor against the tides of error, against abnormalities, extravagances, unbalance; a bulwark against invading time and decay; a check on every bad emperor, so far as check might be set at all; a central idea to mold the hundred races of Chu Hia into homogeneity; a stay, a prop, a warning against headlong courses at all times of cyclic downtrend;—if he had known all this, he would, I think, have ordered his life precisely as he did. Is there no strength implied, as of the Universal, and not of any personal, will, however titanic, in ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... as I have said, delighted in his prop. It was as necessary to him as his cane; and I generally accompanied him, when he visited any ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... I cut down one or two after that, and then I felt Wulf reel and prop himself against me. Then I had a score of men crowding on me, and they clogged my sword arm and gripped my shield and tore it aside, and then from behind or at the side one smote me on the head with a club or a stone hammer, and I went down. I heard one cry that I was ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... said he, "but my time here is very short, and your well-meant efforts for my relief are not only useless, but they also increase my suffering. You are, I presume, from some ship which has come up with us since those fiends left. Kindly prop me up a little higher on the sofa, gentlemen, if you please, and I will endeavour to tell you what has happened ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... for her?" As much to prop an opinion of human nature that was already too low for comfort as in Andrea's ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... her child. Clementine learned to honor the virtues of her aunt, but she adored her mother. When she had the affliction of losing her, she found herself alone in the world, leaning on Mlle. Sambucco, like a young plant on a prop of dry wood. It was then that her friendship for Leon glimmered with a vague ray of love; and young Renault profited by the necessity for expansion which filled this ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... in an awed tone, and planting her sharp elbows on her knees in order to prop her serious face, "The Ship ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... considered it necessary, aye, had it organized by the State, as well in Greece as in Rome. What views existed on the subject during the Middle Ages has likewise been described. Even St. Augustine, who, next to St. Paul, must be looked upon as the most important prop of Christendom, and who diligently preached asceticism, could not refrain from exclaiming: "Suppress the public girls, and the violence of passion will knock everything of a heap." The provincial Council of Milan, in 1665, expressed itself ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... a day away! She shrank and trembled at the prospect of relying upon herself alone for six long days. Every prop had been taken away from her. Even the dubious prop of the strange, unsatisfactory Keith. For had he not failed her? She had said, "must" and "at once"; and he had responded with three words of ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... this: True friendship is a goodly thing and a rare in this world, and, therefore, to be treasured; 'tis thing no man may buy or seek, since itself is seeker and cometh of itself; 'tis a prop—a staff in stony ways, a shield 'gainst foes, a light i' the dark. So do I love friendship, Robin, and thou'rt my friend, yet must leave thee, though ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the marriages and births and deaths—came in between him and his work so that he could scarcely see it, so many things obscured the way. Poor Mortimer! Lost indeed behind a shifting, whirring cloud of real life—never to emerge, poor man, into anything better than a middle-aged clothes' prop. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... refuse to be its tool. Let its power be stretched forth toward this distant Territory, not to bind, but to unbind; not for the oppression of the weak, but for the subversion of the tyrannical; not for the prop and maintenance of a revolting Usurpation, but for the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... books and antiquities and rare marble fragments, in a spacious room surrounded with laden shelves, Romola was his daily companion and assistant. There was a time when he had hoped that his son, Dino, would have followed in his steps, to be the prop of his age, and to take up and continue his scholarly labours after he was dead. But Dino had failed him; Dino had given himself up to religion and entered the priesthood, and the passion of Bardo's resentment had flamed into fierce hatred towards this recreant son of his, and none dared ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... trade in these things, I figured that he probably bought it from some juggler whose performance had given him the idea. So," continued Jones, producing a specimen of his advertisements in the theatrical publications, "I set out to find what professional had sold a 'prop', to an amateur. I found the sale had been made at Marsfield, Ohio, late in November of last year, by a 'Slippery Sam,' termed 'The Elusive Edwardes.' On November twenty-eighth of last year Mr. Harvey M. Greene, of Richmond, Virginia, was registered ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Amos tried to prop himself up on his elbow and promptly fell out of the hammock in a flurry of arms and legs and a heavy landing thump that brought a shout of laughter from Chris. After an attempt at making his bed again in the hammock, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... influence of his example, was expected to do much towards reviving the drooping fortunes of the Association. Nor was the anticipation illusory. From the day on which O'Brien became a Repealer, down to the date of the secession, the strongest prop of the Conciliation Hall was his presence and support; he failed indeed to counteract the corrupt influences that gnawed at the vitals of the Association and ultimately destroyed it; but while he ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... his exertions for Farfrae's good had been in vain. Over this repentant sinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven. He cursed himself like a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses self-respect, the last mental prop under poverty. To this he had come after a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland shade afforded inadequate illustration. Presently he began to walk back again along the way by which ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... boys," said he, "nothing could be more agreeable to me and your mother than to have a snug cottage near you both, on the very spot which you say I pitched upon two years ago. This cabin that we now live in, after all I have tried to do to prop it up, and notwithstanding all Rose does to keep it neat and clean withinside, is but a crazy sort of a place. We are able now to have a better house, and I shall be glad to be out of the reach of Mr. Hopkins's ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... he sank into a chair. It was hard, and he was much exhausted, but still there was no reproach upon his lips. Presently he found himself in bed again with his pillows arranged so as to prop him up. The struggle for breath was awful, and he could not lie down. He had only to fight for a little longer, however, then suddenly the worst was over. And at the same moment, as it seemed to him, the chime rang out again triumphantly; and almost immediately afterward ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... nautilus and conch-shells, and with branches and fans of coral; and children had foreign curiosities and treasures of the sea for playthings. There was one imported shell that we did not value much, it was so abundant—the freckled univalve they called a "prop." Yet it had a mysterious interest for us little ones. We held it to our ears, and listened for the sound of the waves, which we were told that, it still kept, and always would keep. I remember the time when I thought that the ocean was really imprisoned somewhere within ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... but I was, also, dreadfully afraid of John Hinckman. This gentleman was a good friend of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, who was the head of his household, and, according to his own frequent statement, the main prop of his declining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to open the matter to Mr. Hinckman; but, as I said before, I had never asked her whether or not she would be mine. I thought ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... and always with some red feathers about the head. (The flicker is brownish and yellow instead of black and white.) Stocky, high-shouldered build; bill strong and long for drilling holes in bark of trees. Tail feathers pointed and stiffened to serve as a prop. Two toes before and two behind for clinging. Usually seen clinging erect on tree-trunks; rarely, if ever, head downward, like the nuthatches, titmice, etc. Woodpeckers feed as they creep around the trunks and branches. Habits rather phlegmatic. The flicker has ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... said. 