"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the country, and partly for the purpose of increasing its powers of defence and attack. Then it was found that further progress was blocked by a great obstacle, the existence of serfage: and Alexander II. showed that, unlike his father, he meant to grapple boldly with the difficult and dangerous problem. Taking advantage of a petition presented by the Polish landed proprietors of the Lithuanian provinces, praying that their relations with the serfs might be regulated in a more satisfactory ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... mid see her, Mr. Yeobright," said Sam. "We are going to grapple for the bucket at six o'clock tonight at her house, and you could lend a hand. There's five or six coming, but the well is deep, and another might be useful, if you don't mind appearing in that shape. She's sure to be ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... time, observing a large Spanish launch rowing towards him, he opened fire on her with his guns, when, on a sudden, the fire-ship appeared in a blaze, and almost immediately blew up, but at a distance too great either to grapple or damage the Real. The gallant commander, with his lieutenant, gunner, mate, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... have been a terrifying experience to swing above such a horrible abyss by one leg, and for a moment Balisle lost his head. He screamed and started to grapple ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... displeasure. What, then, was it that was holding them apart? What was the nature of this barrier beyond all surmounting? The man in him rebelled at having so spectral an adversary; he longed to fight it out in the open, to grapple with flesh and blood. In spite of promise, his heart found words ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... and 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 sprang ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... over which he is accustomed to range, its vast lakes, boundless forests, 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
... for a theory of politics, a preface to thinking. Like all speculation about human affairs, it is the result of a grapple with problems as they appear in the experience of one man. For though a personal vision may at times assume an eloquent and universal language, it is well never to forget that all philosophies are the language of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... excitement of the animals was intense. Several managed to get into the water, and the muzzles they were wearing did not prevent some hot fights. Two dogs which had contrived to slip their muzzles fought themselves into an icy pool and were hauled out still locked in a grapple. However, men and dogs enjoyed the exercise. A sounding gave a depth of 2400 fathoms, with a blue mud bottom. The wind freshened from the west early the next morning, and we started to skirt the northern edge of the solid pack in an easterly direction under sail. We had cleared the close ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... 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 ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... four columns, two of which were told off to grapple Kekewich's flanks and command his line of retreat, and two to make a frontal but not merely holding attack on his centre. Early in the morning of September 30 Delarey put his columns in motion. He started with certain points in his favour. All Kekewich's outposts ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... gramatiko. Gramme gramo. Granary grenejo. Grand belega. Grandfather avo. Grandson nepo. Granite granito. Grant permesi. Grape vinbero. Grapeshot kugletajxo. Graphite grafito. Grapnel ankreto. Grapple ekkapti. Grasp premi. Grass herbo. Grass-plot herbejo. Grasshopper akrido. Grate fajrujo. Grate raspi, froti. Grateful dankema. Grater raspilo. Gratification kontentigo. Grating krado. Grating ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... with the safety of the nation by neglecting to have at the head of a great department a man who has not only a genius for administrative initiative in this particular sphere but an unerring instinct to guide and grapple with its everyday perplexities. It is colossal aptitude, not mechanicalness, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... all that the English admiral would not permit his people to board their ships, because they had such a number of soldiers on board, which he had not; their ships were many in number, and greater, and higher, that if they had come to grapple, as many would have had it, the English being much lower than the Spanish ships, must needs have had the worst of them that fought from the higher ships. And if the English had been overcome, the loss would have been ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... present instance, are tempted by pride of strength to attack their neighbours, usually march most confidently against those who keep still, and only defend themselves in their own country, but think twice before they grapple with those who meet them outside their frontier and strike the first blow if opportunity offers. The Athenians have shown us this themselves; the defeat which we inflicted upon them at Coronea, at the time when our quarrels had allowed ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... already lasted some ten years, but no Province was in so dreadful a condition as this unhappy land of Brittany. In Normandy or Picardy the inroads of the English were periodical with intervals of rest between; but Brittany was torn asunder by constant civil war apart from the grapple of the two great combatants, so that there was no surcease of her sufferings. The struggle had begun in 1341 through the rival claims of Montfort and of Blois to the vacant dukedom. England had taken the part of Montfort, France that of Blois. Neither faction was strong ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers. For quantity he had no stomach. He shrank from numbers. He was not a Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to depreciate his tastes. As for ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Leagues," "Trade Unions," strike for higher wages and conspire against their employers and their capital, doubtless thinking such a course justifiable, think of such wages as that, and provisions very dear, as they were at that time? I began to think myself rough and ready and was able to grapple with almost anything and do a good days' work. Father, I and the team all worked hard and with the wood thrown in we all together did not make two dollars ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... So you have known The bitter-sweetness of Attempt, The quick determination and the dread despair That grapple and possess you as you ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... it mean? Mr. Luker's explanation gave me no assistance towards solving the problem. My own unaided ingenuity, consulted next, proved quite unequal to grapple with the difficulty. I had a dinner engagement that evening; and I went upstairs, in no very genial frame of mind, little suspecting that the way to my dressing-room and the way to discovery, meant, on this particular occasion, one ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... get at the mass of heathens at home, the need of a different education in some respects for the clergy, &c. But I have already by the time I begin to write taken too much out of myself in other ways to grapple with such subjects, and so I merely spin out a yarn about my own ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... transferred to the turnkey and the jester. The former held the fool at a decided disadvantage, as he had sprung upon the back of the jester and was also unweakened by previous efforts. But still the fool contended fiercely, striving to turn so as to grapple with his assailant, and wonderingly the free baron for a moment watched that exhibition of virility and endurance. During the wrestling the jester's doublet had been torn open and suddenly the gaze of the king's ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... cheerful courage that never failed. But the spectacle of widespread popular demoralization, of selfish scrambles for plunder, and of feeble administration at the centre of government weighed upon him heavily. It was not the general's business to build up Congress and grapple with finance, but Washington addressed himself to the new task with his usual persistent courage. It was slow and painful work. He seemed to make no progress, and then it was that his spirits sank at the prospect of ruin and defeat, not coming ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... after losing so much money in South America, is going there, to see if he can grapple any of it up from the mines of Mexico, or ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... could rest, if she could sleep, she thought that strength might return to her—the strength to grapple with and overthrow the evil that had entered into and tainted her whole life. But till sleep should come to her, she was impotent. She was heavy ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... fantastic, the characters feel real dishonour at the breaking of them. The play shows that though the idea of vow-breaking was in Shakespeare's mind, he had not then the power, or the human experience, or the mental peace, to grapple with it fairly, or see it truly. The idea, that the person for whom the vows are broken brings with her the punishment of the sin of vow-breaking, haunts the mind of Biron (in Act IV, ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable marbles, he had carried away merely a hubbub of recollections of places where the best wines were found and his miseries at being reduced in certain cases to the position of a deaf-mute through his inability to grapple with the difficulties ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... railroad in the widest sense of the word a public improvement, never forgetting the amount of money at his disposal, was the problem he had undertaken to solve. He had proved himself a great master in his profession, and had shown how well fitted he was to grapple with every difficulty. He was equally a man of science and a man of business. And to all this he added the most delicate sense of honor and the most spotless integrity. He was in the prime of manhood, and was prepared to enter upon the great work of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... made a rush, together, towards the man standing by the lady. Taken utterly by surprise, he discharged his pistol at random, and then sprang towards the door. Two blows fell on him, and Sankey and Fullarton tried to grapple with him; but he burst through them, ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... impossible to row in such a sea. As soon as they approached each other, both fleets broke up, and the vessels each singling an opponent out, the combat began. It was a singular one, and differed widely from ordinary sea fights of the time, in which the combatants always tried to grapple with their enemies and carry them by boarding. This was almost impossible now, for it seemed that the vessels would be dashed in pieces like eggshells were they to strike each other. Clouds of missiles were poured from one to the other. The archers plied ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... appointed chamber, and rested at last upon the lean, crooked figure of a man whose back was towards me and who was busy with some phials at a table not far distant. Then recollection awakened also in me, and I set my wits to work to grapple with my surroundings. I looked through the open window, but from my position on the bed no more was visible than the blue sky and a ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... single thread of hope that handkerchief. Weak natures shiver and procrastinate, shunning confirmation of their dread; but to this woman had come a frantic longing to see, to grasp, to embrace the worst. She was in a death grapple with appalling fate, and that handkerchief would ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and as they were generally very old ones, clouds of dust were flying around him. He had on a pair of large gloves such as hedgers use. His present appearance put me in mind of my uncle, Dr. Boswell's description of him, 'A robust genius, born to grapple with whole libraries.