"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... besides) has been given, because it is not only the earliest, but perhaps the most characteristic of the whole. Despite the apparently unsuitable forms, it is evident that the writer is striving, without knowing it, at what we call journalism. But fashion and the absence of models cramp and distort his work. Its main features are to be found in the personal and satirical pieces, in the vivid and direct humanity of some touches in the euphuist tract-romances, in the delightful snatches of verse which intersperse and relieve the heterogeneous erudition, the clumsy dialogue, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... you, dame, to amend you. You are too fine to be a Millers daughter; for if you should but stoop to take up the tole dish, you will have the cramp in your finger ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... bar have, I believe, most of them experienced the friendly assistance of those who have gone before them, and should not therefore in point of gratitude refuse it to help those who are coming forward and to succeed them, not to mention that it is exceedingly ungenerous and illiberal to endeavour to cramp rising genius, or use any attempts to monopolize a profession which should be ever open to men of merit, and especially those who enter into it in the regular methods of education. You will find, however, that nothing will so effectually overcome any difficulties, ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... fully to wait with what patience I might the march of events. Sleep was the farthest thing from my thoughts. When I came to I found myself doubled on my side with a short piece of ore sticking in my ribs and eighteen or twenty assorted cramp-pains in various parts of me. This was all my consciousness had room to attend to for a few moments. Then I became dully aware of faint tinkling sounds and muffled shoutings from the outer end of the tunnel. I shouted in return and made ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... influence, upon humanity! Bridge over the space between, and you have directly the huge continental barrack-yard system all over England. And once get into the condition of a great continental military power, and you get the arbitrary power; you cramp down the people, and you unfit them from being what they ought to be—FREE And all the good influences together at work in this country could not have secured us against this, but for that blessed separation between ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... August training camp, That would make a prohibition town look damp, Underneath my dinky cap While the sun burned off my map And I waited for some gold-fish (and a cramp!). ...
— "I was there" - with the Yanks in France. • C. LeRoy Baldridge
... Diaz is on the sea. While writing those last lines I was attacked by fearful pains in the right side, and cramp, so that I could not finish. I can scarcely write now. I have just seen the old English doctor. He says I have appendicitis, perhaps caused by pips of strawberries. And that unless I am operated on at once—And that even if—He is telephoning to the hospital. Diaz! No; I ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... of mind,—it will ooze out! We ought long ago to have been convinced that the only power allowed to us is the power of direction. If one-half the amount of effort expanded to useless endeavours to cramp and check, had been turned towards this channel, how different would be the results! It is true that it is easier to check than to guide,—to fetter than to restrain; and that to attempt to remove evil by the first-occurring remedy ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... mine got in the water, and was taken with a cramp," Smithy went on hurriedly, his blue eyes sparking with delight; "why, after what you showed me this morning, I believe that as soon as I know a little more about swimming, ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... I may have overlooked a bird or two. Where are the biscuits? Are you getting cramp Down by the water ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... all other arts; and being in some opinion one of the most sound and healthful writings that I have read: not distempered in the heat of invention, nor in the coldness of negligence; not sick of dizziness, as those are who leese themselves in their order, nor of convulsions, as those which cramp in matters impertinent; not savouring of perfumes and paintings, as those do who seek to please the reader more than nature beareth; and chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof, being agreeable to truth and apt for action; and far ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... sort of restlessness, she made herself coffee and forced some food down her contracted throat. Then she put on her coat, took down Miss Blake's six-shooter and cartridge belt, and saw, with a slight relaxing of the cramp about her heart, that there were four shots in the chamber. Four shots and eight dogs, but—at least—she could save herself from that death! She strapped the gun round her slim hips, filled her pockets with supplies—a box of dried raisins, some hard bread, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the minister, and the futility of his negotiations; he moved for such resolutions as would evince the resentment of an injured nation, and the vigour of a British parliament. These were warmly combated by sir Robert Walpole, who affirmed, that they would cramp the ministers in their endeavours to compromise these differences; that they would frustrate their negotiations, intrench upon the king's prerogative, and precipitate the nation into an unnecessary and expensive war. Answers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... a swimmer with cramp or exhausted, or a drowning person who is obedient and remains quiet, the person assisted must place his hands on the rescuer's shoulders close to the neck at arm's length, turn on his back, and lie perfectly still with the head well back. Here the rescuer is uppermost; and, having his arms and ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... His Holy Spirit. Father Hecker longed to tell his fellow-countrymen that the Catholic Church gives them a flight to God a thousand times more direct than they ever dreamed of. They think that the authority of the Church will cramp their limbs; he was eager to explain to them that it sets them free, clears the mind of doubt, intensifies conviction into instinctive certitude, quickens the intellectual faculties into an activity whose force is unknown outside ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... those Masai villains the slip. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and, notwithstanding the mosquitoes, and the great risk we were running from fever from sleeping in such a spot, and forgetting that I had the cramp very badly in my right leg from squatting in a constrained position in the canoe, and that the Wakwafi who was sleeping beside me smelt horribly, I really began to enjoy myself. The moonbeams played upon the surface of the running ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... for every indication of discontent, on the part of laboring men and women, at conditions which cramp or fetter the free utterance of their manhood or womanly glory. In that divine discontent is the hope of the race. Our own ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... though not to stop, for I still struck out with my feet, I saw the savages on the margin of the water, fiercely threatening me with their daggers, but not daring to swim off in pursuit. My mind was greatly relieved; but there was the risk of cramp, or giving way from fatigue, as also the still greater danger of being snapped up by a huge shark. My friends, however, knew this as well as I did, and continuing to exert themselves as at first, at length came up with me. The time, however, ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... knowing what was the matter with me; pains in my head, sicknesses at my stomach, dispiritedness, and a return of the nightly fever I had in the winter. I concluded a northern journey would take all this off- -but, behold! on Monday morning I was seized as I thought with the cramp in my left foot; however, I walked about all day: towards evening it discovered itself by its true name, and that night I suffered a great deal. However, on Tuesday I was -,again able to go about the house; but since Tuesday I have not been able to stir, and am wrapped in flannels and swathed like ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... managed to turn the grin into a pain-grimace, for his simulated cramp had become real. At least in one foot it had, and the muscles ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... be at the risk of debt, ruin, and misery; living not so much according to our means, as according to the superstitious observances of our class. Though we may speak contemptuously of the Indians who flatten their heads, and of the Chinese who cramp their toes, we have only to look at the deformities of fashion amongst ourselves, to see that the reign of "Mrs. Grundy" ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... and the cold water out, rather deeper, setting up, in fact, an exact copy of the current of the ocean, the shadowed part by the copse representing the Polar area. Directly any one began to swim he found the difference, the legs went down into cold water, and in many cases cramp ensued with alarming results and danger. Down to the chest it was warm, quite warm, while the feet were very cold. Not much imagination is needed to conceive the effect on persons not used to rough bathing, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... lunch pries him open. No wolf cud kill a bear th' way Willum J. Long iv Stamford has described. A bear has th' sthrongest throat iv anny crather in th' wurruld, barrin' Bryan. Why, I wud hate to have to sthrangle a bear. I did wanst, but I had writer's cramp f'r months aftherward.' ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... are hot and damp, and my legs are stiff with cramp, And the office punkahs creak! And I'd give my tired soul, for the life that makes man whole, And a whiff of the jungle reek! Ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear boys, With office stool and pew, For it's time to turn to the lone Trail, our own Trail, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... a multitude of questions and variety of subjects; which is much better than to confine and cramp his answers, and so deprive the old man of the most pleasant enjoyment he can have. In short, they that had rather please than distaste will still propose such questions, the answers to which shall rather get the praise and good-will than the contempt ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... there is an end, and I am up on this green hill once more, in December sunlight, with the distant sea a glitter of gold. And there is no cramp in my heart, no miasma clinging to my senses. Peace! It is still incredible. No more to hear with the ears of the nerves the ceaseless roll of gunfire, or see with the eyes of the nerves drowning men, gaping wounds, and death. Peace, actually ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... blazing fire,—her feet in hot water, and her head thrown back in a manner plainly showing that something new had taken hold of her in good earnest. Billy was accustomed to her freaks, and not feeling at all frightened, stepped briskly forward, saying, "Well, mother, what's the matter now? Got a cramp ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... her 12s. for her wages due tyll Friday last, which was Saint Margaret's day, and brought her xijd. for candles: she went by water; Mistres Lee went with her, and Robyn Jackesbite. Jane this night was sore trubbled with a collick and cramp in her belly; she vomyted this Monday more, and every night grew stiff in the sole likewise. A meridie hor. 3 cam Sir George Peckham to me to know the tytle for Norombega in respect of Spayn and Portugall parting the whole world's distilleryes. He promysed me of his gift ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... Joscelyn. My faith cries for elbow-room, and he who pins his faith to common-sense is like to get a cramp in it. Therefore since women, as I hear tell, have ceased to spin brides' shifts, I am obliged to believe that these things are spun by toads. Because brides there must be though ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... the mark maybe ... here now is the part he was reading to me himself ... "the remedies for diseases belonging to the skins next the brain: headache, vertigo, cramp, convulsions, palsy, incubus, ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... "Kroo! kroo! I've cramp in my legs, Sitting so long atop of my eggs! Never a minute for rest to snatch; I wonder when ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... This Dirzed was spoken of as a generally respected member of something called the Society of Assassins, and that'll give you an idea of what things are like on that sector, and why I don't want to send anybody who might develop trigger-finger cramp at the wrong moment. She and Dirzed left the home of the gentleman who had just had himself discarnated, presumably for Dalla's apartment, about a hundred miles away. That's the last that's been heard ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... trying to stoop her grown stature and simplify her complex tastes and adult interests back into the narrow limits of a child's toy-house. Could it be that she felt something of the same displeasure when she set herself fully to conceive what it would be to cramp herself and her complex interests and adult affections back to . ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... remain on the Tom Thumb for a third night; but next afternoon (March 28) they were able to land unmolested, to cook a meal, and to take some rest on the shore. "The sandy beach was our bed, and after much fatigue and passing three nights of cramp in Tom Thumb it was to us ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... important of all rules is perfect cleanliness. The best cages are wooden ones with unpainted wires, and the perches should be of different thicknesses, as, if they are all one size, the bird is likely to get cramp in his feet. Once in a week at least the perches and tray should be scrubbed with very hot water with soda in it, but they must be dried thoroughly before they are put back into the cage; therefore if possible it is best to have two ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... often only a kind of cramp, and needs an easier position. Try and get a little change; read novels; don't get tired; sit in the open air. "A recumbent position," said a witty lady of my acquaintance, "is a great ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... grew to be deliberately rude with her parent, would refuse to fetch and carry for her, was quickly bored over any little personal service performed for her, and did her best in every way to cramp the widow's ever ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... had unfortunately happened to one of my followers: poor Rubso, a Christian convert, had fallen exhausted from cold and fatigue. He had been seized with cramp, and was lying in a semi-conscious state, his teeth chattering and his features distorted and livid; his eyes were sunken and lifeless, and he showed signs of complete collapse. We hastily carried him under the shelter of a rock and rubbed him vigorously, in the hope of restoring his circulation. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and I watch the summer night and all the golden stars, and I cannot say what I think of during all these long and lonely hours; I only know that I cannot find energy to go to bed. And I never sleep a whole night through; the cramp comes on so terribly that I jump up screaming. Oh, Alice, how I hate him! When I think of it all I see how selfish men are; they never think of us—they only think of themselves. You would scarcely know me if you saw me now; all my complexion—you know what a pretty complexion ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... find with the modest entertainment at the Parsonage. A splendid banquet in a great house is an admirable thing, provided always its getting up did not cost the entertainer an inward conflict, nor its recollection a twinge of economical regret, nor its bills a cramp of anxiety. A simple evening party in the smallest village is just as admirable in its degree, when the parlor is cheerfully lighted, and the board prettily spread, and the guests are made to feel comfortable without ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reached Simla at sunrise, and crawled wearily up the steps of the hotel to our rooms, tired with the cramp of dooly and saddle for so many days, and longing for the luxury of the bath, the civilised meal, and the arm-chair. Of course I did not suppose Isaacs would go to bed. He expected that the Westonhaughs ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... find abnormal conditions. Some men cramp and constrict themselves. The chest is allowed to collapse and the whole body tends to be drawn together. Grief or any negative emotion of feeling or condition destructive to health tends to ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... them,' said Scott; 'thrice a day we will feed them'; and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible cramp. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... acting, or being acted upon, in any but the most simple and ordinary manner. He or she (for it was most frequently a woman or girl that was the supposed subject) felt a desire for some unusual kind of food—some unusual motion or rest her hand twitched, her foot was asleep, or her leg had the cramp; and the dreadful question immediately suggested itself, 'Is any one possessing an evil power over me, by the help of Satan?' and perhaps they went on to think, 'It is bad enough to feel that my body can be made to suffer through the power of some unknown ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sequestrations have arisen, and want to know what it is all about and wherefore. I myself am not able to say a word there anent, inasmuch as I wish not to apprehend it; but so much I can say for certain, that one of my journeymen on his way to the fair had his feet twisted double with cramp, and I know what I know. If, therefore, my Lord General so wishes it, and considers it seasonable that men for the common good of the kingdom should make a revolution, therefore we most humbly and respectfully petition for the same. And we are ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Cameron could not have gained entrance to Briarwood; without the attested examination papers of Miss Cramp, teacher of the district school, who had prepared Ruth for entering Cheslow High School before it was supposed that she could go to Briarwood, the girl from the Red Mill would not have ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... the "Hibas" or thin cords of wool which the Badawi binds round his legs, I believe to keep off cramp. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... with life, each hoary knave Grows, here, immortal, and eludes the grave, Thy virtues immaturely met their fate, Cramp'd in the limit of too ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... answered Arnold. "If I were born such, I would make the title grand and holy, so that men should see I was indeed prince and lord as well as man. As it is, I feel myself greater than either, and born to rule higher things. It would cramp me to put on a dignity for which I was not created. Already I am cramped by the circumstances out of which I was born. I cannot express strains of music that I hear in my highest dreams, because my powers are weak, and fail me as often the strings of my instrument fail my fingers. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... often heard this and that and t'other pain mentioned as the worst that mortals can endure—such as the toothache, earache, headache, cramp in the calf of the leg, a boil, or a blister—now, I protest, though I have tried all these, nothing seems to me to come up to a pretty sharp fit of jealousy." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to Calcutta. There was none of the doldrums that trip, dodged 'em fair an' square; a topsail breeze to the Cape, and then the fust of the monsoon to the Hugli. We lay maybe a couple of months at Calcutta, when what should I do but take aboard a full dose of the cramp, just as the Swallow was in a manner of speakin' on the wing. Not but what it sarved me right, for what business had I at my time of life to be wastin' shore leave by poppin' at little dicky birds in the dirty slimy jheels, as they call ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the result of his strange passion for tormenting others. He had a fag who could not swim, and who had the greatest terror of the water; and it was while driving this child into the river out of his depth that cramp seized himself, and he was drowned. Yes, when I think what that boy would have been as a man, succeeding to Darrell's wealth—and had Darrell persevered (as he would, perhaps, if the boy had lived) in his public career—to the rank and titles he ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural feelings, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... full answer would it not be better to do it in the form of letters, addressed to the doctor, and signed by your real name? Write in a candid, mild, and kindly style, and it will have a much more powerful effect upon the mind of the public. Do not cramp yourself, but write fully, seriously, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... cramp the coupe?" Tedda panted. "It weighs turr'ble this weather. I'd 'a' come sooner, but they didn't know what they wanted—ner haow. Fell out twice, both of 'em. I ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... moving about the room would have been pleasant. To walk with her to the studio would have been a joy. As a novelist, I bitterly resented all the minute domestic worries, but as a human being I rejoiced in my new relationship. "Can I combine the two activities? Will being a husband and a householder cramp and defeat me ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... others thought I know not; what they said, if they said anything, I did not comprehend. For me the house was bursting, walls seemed to cramp and to stifle, the roof was jumping and lifting. Escape was the imperative thing—to escape into the open air, to shake off bricks and mortar, and to wander in the unfrequented places of the earth, the more properly to take in the passion and the ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... pencil on the table and leaned back with a sigh. My fingers were so stiff with writers' cramp that I felt as though I should never be able to open my hand again. But I, at least, had had a night's sleep. As for the poor Doctor, he was so weary that he had hardly put the tank back upon the table and dropped into a chair, when his eyes closed ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... has got me into a terrible mess by a misprint in last Chapter—confound my cramp fist—regarding which Old Splinter (erst of the Torch,) has ever since quizzed me verv nearly up to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... took time, especially since Caroline, the brown mare, would rather travel ten miles straight ahead than go backward ten feet. Brit was obliged to "take it out of her" with the rein ends and his full repertoire of opprobrious epithets before he could cramp the wagon and head them ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... could make him. Everything needful was in his head—but could he get it out again? That was the question. The roaring world in which he would find himself, the strange examination-room, the quizzing professors—would these combine with his native shyness to seal the lips and cramp the pen of Robert Chalmers Fordyce? No—a thousand times no! He would win through! Robert set his teeth, braced himself, and ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... him! Here's a fuss! That I should such twaddle as this discuss. Was it for this that I left the school? That the scribbling desk, and the slavish rule, And the narrow walls, that our spirits cramp, Should be met with again in the midst of the camp? No! Idle and heedless, I'll take my way, Hunting for novelty every day; Trust to the moment with dauntless mind, And give not a glance or before or behind. For ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Todd with much amiability. "'Twas most too bad to cramp him down to his peaceful trade, but he's a most excellent shoemaker at his best, an' he always says it's a trade that gives him time to think an' plan his maneuvers. Over to the Port they always invite him to march Decoration Day, same as the rest, ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... ancient massive Gateway, of architecture interesting to the eye of Dilettantism; and farther on, that other ancient Gateway, now about to tumble, unless Dilettantism, in these very months, can subscribe money to cramp it and prop it! ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... factories of Germany, he reminded them that if sending them all at once across the lines, never to return, would shorten the war by a week, it would be his duty to send them. The pilots listened to him with pride. He had their confidence, as they had his. 'Don't cramp the pilots into never talking,' is one of his advices to commanders, and the system whereby the pilots and observers, returning dazed and exhausted from a raid or a fight in the air, were brought to the office of the aerodrome and encouraged by sympathetic ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... been more pleasant than the previous, but the sour apples, and a draught of cold water, had produced anything but a favourable effect; indeed, I suffered most of the day with severe symptoms of cramp. The day passed away again without any further incident, and as I set out at nightfall, I felt quite satisfied that I could not pass another twenty-four hours without nourishment. I made but little progress during the night, and often sat down, ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... the same when he looked up once more, but the cramp in his muscles told Travis that time had passed—perhaps hours instead of minutes—since he had taken out the first disk. He cupped his hands over his eyes and tried to think clearly. There had been sheets of meaningless symbol writing, but also ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... pray thee, free these limbs from the hateful thongs that eat into the flesh, and so cramp his benumbed members, and Wauchee will fly like a deer to his own people, and also bear away with him the sweet Wild-rose of the Oneidas, to bloom afresh in the gardens of the Mohawks. Will Monega free the bondsman? ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... patella (habitual luxation) it is possible in some cases, to prevent its occurrence or at least to minimize the distress occasioned by momentary luxation, by keeping the animals in wide stalls so that "backing" is unnecessary. In some nervous subjects that seem to be suffering from cramp of the crural muscles, the difficulty and pain of their being backed out of narrow stalls, accentuates the nervousness. Sudation and restlessness are manifested and the subject presents a clinical picture of distress and fear of a ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... effect of too much iteration and of the practice of adjusting knowledge to the needs of the feeble-minded by perpetual explanation of what is already simple ad nauseam for the mature intelligence of the teacher. It produces a sort of pedagogical cramp in the soul, for which there is no remedy like a philosophical view of the world, unless, perhaps, it be the study of the greatest poets, ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... thousands of arms for thousands of years in their formation. These corridors of interminable length opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways. These pits again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbols of the tau and pedum—prodigious works of art which no living eye ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... This feather-stitching alone gave her a sort of monopoly, and she was too good a woman of business not to avail herself of it. It was the feather-stitching which had mostly tried her poor hand and arm, and brought on the horrid pain which the doctor had called writers' cramp. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would kill a weakling and make a strong man mad and merry. At the walled city of Chong-ho I put Kim and the city notables under the table with the stuff—or on the table, rather, for the table was the floor where we squatted to cramp-knots in my hams for the thousandth time. And again all muttered "Yi Yong-ik," and the word of my prowess passed on before even to Keijo ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... must cramp that chest into an abortion, all collar, tail, and buttons, and much too tight to breathe in; you must struggle into breeches tight enough to burst, and cram your feet ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... found intolerable. Writing to a friend six weeks before her death, she exclaims:—"I am very ill.... the difficulty and distress to me are the state of the head. I will only add that the condition grows daily worse, so that I am scarcely able to converse or read, and the cramp in the hands makes writing difficult or impossible; so I must try to be content with the few lines I can send, till the few days become none. We believe that time to be near, and we shall not attempt to deceive you about it. My brain feels under the constant ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... said with mingled defiance and alarm. "You ain't saw her afore in one of them spells. Besides, hit meks a difference when a gal's paw and grandpaw and great-grandpaw was feud-followers. A feud-follower teks more killin' then ordinary folks. Her maw was subjec' to cramp colic ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... swing of his snowshoes, measuring off half a mile, or a mile, and then beginning over again until at last the achievement of five hundred steps seemed to take an immeasurable length of time and great effort. Like the ache of a tooth came the first warning of snowshoe cramp in his legs. In the black night he grinned. He knew what it meant—a warning as deadly as swimmer's cramp in deep water. If he continued much longer he would be crawling on his hands ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... cramp," Derek muttered; "can't even give women votes. Fancy my mother without a vote! And going to wait till every laborer is off the land before it attends to them. It's like the port you gave us last night, Uncle Felix, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thank ma'am, please." "I don't think he wants you to know what he have been having happen to him, but I can't keep from telling you 'cause I'm tickled clean to my funny bone. Dave Hanks come over here at daylight wanting a doctor quick, and I had a cramp in my leg what I forgot to tie a yarn string around before I went to bed, so I had to let Tom hurry on over there 'count of the push they was in. Then I got to studying it over and while I knewed how ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... stale. Then Joe and Huck had another swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Josek reaches out both his hands. His face is deathly pale. His eyes gleam with fever. The boys laugh. . . . Their loud calls press themselves to his ears. . . . Another moment and the hands of his mother reach around him as in a cramp. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... slept in bell-tents, fourteen men in each, packed tight as herrings in a barrel, our feet festooning the base of the central pole, our heads against the lower rim of the canvas covering. Movement was almost an impossibility; a leg drawn tight in a cramp disturbed the whole fabric of slumbering humanity; the man who turned round came in for a shower of maledictions. In short, fourteen men lying down in a bell-tent cannot agree for very long, and a bell-tent is not a paradise of sympathy ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... night. Look at me. It was as much as I could do to crawl to this room. I have walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked with rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in an emigrant vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had tried their luck on the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, like me, and were coming home to their native workhouses. You don't know what some of your emigrant ships are, perhaps. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... not being able to get it any other way, he stripped off his clothes and swam off for it. This in the month of December was a hazardous undertaking, and so it proved, for the young fellow took the cramp and was drowned. It was a very sad sight, so I am told by those who saw it, the old father walking up and down the beach all night calling for his son by name. In the morning the son was seen through the ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... he did, an inscription, of which not a single letter has been seen for many ages; but this habile observateur, perceiving a great number of irregular holes upon the frontal and frize of this edifice, concluded that they were the cramp-holes which had formerly held an inscription, and which, according to the practice of the Romans, were often composed of single letters of bronze. Mons. Seguier therefore erected scaffolding, and took off on paper the distances and situation ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... see them, nor the bottom, and this at once convinced me of the immense depth. I had therefore to abandon all hope of recovering my rifle and knapsack, and swim back, not altogether without some fear of being seized with cramp from the coldness ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... was not what he knew it once— The nights were terribly damp; And he never was free from the rheumatiz Except when he had the cramp!" ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the cramp,' Humphrey said, 'it will soon pass. Now, after you have had a good meal, take this letter which is tied and sealed, and put it into the hands of Mistress Gifford. It will tell her all I can yet tell her in answer to the letter you brought me. At least she will know by ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... singular peacefulness possessed me, overcoming me in spite of myself. Feverish impatience and resistance seemed futile, and in my resignation I began to realise that to avert cramp and disablement from cold—for a chill, moist breeze from the ravine played continuously on me—some sort of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... keep up the building which would have fallen, with that brace the less. There is a remarkable difference between the characters of the inconveniences which attend a declaration of rights, and those which attend the want of it. The inconveniences of the declaration are, that it may cramp government in its useful exertions. But the evil of this is short-lived, moderate, and reparable. The inconveniences of the want of a declaration are permanent, afflicting, and irreparable. They are in constant progression from bad to worse. The executive, in our governments, is not the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... "remissum magis specie, quam vi: quia cum venditor pendere juberetur, in partem pretii emptoribus accrescebat[e]." But this inconvenience attends it on the other hand, that these imposts, if too heavy, are a check and cramp upon trade; and especially when the value of the commodity bears little or no proportion to the quantity of the duty imposed. This in consequence gives rise also to smuggling, which then becomes a very lucrative employment: and it's natural and most ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... myself gently by the rattlin of my hammock, descended slowly and noiselessly into the sea. I hung on thus for a couple of seconds, half fearing the attempt, and irresolute of purpose. Should strength fail, or even a cramp seize me, I must be lost, and none would ever know in what an enterprise I had perished. It would be set down as a mere attempt at escape. This notion almost staggered my resolution, but only for a second or so; and, with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... scorpions is dangerous even to human beings. Cases have been known of a man dying in great agony twelve hours after being stung. Others get cramp, fever, and pains before they begin to recover. A man who has often been stung becomes at last insensible ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... amazing that the journal was kept so regularly, as Miss Macnaughtan suffered from writer's cramp, and the entries could only have been written with great difficulty. Frequently a passage is begun in the writing of her right, and finished in that of her left hand, and I have seen her obliged to grasp her pencil ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... chief forte lay in water athletics. He was like a duck himself, and never tired of teaching those boys who showed an inclination to learn. It was of vast importance to know just what ought to be done should a swimmer be suddenly seized with a cramp while in deep water, and with no one near to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... those two loving ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in, the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their wo, And now they keep an oyster-shop for ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... for their interest drawn upon "The Franklin Syndicate," together with printed receipts for their deposits, all signed "William F. Miller," by means of a rubber stamp. No human hand could have signed them all without writer's cramp. The rubber stamp was Miller's official signature. Then with a mighty roar the torrent burst into a deluge. The Floyd Street quarters were besieged by a clamoring multitude fighting to see which of them could give up his money ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... what? I'll tell you frankly, as man to man, that I can't go on walking all night, Clint. I'm dog-tired and my left leg's got a cramp in it and I'm weak with hunger. Let's find a cosy corner somewhere and ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... night, and after a long day of traveling, might I not naturally take a bath in the cool water before I went to bed? And, practiced as I was in the exercise of swimming, might it not nevertheless be my misfortune to be attacked by cramp? On the lonely shores of Greenwater Broad the cry of a drowning man would bring no help at night. The fatal accident would explain itself. There was literally but one difficulty in the way—the difficulty which had already occurred to my mind. Could ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... preferable to small pots. The slope of the pots tends to pack the soil medium and interfere with aeration. Bands or pots less than three inches in diameter tends to cramp the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... glad, now the solitary old miser was gone, to make fellowship with his gentle-looking and wealthy daughter, yet her reserve and quietness prevented the fulfilment of their wishes. Weeks and months rolled on; the old house had been repaired and beautified. Mr. Cramp, Sarah's law agent and 'man of business,' advised her to let the house, of which she occupied about as much as a wren could fill of the nest of an eagle; and, strangely enough, finding that the house of her childhood was to let, she took it, removing thither all the furniture which her father ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... "It don't cramp my style any." He had sprung on his horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any measure of ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... speak, but a terrible cramp in his throat choked him. He appealed with his hands to Slingerland. The trapper lost his smile and the iron ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... exertion in this rarefied air brought about a painful incident. Exhausted from cold and fatigue, a man called Rubso, a Christian convert, was seized with cramp. He was lying in a semi-conscious state, his teeth chattering, his features distorted and livid; his eyes were sunken and lifeless. We carried him under the shelter of a rock and rubbed him vigorously, endeavoring to restore his circulation. He ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... seized an old iron bar which he found in the anteroom, and laboured with all his strength to move the wardrobe; and at last, after much heaving and wrenching and a hundred fruitless efforts, it gave way with a loud cracking as if an iron cramp or chain had snapt. The cabinet now by degrees came forward, and Antonio was at length able to squeeze himself in between it and the wall. He immediately saw his beloved portrait. It was lying upon the broad knob of a ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women who prefer marriage with all its deficiencies to the narrowness of an unmarried life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... all—not at all, my dear boy,' said his father; 'I would rather cramp myself than that you should be cramped, a thousand times over. But it is all my Lady Clonbrony's nonsense. If people would but, as they ought, stay in their own country, live on their own estates, and kill their own mutton, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... head during slumber, and any excessive amount of sleep deranges his stomach. While he was in full vigour, he generally went to bed with his clothes on, even to the tall boots, which he has always worn, because of a chronic tendency to cramp, as well as for other reasons. At certain seasons he has kept these boots on for such a length of time, that when he drew them off the skin came away together with the leather, like that of a sloughing snake. He was never stingy of cash, nor did he accumulate money, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs which brought us here after—after we had found that we had not as much money as we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material facts of board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know the fulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to the spirit of America—the spirit of youth and accomplishment. Instead of dreaming of past cities, I set out to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... least. But worse than that was feared, as, once overturned, the miserable conception of a boat would be beyond the power of any one in the water to right it again. And, moreover, the water was still intensely cold, and a very few minutes would have sufficed to give the cramp to a much ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the remainder of his life in ease in this country. Whilst in England he paid a visit to some friends in Southampton, and whilst taking a bath in a movable bathing-house on the beach, probably was seized with cramp and suffocated by water getting into his lungs. The news of his death caused a painful shock in business, social, and religious circles, where he had been so well known and so ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... A nervous disorder in which pain, sometimes with weakness and cramp, results from continued use of ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... Van Cleve, summoning his strength, threw the boy, who escaped. Nor did Van Cleve's pity for his fellows cease with this; for he stopped to tie his handkerchief around the knee of a wounded man. His violent exertions gave him a cramp in both thighs, so that he could barely walk; and in consequence the strong and active passed him until he was within a hundred yards of the rear, where the Indians were tomahawking the old and wounded men. So close were they that for a moment his heart sunk ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... no fear. Once, during his boyhood, Sam Clemens swam across to the Illinois side, then turned and swam back again without landing, a distance of at least two miles as he had to go. He was seized with a cramp on the return trip. His legs became useless and he was obliged to make the remaining distance ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... don't go to sleep at once—it is terrible! Do you think I should be afraid of death? If I have got to go through life with this terrible ache in my heart, in my whole body —for when I cry my very fingers cramp—I'd a thousand times rather go to Cuba and ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... young gentleman was seized with such an incontrollable fit of the cramp as could only be relieved by immediate exercise. He therefore begged permission to be allowed to saunter abroad for a little while, if Sir Henry Lee considered he might ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... our own houses," said Delphine, at last, "and then complain that they cramp us here, and the wind blows in there, while the fault is not in the order, but in us, who increase here and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... your fancy and your judgment be both employed, and I require no method; for I know, in your easy, natural way, that would be a confinement, which would cramp your genius, and give what you write a stiff, formal air, that I might expect in a pedagogue, but not ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... latter kind of geniuses is lest they cramp their own abilities too much by imitation, and form themselves altogether upon models, without giving the full play to their own natural parts. An imitation of the best authors is not to compare with a good original; and I believe ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... late afternoon, in a beautiful motion that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the life flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born out of the cramp of a womb. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... of sympathy was strong among the poorer class of parishioners. Old stiff-jointed Mr. Tozer, who was still able to earn a little by gardening 'jobs', stopped Mrs. Cramp, the charwoman, on her way home from the Vicarage, where she had been helping Nanny to pack up the day before the departure, and inquired very ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... smell very sour and become injurious to the health of the ferret, especially where four or five are kept together, as they are of a very perspiring nature. Always give them plenty of room to run about when you can; if you don't they are likely to take cramp. ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... overworked and exhausted, as occasionally happens in men and women who do not hold their pens correctly and write for long spells day after day. The break-down which happens in them is called "writer's cramp," but it is a disaster of the same kind as that which overtakes the foot when its arch collapses, and its utility as a ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... Terre of Bouguer, a passage, which shows that this astronomer, whose opinions are of such weight, considered also 36 degrees as the inclination of a slope quite inaccessible, if the nature of the ground did not admit of forming steps with the foot.) We felt the want of cramp-irons, or sticks shod with iron. Short grass covered the rocks of gneiss, and it was equally impossible to hold by the grass, or to form steps as we might have done in softer ground. This ascent, which was attended with more fatigue than danger, discouraged those who accompanied ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... in such a manner that you cannot see the dial-plate. How profound a fit of meditation! Or, supposing him asleep, how infantile a quietude of conscience, and what wholesome order in the gastric region, are betokened by slumber so entirely undisturbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dreamtalk, trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ, or any slightest irregularity of breath! You must hold your own breath, to satisfy yourself whether he breathes at all. It is quite inaudible. You hear the ticking of his watch; his breath you do not hear. A most refreshing ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I'll have to be rackin' out home," said he, getting up, tiptoeing to take the cramp out ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... not the cause of this attack,' said she. 'I am subject to these spasms, a sort of cramp of ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... not free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future like a tide. He broadest creeds ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... over; I was saved; but who could say, if, in the rescue, youth and poetry had not perished? Poetry and youth are of a volatile mood,—they are butterflies. Shut them up in a cage, and they will dash their delicate wings to pieces against its bars. Endeavor to direct them as they soar, and you cramp their flight, you deprive them of their audacity,—two qualities which are often to be met with in inexperience, and the loss of which—am I wrong in saying so?—is not always compensated by maturity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... disputants says: "You say to me that the Church of Rome is corrupt. What then? to cut off a limb is a strange way of saving it from the influence of some constitutional ailment. Indigestion may cause cramp in the extremities; yet we spare our poor feet notwithstanding. Surely there is such a religious fact as the existence of a great Catholic body, union with which is a Christian privilege and duty. Now, we English are separate ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman |
