"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The exertions that men find it necessary to make, in order to support themselves or families, frequently awaken faculties that might otherwise have lain for ever dormant, and it has been commonly remarked that new and extraordinary situations generally create minds adequate to grapple with the difficulties in which they ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Mr. Smivvle caught his wrist, the bottle crashed splintering to the floor, and they were locked in a fierce grapple. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... informed, than any others are those in which the principles which we deem to be those of right reason find least favour. Even in the most Liberal part of the kingdom, the University constituencies are the least Liberal part of the electoral body. The facts are clear; we must grapple with them as we can. There is something in education, in culture, in refinement, or whatever the qualities are which are supposed to distinguish University electors from the electors of an ordinary county or borough, which makes ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... retained her faculties remarkably well. Fifteen of the people had escaped from the mainland in the previous spring. They were pursued, and one of them was overtaken by his master in the swamps. A fierce grapple ensued,—the master on horseback, the man on foot. The former drew a pistol and shot his slave through the arm, shattering it dreadfully. Still, the heroic man fought desperately, and at last succeeded in unhorsing his master, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... can come before the Congress than this of the regulation of interstate business. This country can not afford to sit supine on the plea that under our peculiar system of government we are helpless in the presence of the new conditions, and unable to grapple with them or to cut out whatever of evil has arisen in connection with them. The power of the Congress to regulate interstate commerce is an absolute and unqualified grant, and without limitations other than those prescribed by the Constitution. The Congress has ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... counted especially on Lucy Stone, who seemed to give her approval when she wrote, "I am glad you will speak on the divorce question, provided you yourself are clear on the subject. It is a great grave topic that one shudders to grapple, but its hour is coming.... God touch your lips if ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... instant only; then, without uttering a word, he aimed a blow full at Rokoa's head. The latter caught it in his open palm, wrenched the weapon from him, and, adroitly foiling a furious attempt which he made to grapple with him, once more stood upon the defensive with an unruffled aspect and not the slightest appearance of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... world is a reality even when the views which produce it are wrong. To face a panic one must first of all realise the intrinsic facts, and then allow for the misreading of others. It is the plastic and ingenious mind which will best grapple with these unusual circumstances. It will invent weapons and expedients with which to face each new phase of the position. "Whenever you meet an abnormal situation," said the sage, "deal with it in an abnormal manner." That is ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... be flayed,—to be basted,—to be broiled by Margery upon the gridiron of matrimony." The novice changing colour at this denunciation, "I do understand your signals, brother," said he, "and if it be set down in the log-book of fate that we must grapple, why then 'ware timbers. But as I know how the land lies, d'ye see, and the current of my inclination sets me off, I shall haul up close to the wind, and mayhap we shall clear Cape Margery. But howsomever, we shall leave ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... all the rest. If you don't come to see it, I sha'n't, and I shall not let them have the piece. That is all. Louise," he entreated, after these first desperate words, "can't we grapple with this infernal nightmare, so as to get it into the light, somehow, and see what it really is? How can it matter to you who plays the part? Why do you care whether Miss Pettrell ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... They were met by the Carthagin'ians with a fleet equally powerful, and men more used to the sea. 16. While the fight continued at a distance, the Carthagin'ians seemed successful; but when the Romans came to grapple with them, the difference between a mercenary army and one that fought for fame, was apparent. 17. The resolution of the Romans was crowned with success; the enemy's fleet was dispersed, and fifty-four of their vessels taken. 18. The consequence of this victory was an immediate ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... find the meal served as well as before, but her thoughts were not cheerful while she ate. She remembered her ambitions and her resolve to leave the dreary plains and make her mark in Toronto or Montreal. Now her dreams had vanished and she must grapple with dull realities that jarred her worse than ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... which all of us here had the honor to bear arms—that death grapple of tyranny against freedom—it did not hold back the cause of humanity, of democracy, that war. Else thousands upon thousands of good lives were given ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... business on the eve of that great financial epoch, to grapple with which his talents were well adapted; and when the wars and loans of the Revolution were about to create those families of millionaires, in which he might probably have enrolled his own. That, however, was not our destiny. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... provoke the boar, making as though he would let fly at him; but let fly he must not, for fear of hitting the man under him. The boar, on seeing this, will leave the fallen man, and in rage and fury turn to grapple his assailant. The other will seize the instant to spring to his feet, and not forget to clutch his boar-spear as he rises to his legs again; since rescue cannot be nobly purchased save by victory. (31) Let him again bring the weapon to bear in the same fashion, and make a lunge ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... is merit, in my opinion, in elucidating, if it were only a single word in our great dramatist. Even the attempt, though mayhap a failure, is laudable. I therefore have made, and shall make, hit or miss, some efforts that way. For example, I now grapple with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... L'Isle, bitterly. "What made it more provoking was, that we had at that very time the man to mate him;" and, standing up on his stirrups, he raised his clenched hand above his head, exclaiming: "O, for one hour of Peterborough to grapple with his countryman and ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of my lay preaching, both in Nottingham and London, I had to grapple with other difficulties. What with one thing and another I had a great struggle at times to keep my head above the waters, and my heart alive with peace and love. But I held on to God and His grace, and the never-failing joy that I experienced in leading souls to ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... if the game is worth the candle. To-day Joel, one of a squad of unfortunates, was relearning the art of tackling. It was Joel's first experience with that marvelous contrivance, "the dummy." One after another the squad was sent at a sharp spurt to grapple the inanimate canvas-covered bag hanging inoffensively there, like a body from a ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... been put into place. Foreign investors remain attracted by the country's political stability and high education levels, and tourism continues to bring in foreign exchange. The government continues to grapple with its large internal and external deficits and sizable internal debt. The reduction of inflation remains a difficult problem because of rising import prices, labor market rigidities, and fiscal deficits. The country also needs to ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... oblivious of self as, louder than the buzzing torment of my wounded head, rose a distressful cry and the more hateful sound of desperate struggling. Round I turned and, peering, saw them locked in close grapple, and her slender body bent and swaying in his merciless clutch: at which sight my pain and sickness and selfish fear were all forgotten and in their stead sprang a passionate desire to kill and be done with this evil thing that defiled the earth in man's shape. So back again sped I, and ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... of the Unconditioned is a criticism, partly of Schelling, partly of Cousin; and Schelling and Cousin only attempted in a new form, under the influence of the Kantian philosophy, to solve the problem with which philosophy in all ages has attempted to grapple,—the problem ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... Forsyth had recovered sufficiently from the first shock of her grief to grapple with the cares of every-day life, she showed him that it was not so bad as ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... majestic rivers, and trackless plains, that is, to my mind, wonderfully striking and sublime. He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert. His nature is stern, simple, and enduring, fitted to grapple with difficulties and to support privations. There seems but little soil in his heart for the support of the kindly virtues; and yet, if we would but take the trouble to penetrate through that proud stoicism and habitual taciturnity which lock up his character from casual observation, we should ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Thy name we go forth against the enemy. Lord Christ, Thou hast said, "I am with thee in the hour of need; I will pull thee out, and place thee in an honourable place." Bethink Thee, Lord, of Thy word, and remember Thy promise. Come to our aid when we are sore pressed, when the close grapple is imminent, when the enemy overmatches us, and we have been surrounded by them. Stand by us in need, for the aid of man is of no avail. Through Thee we will vanquish our enemies, and in Thy name we will tread under the foot those who have set themselves ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... animals will fight desperately under the stimulus of sex-passion. Hares and moles battle to the death in some cases; squirrels and beavers wound each other severely. Seals grapple with tooth and claw; bulls, deer and stallions have violent encounters, and goats use their curved horns with deadly effect.[53] The elephant, pacific by nature, assumes a terrible fury in the rutting season. Thus, the Sanskrit poems frequently use the simile of the elephant goaded by ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the growth of the Protestants, Henry II was just preparing, after the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, to grapple with them more earnestly than ever, when he died of a wound accidentally received in a tournament. [Sidenote: July 10, 1559] His death, hailed by Calvin as a merciful dispensation of Providence, conveniently marks the ending of one epoch and the beginning of another. For the previous ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... dissembling—no sword thrusts intended to be parried, no machiavelian hits nor disguises. The fight is close, desperate, deadly; it is yard arm to yard arm; it is heart seeking for naked heart, flashing eye to eye, visor down, and hot breath mingling with hot breath, as the foes close in the last grapple. The other idea is embodied in the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and is represented by the Federal authority. The South, then, is taken to mean the one, and the North, its opposite. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... University Reform, well aware of the opposition such views must encounter in deep-rooted prejudice and fixed routine; aware also of the rashness of attempting, within the limits of such an occasion, to grapple with such a theme; but strong in my conviction of the pressing need of a more emancipated scheme of instruction and discipline, based on the facts of the present and the real wants of American life. It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... education levels, and tourism continues to bring in foreign exchange. However, traditional export sectors have not kept pace. Low coffee prices and an overabundance of bananas have hurt the agricultural sector. The government continues to grapple with its large deficit and massive internal debt and with the need to modernize the state-owned ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... smiled at himself as he paused. He had been out more than an hour and had done nothing, thought out nothing, made no definite plan for the future. His present poverty, which was desperate enough, had put on a carnival mask and laughed at him, as it were, and ran away when he tried to grapple with it and look it in the face. Gloria was there, upstairs in that tall house on which the morning sun was shining, and nothing else could possibly matter. But if anything mattered, it would be simple to talk it over together and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... ghastly. I saw his face change, his finger tremble where it hovered above the fatal button; saw—though only in imagination as yet—the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden grapple with this man, when a sound from another direction caught my ear, and looking around in terror of the only intrusion we could fear, beheld Eva advancing from the room in which we had ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... friends and for old acquaintance sake, doing it with all possible tenderness for his person and his feelings—till all of a sudden he feels the grip on his throat and the dagger's point at his breast, and knows that it is a life-and-death grapple. ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... and gets from it a general impression of human cowardice, but has a strange intoxication with blood and would like to thrust a lance into the neck of every one she meets; coquets a great deal with the thought of marriage; takes up her art and paints a few very successful pictures; tries to grapple with the terrible question, "What is my unbiased opinion concerning myself?" pants chiefly for fame. When the other lung is found diseased the diary becomes sometimes more serious, sometimes more fevered; she is almost racked to find some end in life; ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... of a league of sister nations. The flame from the Fury's torch had spread with a vengeance. Gage was a brave man, an able man, an {166} honorable man; but for Alexander he was a little over-parted. The difficulties he had to encounter were too great for him to grapple with; the work he was meant to do too vast for his hands or the hands of any man. He was sent out to sway a chastened and degraded province; he found himself opposed by a defiant people, exalted by injustice and animated ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hitherto despised path toward which the iron hand of our necessity pointed, and in which all men should be considered equal in their rights, and the position of each should depend, not upon the distance to which he could trace a proud genealogy, but upon the energy with which he should grapple with the stern realities of life, the honesty and uprightness with which he should tread its path, and the use he should make of the blessings which God and his own exertions bestowed upon him. We had to learn the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and I was surprised to find with what tenacity the Duke clings to his cherished prejudices, and how he shuts his eyes to the signs of the times and the real state of the country. With the point at issue he never would grapple. Wharncliffe argued for concession, because they have not the means of resistance, and that they are in fact at the mercy of their opponents. The Duke admitted the force against them, but thought it would be possible ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... difficulties have met me when translating the Welsh sacred and spiritual poems which form the second division of this volume. But they have been more easy to grapple with—in part because I have had more assistance in dealing with the older Cymric poems from my lamented friend Mr. Sidney Richard John and other Welsh scholars, than I had in the case of the early Irish lyrics—in ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... vain! Such mockery now to me! She was the sole reality of this universe to my heart! I grapple with shadows unceasingly. There is not on the face of this globe a more desolate wretch. You understand this! You feel for me, you do not deride me! You know how perfect, how spiritual she was! You loved her well—I saw it in your eyes, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... is—conflict. Voltaire in one of his letters said that every scene in a play should represent a combat. In "Memories and Portraits," Stevenson says: "A good serious play must be founded on one of the passionate cruces of life, where duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple." Goethe, in his "William Meister" says: "All events oppose him [the hero] and he either clears and removes every obstacle out of his path, or else becomes their victim." But it was the French critic, Ferdinand Brunetiere, who defined dramatic law most sharply and clearly, and ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... as Hetty's servant without hope of reward, decided on what he felt was right. He was merely one of the many quiet, steadfast men whom the ostentatious sometimes mistake for fools, until the nation they form the backbone of rises to grapple with disaster or emergency. They are not confined to any one country; for his comrade, Muller, the placid, unemphatic Teuton, had ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... cruel web of circumstance. But most of all he was incensed and shamed by this indignity. He could not trust himself to speak, he would break down. Something was wrong, everything was wrong, fate was against him, he could not grapple with the situation. If he spoke, he would say too much and lose his temper in that solemn hall of justice. And what would happen to ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... nevertheless, not forget the weakness when we reflect upon his abject submission to royalty during his days of dependence, and as we approach the more stormy times when the spirit of vengeance incited him to grapple with royalty in the temper of a rebel. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... august channels of thought, became impeded by the meshes and clogs of intoxication, and were thus worse than prevented from exploring the regions of immortal truth! How many dallied with the sirens of the wine cup, until all power to grapple with great subjects was lost irrevocably! How many are the instances in the world's history of great minds debased and ruined by alcohol! Look back and around you at the lives of the brightest literary ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... ambitious, he sought to rival his seniors at the Bar. Unwilling to wait on time, he aspired to leap at once to this equality. It was the daring of genius, and of a genius which counted as only a stimulant the obstacles intervening. To grapple with giants, such as he found in Guion, Yerger, Sharkey, McNutt, and Lake, would have intimidated a less bold and daring mind; but Prentiss courted the conflict con amore, and applying all his herculean powers with the vigor of youth and the ardency of enterprise, he soon found ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... think of such a thing's spakeing to the missus! Will I fight him?—That will I, rather than he'll say an uncivil word to the likes of her! He's claws they tell me, though he kapes them so well covered in his fine brogues; divil burn me, but I'd grapple ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Waterloo in a frame of mind that baffles description. He was a modest man; he had never conceived an overweening notion of his own powers; he knew himself unfit to write a book, turn a table napkin-ring, entertain a Christmas party with legerdemain—grapple (in short) any of those conspicuous accomplishments that are usually classed under the head of genius. He knew—he admitted—his parts to be pedestrian, but he had considered them (until quite lately) fully equal to the demands of life. And ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deal with an elaborate system of evil cannot, therefore, be confined to treating consequences, the separate instances of the system. There must be a power which can go behind these and grapple with causes. There must, therefore, be something more than a court. There must be a commission, a department of government which will provide organized supervision and inspection against which the quasi-public corporation can claim no privacy as ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... unaffected, earnest manner, the magic power of his unstudied action, and the thrilling intonations of his deep rich voice, rendered him, in his best days, "before public assemblies, almost irresistible." He managed his strength to such advantage, that few men dared to grapple with him "in a pitched field of long and serious debate." His general tone and style in debate were marked by an intense earnestness, whilst his narrative, possessing, from its striking naturalness and simplicity, a high degree of dramatic interest, was ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... head and thanked God, but soon after, learning that the centre had been repulsed, he put himself at the head of the Smaland cavalry and charged the Imperial cuirassiers, the "black lads," with whom he had just before told Stalhaske to grapple. Piccolomini hastened to support the cuirassiers; and the Swedes, being overmatched, retreated without perceiving—the fog having again come over—that they had left the King in the midst of the enemy. A pistol-ball now broke his arm; and as the Duke of Lauenburg was supporting him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... counter-assaults were the order of the day. From Ostend, on the North Sea, now in the hands of the Germans, to the southern extremity of Alsace-Lorraine, the mighty hosts were locked in a death grapple; but, in spite of the fearful execution of the weapons of modern warfare, there had been no really decisive engagement. Neither side had suffered ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... with these books, and time and space "to nothingness do sink." There looms up before you—like a bare mountain in its majesty—the great elemental world-fact, the death-grapple of the will with circumstance. You may build yourself any philosophy or any creed you please, but you will never get away from the world-fact—the death-grapple of the soul with circumstance. schylus ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... would be disastrous to the country for him to hesitate. Writing from Edinburgh, Lord John Russell announced his conversion to total and immediate repeal of the corn laws. Sir Robert Peel hesitated no longer, but, feeling that the crisis had arrived, determined to grapple with it. It was duty to country before and above fancied loyalty to party to be considered. It is strange what remedies some men deem sensible, suggested to prevent famine ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... gales, that seem to haunt the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains and their outlying ranges, each in turn assailed us: and then, on the melting of the snow at the first breath of approaching spring, the floods, which were the most virulent antagonists with whom we had to grapple, almost overwhelmed us! There was 'water, water everywhere,' as Coleridge says in his 'Ancient Mariner.' The whole valley, almost as far as you can see, was one vast foaming torrent, that bore down all our puny protections in the shape of ramparts and stockades. It nearly swept away our rough ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... "Do you think the agents of the men we are to grapple with in the Canal Zone have been in this house to-night? If so, it looks like they were looking us up, instead ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... intense desire that he might grapple with his young foe in the death struggle. Willingly would he have accepted such a decision between their rival claims; but he was alone, wounded, exhausted, a faithful dog his sole friend. He felt that the day of vengeance must ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... never exceeded five feet eight inches,—but broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed, and so compact of bone and muscle, that in a ship of the line, in which he afterwards sailed, there was not, among five hundred able-bodied seamen, a man who could lift so great a weight, or grapple with him on equal terms. His education had been but indifferently cared for at home: he had, however, been taught to read by a female cousin, a niece of his mother's, who, like her too, was both the daughter and the widow of a sailor; and for his cousin's only child, a girl ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... morals and manners, by the things they don't say. Our mutual friend's father, Mr D——, used to utterly damn a book to me when he said it was Just fair, and his It's a likely story, put things in the front ranks. Just get the confidence of as many readers as you can, grapple some of the most divergent minds with hooks of steel; and in finding out how little you know that is of any real value to anyone else, you will begin to be of some little value to yourself. Don't try ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... watching them, striving to divine their speech by their gestures, and letting her savage mood interpret the possible utterances. It went ill with Robert in her heart that he did not suddenly grapple and trample the man, and so break away from him. She was outraged to see Robert's listening posture. "Lies! lies!" she said to herself, "and he doesn't know them to be lies." The window-blinds in Dahlia's sitting-room continued undisturbed; but she feared the agency of the servant of the house in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... however, on the afternoon that Smith called to escort her northward to the field where those idols of Gotham, the Giants, were indulging in a death grapple with their rivals from Chicago in the closing series of the year, with the National League pennant hanging on its result. Her companion had, to be sure, called formally and in due order upon Miss Wardrop and her niece on an evening of the intervening period, so that Helen felt her sharp ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... for their momentous labours; but many of our most valuable ministers have, like Bunyan, relied entirely upon their prayerful investigation of the Scriptures. his college was a dungeon, his library the Bible; and he came forth with gigantic power to grapple with the prince of darkness. No human learning could have so fitted him for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... present themselves as delegates from the oldest societies in America. I expected that Mr. Burnet would, as he was bound to do, if he intended to offer a successful opposition to their introduction into this Convention, grapple with the constitutionality of their credentials. I thought he would come to the question of title. I thought he would dispute the right of a convention assembled in Philadelphia, for the abolition of slavery, consisting ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... curiously enough, though he hated her more, he disliked her less. Perhaps because he thought of her as a Force rather than as a mother; a power he was fighting—force against force! And the mere sense of the grapple gave him a feeling of equality with her which he had never had. Or it may have been merely that his eyes and ears did not suffer constant offense from her peculiarities. He had not forgotten the squalor of the peculiarities, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... grapple that cat to your soul with hoops of steel. He's the greatest little luck-bringer in New York. He was boarding ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the dawn was touching the hills with silver, he returned towards the spot where he had first laid eyes on the grisly phantom, feeling that, after all, two ghosts were better than one, and that, by the aid of his new friend, he might safely grapple with the twins. On reaching the spot, however, a terrible sight met his gaze. Something had evidently happened to the spectre, for the light had entirely faded from its hollow eyes, the gleaming falchion had fallen from its hand, and it was leaning up against the wall ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... again," would refer us to some of the best chapters in the writers who have refuted him. My own reading has led me to become moderately well acquainted with the literature of evolution, but I have never come across a single attempt fairly to grapple with Lamarck, and it is plain that neither Isidore Geoffroy nor M. Martins knows of such an attempt any more than I do. When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger on Lamarck's weak places, then, but not till then, may he complain of those who try to replace Mr. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... you not heard how the Trojan horse Held seventy men in his belly? This dragon was not quite so big, But very near, I'll tell ye; Devour'd he poor children three, That could not with him grapple; And at one sup he ate them up, As one ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... he turned for support and guidance to his self-constituted mentor—only to discover that the Jinnee, whose short-sightedness and ignorance had planted him in this present false position, had mysteriously and perfidiously disappeared, and left him to grapple with ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... after him; they thought they had beaten him off. But Dodd knew better. He was but retiring a little way to make a more deadly attack than ever: he would soon wear, and cross the Agra's defenceless bows, to rake her fore and aft at pistol-shot distance; or grapple, and board the enfeebled ship two ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... it is evident that one cannot carry the investigation far without undertaking to make a complete bibliography of Swift. Mr. Temple Scott says, in the Advertisement of his edition of Swift's Prose Works, begun in 1897, that since Sir Walter's edition of 1824 "there has been no serious attempt to grapple with the difficulties which then prevented and which still beset the attainment of a trustworthy ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... we can see him no more; the immoveable Destiny markt him, And it was wove in his thread, even so, in the hour that I bare him, To be the portion of dogs, who shall feast on him far from his parents, Under the eyes of the foe: whose liver if I could but grapple Fast by the midst to devour, he then should have just retribution For what he did to my son; for in no misbehaving he slew him, But for the men of his land and the well-girt women of Troia Firm stood Hector in field; neither mindful of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... you that it is very pleasing to me to know that your career has been so successful as to enable you to give your sons an education to fit them to grapple with the difficulties people have to meet with nowadays to make them comfortable, and to do so is all the more satisfactory when accomplished by their own exertions. My mother [the lady who served as model and suggestion for Mrs. Ogden in 'Marmorne'] still retains unimpaired ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... requirements of modern warfare. The supply of trench guns and mortars, with their ammunition, hand-grenades, and other most necessary munitions of war, was almost negligible, nor was there any active attempt to understand and grapple vitally with the new problems calling for the application of modern science to the character ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... no, 'tis the guns' roar, The neighbouring billows are turn'd into gore; Now each man must resolve to die, For here the coward cannot fly. Drums and trumpets toll the knell, And culverins the passing bell. Now, now they grapple, and now board amain; Blow up the hatches, they're off all again: Give them a broadside, the dice run at all, Down comes the mast and yard, and tacklings fall; She grows giddy now, like blind Fortune's wheel, She sinks there, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... tellingly expressed the death-grapple of the sections: slavery the weapon of one, free labor the weapon of the other. Though Lincoln was at that time forty-nine years old, his political experience, in contrast with that of Douglas, was negligible. He afterward aptly described his early ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... their inability to return in full to that world they had left, or even to take part in the affairs of this. Surely their case was far worse than his, for after a few years he would be freed from the bondage of matter, and would grapple with the mysteries which had become so fascinating; but with them it was different. Unfitted for either world, without a friend and alone, they must drag out their weary existence until the law of Karma was ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... was anxious that all horse-thieves should be placed beyond the possibility of carrying on their business, at once started in pursuit, probably without thought as to how he could make prisoners of two men whom he had not dared to grapple with when they were trying to tear down the barrier which prevented them from ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... men were locked in a deadly grapple. The meager furniture of the room was splintered and broken, and the whole place looked as though a cyclone had struck it. With a yell Bert and ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... some attentions from the literary set. But if I had known that he had written those two stories of sixteenth-century Paris—as I learned afterwards when they reappeared in the New Arabian Nights—I would not have bidden him good-bye as to an 'unfledged comrade,' but would have wished indeed to 'grapple him to my soul with ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... In order to grapple with cases of this peculiar kind, he had submitted himself to a long and severe training, at once physical, mental, and spiritual. What precisely this training had been, or where undergone, no one ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... awful army, artfully array'd, Boldly by battery besieg'd Belgrade; Cossack commanders cannonading come, Dealing destruction's devastating doom, Every endeavour engineers essay, For fame, for fortune, forming furious fray. Gaunt gunners grapple, giving gashes good, Heaves high his head heroic hardihood; Ibraham, Islam, Ismael, imps in ill, Jostle John Jarovlitz, Jem, Joe, Jack, Jill. Kick kindling Kutusoff, king's kinsmen kill; Labour low levels loftiest, longest lines, Men march 'mid moles, 'mid mounds, 'mid murd'rous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... appetite and lust, pride, anger and revenge, the love of power and honor, are each an overmatch for it; and when either of them is roused by a sudden stimulant, the love of money worsted in the grapple with it. Look at the hourly lavish outlays of money to procure a momentary gratification for those passions and appetites. As the desire for money is, in the main, merely a desire for the means of gratifying other desires, or rather for one ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... before he took Orders. A hundred odd, incongruous details came back to Robert now with poignant force. Grey had been to him at one time primarily the professor, the philosopher, the representative of all that was best in the life of the University; now, fresh from his own grapple with London and its life, what moved him most was the memory of the citizen, the friend and brother of common man, the thinker who had never shirked action in the name of thought, for whom conduct had been from beginning to end ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... settlement, which might cramp its expansion or fetter its usefulness. On the contrary they desire—while adhering, of course, to certain main lines of intellectual activity—to imbue it with such elasticity of adaptation as will enable it to successfully grapple with the changing necessities of changing times. The chief wants of to-day may not necessarily be the most pressing requisites of a century hence. Therefore, one of the greatest essentials—and at the same ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... about overcoming any difficulties that might exist because of the current laws of the colony. But instructions to the royal Governor was one thing; putting these instructions into effect was quite another. Neither the Council nor the Burgesses were willing to grapple directly with land reform and no action was taken by the two bodies to implement the recommendations of the Board of Trade. Governor Nicholson on his own ordered that no more headrights be issued for ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... his bold, gay eye rest confidently on Northwick, as if to say he knew what had brought him there, and he might as well own the fact at once; and Northwick tried to get his mind to grapple with his real motive. But his mind kept pulling away from him, like that unruly horse, and he could not manage it. He knew, in that self which seemed apart from his mind, that it would be a very good thing to let the man suppose he was there to look into the question ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... their force and onset, must always be on his guard, lest he help where he would hinder, retard when he would advance, and drown the plant he thinks to water. He must therefore study well the symptoms of the disease; and, if he believe himself equal to the cure, grapple with it fearlessly; if not, he must let it be, and not attempt to treat it in any way. For, otherwise, it will fare with him as it fared with those neighbours of Rome, for whom it would have been safer, after that city had grown to be so great, to have sought to soothe and restrain her by ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... discharged from the loop-holes; in the front, three doors were contrived for the alternate sally and retreat of the soldiers and workmen. They ascended by a staircase to the upper platform, and, as high as the level of that platform, a scaling-ladder could be raised by pulleys to form a bridge, and grapple with the adverse rampart. By these various arts of annoyance, some as new as they were pernicious to the Greeks, the tower of St. Romanus was at length overturned: after a severe struggle, the Turks were repulsed from the breach, and interrupted by darkness; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... I am a Clifford, My son a Clifford and Plantagenet. I am to die then, tho' there stand beside thee One who might grapple with thy dagger, if he Had aught of man, or thou of woman; or I Would bow to such a baseness as would make me Most worthy of it: both of us will die, And I will fly with my sweet boy to heaven, And shriek to all the saints among the stars: 'Eleanor ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... such methods of propagation, that the gardener must maintain a continual struggle or they will hopelessly overwhelm him? What hidden virtue is there in these things, that it is granted them to sow themselves with the wind, and to grapple the earth with this immitigable stubbornness, and to flourish in spite of obstacles, and never to suffer blight beneath any sun or shade, but always to mock their enemies with the same wicked luxuriance? It is truly a mystery, and also a symbol. There is a sort of sacredness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... your comrade's blood, your ears are full of strange noises; your very nature changes within you; the smell of gunpowder and of carnage makes you feel like a beast of prey. You do not think any longer of the friends who have fallen beside you; you only long to grapple with the enemy ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... diameter, through which some with arrows, others with scorpions of moderate size, assailed the enemy without being seen. Certain ships which came nearer to the walls in order to get within the range of the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by throwing upon them an iron grapple, attached to a strong chain, by means of a tolleno which projected from the wall, and overhung them, having a heavy counterpoise of lead which forced back the lever to the ground; then the grapple being suddenly disengaged, the ship falling as it were from the wall, was, by these means, to the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Woods, Weeds, Forneys, to the Greeleys, by the simon-pures or the lobby-impures; 2d, by the press of all parties and shades of parties. The people may again make a mistake. Is not Lincoln hailed as the new Moses? as the man for the times, as the only one God sent to direct the people, and to grapple with the stern, earnest emergencies and perils? Emancipation is not Lincoln's, is not Sumner's, is not anybody's personal special work. The necessities, the emergencies of the times and of the hour did it. Their current drifted Mr. Lincoln irresistibly along, and to a ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... du Temple, the friends agreed to meet at the office between four and five o'clock. Hector Merlin would doubtless be there. Lousteau was right. The infatuation of desire was upon Lucien; for the courtesan who loves knows how to grapple her lover to her by every weakness in his nature, fashioning herself with incredible flexibility to his every wish, encouraging the soft, effeminate habits which strengthen her hold. Lucien was thirsting already for enjoyment; he was in love with the easy, luxurious, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... missionary aspirations have hesitated to volunteer for Indian work because they felt that they were not competent to grapple with the acute intellects and subtle philosophy of Indian thinkers. It is commonly said that the acutest intellects in India are to be found amongst the Brahmins of Poona City. A tolerably wide acquaintance amongst them would lead one to say that ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... The long parliament had not ventured to grapple with the subject; but this, the little parliament, went at once to the root of the evil, and voted that the whole system should be abolished. But then, came the appalling difficulty, how to dispose of the causes actually pending in the court, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... telephone message was sent to Corporal Lett. It took some time to ride in, but Lett located the Idaho citizen terrorizing a bar-room. Lett walked in and the Idaho man had his gun up in a second. No one knew just how it happened, but Lett sprang at the desperado. There was a grapple and a fall, but when they got up Lett had the Idaho "gun" in his hand. The rest was simple. The gun-man had to hold out his hands for the "bracelets." Whether he paid the bet or not no one has recorded, but Lett got an extra ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... prayers and mystic raptures: its eye is fixed within, or, if not within, only upon God. It is sweet rather than strong: more meditative than active: a faint fragrance exhales from it, but it does not forget itself to grapple with wrong, or descend upon the arena of human woes and oppressions, full of the heat of battle, or, with a careless heroism, spend itself to the last for the kingdom of God. I do not deny the reality and the sweetness of this type of goodness; but it is not the only type, ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... comparatively easy to run a tilt against a fellow-mortal, or an external evil; but to set our lance in rest against a cherished sin, a habit that has become our second nature, and remorselessly ride it down—to grapple with a secret fault in the solitude of our own soul, with no applauding hands to spur us on, and fight and wrestle for weary months—years perhaps—this does require heroism of the highest order, and the man who can do it is my ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... and that he meant to bid Christians, when they fought God's battle, to fight, like the Romans, hand to hand: not to indulge in cowardly stratagems, intrigues, and lawyers' quibbles, fighting like the barbarians, cowardly and afar off, hurling stones, and shooting clouds of arrows, but to grapple with their enemies, looking them boldly in the face, as honest men should do, trying their strength against them fairly, and striking them to the heart. But with what? With that sword which, if it wound, heals likewise,— if it kills, also makes alive; the sword which slays the sins of ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... yes, we little china people have a variety of rivets, thank God, to prevent too frequent nodding and too cowardly a compromise with baseness,—rivets that are a part of us and force us into flashes of upright living, almost in spite of ourselves, when duty and inclination grapple. There is always the thing one cannot do for the reason that one is constituted as one is. That, I take it, is the real rivet in grandfather's neck and ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... her lose her way, making everything draw again as it might be by instinct. The proas tacked, too, and, laying up much nearer to the wind than we did, appeared as if about to close on our lee-bow. The question was, now, whether we could pass them or not before they got near enough to grapple. If the pirates got on board us, we were hopelessly gone; and everything depended on coolness and judgment. The captain behaved perfectly well in this critical instant, commanding a dead silence, and the closest ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... century after century, we seem to go swimming slowly and wearily on through a vague sea of confusion and disorder; of brutal deeds and yet more brutal retaliations; of misgovernment and anarchy; of a confusion so penetrating and all-persuasive that the mind fairly refuses to grapple with it. Even killing—exciting as an incident—becomes monotonous when it is continued ad infinitum, and no other occurrence ever comes to vary its tediousness. Campion the Elizabethan historian, whose few pages are a perfect magazine of verbal quaintness, apologizes in ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... equal protection. These are the ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government; they will cling and grapple with you, and no power under heaven will be able to tear them from their allegiance. But let it once be understood that your government may be one thing, and their privileges another, then the cement is gone, and every thing hastens to dissolution. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the great problems—scientific, social and industrial, which the new conditions of an advancing civilisation have created, the Church, if it is to fulfil its function as the interpreter and guide of thought, must come down from its heights of calm seclusion and grapple with the actual difficulties of men, not indeed by assuming a political role or acting as a divider and judge amid conflicting secular aims, but by revealing the mind of Christ and bringing the principles of the gospel to bear upon the ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... finding it so;—it is a plea that such as these should learn how experience, even under cramped conditions, may be finely and beautifully interpreted, and made rich by renewed intention. Because the secret lies hid in this, that we must observe life intently, grapple with it eagerly; and if we have a hundred lives before us, we can never conquer life till we have learned to ride above it, not welter helplessly below it. And the cramped and restricted life is all the grander for this, that it ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Christo." If Lovelace has the advantage in fancy, Prynne has it as clearly in depth of sentiment. There could be little doubt which of the parties represented by these men would have the better if it came to a death-grapple. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... consequences. But since we cannot come to terms, as victor and the submitting party, we may part in amity. Touch my hand, Captain Ludlow, as one brave man should salute another, though the next minute they are to grapple at the throat." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... silence for a time, and Ward kept beating his leg with the paper wand in his hand. "Watts," said the general, finally, "I know what it was—it was youth. John Barclay had to go through that period. He had to fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did. Do you remember that night the Minneola fellows came up with their ox team and their band of killers to take the county records—" and there was more of it—the old story of the town's wild days that need not be recorded, and in the end, in answer to some query from ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... he replied loftily, as if no problem was so difficult that he could not grapple with it. "I'd probably get some kind of an idea in time to save the ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... word London, which was found in a miserable hut on the banks of the Awatska by some British sailors, at once excited in their minds a thousand tender remembrances of their country. And it would, I suspect, be rather a poor criticism, and scarcely suited to grapple with the true phenomena of the case, that, wholly overlooking the magical influences of the associative faculty, would concentrate itself simply on either the-workmanship or the materials of the spoon. Nor is the Dwarfie Stone to be correctly estimated, independently ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... save for a couple of white stripes; it has a long, bushy tail and very powerful claws on its fore feet. It walks on the sides of its fore feet with these claws curved in under the foot. The claws are used in digging out ant-hills; but the beast has courage, and in a grapple is a rather unpleasant enemy, in spite of its toothless mouth, for it can strike a formidable blow with these claws. It sometimes hugs a foe, gripping him tight; but its ordinary method of defending itself is to strike with ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... Revolution much might be said; but, in so far as the blunders committed by our Government are concerned, it has to be admitted that the situation was no easy one to grapple with. When you have been such an ass as to ride your horse into a bog, there is a good deal of excuse