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... rights of the people, and declared it clear as day that the Church had power to enact the Veto,—had we but him here, he would be the man to fight this battle. It would be no such child's play to grapple with him. Unaccustomed as we are to lay wagers, we would stake a hundred pounds to a groat ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Accept an anecdote well based on facts; On Sunday morning—(at the day don't fret)— In riding with a friend to Ponder's End Outside the stage, we happened to commend A certain mansion that we saw To Let. "Ay," cried our coachman, with our talk to grapple, "You're right! no house along the road comes nigh it! 'T was built by the same man as built yon chapel, And master wanted once to buy it,— But t' other driv' the bargain much too hard,— He axed sure-LY a sum prodigious! But being so particular ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... even weightier in her eyes. The tremendous difficulties of the future presented themselves very clearly to her mental view, and she knew that before long they would not be mere shadows of things to come, but actual problems with which she must grapple, and upon the solution of which she must concentrate all her strength. Tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, the earth would close for ever over what remained of those poor beings whose departure from life had saddened her own and made it seem so hard to understand. But ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... while he expounded to him in scientific tones the ill effects of alcohol on the system, and the remarkable results to be attained by steady self-suggestion. Mr. Kane's collar was awry and his coat dusty, almost as dusty as the drunkard's, with whom he had evidently had to grapple in raising him from the highway; and Helen, as she paused at the turning of the road which brought her ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... think of Mark Twain in his maturer development as other than a moralist. My personal acquaintance with Mr. Clemens convinced me—had I needed to be convinced—that in his later years he had striven to grapple nobly with many of the deeper issues of life, character and morality, public, religious and social, as well as personal and private. I never knew anyone who thought so "straight," or who expressed himself with such simple directness upon questions affecting religion and conduct. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... that they will not be prosecuted during the holidays. I may say that I have drawn the attention of the School Attendance Committee to this—er—propensity on the part of parents, and have asked them to grapple with it: ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Sierra, questions touching the absolute integrity of Calaveras and Tuolumne as social communities, were even now waiting expression. Weeks, nay, months, must elapse before that pressure would be removed, and the "Record" could grapple with any but the sternest of topics. Again, the editor had noticed with pain the absolute decline of poetry in the foot-hills of the Sierras. Even the works of Byron and Moore attracted no attention in Dutch Flat, and a prejudice seemed to exist against Tennyson in Grass Valley. But the editor ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... disgust and self-accusation, settling down into this life of rustic littleness, concerned over the late nesting of a partridge or the defective draining of a loose-box, hugely busy over affairs that a gardener's boy might grapple with, ignoring the struggle- cry that went up, low and bitter and wistful, from a dethroned dispossessed race, in whose glories he had gloried, in whose struggle he lent no hand. In what way, he asked himself in such moments, would his life be better than the ...
— When William Came • Saki
... Assaults and 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 ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... that he despised all the subterfuges and evasions by which, in ordinary controversies, the real question is dodged, and went directly to the heart of the matter,—a resolute intellect, burning to grapple with another resolute intellect in a vital encounter. In common legislative debates, on the contrary, there is no vital encounter. The exasperated opponents, personally courageous, but deficient in clear and fixed ideas, mutually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... possibly worth while to note the coincidence that these symptoms developed with unexpected suddenness in the midst of earnest preparations by the Army of the Cumberland, for a terrible grapple at Perryville with the Rebel ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... 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 ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... had related the poor woman's trouble to her husband just before the entrance of Gaudissart, and at the first words of the famous traveller Vernier determined that he should be made to grapple with Margaritis. ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... the indolence of his mind, and his vacillating and uncertain disposition. He was, however, occasionally capable of intense application, and competent to make himself master of any subject he thought fit to grapple with; his mind was reflecting, combining, and argumentative, but he had no imagination, and to passion, 'the sanguine credulity of youth, and the fervent glow of enthusiasm' he was an entire stranger. He never had ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... divide it into two classes, the outfit for specially low temperatures and that for more moderate temperatures. It must be remembered that no one had yet wintered on the Barrier, so we had to be prepared for anything. In order to be able to grapple with any degree of cold, we were supplied with the richest assortment of reindeer-skin clothing; we had it specially thick, medium, and quite light. It took a long time to get these skin clothes prepared. First the reindeer-skins had to be bought in a raw state, and this was done ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... Nature's Fact ought to fall stricken, but does not: his logic-arrow glances from it as from a scaly dragon, and the obstinate Fact keeps walking its way. How singular! At bottom, you will have to grapple closer with the dragon; take it home to you, by real faculty, not by seeming faculty; try whether you are stronger, or it is stronger. Close with it, wrestle it: sheer obstinate toughness of muscle; but much more, what we call toughness ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... their nests with the bodies of spiders for their young to feed on. In Australia, I often witnessed a wasp combating with a large flat spider that is found on the bark of trees. It would fall to the ground, and lie on its back, so as to be able to grapple with its opponent; but the wasp was always the victor in the encounters I saw, although it was not always allowed to carry off its prey in peace. One day, sitting on the sandbanks on the coast of Hobson's Bay, I saw one dragging ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Scammon three or four of them do not hesitate to grapple with the largest baleen whale; and, as described by Dr. Murie, "the latter often, paralysed through fear, lie helpless and at their mercy. The killers, like a pack of hounds, cluster about the animal's head, breach over it, seize it by the lips, and haul the bleeding ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... such trust in you," she had said, wiping away an incipient teardrop; and, although Mr. Taylor told her that the individual was nothing and the Office everything, he had been rather gratified. Thinking that a turn in the open air might clear his brain and enable him better to grapple with this very thorny question, he changed his cassock for a long tailed coat, put on his wide awake, and, leaving the precincts of St. Edward Confessor, struck across Park Lane and along the Row. He passed ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... apostles surveyed the humble individual with whom they were in daily intercourse, it is not extraordinary that their faith faltered, and that their powers of apprehension failed, as they pondered the prophecies relating to His advent. When they attempted closely to grapple with the amazing truths there presented to their contemplation, and thought of "the Word made flesh," well might they be overwhelmed with a feeling of giddy and dubious wonder. Even after the resurrection had illustrated so marvellously the announcements ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... us with the nucleus of an air force. They made their own flying school, and established their own factory for the output of aircraft. They organized an air service with naval and military wings. They formed advisory and consultative committees to grapple with the difficulties of organization and construction. They investigated the comparative merits and drawbacks of airships and aeroplanes. The airships, because they seemed fitter for reconnaissance over the sea, were eventually assigned wholly to the Naval Wing. No ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... for compromise now. The printed trial of Charles I. was everywhere sold and read. "This," people said, "was how the English dealt with an impossible king and became a free nation." Old and new were in death-grapple, and the lives of many victims, for the people lost heavily,[168] had sealed the cause of the Revolution with a bloody consecration. Unhappily, the city of Paris, like all great towns in times of scarcity (and since 1780 scarcity had become almost permanent), ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... 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 ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Kubbee against Hippi, and so on. A Hippi, for example, will go into a ring and plant there a mudgee, or painted stick with a bunch of feathers at the top. In will run a Kubbee and try to make off with the stick; Hippi will grapple with him, and a wrestling match comes off. Into the ring will go others of each side wrestling in their turn. The side that finally throws the most men, and gets the mudgee, wins. Before wrestling matches, there is much greasing of bodies ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... again both sides will subside into new trenches; but now between those trenches will lie perhaps some hundreds of wounded, and how in the world are they to be got? This is the problem with which an ambulance is everywhere faced—the recovery of the wounded from disputed ground. It was to grapple with difficulties like these that the rules of the Geneva Convention were framed, so that men wearing a Red Cross on their arms might be able to go where no combatant of either side dare venture, and succour the wounded, whether they were friend or ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... 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
... repentance: his Word gives me no encouragement to believe; yea, himself hath shut me up in this Iron Cage; nor can all the men in the world let me out. O Eternity! Eternity! how shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... It wouldn't show on my eyes tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a relief. But anyway, I can't eat porridge. I'm going to need all my strength of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won't have any left to grapple with porridge. Oh Grandma, I don't know what I'll do when my beautiful teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews will get the school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know she won't understand ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to prepare him for it. The mind of Sheridan being, from the circumstances of his education and life, but scantily informed upon all subjects for which reading is necessary, required, of course, considerable training and feeding, before it could venture to grapple with any new or important task. He has been known to say frankly to his political friends, when invited to take part in some question that depended upon authorities, "You know I'm an ignoramus—but here I am—instruct me and I'll do my best." It is said that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... 