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More "Undoing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment at the closely buttoned collar of his blue blouse. Then he succeeded in undoing it and showed his neck. From chin to bosom it was a mass of ghastly bites, some partially healed, more of them recent and yet raw, while the skin, so far as the three Scots could observe it, was covered with a hieroglyphic ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... remember afterwards if anybody suggested it, and he fancied that the same idea occurred to all of them at once, but in another moment or two they set about undoing the traces from the sled, and making them secure about their bodies. Then for half an hour they made perilous attempt after attempt to recover the lost provisions, and signally failed. The snow broke through continuously beneath the foremost man, but it did not break away altogether, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... that has happened since his departure from Spain until his arrival at Pernambuco be taken down by the notary-public, this testimony being taken from the men who had come with him, "and the Frenchmen who were present at my undoing, and others who heard it from persons who were in the ships of the French who destroyed me." Acuna desires this in case any accident befall him while on the way to Portugal, and "that the emperor may be informed of the truth, and that I may give account of myself." ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... NO upon you without one moment's hesitation. And now, in my disillusioned middle age what do I feel? Do you know, I almost feel tempted to give way to this Martinmas summer of love, to stultify my past by unsaying and undoing everything. For I love you, Harvey. If I were to give way now, as George Eliot gave way, as almost every woman who once tried to live a free life for her sisters' sake, has given way in the end, I should counteract any little good my example ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... made a timely and resolute decision either in favor of the Western Policy that he advocated, or in favor of the Eastern Policy, we should have prevented the development of a situation in the politics of the world which ultimately led to our own undoing. If, during the war, however, we had completely abandoned the U-boat campaign, and had made every possible effort to come to an understanding with America, we should, in my opinion, have been able to extricate ourselves from it satisfactorily. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Souls undone, undoing others,- Long time since the tale began. You would not live to wrong your brothers: Oh lad, you died as ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... d'Azeglio, Cavour remarked that he was glad of the appointment, and equally so that D'Azeglio had not asked him to be his colleague, because in the actual circumstances it seemed to him difficult or impossible to do any good. D'Azeglio could not have offered Cavour a portfolio without undoing the effect of his own appointment, by which confidence in Victor Emmanuel was confirmed. The king was not sufficiently known for it to be wise to place beside him an unpopular man, a suspected codino, the nickname ("pig-tail") given to reactionaries. ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... sometimes stumble and fall. But mankind is moving toward the light, and such is our faith now in the Divine Intelligence that we do not believe that in our hearts were planted aspirations and desires that are to work our undoing. The same God who created paradise devised the snake, and if the snake had something to do with driving the man and woman out of the Garden into a world of work, it was well. Difficulty, trial, hardship, obstacle, are all necessary factors ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... look into the mare's glazing eyes to tell him what he had done. He had killed her. The first really honest act of her life had led to the unfortunate creature's own undoing. Her lean ewe neck was broken, as were ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... away, now thirty and almost ready to drop. Ten feet more and he would fire, Chris resolved. But that ten feet proved the ambitious little darky's undoing. A concentrated drop of buzzing liquid fire struck him above the eye, while hand and legs seemed splashed with molten fire. Down went the rifle with a thud and with a shrieked "Oh golly, oh golly, oh golly!" a black ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... undoubtedly happen—each adoptive parent spent his six months in undoing the other's work, it must follow that, at the end of any given period, the child's mind would be a mere tabula rasa. Suppose, on the other hand, we failed to wipe out each other's teaching, the unfortunate youth would be launched upon life with half ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... now to the gay, thoughtless life of the student; the side-glance of a bright eye had been the undoing of him. Day and night he could not get the image of this most modest damsel out of his mind. He sought the mansion of the padre. Alas! it was above the class of houses accessible to a strolling student like himself. The worthy padre had ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... musician was so great, and so well known by her enemy, that she would probably be traced by it at once. As she looked back at the hour spent at Mrs. Bowman's piano, she shuddered at the realization that it might have been her undoing, had it chanced that her enemy passed the house, with a suspicion that she was inside. She would never dare to seek a position as accompanist, and she knew how futile it would be for her to attempt to teach music in an unknown city, among strangers. She might starve to death before ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... her chum's measure of beauty. Helen was a dainty, compelling brunette with flashing eyes—eyes she had already learned to use to the undoing of what Ruth called "the youthful male ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... state of his case; how the King did owe him above 6000l. But I do not see great likelihood for them to be paid, since they begin already in Parliament to dispute the paying off the just sea-debts, which were already promised to be paid, and will be the undoing of thousands ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... but, all the same, something seemed to whisper to me that I should live to repent that day's work; but I would not listen to this inward prompting—I would be firm. Bessie, I verily believe some evil spirit dominated me—I felt so cold, so inexorable, so determined on my own undoing. For one moment I quailed, and that was when I saw Neville drive away from the house. I saw his face, and it looked so pale and sad. Something within me said, 'Call him back, and he will come even now;' but I was too proud to give the sign. I wanted to do it, but my demon would not suffer ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... punishment, for the dwarf came plump into the pot of warm tar which had been prepared for the preacher. Turner was wedged in the pot, so that he could not extricate himself, and meantime the thick fluid beneath was making a warm acquaintance with his trousers and legs. This unlooked-for disgrace and undoing of the two leaders brought the pitched battle to a close. The unknown rascals, having broken away from their antagonists and seeing the discomfiture of their chiefs, fled up the knob road, while the three principals, Wiles, Turner, Danks, ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... feared most because of his brain, and his knack of using his mind to the undoing of others. And he taught me all that he knew; taught me all that he had learned in a lifetime of fighting for the emperor, of mending the complicated machines in the armory, of contact with the chemists who wrought the secret alloy, and the ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... We must change our lives. Insidiously, while we have called all foreigners brothers and sought foes amongst ourselves, the great force of barbarism, in a new guise and with enormous power of penetration and annexation, has worked for our undoing. This force now stands bared, in the hideous bestiality of Germany's doctrine of Might, and it can be defeated only by an adaptation of its methods that will leave nothing as ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... among them. Even that poor devil who had been on duty Friday night as sentry on Number Five had been marched into the awful presence of the commanding officer, and ordered to tell who gave him the whiskey that had been his undoing—even promising immunity from punishment; but he was Irish and true to his faith and his friends, even they who had betrayed him, and he'd die first, he said. Never would he "sphlit on the ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... The undoing of the iron enclosure gave great relief to the honest man, who, in putting it on, had more considered his zeal to the cause of Liege, than his capacity of bearing arms. It afterwards turned out ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... extinguished, as to a sailor putting out to sea the comfortable harbour lights vanish in the wracks of a tempestuous winter morning. I turned my face away from the gracious young life amidst which I moved, like a man possessed of a dark secret to his undoing. My heart, yet eager for the joy of living and yearning for affection, was daily starved of its need as by a power of deliberate and feline cruelty; and with every expansive impulse instantly restrained by this daemonic force, I was left at last unresponsive as a maltreated child, who ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... beings could dominate another more completely than Meshach dominated his sister. But here, for Leonora's undoing, was just a case where, without knowing it, Hannah influenced her brother. He had a reputation to keep up with Hannah, a great and terrible reputation, and in several ways a loan by him through Leonora to John would have ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... son's heart and killed him, who did what she could, and has been doing what she could in the years since, to disgrace our house. I might have known I should strive in vain, and I did know at heart. Vanity and extravagance and fondness of pleasure were Barbara Ballantree's undoing. I preserved her daughter from those dangers, and gave her a religious education. Levity was sternly rebuked in her. She had no young acquaintances to teach her foolishness, or tell her of her mother's sin. She was allowed no ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... so simple an affair with me as it is with the birds; would that it were! I had to spend half a day packing, and another half undoing the work. I had to secure another temporary home, where certain conveniences to which we human beings are slaves should not be lacking, and with a family one could endure under the same roof. All this must needs be settled before ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... this provision in the Constitution? Where is the use of it? Sir, what are we about? Have we not been undoing what the wiser heads—I must be permitted to say so—yes, Sir, what the wiser heads of our ancestors did more than half a century ago? Can any one believe that we, by any amendment of ours, by any of our scribbling on that parchment, by any amulet, by any legerdemain—charm—Abracadabra—of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... because one, a racionero, would not consent, they thrust him out of the chapter-room. Government by the cabildo having been declared, it was an easy thing for this same dean to cause them to appoint him as provisor; and in virtue of this fantastical jurisdiction he went on undoing what had been done, and making blunders—liberating all those who had been imprisoned by the [ecclesiastical] tribunal, [153] giving permission to all the clerics to hear confessions, absolving ad cautelam the excommunicated (especially the executor [i.e., Ortega] who had been publicly posted), ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... to do now? I spent the first sad night of my life undoing the plans which had been so dear to me but not so dear as my aunt and uncle. I decided to give all my life and strength to the saving of the farm. I would still try to be great, but not as great as the Senator. Purvis stayed with us through the ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... undoing one of them, I extracted a handful of beads. 