'For this I swear to you, ye have heard evil enow of me to have believed some. But there is no man dare call me traitor in his heart of them that do know me. And this I tell you: I had rather die a thousand deaths than that ye should prop me up against the majesty and awe of government. By so doing ye might, at a hazard, save my life, but for certain ye would imperil that for which I have ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... deplore, And bleed for others' woes, Herself on shore; 465 To friendless Virtue, gasping on the strand, Bare her warm heart, her virgin arms expand, Charm with kind looks, with tender accents cheer, And pour the sweet consolatory tear; Grief's cureless wounds with lenient balms asswage, 470 Or prop with firmer staff the steps of Age; The lifted arm of mute Despair arrest, And snatch the dagger pointed to his breast; Or lull to slumber Envy's haggard mien, And rob her quiver'd shafts with hand unseen. 475 —Sound, NYMPHS OF HELICON! ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... by the name of toes. As to his looks, he was a fine-looking man to just below his hips, and there he had been razed, as he called it to Aleck Donne, while the most peculiar thing about him as he toddled along was what at first sight looked like a prop, which extended from just beneath his head nearly to the ground, as if to enable him to stand, tripod-fashion, steadily on a windy day. But it was nothing of the sort, being only his pigtail carefully bound with ribbon, and the thickest and longest pigtail ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... natural to the old builders if they had, say, a barn to build, to make it strong and seemly and graceful; to buttress it with stone, to bestow care and thought upon coign and window-ledge and dripstone, to prop the roof on firm and shapely beams, and to cover it with honest stone tiles, each one of which had an individuality of its own. But now he saw that if people built naturally, they ran up flimsy walls of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Scripter when you say he secon' Moses. Don' want no more sich Moseses in dis town. Dey wouldn't lebe a brick heah ef dey could take dem off. He'n his tribe got away wid 'bout all ole Missus' and young Missus' prop'ty in my 'pinion. Anyhow I feels it in my bones dey's poah, an' I mus' try an' fin' out. Dey's so proud dey'd starbe fore ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Clint, think of following your meteoric career in the papers! As I nibble at my toast of a morning I prop the New York Herald against the water giraffe and read, spilling my coffee down my neck: 'The life of the party was Right Tackle Thayer. Seizing the elongated sphere and tucking it under his strong left arm, ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had much hope himself; he dared not hope. Hope meant a prop to his old age; hope meant joy to Jane, who would welcome the prodigal; hope meant relief to the doctor, who could then claim his own; hope meant redemption for Lucy, a clean name for Archie, and honor to himself and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... on the fluted edges Of pillars once the prop and pride of palace ledges, Now smear'd with damp decay and sunk in ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... longer in a cause where she had met with nothing but misfortunes of her own procuring, left the kingdom likewise, and retired to her husband. Nor was this the only good fortune that befell Stephen; for before the year ended, the main prop and pillar of his enemies was taken away by death; this was Robert Earl of Gloucester, than whom there have been few private persons known in the world that deserve a fairer place and character in the registers of time, for his inviolable faith, disinterested friendship, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... effort, flung himself upwards, catching with his left hand at a slight projection that was hardly visible; thus, hanging between earth and heaven, he coolly disengaged the staff, and placed it under the extended arm, so as to form another prop; and feeling, as it were, his way, he burrowed with his foot a resting in the cliff, from which he sprang on a narrow ledge, and was in safety. He then turned to look for his young companion, to whom he extended the boat-spear that had been of such service. Animated by his master's ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... could draw it out, prop it up perhaps for a few days, for a month even (though sometimes not for a single night)—you might even start to talk to each other a little, after a while—but it could never last. The glands always tire, if ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... I can," Mr. Jope answered cheerily. "You come along o' me to Plymouth an' I'll put you into the very job. A cook's galley, it is, and so narra' that with a wooden leg in dirty weather you can prop yourself tight when she rolls, an' stir the soup with ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... freedom of thought. The power of educating a people, which is, in fine, the chief power in a state, has been often, if not usually, perverted to the support of favored opinions in religion and government. The boasted system of Prussia is only a prop and ally of the existing order of things. In France, Napoleon makes the press, which has become in civilized countries an educator of the people, the mere instrument of his will. Tyrants do not hesitate to pervert schools and the press, learning ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... often am, in spite of all your kindness and care, ungraciously as I often treat you, to-night I clearly perceived that we belong together, like a pair of eyes, and that without you I am only half myself—or, at any rate—not complete. And—as we are speaking in images—I felt like a sapling whose prop has been removed; even your Wolff can never have longed for you more ardently. My father found little time to give me. As soon as he saw me take my place in the Polish dance he went with Uncle Pfinzing to the drinking room, and I did not see him again till he came to bring me ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... could never make out. What I should fear would be that the stone would come up and take the frame with it. Every brick mason knows better than to bed mortar under the center of a window sill; and this putting a prop under the center of an engine girder seems a parallel case. They say Mr. Corliss would have done the same thing if he had thought of it. I do not believe it. If Mr. Corliss had found his frames too weak, he would soon have found a way to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... and species of prop or association or support which threw the responsibility upon civilisation or society, or anything but the individual conscience. He has often been called a prophet. The real ground of the truth of this phrase is often neglected. Since ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... went on, "as if I should have continually to prop up my confidence with my affection as I might with a man of less experience. Oh!" she threw out her arms with a beautiful upward motion, "you give me so much ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... watch-dog of the fold, The stay that saves the ship, of lofty roof {870} Main column-prop, a father's only child, Land that beyond all hope the sailor sees, Morn of great brightness following after storm, Clear-flowing ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... concerned, and he felt as if some prop had been knocked away from him. But his sweet niece soon brought him round. She had scared his vanity on purpose, and she now ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... parties, for Joab, as next of kin to Asahel, was by the law and custom of the country the avenger of his blood. For some time afterwards the war was carried on, the advantage being invariably on the side of David. At length Ishbaal lost the main prop of his tottering cause by remonstrating with Abner for marrying Rizpah, one of Saul's concubines, an alliance which, according to Oriental notions, implied pretensions to the throne (cp. 2 Sam. xvi. 21 sqq.; 1 Kings ii. 21 sqq.). Abner was indignant at the deserved rebuke, and immediately ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... for me. I said something about being tired and went off to bed. I was tired, right enough, but I was something else too. All that business about the girl I meant to find and marry may sound like a child's silly game to you, but it had been more than a game to me. It had been a solid prop to hold to in ugly places where a man might slip if he had not clean love and a girl in his head. And now, at seven-and-twenty, I wanted my child's game to come true: just my own fire, and my own girl, and a life that held more than mere slaving for money. And it had come true, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... to say that a man can by his own natural strength turn and prepare himself to faith and calling upon God, it is, also, improper to say he is naturally accountable, for where ability ceases, accountability also terminates. But a prop is found in "the grace of God by Christ going before to give a good will, and to work with that good will." So the grace of God by Christ must go before to displace a bad will by giving "a good one." But this fails to relieve the doctrine from embarrassment; for if the sinner ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... until the rush was over. Looking in through the glass door, Claude noticed a young man writing at a desk enclosed by a railing. Something about his figure, about the way he held his head, was familiar. When he lifted his left arm to prop open the page of his ledger, it was a stump below the elbow. Yes, there could be no doubt about it; the pale, sharp face, the beak nose, the frowning, uneasy brow. Presently, as if he felt a curious eye upon him, the young man paused in his rapid writing, wriggled ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... you could advise him to give up his silly notions for acquiring land. He might listen to you, Phil. You might be able to induce him to sell part of what he has in order to bolster up what remains. If a slump of any kind comes, he will be without a prop to lean on. No man has any right to involve himself in this way, no matter how good the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... 1: The higher a virtue is, the greater the number of things to which it extends, as stated in De Causis, prop. x, xvii. Wherefore from the very fact that wisdom as a gift is more excellent than wisdom as an intellectual virtue, since it attains to God more intimately by a kind of union of the soul with Him, it is able to direct us not only in contemplation ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... away the prop of self-approval entirely and immediately from any one of the habitually self-satisfied people, the probable result would be an entire nervous collapse, or even a painful form of insanity; and, in all changes of state from bondage to freedom, the process is and must be exceedingly slow. No one ever ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... A supporting outside prop of the thrust variety. Notably a distinguishing feature ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... ——" Smith choked, and reached for a tent prop. The next moment his hand was at the Indian's throat. With a quick twist of his collar band he shut off the Siwash's wind, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... the high contracting parties was wordy, bristled with the gesticulations of two pair of hands, and was commented on by all the guests in the "Fiore del Marinajo." The girl, said Don Urbano, was the very pride of his eye, prop of his failing years, a little mother to the children. She had had a most pious bringing-up, never missed the Rosary, knew the Little Hours of the Virgin, could do sums with notches in a stick, market like a Jew's housekeeper, sew like a ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Lowell, of Harvard, twenty years ago said that the nebular hyopthesis was "founded on a fundamental mistake." ("The Solar System," p. 119.) Do we find that scientists, though forced to surrender this prop, have given up atheistic evolution? By no means. Evidently, their atheism ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... the most glowing language, the domestic happiness which he enjoyed in his native isle. He would paint, in harrowing sentences, the eternal misery and disgrace which his ignominious execution would entail upon the grey-headed father, who looked up to him as a prop for his old age; the affectionate mother, who perceived in him her husband again a youth; the devoted wife, who could never survive his loss; and the sixteen children, chiefly girls, whom his death would infallibly ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... said Averil, who had moved to the window, 'to see so many elderly faces—men who must be the prop ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place was not very visible. The two ladies were squeezed into this, and ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... isn't any longer. Mrs. Wiltshire was the main social prop of the old rector. And the annual concert of the St. Luke's Guild has always been held at her house, down at Shawport, you know. Awfully poky! But it was the custom since the Flood, and no one ever dared to hint at a change. Now the concert was to have been next week ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... hurtful power of injurious age, I, dim-sighted, and hoarse in my tones and in my chest; and all helpful things have turned to my hurt. Now my body is less nimble, and I prop it up, leaning my faint limbs on the support of staves. Sightless I guide my steps with two sticks, and follow the short path which the rod shows me, trusting more in the leading of a stock than ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... without power to take from him that hath, and give unto him that hath not, would be without functions, and the foinest pisintry in the wuruld would instantly rebel against such a nonentity. The farmers remember the oft-repeated statements of Mr. Timothy Healy to the effect that "landlordism is the prop of the British Government, and it is that we want to kick away." And the benefit accruing from this vigorous action was by the same eloquent patriot very plainly stated. "The people of this country ought never to be satisfied so long as a single penny of rent is paid for a sod of ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... private dwellings and the foundations of the fortification walls. Then, as the lower layers of bricks became saturated and refused their support to the rows above, the wall began to crack and soon to totter to its fall. The citizens for some time tried to prop it with pieces of timber, and used other devices to avert the imminent ruin of their tower; but finding themselves overmatched by the water, and in dread lest the fall at some point or other of the circular wall (9) might deliver them captive ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... blent with eternity, and when the last sigh seems to waft the immortal spirit into a state of existence of which no adequate conception can be formed. After all was over, and the breath of life had fled, I could not believe my senses, that the prop of my affections was gone from my love and my embrace, and that all which remained on earth of my father, protector, and gentle monitor, was a lifeless wreck on the shore of time. The world appeared to my young eye and heart as a wide scene ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... to produce practical righteousness in daily living. No church is better adapted to this end than the Protestant Episcopal. (a) She seeks after the example of her Master's method to develop the permanent power of the will, rather than the unstable prop of emotionalism. This is evidenced in her majestic liturgies and dignified but helpful services. (b) In doctrine, discipline and worship the Protestant Episcopal Church is the school of mental, moral and spiritual training, that a people but ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... heaved himself into a hammock under the trees in that broad backyard wherein, as Valentine Corliss had yesterday noticed, the last iron monarch of the herd, with unabated arrogance, had entered domestic service as a clothes-prop. The young man, who was of delicate appearance and unhumanly pale, stretched himself at full length on his back, closed his eyes, moaned feebly, cursed the heat in a stricken whisper. Then, as a locust directly overhead violently shattered the silence, and seemed ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... his watch, his horse, and any sum of money they should name. They rejected his offers with indignation; and the gold that could seduce a man high in the esteem and confidence of his country, who had the remembrance of his past exploits, the motives of present reputation and future glory to prop his integrity, had no charms for three simple peasants, leaning only on their virtue, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... he could only offer himself to satiate the mob's lust, and save these innocent ones! Lurid, condemnatory thoughts burned through his brain like molten iron. He rose hastily and rushed to the door. Rosendo and Don Jorge seized him as he was about to lift a prop. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... learning Rhetorick wit so large, Hath now the power, death's warfare to discharge, It's not my goodly state, nor bed of downs That can refresh, or ease, if Conscience frown, Nor from Alliance can I now have hope, But what I have done well that is my prop; He that in youth is Godly, wise and sage, Provides a staff then to support his Age. Mutations great, some joyful and some sad, In this short pilgrimage I oft have had; Sometimes the Heavens with plenty smiled on me, Sometime again rain'd all Adversity, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... managed to prop a sack against the small cobwebbed window, fastened the door with a rusty bolt, and brought out an electric torch he always carried in ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Is to exchange one misery with another, And euery day that comes, comes to decay A dayes worke in him. What shalt thou expect To be depender on a thing that leanes? Who cannot be new built, nor ha's no Friends So much, as but to prop him? Thou tak'st vp Thou know'st not what: But take it for thy labour, It is a thing I made, which hath the King Fiue times redeem'd from death. I do not know What is more Cordiall. Nay, I prythee take it, It is an earnest of a farther good That I meane to thee. Tell thy Mistris how The ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... constantly kept before the public, that we do not seek to prop up woman; we only ask for her space to let her grow. Governments are not made; they grow. They are not buildings like this, with dome and pillars; they are oaks, with roots and branches, and they grow, by God's blessing, in the soil He gives to them. Now man has been allowed to grow, and when ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... lord and master, 'The humble inferior who presumes to address the prop of the true faith, the terror of infidels, and the refuge of the sinner, begs leave to lay before him, that after having encountered a thousand difficulties, he has at length succeeded in getting from the peasantry of his villages one hundred tomauns in ready money, besides the fifty kherwars, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... centuries there flowed from the mines of Mexico and Peru, millions and millions of silver and gold, which went to fill the needy coffers of Spain, to enrich a distant and callous or careless monarch, and to prop up a moribund nation. The appalling system of the mitad and the encomenderos, by which silver and gold were extracted with indecent haste, form such pages as can never be erased from the history of metallurgy in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... heart too! from his lips Have dashed joy's last poor lingering drop, and shown him, His only prop was frail as all the former! Could I but think he felt like common parents, That when he found my fault, affection died, Then I were blest! then I alone should suffer, And when his hatred broke my heart, could seek Some lone sad place, and lay me down and die! Alas! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... with angry energy, "while we are seeking help he may— Yes; still beating. Quick! Open that door. No, no; that's the way into the street! The other door—the consulting-room. Prop it open with a chair. We must get him on to the sofa, and ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... In October Changarnier's influence decreased, and X.'s enthusiasm abated. X. then frequented the Elysee, but without giving his adherence. He promised his support to General Bedeau, who counted upon him. At daybreak on the 2d of December some one came to waken X. It was Edgar Ney. X. was a prop for the coup d'etat, but would he consent? Edgar Ney explained the affair to him, and left him only after seeing him leave the barracks of the Rue Verte at the head of the first regiment. X. took up his position at the Place de la ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the car and laid him back on the cushions; the boys rolled up the rugs, and their coats to prop him up. Again he ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of Time has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... would not come to life before morning." Indeed, there was a general chorus of commiseration, which Burt brought to a prosaic conclusion by saying: "Crocodile tears, every one. You'll all enjoy the pot-pie to-morrow with great gusto. By the way, I'll prop up one of these little fellows at the foot of Ned's crib, and in the morning he'll think that the original 'Br'er Rabbit' has hopped out of Uncle Remus's stories to make ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... his political schemes of ambition at this particular crisis was irreparable. One after one, all the agents and tools by whom he could hope to work upon the counsels of the Klosterheim authorities had been removed. Losing their influence, he had lost every prop of his own. Nor was this all; he was reproached by the general voice of the city as the original cause of a calamity which he had since shown himself impotent to redress. He it was, and his cause, which had drawn upon the people so fatally trepanned the hostility of the mysterious Masque. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... will pick up strength like a steam engine now. Here, let me prop you against this tree. That's better. Now drink a drop of this tea; it's like nectar after that filthy water we have been drinking. Now you will feel better. Now you must try and eat a little of this chicken and rice. Oh, nonsense, you ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... Ministers on all matters of importance regarding Church or State. One thing, however, I trust I ken, and that is, my duty to my King as his loyal subject, to old Scotland as her unworthy son, and to my family as their prop, support, and breadwinner;—so I shall stick to all three (under Heaven) as long as I have a drop of blood in my precious veins. But the truth is—and I will let it out and shame the de'il—that ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... he was kind," began Polly, in a soothing tone; but Tom cried out, remorsefully, "That 's what knocks me over! Just when I ought to be a pride and a prop to him, I bring him my debts and disgrace, and he never says a word of blame. It 's no use, I can't stand it!" and Tom's head went down again with something very like a sob, that would come in spite of manful efforts to keep it back, for the poor fellow had the ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... patience As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by law Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it Assurance they give us of the certainty of their drugs At least, if they do no good, they will do no harm At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little Attribute