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 of Aquitaine, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... shape of Kettle's nose, and had disfigured an otherwise handsome and manly countenance. Hence his name. He was about thirty-five years of age, large-boned, broad-shouldered, and tall, but lean in flesh, and rather ungainly in his motions. Few men cared to grapple with the huge Irish slave, for he possessed a superabundant share of that fire and love of fight which are said to characterise his countrymen even at the present time. He was also gifted with a large share of their characteristic good humour and joviality; ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... development of my sex life, unless I were clearly to state that it was to a large extent on that life that my strongest and most valuable religious experiences arose.[219] It is to the endeavor to discipline the sexual instinct, and to grapple with the difficulties and anxieties of the sex life, that I owe what I possess of spiritual religion, of the consciousness that my life has been brought into contact with Divine love ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "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 of our ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... institution at Belfast for the Presbyterians of the north of Ireland, which was supported by a parliamentary grant, at the cost of L2100 per annum; and government proposed to continue this grant. There was another subject, he said, with which, although a difficult one, he was prepared to grapple. The bill only founded colleges in Ireland: the question was:—"Should these three colleges be incorporated into one great central university, or should parliament invest each of them with the power of granting degrees in the arts, sciences, and medicine?" ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... upon the first appearance of his sunshine: and, which is worse, while he was on the one side guarding himself against envy, he is, on the other side, unhappily surprised by a worse enemy, called contempt, and with which he is less able to grapple. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... does spread I shall be on the spot to grapple with it," said Dr. Marshall.—"What an excellent plan, Mrs. Brett, and how exactly like you!—Now then, young ladies, the sooner you pack up the better. You needn't take a great many things; they can be sent to you afterwards. ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... arena to fawn upon her, but nowise disarmed the tigress who lapped her blood; she who banished and slew the man she would not stoop to love, because he dared to love another; and when death stared her in the face, and open-eyed judgment shook her soul, rose from that death-pallet to grapple and abuse a false woman, penitent for and confessing her falseness; a virgin-monarch, pitiless, relentless, cruel as jealousy; an anomalous woman, were she not a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Judith. When Jackson comes General Lee will have eighty-five thousand men. Without reinforcements, with McDowell still away, McClellan must number an hundred and ten thousand. North and South, we are going to grapple, in swamp, and poisoned field, and dark forest. We are gladiators stripped, and which will conquer the gods alone can tell! But we ourselves can tell that we are determined—that each side is determined—and that the grapple will be of giants. Well! to-night, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... some German minds more far seeing than the rest, that schools of a higher than secondary rank must be inaugurated to offer training in the sciences; give opportunity to show the application of science to the arts; and prepare young men to grapple with scientific industrial problems such as were constantly springing up. Should the university attempt such work? An effort was made looking toward this end. It was at once evident that here was not the place to begin. The university was an institution in and of itself. Its methods, ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... begun to cry. She was a mighty pretty, innocent, plump little thing, and we'd rather have had most anything than that she should stand there cryin'. But we were all hung by the feet and wandering in our minds. The simple life of the cow-puncher doesn't fit him to grapple ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the 32nd; with what a yell the brave Irish of the 10th dropped down among them from the branches of the trees above; and how like the deadly conflict of the lion and tiger in a forest den, was the grapple of the pale English with the swarthy Sikhs in that little walled space the ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... by an effort seemed to sweep the subject from his thoughts, and I did my best to do the same. At any rate the air was cleared—we were friends; and it only remained to grapple with the main problem in the light ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... were close up to the trenches, and some even leaping over the redoubt, to grapple hand to hand with those who ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... mortality caused by the Great Plague, the burials in the large common pits and public burial grounds, and the opposition of the Quakers to inspection and registration. All these causes contributed to the issuing of unreliable returns. The company did their best to grapple with all these difficulties. They did not escape censure, and were blamed on account of the faults of individual clerks. The contest went on for years, and was only finally settled in 1859, when the last bills of mortality were issued, and the Public Registration Act ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... child. I've been in too much awful earnest ever to be much amused again. No, I want to die in the harness. It's hard work I want. I couldn't have been tied down to a common, easy sort of life. I want something to fight and grapple with; and I'm thankful there's been a way opened for me to do good according to my nature. If I hadn't had sickness and death to battle against, I should have got into human quarrels, maybe, just for the sake ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Home had been to him the only verdant spot in the desert of life. In his wife and children he had centered all affection, and now they were torn from him. The remembrance of their love clung to him like the death grapple of a drowning man, sinking him down into darkness and death. This was followed by a calm a thousand times more terrible, the creeping agony of despair, that brings with it no ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... separated us, and both rose at the same instant, again to grapple, and again to come together to the earth. We twisted and wriggled over the ground, among weeds and thorny cacti. I was every moment growing weaker, while the sinewy savage, used to such combats, seemed to be gaining ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... of mind, and immediately attempted to relieve himself of the powerful constriction by getting at the snake's head. But the serpent had so knotted himself on his own head, that Mr. Cops could not reach it, and had thrown himself on the floor in order to grapple with a better chance of success, when two other keepers coming in broke the teeth of the serpent, and with some difficulty relieved Mr. Cops from his perilous situation. Two broken teeth were extracted from the thumb, which ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... replied, saying: 'He said: "Character and environments are so different that each must work from the plane he or she is on. Nothing but the best judgment and experience will be able to grapple successfully with the problem, but it can be done; it has been done. And it will be comparatively easy for the next generation to put into practice, if it is done by the present. Avoid all kinds of food and drinks that stimulate the ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... was 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 ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... evening sun. Everything was peaceful—the blue sky, the waving corn-fields, the magnolia, the songs of the homing birds. The air tasted rich as with great breaths he drew it into his lungs. It gave him hope. With this air to aid him he might successfully grapple ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... is, and the more able to grapple with immense Objects, the greater still are those Discoveries which it makes of Wisdom and Providence in the Work of the Creation. A Sir Isaac Newton, who stands up as the Miracle of the Present Age, can look through a whole Planetary System; consider it in its Weight, Number, and Measure; ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the window, breathing heavy draughts of the fresh morning air. The man would not die, he thought. Grey would never be free. No. Yet, since he was a child, before he began to grapple his way through the world, he had never known such a cheerful quiet as that which filled his eyes with tears now; for, if the fight had been hard, Paul Blecker had won ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... themselves in one quarter to make and meet charges, and the light horse in another quarter to support, pursue, and harass[3] so in a fleet, the captain-general ought to order the strongest and largest ships to form in one quarter to attack, grapple, board and break-up the enemy, and the lesser and weaker ships in another quarter apart, with their artillery and munitions to harass, pursue, and give chase to the enemy if he flies, and to come to the rescue wherever there is ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... Interim of 1548 was an attempt of Charles V. and the Diet of Augsburg to grapple with this state of things, and was so far analogous to the English Act of Uniformity, and a ...
— The Acts of Uniformity - Their Scope and Effect • T.A. Lacey
... the whole country, and even the teeming millions struggling upon the planet, were with him—down to the very thieves and mendicants. Yes, the thieves themselves were sure to be with him in his present work. The consciousness of universal support in his general activity heartened him to grapple with the particular problem. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... anchor resembles a body with six legs, like a fly—three on either side. Each leg has a crook at the end, which will grapple firmly wherever the least hold ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... message she was, unluckily, caught by Dr Pughson, who, after dealing her one of his butcherly gibes, bade her to the blackboard, to grapple ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... gigantic undertaking. In its fourteen books Maimonides presented a clearly-arranged and clearly-worded summary of the Rabbinical Halachah, or Law. In one sense it is an encyclopedia, but it is an encyclopedia written with style. For its power to grapple with vast materials, this code has few rivals and no superiors in other literatures. Maimonides completed its compilation in 1180, having spent ten years over it. During the whole of that time, he was not only a popular doctor, but also official Rabbi of ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... the street to grapple with the problem before them. It was obviously impossible for civilized men to sacrifice Sam, even if they could catch him—which they could not. Sam had bolted through the dining-room, upset the Chinaman in the kitchen, ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... an Italian port, carrying a hundred and forty thousand men. 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 ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... 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 too stunned ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... 