'Now,' I said, 'a gift for a gift. Hand over ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... oft-repeated prayer; for now I remembered that with the flood this ship was to sail for Nombre de Dios, where, safe-dungeoned and secure against my coming lay my hated foe and deadly enemy, Richard Brandon. And now, in my vain and self-deluding pride (my heart firm-set on this miserable man, his undoing and destruction) I cast me down on my knees and babbled forth my passionate gratitude to Him that is from everlasting to everlasting the God of Mercy, Love ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... immured in Sing Sing, was chosen out, was enslaved by those lovely mysterious eyes, was taking to his soul the lies which fell from those perfect lips, triumphant in a conquest that must end in his undoing; deeming, poor fool, that for love of him this pearl of the Orient was about to betray her master, to resign herself a prize ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... early light with his great chest bare and the blue of the pajamas melting into the bronze of his throat and calling out the gray in his eyes. I had to force myself into being gardener rather than artist, as we laughed together over the glass bowl and silver spoon I had brought out for the undoing of the slugs. Some day I'm going to paint ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... meaning that she will not be so pretty then. So little does the sex know of beauty. Surely a spirited old lady may be the prettiest sight in the world. For my part, I confess that it is they, and not the young ones, who have ever been my undoing. Just as I was about to fall in love I suddenly found that I preferred the mother. Indeed, I cannot see a likely young creature without impatiently considering her chances for, say, fifty-two. Oh, you mysterious girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... decide, and immediately. Assured as to the nature of the visit, the head man then gave Mr. Worcester a white rooster, symbol of peace and amity, and escorted him in. But the accompanying Igorots came very near undoing all of Mr. Worcester's plans. Not only were they shut in during their stay, an obvious and necessary condition of good order and the preservation of peace, but, on Mr. Worcester's asking food for them, they were told they could have camotes, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... help; here in this very letter that was intended to be my undoing. I cannot wait to thank the Holy Mother." She crossed herself and buried her face in her mother's lap while she ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... hurt, moved only by the loveliness of the maiden, he hastened to pour over her locks the healing joy that he ever kept by him, undoing all his work. Back to her dream the princess went, unshadowed by any thought of love. But Cupid, not so light of heart, returned to the heavens, saying not a word of ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... little common sense, my Lords, Only undoing all that has been done (Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it), 385 Our victory is assured. We must entice Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG Are the true test ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... our fatal story; I am Hosier's injured ghost, You who now have purchased glory At this place where I was lost! Though in Porto-Bello's ruin You now triumph free from fears, When you think on our undoing, You will ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... consulting his railroad schedule and formulating the arguments he meant to use against Dick's determination to give himself up. He foresaw a struggle there, but he himself held one or two strong cards—the ruthless undoing of David's work, the involving of David for conspiring against the law. And Dick's own obligation to the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ally themselves with it, and find that there is a tide that bears them on. Divine will? Not necessarily. There is no understanding of it. Guardian spirits? There are many who so believe, to their utter undoing. (Witness Macbeth). An unconscious drift in the direction of right, virtue, duty? These are banners of mortal manufacture. Nothing is proved; ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and a cloud of smoke, and that odor which has the same intoxicating effect as absinthe, blended with the atmosphere. The women were shaking their dresses outside the door, to get rid of the dust, were undoing their cap-strings and pulling their shawls over their arms, and then they went into the house to lay them aside altogether for the time. The table was laid in the great kitchen that would hold a hundred ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... subject of presumptuous will; Th' alluring object of unstayed eyes; Friended of all, but unto all a foe; The dearest thing that any creature buys, And vainest too, it serves but for a show; In seem a heaven, and yet from bliss exiling; Paying for truest service nought but pain; Young men's undoing, young and old beguiling; Man's greatest loss though thought his greatest gain! True, that all this with pain enough I prove; And yet most true, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... lovely, for they could now be heard softly opening the window, and pushing the sash carefully back out of the way. While climbing in through the opening thus made, they did not wish to thrust a foot against the glass, and cause a smash that might be their undoing; oh! trust that shrewd general, Nick Lang, for looking out against any such accidents; he had been in this business a long time now, and understood all the ins and outs ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... a nice time," he shouted. Then he turned and moved disconsolately back to the desk. He might have expected it. It was thus in nine cases out of ten. The Emporium, Mr. J. Cohen, proprietor, was his undoing in this instance as in so many others. The Emporium got the trade and he got the good bys. Mr. Cohen was not an old resident, as he was; Mr. Cohen's daughter was not invited to picnics by the summer people; Mrs. Cohen was not head of the sewing circle and the Chapter of the Ladies ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... careless girl—she has ruined me, she will be my undoing! Oh, sir, how can I make you understand? The letter was not intended for you—it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old friend of my mother's, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance—oh, how can I ever ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... They were only carrying out strenuously the principles laid down under Gregory's guidance in many acts of synods and inculcated by Gregory in numberless private letters. And yet Gregory is found frequently undoing their acts, restoring bishops whom they have deposed, accepting excuses or explanations which cannot possibly ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... remained empty, exactly opposite to the coat of arms, that intended for the Renaissance chest. It was not finished; Gorju was still working at it, jointing the panels in the bakehouse, squaring them or undoing them. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... expressions from the trust officers of complacency in their success in "quieting" the Clark title had convinced her that this would be the wiser course to pursue. The trust company might find some objections to undoing all the fine legal work that they had accomplished in ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... on the movements of Joan's fingers undoing the little parcel, as hers had been on his while he was finding it. Within the paper was a piece of cotton wool. Joan dropped the paper, and unfolded the wool. Bedded in the middle of that were two rings. The eyes of Cosmo fixed themselves on one of them—the eyes of Joan upon the other. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... own latent imagination. And immediately it occurred to me that perhaps, in the humble letter from the wilds of Baffin Land, which I was now opening with eager and unsteady fingers, might lie concealed the professional undoing of Professor Jane Bottomly, and the only hope of my own ultimate and ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... time I've lost in wooing, In watching and pursuing, The light that lies In woman's eyes Has been my heart's undoing. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Labrador coast in summer on "feather-voyages." The feathers sought were those of the Labrador Duck and the Eider. These adventurous bird pirates secured their booty either by killing the birds or taking the down from the nests. The commercializing of the Labrador Duck meant its undoing. The last one known to have been taken was killed by a hunter near Long Island, New York, in 1875. Forty-two of these birds only are preserved in the ornithological collections of ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... through the throng, human and animal, which made progress difficult and the atmosphere strong. Spotting a couple of donkeys in the charge of one Arab donkey boy, they schemed with each other with a view to his undoing. ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... prayed for it in vain, from the Estates of Scotland, and from Elizabeth. Charles I. asked for public trial in vain, from the Estates of Scotland, at the time of the unsolved puzzle of 'The Incident.' Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette had the publicity they wanted; to their undoing. The Parlement was to acquit Rohan of the theft of the necklace (a charge which Jeanne tried to support by a sub-plot of romantic complexity), and that acquittal was just. But nothing was said of the fatal insult ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... she turned upon him with a spontaneous frankness of interest, which had lured many men to their undoing. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... before he was nine months old, and although the regency of the two kingdoms to which he was heir had been arranged by Henry V. before his death, the reign of the third king of the House of Lancaster saw the undoing of much that had been accomplished in the reigns of his father and grandfather. It was during the reign of Henry VI. that Joan of Arc came forward alleging her Divine commission to rescue France from the English invader. But it is not part of our subject to describe her heroic ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... might live, her seasons had become stormy, unbearably cold and dreary: and the very fact of her knowledge of the Secret of Life, in which men numbered their ages by centuries instead of by years, was her undoing. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... against their own mothers, that they were instruments to bring them into the Devil's covenant, to the undoing of them, body and soul; and some girls of eight or nine years of age did declare, that, after they were so betrayed by their mothers to the power of Satan, they saw the Devil go in their own ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... dream me this man set forth in might: He wolf and whelps upon those mounts pursued Which Pisa 'twixt and Lucca's domes obtrude. Hounds had he with him, lank and shrewd and keen, And in their front Gualandi's sword had place, Sismondi's lash and sour Lanfranchi's mace. Father and sons' undoing soon was seen; Methought the sharp fangs on them closed, and tore Their flanks, which now the hue of ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... man, who watched our coming; "tarry here and honour my roof." Another came up, shook us by the hand, his eye sparkling with kind feelings. A third took our mules by the bridles and led us to his own door, when half-a-dozen pretty girls, with flashing dark eyes and long taper fingers, insisted on undoing our leggings and taking ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... groups and parties among their own subjects to whom they have never been just or fair, or even tolerant, to promote a propaganda on both sides of the sea which will preserve for them their influence at home and their power abroad, to the undoing of the very men they ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... of Nature, and I can quite understand that ancient libertine refusing to co-operate in her own undoing. And I can quite understand, too, my father's preference for what he called an illustrative experiment, which was simply an arrangement of the apparatus in front of the class with nothing whatever by way of material, and the Bunsen burner clean and cool, and then a slow luminous ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... and it behooved the lads to make haste. In the first place they did not know these hills, and, in the second, the professor would become alarmed and come in search of them were their return delayed too long. This was not desirable. It might mean the undoing of the entire party unless Tad and Ned succeeded in rounding ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... the whole matter has been taken out of the hands of Switzerland, where it justly belonged, and put under the care of the Netherlands. This has provoked much ill feeling in Switzerland, and there is especial astonishment at the fact that when Beldiman moved an amendment undoing this unjust arrangement it was, by some misunderstanding lost, and that therefore there has been perpetuated what seems much like an injustice against Switzerland. I promised to exert myself to have the matter rectified so far as the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... that while her heart and soul had gone forward in dumb pain in utter darkness with the single aim of undoing the sin done, the mind still lagged and reasoned. This is a peculiar agony, and Molly had to ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... little Heywood Dare, the Taunton goldsmith, who had landed at Seatown and gone out with the news of the Duke's arrival, rode into Lyme with forty horse, mounted, himself, upon a beautiful charger which was destined to be the undoing of him. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... and became wounded in a non-bellicose fashion. His general desired to make a remark to another general, and writing it on a piece of thin yellow paper, gave it to him to deliver. He rode off to the tune of axes,—for a Maine regiment was putting in an hour in undoing the stately work of a hundred years,—trotted fifteen miles peacefully enough, delivered his general's remark, and started back. Then came night and a sticky mist. Then the impossibility of finding the way. Aladdin rode on and on, courageously if not wisely, and came in ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... the battle of Torgau was not to be measured by the respective losses of the two armies. It had the effect of entirely undoing all the advantages that the Austrians had gained, throughout the campaign; and left the king in a better position than when it opened in the spring. The Russian army had been attacked and beaten, while the Austrians ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... raked in all of the gang. We have them nicely ironed over at the old boarding house, where one of my men is watching over them. Among them, Mr. Merriwell, are your friends, Hicks and Wiley. Somehow they think you were concerned in their undoing, and they have expressed sincere regrets that they did not do you up, instead of capturing you and stowing you here in the old cave. The chap who was watching you came over to get his breakfast this morning, and now he is ironed ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... done with me, I leave them to you and the old Nick, and never trouble myself about them more. What I want to know is, why you have taken upon you to steal a man's grave, after he has had immemorial possession of it. By what right have you dug up this bed, undoing the work of a predecessor of yours, who has long since slept in ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... transports of the evening the frantic little Bartow. [2] Too eager to embrace the bliss he has in prospect; frustrating his own purposes by inconsiderate haste; misplacing every thing, and undoing what he meant to do. It will only confuse you. Nothing better can be done than to tie him, in order to expedite his own business. That you might not be cheerful alone, I have obeyed the orders of your heart (for you cannot, even at this distance, conceal them) ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... between the shafts with drooping head. The man himself was old, and moved slowly and painfully. A white beard of unusual length blew over his right shoulder. Everything seemed aged and worn and weary, and full of knowledge, to its undoing. To Carroll, in this mood, even the bridal-party, even the children, seemed as old as age itself, puppets evolved from the ashes of ages, working out a creation-old plan ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... high walls—so it was now—the outer world drifted far, and the eyes of the girl—pleading—were the only real things. In his hours on the trail through the forest he had thought the ever-present picture of her in his heart might be strange new magic for his undoing, but to hear her tremulous girl voice:—and to see the broken thong, and the symbols of the most primitive of tribal dances, drove into forgetfulness the thought of all magic that was false magic. The gods had sent the vision of her in the dawn ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... obeyed his first brief order, one by one undoing the buttons of her dress, laying bare her poor chest, all flat and formless as a child's. A momentary gentleness came over him as he adjusted the tubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwards from heart to lungs, and from lungs to heart again; ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... is that I want Irina's pardon.—Listen! Sergius Lihnoff has been her undoing. Freed from his fanaticism, his fascination, she will be as dangerous as a baby.—She always hated the treachery.—Before that supper she even begged me to give it up, or to postpone it to Sunday—a day when Ternoff wouldn't leave the offices at his hour.—I ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the men were kept under arms all night, waiting for orders which never came. Indecision and procrastination again prevailed, and were again the undoing of the English enterprise. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... vain attempt to assert his rights as king and husband, only to be flouted and dismissed with the conviction that his life was no longer safe in Scotland, and that he had best cross the Border. Yet, to his undoing, detained perhaps by the overweening pride that is usually part of a fool's equipment, he did not act upon that wise resolve. He returned instead to his hawking and his hunting, and was seldom seen at ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... been forbidden to undress him, because it had been found that I entangled the knots instead of undoing them. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... great idea, which his hand proved powerless to execute as his mind became increasingly deranged. At length, in a moment of delirium, he hanged himself in front of the picture which had proved the means of his undoing. His genius was incomplete, and he was unable to carry out his own theories, but they were adopted by other and less able successors with better results. He was buried in the cemetery of Cayenne ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... first sign to me that I was done for—wiped out. There wasn't any violence or any hysteria about it, only grief, only pity. It was an entirely simple, gentle and beautiful performance, and it took place in my rooms after Jevons had left us. But, as I say, this was long afterwards. The agony of my undoing was ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... stopped short, as though seized with a sudden fear.... Fear of what? Fear of the monstrous chance that might be her undoing? Or fear rather of the dread weapon which she was about to deliver against herself? In any case nothing accused her with greater directness than this last hesitation, which was incomprehensible if she was innocent, but clear as day if ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... barked orders into his transmitter and the police reformed. They would now systematically scour the fortress, to wipe out any hexans that might still be in hiding; to discover and destroy any possible traps or infernal machines which the enemy might have planted for their undoing. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... stepped from one ship to the other, and glided into the cabin where the maiden awaited him. She gave him formal greeting, which he returned; but they looked at each other under the lamp, and their passion already raged like fire. They could hardly exchange a word, and Ya-nei's trembling hands were undoing. She offered but very feeble resistance. He ardently embraced her, and with his arms joined himself to the fresh breast that ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... man grows rich, the knaves are the knaves still. But to the use I 'll make of it; it shall serve To point me out a list of murderers, Agents for my villany. Did I want Ten leash of courtesans, it would furnish me; Nay, laundress three armies. That in so little paper Should lie th' undoing of so many men! 'Tis not so big as twenty declarations. See the corrupted use some make of books: Divinity, wrested by some factious blood, Draws swords, swells battles, and o'erthrows all good. To fashion my revenge more ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... "I deny nothing. I wish with all my soul I had never heard your name. I confess you have troubled me. I go beyond even that, I declare that you have been my undoing! And now, let us make an end of it. I am a poor man and a busy one, this task your father laid upon my shoulders is too heavy for me. I shall resign my guardianship; Gwendoline—Lady Baring—will accept the ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... not the half or any other fraction. Therefore, if any reserve be made, any corner kept for something unconnected with this true work and sincere purpose, the whole is thereby vitiated and accurst. So far as his arm reaches he is undoing whatever in nature is holy: ruining whatever is the real creation of the great worker of all. This truth of purpose is to the soul what life is to the body of man; that which unites and organises the mass, keeping all the parts in due proportion and concord, and restraining ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... by some influence malign or fate sinister, the loyal portion of two of the southern tribes, the Creeks and the Seminoles, took in April, 1862, a certain action that, all unbeknown to them, expedited the northern schemes for Indian undoing. The action referred to was tribal reoerganization. Each of the two groups of refugees elected chiefs and headmen and notified the United States government that it was prepared to do business as a nation.[646] ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Conway, one of the very few who had opposed the Stamp Act, now actually received the southern department of state within which the colonies were included. Still there seemed little hope for any undoing of the past, which probably would never have been wrung from this or any British ministry so long as all the discontent was on the other side of three thousand miles of ocean. But this was ceasing to be the case. The American weapon of non-importation was proving most ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber and returned with the same ponderous folio bound in black leather which common report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... needed more light, so she opened the door wide and pushed aside the curtain. A fragment of cracked mirror was nailed to the door. She faced it, rapidly undoing the glossy masses of her hair; then lifting her gown, she buckled the army belt underneath, slipped the revolver into it, smoothed out the calico, and crossed the floor to the bed again, at the foot of which a pair of woman's coarse, low shoes stood on the carpetless floor. Into ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... nights when there was little to do father had time to think. That was his undoing. He decided that he had in the past been an unsuccessful man because he had not been cheerful enough and that in the future he would adopt a cheerful outlook on life. In the early morning he came upstairs and got into bed with mother. She woke ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... and Arabian doctors. It is, however, little to the purpose at present that we continue this discourse. What more properly concerns thee is how to get rid of this grievous visitation, which, unless removed, will of a surety fall out to thine undoing. By prayer and fasting much may be accomplished, together with the use of all lawful means for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... unforgotten dead and with the unextinguishable fire of a hopeless passion which only a living, breathing, warm ideal can kindle in our breasts for our pride, for our weariness, for our exultation, for our undoing. ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... found impossible even to make out the semblance of an accusation, the testimony event of those hostile to him being irresistibly in his favour in all ways. He had done his utmost to defend the poor peasantry who had been misled by Adone to their own undoing, and he had defended also the motives and the character of the dead with an eloquence which moved to tears the public who heard him, and touched even the hearts of stone of president and advocates; ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... Uncle's (I strongly suspect) on Coeleb's errand. The rest of us had no weapon of any sort to combat time with, and for four whole days I sat counting the drops of rain that fell from the ceiling into a bowl beneath, or in burbling the chain of my watch for the pleasure of undoing it. 'Oh, Plato! what tasks for a philosopher!' At length in a frenzy of ennui I mounted a brute of a horse that could do nothing but trot, and rode till I was ready to drop from the saddle—just for diversion. I left my companions wondering when it would be fair; and when I returned they ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... was light as day, with the moon full on the window at the end of it. And wrapped in a shawl, with her back to me, stood my dream girl, undoing the front door as noiselessly as I had come into ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... one of these abductions that he worked his own undoing. Near St. John of the Remedies lived the pretty Anita de Pareira, daughter of a frugal and worthy couple and fiancee of a prosperous planter of the district. The time for the wedding having been set, the father ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... rocky earth as the most suitable spot in the western hemisphere wherein to plant the roots of English civilization. They built a hut and made a boat, and gathered together their stores of furs and sassafras; but these same stores proved their undoing. They could not agree upon an equable division of their wealth; and recognizing that disunion in a strange land was weakness and peril, they all got into their ship and sailed back to England, carrying their undivided furs ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... reply, but went about the rearrangement with swift artistic skill; while Jo, who had changed her mind about being in a hurry, slipped down stairs to the dining room again. At the doorway she discovered the undoing of her work. For a minute or two she watched the pair, then passed unnoticed up stairs again. Leigh Shirley was the only girl who ever dared to oppose Jo, and she did it so quietly and completely that Jo could only ignore her. She ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... again at Leicester House, now occupied by the new favorite Essex, where he probably met Shakespeare and the other literary lights of the Elizabethan Age. Soon after his return to Ireland, Spenser was appointed Sheriff of Cork, a queer office for a poet, which probably brought about his undoing. The same year Tyrone's Rebellion broke out in Munster. Kilcolman, the ancient house of Desmond, was one of the first places attacked by the rebels, and Spenser barely escaped with his wife and two children. It is supposed that some unfinished parts ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... waking Nights, and now more retired Days; while Love, to make her truly wretched, suffered her to sooth herself with fond Imaginations; not so much as permitting her Reason to plead one Moment to save her from undoing: She would not suffer it to tell her, he had taken Holy Orders, made sacred and solemn Vows of everlasting Chastity, that it was impossible he could marry her, or lay before her any Argument that might prevent her Ruin; but Love, mad malicious Love, was always called to Counsel, and, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... be gone!' he said, and added, 'Be certain and take care that no Englishman heareth of wedding betwixt thee and me.' It must in England work his sure undoing. ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... UNDOING THE PUZZLE.—To take the puzzle to pieces all that is required is to turn the "key" half round and push the other two cross bars on that arm towards the outer point. The cross bars below may then be removed, and the whole structure ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... we are told, a curious contrivance in the service of the English marine. The ropes in use in the royal navy, from the largest to the smallest, are so twisted that a red thread runs through them from end to end, which cannot be extracted without undoing the whole; and by which the smallest pieces may be recognized as belonging to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... disaster. He had contrived to kick off his shoes, and was swimming towards the rock. Poor old man, he struggled hard for life. In a moment I forgot all the mischief he had caused, and considered how I might help to save him. Undoing my neck-handkerchief, I fastened it to another I had in my pocket, and secured the two to the sleeve of my jacket. I watched him anxiously as he drew near, crying out to encourage him. Then I lowered the ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... awakened in other hearts as well as his, blind greed and avarice; so that as it had been the indirect cause of his disaster it now proved the incentive to another to turn the mishap to his own profit, and to the final undoing of the Malay. ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were willing (Pray it never may be true!) That a universal chilling Should ensue Of the sentiment of loving,— If they made a great undoing Of the plan of turtle-doving, Then farewell all poet-lore, Evermore. If there were no more of billing There would be no more of cooing And we all should be but owls— Lonely fowls Blinking wonderfully wise, With our great round eyes— Sitting singly in the gloaming and no longer two and ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... from where my father lives, a lady, A neighbour by, bless'd with as great a beauty As nature durst bestow without undoing, Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then, And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in. This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, Nor I no way ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... That kiss was Betty's undoing. She uttered a strange little cry. Then her dark head found a hiding place over his heart, and her slender form, which a moment before had resisted so fiercely, sank yielding into ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... woman is at once an impertinence to her and a shame to yourself. But to pour forth such worship, such offers of service, at the feet of an unhappy woman—age-old sophistry, so often ruling the speech and actions of men to their fatal undoing!—this is praiseworthy and legitimate, a matter not of privilege merely, but of obligation to whoso would claim to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... him, seemingly; or perhaps it was Joyce's regained sanity. The man on the floor looked calm, peaceful and strangely dignified. His helpless peacefulness appealed to Joyce. She began to take away all signs of degradation that remained. The inanimate tokens of poor Jude Lauzoon's weakness and undoing. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... happiest of all mothers, and so would she have remained if she had not believed herself so peculiarly blessed. Her very knowledge of her good fortune was her undoing. ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... cloak, as dark as Hamlet's mind; I will go forth upon a bloody business, and who hinders me shall know the bitter taste of death. Oscar, by the faith of my body, you shall be the Horatio of the tragedy. Set me right afore the world if treason be my undoing, and while we await the trumpets, cast that silly pair of trousers as rubbish to the void, and choose of mine own raiment as thou wouldst, knave! ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... the old woman, undoing the iron hasp with a trembling hand. The door flew open, and there entered a man of a middling stature, and of a handsome but melancholy countenance. He was clad in the Circassian dress: the water trickled down his bourka and bashlik.[22] Without any apologies, he threw it on the feather-bed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... flaring-up every single individual pulse in her body seemed to jerk itself suddenly into conscious activity again like the soft, plushy pound-pound-pound of a whole stocking-footed regiment of pain descending single file upon her for her hysterical undoing. "Maybe I've had a good deal more experience than you give me credit for!" she hastened excitedly to explain. "I tell you—I tell you I've been engaged!" she blurted forth with ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... avenging angel that he would appear before her. The gods had mocked him who was now their minister. Their minister? Their master, as being once more master of himself. It was they who had plotted his undoing. Because they loved him they were fain that he should die young. The Dobson woman was but their agent, their cat's-paw. By her they had all but got him. Not quite! And now, to teach them, through her, a lesson they would not soon forget, he ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... nightingale so sweetly sang, I yielded to their wooing; And as I kissed that winning face, I sealed my own undoing. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... culmination of the rivalry between Hughie and Foxy is preserved in John Craven's second letter to his friend Edward Maitland. The letter also gives an account of the master's own undoing—an undoing which bore fruit to the end of ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counsellor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... wise would pray to possess, and when this boastful piper had been defeated in the contest and had been skinned as though he were a two-footed bear, they left him with his entrails torn and exposed to the air. Thus did Marsyas sing for his own undoing, and such was his fall. As for Apollo he was ashamed ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... whether they be on the right side or the wrong. Nature, as I said in "Life and Habit," hates that any principle should breed hermaphroditically, but will give to each an helpmeet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; and in the undoing, do; and in the doing, undo, and so ad infinitum. Cross-fertilisation is just as necessary for continued fertility of ideas as for that of organic life, and the attempt to ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... skirmish. It was not from Fred's gun, or Will's. It was the phantom rifleman at work again. Schillingschen—Schillingschen's ghost—or whoever he was, he could not have timed his fusillade better for our undoing. The first shot was followed by six more in swift succession. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... suspicious of the ultimate ending of the affair. St. Pierre had almost no cause for complaint, for it was his own carelessness, coupled with his opponent's luck, that had been his undoing—and luck and carelessness are legitimate factors of every fight, Carrigan told himself. But with Bateese it was different. He had held up his big jaw, uncovered and tempting, entreating some one to hit him, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... end; and just as I reached this box a vivid flash of lightning revealed its interior, and there, bolt upright, stood a tall Spanish grenadier, with his musket resting in a corner of the hut, close to his hand. I realised instantly that the briefest period of hesitation now meant our undoing; for as I had seen the soldier, he had also undoubtedly seen me; so the man no sooner stood revealed before me than, with one bound, I was in the sentry-box with him, one hand grasping his throat to prevent him ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... to try to influence you, Charles," she said, "except as anyone tries to help those about one. And certainly you've been the one that has put us all in our present position. That's why it distressed me for you even to talk of undoing your work." ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... his meal, Brady got up from the box he had been seated on. He went over to the bundles he had brought, undoing one of them. He took out a long black dress coat. This he tried on. It buttoned up to his neck closely, ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... apprehensive for Isabinda, her Father's Humour is implacable; and how far his Jealousie may transport him to her Undoing, shocks my Soul ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... Rocks and lakes and mountain-floods, The warriors come, in armed might Careering, careless of the right! Their leader he who sternly bade Freedom fall; and glory fade, The scourge of nations ripe for ruin, Planning oft their own undoing! But who in yonder swarming host Locust-like from coast to coast, Reluctant move, an alien few, Sullen, fierce, of sombre hue, Who, forced unhallow'd arms to bear, Mutter to the moaning air, Whose curses on the welkin cast Edge the keen and icy blast! Iberia, sorrow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... are the wiser man; for many a man's tongue shakes out his master's undoing: to say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title; which is within a ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and when I have got together enough of them, and have selected from that number those whom I deem most available for my purpose and competent to carry out my directions as I shall give them, I shall organize them into a Band of Hatred, the sole object of which shall be your undoing and, ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... time to time, the clumsy and complacent Dave whiled away his days, and comforted himself that he had the persimmon-tree all to himself, as he expressed it. Meanwhile, the notes of Westcott were fast undoing all that Albert had done to separate him from ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... was his undoing. The light fall of snow a few days before had gathered in the little hollows of the wood deceptively. The detective plunged into one of these and fell sprawling on all fours,—a calamity that caused his comrades to pause uneasily. Larry was upon his enemy in a flash, wrenched his pistol away and ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... trouble for the man. On the other hand, it must be owned I had not much reason to count upon a general run of good luck. And suppose I had the misfortune to pile her up high and dry on some beastly shoal? That would have been the final undoing of that voyage. It was plain that if Falk refused to tow me out he would also refuse to pull me off. This meant—what? A day lost at the very best; but more likely a whole fortnight of frizzling on some ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... must cooperate, and to get him to do this he must be tactfully warned of his condition. Many, such patients, noting their impaired ability, do not seek medical advice, but think all they need is more exercise; hence they walk, golf, and dance to excess and to their cardiac undoing. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... Nupton will not have read the later passages of this memoir. Such lack of thoroughness is a serious fault in any one who undertakes to do scholar's work. And I hope these words will meet the eye of some contemporary rival to Nupton and be the undoing of Nupton. ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... country. It was not an issue that could be left to arbitration in the hereafter, or threshed out by judge and jury. The situation called for instant action. To do his obvious duty rather than to know it, seemed to our hero the only honorable exit from the dilemma, even though it resulted in his own undoing. ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... male, increasing in strength through the long course of time, which places him in woman's power. Man is the slave of woman, often when least he thinks so, and still woman uses her power, even like the spider, not infrequently, for his undoing. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... part of the plan had gone astray, so the murderer, in the fanatical resolve of his latent fixed idea, had recourse to a further expedient as daring and original as the scheme which failed. The second instrument had been the means of his own undoing. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... me, and we will douse them in the pond." Two large footballs, but very flaccid-looking, were brought out, and by tying a stone and a line to them they were both very soon thoroughly soaked. He then took them out, and brought them into the house. First he took one, and undoing the lacing which confined one side, he drew out a flaccid bladder. "This is the sort of football we use here," he said, holding it up to Selby. "It cannot be easily rendered unserviceable by thorn, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her noble friends, all of whom she so transcended in beauty, purity, goodness, and breeding (although she was but an untaught, wandering gypsy girl, out of the gutter); and there, before them all and the gay archer, she was betrayed to her final undoing by her goat, whom she had so imprudently taught how to spell the beloved name ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... from whom he had inherited his title, had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic tinge to the matter—the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong devotion that he will bestow. This calling up the past, and incautious revealing of the fact that the ancestor Chaworth could not hold his own with a Byron, but allowed himself to be run through the body by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Heaven speed thee, poplar tree, May thy wooing happy be. GENERAL: Yet, the breeze is but a rover, When he wings away, Brook and poplar mourn a lover Sighing,"Well-a-day!" MEN: Well-a-day! GENERAL: Ah! the doing and undoing, That the rogue could tell! When the breeze is out a-wooing, Who can woo ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... me from Frankfurt," said the doctor, rising, and he went up to the package and began undoing it, Heidi looking on in great expectation. After he had released it from its heavy outer covering, "There, child," he said, "now you can go on ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... thereto by some influence malign or fate sinister, the loyal portion of two of the southern tribes, the Creeks and the Seminoles, took in April, 1862, a certain action that, all unbeknown to them, expedited the northern schemes for Indian undoing. The action referred to was tribal reoerganization. Each of the two groups of refugees elected chiefs and headmen and notified the United States government that it was prepared to do business as a nation.[646] The ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... commissioners appointed to check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory. The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his power was artificial, that the least breath might blow him back into the nothingness from which he had arisen on the wrecks of his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... The Earl was my undoing. At a critical point in the unfolding of the plot there was talk of his having been connected with a scandal in St. Petersburg. This he attempted to deny, and though I am unable to quote the exact words of his denial, the sound of it lingers sweetly in my memory. Nor would the exact words, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of icy air as the door at the end of the compartment is pushed open, and I realise the train has stopped at a station. The native guard stands in the doorway apologetically fumbling with the key which he has just used in undoing the door. "Mem-sahib coming in," says he hopelessly, and a very disagreeable high-pitched voice makes itself heard behind him. Pushing rudely past come a man and woman so much alike they must be brother and sister; they have both coarse features and clumsy squat figures; ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... would not let Tordenskjold go when peace was made, but he had his way in the end. To his undoing he consented to take with him abroad a young scalawag, the son of his landlord, who had more money than brains. In Hamburg the young man fell in with a gambler, a Swedish colonel by name of Stahl, who fleeced him of all he had and much ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... of native treachery is frequently repeated, and explains the enslavement, the downfall, and in parts, the extermination of the American tribes. Everywhere they betrayed one another to the final undoing of all.] ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... untoward thing had not so cruelly happened, had cast no such cloud over the fair future before him! Nor were his selfish regrets unmingled with annoyance that Isy should have yielded so easily: why had she not aided him to resist the weakness that had wrought his undoing? She was as much to blame as he; and for her unworthiness was he to be left to suffer? Within an hour he had returned to the sermon under his hand, and was revising it for the twentieth time, to perfect it before finally ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... that after this the poor youth would have been left in peace; but no, his enemy the stableman hated him as much as ever, and laid a new plot for his undoing. This time he presented himself before the king and told him that the youth was so puffed up with what he had done that he had declared he would seize the king's ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... victory may bring ruin, and disappointment endanger their heads.... Acquisition alone can make burdens palatable, and in a war with our own colonies we must inflict instead of acquiring them, and we cannot recover them without undoing them. I am still to learn wisdom and experience, if these things are not so." (Letter to Mann, January 25, 1775.) "A war with our colonies, which is now declared, is a proof how much influence jargon has on human ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... to acquire her African possessions were peculiarly typical. Like the madness that plunged her into a struggle with civilization they were her own undoing. Into a continent whose middle name, so far as colonization goes, is intrigue she fitted perfectly. Practically every German colony in Africa represented the triumph of "butting in" or intimidation. The Kaiser That Was regarded himself as the mentor, and sought to recast continents in ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... memories of wasted soil fertility and forest destruction. Slowly but surely they are rebuilding and rehabilitating worn out tracts at tremendous expense. The ruin which ignorance accomplished with alacrity, education is slowly and painfully undoing. Americans should heed the lessons of history and profit by the mistakes of other countries. The production of food, clothing and other necessaries of life which is of vital importance to a nation, cannot, with safety, be left to blind forces or to revered but ignorant traditions. For ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... and preventing any real coherence and continuity in our Government of that great Colony. A good and successful Administrator has sometimes been withdrawn to be superseded by another, equally well-intentioned, perhaps, but whose policy was on wholly different lines, thus undoing the work of his predecessor. This has introduced not only confusion, but sometimes an appearance of real injustice into our management of the colony. In all this chequered history, the interests of the native ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... the letters," said Harding, "that we write at three in the morning to tell her how enchanting she was; it is the flowers we send, the words of love that we speak in her ear, that are our undoing. So long as we ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... "feather-voyages." The feathers sought were those of the Labrador Duck and the Eider. These adventurous bird pirates secured their booty either by killing the birds or taking the down from the nests. The commercializing of the Labrador Duck meant its undoing. The last one known to have been taken was killed by a hunter near Long Island, New York, in 1875. Forty-two of these birds only are preserved in the ornithological collections of the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... which converted the politically divergent Swedish nation into the irreconcilable foe of the unional government (see CHRISTIAN II.). Christian's contempt of nationality in Sweden is the more remarkable as in Denmark proper he sided with the people against the aristocracy, to his own undoing in that age of privilege and prejudice. His intentions, as exhibited to his famous Landelove (National Code), were progressive and enlightened to an eminent degree; so much so, indeed, that they mystified the people as much as they alienated the patricians; but his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... voice was such as to hurl the woman pell-mell over the cliff of discretion down into the depths of her own undoing. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... intuitions, yet gullible, Easily used at times, of erratic judgment, Analytic but pursuing with incredible swiftness The falsest trails to her own undoing— All in all the strangest mixture of colors and scent Derived from father and mother, But mixed by ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... young—so young! and am to die already! I was fair, too; that was my undoing. My true love was near, now he ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... in a corner, the trunk he had bought while at college, small and cheap in itself, not in what it held. For here were David's books—the great grave books which had been the making of him, or the undoing of him, according as one may have enough of God's wisdom and mercy to decide whether it were the one ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... While I was undoing my trousers, I observed that Miss Frankland had quite lifted up her outer frock, and had sat down, evidently intending to flog me across her knee. Both being ready, she told me to put the footstool by her side and kneel upon it, then desiring me ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... a petticoat, but a piano was the cause of my undoing. Vaulting ambition and all that sort of thing. My parents were easy in circumstances and I was brought up to be a pianist. Deliberately planned to be a virtuoso. I was sent to Leschetizky, to Von Buelow, to Rubinstein, to Liszt. I studied scales in Paris with Plante, trills in Bologna ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... dined, I gathered up this basketful. Methought the more I cast mine eye upon the whole discourse, the more I saw lie in it. Wherefore setting myself to a more narrow search, through frequent prayer to God, what first with doing, and then with undoing, and after that with doing again, I thus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... their paste of masticated leaves, have piled their cells one above the other; in the deserted chambers and vestibules, Megachiles have arranged their leafy jars; in the live wood, filled with juicy saps, the larvae of the Capricorn (Cerambyx miles), the chief author of the oak's undoing, have set up ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... evidence of the hypocrisy with which our Senate parades our national honor and our vital interests to the undoing of a grand work? Search our history and you will find it in abundance. In the great case of the Alabama claims, Charles Francis Adams pronounced the construction of Confederate ships in English ports to be a violation of the international law of neutrality. This certainly was a question of national ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... shall have the benediction of the church, less fortunate girls will envy me; but I am not a whit better than the poor creature flaunting her shame on the pavement. Nay, I am worse, for she can plead that love was the cause of her undoing. Father, I can't, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... Monday morning in season for biz!" This was certainly satisfactory as far as it went, but I added, by way of parenthesis, "and who else will be present?" knowing well enough that one uncongenial spirit might be the undoing of us all. To this Bartholomew responded, "No one but ourselves, old fellow; now don't be queer." He knew well enough my aversion to certain elements unavoidable even in the best society, and how I kept very much to myself, except on Monday nights when ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... at the time of Bismarck's retirement, we had made a timely and resolute decision either in favor of the Western Policy that he advocated, or in favor of the Eastern Policy, we should have prevented the development of a situation in the politics of the world which ultimately led to our own undoing. If, during the war, however, we had completely abandoned the U-boat campaign, and had made every possible effort to come to an understanding with America, we should, in my opinion, have been able to extricate ourselves from it satisfactorily. Be this ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... the tall, leather-clad figure out of sight than a crowd of small boys and youths pressed boldly round the handsome car. Her splendour was her undoing, for a plain, every-day sort of automobile might ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... through Intellect, gives it a meaning and value to the percipient. That would involve the rejection of all that our culture has accumulated, all our social heritage from the past, the overthrow of our civilization, the undoing of all that has developed in our world, since man's Intelligence came into it. We cannot obtain Intuition without intellectual labour, for it must have an intellectual or scientific basis. Yet, however valuable Intellect is, it is not final. "It is reality itself, in the profoundest ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... Riding on a razor, to my mind. Come down, and have a lark," said Osmond; while Martin, undoing the gate, proceeded to swing it backwards and forwards, to John's extreme terror; but the more he clung to the spikes, and cried for mercy, the quicker Martin swung it, shouting with laughter at his fright. Henry meanwhile scrambled and tumbled to the ground, and ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Muza; "the Christian king conquers more foes by craft than force; and his spies are more deadly than his warriors. Wherefore this caution against me, but (pardon me) for thine own undoing? Were I a traitor, could Ferdinand himself have endangered thy crown so imminently as the revenge of the leader of thine own armies? Why, too, this desire to keep thee inactive? For the brave every hour hath its chances; but, for us, every hour increases our peril. If we seize ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the story of the shocking treachery of Humpy Joe, together with the miserable undoing of the Flying Heart. "Why, those poor fellows are broken-hearted," she concluded. "Their despair over losing that talking-machine would be funny if it were not so tragic. I told them you would win it back for them. And you will, won't ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... final question, that although he should submit as a quiet citizen, he should seize the first moment that offered for shaking off the yoke in a constitutional way. I suspect the plan will be to encourage two thirds of the legislatures in the task of undoing the work; or to get a Congress appointed in the first instance that will commit suicide on their ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... will. He sent for Leon, you see, and must have seen at a glance that he had for a son—a mule, of the worst sort. He probably saw that to leave money to Leon was to give it to the Church, which meant that it would be spent for the further undoing of Spain and the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... snow on the ground, and Aunt Louisa had allowed herself the unaccustomed luxury of a fire in her bed-room; but in Philip's little room it was so cold that his fingers were numb, and he had great difficulty in undoing his collar. His teeth chattered. The idea came to him that he must do something more than usual to attract the attention of God, and he turned back the rug which was in front of his bed so that he could kneel on the bare boards; and then it struck him that his nightshirt ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... suddenly endowed with that clearness of mental vision so often granted to the dying. She saw how she had wrought her own undoing by consenting to accept the perfidious role imposed upon her by her father, and how she, herself, had paved the way for the falsehoods, slander, crimes and misfortunes of which she had been ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... effect, been undoing with levels and scoops and dredges what nature did in a mighty upheaval. They are practically tipping the bowls back the other way and so making currents to run down the old channel toward the gulf through the valleys of the Des Plaines and the Illinois ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... organised conquest of Nature, and I can quite understand that ancient libertine refusing to co-operate in her own undoing. And I can quite understand, too, my father's preference for what he called an illustrative experiment, which was simply an arrangement of the apparatus in front of the class with nothing whatever by way of material, and the Bunsen burner clean and cool, and then a slow luminous ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... movement, she stopped short, as though seized with a sudden fear.... Fear of what? Fear of the monstrous chance that might be her undoing? Or fear rather of the dread weapon which she was about to deliver against herself? In any case nothing accused her with greater directness than this last hesitation, which was incomprehensible if she was innocent, but clear as ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... house easily enough, by sacrificing a window-pane in the kitchen and then undoing the catch. A sweet kitchen it was, or ought to have been if the servants hadn't avenged their wrongs by leaving a lot of dishes and dish towels unwashed. We wandered about, Patsey pretending to remember this ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... and even the rising colour in Miss Hartley's cheek did not serve to enlighten him. But he was glad to notice that she was becoming reserved again. Mr. Vyner noticed it, too, and, raging inwardly against a tongue which was always striving after his undoing, began with a chastened air to criticise the architecture of the new chapel in Porter Street. Architecture being a subject of which the captain knew nothing, he discussed it at great length, somewhat ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... presence of mind shewed by Perkins in amusing the mob with meat and drink and huzzas, till Sir Philip Jennings Clerke could get the troops and pack up the counting-house bills, bonds, &c. and carry them, which he did, to Chelsea College for safety,—could have saved us from actual undoing. The villains had broke in, and our brewhouse would have blazed in ten minutes, when a property of L150,000 would have been utterly lost, and its once ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Minna's: the mating of a man and a woman whose brains were not oversensitized by too complicated mentality; of a man and a woman direct and sincere, primarily and clearly a man and a woman. Such happiness could never be for her now; for her who had let a man make love to her for his own undoing. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... be common to the whole human race. In primitive times religious interest was prompted by fear, and the early customs of sacrifice and worship were established by the group to bring its members into friendly relations with the Power outside themselves that might work to their undoing. Temples and shrines testified to man's devotion and stirred his emotions by their symbols and ceremonies. A special class of men was organized, a priesthood to mediate with the gods for mankind. Children were taught to respect and fear the higher powers, and their elders ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... impertinence to her and a shame to yourself. But to pour forth such worship, such offers of service, at the feet of an unhappy woman—age-old sophistry, so often ruling the speech and actions of men to their fatal undoing!—this is praiseworthy and legitimate, a matter not of privilege merely, but of obligation to whoso would ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... night, September 8th, Lord Salisbury had his opportunity of undoing this great effect—of reasserting that intellectual as well as mere voting dictatorship which he holds in the House of Lords; and he signally failed to rise to the occasion. I do not like the policy of Lord Salisbury, but there is a lucidity, a point, and sometimes a vigour ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the suitors rush into the apartment, insolently reminding her of her promise to choose one of them, as soon as the garment, which she has been weaving for so many years for Laertes shall be completed, and wildly upbraiding her with undoing her work during the night Penelope tries to hold them in check, but they only grow more shameless, and at last Antinous tries to embrace her. Quick as thought she draws her dagger, and when it is wrenched from her she snatches his own sword and directs ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... some of those who take part in it, and may result in the temporary political success of others, in the long run every such movement will either fail or else will provoke a violent reaction, which will itself result not merely in undoing the mischief wrought by the demagog and the agitator, but also in undoing the good that the honest reformer, the true upholder of popular rights, has painfully and laboriously achieved. Corruption is never so rife as in communities where the demagog and the agitator bear full sway, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... plays a lively air as the coach rattles through the ill-paved streets of a country town; and the coachman, undoing the buckle which keeps his ribands together, prepares to throw them off the moment he stops. Mr. Pickwick emerges from his coat collar, and looks about him with great curiosity; perceiving which, the coachman informs Mr. Pickwick ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... while father was laid up, she looked in on us. "Polly, my girl, there's no use trying to beat up in the teeth of a gale with a five-knot current against one," she exclaimed, as, dropping down into out big arm-chair and undoing her bonnet-strings and the red handkerchief she wore round her neck, she threw her bonnet over the back of her head. "I'm dead beat with to-day's work, and shall be worse to-morrow. Now, my dear, what I've got to say is this, I want ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... so, drawing his pork to the extremity of the hanger, and arming himself with his lantern and his old sack, he set out on what, in ordinary weather, would have been a twenty minutes' errand. He could not have locked his door without undoing his well-knotted string and retarding his supper; it was not worth his while to make that sacrifice. What thief would find his way to the Stone-pits on such a night as this? and why should he come on this particular ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... which came howling round him, had not an old woman come to the rescue and driven them away. With the help of her grand-son—a little naked creature, just able to walk, or rather to stagger—she dragged him to her tent, and, undoing the line that fastened his ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... imagine how angry I was, and how I tried to find some means of undoing the mischief she had done; but there was no help for it. I could only bring Prince Pink to the place where you were being brought up, hoping that when you grew up he might love you, and by your care be restored to his natural form. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... the three boys sat down around a wooden block formed of a tree-trunk with a deep groove running through it. The labour consisted in undoing and taking apart old boots and shoes, which arrived at the shop from every direction in huge, badly tied bales and in sacks with paper designations sewed to the burlap. The boot destined to be drawn and ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... instantly animated my own latent imagination. And immediately it occurred to me that perhaps, in the humble letter from the wilds of Baffin Land, which I was now opening with eager and unsteady fingers, might lie concealed the professional undoing of Professor Jane Bottomly, and the only hope of my ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... refusing to let her speak at once, when she wanted to tell him all about Dickerson. That was her instinct; she had been right, and he wrong; she might be to blame for everything since, but he was to blame then and for that. Now it was all wrong, and past undoing. She tried, in the reveries running along with what she was hearing of Charmian's talk, every way of undoing it that she could imagine: she wrote to Ludlow; she sent for him; she went to him; but it was all impossible. She did not wish to undo ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... sitting there so still Before that little shrine beside the way, And wondered where your thoughts might be astray; Your knitting lying idle on your knees, And worse than idle—like Penelope's, Working its own undoing! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... so much since the days of apostasy from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God." There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart, while it amused him; and, though he would begin by bantering Fox at an interview, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... from which to view the delightful valleys. Then again it lost itself under great over-arching trees, and as we came too rapidly down a steep hill on entering Bodmin, the road was so heavily shaded that we were near our undoing. The loose sand had been piled up by the rain and the dense shade prevented the road from drying. The car took a frightful skid and by a mere hair's breadth escaped disastrous collision with a stone ...
— 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
... those blue eyes of his which could be by turns so fierce, so unrelenting, and—did she not know it to her heart's undoing?—so unutterably tender, besought her. But, for once, they awakened no response. She felt cold—quite ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... unlocked one of her trunks and took out a little white package with a red cross scored on it. Undoing the sealed waxed paper she uncovered several neatly cut strips of meat. She regarded them with disgust. It was by no means the first little white package she had opened since her arrival at Grey House, but none of the previous ones had ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... the very nature of slavery, and fostered by their long defense of slavery. That genesis of the movement is all the more impressive when we recognize the high personal character of its leaders, and acquit them of conscious motives of personal ambition. Slavery was their undoing. The habit of absolute control over slaves bred the habit of mastery whenever it could be successfully asserted. There grew up a caste, its members equal and cordial among themselves, but self-assertive and haughty to all besides. They brooked no opposition at home, and resented ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... standing up not far from Hollyhock. She resolved in her own mind to take no notice whatever of Hollyhock. Jacko was to the Lady Leucha as one who did not exist, but in her busy, vain little brain she was forming schemes for the undoing of this ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... deep shadow over his features. But his voice was peculiarly melodious and persuasive, and there was a nameless attraction about him that Cuthbert was quick to feel. Others in the days to follow felt it to their own undoing, but of that the lad knew nothing. He only wished to retain the good opinion this stranger seemed ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... until now. He had forgotten the traitor responsible for his undoing. So much was Jessie in his life that James had counted for little when he thought of her. But now the scoundrel swept all other thoughts pell-mell out of his head. He was suddenly ablaze with a rage such as he had never before experienced. All that was human in him was in a state of fierce resentment. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... county of Longford, three-fourths of nine hundred and ninety-nine cartrons, the property of the O'Farrells, were granted to adventurers, to the undoing and beggary of that princely family. Twenty-five of the septs were dispossessed of their all, and to the other septs were assigned mountainous and barren tracts about ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... uncle's, and must be applied to his use in the first instance? If I mistake not greatly, there is not a Jew or Lombard who would not advance the necessary sums on such security.—Therefore, dog," he continued, addressing the jailer, "hasten thy unclenching and undoing of rivets, and be not dainty of giving me a little pain, so thou break no limb, for I cannot afford to be stayed on ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... he had ever done, or was ever likely to do, in his life, proved, for a time at least, his undoing. Kitty had made him from generous mean, from unsuspecting suspicious, and during the wretched year they had spent together she had had a disastrous effect on his work. At last, acting on the shrewd advice of one of those instinctive men of the world of which Bohemia ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... When, during the course of their first conversation, she casually mentioned that she could command millions if she wanted them, his immediate interest in MacNair cooled appreciably—not that MacNair was to be forgotten—merely that his undoing was to be deferred for a season, while he, the Pierre Lapierre once more of student days, played an old game—a game long forgot in the press of sterner life, but one at ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... bring in another Whig. The widowed mother, in a letter written with all the excellent sense and feeling which distinguished her, refused to sacrifice her son to her party. His education, she said, would be interrupted; his head would be turned; his triumph would be his undoing. Just at this conjuncture the Admiral arrived. He made his appearance before the freeholders of Middlesex assembled on the top of Hampstead Hill, and was returned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceived me; they do not tell the whole story. Beware of the struggling young author, my friends. Whom God sees fit to starve, let not man presumptuously rescue to his own undoing." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cutting and tying together bundle after bundle of canes, till we had six which roughly resembled as many big trusses of straw. These we secured to four of the stoutest canes we could find, passing them through the bands crosswise, and after a good deal of difficulty, and at the risk of undoing our work, we managed to thrust it off the bank into the river, where, to my great delight, upon trying it, the buoyancy far exceeded my expectations. In fact, though we could not have stood upon it, lying down it supported us well, and without any hesitation, after cutting ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... interest and profound indignation; for they, as he told them, were themselves insulted in the person of their general: they all swore, on their honour, that if he would put the matter in their hands, and not yield to his rage, which could only work his own undoing, either his bride should be rendered up to him without a smirch upon her bridal veil, or else a punishment should be dealt out proportioned to the affront. And without delay, as a proof of the energy wherewith the noble tribunal would take action in the affair, Luigi Manenti, secretary to the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... about to rise, his glance fell on something wrapped in newspaper and tucked under the stern seat. If it should only prove to be food of any description, "even burned mush," thought Winn, grimly, how happy it would make him! In another second he was undoing, with eager fingers, the lunch of crackers and cheese that Sheriff Riley's wife had so thoughtfully thrust into her husband's hands as he left the house the morning before, and which he had as thoughtfully tucked under the stern seat of his skiff. He ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... has seen better times has usually a poor tale to tell, some mean and trivial thing has been his undoing, but they that dined in that basement had mostly fallen like oaks on nights of abnormal tempest, had fallen mightily and shaken a nation. Those who had not been kings themselves, but claimed through an ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... do better than fight; and Rawdon, in spite of his true love, can do better than follow the quarrel up to his own undoing. The marquis, on the spur of the moment, gets the lady's husband appointed governor of Coventry Island, with a salary of three thousand pounds a year; and poor Rawdon at last condescends to accept the appointment. He will not see his wife again, but ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... hands, undoing the door of her apartment, she made her way into the long, dark gallery, with which she was perfectly familiar, and soon gained the apartment already referred to. The door fortunately stood nearly closed, and she successfully passed ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Achilles at least to allow the Myrmidons to sally forth under Patroclus' leadership, if he would not fight in person. The importance of this episode is emphasised in the poem. The dispatch of Patroclus is called "the beginning of his undoing", it foreshadows the intervention which was later to bring Achilles himself back ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... teeth, determined to reach the top in time to get away before he could join her. In her eagerness she took a chance that proved her undoing. A rock gave beneath her foot and clattered down. Clinging by one hand and foot, she felt her body swing around. From her throat a little cry leaped. She ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... is that admirable alimentary harmony sustained by the Church. During the whole year we are authorized to eat terrestrial animals, and in Lent aquatic ones only. Promiscuous as we are, we are undoing the equilibrium between the maritime and the land forces, we are attacking the peaceful rotation of ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... of wolves, that at any time may fall upon and destroy a weaker one, the boisterous antics of these children of the forest fascinated me. Filled with the curiosity that lures many a trader to his undoing, I rose and went across to the thronging, shouting, shadowy figures. A man darted out of the woods full tilt against me. 'Twas he of the pointed beard, my suspect of the Hudson's Bay Company. Quick as thought ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... regained sanity. The man on the floor looked calm, peaceful and strangely dignified. His helpless peacefulness appealed to Joyce. She began to take away all signs of degradation that remained. The inanimate tokens of poor Jude Lauzoon's weakness and undoing. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... before he resigned his command at the end of the war was to thank Steuben for his invaluable aid. Charles Lee did not believe that American recruits could be quickly trained so as to be able to face the disciplined British battalions. Steuben was to prove that Lee was wrong to Lee's own entire undoing at Monmouth ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... Court held that Sir Charles was no longer a party, and that he could not be allowed to intervene. Thus the first judgment, by declaring him innocent and awarding him costs as one unjustly accused, led straight to his undoing. He had been struck out of the case; he was now a mere member of the general public. There never were, probably, legal proceedings in which from first to last law and justice ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the gleam of hot desire commingled with a glitter of revenge as his thoughts flew swiftly to Wolf River—the Texan's open insult and the pilgrim's swift shot in the dark. Here, helpless, completely in his power to do with as he pleased, lay the woman who had been the unwitting cause of his undoing! Vengeance was his at last, and he licked his lips in wolfish anticipation of the wrecking of that vengeance. The thought of revenge was more sweet in that he never anticipated it. The Texan had disappeared altogether, and he had heard from ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... again, Miriam! What's eatin' you to-day?" cried the foreman, as he came along to inspect the work; and seeing Miriam undoing my blunders, asked, "Who ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... gay, thoughtless life of the student; the side-glance of a bright eye had been the undoing of him. Day and night he could not get the image of this most modest damsel out of his mind. He sought the mansion of the padre. Alas! it was above the class of houses accessible to a strolling student like himself. The worthy padre had no sympathy with him; he had never been ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... groaned. "It may be some satisfaction to you," he said, "to know that this may mean my undoing, disgrace, a ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... come to? I was used to hear say, in Queen Mary's days, that the great Council to London were busy undoing what had been done in King Harry's and King Edward's time: but I ne'er heard that the Lord had ta'en His Word in pieces, and laid up an handful thereof ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
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