facility of belief to simplicity and ignorance Attribute to itself; all the happy successes that happen Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses Authority to be dissected ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... it!" And Nan settled herself more comfortably against the governess' knee quite as if that person were, in reality, her prop and stay, instead of being only some one she "sort of liked ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... my life and all, pardon not that, You take my house, when you do take the prop That doth sustaine my house: you take my life When you doe take ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a widow! Long since the evangelical narrative has dropped the name of her husband, doubtless because Joseph was no more; but Jesus survived to console her amidst domestic misfortunes, to cheer her declining days, to prop her falling house, to pour the wine of consolation into her cup of sorrow, and the light of celestial truth into her mind. He was all goodness, all perfection, who could never forget a mother—a widowed mother, wherever "he went about doing good"—was to this awful hour her staff ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... of the opposite parties, for Joab, as next of kin to Asahel, was by the law and custom of the country the avenger of his blood. For some time afterwards the war was carried on, the advantage being invariably on the side of David. At length Ishbaal lost the main prop of his tottering cause by remonstrating with Abner for marrying Rizpah, one of Saul's concubines, an alliance which, according to Oriental notions, implied pretensions to the throne (cp. 2 Sam. xvi. 21 sqq.; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... life to be thrown away, and Tira found it "up attic" and brought it down to him. She waited, in a sympathetic interest, to see him try it, and when he did and swung across the kitchen with an angry capability, she caught her breath, in a new fear of him. The crutch looked less a prop to his insufficiency than like a weapon. He could reach her with it. He could reach the child. And then she began to see how his helplessness had built up in her a false security. He was on the way to strength again, and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... homogeneousness of the ecclesiastical constituency: "We cannot confine the right of chusing a minister to the male communicants alone, but we think that every baptized adult person who contributes to the maintenance, should have a vote in electing." [Footnote: History of Brattle St. Church, p. 25, Prop. 16.] ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... un'stand prop'ly. It's a inside white frock over our hearts. Nobody sees it but Jesus and the angels at the gate—and God. Our hearts are quite dirty and black till we ask Jesus to wash them and put the white dress on. Why, I had mine ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... Britain owes (and pays you too) so much, Yet Europe doubtless owes you greatly more: You have repair'd Legitimacy's crutch, A prop not quite so certain as before: The Spanish, and the French, as well as Dutch, Have seen, and felt, how strongly you restore; And Waterloo has made the world your debtor (I wish your bards would sing it ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... column, and so saved the two passengers, who, we hope, in consideration of what he has done for their lives, have settled something hansom upon him for his life. If not, the proposition is here made, and after the prop comes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... of your son, and entice him to the ways of intemperance? Would you be pleased if he would listen to no remonstrance of yours, if he should even disregard your entreaties and your tears, and coolly see, for the love of gold, ruin coming into your family, and your prop taken from beneath you, and your gray hairs coming down with sorrow to the grave? And yet to many such a son may you sell the poison; to many a father whose children are clothed in rags; to many a man whose wife sits weeping amidst poverty and want, and dreading to hear the tread ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... also addressed him. Knowing the king, the son of Pritha, afflicted in mind, and bereft of his relatives and kinsmen slain in battle, and appearing crest-fallen like the sun darkened eclipse, or fire smothered by smoke, that prop of the Vrishni race (Krishna), comforting the son of Dharma, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... flapdoodle! Pure psychological prop-wash, started and maintained by men who are either too weak to direct and control their drives or who haven't any real work to occupy their minds. It applies to many men, of course, possibly to most. It does not, however, apply to all, and, it lacks one whole ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... my prop and safety always. Who would not have done what I did? Not Santa Felicita herself," she said, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... written consulting him about the purchase of some old furniture in London he wrote: "There is a chair (without a bottom) at a shop near the office, which I think would suit you. It cannot stand of itself, but will almost seat somebody, if you put it in a corner, and prop one leg up with two wedges and cut another leg off, The proprietor asks L20, but says he admires literature and would take L18. He is of republican principles and I think would take L17 19s. 6d. from a cousin; ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... too, for if I had been under it, I had never wanted a gravedigger. I had now a great deal of work to do over again, for I had the loose earth to carry out; and, which was of more importance, I had the ceiling to prop up, so that I might be sure no ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... controls the Republic, and refuse to be its tool. Let its power be stretched forth toward this distant Territory, not to bind, but to unbind; not for the oppression of the weak, but for the subversion of the tyrannical; not for the prop and maintenance of a revolting Usurpation, but for the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... hoped that time and absence, from whatever excited your uneasiness, might best operate in silence: but, alas! your affliction seems only to augment,-your health declines,-your look alters!-Oh, Evelina, my aged heart bleeds to see the change!-bleeds to behold the darling it had cherished, the prop it had reared for its support, when bowed down by years and infirmities, sinking itself under the pressure of internal grief!-struggling to hide what it should seek to participate!-But go, my dear, go to your own room; we both want composure, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... 58: ? shorewise, as shores. 'Schore, undur settynge of a ynge at wolde falle.' P. Parv. Du. Schooren, To Under-prop. Aller eschays, To shale, stradle, goe crooked, or wide betweene the feet, or ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Prop Corning was the best hand any of them knew of with a jackknife, and he knew all about jack-o'-lanterns; but they all had learned more by the time they had worked up four ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... unwearied Ulpius. Already tumults began to take place between the Pagans and the Christians; and even now the priest of Serapis prepared to address a protest to the new Emperor in behalf of the ancient religion of the land. At this moment it seemed probable that the heroic attempts of one man to prop the structure of superstition, whose foundations were undermined throughout, and whose walls were attacked by brigands, might actually ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... investigators rushed to Fargo. They had wired ahead to ground the plane. They wanted to check it over before it flew again. When they arrived, only a matter of hours after the incident, they went over the airplane, from the prop spinner to the rudder trim tab, with a Geiger counter. A chart in the official report shows where every Geiger counter reading was taken. For comparison they took readings on a similar airplane that hadn't been flown ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... communication with Richmond, and swells the central forces; then the Rebels are lured from their lines and scattered on their right; the same night the intrenchments of Petersburg are stormed, Richmond falls as this prop is removed, being already hungry-hearted, and the flushed army falls upon Lee and finishes the war. Is not this work for gratulation? Glory to the army, perfect at last, and to Grant, to Sheridan, to each ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... would remind you that the precursor of every genuine forward movement is a Godward movement, and that it is worse than useless to talk about lengthening the cords unless you begin with strengthening the stakes. The little prop that holds up the bell-tent that will contain half-a- dozen soldiers will be all too weak for the great one that will cover a company. And the fault of some Christian people is that they set themselves to work upon others without remembering that the first requisite is a deepened and growing godliness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... could be made to turn pale or red any day by a word or a look from her. Hetty's sphere of comparison was not large, but she couldn't help perceiving that Adam was "something like" a man; always knew what to say about things, could tell her uncle how to prop the hovel, and had mended the churn in no time; knew, with only looking at it, the value of the chestnut-tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the walls, and what they must do to stop the rats; and wrote a beautiful hand that you could read off, and could do figures in his head—a ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... aversion which a mean and servile nature ever feels to one whose dealings are free from fraud or deceit. He also feared him as a rival, and it became his aim to undermine him, and to lay a plot for the chief stay and prop of the undertaking. It was naturally to be supposed that Lord George Murray's age, his high birth, his experience and influence, and his great capacity, would have given him an advantage over his dastardly rival, and have gained the first consideration ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... series. The sill of the doorway by which this room communicates with an adjoining one is raised about 18 inches above the floor, and is provided with a rudely mortised door in a single panel. Alongside is a small hole through which the occupant can prop the door on the inside of the communicating room. The subsequent sealing of the small hand-hole with mud effectually closes the house against intrusion. The unusual height of this door sill from the floor has necessitated the construction of a small ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... left to try to prop up a tumble-down log-hut with my own shoulder,' he laughed. 'This journey to England has been the great desire of my life, and I am very thankful to have ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dark reaches of the forest, whose trees were getting scarcer at every step. At last, after about four hours, this marvelous excursion came to an end. A wall of superb rocks rose before us, a heap of gigantic blocks, an enormous granite shore. It was the prop of the island of Crespo. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... pigs," she stormed at Achmed, who, reducing his fez to a pulp, raved at her as she crouched in a corner with something a-glitter in her hand. "Send in thy wife who ambles like a camel in foal, and whose ankles are thick enough to serve as prop to a falling house." ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the rest of his earthly pilgrimage with only a leg and a half—let the added half be of what material it might. And his excitement may be better imagined than described when, one afternoon, the surgeon came in with a most wonderful object in his arms—a lovely prop of bright, black, burnished wood, set off with steel couplings and the most fascinating straps you ever saw. And the best of all was the socket, in which his soft white stump fitted as comfortably as though they had been made for one another—as, in fact, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... when grim death draws near him, by his ain fireside, What cause has he to fear him, by his ain fireside? With a bosom-cheering hope, he takes heaven for his prop, Then calmly down does drop, by his ain fireside. Oh! may that lot be ours, by our ain fireside; Then glad will fly the hours, by our ain fireside; May virtue guard our path, till we draw our latest breath, Then we 'll smile and welcome ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the kitchen where she had been attending to the fastenings of the back door. Fortunately her light had survived the gusty attack and she was able to help her husband to his prop. ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... native names shows where it belongs and what it refers to. These names are three, and their significations are, "The Rain-God," "The Tree of our Life," "The God of Strength."[1] As the rains fertilize the fields and ripen the food crops, so he who sends them is indeed the prop or tree of our subsistence, and thus becomes the giver of health and strength. No other explanation is needed, or is, in ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... ungraciously as I often treat you, to-night I clearly perceived that we belong together, like a pair of eyes, and that without you I am only half myself—or, at any rate—not complete. And—as we are speaking in images—I felt like a sapling whose prop has been removed; even your Wolff can never have longed for you more ardently. My father found little time to give me. As soon as he saw me take my place in the Polish dance he went with Uncle Pfinzing to the drinking room, and I did not see him again till he came to bring me home. He had asked ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gods! when barbarous Scythians come From their cold north to prop declining Rome. That I should see her fall, and sit secure ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... that his Lordship read in my partial defence of Kilkee, a slight attempt to prop up my own case, and felt confused and embarrassed ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Then came upon her a feeling that at such a time any other husband and wife would have been at once in each other's arms. And at the moment she thought of all that they had lost. To her her child had been all and everything. To him he had been his heir and the prop of his house. The boy had been the only link that had still bound them together. Now he was gone, and there was no longer any link between them. He was gone, and she had nothing left to her. He was gone, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... dialogue which might not be inaptly called, after the manner of my friend Mr. Albert Smith, the toilsome ascent of Miss Mary and the eruption (cutaneous) of Master Alexander. We know what it is when those children won't go to bed; we know how they prop their eyelids open with their forefingers when they will sit up; how, when they become fractious, they say aloud that they don't like us, and our nose is too long, and why don't we go? And we are perfectly acquainted with those kicking bundles which ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... some distance, and our path took us by flower-beds where some exquisite little toys were growing, and a hot-bed where new varieties were being prop—propagated. Pretty soon we came to a plantation of young trees, with rattles, and rubber balls, and ivory rings growing on the branches, and as we went past they rang and bounded about in the merriest sort of ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... announced himself as the enemy of Greece, and the prop of the Ottoman Empire. At the subscription ball given at the Opera in Berlin, did he not walk arm-in-arm with Ghalik Bey, the Turkish Ambassador, and authorise him to telegraph to the Sultan that, under existing conditions, he might count upon his sense of justice ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... wide expand, The pride of Turkey and of Persia land! Soft quilts on quilts, on carpets carpets spread, And couches stretch'd around in seemly band, And endless pillows rise to prop the head. ... Here languid Beauty kept ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... piece of pasture unhedged, and it's odds on that not a single soul will tramp or want to tramp over it, from one year's end to another; hedge it, close it with padlocked gate, prop up the warning re trespassers and see if you don't find a wide track of footprints across it in ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... is to strike the right note in these matters," he said. "And it weren't till the third time that I struck it with your sister. Afore that I talked of being her right hand and protector and so on, and I offered to be a prop to her declining years, and all that. And I knew I'd failed almost before the words were spoken. But the third time I just went for her all ends up, as if we was boy and girl, and told her that I loved her, and wanted her for ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... upon Bylands Abbey, the rival of Rievaulx, but far more fallen into decay. It stood alone in the midst of the wide valley; no caretaker hindered our steps to its precincts and no effort had been made to prop its crumbling walls or to stay the green ruin creeping over it. The fragment of its great eastern window, still standing, was its most imposing feature and showed that it had been a church of no mean architectural ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... weeks after this as if Mrs. Darcy would follow her husband. She looked so white and wan, she was so feeble that some days she could not leave her bed. Grandmother rallied with that invincible determination not to be beaten down if her prop ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... narrative are not serious." [135:1] They have been considered so by men like Keim, Schuerer, Lipsius, and Holtzmann. The account has too much need to be propped up itself to be of much use as a prop for the Gospels. Dr. Lightfoot points out that an "idea of literal conformity to the life and Passion of Christ runs through the document," [135:2] and it is chiefly on the fact that "most of the incidents have their ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... rifles had been placed he could not resist the temptation to take one. Laying hold of that which stood nearest, and which seemed to be similar in make to the rifle they had taken from himself when he was captured, he drew it towards him. Unfortunately it formed a prop to several other rifles, which fell with a crash, and one of them exploded in ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... in vain, and old nursie had enough to do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were about, so long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the man-servant, who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of the establishment, looking after everything and putting his hand to everything, with an indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the wine-cellar, and from the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we could not possibly get on without him, sat on the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary might perhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency to push ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposed to prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortune to be the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... about that, I'd say, Jack. Listen. The High Command have laid out a scheme to knock the last prop out from under Fritz. There's a certain stronghold they're banking on as a bulwark of safety in case we do succeed in breaking through ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... hole in the middle, and mix in the white of egg so as to form a thick batter, and then add two table-spoonfuls of the best fresh yeast. Cover it, and let it stand all night. In the morning, take a hoe-iron (such as are made purposely for cakes) and prop it before the fire till, it is well heated. Then flour a tea-saucer, and filling it with batter, shake it about, and clap it to the hoe, (which must be previously greased,) and the batter will adhere, till it ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... side of the front foot, has completely disappeared. The change in the hind foot has gone still further. The hind leg in many animals evolves more rapidly than the front. The heavy work of running is always done by the hind feet, while the front feet serve rather as a prop to keep the animal from falling than as the actual means of locomotion. Hence the hind feet and the muscles of the hind quarters are almost always heavier than the front. Possibly on the front foot the little fifth toe was less of an obstruction, and persisted after the ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... tails. It is reasonable to suggest (as did Hall, 1955:134) that the long, tufted tail is an adaptation for a scansorial existence. Little observation is necessary to observe how such a tail is used in balancing. Furthermore, it is used as a prop when the mouse is climbing a vertical surface. Dalquest (1955:144) mentioned tree-climbing in P. boylii from San Luis Potosi, Mexico. It may occur in P. b. attwateri or in P. b. cansensis also, but there is no evidence ...
— Natural History of the Brush Mouse (Peromyscus boylii) in Kansas With Description of a New Subspecies • Charles A. Long
... to the savages. While this clashing of one object against another could not be called the beginning of music, and while it could not be said to originate a musical instrument, it did, nevertheless, bring into existence music's greatest prop, rhythm, an ally without which music would seem to be impossible. It is hardly necessary to go into this point in detail. Suffice it to say that the sense of rhythm is highly developed even among ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... seemed, in the opinion not only of the victors, but of the vanquished, to have given the finishing stroke to the American Revolution, Lee's force, augmented by the junction of the troops marching down to join him, was the sole prop and stay of the ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... was called, was situated in a beautiful valley nine miles from Natchez, and near the river Mississippi. The once unshorn face of nature had given way, and now the farm blossomed with a splendid harvest, the neat cottage stood in a grove where Lombardy poplars lift their tufted tops almost to prop the skies; the willow, locust, and horse-chestnut spread their branches, and flowers never cease to blossom. This was the parson's country house, where the family spent only two months during ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... it in the low and dark and desolate places of the world, are the true saints. Nothing else will do in its place. Not Churches, nor creeds, nor rituals, nor respectabilities. Without it we are not friends of Christ, nor co-workers with God. Without it we deepen the channels of human woe, and prop the strong-holds of wickedness. Without it, whatever we may not be, we are Allies of the Tempter. The Saviour says to each of us to-day, placed amidst these antagonistic forces of Life—"He that is not with ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... treated of; but these are evidently not the audience Mr. Lowell reckons on; rather, if one may trust the manner of his setting to work, he would propound his doctrine to the class. Always to be found, of spirits instructed up to a certain height and there resting—vines that run up a prop and there tangle and grow to a knot—which want supplying with fresh poles; so the provident man brings his bundle into the grounds, and sticks them in laterally or a-top of the others, as the case requires, and all ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... whose form is so perfect, whose spirit is so noble, and whose life so pure; while I, the last of a line that is lost in the obscurity of time, the wealthiest of my land, and the chosen of my peers, am accursed with an outcast, a common brigand, a murderer, for the sole prop of my decaying house—with this Il Maledetto—this man accursed—for ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... lie the greater the truth.' Take that with you. A lie must, somewhere, have a truth to prop it. In the heart of every big successful lie you will find some reality. Of course you cannot build a house on nothing. A pyramid cannot be constructed in the air. Now a lie is nothing, the very definition ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... under his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... declared that if Miss Howe had not been a Protestant and so impervious he would have excommunicated her—and as he looked his movement imperceptibly changed to afford him a better place. He put an undecided hand upon a prop of the box that rose behind Alicia's shoulder, and so stood leaning and looking, more conspicuous in the straight lines and short shoulder-cape of the frock of his Order than he knew. Hilda, in one of those impenetrable regards which she threw straight ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... fought against Europeans; these troops, who were not allowed to marry, gave an absolute obedience. They were perhaps the finest infantry in the world—for two hundred years they formed the strongest prop of the Turkish Empire. Paulus Jovius, the historian, says that in 1531 nearly the whole corps of janissaries spoke Slav. Other young men were received into the Government offices—the Porte, until the end of the seventeenth century, used the Serbian language for its international transactions; ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... also fallen to his knees, to help his master in his plea for blessing, and he called out after the peasant girls: "Oh, princess and universal lady of El Toboso, is not your heart softened by seeing the pillar and prop of knight-errantry on his knees before your ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a happy one, for we children were fond of one another and all loved the father and mother who worked so hard for us. We were the first to realize that our home was insecure, upheld by a single prop, our father's labor. The breaking of his right arm might have broken up our home. We wanted to acquire property so that mother would be safe. For we knew that God was a just God. He did not ordain that one class should labor and be ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... time much reputation as a remarkably successful teacher, and her services were in constant demand. She was also a favorite in all classes of society and knew how to adjust herself to the humblest and the highest of her fellow creatures. From the time of her father's death she had been the prop of the family, the mover in all their plans and the provider of their needs. Over me she had a special charge and a sacred duty, for my father, conscious of the too gentle nature of his wife and the poverty in which he was about to leave her, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... the colonies. For a naturally bad sailor, he was very fond of the sea; and perhaps in his heart of hearts he cherished the thought that he was performing a national work in directing promising recruits to the first line of our defence, and the main prop of this Empire. Soon his few special pupils swelled into a class, not all boarders, but of outsiders who came in to learn geography and hear the Colonel explain the Bible; and not only that, but to be told of stirring deeds beyond the sea by ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... to his heart, and was chill as a stone. And so again, again deceit; no, worse than deceit—lying and baseness... and life shattered, everything torn up by its roots utterly, and the sole thing which he could cling to, the last prop, in fragments too. In Litvinov's soul rose, like sudden gusts of wind before a storm, momentary ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... not weep from a sense of bereavement—there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost—but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light. My brother was a year my junior. I had aspirations and ambitions ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... I presented him with this, not at all aware of the goods and chattels removed for the occasion, he said it was so very comfortable he should now write all his letters here, for at his lodgings he had such a miserable low table he had been forced to prop it up ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... of this cranky craft were gentlemen all, who, beyond running up the string-tied sail to the clothes-prop mast, or taking a trick at the wheel—another clothes-prop with a large disc of wood at the water-end, were far ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... a weasel in another: some are like a tropical habitat in which the very ferns cast a mighty shadow, and the grasses are a dry ocean in which a hunter may be submerged; others like the chilly latitudes in which your forest-tree, fit elsewhere to prop a mine, is a pretty miniature suitable for fancy potting. The eccentric man might be typified by the Australian fauna, refuting half our judicious assumptions of what nature allows. Still, whether fate commanded us to thatch our persons among the Eskimos ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... gradually changed and elaborated, and finally groomed as fact. Agents of the Russian secret police department and of the unscrupulous "Black Hundreds" then utilized this fiction as the framework for the "protocols" through which they sought to crush the Jews and prop up ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... own teown prop'ty somewhars, and they own all the Neck here, and lays areound on her through the summer. Why, Note's father—he 's dead neow—he and I uster stand deown on the mud flats when we was boys, a-diggin' clarms tergether, barefoot; 'tell he cruised off ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... says his prayers," said the fairy, Or else he would wither and die. "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy, "For strength to climb up through the sky. He leans on invisible angels, And Faith is his prop and his rod. The sky is his crystal cathedral. And dawn ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... clothes; but he managed his wardrobe with the greatest care, kept every thing about him clean, and required all things in ordinary life to go according to his example. He never happened to lean anywhere, or to prop his elbow on the table; he never forgot to mark his table-napkin; and the maid always had a bad time of it when the chairs were not found perfectly clean. With all this, he had nothing stiff in his exterior. He spoke cordially, with precise and dry liveliness, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... strength and salvation, and trusting entirely in the merits of Jesus Christ, he found a satisfying sense of God's saving presence and power to the very last. He would often say, 'my feet are on the Rock of Ages. I cannot sink under such a prop, as bears the world and all things up.' His affliction, water on the chest, and an enlargement of the heart brought on by his frequent plunges into the water, and exposure to wet and cold, was protracted and very severe. He found great difficulty in breathing and had ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... lodge, remain, continue, abide; support, prop, buttress, brace, uphold, strengthen; delay, obstruct, hinder, restrain, appease, withhold, forbear, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... manly tempers can the longest bear. Yet, since they will divert my native course, 'Tis time to show I am not good by force. 950 Those heap'd affronts that haughty subjects bring, Are burdens for a camel, not a king. Kings are the public pillars of the state, Born to sustain and prop the nation's weight: If my young Samson will pretend a call To shake the column, let him share the fall: But oh, that yet he would repent and live! How easy 'tis for parents to forgive! With how few tears a pardon ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the future he expressly acknowledges. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the interest in the prediction of the future was so strong, the ancient accounts of true prognostications were the real prop of demonology. Hence demons generally play a great part in these explanations, even though in other cases the Devil fills the bill. Thus Acosta in his account of the American religions; thus Voss and numerous other writers of the seventeenth century; and it is hardly a mere accident, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... of the mine still bear on their rocky walls the marks made by the pick of the workman who toiled to excavate them. The space between each prop in the underground galleries might be marked as a miner's grave; and who can tell what each of these graves has cost, in tears, in privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the family who depended on the scanty wage of ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
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