for your botching getting the beast out again, as that is in the nature of things a difficult job. The mischief was done when the Revolution was allowed to occur. After that it became a case of ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... my own ideas of the matter. He said that our force was ample, every gun shotted, and the ports open: that we had the windward gauge of her, and that the proper course was to send a boat in to cut her cable, and, when she drifted down with the current, we would ware ship, lay up alongside, grapple, pass lashings aboard, and send the whole crew on to her deck with a rush. Assaulted in such a man-of-war style, he was confident she would become confused, be intimidated, and strike her colors without ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him—clinging for dear life. But he couldn't have told you himself that minute how it all took place. He was ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Madame to be an innocent person, the housekeeper; a state of obsession, in which Madame, as she looked at her, seemed to grow vaster, to become immense; a state of imbecility in which her mind feebly tried to grapple with the details of her father's death as presented brokenly by Madame. Last had come a state of frenzy, in which she had freed herself from Madame. After that something had appeared to her ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of nature was circumscribed, save only in the one exception of a work throbbing with the sufferings and sorrows of a shadowed side of modern life. To this lyric, however, there came as basis a fundamental conception that made aim to grapple with the pro-foundest problems compassed by the mysteries of life and death, and a temper to yield only where human perception fails. Abstract indeed in theme the lyric is, but few are the products of thought out of which imagination has delved ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... under water. At length, catching hold of the long tuft of hair which had been suffered to grow on the head of the chief, Poe held him under water, until he supposed him dead; but relaxing his hold too soon, the gigantic savage was again on his feet and ready for another grapple. In this both were carried beyond their depth, and had to swim for safety. Both sought the shore, and each, with all his might, strained every nerve to reach it first that he might end the conflict with one of the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Kuru chieftains, bravest warriors and the best, Leagued they came to grapple Arjun ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... people are as ignorant of the subject of Sex as they are of God. Both of these must be understood if the race is to progress beyond its present stage. Otherwise we shall pass into the long sleep of oblivion like all civilizations in the past leaving future generations to grapple with the same ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... no bitterness, no shade of complaint in his tone; he merely stated a fact. Erica was amazed; she knew that he was about the only man who attempted to grapple with the evil and degradation and ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... preserved at the bottom of the ship, exploded, sending every particle of her which remained high into the air, and as the wreck came down, the fragments very nearly swamped the boat and killed all in her. No one was hurt, however, and he and his brave crew instantly pulled back to grapple with another foe. All the other fire-ships had been seized hold of and were very nearly towed ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... love of mountains and of streamlets. His lonely walks in the pinewoods of the Arveron were given to meditation on a great problem which had been set, as it seemed, for him to solve, ever since he had written that chapter on "The Nature of Gothic." Now at last, in the solitude of the Alps, he could grapple with the questions he had raised; and the outcome of the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... admiral thought it not best to grapple and risk the fortune of a hand-to-hand fight. For the enemy had a strong and well appointed army aboard which he lacked, and, their ships standing higher than his own vessels, threatened nothing less than certain destruction ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... of life are in the long run changeable; and second, which is more important, that each individual form is a self-fertilising hermaphrodite, so that each hair-breadth variation is not lost by intercrossing. Your manner of putting the case would be even more striking than it is if the mind could grapple with such numbers—it is grappling with eternity—think of each of a thousand seeds bringing forth its plant, and then each a thousand. A globe stretching to the furthest fixed star would very soon be covered. I cannot even grapple with the idea, even with races of dogs, cattle, pigeons, or ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... strolled on up the hill to the edge of the cliff from which the storming party of the Allies was thrown by the Russian gunners. No traces now remain of the bloody struggle which took place upon the brink of this precipice. Moss covers with its green carpet the ground which was torn up in the death grapple; and the nodding bluebell, as it bends to the fresh sea-breeze, tells no story of the last desperate rally, the hand to hand conflict, and the shrieks of the overpowered as they were thrown from the Russian bayonets upon the rocky beach ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... length of fuse, and attach it to the explosive, so that it will burn for about a minute. That will just give us time to get out of reach before the powder blows up, and will not leave the Peruvians sufficient to displace the torpedo. Now then, grapple hold of the spar, you four men, and stand by to push all together when I give the word. Be ready, Terry, my boy, to go ahead with your engines directly we scramble on board, for a second's delay may mean that we shall all be blown ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Fernand: thou thinkest that I shall love thee less if this immense sacrifice be consummated, that I shall look upon thee with loathing. No, not so: and to convince thee that mine is a soul endowed with an iron will, that mine is an energy which can grapple even with remorse, I will reveal to thee a secret which thou hast perhaps never even suspected. Fernand!" she exclaimed, now becoming absolutely terrible with the excitement that animated her; "Fernand!" she repeated, "'twas I who murdered the girl Agnes, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... The ignorance of the earth's dimensions, the manifold errors respecting the laws of motion, and the defective state of the mathematical sciences, which then prevailed, would have rendered utterly impotent the efforts of a thousand Newtons to grapple with such a problem. The time was neither ripe for the solution of that problem, nor for the appearance of a Newton. It was only after science had, during a period of two thousand years, multiplied her resources ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... injustice; the Judge left to himself, that is, to his impressions, his prejudices, and his surroundings. This is abandoning the accused in his distress, to grapple alone with ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... is no pain. I don't mean to be sententious, but this is the death-grapple that is coming. They will need me and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to this argument is to fall back upon man's weakness and ignorance, and to take refuge in the infinite unknown. Man, it is said, may of course interfere a little with some of the less important laws of his being: but who is he, to grapple with the more vast and remote ones? Because he can prevent a pebble from falling, is he to suppose that he can alter the destiny of nations, and grapple forsooth with 'the eternities and the immensities,' and so forth? The argument is ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... of Sonny's was a fine game. He would grapple with the dog, hug him, pound him gleefully with his little fists, and call him every pet ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... places brings an eerie feeling sometimes to the bravest—dormant sense impressions, running back to the cave age and beyond, become active, harry the mind with subtle, unreasoning qualms—and she was a girl, brave enough, but out of the only environment she knew how to grapple with. All the fearsome tales of forest beasts she had ever heard rose up to harass her. She had not lifted up her voice while it was light because she was not the timid soul that cries in the face of a threatened danger. Also because she ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the two armies will fairly spring into unfriendly embrace. The generals have each measured his enemy's line and extended his own to match it.[*] With files of about equal depth, and well-trained men on both sides, the first stage of the death grapple is likely to be a most fearful yet indecisive pushing: the men of the front ranks pressing against each other, shield to shield, glaring out of their helmets like wild beasts against the foeman three feet away, and lunging with ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... missed their intended grip upon the boy's throat, but the arms managed to grapple the lad in a tight embrace. Alf struggled well, but he was no match for the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... thoughts—yes, even powers—which he had never known before. He felt that she developed him. He found that instead of being weak he was merely latent; that now the latent perceptions were unfolding. Since he had known her he had felt himself more of a man, more ready to grapple with facts and conditions on his own behalf, more inclined to take his own view of the world and to act on it. She had given him independence, for she had made him believe in himself, and belief in one's self is the first principle of independence. Bennington ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... the ape might pass into the forest without observing them. If it did, the danger would be at an end; if not, the brave boy had summoned up all his energies to meet and grapple with it. He held the loaded musket in his hand, ready at a moment's notice to raise it to the level and fire into the face ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... with a dread of the words he had come to utter; a wild hope sprang in him that he might yet win her in other ways; he used language recklessly, half believing that his arguments would seem of force. His passion was in the death-grapple with ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... and which maybe reaches back beyond the Christian era. I have always supposed that the story of Ulysses and the Sirens was only a fiction of the poets, intended to illustrate the allurements of a soul given over to pleasure, and deaf to the call of duty and the excitement of a grapple with the world. But a lady here, herself one of the entranced, tells me that whoever climbs the hills behind Sorrento, and looks upon the Isle of the Sirens, is struck with an inability to form a desire to depart from these coasts. I have gazed at those ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her astonishment he did not run, though Dupin was cutting closer and closer through tangled bodies, eager to grapple with his old-time slippery foe. Don Rodrigo raised in his saddle, and looked anxiously in all directions. Suddenly his dark face lighted, and wheeling round, he called to his men, and in his turn strove as furiously to reach the Tiger ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... cowardice;—finding its strength only in fall back to its Earth,—he is the master, in a word, of all such kind of persons as have been writing lately about the "interests of England." He is, therefore, the Power invoked by Dante to place Virgil and him in the lowest circle of Hell;—"Alcides whilom felt,—that grapple, straitened sore," etc. The Antaus in the sculpture is very grand; but the authorship puzzles me, as of the next piece, by the same hand. ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... therefore, is bound to grapple with the following problem whenever it is clearly put before him:—Here are the Faunae of the same area during successive epochs. Show good cause for believing either that these Faunae have been derived from ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... office excellent opportunities for increasing one's fortunes were offered; but I had been rendered quite useless to the parish ever since the New York politicians had taken me into their favor. Anybody, he said, might go out upon and know the world, but few had the courage and daring to grapple with its difficulties. And then, the world was so wicked that men of reflection instinctively shrank from it. Notwithstanding my wild, visionary plans, he yet had hopes of me. But if I sought distinction in the political world, it would be well not to forget that it had at this day ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... foredoomed to yield: For in the groins of branches, lo! The cancers of the orchid grow. Silent as in the listed ring Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling, Dumb as by yellow Hooghly's side The suffocating captives died: So hushed the woodland warfare goes Unceasing; and the silent foes Grapple and smother, strain and clasp Without a cry, without a gasp. Here also sound Thy fans, O God, Here too Thy banners move abroad: Forest and city, sea and shore, And the whole earth, Thy threshing-floor! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perceived, as I think, that the overthrow of the western world would speedily be accomplished, he has already taken in hand to assail you of the East, since the Persian power alone has been left for him to grapple with. The peace, therefore, as far as concerns him, has already been broken for thee, and he himself has set an end to the endless peace. For they break the peace, not who may be first in arms, but they who may be caught plotting against their neighbours in time of peace. For the crime ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... several States has to grapple with many difficulties, and these difficulties would be more numerous, greater, and much more complicated within a Federal World State. We need democracy and constitutional Government in every single State, ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... to sheer alongside and grapple, despite the fact that the sea had gone down, and the waves were partially under ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... were done! The lanyard pulled on every shotted gun; Into the wheeling death-clutch sent Each millioned armament, To grapple there On land, on sea and under, and in air! Suppose at last 't were come— Now, while each bourse and shop and mill is dumb And arsenals and dockyards hum,— Now all complete, ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... now presented itself to my mind in a wholly new and ideal light. I endeavoured in various ways to secure all that seemed most attractive about the project, or which filled my soul with longing. My intercourse with Lehrs had, on the whole, given a decided spur to my former tendency to grapple seriously with my subjects, a tendency which had been counteracted by closer contact with the theatre. This desire now furnished a basis for closer study of philosophical questions. I had been astonished at times ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to our wishes; and therefore, my Lords, I very willingly fall in with the inclinations of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, to come as soon as possible to close fighting, and to grapple immediately and directly with the corruptions of India,—to bring before your Lordships the direct articles, to apply the evidence to the articles, and to bring the matter forward for your Lordships' decision in that manner which the confidence we have in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... you please to sit down? for an you stand a stern a that'n, we shall never grapple together. Come, I'll haul a chair; there, an you please to sit, I'll sit ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... more, Raby, and pass two of the muskets forward," he exclaimed. "As they hook on, we will all fire together, two on each side; then, with our pistols, shoot those who are attempting to grapple the boat, and trust to our cutlasses for the rest. The moment we can free ourselves we will again take to our oars; and I hope we may give them such a taste of our quality, that the rest may not wish to ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... was, no doubt, crouching in the dark, ready to shoot. He tried again to find the pistol, and then with an effort pulled himself together. The next move might draw a shot, but he must risk that and not lie there helpless. Besides, if the fellow missed, he might grapple with and disarm him, and he ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss |
