"Hairbreadth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could describe the scenes of terror, anguish and destruction which have taken place in Conemaugh Valley it could write an epic greater than the "Iliad." The accounts that come tell of hairbreadth escapes, heartrending tragedies and deeds of heroism almost ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... with the Arabic, the Mongolian, the Victorian, and two freighters, amid a whole flock of cruisers and destroyers. The protecting fleet stayed with us two nights and three days. On the French boat the barber practically had no news of sudden deaths and hairbreadth escapes which had happened while we slept. We sailed into the Gironde River peacefully, almost joyously. But we left the Mersey with a story that a big fleet of destroyers hovered at the river's mouth; ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... general. The news of the day—not always, as may be imagined, very recent—was commented upon, and then, as now, political questions were sagely and earnestly discussed. Stories, mainly of adventure, were told; hairbreadth escapes from Indian massacre recounted and the battles of late wars fought again beneath the spreading branches of the trees. Meanwhile, the boys and girls wandered off in separate and smaller groups, singing and playing and making love much in ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... the State, and was Ban of Craiova before he ascended the throne of Wallachia. This step he accomplished through intrigues at Constantinople with the aid of his father-in-law, whereby he succeeded in deposing his predecessor Alexander. Some marvellous tales are told concerning the hairbreadth escapes of Michael in his struggles for the ascendency, one being that, when he was captured by Alexander and ordered for execution, the headsman was so terrified at the majesty of his countenance that he dropped the axe and fled, and no one else was to be found willing to undertake the odious ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... of about half a mile, measured by his twisting and turning, was one series of hairbreadth escapes. A dozen times over he had to turn and come back over almost precisely the same ground to avoid a party of Malays, who seemed ready to spring out of the earth on all sides of him, but still, thanks to the thick growth, he was unseen. Such a journey on their first landing ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... appeared as though the boat must be overrun by the sea and swamped; but the coxswain in charge of her was an old man-o'-war's-man, and each time he avoided disaster by a hairbreadth, until, at the expiration of a breathless five minutes, Frobisher saw her living cargo leap safely out on the beach, and heaved a sigh of relief. By this time, too, the second and third boats had been got into the water without mishap, and were also on their way shoreward, leaving about a hundred ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... ships, and make up all sorts of stories as to where they were going and the wonderful adventures they would meet with—pirates and desert islands and shipwrecks and sea-serpents. I think I must have had a very vivid imagination. But my stories always ended up happily. After endless perils and hairbreadth escapes my vessels sailed home laden with treasure. Where is that ship going, and what sort of passengers does she carry? I wonder if they are all very unhappy at leaving England, or full of hope about the new land ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... their vacation trips to the wonderland of the great Northwest. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of the story, which abounds in plenty of humor, and hairbreadth escapes. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... on the peaceful inhabitants by rendering them houseless during the rigour of winter. The attempt to restore the Chevalier St. George soon collapsed, but it does not seem to have been followed by the thrilling scenes, the hairbreadth escapes, and the rigorous treatment which marked the close of the ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... had not scratched Bandmaster. He would not believe Alan Chesney had been shot, and this firm conviction cheered Eve Berkeley wonderfully. Then came the news that Captain Chesney had returned to headquarters after many hairbreadth escapes and ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... narrow escape. 'Tis the luck of the Le Moynes. Perhaps you know the motto of our house?—'By hairbreadth ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... admiration, my devotion, she offered only that bright surface of her schooled manner and disciplined emotions. While her house crumbled about her ears, while her world failed her, she deviated not a hairbreadth from the ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... cold night in the Christmas vacation fourteen years later.[51] Alec Mackay, now a young engineering student, was lost to all sense of time as he read of the hairbreadth escapes and adventures told by the African explorer, Stanley, in his ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... real hairbreadth escape—for that night, at any rate, though other thrills were in store. The chauffeur was greatly surprised when bidden to go on from St. Albans to London, and take the High Barnet road to the City; but Fenley ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... a case for a certain steamboat captain, and in gratitude the counsel had been invited by his client to go on an excursion to Peoria, the head of navigation on the Illinois River. The lawyer took the trip, and duly reached Peoria after many hairbreadth 'scapes on the imminently deadly sandbar. But a week must be spent at Peoria while the boat was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... that Indians were no longer on the map, and cowboys were kicking up their last dust before vanishing, but she had supposed that they had left compensations in their wake. On the principle that adventures are to the adventurous, her life should have been a whirl of hairbreadth escapes. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... was distinguished for a career combining adventure and romance. Though he was only thirty years of age he had already seen much service and had many hairbreadth escapes, his most remarkable exploit having been his killing before the town of Regal, in Transylvania, three Turks, one after another, in single combat.[15] The ships sailed from London December 20, 1606, and Michael Drayton wrote ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... the other side, with all brakes set and forty hairbreadth margins recorded for the outer wheels; and, an hour from the col, we are safely at the hamlet of Grip, where the horses and we are doomed to a two hours' halt and a lunch. The first inn, irrationally placed in a patch of field apart from the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... his worthless son, and nearly broke with unkingly sorrow for the rebel's death. Their confidence in God, too, has in it a ring of joyousness in peril which corresponds with the buoyant faith that went with him through all the desperate adventures and hairbreadth escapes of the Sauline persecution. If then we may, with some confidence, read these psalms in connection with that period, what a noble portraiture of a brave, devout soul looks out upon us from them. We see him in the first flush of his manhood—somewhere about five-and-twenty ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... from me," said Mr. Wyndham, "exciting tales of adventure, and hairbreadth escapes by sea and land. I have never read a dime novel in my life, and therefore couldn't undertake to rival them in highway robbery, scalping Indians, and bowie-knives and revolvers. My heroes were never left on a desert island, nor escaped with ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... have ever slipped, though only an inch, while climbing over roofs, you will know that sudden, stabbing, sinking feeling that came to Aladdin and stopped the beating of his heart by the hairbreadth of a second. He had been proceeding chin on breast, and head bent against the wind, or he would have seen it before, for it was a notable landmark in that part of the world, and showed him that he had been making way, not toward his destination, but ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... possible the serene critic may take exception to this form of reasoning and produce examples of genius, such as Wordsworth, who lived a strictly pious life, never offending any moral law by a hairbreadth; but Wordsworth was not made like Byron; he had not the personality of the poor wayward cripple who at one time had brought the world to his feet, neither had Wordsworth to fight against such wild hereditary complications as Byron. Wordsworth never caught the public imagination, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... foremost of the pursuers. The arrow struck the Mongul in the eye. The agony which the wounded man felt was so great that the two others stopped to assist him, and in the mean time Timur got out of the way. In due time, and after meeting with some other hairbreadth escapes, he reached the camp of the sultan, who received him very joyfully, loaded him with praises for the indomitable spirit which he had evinced, and immediately made him governor of ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... shelter under a cart standing in the street. After being jammed and pulled about for nearly two hours, I returned to my lodgings, where I found part of my company, who had come in one after another. At eleven o'clock we had all assembled, and each told his adventures and "hairbreadth escapes;" and nearly every one had lost a pocket handkerchief or something of the kind: my own was among the missing. However, I lost nothing; for a benevolent lady, who happened to be one of the company, presented me with ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... are graven on my memory from those days, not by the thrilling experiences—"th' hairbreadth 'scapes"—but by the fellowship of the men I knew. An American general said to me recently that scouts were born, not made. It may be so, but it is surprising what opposite types of men became our best scouts. There were two without equal: one, city-bred, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... lost control of myself entirely, and felt that, come what might, the girl must be attended to. There's no doubt of it, your Nan is improved, and if this neighborhood is not made miserable by her piercing war-cries, her hairbreadth adventures, and her eccentric behavior generally, it is all owing to you. But here she comes herself! Put away your ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word 'Victoria,' it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... anywhere a body of men as fearless, as brave, and as efficient as the Fire Brigade of New York. I have known it well for twenty years, and I speak from a personal acquaintance with very many of its men, and from a professional knowledge of more daring feats, more hairbreadth escapes, and more brilliant work, than could well be recorded between the covers of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... of its sports, and the tales of hairbreadth escapes from elephants, which I had read in various publications, were sources of attraction against which I strove in vain; and I at length determined upon the very wild idea of spending ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last census are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They are simply men of complexions ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... are told of Fanning's exploits, of his audacity, his cruelty, his arrogance, and his wonderful successes and hairbreadth escapes. Such a state of affairs existed at one time in the counties ravaged by his band that even the pitiless Colonel Tarleton deplored its continuance. Fanning was born in Johnston county about the year 1754, and was ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... the Kennedys' in a pleasantly excited frame of mind and a cab. I just missed being late by a hairbreadth. The house was a big one, and everybody pertaining to it was big, except the host. Mark Kennedy was a little, thin man with a bald head. He didn't look like a political power, but that was all the more ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Wallace's name was frequently mentioned, and Archie always spoke with enthusiasm of his hero; and he could see that, although Mistress Bradfute said but little, she fully shared his views. It was but natural that Wallace's name should come so often forward, for his deeds, his hairbreadth escapes, his marvellous personal strength and courage, were the theme of talk in every Scotch home; but at Lanark at present it was specially prominent, for with his band he had taken up his abode in a wild and broken country known as Cart Lane Craigs, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... said, with a forced smile, "my story is not very interesting! No hairbreadth escapes, no thrilling adventures, no love intrigues—nothing but mental misery, for which few people have any sympathy. A child with a cut finger gets more universal commiseration than a man with a tortured ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... ring quite true, and in any case it is too much on the lines of 'Sunday reading' to please the small boy, who must, however, have found a thousand things in that volume that were to his taste—some of the wildest adventures, hairbreadth escapes, extraordinary meetings again and again with unique people—with Benedict Mol, for example, who was always seeking for treasure. Gypsies, bull-fighters, quaint and queer characters of every kind, come before us in rapid succession. Rarely, surely, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... she continued, "every one was saying that you had made up your mind to end your days in the hunting-field. All Melton was talking about your reckless riding, and your hairbreadth escapes." ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was progress through the lake. A canoe can be paddled only in almost smooth water, and we were frequently stormbound on some desolate island or point of land for two or three days at a time. When, after many adventures, some of which looked like hairbreadth escapes, we reached the Saskatchewan River, the eclipse was only three or four days ahead, and it became doubtful whether we should reach our station in time for the observation. It was to come off on the morning of July ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Querido, the self-proclaimed son of the pseudo-Messiah Shabbatai Zebi, "that the sinfulness of the world can be overcome only by a super-abundance of sin." This paved the way for the last of the long list of Messiahs, Jacob (Yankev Leibovich) Frank of Podolia. His experiences, adventures, and hairbreadth escapes, his entire career, beginning with his return from his travels in Turkey, through his conversion to Catholicism (1759), to the day of his death as "Baron von Offenbach," would furnish material for a stirring ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... sat watching the tremendous gallop. Nearer and nearer we drew to the waggon, and precisely at the right time Jack pulled the mare's bridle, and I cut her over the ear. Within a hairbreadth of the post on one side, and the van on the other, we cut ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... it was applied, and landed in the midst of the ruins caused by the dreadful explosion of gun-powder that had taken place the previous year: it had occasioned a fearful destruction of property and loss of life, and many hairbreadth escapes were recounted to us. We were told, indeed, that two children, after being buried for five days, were dug out alive; two officers were blown out of the window of an hotel, one of whom was uninjured, the other was only wounded by a splinter, whilst the Kitmutgar, who ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... the most part to carrying the injured to the various dressing- stations and to the train, and for these purposes they were always welcomed. They were soon well known at the trenches, and wherever the fighting was heaviest you might be sure to find one of them. Many were the hairbreadth escapes of which they had to tell, for if there were wounded they brought them out of danger, shells or no shells. And it says as much for the coolness of the drivers as for their good luck that no one was ever injured; for danger is halved by cool judgment, and a bold driver will come safely ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... Beaumanoir. Raoul played a bold game, and calling jealousy to his help, he went and confided the deed to Madame Pean, Bigot's fair charmer, entreating her immediate interference, and after some hairbreadth escapes, arrived at the Chateau with her just in time to save Mdlle de ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... where mounted high The giddy driver seems to fly, Were themes for harmless satire fit, And gave fresh force to Jenny's wit. Whate'er occurred, 'twas all delightful, No noise was harsh, no danger frightful. The dash and splash through thick and thin, The hairbreadth 'scapes, the bustling inn, (Where well-bred landlords were so ready To welcome in the 'squire and lady,) Dirt, dust, and sun, they bore with ease, Determined to ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... partly because he had so much more time than usual on his hands, before he was considered quite well enough to go into the school-room and employ himself with the others. He was allowed, however, to sit up and to read as many story-books as he liked. They were full of stirring adventure and hairbreadth escape. It was quite a common everyday thing in them for a boy to save a person's life and risk his own. Why could not something of the same ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... on the first floor, above an entresol, and looked into a back street. I raised my hand to open the window, knowing that on that action hung, by the merest hairbreadth, my chance of safety. They keep vigilant watch in a house of murder. If any part of the frame cracked, if the hinge creaked, I was a lost man! It must have occupied me at least five minutes, reckoning by time—five hours, reckoning by suspense—to open that window. I succeeded in doing it silently—in ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... After his hairbreadth escape from Varden, Rudge hid himself in a narrow street. When the next dawn came, as he searched for some dark den in which he might lie sheltered till another night, he saw Simon Tappertit issuing with his noisy apprentice crew from the cellar in which they held their meetings. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... into our faces that years could not remove it; the proved character of every man and officer on board; the implicit trust and the adoration we felt for our commander; the ludicrous situations which would occur even in the extremest danger and create mirth when death was staring you in the face; the hairbreadth escapes, and the indifference to life shown by all—when memory sweeps along those years of excitement even now, my pulse beats more quickly ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... most of the summer, and brought it nearer to the condition of Red Indian fighting, which was our favourite reading and our example of heroism. Again and again we studied the adventures of Bill Biddon, the Indian spy, not only on account of his hairbreadth escapes when he eluded the Indians after a miraculous fashion and detected the presence of the red varmint by the turning of a leaf on the ground, but also in order to find out new methods of deceit by ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... successful chase. As the appetites of those who had passed the day in the exciting toil were keen and the viands tempting, the first half-hour passed quickly, as all such half-hours are wont to pass, in garrulous recitals of personal exploits, and of the hairbreadth escapes of deer, which, had fortune not been fickle, should have now been present as trophies of the skill of the hand by which they fell. It was only after personal vanity was sufficiently appeased, and when the hunger even of a border-man could achieve no more, that the hunters ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... criticism to conceal the adventurous side of their calling, and then the criticism becomes a mere "notice," as it were, the relation of a journey where nothing but the distances and the geology of a new country should be set down; the glimpses of strange beasts, the dangers of flood and field, the hairbreadth escapes, and the sufferings (oh, the sufferings, too! I have no doubt of the sufferings) of the traveller being carefully kept out; no shady spot, no fruitful plant being ever mentioned either; so that the whole performance looks like a mere feat of agility on the part of a trained pen running ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... tormented him and made him shrink from being left alone with his father had quite vanished. He had argued himself into a state of mental tranquility where further punishment for his misdemeanor seemed superfluous. After his hairbreadth escape from disaster there was no danger, he argued, of his repeating the experiment, and was not this the very lesson all punishments sought to instill? If he had achieved this result without bothering his father about ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... distance of time, my eyes are dimmed with tears when I remember how he used to unlock that storehouse for my pleasure, and ransack his memory for stories either of his own personal perils by flood and field, or of the hairbreadth 'scapes of earlier travellers. For it was his amusement to amuse me; his happiness to make me happy. And I in return loved him with all my childish heart. Nay, with something deeper and more romantic ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... The thrilling adventures and hairbreadth escapes he went through in that memorable flight for duty and freedom will no doubt be found accurately recorded in his book on the war, which I know to be "in the making" at the present moment. Suffice it to say that he reached the ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... a cry of pain and terror, slipped to the ground, his nerve completely shaken. The sorrel lashed out with his hind feet, and missed his head by a hairbreadth. Pedro turned to run, stumbled, and ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... an Englishman who made an extensive journey encumbered with a large pack. He visited Paris, had some hairbreadth escapes, was stuck in the mud, but finally returned and became ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... kept us busy for a few days; but whatever of thankfulness we were capable of feeling was aroused by this hairbreadth escape from death through the wicked neglect of the most elementary duty of any man calling ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... I was, by the story of this hairbreadth escape, I asked Mrs. Gilmour more about those fearful weeks of suspense, and she assured me that they had been perfectly calm, and that they were entirely resigned to God's will, ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... in safety, and found his Loo Loo well and cheerful. Words are inadequate to describe the emotions excited by reunion, after such dreadful perils and hairbreadth escapes. Their marriage was solemnized as soon as possible; but the wife being an article of property, according to American law, they did not venture to return to the States. Alfred obtained some writing to do for a commercial while Loo ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... God and John Williams's The Redeemed Captive, both famous in their day, and still of lively interest. In the third group are the fighting stories, such as John Mason's History of the Pequot War. The adventures and hairbreadth escapes recorded as sober facts in these narratives were an excellent substitute for fiction during the Colonial period. Moreover, they furnished a motive and method for the Indian tales and Wild West stories which have since appeared ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... pieces of gold more; but looking towards the quarter from whence the sounds came, I saw a woman who resembled exactly the portrait I had. I drew it out and compared it, and perceived that there was not a hairbreadth of difference. A deep sigh escaped from my bosom, and I became senseless. Mubarak took me in his arms and sat down, and began to fan me; I recovered a little sensation, and was gazing at her, when Mubarak asked, "What is the matter with you?" I had not yet answered ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... other South Carolina leaders found places of refuge in the great swamps which are found in parts of the state; and from these they kept up an active warfare with the British. Their desperate battles, night marches, surprises, and hairbreadth escapes make this the most exciting and interesting period of the Revolution."—Johnston's History of ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... fire-arms. And in all these things his versatile head and ready hand were personally employed, not by deputy; while coupled with so much artistic taste was a violent passion for hunting, which carried him through many hairbreadth 'scapes. "It was plain," he used to say, "that God Almighty ruled the world, or how could things go on with a rogue like Alexander VI. at the head of the Church, and a mere huntsman like himself at the head of the Empire." His bon- mots are numerous, all thoroughly characteristic, and ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... standard of truthfulness shown by even the most enlightened pagans" have either forgotten the days when they read stories of adventure, or else have not, in reading this scene, realised properly the strain of hairbreadth peril that lies behind the comedy of it. A single slip in Iphigenia's tissue of desperate improvisations would mean death, and not to herself alone. One feels rather sorry for Thoas, certainly, and he is a very ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... the inspiring, purifying uplift of the flowers, drawing us up the hillside to the top. We find the voice—the Man—gently but with unflinching unbending determination that never yields a hairbreadth, insisting on our coming clear up to the topmost level. That's a wondrous order of words, and coupling of ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... charming woman of the world. Her mother, still living, had passed her time in the disturbed and exciting atmosphere of plots and counterplots; and she herself could tell him story after story of heartrending tragedies and of hairbreadth escapes, which had happened to her own relations and friends. From her he acquired those aristocratic longings which always characterised him, and through her influence he made acquaintance with several people of high position and importance, and thus was enabled to make an occasional ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... disquiet; the lover must have something to fear, or something to forgive, some hostility, or guilt, or absence, or death, to brave. Or the rapturous union of lovers must be remembered with a pang, when they have quarrelled; or its joy be sobered by recalling the perilous hairbreadth chances incurred in achieving ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Revolution by Gov. Tryon to capture or murder Washington. They communicate their knowledge to Gen. Putnam and are commissioned by him to play the role of detectives in the matter. They do so, and meet with many adventures and hairbreadth escapes. The boys are, of course, mythical, but they serve to enable the author to put into very attractive shape much valuable knowledge concerning one phase ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... as elemental dust, as again Jonathan saw those sisters in the castle of Dracula. He become so small, we ourselves saw Miss Lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a hairbreadth space at the tomb door. He can, when once he find his way, come out from anything or into anything, no matter how close it be bound or even fused up with fire, solder you call it. He can see in the dark, no small power this, in a world which is one half shut from the light. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... conversation I have mentioned that I overheard. I looked again upon the coffin. A wavering recollection of the incidents that led me hither, and of the stunning blow which I had received, occurred to me. I saw into what error appearances had misled these men, and shuddered to reflect by what hairbreadth means I had escaped ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... MacKenzie, but, as the sequence of events will show, it was not all over with the cause. A book of soldiers' yarns might be told of hairbreadth escapes, the aftermath of the rebellion. Knowing his side was doomed to defeat, Dr. Rolph tried to escape from Toronto. He was stopped by a loyalist sentry, but explained he was leaving the city to visit a patient. Farther on he had been arrested by a loyalist picket, when luckily a young ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Presently a dial announced the impossible, and they gazed at a device that seemed to be doing nothing whatever. The gyros appeared quite motionless. They spun with such incredible precision that it was not possible to detect that they moved a hairbreadth. And the whole complex device looked ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... tattoo against my ribs as I followed the Prince and Raasay to the drawing-room where his sister and Miss Macdonald awaited us. Eight months had passed since last I had seen my love; eight months of battle, of hairbreadth escapes, and of hardships scarce to be conceived. She too had endured much in that time. Scarce a house in Raasay but had been razed by the enemy because her brothers and their following had been "out" with us. I was to discover whether her liking for me had ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the father the child.'' But in that very discourse He also said: "He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me.'' "Go, preach,'' He commanded. "Woe is me if I preach not,'' cried Paul. Hostile rulers and priests and mobs and the bitter Cross did not swerve Him a hairbreadth from His purpose; nor did the rending of the early disciples in the arenas of Nero, the burning of a Huss and a Savonarola, the pyres of Smithfield, the dungeons of the Tolbooth and the thumb-screws of the Inquisition quench the zeal ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... my intention to have remained quietly on shore, after so many hairbreadth escapes and singular adventures; but I found France so changed, that I was disgusted with my own country. Every thing was upside down—the nobles, the wealthy, the talented, either were murdered, or living in abject ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... there were innumerable discretions in his valour. He knew to a hairbreadth how far he might go, and he went no farther. He respected existing prejudices because they existed. He didn't ask awkward questions; he didn't raise problems; he had the British capacity for doing serious things with an air ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Ken, but though he spoke quietly enough, he, too, felt a thrill. For five long hours they had been pushing east, or rather south-eastwards. They had crossed the main road leading to Great Maidos, they had had hairbreadth escapes sufficient to last most folk for a lifetime, and now at a little after one in the morning, they had crossed the whole peninsula, and were facing the famous Narrows, with their double cordon of forts on both sides of the Straits, ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... bear to be near sights without seeing them. I believed what I heard—never were such grand mountains! never such soul-stirring views! never such hairbreadth roads! I believed—and stayed in my cottonwood grove content. I knew how it all looked; did I not peer down into one canyon, holding my breath the while? and, with slightly differing arrangement of rocks and pine-trees and brooks, are not all canyons the same? Did I not gaze with awe at the ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Lorraine floated into others more entrancing. All the hairbreadth escapes of the heroine of the movie serial were hers, adapted by her native logic to fit within the bounds of possibility,—though I must admit they bulged here and there and threatened to overlap and to encroach upon the impossible. Over the hills where her father's vast herds grazed, ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... surface, under the friendly stars. The outcast and his strange brethren had played fair: this was the long roof, and close ahead rose the wall of some higher building, an upright blackness from which escaped two bits of light,—a right angle of hairbreadth lines, and below this a brighter patch, small and ragged. Here, louder, but confused with a gentle scuffing of feet, sounded the voices ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Maitland, "I was not to be caught napping. My previous adventures and hairbreadth escapes had rendered me unusually wary, and perceiving a number of people, among whom were two or three sheriff's officers, approaching my house, I at once interpreted their mission, and climbing through a trap-door leading on to the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... a wild story is told of his feats of arms and hairbreadth escapes while he wandered about without a country. Sir Walter Scott, in his poem, "The Lord of the Isles," records one of these legends. It is reported that, on one occasion, with his brother Edward and sister Isabel in a boat, he was driven by stress of weather ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... that, leaving no part uncolored, the town of Dornbirn grew scandalized at a mad peasant's audacity. The authorities took it in hand, and a solemn gendarme visited Hans Jakob with strict orders from government to desist from such perilous, hairbreadth inventions for the future. Poor Hans! he now regarded himself not only as the laughing-stock of the whole country, but as a ruined man. He had spent all his savings on his first venture; but neither ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... that this very defect, though it render the perusal of my journal still heavier, will assist in conveying an accurate idea of the nature of the country; it is not my fault if we met with no adventures, no hairbreadth escapes, or perilous encounters. I must ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... intrusion of her uncle of Cumberland,—her riding cross-legged to meet the judges of assize, when she acted in person at Appleby as High Sheriff by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland,—her hairbreadth escapes and dangers during the great rebellion, are characteristics of the woman, so striking in themselves, that they would require little adventitious ornament from the writer, who should take them as incidents ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... do business together today. You c'n be easy an' go a door further. We just dragged ourselves across the lake ... a hairbreadth an' we would've been stuck in the ice. We couldn't get forward an' we couldn't get backward. You can't give away somethin' ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... felt the war. One son had just been wounded, they knew not how severely, in France. If some unknown English, soldier on the Yser had raised his rifle just a hairbreadth higher the other son would be sleeping in the blood-soaked soil of Flanders instead of doing garrison duty in Hanover while recovering from a bullet which had passed through his head just under ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... coming in of hairbreadth escapes, of stray shots, apparently from the sky, picking off unfortunate wayfarers, and of whole parties of officers on their way back from the races in their cars being captured and held up by the Volunteers—and every story went one further ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... murderer, who is such by passion and by a wolfish craving for bloodshed as a mode of unnatural luxury, cannot relapse into inertia. Such a man, even more than the Alpine chamois hunter, comes to crave the dangers and the hairbreadth escapes of his trade, as a condiment for seasoning the insipid monotonies of daily life. But, apart from the hellish instincts that might too surely be relied on for renewed atrocities, it was clear that the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... of thrilling adventure, hairbreadth escapes, and deeds securing worldly applause, but quiet, unobtrusive and useful. Her constitution was naturally weak—her brain too active for her body, and as a consequence much mental and physical suffering was her portion. To her studies—French, Latin and drawing, besides the English ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... game. So in a lottery, the proprietors of the next numbers to that which wins the great prize are apt to account themselves much more unfortunate than their fellow-sufferers. In short, these kind of hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune, who may be considered as thus playing tricks with us, and wantonly diverting herself ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... them—one of those innumerable hairbreadth escapes that make the streets of New York as exciting as a battle—and as dangerous. For a few minutes Ursula's mind was deflected. But a fatality seemed to pursue the subject of the pale obscurity whose very name he was ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... petticoat or fringe of the smoked fibre of cocoa-nut leaf, not unlike tarry string; the lower edge not reaching the mid-thigh, the upper adjusted so low upon the haunches that it seems to cling by accident. A sneeze, you think, and the lady must surely be left destitute. "The perilous, hairbreadth ridi" was our word for it; and in the conflict that rages over women's dress it has the misfortune to please neither side, the prudish condemning it as insufficient, the more frivolous finding it unlovely in itself. Yet if a pretty Gilbertine would look ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... window as you came through the cut. You handled the gear like an imported chauffeur, but it was steep there on the approach, and the car began to skid. I saw in a flash what was going to happen; it made me limp as a rag. But there was a chance,—the merest hairbreadth, and you took it." He waited a moment, then said, smiling: "That was a picture worth snapping, but I was too batty to think of it in time. You see," he went on seriously, "the leading character in this story is ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... town. Edgar joined a group of several civilians, who, having either been hidden during the massacre or having escaped to the French lines, now came up, deeming that they would be safer near the troops than elsewhere. All had stories of hairbreadth escapes to relate, but, feigning not to be able to follow their narratives, Edgar, after a few words in Italian, joined the troops, who were engaged in eating the food that they had brought ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... to having been bailed up on the Cow Flat road by a gang of bushrangers, who demanded his money or his life and fired upon him. He described his hairbreadth escape with primitive eloquence, and was certain the gang meant to murder him. He was too agitated at the time to notice whether the bushrangers were men or boys. It was he who overtook the three young men, but they could not be induced to turn back till the ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... for his own pledged word—the regard which looks straightforward at the fact, and which never glances sidelong at the circumstances—and the utmost persistency of Pedgift Senior failed to move him a hairbreadth from the position which he had taken up. "No" is the strongest word in the English language, in the mouth of any man who has the courage to repeat it often enough, and Allan had the courage to repeat it ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... before been on board a whaler, and as I listened to the long yarns of the men describing their hairbreadth escapes and the exciting chases after the monsters of the deep, I felt, had I not had such cogent reasons for returning home, that I would very gladly have gone out to the South Seas to witness with my own eyes the scenes the men spoke of. Still I longed as much as ever to get ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... intimately associated with the bringing to justice of the Camden Town Gang—a group of daring and successful criminals which had baffled the London police for two years. Neale had read all about Starmidge's activities in both cases, and of the hairbreadth escape he had gone through in connection with the second. And he had formed an idea of him—which he now saw to be a totally erroneous one. For Starmidge did not look at all like a detective—in Neale's opinion. Instead ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... actually touched at the island, but had simply availed herself of its presence to gain a few miles by turning to windward in the smooth water under its lee. The discovery of the presence of the English ship did not appear to have caused any uneasiness to her commander, for he did not deviate a hairbreadth from his course, but stood on, maintaining his luff, the only indication that he had observed the Adventure at all being the display of the yellow flag of Spain, which he had hoisted to the head of his ensign staff within five minutes of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... adventures as contrasted to the observation and dissection of character and manners we find in the true "novel." Rather be it said that it is one in which the hidden soul is made patent under the touchstone of blood-stirring incidents, of hairbreadth risks, of recklessness or fierceness. There are soaring passions, secrets of the innermost heart, that can only be set free in desperate situations—and those situations are not found in the tenor in every-day, well-ordered life: they belong ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... their severed heads would soon have been placed over Temple Bar. The king's detectives hotly pursued them through the woodland paths of New England, and they would soon have been taken but for the aid they got from the people. Many are the stories of their hairbreadth escapes. Sometimes they took refuge in a cave on a mountain near New Haven, sometimes they hid in friendly cellars; and once, being hard put to it, they skulked under a wooden bridge, while their pursuers on horseback galloped by overhead. After lurking about New Haven and Milford for two ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... the New Hampshire grants, already known well, and destined to become famous as one of the great partisan leaders of the war, a wild and adventurous spirit who was fully a match for Dumas and Ligneris or St. Luc himself, a man whose battles and hairbreadth escapes surpassed fiction. Around him gathered spirits dauntless and kindred, and here already was the nucleus of the larger force that he was destined to lead in so many a daring deed. Now his fierce face showed pleasure, as he shook the hunter's powerful ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... whether in the form of plays or of novels. The mere sight of the printed page, broken up in dialogue, was anguish. Yet it was not the excitement of the fiction that I dreaded, for I consumed great numbers of narratives of travel, and was not in the least troubled by hairbreadth escapes, or shipwrecks, or perils from wild beasts or deadly serpents; it was the dramatic effect contrived by the playwright or novelist, and worked up to in the speech of his characters that I could not bear. I found ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... took, and Don openly rebelled when ordered to leap and show off his accomplishments; while the girls at college were both amused and worried by the ghosts who haunted the grounds at night, the unearthly melodies that disturbed their studious hours, and the hairbreadth escapes of this restless boy by flood and field and fire. Something happened at length which effectually sobered Ted and made a lasting impression on both the boys; for sudden danger and a haunting fear ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... played of hunting down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been his hairbreadth escapes. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... it makes her feel so and so, she says. But do you think that brings you a hairbreadth nearer? Hardly. Look at her, use your eyes as much as you please—but as soon as she marks what you are doing, she will say to herself—'Ho, here's this man looking at me with his eyes, and thinks to win me that way.' And ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... familiarly as "Cap'n Tom," commander of the privateering ship Fox, and numerous other vessels. This boat, a brigantine, was well named, for she was quick and sly and yet could fight on occasion. Many a rich haul he made in her in 1748, and many a hairbreadth escape shaved the impudent bow of her on those jolly, nefarious voyages of hers. One of her biggest captures was the French ship L'Amazone. In 1757 he took out the De Lancey, a brigantine, with fourteen guns, and made some more sensational captures. He is said to have plied a coastwise ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... the smoked fibre of cocoa-nut leaf, not unlike tarry string: the lower edge not reaching the mid-thigh, the upper adjusted so low upon the haunches that it seems to cling by accident. A sneeze, you think, and the lady must surely be left destitute. 'The perilous, hairbreadth ridi' was our word for it; and in the conflict that rages over women's dress it has the misfortune to please neither side, the prudish condemning it as insufficient, the more frivolous finding it unlovely in itself. Yet if a pretty Gilbertine would look her best, that ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ministry. To get away safely he adopted a ruse. He started out as if to go to Marseilles; but costuming himself as a courier, he proceeded instead toward Los Pasajos, where his ship and friends were awaiting him. The masquerade was successful until he reached St. Jean de Luz where a hairbreadth escape was in store for him. Here certain officers were watching for Lafayette. The clever daughter of an innkeeper recognized him as the young nobleman who had passed some days before on the way to Bordeaux. A sign ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... quarters that evening, and I reposed more peacefully in my bomb-proof than I had done for many nights past. The air at the convent had accomplished its healing work. We were both practically recovered, and we had had a hairbreadth escape; but I was firmly convinced that an underground chamber is preferable to a two-storied mansion when a 6-inch 100-pound shell gun, at a distance of two miles, is bombarding the town you happen to ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... much at home in the water as on the land; in fishing, sailing, climbing over the rocks, and wandering among the silent hills, he spent a free, careless, happy boyhood.' Every day had its own romance, its hairbreadth escape, its ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... not admit it?—to escape without having learned anything of the "Terror's" secrets would not have contented me at all. Although I could not thus far flatter myself upon the success of my campaign, and though I had come within a hairbreadth of losing my life and though the future promised far more of evil than of good, yet after all, a step forward had been attained. To be sure, if I was never to be able to re-enter into communication with the world, if, like this Master ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... had enough of the new country, weighed anchor, and steered away to the north. Dampier returned to England even a poorer man than he had left it twelve years before. After countless adventures and hairbreadth escapes, after having sailed entirely round the world, he brought back with him nothing but one unhappy black man, "Prince Jeoly," whom he had bought for sixty dollars. He had hoped to recoup himself by showing the poor native ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... be no more than a faithful narrative of five years spent on the goldfields and in the far interior of Western Australia. Any one looking for stirring adventures, hairbreadth escapes from wild animals and men, will be disappointed. In the Australian Bush the traveller has only Nature to war against—over him hangs always the chance of death from thirst, and sometimes from ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... realise when I met him on the barrack-square at Limerick how fate would throw us together upon the scorching sands and rocky ridges of Gallipoli, nor could either of us foresee the hairbreadth escapes and queer corners in which we found ourselves at Suvla Bay and on ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... to rest for a short time and recuperate themselves; for they were nearly exhausted by their efforts to escape from the bloody scalping-knives of the Scarred-Arms. They kindled a fire, around which the six warriors huddled, telling each other, as is the savage wont, of their numerous hairbreadth escapes and single combats with the common enemy; also trying to devise some means of eluding the Scarred-Arms, who they knew to be still ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... lackey, and every political and religious renegade in the kingdom. His fury was that of an angry bull tormented by gnats. His worst passions were aroused, his most violent prejudices confirmed. But the abuse did not divert him by a hairbreadth from his preconceived plan. He proceeded with deliberation to carry on in "The Romany Rye" the story so abruptly suspended at the close of the hundredth chapter of "Lavengro." The first chapters of "The Romany ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... his arm, and heard a heavy thud at his side. It was a ripe Durian which had fallen from an immense height and missed him by a hairbreadth. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and, if but half of what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the best pages of the American novelist. Poor man after having during so many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... with the settlement of that state. Spending much time in the saddle, while a mere boy he crossed the plains many times in company with bull-trains; on some of these trips he met with thrilling adventures and had several hairbreadth escapes from death at the hands of Indians. Then, for a while, he was dashing over the plains as a pony-express rider. Soon afterwards, mounted on the high seat of an overland stagecoach, he was driving a six-in-hand ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody |
