"Bracing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and search his very soul to see of what quality he was. Far better a man should die than falter. He had not failed to notice the startled look in Cameron's eyes when Hobbs blurted out his news. Some way must be found for the bracing up of the nerve, the steadying of the courage ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the skipper, bracing up and smiling sweet as he could for the ache in his back. 'I'll 'elp you out. You trust your Uncle George. Not on account of what you're going to give me, you understand,' says he. 'It would be a pity if ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... beacon was now finished, with its supports and bracing-chains, and whatever else was considered necessary for its stability, in so far as the season would permit; and although much was still wanting to complete this fabric, yet it was in such a state that it could be left without ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... previous day. Thus for several days we travelled on, resting during the night at rude tambos, the inhabitants of which, directly Don Jose spoke to them, willingly undertook to give us accommodation. The weather was fine, the air pure, bracing, and exhilarating; and in spite of the fatigue we underwent, none of us suffered. Ellen and Maria bore the journey wonderfully. Although we were making our way towards the east, frequently we found ourselves riding round a mountain with our backs to the rising ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... the new goal posts and ball, which Mr Freshfield, a junior master, was heard to explain was a present from the head-master to the school, had also a mollifying effect. And the bracing freshness of the air and the self-respect engendered by the sensation of their flannels (for most of the players had contrived to provide themselves with armour of this healthy material) completed their reconciliation to their lot, and drove all feelings of resentment against their tyrant, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... And when (bracing myself at last) I asked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from me, and he answered "No," I might have been relieved, but I wasn't. Though I did not know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I began ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... of rough but picturesque highlands, which embrace the central ranges of the Suliman system (the prehistoric home of the Pathan highlander), where vegetation is often alpine, and the climate clear and bracing and subject to no great extremes of temperature. The average breadth of this northern Pathan district is 150 m., but it narrows to less than 100 m. on the line of the Gomal, and expands to more than 200 m. on the line of the railway. Here all the main ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... honesty, scrupulous accuracy, chivalrous fairness, endless docility to facts, disinterested collaboration, unconquerable hopefulness and perseverance, manly renunciation of popularity and easy honours, love of bracing labour and strengthening solitude; these, and many other cognate qualities," says Baron von Huegel, "bear upon them the impress of God and His Christ." What Dr. Inge, who quotes these words, says of Plotinus declares his own character. He speaks of "the intense honesty of the man, who never ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... the pilot was sweating and swearing. The haze began to clear as they neared the ground, but the ports were too high for Duke to see anything but the underside of the thick clouds. He stood up and headed for the lift, bracing himself as the ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... fascination about the great, black leaves floating there, which seemed to invite the lad to strip off the light flannels in which he had slept, to lower himself gently over the side, and lie in and on and amongst them, with the cool water bracing and invigorating him ready for the heat and toil ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... new proposal, I mean Honolulu. You would get the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, would you not? for bracing. And so much less sea! And then you could actually see Vailima, which I would like you to, for it's beautiful and my home and tomb that is to be; though it's a wrench not to be planted in Scotland—that I can never deny—if I could only be buried in the hills, under the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... different thing on the gun-deck of a frigate, from what the gentle and sequestered Wordsworth found it at placid Rydal Mount in Westmoreland. In a frigate, you cannot sit down and meander off your sonnets, when the full heart prompts; but only, when more important duties permit: such as bracing round the yards, or reefing top-sails fore and aft. Nevertheless, every fragment of time at his command was religiously devoted by Lemsford to the Nine. At the most unseasonable hours, you would behold him, seated apart, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... his sowing had done, for by day the bright sunshine shone down on standing wheat and lengthening rows of sheaves. It was in the bracing cold of sunrise the work began, and the first pale stars were out before the tired men and jaded horses dragged themselves home again. Not infrequently it happened that the men wore out the teams and machines, but ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... and light in her eyes which puzzled him. Her expression seemed to speak less of passive grief, than of some active determination—some strong desire. She had all the appearance of a woman who was bracing herself up for some ordeal, nerving herself with all the stimulus of a firm will to triumph over her natural feelings, and follow out a difficult purpose. Mr. Thurwell scarcely recognized his own daughter. She was no longer ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whose fates were linked irrevocably by love. I stooped suddenly, under the sway of an impulse, I could not resist, and kissed her upturned face, turning almost dizzy in the act. Then I broke from her clasp, and bracing myself for the task to which we stood committed ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... be no doubt that in these ways the Crusades were for our forefathers in Europe the most bracing and stimulating events that occurred in the whole millennium between the complicated disorders of the fifth century and the outburst of maritime discovery in the fifteenth. How far they justified themselves from the military point of view, it is not so easy to say. On the one ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... stubborn were all her replies and assertions; she did not contradict herself once. Waymark marvelled at her appearance and manner. The venom of malice had acted upon her as a tonic, strengthening her intellect, and bracing her nerves. Once she looked directly into Ida's face ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... like an algebraic symbol but still joyful; and the reader will find there a caput mortuum of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him a bracing, writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... next few days, regardless of the heat, George toiled early and late in his father's office, incited by the hope of soon taking the old man away on a visit to the more bracing climate of the North. In the evenings he refreshed himself by a long swim in the harbor, and by sailing his boat over ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... obstacle to know whether to relax or stiffen, or rise or fall to meet it. Just before she strikes the ground on the down plunge, see the wonderful hind hoofs sweep themselves forward, surveying the ground by touch, and bracing themselves, in a fraction of time so small that the eye cannot follow, for the shock of what lies beneath them, whether rock or rotten wood or yielding moss. The fore feet have followed the quick eyes above, and shoot ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... did often in this way Master my fancy while I wandered on With that revered companion. And sometimes—465 When to a convent in a meadow green, By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile, And not by reverential touch of Time Dismantled, but by violence abrupt— In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies, 470 In spite of real fervour, and of that Less genuine and wrought up within myself— I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh, And for the Matin-bell to sound no more Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross 475 High on ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... wrought-iron vertical rods, with horizontal tie-bars to resist the thrust. The suspension-bolts are enclosed within spandril pillars of cast iron, which give great stiffness to the superstructure. This system of longitudinal and vertical bracing has been much admired, for it not only accomplishes the primary object of securing rigidity in the roadway, but at the same time, by its graceful arrangement, heightens the beauty of the structure. The arches consist of four main ribs, disposed ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... crest of the eastern side of the Rio Chico Canon, in an ideal place with bracing air. A fine, sloping meadow afforded quite an arcadian view with the animals peacefully grazing and resting; but looking westward, the eye revelled in the grand panorama of the sierra. The two sides of the Rio Chico Valley rise here evenly from the bottom of the gorge so as to suggest the letter ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the drawing-room babbled, while Agnes stared into the fire, bracing herself to encounter Lambert, who would surely arrive within the next two or three days, and while Miss Greeby savagely rebuked herself for having so foolishly intimated her departure. Then the men straggled in from their wine, and bridge became the order ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... example, what an inspiration, what a grand symphony of concentrated harmony! Germany was the source of Protestantism and therefore of modern morals—honest, uncompromising morals. German discipline would have a bracing, solidifying effect on a typically casual, slack American youth like Gard, whose latent capabilities were never likely to be fully called upon in the comparatively hit-and-miss organization of ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... they were cut off from all the world. England was an integral part of the empire, where, if the proconsul or legionary commander had not the hot sun and blue sky of Italy, there were partial compensations in the bracing air which renewed his wasted strength, the new and peculiar luxuries in the shape of shellfish and wildfowl that enriched his table, and the facilities which his insular authority afforded him for strengthening his political position, and plotting ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... little way up the beach. The respirator about my mouth, charged with some chemical substance I did not know the use of, permitted me to breathe at first with some ease. And what was more extraordinary was this, that while in the woods the fog had seemed to suffocate me, here it was exhilarating; bracing a man's steps so that he seemed to walk on air; exalting him so that his mind was on fire and his head full of the wildest notions. No coward that ever lived would have known a moment's fear under the stimulation of that clear blue vapour. I bear witness, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... an unlucky moment, for continual racketing in the country had quite unhinged me; I required bracing, and had quite lost my colour. My paternal relation, however, (Houlditch), undertook my repair, and I was very soon exhibited painted green, and ticketed, 'For ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... any dressing-bell that she had better get up. So up she jumped, and set about the business of dressing with great alacrity. Where was the distress of last night? Gone with the darkness. She had slept well; the bracing atmosphere had restored strength and spirits; and the bright morning light made it impossible to be dull or downhearted, in spite of the new cause she thought she had found. She went on quick with the business of the toilet. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... said he. He sat up, and, bracing himself against the roll of the vessel, he opened the bag and carefully examined its contents. In an inner pocket he found an old letter of Doctor Glyphic's to Thor; another from Thor to his son, dated three years back; and finally a diary kept by Balder Helwyse, which gave Manetho all the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... old rocks which the steam heaved up and burst before it could get out. And what are the black lines across, marked E E E? They are the streams of lava which have burrowed out, some covered up again in cinders, some lying bare in the open air, some still inside the cone, bracing it together, holding it up. Something like this is the ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... inspiration. Vandy and I separated instinctively without a word. You want to be with the Taj alone, for it leads you captive and invites to secret communion. I wandered around many hours, gazing at every turn, deliciously, not joyously happy; there was no disposition to croon over a melody, nor any bracing quality in my thoughts—not a trace of the heroic—but I was filled with happiness which seemed to fall upon me gently as the snow-flakes fall, as the zephyr comes when laden with sweet odors. I sat ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... excited, determined to hold fast to that which she had, twisted the free end of the rope about her arm and grasped the tautened strand with both hands, at the same time bracing her feet and pulling ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... was to wait and hope. No human force could prevail over the storm. Bracing themselves against whatever offered, and clinging by their hands to projections, the adventurers in the cabin expected every moment to be their last. Washington, who had gone out to the engine room, came ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... have just returned from a walk to the top of a hill, on the opposite side of the flat on which the town is situated from that which we mounted yesterday. The day is charming, clear, with a fanning, bracing air. We had a finer view almost than yesterday. The same character of scenery all round the island. Spacious flats on the sea-board under irrigation; about one-half of the fields covered (now) with water, and the other ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... of him, right down to the camp stretched a long, sloping rock, whose smooth face, glistened in the light of the camp fire. As the men rose to prepare for the night, Tad began pulling himself cautiously back, bracing himself with one hand. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... with frost. The deck passengers shivered around the engines and endeavored to extract heat from them. The cabin passengers, excepting myself, were wrapped in their fur coats as if it were midwinter. I walked about in my ordinary clothing, finding the air bracing but not uncomfortable. I could not understand how the Russians felt the cold when it did not affect me, and was a little proud of my insensibility to frost. Conceit generally comes of ignorance, and as I learned, wisdom I lost my ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... marching at route step, bivouac fires, around which groups were eating their breakfast, orderly sergeants insisting in very naughty yet impressive language on the use of sand paper on muskets already bright, musicians rehearsing some new march, little boys bracing up drums half as high as themselves, important adjutants riding to and fro to hurry up the formation of their respective regiments, elegantly attired aides-de-camp galloping like mad and endeavoring to avoid mud puddles, batteries thundering along, as if eager to unlimber and fire at some ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... her son George, after the laughter had subsided, "that, however much you might like the aspect, the situation would be a little too bracing for you." ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... strong was little David, for the sun gave him rosy cheeks, and the bracing wind made him long to run races with his own shadow, ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... Bracing strongly back, with the reins wound around his tough hands, and with a look in his face that should have given courage even to the Hart boys, Dab strained at his task as bravely as he had stood at the tiller of the "Swallow" in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... years, and trying to enjoy it to the utmost. She has no household cares. Mr. Bowie manages everything, and does so, in order to keep up the honour of the family, on a somewhat magnificent scale. The children, in that bracing air, are better than she has ever seen them. She has Valencia all to herself; and Elsley, in spite of the dark fancies over which he has been brooding, is better behaved, on the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... indeed looking. Far down below a few cabins appeared like little toy houses, while away beyond could be seen the blue cold waters of the North Pacific. The air was becoming keen. But it was bracing ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... ships; and a sort of dull and indefinite longing took possession of me and I felt as if I would like to be out of doors myself in search of pleasurable and exciting adventure. I hungered to be in the bracing wintry night air, or in one of those foreign lands where the sun beats down with tropical warmth; I yearned to be out and singing like them, as loud as possible, just for the joy of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... bracing to watch one's friend burst into bloom!... I needed the stimulus, too. You are ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... confidence. It was a blow on a wound. She glanced at her sister entreatingly. And what she fancied she read in the other's eyes instantly altered the desire to turn—made her send the mules forward at a better pace. Marylyn was sitting stiffly upright, bracing herself with her hands. Her head was up, her look was eager and fixed. There was a smile ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... cloudless, bracing autumn morning. I rose gayly, with the pleasant conviction on my mind that our experiment had thus far been successful ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... been close, damp weather," said Henrietta, surprised at the accurate remembrance, which she could not confute. "She misses the cold bracing wind." ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... light was the white glare of ice. The only guide across that heaving traverse, the unerring instinct of that tall figure at the bow, now plunging forward, now bracing back, now shouting out a "Steady!" that the wind carried to our ears, thrusting his pole to right, to left in lightning strokes, till the canoe suddenly darted up the roaring current of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... heart was of the old-fashioned kind, and his fancy was not fickle; besides, being now, in a measure, launched upon the subject, of love, so awful to approach, he was unwilling thus soon to leave a theme so sweet, yet so formidable. Therefore, crossing his legs, and bracing up against the chair-back; he determined, now or never, to give her an inkling of his feelings, an intention so very palpable, that Nattie was glad indeed to hear from ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... day in November, when the sun seemed making a last effort to prevail against coming winter. The wind was fresh and bracing, and nature appeared bright and cheerful, on ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... men live better, to work out a moral reformation,—why, there is no need for a Gospel at all. If the change were a simple change of habit and action on the part of men, we could do without a Christ. If the change simply involved a bracing ourselves up to behave better for the future, we could manage somehow or other about as well as or better than we have managed in the past. But if redemption be the giving of life from God; and if redemption ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... all so discreet. One of the Kents of Gracedieu tried to trip me by thrusting his cane between my legs. But! was ready for him, and, pulling up quick and bracing my knees, I snapped the thing short, so that he was left ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... rear the structure. So, with "switch" upon "switch," and "braid" surrounding "braid," a "frizz" here and a "frizz" there, with a few bows for capitals, and a few curls for streamers, and twenty-four hair-pins for fastenings and bracing-rods, the tower was finished, in less than half the time, as she assured him, owing to the advantageous position she enjoyed in her work, that it would take her to rear the same structure on her own head, and it was precisely like what other ladies ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... force of the hurricane was not so fiercely felt, and where the angry argument of the sea was deadened by distance. There was a lovely perfume everywhere,—the dash of rain on the herbs and field flowers had brought out their scent, and the freshness of the stormy atmosphere was bracing and exhilarating. He put Charlie down on the grass, and was amused to see how obediently the tiny creature trotted after him, close at his heels, in the manner of a well-trained, well-taught lady's favourite. There was no ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... and his friends having walked their blood into active circulation, proceeded cheerfully on. The paths were hard; the grass was crisp and frosty; the air had a fine, dry, bracing coldness; and the rapid approach of the gray twilight (slate-coloured is a better term in frosty weather) made them look forward with pleasant anticipation to the comforts which awaited them at their hospitable entertainer's. It was the sort of afternoon that might induce a ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... surrounded by a sort of halo. The sky seemed of a more vivid blue, the grass of a brighter emerald than in the States where women do not enjoy equal rights. The leaves of the many cottonwood trees twinkled pleasantly in the clear sunlight, the air was fresh and bracing and the snow mountains looked down upon the city like a visible realization of ideals." The presence of the visitors soon became known and an impromptu reception was held in the large waiting room of the station, which was beautified by potted ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... towards the door, and took the step unsteadily. He stopped for a second, bracing his shoulders; then he walked firmly across the room. While his hand was on the handle, he heard Mr. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... seen some of them swallow sand, ashes, and do their utmost to destroy their stomachs to get pale complexions. To make a fine Spanish body, what racks will they not endure of girding and bracing, till they have notches in their sides cut into the very quick, and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... it was that the men got the means of recruiting their strength in this manner, as the latter part of the march was a terrible teaser. We marched off from this place about twelve. Although we had found the morning pleasant enough, with a fine bracing breeze, yet in the afternoon, about half an hour after starting, the wind went down, and the sun shone out terribly; the sand in some parts was half knee deep, and although there was no breeze to blow it in our faces, ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... to have recovered her spirits under the influence of her friends, and in the fresh, bracing air of the Winter woods. Letters from home came for all the girls and boys, but ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... elated. He refused to question the likelihood of such tales. He was hungry for just such cheering stories of success. And when he got them, he devoured them with avidity, without ever looking at them. The effect on him was bracing. It was glorious, he told himself, to have taken part in such happenings. The only cloud on his horizon was the fact that the chance to do distinguished acts had never come to him. The Regimental Colours never required saving under ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... reminiscence. "A girl among the anarchists!" he exclaimed to his present biographer; "if they had said 'A man among the anarchists' it would have been more of an adventure." He is ready to tell other tales of this eccentric environment, most of which does not convey an impression of a very bracing atmosphere. That revolutionary society must have contained many high public ideals, but also a fair number of low private desires. And when people blame Bernard Shaw for his pitiless and prosaic coldness, his cutting refusal ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... his wild songs, and Llewelyn and Howel sat by the glowing fire of logs that blazed in the long winter evenings upon his hearth, listening to his fierce words, and hardening their hearts and bracing their wills against any kind of submission to a foreign yoke. A burning hatred against the English king also consumed them. Had they not, at the cost of most bitter humiliation, gone to him as vassals, ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... owing to the proximity of much of the shire to the sea. The mean annual temperature at Braemar is 43.6 deg. F., and at Aberdeen 45.8 deg. . The mean yearly rainfall varies from about 30 to 37 in. The summer climate of the upper Dee and Don valleys is the driest and most bracing in the British Isles, and grain is cultivated up to 1600 ft. above the sea, or 400 to 500 ft. higher than elsewhere in North Britain. Poor, gravelly, clayey and peaty solis prevail, but tile-draining, bones and guano, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the cultivator soon learns to make many deft applications of ingrafting. Sometimes a piece of bark may be used as a patch. In the bracing of crotches in young trees, the two trunks may be joined by uniting a small branch from either one, twisting them together to form a bridge like a bolt; they can be made to grow together, forming a solid union. Bolting the parts with iron rods, or holding ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... suddenly come to a stop, bracing himself for the shock, and when Gladiator came to the end of the rope he turned completely over, and landed on his back with a ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... and they had rolled up a huge boulder against the small entrance, bracing it so that it would be impossible for her to get out from the inside. Then they ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... help it, Sir John; but a craft that is foreordained to be a wrack, will be a wrack, in spite of reefing and bracing. Look ahead, you Dick Lion—ay, there you ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to Norway. I was well enough off. I rather enjoyed myself. Perhaps I required a little bracing up for the task that lies before me." He ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... tone of the book is bracing, and its spirit excellent; the work cannot fail to delight as well ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... have been deserved. The young nobleman, who was then in his thirty-fourth year, had the qualities of a leader of men. The army felt him, from general to drummer-boy. He was its soul; and while breathing into it his own energy and ardor, and bracing it by stringent discipline, he broke through the traditions of the service and gave it new shapes to suit the time and place. During the past year he had studied the art of forest warfare, and joined Rogers and his rangers in their scouting-parties, sharing ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... has hitherto been the by-word for perfidious treachery. The heartening surprises of gallant little Belgium and Serbia; the renascence of Russia; the wonderful upleap to the needs of the times by Great, and still more by Greater Britain; and, not least, the bracing of the loins of our closest Allies just across ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... telling the judge that he felt highly complimented, but it was a mistake to ring in that snow stuff on Alaska. She'd suffered from it too long. He was going on to paint Alaska as something like Alabama—cooler nights, of course, but bracing. Alonzo still had Beryl Mae by the scarf, telling her how flowerlike ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... His chief experience in the weight of human-kind had been in wrestling matches at the armory, and only the largest and most muscular men in the regiment cared to try a bout with him. Of course Peter knew as a fact that women were lighter than men, but after bracing himself, much as he would have done to try the cross-buttock with two hundred pounds of bone and brawn, he marvelled much at the ease with which he transferred the rider. "She can't weigh over eighty pounds," he thought. Which was foolish, for ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... with earnest sympathy, at each step helped out the broken words, and showed her comprehension of the pauses. She was a perfect listener in all but one respect; she would not give the counsel Caroline wanted; and she would not have been Marian, she would not have had her own reality and bracing severity, if she had. She could not cheer Caroline up, bid her banish fear, and look forward to happiness; she could not even tell her there was no help for it: she only said, "I don't know," and sat considering ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... allowed themselves to be hauled stiff-legged through the deep snow in their effort to keep the sleds from over-running the dogs. It was exciting work. The men throwing their utmost weight upon the lines sought every obstruction, swerving against trees, bracing against roots, grasping at branches, and floundering through bushes. Often they fell, and occasionally, when they failed to regain their footing, were mercilessly dragged downhill; the heavy sleds, gathering momentum, overtook ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... bracing that we all feel equal to anything. Mr. Struble has already killed a fine "spike" elk for camp eating. We camped in a bunch, and we have camp stoves so that in case of rain or snow we can stay indoors. Just now we have a huge camp fire around which we ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... picture, while Barraclough embraced the opportunity to slip the crook of his stick through the handle of the bag and tug hard. But the bag was heavier than he had imagined. It scarcely moved and only by bracing his foot on the seat opposite was he able to upset its balance. Just a fraction of a second too soon the man turned. Conceivably he saw murder in Barraclough's eyes or else he was unusually quick at grasping a ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... the bridge, they saw strong columns of Greek infantry, dead black in the dim light, crossing the stream and slowly deploying on the other shore. It was a bracing sight to the dragoman, who then went into one of his absurd babbling moods, in which he would have talked the head off any man who was not born in a country laved by the childish Mediterranean. Coleman could not understand what he said to the soldiers as they passed, but it was evidently ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... which he had boasted to his waiting comrades. True, it had been only a boast; never yet had he dared to lay violent hands upon her; but with the thoughts of the delicious, cool bock or Culmbacher bracing his nerves, he was near to upsetting his own theories of the treatment due by a gentleman to a lady. But, with his loafer's love for the more artistic and less strenuous way, he chose diplomacy first, the high card in the game—the assumed ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Honfleur, and Harfleur, and most people know Ste. Adresse and Etretat. The views and the drives are not equal to those about Ilfracombe and Lynton, and Etretat itself is only a rather inferior kind of Lynmouth. Those who want bracing won't select either Ste. Adresse or Etretat or Havre for a prolonged stay. Taking for granted the short-holiday-maker will visit all these places, let me give him a hint for one day's enjoyment, for which, I fancy, I shall earn his eternal gratitude. Order a carriage with two horses at Havre, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... entranced with Chicago. She thrived under its more bracing air. She loved the bustle, the stir. We were now in the midst of the presidential campaign, and Mammy and Jenny saw political enthusiasm in a new phase. Marching men passed through the street. There were shouts, torches, many speeches ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... see them slowly close again. The sight of the encircling peaks and ridges, rising in solemn grandeur out of the darkness into the light of the stars, comforted her. The night wind, drawing down the canyon, was sweet and bracing with the odor of the hills. The roar of the tumbling Clear Creek, filling the night with its deep-toned music, soothed and calmed her troubled mind. Presently, she would be with her friends, and, somehow, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... had turned rosy at the close and then white with the lesser light of night, so did the summer now fade away in a blaze of colour, giving one last display of what life could do before leaving the land to the shroud of the winter's snow. Cool bracing winds, of which there had already been foretaste, now swept the land. The sun seemed brighter because the air was clearer. The college boys had returned, and were heard daily shouting at their games. A few days made all this outward difference. No other difference ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... meerschaum-pipe I ever saw. Lucky? Yes, he was—and especially so, and more than all else—on account of the joyousness of his soul. There was a contagious and a godlike hilarity in his broad, open brow, his frank, laughing eyes, and his mobile lips. He seemed to carry about with him a bracing moral atmosphere. The sight of him had the same effect on the dull man of ordinary life that the Himalayan air has on an Indian invalid; and yet Jack was head-over-heels in debt. Not a tradesman would trust him. Shoals of little bills were sent him every day. Duns without number ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... to Hector reassuringly and backed him several paces. He was quick to grasp her desire and eager to fall in with it. She felt him bracing himself under her, and she laughed in sheer delight as she set him at ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... be used as rests for the feet. Here the men, five on a side, march like a chain-gang, backward and forward; placing one end of the pole in the bed of the stream, resting the other in the hollow of the shoulder near the arm-pit, and bracing themselves by their feet against these bars, they pry ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... she was inspirited by perceiving any door of escape. Any vivid sensation was welcome in the irksome vacancy that pursued her in the absence of immediate excitement. Devoid of the interest of opposition, and of the bracing changes to the Holt, her intercourse with the Charterises had become a weariness and vexation of spirit. Idle foreign life deteriorated them, and her principle and delicacy suffered frequent offences; but like all living wilfully in temptation, she seemed under a spell, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which had been awakened since his marriage. In speaking of his family, his wife, and his children, he is always full of thanks to God; his heart swells with emotion, and he breathes amid his heated labours and struggles a fresh and bracing air. Just as, during the Diet of Augsburg, he had pointed out encouragingly to the Elector the happy Paradise which God had allowed to bloom for him in his little boys and girls, so he himself was permitted to experience and enjoy this Paradise at home. In his domestic no less than in his ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... to play a little at Monte Carlo and cruise a little in the Mediterranean—to kill time through the detestable winter, which made itself felt wherever he was; and she went to London to see about Francie's gown, and up north to bracing Scotland, and down to Wellwood for Christmas, and back to the racket of London in the spring; and neither of them had spent a lonelier time in all their lives. Quite a fresh and peculiar sense of homelessness and uncomforted old age took possession ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... suspicious, had been a murderer. The cold, unkindly memory slid along his senses like a snake. On the edge of the sloping road-bank, studded with little yellow flowers, just where the trees stopped, Pete set down his load and waited, instinctively bracing his body, drawing it back beneath the shelter of ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... I felt that this mere hovering on the outskirts of debate must not last too long, and that nothing was more hazardous to final reputation than to be too slow in attempting to lay its first stone. Yet I felt some difficulty in every great question; and, after bracing my nerves for the onset, I always found my courage fail at the sight of the actual encounter. I felt as a young knight might have felt in some of the tilting-matches of old—master of his charger in the open field, and delighting in the pressure of his armour and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... in, and Mrs. Cody got breakfast for us. He refused the drink I set out for him. I felt that I needed a good deal of bracing in this writ of replevin business, so I drank his as ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... of his long arm. And as she looked, a lusty bass—heavy, full of fight—took the hook, and she saw the man stand motionless, intent, alert, at the instant he first felt the fish. Then she caught the skillful turn of his wrist as he struck—quick and sure; watched, with breathless interest as—bracing himself—the fisherman's powerful figure became instinct with life. With the boiling water grasping his legs, clinging to him like a tireless wrestler seeking the first unguarded moment; and with the plunging, tugging, rushing giant at the other end of the silken line—fighting ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... against the insipidity which is too often an accompaniment of conjugal intercourse the institution might well seem to deserve a more tolerant and impartial investigation than it has yet received at the hands of our sociologists. A survival so picturesque could hardly be expected to outlive the bracing air of the nineteenth century. The north wind blew and by 1840 the cicisbeatura was ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... answered the question you put to me," he said, "but I'm going to make a fight of it. Dan Boundary is too old in the bones and hates exercise too much to survive the keen air and the bracing employment of Dartmoor—if we ever got there," he ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... both of them upon the body, and then at last they had the poor boy down, with his face upon the ground and his arms pinned to his sides, and Blunt, bracing himself for the stroke, with a grin of rage raised a heavy clog for one terrible blow that should finish ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... was as if, unconsciously, he was bracing himself for a blow. He had grown a little white; but his voice was quite ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... was in sight from the loopings of the eastern approach. Lidgerwood, scanning the grades as the service-car swung from tangent to curve and curve to tangent up the steep inclines, was beginning to think of breakfast. The morning air was crisp and bracing, and he had been getting the full benefit of it for an hour or more, sitting under the umbrella roof at the observation end ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... was fine; the air bracing. The utmost strength of poor little Diana, and she applied it well, made no impression whatever on the pony's tough mouth. Influences of every kind were favourable. On the illogical principle, probably, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... could learn to make his statements as firm and unswerving as the horizon-line,—his continuity of thought as marked, yet as unbroken, as yonder soft gradations by which the eye is lured upward from lake to wood, from wood to hill, from hill to heavens,—what more bracing tonic could literary culture demand? As it is, Art misses the parts, yet does not grasp ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... stronger cynic. But she had eluded him, eluded him at the very moment of her freshness and happiness and triumph. What defeat to his proud spirit was working now in him? What longing? What fierce determination to secure even now his ends? The change that I fancied in him was perhaps no more than his bracing of his strength and courage to face new conditions. Death had robbed him of his possession—so much the worse ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... it, going down hill, and got caught in the skid. It had been under an artillery corps and field-guns at a gallop, when the Queen revoo'd the troops in Hyde Park. And look at it now! Horse-kicks and wheel-crushing really had a bracing tendency; gave the constitution tone, and seldom left ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... in Massachusetts offer to summer visitors as many attractions as does Princeton. The air is clear and bracing, the landscape charming, and the pleasant, shady woodroads afford opportunities for drives through most picturesque scenery. Near at hand is the lake, and above it towers Wachusett. It has been proposed to run a railroad up to and around the mountain, but ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... our first exploratory ramble in Eigg an hour before noon. The day was bracing and breezy, and a clear sun looked cheerily down on island, and strait, and blue open sea. We rowed southwards in our little boat, through the channel of Eilean Chaisteil, along the trap-rocks of the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... her eyes for a minute, then she opened them and looked steadily at her father, her childish lips became slightly compressed, it was as if a world of strength suddenly entered her little frame, as though, dying as she was, she was bracing ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... trust it will not spread, though 'twoulde be unadvised to goe needlesslie into the infected Quarter. Uncle Dick would fayn take us Girls down to Oxon, but Father sayd he could not spare us while Mother was at Stoke; and that there was noe prevalent Distemper, this bracing Weather, in our Parish. Then felle a musing; and Uncle Dick, who loves a Jeste, outs with a large brown Apple from's Pocket, and holds it aneath Father's Nose. Sayth Father, rousing, "How far Phansy goes! thy Voice, Dick, carried me back ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... but the hillsides are for the most part bare and green. Piora in fact is a fine breezy open upland valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of cow about it; it is rich in rhododendrons, and all manner of Alpine flowers, just a trifle bleak, but as bracing as the Engadine itself. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... more favorable than the other for beginning a new life, nor did there seem to be, as he went along, any need of it. He had an appearance of being busy every day; he rose late and went late to bed. It was the old life. Stocks down, there was a necessity of bracing up with whomever he met at any of the three or four clubs in which he lounged in the afternoon; and stocks up, there was reason for celebrating that fact in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... where they stood. The plaza was enclosed by the natives gathered in whispering groups, and depressed by fear and wonder. On one side were crowded all the Messenwah warriors, unarmed, and as silent and disturbed as the Opekians. In the middle of the plaza some twenty sailors were busy rearing and bracing a tall flag-staff that they had shaped from a royal palm, and they did this as unconcernedly and as contemptuously, and with as much indifference to the strange groups on either side of them, as though they were working ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... glue and bracing, and fitting iron rings about it. The vibration of the motor and the straining have pulled the nail heads through the holes in ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... your surroundings here. The mountains crush you, and weigh upon your heart. Nothing is open enough for you here. The heavens above you are not spacious enough. The air is not strong and bracing enough. ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... burn runs down to the uplands brown, From the heights of the snow-clad range, What anodyne drawn from the stifling town Can be reckon'd a fair exchange For the stalker's stride, on the mountain side, In the bracing northern weather, To the slopes where couch, in their antler'd pride, The deer ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... either side seemed to Dorothy Thornton to close in and stifle her, and the bracing, effervescent air of the high places had become dead and lifeless in her nostrils, as ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... laugh—the first since she had come home. She kept Betty gossiping for half an hour, and as the stream of the village life poured about her, in Betty's racy speech, it was as though some primitive virtue entered into her and cheered her—some bracing voice from the Earth-spirit—whose purpose is ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of her health. While she had been so unhappy, she had neglected to take that care of herself which her condition necessitated, and she was suffering the consequences. Once her mind was at rest, she made what amends she could by exercise in the bracing winter air, in defiance of dirt and intense cold, and by social relaxation, at least such as could be had while the guillotine was executing daily tasks to the tune of Ca ira, and women were madly turning ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... his plan had worked to perfection, but when he grasped the rope, bracing himself behind a crotch of two mighty branches, he found that dragging the mighty, struggling, clawing, biting, screaming mass of iron-muscled fury up to the tree and hanging her ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and east, and with the hotly golden rice flats of the Val Maggia to the north. And because it was a remote and insignificant place, far away out of the crowding tragedies of that year of disaster, away from burning cities and starving multitudes, bracing and tranquillising and hidden, it was here that there gathered the conference of rulers that was to arrest, if possible, before it was too late, the debacle of civilisation. Here, brought together by the indefatigable energy of that impassioned humanitarian, Leblanc, the French ambassador ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Mrs. Murray succeeded in inducing Christine to take walks with her along those quiet unfashionable streets, in the bracing air of the late autumn afternoons. She would return from these expeditions so refreshed, with such a charming color in the fair, sweet face to which peace and love and protecting companionship had given an expression of new beauty, that Mrs. ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... with the burden of their treasure, saying they had not come to Arizona for their health. Now in these present days there comes a throng of people in quest of health solely, and many are they who find its blessing in the sunny and bracing air of this climate, in hot springs and the balmy breath of the fir and juniper of our mountains. I found employment in a mercantile establishment of this little mining town and grew up with the country, as the saying is. I formed new acquaintances and made new friends. Among others, I met ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... agitation went through the house. I knew what they were all talking about, thinking about. Subtle waves of thought seemed to catch up each new comer so that she felt, without being told, that something extraordinary was happening. Women now approached not unprepared; but for all their bracing against the shock, not one could be quite nonchalant at the first sight of ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... point of view Autumn is suggestive of pleasant reflections. The wearying, wasting heat of Summer, and the deadly blasts with which her breath has for some years been freighted, are past, and the bracing north winds begin to bring balm and healing on their wings. The hurly-burly of travel, and most sorts of publicity (except newspapers), are fast playing out, and we can once more hope to see our friends and relations in the happy ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... busy in keeping his team upon the trail, but soon they settled down into a steady, shuffling trot, to which they held for mile after mile over the hard prairie road. The day was bright and clear, the air sweet and bracing. An hour's drive from the town, and the traveller seemed in a virgin world. A curious coyote sat on a hill, regarding intently the spectacle of a man travelling with wheels beneath him, instead of the legs of a horse. A band of antelope lined up ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... morning and the bracing air of Colorado made me feel as wild as the young animals that were fast wheeling me over the dangerous trail and possibly into a camp of hostile Indians. I gave no thought to danger for I was too busy keeping the fiery little beasts ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... and the bracing effect of the cold water of the Rappahannock was wearing off, and I began to feel the fatigue of an exciting day and a seventy-five-mile ride—on top of nine other days with little to eat and not much rest. My wet clothes chilled me, and the last few miles I have never been able to ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... H. H. Murray, in both which appears John Norton, the trapper, a character that promises to become as much of a favorite as is the hero of the Leather Stocking novels. These stories have a bracing outdoor freshness and a delightfully crisp realism: are vigorous in tone, and strong and picturesque in the relation. Taken altogether, they may be pronounced in the most artistic of Mr. Murray's excursions into the realms ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... weather is this for the caravan. The people do not like to move, and show a decided tendency to hibernation. Some camels are also lost—escaped from the numbed fingers of their drivers. I, too, feel it cold; and yet there is so much of home in this weather—this keen, bracing air—that I cannot complain. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... nests, of superior quality, and five mace of sugar candy and prepare congee with them in a silver kettle. When once you get into the way of taking this decoction, you'll find it far more efficacious than medicines; for it possesses the highest virtue for invigorating the vagina and bracing up the physique." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and stumbling through the roots of the heather. Roddy gazed at them with his fixed and mournful eyes. He couldn't share your excitement. He drew back his shoulders, bracing himself to bear it; his lips tightened in a hard, bleak grin. He grinned at the absurdity of your supposing that he could be interested in ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... when Bettina, already a little intoxicated with the bracing air and liberty, gave forth triumphantly these three exclamations, "No one! no one! no one!" a rider appeared, walking his horse in the direction of the carriage. It was Paul de Lavardens. He had been watching for more ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the story was given to me and I repeat it to show how bracing the climate near Superior is. Remember, if you please, that I do not want the story to be repeated as coming from me, for I have nothing left now but my reputation for veracity, and that has had a ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... agricultural purposes, as also for the rearing of sheep; but the island is totally destitute of mineral wealth. It is highly favoured in climate. The intense heat of a North American summer is here tempered by a cool sea-breeze; fogs are almost unknown, and the air is dry and bracing. Instances of longevity are very common; fever and consumption are seldom met with, and the cholera has never visited its shores. Wages are high, and employment abundant; land is cheap and tolerably productive; ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... elated at this. The construction he put on it was that she had relented and was coming back to fling her arms round his neck. He was just bracing himself for the clash, when he caught her eye, and it was as cold and unfriendly ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... me at last," hollered Dave, bolting into the kitchen, slamming the door behind him and bracing ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... of the jury was completed Mr. Loram rose to introduce the case; whereupon his lordship leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, as if bracing himself for a ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... temperature low, the springs shoot thick volumes of steam high in air. To the incomer by the north or west entrance who has yet to see a geyser, the first view of the Lower Geyser Basin brings a shock of astonishment no matter what his expectation. Let us hope it is a cool, bracing, breezy morning when the broad yellow plain emits hundreds of columns of heavy steam to unite in a wind-tossed cloud overlying and setting off the uncanny spectacle. Several geysers spout vehemently and one or more roaring vents bellow like angry bulls in a nightmare. This is appropriately ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... to whom the world was a bank had not been so inexorably shut away from the bracing, tonic shock of knowing men utterly diverse, to whom the world was just as certainly only a grocery store, or a cobbler's bench, he might have come to believe in a world that is none of these things and ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... waving both hands and bracing on feet wide apart. "Do look! Your age or more, and about half your beefsteak ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... frightened, and I could feel him tremble, which made me all the more afraid. The situation was not pleasant, and without stopping to think, I said, "Rollo, we must run him down—now do your best!" and taking a firm hold of the bridle, and bracing myself in the saddle, I struck the horse hard with my whip and gave an awful scream. I never use a whip on him, so the sting on his side and yell in his ears frightened him more than the wolf had, and he started on again with a rush. But the wolf stood still—so did my heart—for the beast ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Jacob Cochrane's lively songs, cheerful, hopeful, militant, and bracing, fell with a pleasing sound upon the ear of the believer of that epoch.) The love of God had, indeed, entered Philip's soul, but in some mysterious way had been ossified after it got there. He had intensely black hair, dark skin, and a liver that disposed him constitutionally to an ardent ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... shipping coming up with wind and tide. Sea-gulls wheeled around us overhead, sea-weed clung everywhere to the banks which the advancing tide had not yet covered, everything was of the sea sea-ey, and the fine bracing air which blew over the water made me feel more hungry than I had done for many a day; I did not see how children could live in a better physical atmosphere than this, and applauded the selection which Ernest had made on behalf ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... rejoined, bracing herself, but turning a drawn and haggard face, that had just grown ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... know thou wouldst rejoice To inhale this bracing air; Thou wouldst break thy sweetest sleep To ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... a hard frost, that day. The air was bracing, crisp, and clear. The wintry sun, though powerless for warmth, looked brightly down upon the ice it was too weak to melt, and set a radiant glory there. At other times, Trotty might have learned a poor man's lesson from the wintry sun; but, he was ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... and striking into a canter the two men made for the open country. The excitement and motion combined with the bracing air drove the fumes of the liquor from Cook's head, and before many miles had been passed he was comparatively free from the terrible malady which threatened to ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... remarked, "have you a little something bracing round this place? I'd like a small nip of whisky ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... for so peaceful was the country to which he was accustomed that he carried no weapon. He took his present danger little to heart. There was a strange buoyancy—born, no doubt, of the bracing wind—in his spirit. If they were going to kill him—well, he would die hard; and a man can but die once. A laugh arose from the men; it sounded to him as strange a sound, for the time and place, as the almost human cry of the horse a few minutes before. Then O'Shea came towards him with menacing ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... of amazement into the lads' countenances. The soft, sweet, bracing air of morning floated from the glorious shore, all cliff and indentation looking of a pearly grey, almost the same tint as the surf that curled over upon the rocks distant ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... rains and rains, and the streets stream with the flood, and the dull air reeks with a sort of inner steam, hot, close, and sticky as a brother: a brother whose wants are many and whose resources are few. The morning after the storm, there will be a keen thrill in the air, keen but wholesome and bracing as a good resolution and not necessarily more lasting. The asphalt has been washed as clean as a renovated conscience, and the city presses forward again to the future in which alone it has its being, with the gay confidence of ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... character to subject themselves to. Lastly, I would have you consider especially the moral atmosphere in which they have habitually breathed: according to the nature of this the mental health varies as certainly as the physical strength varies in a bracing or relaxing air. A strong bodily constitution may resist longer, and finally be less affected by a deleterious atmosphere than a weak or diseased frame; and so it is with the mental constitution. Minds insensibly ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the breath exhaled in chagrin audible to all but the teacher. Out of class I was noticed, cheered, and commended, and exhorted to hold on in the course of truth and uprightness—encouragement corresponding to the rubbing down and bracing bestowed by his guardians upon the pugilist. And still the geography questions went around, and Mary Morgan was head and ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... of course acquainted with the vigorous and bracing pages of Sir John (2 vols.: London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown). Sir John, who plays but a tooth-comb in the orchestra of this historical romance, blows in his own book the big bassoon. His character is there drawn at large; and the sympathy of Landor has countersigned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... position very agreeable, the fine bracing air from the sea acting like a charm upon the invalids, and driving away those wandering minstrels, the mosquitoes. Besides, there was the daily trip on shore in the "fast boat," available to those whose duties ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... bracing, but not chilly. The sunshine flooded the landscape on every side. All the windows of the limousine ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... fir trees and the ground was like a brown velvet carpet, yielding gently under their feet. The air was laden with a pungent odor, accentuated by the recent storm, and the damp, resiny fragrance was like a bracing tonic to the fugitives, bidding them welcome to ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... "And we die fast too," echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity of the surrounding prairies, its hotels—and they are many—are crowded with the broken wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find what ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... take care of myself, mon petit Asticot," she laughed, bracing her strong arms. "And suppose I wanted to go off with him? They are amusing sometimes, people like that. There is one. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the right was Lucy, tense and pale. My coach was a stranger; his was good Clay. My coach tried in vain to get me to take the position he preferred; it hurt and strained me, and he gave up. As I slowly got the position I was used to, working my elbows into the sand, bracing my toes, keeping my body close to the ground, my left hand twisted in the sling and supporting the barrel, my right at the trigger and stock, and my cheek at the butt, to my left a rifle heavily spoke, and in spite of cotton my ear rang. Then Lucy shot. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French |