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 ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... spirit of dogged fatalism, he sat still and waited. To his disordered mind it seemed that footsteps were moving about the house, but they had no terrors for him. To grapple with a man for life and death would be play; to kill him, joy unspeakable. He sat still, listening. He heard rats in the walls and a babel of jeering voices on the stair-case. The whole blackness of the room with the devilish, writhing thing on the floor became invested ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... her companion, "it would be best for you to grapple with this thing at the outset—to take our vampire by the throat and strangle her at once. The knife is the only remedy for some forms of disease. If left to grow and prey upon the body, they gradually suck away its life and ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... state, which had so seriously paralyzed Canadian industries. It was a happy day for Canada when Lord Elgin accepted this gracious offer of his political opponents, who undoubtedly recognized in him the possession of qualities which would enable him successfully, in all probability, to grapple with the perplexing problems which embarrassed public affairs in the province. He felt (to quote his own language at a public dinner given to him just before his departure for Canada) that he undertook no slight responsibilities ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... of an eye the man had seized the wrist of the great ape, and before the other could grapple with him had whirled him about and leaped upon his ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to be, that is how Amy has seen it several times in the past week; and now that we come to the grapple we wish we could give you what you want, for you do want it, you have been used to it, and you will feel that you are looking at a strange middle act without it. But Steve cannot have such a room as this, he has only two hundred and fifty pounds a year, including ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... her bounds there was for a time some semblance of peace, the national and religious rage burst forth on a wilder theatre. Thither it is for us to follow it, where, on the shores of Florida, the Spaniard and the Frenchman, the bigot and the Huguenot, met in the grapple of death. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... sentence with "dejection and tears." We must, 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
... called aloud, and called in vain. A mocking echo was the only answer from that valley of dry bones. Christianity, on the other side, had won the victory almost without a blow. Instead of ever coming to grapple with its mighty rival, the great catholic church of heathenism hardly reached the stage of apish mimicry. When its great army turned out to be a crowd of camp-followers, the alarm of battle died away in peals of defiant laughter. Yet the alarm was real, and its teachings were not forgotten. ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... first and most obvious thing was that Bunning was in a state of terror that threatened instant exposure. The man was evidently realizing that now, for the first time, he had a big thing with which he must grapple. He must grapple with his devotion to Olva, with his terror of Craven, but, most of all, with his terror of himself. That last was obviously the thing that tortured him, for, having now been given by the High ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... seemed to himself to be taking part in a great play. Holding a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, he opened the box door, put the pistol to the President's head, and fired. Major Rathbone sprang to grapple with him, and received a savage knife wound in the arm. Then, rushing forward, Booth placed his hand on the railing of the box and vaulted to the stage. It was a high leap, but nothing to such a trained athlete. He would have got safely away, had not his spur caught ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... said gently, "you had better not go on." "Ah!" replied Sylvia, "I must grapple with the horror and not yield to it; with the future to be faced, I can't be a coward. At last I heard the team and opened the door. The snow was blinding, but I could dimly see the horses standing in it. I called, ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... and so fearless, that the priest paused. But it was for an 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 excitement ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... deadly one, for it was aimed with judgment, and Gyt was a bold and powerful man; but it did not prove effectual so as to save Gyt's life, for the enraged lion, striving in his death agonies to grapple with Gyt,—held at arm's length by the strength of desperation on the part of the boor,—so dreadfully lacerated with his talons the breast and arms of poor Gyt, that ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... 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 the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... inland from Kalaupapa is the leper village of Kalawao, which may safely be pronounced one of the most horrible spots on all the earth; a home of hideous disease and slow coming death, with which science in despair has ceased to grapple; a community of doomed beings, socially dead, "whose only business is to perish;" wifeless husbands, husbandless wives, children without parents, and parents without children; men and women who have "no ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... every man in her acquaintance or only to one. It certainly must refer to one! Misery loves company to such an extent that I could not bear to think that there was any girl living who did not occasionally have to grapple with the problem of at least one man in the raw, if only for her ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... not the progress of industry and happiness cause a steady increase in population, and must not the time come when the number of the inhabitants of the globe will surpass their means of subsistence? Condorcet did not grapple with this question. He contented himself with saying that such a period must be very far away, and that by then "the human race will have achieved improvements of which we can now scarcely form ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury |
