"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the 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 ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... stare at columns of polished granite, at a piece of weed, at one another, as though they had never seen such things before. They totter about on tip-toe; they yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is one, stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp; another is convulsed with nervous twitchings; another scratches the earth in a kind of mechanical trance. One would say she was preparing a grave for herself. The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl and a face that bears the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... appeared the panther suddenly opened her eyes; then she stretched out her paws with energy, as if to get rid of cramp. Presently she yawned and showed the frightful armament of her teeth, and the pointed ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... and I realised, at last, that if I was to escape an agonising cramp in the leg, I must get down. I put my feet on the ladder, and then paused for a last look about the grounds. My eye was caught by a flutter of white among the trees. Someone was walking along one of the paths; in a moment, straining forward, I saw it ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... set, and the crew cleaning guns, suddenly there arose the cry "Man overboard! Away lifeboat!" The order was "Heave to!" The poor fellow, however, had sunk beneath the sea almost instantly. The water being so bitterly cold it was supposed the cramp seized him. He, at the time of the accident, was outside the ship cleaning the muzzle of a gun, when she gave a lurch which overbalanced him into the sea. No frivolity was there that day, or for the ensuing week, amongst ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... coupled with Eleutheria and Douleia, note that Caliban's torment is always the physical reflection of his own nature—"cramps" and "side stiches that shall pen thy breath up; thou shalt be pinched, as thick as honeycombs:" the whole nature of slavery being one cramp and cretinous contraction. Fancy this of Ariel! You may fetter him, but you set no mark on him; you may put him to hard work and far journey, but you cannot ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... put my head between my knees, and groaned. Then I straightened out my right leg and rubbed it, because a cramp was knotting it. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Gladstein was one of them fellers which he ain't got a relation in the world. Mrs. Gladstein neither, except im Russland. That's the way it goes, Mawruss. A feller which he has got so many cousins and uncles that he gets writer's cramp already indorsing accommodation paper for 'em, understand me, lives to be an old man yet, and all the time his relations and his wife's relations is piling up on him; while a man like Gladstein which you could really say has a chance to enjoy life, ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... fever, contracted at a poisonous little place, as they had afterwards found out, that they had taken for a summer; the other, the flower of the flock, a middy on the Britannia, dreadfully drowned, and not even by an accident at sea, but by cramp, unrescued, while bathing, too late in the autumn, in a wretched little river during a holiday visit to the home of a shipmate. Then Marian's unnatural marriage, in itself a kind of spiritless turning of the other cheek to fortune: her actual wretchedness and plaintiveness, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the Ladies in the Neighbourhood; and from such weighty Considerations as these, as it too often unfortunately falls out, the Mother is become invincibly persuaded that her Son is a great Scholar; and that to chain him down to the ordinary Methods of Education with others of his Age, would be to cramp his Faculties, and do an irreparable Injury to his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... done when the Normans crossed their not far distant Channel, or rattling over hilltops through leather-coated oak groves which had kept their symmetry since their progenitors were planted by the Druids. Here was nothing to cramp the mind: here was the England that has absorbed Celt, Saxon, Fleming, Norman, generation after generation, each with its passing form of political faith: the England of ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... mean?—It was only one in the millions coming and going, and every man must work out his own salvation. Why should she cramp her soul to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself upon the greater motives and in the larger circle? A wide world of influence had opened up before her; position, power, adulation, could all have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you will find more difficulty in the undertaking than you are aware of. There is a peculiar rhythmus in many of our airs, and a necessity of adapting syllables to the emphasis, or what I would call the feature-notes of the tune, that cramp the poet, and lay him under almost insuperable difficulties. For instance, in the air, "My wife's a wanton wee thing," if a few lines smooth and pretty can be adapted to it, it is all you can expect. The following were made extempore to it; and though on further study ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... while all were giving attention to the rescued Andy, there occurred with Jack one of those events which people call a cramp. I do not know what to call it, but it is not a cramp. It is a kind of collapse—a sudden exhaustion that may come to the best of swimmers. The heart insists on resting, the consciousness grows dim, the will-power flags, and ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... Once—though this was considerably later, when he was sixteen—Sam Clemens swam across to the Illinois side, and 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 with his arms. It was a hardy life they led, and it is not recorded that they ever did any serious damage, though they ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the truth of the woman's statement unless she came to his assistance with food. Although almost starving, he was afraid to call for dinner lest she should ask him for some money in advance, but at that moment a cramp seized him, and turning pale he had to lean over the table to suppress the moan which rose ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... hands. All his misery was in the future; and if he had stayed, perhaps his master might have done well by him, though it is not probable. Still, I think Harry was in some sense justifiable. To remain in such a place was to cramp his soul, as well as pinch his body—to be unhappy, if not positively miserable. He might have tried the place, and when he found it could not be endured, ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... submitted in silence and sacrificed to the scorn of his time his enchanting elegy of Esther, his magnificent epic, Athalie. So that we can but believe that, if he had not been paralyzed as he was by the prejudices of his epoch, if he had come in contact less frequently with the classic cramp-fish, he would not have failed to introduce Locuste in his drama between Narcisse and Neron, and above all things would not have relegated to the wings the admirable scene of the banquet at which Seneca's pupil poisons Britannicus in the cup of reconciliation. But can we demand ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... 1888, Burton writes, "I have been moving since yours of March 5th reached me, and unable to answer you.... Delighted to hear that in spite of cramp, [550] Vo. V. [551] is finished, and shall look forward to the secret [552] being revealed. You are quite right never to say a word about it. There is nothing I abhor so much as a man intrusting me with ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret floor and set down his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon, brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to command the ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... hand to the garden and the stars—"which I 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 make a city like a true American. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him, the keen interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the house and estate of Abbotsford, and finally, notwithstanding obstinate and agonizing attacks of internal cramp which were undermining his constitution, Scott continued to produce rapidly the wonderful series of the Waverley Novels. "The Bride of Lammermoor," "Legend of Montrose" and "Ivanhoe" appeared in 1819, "The Monastery," "The Abbot" and "Kenilworth" in 1820, "The Pirate" in 1821, "The Fortunes ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... oped his lips, and made attempt to speak; He fail'd indeed—but still his Friend confess'd The best have fail'd, and he had done his best: The first of swimmers, when at first he swims, Has little use or freedom in his limbs; Nay, when at length he strikes with manly force, The cramp may seize him, and impede his course. Encouraged thus, our Clerk again essay'd The daring act, though daunted and afraid: Succeeding now, though partial his success, And pertness mark'd his manner and address, Yet such improvement issued from his books, That all discern'd it in ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... slivers. We plunge into a hole on our left, the entrance to the communication trench. We let our loads fall in a circular enclosure prepared for them, and both hot and frozen we settled in the trench and wait our hands abraded, wet, and stiff with cramp. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... was it 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, ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... kitchen and dining-room are on the ground floor," said Paganel, "we must sleep on the first floor. The house is large, and as the rent is not dear, we must not cramp ourselves for room. I can see up yonder natural cradles, in which once safely tucked up we shall sleep as if we were in the best beds in the world. We have nothing to fear. Besides, we will watch, and we are ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... authority, where the pax deorum was the one essential object of public and private life, a power might be developed apt one day not only to petrify religion and stultify its worshippers, but thereby also to cramp the energies of the community, acting as an obstacle to its development within its walls and without. Had Roman law remained entirely in the hands of this self-electing college, one of two things must have happened: either ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... other hand, and she was urgent on the necessity of thoroughness in the wringing out of one's floor cloth, because a dry floor cloth takes up twice as much water as a wet one, and thus lightens labor; also she advised Mary to change her positions as frequently as possible to avoid cramp when scrubbing, and to kneel up or stand up when wringing her cloths, as this would give her a rest, and the change of movement would relieve her very greatly, and above all to take her time about the business, because haste seldom resulted in clean ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing-space; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... assistance. With the partial recovery of his animation came the return of his wonderful delusion on the subject of swimming. As soon as his chattering teeth would let him speak, he smiled vacantly, and said he thought it must have been the Cramp. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... head"—Vicia Caroliniana—Vetch: Decoction drunk for dyspepsia and pains in the back, and rubbed on stomach for cramp; also rubbed on ball-players after scratching, to render their muscles tough, and used in the same way after scratching in the disease referred to under [^u][n]nagei, in which one side becomes black in spots, with partial ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... rub the cramp out of that leg, boys, I'll 'fess up' everything," he began. "That leg feels as if some one were trying to pull some teeth out of it by the roots. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... have 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, and slept frequently fifteen ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... alone could have discovered, by the means 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 ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... immediately stripped, and each having had a dram, they tied up in a handkerchief a shirt, trowsers, and a pair of shoes each, which was rested upon their shoulders: thus equipped, they took the water, and in seven minutes landed on the opposite shore; but one being seized with the cramp, was obliged to disengage himself from his bundle, which was of course lost: they set off through the woods, and in a short time got on board the ship, the one with his shirt and ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... common-sense who is heartless and has not a shilling in his pockets?' 'Come, come, George,' said Wilks, 'banish melancholy, draw up your drama, and bring your sketch with you to-morrow, for I expect you to dine with me. But as an empty purse may cramp your genius, I desire you to accept my mite; here is twenty guineas.' Farquhar set to work, and brought the plot of his play to Wilks the next day; the later approved the design, and urged him to proceed without delay. Mostly written in bed, the whole was begun, finished, and acted within ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... effect in the house of commons was that it acted as a check on those places which were popularly represented. He further argued, that if a house of commons were once elected on the principles of this bill, it would cramp the crown in the exercise of its prerogatives, and create a body in that house so irresistible as to make their lordships' decisions on all public questions a dead letter. The house of commons would become too much the image of the people. The dangers, indeed, which at this moment surrounded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sick of watching and seeing nothing but black night. Later I'll go down and see what that thing is. If it's a flatboat or a raft, I'll try to get across on that. If it isn't, I'll climb up the bank and get a log. Then I'll try swimming across holding to it. That'll keep me up if I get a cramp. Lord, I'm hungry! Guess I'd better not think about it. I'm talking to myself as though I'd reached my second childhood. Oh, well...." He paused and looked up toward the embankment. "You thought you'd get me, didn't you, Alf? ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... give unequivocal signs of being unwell. He began to writhe in a most lamentable fashion, either with cramp in his stomach or in his limbs; and Uncle Prudent, thinking it his duty to put an end to these gymnastics, cut the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... strokes swam towards the land. He had proceeded but a short way when, either in consequence of becoming benumbed by the coldness of the water after being chilled by exposure to the wind, or from being seized by cramp, or from what other cause, the unfortunate man suddenly turning his face towards Armstrong, and uttering a cry of alarm, sank and disappeared from sight. Once more only was anything seen of him, when brought near the surface, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... number of cases, there is an excessive amount of pain, preventing sleep; where this is due to cramp-like contractions of the muscles and movements of the fragments, it is relieved by more accurate fixation, as by strips of plaster; otherwise a hypodermic injection of heroin or ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... 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
... the wife of Eben Tollman, the bigot whose narrowness would cramp her life into a dreary torture. His imagination eddied in bewildered wretchedness about that whirlpool of thought, bringing transient impulses of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... filled through and through with intensely painful emotion about himself. He is threatened, he is guilty, he is doomed, he is annihilated, he is lost. His mind is fixed as if in a cramp on these feelings of his own situation, and in all the books on insanity you may read that the usual varied flow of his thoughts has ceased. His associative processes, to use the technical phrase, are inhibited; and his ideas stand stock-still, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Noguez, Fortanet, and Bernard senior. For lofty summits, such as the Pic d'Ardiden, and for other excursions, Lons, Pratdessus, and Cramp Brothers. ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... 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 can hold her, and no codes; She chooses men ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the town where all cares are rife, Weary with troubles that cramp and kill, Fain would be done with the restless strife, Fain would go back to the old bush life, Back to the ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... 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 particularly into ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... It was only on the 25th, at five in the evening, that Eble arrived there, followed only by two field forges, two waggons of coal, six covered waggons of utensils and nails, and some companies of pontonniers. At Smolensk he had made each workman provide himself with a tool and some cramp-irons. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... on their sinfulness! Hear grave philosophers, so limp and frail They scarce can walk God's earth to breathe his air, Talk of the waste of time! Short-sighted men! God made the body just to fit the mind, Each part exact, no scrimping and no waste— Neglect the body and you cramp ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... fell into the river and the brother, in swimming out to save her, was seized with the cramp and sank before he could reach her. The mother has lived alone ever since, except for her servants. They are very good and faithful. Then, she has her hummers and her pygmies, who are a great deal of company ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Epic Poem Vox Populi Vox Dei Black Asgill and Defoe Horne Tooke Fox and Pitt Horner Adiaphori Citizens and Christians Professor Park English Constitution Democracy Milton and Sidney De Vi Minimorum Hahnemann Luther Sympathy of old Greek and Latin with English Roman Mind War Charm for Cramp Greek Dual, neuter pleural *sic*, and verb singular Theta Talented Homer Valcknaer Principles and Facts Schmidt Puritans and Jacobins Wordsworth French Revolution Infant Schools Mr. Coleridge's Philosophy Sublimity Solomon Madness C. Lamb Faith ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... a white apron. Her sleeves were short, her elbows always grazed, her cap anywhere but in the right place; but she was scrupulously clean, and "maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness." She carried in her pocket "a handkerchief, a piece of wax-candle, an apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp-bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors, a handful of loose beads, several balls of worsted and cotton, a needle-case, a collection of curl-papers, a biscuit, a thimble, a nutmeg-grater, and a few miscellaneous articles." Clemency Newcome married ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... winter I run down to see the happy couple. Vida was now looking a good forty, but Clyde was actually looking younger than ever; not a line nor a wrinkle to show how he had grieved for her, and not a sign of writer's cramp from these three picture cards he had sent her in five years. She'd been afraid he'd come ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... that he might seem to be paying Northwick's indebtedness to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be said that the prospect ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... God 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 ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... here, and all this brunt is past. I ne'er was in dislike with my disguise Till this fled moment; here 'twas good, in private; But in your public,—cave whilst I breathe. 'Fore God, my left leg began to have the cramp, And I apprehended straight some power had struck me With a dead palsy: Well! I must be merry, And shake it off. A many of these fears Would put me into some villanous disease, Should they come thick upon me: I'll prevent 'em. Give me a bowl of lusty wine, to fright This humour ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... 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 ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Extracts of cramp bark, forty grains; blue cohosh, ten grains; Squaw wine, forty grains; pokeberry, twenty grains; strychnine, one grain. Make forty pills. Dose: One pill four times a ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... think it odd, but sometimes I feel them just as plain as if they were now on, instead of being long ago in some shark's maw. At nights I has the cramp in them till it almost makes me halloo out with pain. It's a hard thing, when one has lost the sarvice of his legs, that all the feelings should remain. The doctor says as how it's narvous. Come, Jacob, shove in your pannikin. You seem to take it ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Hardwigg did not intend the old woman and myself to become martyrs to his obstinate will. Were we to be starved to death? A frightful recollection came to my mind. Once we had fed on bits and scraps for a week while he sorted some curiosities. It gave me the cramp even to think ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... 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
... come to where the boys said they meant to go in swimming this morning," added Toby. "It's a perfect day, too, even if the sun does feel hot. Just such a day as this when I got that nasty little cramp in the cold water of the lake, and might have had a serious time only for Big Bob Jeffries taking me on his back and carrying me like a ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... fell very piteously, and was like to have broken my knee-cap, and the torrent got hold of my other leg while I was indulging the bruised one. And then a vile knotting of cramp disabled me, and for awhile I could only roar, till my mouth was full of water, and all of my body was sliding. But the fright of that brought me to again, and my elbow caught in a rock-hole; and so I managed to start again, with ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... some day brag of it to you." Then he and Mary became very poorly. He writes, "We have had a sick child, sleeping, or not sleeping, next to me, with a pasteboard partition between, who killed my sleep. My bedfellows are Cough and Cramp: we sleep three in a bed. Don't come yet to this house of pest and age." This is in 1833. At the end of that year (in December) he writes (once more humorously) to Rogers, expressing, amongst other things, his love for that fine artist, Stothard: "I met ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... wasteful to send forth with the bridle thrown up, and to set to steeple-hunting instead of running on highways! But it is the lot of many such, in this dislocated time,—Heaven mend it! In a better time there will be other "professions" than those three extremely cramp, confused and indeed almost obsolete ones: professions, if possible, that are true, and do not require you at the threshold to constitute yourself an impostor. Human association,—which will mean discipline, vigorous wise subordination and co-ordination,—is so unspeakably important. Professions, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... his teeth (I think he set them) and swam after it. Just as he reached it, he fetched an awful yell. He had been seized with cramps. Still, he had sense enough to cling to the door, and, when the first spasm of the cramp had passed, to sprawl himself upon it. There he lay for a while, lapped by the water that came over the door, and writhing ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... rusty shield bosses and the mouldering skull of an Anglo-Saxon; from the old Lewes gaol come a lock and a key strong enough to hold Jack Sheppard; and from Horsham Gaol a complete set of fetters for ankles and wrists, once used to cramp the movements of female malefactors. Here, in a case, is a tiny bronze thimble that tipped the pretty finger of a Roman seamstress—one only among scores of tokens of the Roman occupation of the county. Flint arrow heads and celts in profusion ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... brother alone now in the valley. Once the hunt swung away to the westward and the sounds of it grew faint. Dick hoped it would continue in that direction, but by and by it came back again and he crouched down anew in his narrow quarters. He felt that every bone in him was stiffening with cramp and needlelike pains shot through his nerves. Yet he dared not move. And upon top of his painful position came the knowledge that the Sioux would stay there to cut up the slain buffaloes. He was tempted more than once to jump up, run for ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... heavy meal, stiffening the legs too much, and varicose veins. Preventive: Never remain in the water after feeling chilled; always swim around and exercise yourself; twenty minutes is long enough for any one to remain in the water; always turn over on the back when getting a cramp, and float, at the same time working toward the shore with the hands, and don't lose your ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... had thought it was all the same to him whether or not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... began to ride. My soul Smooth'd itself out, a long-cramp'd scroll Freshening and fluttering in the wind. Past hopes already lay behind. What need to strive with a life awry? Had I said that, had I done this, So might I gain, so might I miss. Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... 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
... like the contortions of one big, furry beast twisted with cramp, by the moonlight. You could not possibly separate the combatants, or tell that there were two. But the polecat only fought because he dared not expose his flank with the foe facing him. Now, however, as they both ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... more and more with the motion of his arms. And then he saw that the terrific pace set by O'Grady was beginning to tell on the occupants of the canoe ahead. The speed grew less and less, until it was no more than seventy yards. In spite of the pains that were eating at his strength like swimmer's cramp, Jan could not restrain a low cry of exultation. O'Grady had planned to beat him out in that first twenty-mile spurt. And he had failed! His heart leaped with new hope even while his strokes were ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... high enough to have a view of a few paces along the trench. Now he saw Weixler, with his back turned, leaning on his right side against the trench wall, standing there crookedly, his left hand pressed against his body, his shoulders hunched as if he had a cramp. The captain raised himself a little higher and saw the ground and a broad, dark shadow that Weixler cast. Blood? He was bleeding? Or what? Surely that was blood. It couldn't be anything but blood. ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... feed 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
... a time.... That disease had not long left mee, till ... I began to be distempered with other greevous sickness, which successively & severally assailed me: for besides a relapse into the former disease; ... the Flux surprised me, and kept me many daies: then the cramp assaulted my weak body, with strong paines; & afterward the Gout afflicted me in such sort, that making my body through weaknesse unable to stirre, ... drew upon me the disease called Scurvy ... till I was upon the point to leave the world."[85] Realizing that it would be fatal for him ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... rule, so moderate in drinking that the wine he had taken, supplemented by his misery, made him feel physically ill. He shuddered with cold as he dived into the water, and as he swam out he felt, for the first time in his life, a slight twinge of cramp. At another time he would have been somewhat alarmed, for the strongest swimmer is absolutely helpless under an attack of cramp, but this morning he was indifferent, and the thought struck him that it would be well for him if he flung up his arms ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... have the power to kill their prey, and stun their enemies, at a distance! Instead of a spiny defence, they are armed with electricity! The best-known sea-fish of this sort is the Electric Ray, also called the Cramp Fish or Torpedo (see p. 48). It is a clumsy fish about a yard long, and very ugly. Being too slow to catch its swift prey in fair chase, it stuns them with an electric shock, and then eats them. The electric power comes from ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... such an intense cramp seized him that he could not speak for some time. Then he began again, but in ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... manuscript, crossing out, interpolating, re-arguing, and then referring to volumes on his shelves. Bock would snore under the chair, and soon Roger's brain would begin to waver. In the end he would fall asleep over his papers, wake with a cramp about two o'clock, and creak ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... be perfect, therefore, must be like a perfectly fitting garment, which, beautifying and adorning the person, must yet never cramp or restrain perfect freedom of movement. Any visible restraint will mar its grace, as a wrinkle will mar the ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... our attempts to catch these two devilish goats, which to our cost we found were not so feeble, after all; for getting one up in a corner, she raises herself up on her hind legs and brings her skull down with such a smack on my knee that I truly thought she had broke my cramp-bone, whilst t'other, taking Dawson in the ankles with her horns, as he was reaching forward to lay hold of her, lay him sprawling in our little stream of water. Nor do I think we should ever have captured them, but that, giving over our endeavours ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... "I 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
... "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 reasonable punishment, viz. confiscation ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... thing to say that genuine loyalty and fervent gratefulness were strange to Erasmus. And yet such was his nature. In characters like his a kind of mental cramp keeps back the effusions of the heart. He subscribes to the adage: 'Love so, as if you may hate one day, and hate so, as if you may love one day'. He cannot bear benefits. In his inmost soul he continually retires before everybody. He who considers himself the pattern of simple unsuspicion, is ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... a thump. Here was a chance for Dan; a word from her was all that was needed to make his path an easy one. Had she a right to withhold that word,—to cramp and hinder him? She did not speak for a good many seconds; she simply plied her needle with more and more diligence, while her breath came fast and unevenly. Suddenly a furious blush went mounting up into her temples and spread itself down her ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... their firmly and equally grasping both flexor and extensor muscles alike, they are steadied, and rendered much less likely to be affected with spasmodic action or cramp. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... strength to carry heavy burdens across the plain. In all that the water does, the poet's fancy can discern its personality of life. It gives fish to the fisher, and crops to the husbandman; it swells in fury and lays waste the land; it grips the bather with chill and cramp, and holds with inexorable grasp its drowning victim. . . . What ethnography has to teach of that great element of the religion of mankind, the worship of well and lake, brook and river, is simply this—that what is poetry to us was philosophy to early man; ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... day, for one of the family, it was believed, would surely die before the end of the year. There are many other superstitions attached to the day, such as the preserving of eggs laid on Good Friday, which were supposed to have power to extinguish fire; the making of cramp-rings out of the handles of coffins, which rings were blessed by the King of England as he crept on his knees to the cross, and were supposed to be preservatives ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... customers received checks 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 ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... fathers and mothers, save to crimp and cramp young folks that would fain stretch their wings and be off into the sunlight? ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... of the individual. He (or she) has got to settle it. He must learn to manage himself in such a way that he ceases to be abnormally excitable, or he must arrange his life so that he avoids, as far as possible, the causes of excitement. He must not expect others to cramp their lives to fit him; he must not expect civilization to be perverted or arrested in order to avoid a difficulty which is ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... timbers are? What though the crumbling walls turn dust and loam— I shall have left them for a larger home. What though the rafters break, the stanchions rot, When earth has dwindled to a glimmering spot! When thou, clay cottage, fallest, I'll immerse My long-cramp'd spirit in the universe. Through uncomputed silences of space I shall yearn upward to the leaning Face. The ancient heavens will roll aside for me, As Moses monarch'd the dividing sea. This body is my house—it is not I. Triumphant in this faith ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... coming to the farm? He laughed a little. "Ha, ha, ha," he said, and went on smiling—left his smile standing. It looked horrible; he was quite white, and his mouth seemed to have stiffened in a smiling cramp. Here was an equal for Solem, a sexual colleague, a stallion in strength and stubbornness. And still ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... kroo! I've cramp in my legs, Sitting so long atop of my eggs! Never a minute for rest to snatch; I wonder when they are going ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... death passed on a criminal by a judge. He has just undergone the cramp word; sentence has just been passed on ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Always striving to improve himself, when he became a man, he built a small observatory upon his own land, that he might study the stars. He was thus enabled to earn one hundred dollars a year in the work of the United States Coast Survey. Teaching at two dollars a week, and fishing, could not always cramp a man of such ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... and George, and all are equal, except perhaps the chairman, who has two more pens in front of him and a much larger ash-tray. Mr. BEVIN and Sir ERIC GEDDES smile affably across at each other, and the PRIME MINISTER and Mr. CRAMP find out how much they have in common, such as love of poetry and pelargoniums. The mine-owner offers the miners' representative a cigarette, and the miners' representative says to the mine-owner, "Many thanks, old boy; but I'll have one of my own." And after it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... The streets were dotted with these black-clothed men and stiff women, all reduced to a Sunday nullity. I hated it. It reminded me of that which I knew in my boyhood, that stiff, null 'propriety' which used to come over us, like a sort of deliberate and self-inflicted cramp, on Sundays. I hated these elders in black broadcloth, with their neutral faces, going home piously to their Sunday dinners. I hated the feeling of these villages, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... kicking out, as I told you before," he exclaimed. "You will not sink, and it will keep them from getting the cramp. Kick, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... she supposed that he was accustomed to the exercise, and that there was no danger. But whether, in swimming, the boy had struck his breast against a sunken rock, or whether he was suddenly taken with cramp, or whether he had over-calculated his own strength, it so happened, that when he had disembarrassed the little plaything from the flags in which it was entangled, and sent it forward on its course, he had scarce swam a few yards in his way to the shore, than he raised himself suddenly ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... of anything—that is, in the way of ready money. In fact, I must bear all the burden of the funeral expenses. I'm short myself, and it's going to cramp me to get hold of ready cash. I've got to make something of a sacrifice, and it's ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... her plight to see Splashed tears in cups of milk or tea; The room it grew so very damp Her limbs began to feel the cramp. ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... fool, when everybody in the gallery can see it?—that his parliamentary work is meaningless to her, that her life is insufficient. That's it. Lady Cicely is being "starved." All that she has is money, position, clothes, and jewelry. These things starve any woman. They cramp her. ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... after her arrival, Rebecca began to take a regular place in Mrs. Crawley's bulletin from the Hall. It was to this effect: "The black porker's killed—weighed x stone—salted the sides—pig's pudding and leg of pork for dinner. Mr. Cramp from Mudbury, over with Sir Pitt about putting John Blackmore in gaol—Mr. Pitt at meeting (with all the names of the people who attended)—my lady as usual—the young ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I always get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... is not characteristic of the English people; but "they are well kept that God keeps," and perhaps it would not be wise to cramp the hand of relief too much at a time like this, to a people who have been, and will be yet, the hope and ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... 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 at least ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... 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 ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... delicately-flavoured honey. Perfumers are greatly indebted to it. According to De Gubernatis, the flowers of the plant are proof against rheumatism, nervous indisposition, general debility, weakness of sight, melancholy, weak circulation, and cramp. Almost as comprehensive a cure as some of our modern ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... perceived, meant terrible ill-luck to Mrs. Twitt,—if a cat sneezed, it was a sign that there was going to be sickness in the village,—and she always carried in her pocket "a bit of coffin" to keep away the cramp. She also had a limitless faith in the power of cursing, and she believed most implicitly in the fiendish abilities of a certain person, (whether male or female, she did not explain) whose address she gave ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... can't get out. Drawing tires me; however, I have done a little better to-day. The doctor residing in the castle has taken me in hand, and gives me leave to dine to-day with the Queen and the rest of the royal family.... Flogging would be mild compared with my sufferings. No sleep, fearful cramp at night, accompanied by a feeling of faintness ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... of yesterday only aggravated by the cramp which had stolen into his legs during the ride of to-day, climbed down from the buckboard and limped across the lawn ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... them with our fingers. Good as the food undoubtedly was, I was always glad when the meal was over, as it is very far from comfortable to sit with your legs doubled up under you. Afterwards I could hardly stand up straight, owing to cramp. I found it especially trying in Samoa, where one had to sit in this manner for hours during feasts, "kava"-drinking and "siva-sivas" (dances). Sometimes a glistening damsel would fan us with a large fan made out of the leaf of a fan palm, [6] which at times ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... as though walking through nettles, and noticed that the grass was adhering to my stockings. However, I pushed on, my dog being hot on the scent, but presently we both came to a standstill—I, because of cramp in both legs, each of which was now enveloped in grass to the size of a bee-hive; while the dog's shaggy coat had collected it till he appeared as large as a sheep, and could no longer force his way along, besides being ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... of all about these taboos," Bertram mused, as if half to himself. "The very people whom they injure and inconvenience the most, the people whom they hamper and cramp and debar, don't seem to object to them, but believe in them and are afraid of them. In Samoa, I remember, certain fruits and fish and animals and so forth were tabooed to the chiefs, and nobody ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... the afternoon of the 28th, we got on shore under the high land to the north of Hat Hill and were able to cook provisions and take some repose without disturbance. The sandy beach was our bed; and after much fatigue, and passing three nights of cramp in Tom Thumb, it was to us a bed ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... through," he 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 afore her." ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... we were eager for, but we had an enemy against which it was hard to contend; that was the cholera. Officers and men were quickly struck down by it. The Guards alone lost nearly a hundred men. It was sad to hear the poor fellows' cries as the terrible cramp seized them. All the troops suffered more or less from sickness— the French more than all. We were thankful when the order came for us to embark once more for the spot where we hoped to meet the enemy. Yet many a strong man ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... The moral cramp forsook his hand. He took the money with a hearty "Thank you, sir." As he put it in his pocket, he felt its corners carefully, lest there should be a hole. But his pockets had not had half the wear ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... you'd see that I'm acting square. Come! Get the cramp out of yourself while I make a pot of coffee." He held out his hand to assist her, and she accepted it, but stumbled as she rose, for she had been crouched in one position for several hours, and her limbs ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... a fish, well known elsewhere, and also called elsewhere, the Numb-fish and Cramp fish. For ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the country neighbours welcoming her as her mother's daughter, but most of them saying she was far more like her Aunt Phyllis than her own mother. The dancing and excitement so late at night had, however, tired her overmuch, she had cramp all the remainder of the night, could eat no breakfast the next day, and ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and some of them were curled back on themselves into disgusting-looking knots. What walking he had ever done had been on his heels. His feet were bent upward, and fixed upward, by a deliberately cultivated cramp. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... cords must, in their action, be free from the disturbance of uncontrolled breath action below them, or the hindrance due to misdirected effort above them. To direct consciousness to the vocal cords is to cramp them and prevent that free vibration and that perfect relaxation of the throat without which pure tone and ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... one of the niggers' wood fires and ate in our fingers ravenously. The leg I also cooked and kept for to-day (I am writing on the morning of the 4th), and it is hanging on my saddle. I was rather sleepless last night, owing to cramp from a drenched blanket, and got up about midnight and walked over to the remains of one of our niggers' fires. Crouching over the embers I found a bearded figure, which hoarsely denounced me for ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... more than three rods under water the other day," said Charlie. "I shouldn't want to risk myself so long out of sight. Suppose the cramp should seize you, Nat, I guess you'd like to see ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... and graced with a preface from the man of men. I can only say that I heartily wish the book were better, and I must try and deserve so much favor from the kind gods by a bolder and truer living in the months to come; such as may perchance one day relax and invigorate this cramp hand of mine, and teach it to draw some grand and adequate strokes, which other men may find their own account and not their good-nature in repeating. Yet I think I shall never be killed by my ambition. I behold my failures and shortcomings there in writing, wherein it would give ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... ribs, etc., and the three larger ones to hold down the centre rib in the same way by means of fitted wood block 33, and for the corner blocks, when they are fitted properly to the shaped ribs. (Cramp 11 is ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... s'pose I do without knowing it. I am so glad you had a pleasant Sunday. No doubt you had more bodily strength with which to enjoy spiritual things. A weak body hinders prayer and praise when the heart would sing, if it were not in fetters that cramp ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... puddin' stopped, a crusty ol' mince pie Jumped from its plate and glared at me and winked its little eye; "You boy," it says, "Thanksgivin' Day, don't dare ter touch a slice Of me, for if you do, I'll come and cramp you like a vise. I'll root you, and I'll boot you, and I'll twist you till you squeal, I'll stand on edge and roll around your stomach like a wheel; I'll hunch you, and I'll punch you, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... LOCK-JAW, a nervous affection of a most painful and fatal character, which usually begins with intensely painful and persistent cramp of the muscles of the throat and jaws, spreading down to the larger muscles of the body. As the disease progresses the muscles become more and more rigid, while the paroxysms of pain increase in violence and frequency. Death ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... close to the girls who aren't so much used to it, in case they should get cramp, or turn giddy," explained Lettice. "Beatrice Marsden and Ivy Ridgeway are only beginning, so I expect she'll paddle about with them in four feet of water. Janie Henderson ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... shoes, there is some variety of opinion among medical men. A few hold that they cramp the feet, and prevent children from learning to walk as early as they otherwise would. If it were best for children that they should learn to walk as early as possible, the last objection might have weight. But it seems to me not at ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... that I'm not dreaming," confided Eph, almost in a whisper. "Whee! but it's fine to be out on a craft so big that you don't get a cramp in your leg from walking! Say, do you know, Jack," he whispered, "I am almost crazy to see one of this ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... might be there, and down she came, and told me to swim ashore. It wasn't far, but the water was horrid cold, and I didn't like it. I started though, just as she said, and got on all right, till about halfway, then cramp or something made me shut up and howl, and she came after me slapdash, and pulled me ashore. Yes, sir, as wet as a turtle, and looked so funny, I laughed, and that cured the cramp. Wasn't I good to mind when ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... dropped from their saddles in front of the hotel at just eleven o'clock. They had ridden thirty miles and stood for a moment stretching the cramp ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... exhausted by his previous struggles and the extreme violence with which he had been dragged hither and thither in his passage from the wrecked ship's cuddy to the cave. He was bruised and aching in every joint of his body, and was, furthermore, suffering severely from cramp due to the constraint ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... road, at easy running distance from the schoolhouse at noontime or recess, crawled the little river, with its inevitable "hole," which each mother's son was warned to avoid in swimming, lest he be seized with cramp there where the pool was bottomless. What eerie wonders lurked within the mirror of those shallow brown waters! Long black hairs cleaved and clung in their limpid flowing. To this day, I know not whether they were horse-hairs, far from home, or swaying willow roots; the boys said they were "truly" ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... had fled. They hid behind trees, borrowed silk hats and umbrellas and pretended they were visitors—any device, however mean, to avoid the task of umpiring for that young man. Provided his opponent did not go to sleep or get cramp, one game might last all day. Anyone could return his balls; but, as I have said, to get a ball past him was almost an impossibility. He invariably won; the other man, after an hour or so, would get mad and try to lose. It was his ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... publishing house. It was my good fortune to know him intimately, and when he could be severed from his innumerable manuscripts, which accompanied him everywhere, even in bed, he was very good company. His premature death from reader's cramp and mental hernia was a sad loss to the world of polite letters. Thousands of mediocre books would have been loaded upon the public but for his incisive and unerring judgment. When he lay on his deathbed, surrounded by half-read MSS., he sent for me, and with an ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... is as strong. Why, I tell you there's nothin' a trushul can't do, whether it's curin' a man as is bit by a sap, or wipin' the very rainbow out o' the sky by jist layin' two sticks crossways, or even curin' the cramp in your legs by jist settin' your shoes crossways; there's nothin' for good or bad a trushul can't do if it likes. Hav'n't you never heer'd o' the dukkeripen o' the trushul shinin' in the sunset sky when the light o' the sinkin' sun shoots up behind a bar o' clouds an' makes a kind ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... kinds of medicines. It is particularly useful in confined habit of body, as also diarrhoea, bowel complaints, affections of the kidneys and bladder, such as stone or gravel; inflammatory irritation and cramp of the urethra, cramp of the kidneys and bladder, strictures, and hemorrhoids. This really invaluable remedy is employed with the most satisfactory result, not only in bronchial and pulmonary complaints, where irritation and pain are to be removed, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... forms, having equally various causes. One of these causes, giving rise to a comparatively simple form of the disease, is cramp of the ring-muscle of the windpipe, so contracting the windpipe that breathing is rendered difficult. A "wheeze" is heard in breathing, though there is no bronchitis or lung trouble present. The cause of this cramp is an irritation ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... attention will rarely give excellence in many. But our assent will go no further. For, to think that the way to prepare a person for excelling in any one pursuit (and that is the only point in hand), is to fetter his early studies, and cramp the first development of his mind, by a reference to the exigencies of that pursuit barely, is a very different notion, and one which, we apprehend, deserves to be exploded rather than received. Possibly a few of the abstract, insulated kinds of learning might be approached in that ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... moment I heard that you had gone to Barport, and it struck me that a trip of the sort is exactly what that young person needs. She is shut up in the narrowest place in which a girl can be put, with responsibilities entirely beyond her years, and which help to cramp her mind and her ideas. She should have a total change; she should see how the world, outside of her school and her country home, lives and acts—in fact, she needs exactly what Barport and you and Mrs. Bannister can give her. I do not believe that you can bestow a ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... running—effort that caused him physical pain and discomfort. His feet stumbled occasionally in the snow; his legs, from thigh to knee, began to ache with the gnawing torment that centers in the marrowbone; and with this beginning of the "runner's cramp" he was filled with a new and ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... 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
... them. Calvert paid devotions to St. Hubert for the recovery of his son, who was cured by this means. The son also performed the necessary rites at the shrine, and was cured not only of the hydrophobia "but of the worser phrensy with which his father had instilled him." Cramp-rings were also used; and eelskins to this day are tied round the legs as a preventive of this spasmodic affection; and by laying sticks across the floor, on going to bed, cramp has ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... here appropriately cite one of several cases reported in the "British and Foreign Medical Review," January, 1847. A naval officer had suffered for some years from violent attacks of cramp in the stomach. He had tried almost all the remedies usually recommended for the relief of this troublesome affection. For a short time bismuth had been prescribed, with good results. The attacks came on about once in three weeks, or from that to a month, unless when any ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... should say thank your sister, too. She saved him. I tell you, Gresley, neither you nor I could have sat all those hours without stirring, as she did. She had cramp after the first hour. She has a will of iron in that weak body ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the wild, 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
... move, intending to displace the Rook. Black has then open lines for his two Bishops as compensation for his shattered pawn position. 11. R-KB4, Castles; 12. KtxKt, QxQch; 13. KtxQ, PxKt. Now it is not easy to find a reasonable plan for White, as Black threatens to cramp White's game with B-Q3 and P-B5. It is therefore necessary for White to take measures against that by playing R-B4 and B-B4. If Black still plays B-Q3, B-B4 follows, with the intention of exchanging and of provoking Black's P-B4, which ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... do I lift my collar. Yet the presence of a thoroughly hard-headed person provokes a sneeze. There is a chilly vapor off him—a swampish miasma—that puts me in a snuffling state, beyond poultice and mustard footbaths. No matter how I huddle to the fire, my thoughts will congeal and my purpose cramp and stiffen. My conceit too will be but ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... Collodi. Walter Cramp's translation of this little Italian classic will be highly appreciated. Ginn ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... by not at all wearisomely to me, though my cousins and their children suffered much from cramp and fatigue, and at five, after an ascent of three hours, we began to descend towards a large tract of cultivated undulating country, in the centre of which is situated a large settlement called Truro. There, at a wretched hostelry, we stopped to dine, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... think how you do it," Rosalind was crying to her in her rich, ripe voice out of the splashing waves. "But fancy their all swimming out and leaving you to yourself. Why, you might get cramp and sink. I'm no use, you know; I'm hopeless; ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... sudden," I said. "It seemed to me as if the man had got an attack of cramp. That would account for it. He has the reputation of being a ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... He recounted to me the particulars of his sudden seizure when he spoke last, from the cramp in his stomach, owing to a draught of cold water which he drank in the midst of the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... this moment poor old Tuppy must have got a sudden touch of cramp. He had been sitting hard by, staring at the ceiling, and he now gave a sharp leap like a gaffed salmon and upset a small table containing a vase, a bowl of potpourri, two china dogs, and a copy of Omar Khayyam bound in ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... I says to myself, I says: 'If ever Emily should start to cramp, the world's cramping record is also in a fair way to be busted this afternoon. I certainly do hope,' I says, 'that Emily don't ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 in her clenched fist before ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... coming; the road was bare as far as he could see. Then the cold began creeping, creeping, up his arm; first his wrist, then his arm to the elbow, then his arm to the shoulder; how cold it was! And soon it began to ache. Ugly little cramp-pains streamed up his finger, up his palm, up his arm, till they reached into his shoulder, and down the back of his neck. It seemed hours since the little brother went away. He felt very lonely, ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... knowledge of ballads to any man breathing," said Mr. Daly; "and, with God's blessing, I'll sing you one this evening, after dinner, that will give you a cramp in the stomach." ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872) |
