"Stern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... However on a subsequent occasion I was told that this folk-song was of great poetic interest. As I was returning home late one night on the gloomy canal, the moon appeared suddenly and illuminated the marvellous palaces and the tall figure of my gondolier towering above the stern of the gondola, slowly moving his huge sweep. Suddenly he uttered a deep wail, not unlike the cry of an animal; the cry gradually gained in strength, and formed itself, after a long-drawn 'Oh!' into the simple musical exclamation 'Venezia!' This was followed by other ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Secretary, with his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily make war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme was scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality of their new surroundings, this man's eyes were still stern. No smell of ale or orchards could make the Secretary cease ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... McKay approved, noting the easy grace of the crew. In the bow a tall, slender fellow stood with arms folded, balancing himself to the sway of the rather clumsy craft and watching the water ahead. In the stern, on a little platform whence he could look over the heads of the others and catch any signal from the lookout, a squat, dark-faced steersman lounged against his crude rudder. Between these two the paddlers stood, each with one foot on the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... solace during this trial had been Washington; he had been too busy and too frozen for Mrs. Croix. But that closest of his friends, although forced by his high office to a position of stern neutrality, did all he could in private to convince Hamilton of his unaltered affection and regard. As soon as the vindication was complete he fell into the habit of finishing his daily walk with an hour in Hamilton's library. But if his visits were a pleasure to his Secretary, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... of the vessel was exchanged for a heavy regular wash along its stern quarters; for the bows were so much raised as that I felt a little strain on my knees as I went forward to satisfy my curiosity with a view of the icy mass into which we were penetrated. I waited, indeed, until the crew were come ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... and fierce as many of them looked, they were not wholly insensible to kindness. On the schooner Power of God, where there seemed to be more wild, cruel, piratical types than on any other vessel except, perhaps, St. James the Apostle, I noticed a sailor with a stern, hard, almost black face and fierce, dark eyes, who—had such a thing been possible—might have stepped, just as he stood, out of the pages of "Amyas Leigh." He was regarding me with an expression in which, if there was no actual malevolence, there was at least not the slightest indication of ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... beyond Burgos, through the sunless glare of before-dawn; upon a soft-padding ass that cast no shadow and made no sound; well upon the stern of that ass, and with two bare heels to kick him; alone in the immensity of Castile, and as happy as a king may be, rode a young man on a May morning, singing to himself a wailing, winding chant in the minor which, as it had no end, may well have had no beginning. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... excommunication was passed upon King Philip for adultery with Bertrade de Montfort, Countess of Anjou, and for disobedience to the supreme authority of the apostolic see. This bold step impressed the people with reverence for so stern a Church, which in the discharge of its duty shewed itself no respecter of persons. Their love and their fear were alike increased, and they were prepared to listen with more intense devotion to the preaching of so righteous ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... this beautifully-executed, deeply-felt music of the royal performer, without being impressed in his inmost soul, and feeling his heart swell with powerful emotions. Outside, in the antechamber, were standing the stern generals, the heroic warriors, Zeithen, and the brave Schwerin, and General von Saldern, and their scarred, austere features assumed a soft, touching expression, as they leaned against the wall and listened in breathless silence to the performance ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... I got into the carriage with Molly, who opened her eyes wide when she saw me. We were soon in conversation. Molly was going to an aunt's in London who was to meet her at the Terminus. You may guess which way my talk ran. I kept whispering lewd things in her ear. An elderly stern-faced woman got in at a station, fixed her eyes on us, especially on me, and at length said, "Do you know that young woman?" Her coolness nearly settled me, but I said I did, kept on talking, and was delighted when about two or three stations further on she left with the remark ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... his shoulder, I turned back to my dead horse, and plucking the remaining pistol from the holster I ran down to the very edge of the water. The boat was not ten yards from shore, and my action had been unheeded by St. Auban, who was standing in the stern. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... a stern, fierce-looking man, with large dark eyes that seemed to ferret out everything one was thinking about, and as he came up he looked at us all searchingly ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... holes in their ears, wherein they wear such stuff as in their noses. They are very dexterous, active fellows in their proas, which are very ingeniously built. They are narrow and long, with outriggers on one side, the head and stern higher than the rest, and carved into many devices—viz., some fowl, fish, or a man's head painted or carved; and though it is but rudely done, yet the resemblance appears plainly, and shows an ingenious fancy. But with what instruments they make ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... your model for shape and form. As I have said, we require two of these canoes, and they are to be of different sizes. The length of the big one is 12 inches; the depth of this boat in the middle is 2 inches; at its stern and prow, which you will see are alike also in form, the measurement ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost; on which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her; these are rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night and the darkness of death. Here she ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... in the sand. Advice was immediately sent overland to Manila, whence were brought several Chinese ships, cables, and anchors. By dint of the great efforts exerted, both vessels, each singly, were fitted with tackle and cables, which were rigged at the stern. There awaiting the high tide, the ships were drawn, by force of capstan and men, stern first for more than one legua through a bank of sand, upon which they had struck, until they were set afloat, on the twenty-second ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... Millie—and the "KAYSER": Millie, who was short of stature and round-backed, who showed her fifty-odd years unflinchingly to the world; Millie with her felt slippers and her overall and coarse hands; Millie, the possessor of a sugar-card—and the mighty War Lord, stern and implacable, trying to subdue the world to his will. And Millie only wished she could get near him to smash him up—"the KAYSER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... fault you're not cool and comfortable like mesilf," said Mrs Gilmour, whom Hellyer had escorted to the pier. He had, likewise, secured a good seat for her in the stern-sheets of the boat, as the Captain had previously done; and here she was now snugly ensconced when the late-comers arrived— "How hot you ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... humble sphere a true builder of the nation. His neighbors and friends, John Tinker, Ralph Houghton, and Major Simon Willard, doubtless excelled him in culture, but no neighbor surpassed him in natural personal force, whether physical, mental or moral. Not only was he of commanding stature, stern of mien and strong of limb, but he had a heart devoid of fear, great physical endurance and an unbending will. These qualities his savage neighbors early recognized and bowed before in deep respect, and because ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... so unpopular in American literature? Is it because she is, after all, just what that loftiest if not most impeccable of Puritans called her, stern daughter of the voice of God? Is there to be no more sternness in our morals now we understand their psychology, no voice commanding us to do this or not to do that because there is a gulf set between worth and worthlessness? Is ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... and heard one tell the hour and the college bell confirm it. Care was on his brow, but you could see it was a care that came of new freedom. He was again a lover, still tremorous with the wonder of unsought deliverance from his dungeon of not-loving. And now the stern yet inspiring necessity was not to let his delivering angel find it out; to be a lover, but not a suitor. Hence his presence up here instead of down in the town beyond the meadows and across the river. He would make it very plain to her and her friends that ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... brought to stow away were the provisions. The kid of fish was put amidships on the breakers, and the dried birds, which they carried down in their arms, were packed up neatly in the stern-sheets. They were soon up to the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... mutual. He advanced, and again stopped short, as his eye fell upon that fair and still childlike form, which had once knelt by his side and pleaded, with the orphan, for his brother. While he spoke to her, many recollections, some dark and stern—but those, at least, connected with Camilla, soft and gentle-thrilled through his heart. Occupied as her own thoughts and feelings necessarily were with Sidney, there was something in Vaudemont's appearance—his manner, his voice—which forced upon ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... time gazing at the ship from a considerable distance. They had evidently profited by their short experience in this new style of warfare, for, observing that the terrible iron shower came thundering only from the sides of the ship, they made their next attack on the bow and stern—advancing with much daring, and throwing their stones with great violence and good aim, insomuch that some more of ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... relies upon the Star or Stern press—a small lithographic press—one man sufficing to manage it, who turns a wheel with large spokes, reminding one of the steering wheel of a ship. The Lichtdruck plate, gelatine film upward, is laid ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... weather side. A lamp is lighted in the wheel-house; so one patch of yellow light falls on the green-painted pistons of the steering gear as they snatch up the rudder-chains. A big sea has got home. Her stern flies up in the lather of a freed screw, and her deck from poop to the break of the foc's'le goes under in gray-green water level as a mill-race except where it spouts up above the donkey-engine and the stored derrick-booms. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... clean, powerful physique. But from near by one might have forgotten this matter of physical bigness for another, noting just the man's eyes alone. Very keen, piercing, quick eyes just now, watchful and suspicious of every corner and alley, they more than hinted at a stern vigilance that was ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... among them On her lion car. "Greeting, gods and sages, Greeting, father mine! Work hath wondrous virtue, Where such aids combine. Guest-hall never gathered Goodlier company: Seemeth all are welcome. All the gods but me." Spake the Muni Daksha, Stern and cold his tone:— "Welcome thou, too, daughter, Since thou com'st alone. But thy frenzied husband Suits another shrine; He is no partaker Of this feast of mine. He who walks in darkness Loves no deeds of light: He who herds ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... altogether satisfied as to the division of wages which had led to war in their midst, did not come back to the Place of the Pouch next morning, but Richard and Georgina appeared promptly, albeit with sore muscles and ebbing enthusiasm. Only stern necessity and fear of consequences ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a close, stern friendship. Dorothy worked at all things with the same passion, never sparing herself. She came closest to Ursula during the botany hours. For she could not draw. Ursula made beautiful and wonderful drawings of the sections under the microscope, and Dorothy always came to learn ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... pursuits of man seemed to him not only frivolous, but criminal. He looked forth, therefore, on this common life with eyes not only of tears, but of displeasure. He seemed even at times to derive something of stern satisfaction from its very follies and absurdities. But this is only the temporary mood of the profound moralist touched to his heart by pangs that he cannot resist. His true view of life is never cynical,—but always grave, if ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... and industrialism, with the drummer and the counter-jumper in the saddle, for so many faculties and graces which could flourish in the feudal world. See our kindliness for the humble and the outcast, how it wars with that stern weeding-out which until now has been the condition of every perfection in the breed. See everywhere the struggle and the squeeze; and ever-lastingly the problem how to make them less. The anarchists, nihilists, and free-lovers; the free-silverites, socialists, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... few members who regard vote getting as of supreme importance, no matter by what method the votes may be secured, and this leads them to hold out inducements and make representations which are not at all compatible with the stern and uncompromising principles of a revolutionary party. They seek to make the Socialist propaganda so attractive—eliminating whatever may give offense to bourgeois sensibilities—that it serves as a bait for votes ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... little black whirlpools in the wind. Even the white river steamers, guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current, were gray with soft coal smoke. The foam of the river falling in broken cataracts from their stern wheels ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Stern, passionless, no soul those looks betray; Though kindred rocks, to sport at mortal clay— Much as the chisel of the sculptor's art "Plays round the head, but comes not ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... and she hoped that he would say that he did not think them happy; but, instead, he said that they must go too—go home, for they were always being late for meals, and Mrs. Ambrose, who was very stern and particular, didn't like that. Evelyn laid hold of Rachel's skirt and protested. Why should they go? It was still early, and she had so many things to say to them. "No," said Terence, "we must go, because we walk so slowly. We stop ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... and neither of you ready for church, and I a verger," cried Mr. Hill, the tanner, as he stood at the bottom of his own staircase. "I'm ready, papa," replied Phoebe; and down she came, looking so clean, so fresh, and so gay, that her stern father's brows unbent, and he could only say to her, as she was drawing on a new pair of gloves, "Child, you ought to have had those gloves on before ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... paddles were individual and unlike, none of them bearing any resemblance to the other two. The man sat in the stern. He was of middle years, built very powerfully and with muscles and sinews developed to an amazing degree. His face, in childhood quite fair, had been burned almost as brown as that of an Indian by ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... Stern. The wind had died; it seemed as though the waters were moving with the wind, as fast as the wind; the yawl was keeping pace with it, even as a floating balloon drifts in a storm, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... stern as not to feel emotions of sympathy rather than of condemnation for Louise de la Valliere. She was a child of seventeen, exposed to all the fascinations and temptations of the most luxurious court then upon the globe. But God has implanted ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... I gin him a stern look and sez, "Some knowledge is demeanin' to a perfessor." And he acted puggicky and didn't say another word for a mild or so. But I sot calm and looked away into the entrancin' seen. And all the time we wuz ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... inclinations he could master. Poetry was often but not always an exaltation and a relief. He could fulfil his tasks in "hours of gloom." If he had not been a great poet he would have gained credit as a painstaking and laborious man of letters. His habitual temperance was the outcome of a stern resolve. He had no scruples, but he kept his body in subjection as a means to an end. In his youth Byron was a cautious spendthrift. Even when he was "cursedly dipped" he knew what he was about; and afterwards, when his income was sufficient for his requirements, he kept a hold ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... gushes out so livingly from the stern heart of the satirist. And when old—complimented me on my verses, my eye sought yours. Verily, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... days of the 17th century; a ruffling young theologue new to the city; a beautiful and innocent girl, suspected of witchcraft; a crafty scholar and metaphysician seeking to give over the city into the hands of the Savoyards; a stern and powerful syndic whom the scholar beguiles to betray his office by promises of an elixir which shall save him from his fatal illness; a brutal soldier of fortune; these are the elements of which Weyman has composed the most brilliant and ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... I have punished the wretch deservedly and lashed him out of the castle," answered Golo in a stern voice, ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... inflicted in his hour of triumph!" The violence of passions suddenly unreined after years of jealous curb and watchfulness for a moment overcame him, and he reeled as if fainting, into a chair. The fierce, stern nature of the man soon mastered the unwonted excitement, and in a few minutes he was cold, silent, impassable as ever. The letter which he despatched the same evening gave calm, business orders as ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... conception of duty which are as needful as intelligence to a nation's strength. Beneath the dull, monotonous surface of political society these sects give us a glimpse of the hard rock which is the groundwork of this seemingly inert race: its originality and stern individuality are what are dear to it. One day Russia will display in other spheres the originality and patient, sturdy energy which these religious struggles have called forth. That a considerable portion of the people have revolted against the liturgic reform shows that it is not the stupid, sluggish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... and waves. The vessel closed with him, hove-to to windward, and, after some demur, a small boat, capable of holding three persons, was hoisted over the gunnel, and two hands, jumping into her, rowed under the stern of the wreck. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... two old men in the scow. One sat at the oars, and the other stood on a bench in the stern and held in his hand a short spear which was coarsely barbed. The one who rowed was apparently a poor fisherman. He was small, dried-up and weather-beaten, and wore a thin, threadbare coat. One could see that he was so used to being out in all sorts of weather that he didn't mind the cold. The ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... thunder of their artillery, and carrying with them the rubidub of drums, and the tantarara of trumpets, in addition to their increasing shouts, it looked, at first, as if they had some hopes of scaring us off the ground; for it was a singular contrast to the stern silence reigning on our side, where nothing, as yet, but the voices of our great guns, told that we had mouths to open when we chose to use them. Our rifles were, however, in a very few seconds, required to play their parts, and opened such a fire on the advancing skirmishers as quickly ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... confidence in his prowess to such a height, that he began to think himself and his goose-gun a match for any thing. Unluckily, in the course of one of his prowlings, he descried a British transport aground, not far from shore, with her stern swung toward the land, within point-blank shot. The temptation was too great to be resisted; bang! as usual, went the great goose-gun, shivering the cabin windows, and driving all hands forward. Bang! bang! the shots were repeated. The reports brought ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... hour his stern command Called to a martyr's grave The flower of his beloved land, The nation's flag to save. By rivers of their father's gore His first-born laurels grew, And well he deemed the sons would pour ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... Phenician gods is simple. They are purely Semitic deities, formed on the pattern of human rulers and deriving their attributes from that character. When a state becomes highly organised before it is quite civilised in other respects, its religion is apt to be stern and cruel; of this various instances may be found in the history of religion, and the present is one of them. The Phenician gods were of such a character as to favour the survival of savage practices; the Semite, as we saw, is extremely ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Burke, but, under a stern look from Mary, gave the outward semblance of good grace. The fact that he had been present in her home at the time of her disastrous escapade, even though she believed him ignorant of it, made the ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... Juan stood, and, gazing from the stern, Beheld his native Spain receding far: First partings form a lesson hard to learn, Even nations feel this when they go to war; There is a sort of unexpressed concern, A kind of shock that sets one's heart ajar, At leaving ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and stern assaults, With every tower and battlement destroyed, The walls of Ceuta still were ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... filed out of the gold and silver doors in great numbers, and marched up a winding stairs and into the throne room, led by a stern featured Nome who was their captain. When they had nearly filled the throne room they formed ranks in the big underground cavern below, and then stood still until they were told ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... His voice was very stern, and as she dropped her hand from his arm she felt it to be impossible to leave him in that way. Were she to do so, she would never be allowed to speak to him or to see him again. "Good-night," he said, preparing to ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... undertone: "Ye dainty little darling!" She sat up, struck out madly, screamed at the top of her lungs. The curtains fell back into place, the snoring stopped. Susan, all in a sweat and a shiver, lay quiet. Hoarse whispering; then in Burlingham's voice stern and gruff—"Get back to your bed and let her alone, you rolling-eyed——" The sentence ended with as foul a spatter of filth as man can fling at man. Silence again, and after a few minutes the two snores resumed their bass ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... was an old man with white hair and a gray, stern face, who sat beside a table on which were paper and lighted candles. A letter lay before him, but he was not reading it. When the sound of the rocking began, he started and turned pale. A little boy once used to rock in that way in the garret overhead, but ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... dominant, self-satisfied good-humor became set and stern. Without taking the least notice of Carroll, he rose, and, stepping to a telegraph instrument at a side table, manipulated half a dozen ivory knobs with a sudden energy. Then he returned to the table, and began hurriedly to glance over ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Monsieur de Barante. M. Capefigue has published many historical productions, and amongst the rest a Life of Napoleon, which is perhaps one of the most impartial extant, and very interesting, as containing a sort of recapitulation of facts, without any endeavour to palliate such of his actions as stern justice must condemn. M. Mignet has also chosen the path of history, and has not followed it unsuccessfully; the foundation of his present prosperity consisting entirely in his writings, there are several other authors of minor note who have adopted the same course, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... looking about him. We of the steerage were careless in our dress, but he was always clad in immaculate white linen, with pointed, yellow shoes to match his complexion. He spoke to no one, but smoked long cheroots all day in the stern of the ship, and studied a greasy pocket-book. Once I tripped over him in the dark, and he turned on me with a snarl and an oath. I was short enough with him in return, and he looked as if he ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... to praise a lady then at Bath; observing 'She does not gain upon me, Sir; I think her empty-headed.' He was, indeed, a stern critick upon characters and manners. Even Mrs. Thrale did not escape his friendly animadversion at times. When he and I were one day endeavouring to ascertain, article by article, how one of our friends[153] could possibly spend as much money in his family as he told us he did, she ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... hair, not foolishly fond, but with a sort of stern maternal care, smoothing it back in place where it belonged, straightening out the riot it had assumed. It made a mane above his forehead and reached down his neck to his shoulders, so heavy that where its dark mass was lifted it showed the skin of ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... and empties itself into the Connecticut, when they espied, at some distance, an object of unusual appearance moving slowly up the stream." On a nearer approach it was discovered to be a canoe, in the stern of which something was observed to be heaped up, but apparently without life or motion. At length it struck the shore, and out leapt John Ledyard from under his bear-skin, to the great astonishment of his relatives at this sudden apparition, who had no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... observe that the moment he was out of soundings and away from the influence of her ladyship, Sir Hercules reinstated my father, and gave him back his rating as coxswain. My father was indeed the smartest and best seaman in the ship; he could do his work from stem to stern—mouse a stay, pudding an anchor, and pass a gammoning, as well as he could work a Turk's head, cover a manrope, or point a lashing for the cabin table. Besides which, he had seen service, having fought under Rodney, and served at the siege ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... relic, then, we have one of the identical boats in which the descents upon the British coast were first made. The craft is rudely built of oaken boards, and is seventy feet long by nine broad. The stem and stern are alike in shape, and the boat is fitted for being beached upon the foreshore. A sculptured stone at Haeggeby, in Uplande, roughly represents for us such a ship under way, probably of about the same date. It is rowed with twelve pairs of oars, and has no ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... transitory, unsatisfactory coruscations, none, has undermined its Clay Prison in the weakest point (which proves to be the lungs), and will make outlet there. My poor Sterling! It is an old tragedy; and very stern whenever it ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... philosophy held sway over his mind, either envy or desire to imitate the splendid achievements of the white man. In his own thought he rose superior to them! He scorned them, even as a lofty spirit absorbed in its stern task rejects the soft beds, the luxurious food, the pleasure-worshiping dalliance of a rich neighbor. It was clear to him that virtue and happiness are independent of these things, if not ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... some rude outline of a true God-made King; whom not the Champion of England cased in tin, but all Nature and the Universe were calling to the throne? It is absolutely necessary that he get thither. Nature does not mean her poor Saxon children to perish, of obesity, stupor or other malady, as yet: a stern Ruler and Line of Rulers therefore is called in,—a stern but most beneficent perpetual House-Surgeon is by Nature herself called in, and even the appropriate fees are provided for him! Dryasdust talks lamentably about Hereward and the Fen Counties; fate of Earl Waltheof; Yorkshire ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... and are sharp and symmetrical; the cut-water stretches, with a graceful curve, far out beyond them toward the long sweeping martingal, and is surmounted by a gilt scroll, or, as the sailors call it, a fiddle-head. The black stern is ornamented by a group of white figures in bas relief, which give a lively air to the otherwise sombre and vacant expression, and beneath the cabin-windows is painted the name of the ship, and her port of register. The lower masts of this ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... standing shirt-collar, and thoroughly English aspect. Anton took a rapid survey of his countenance, and felt his courage return. He at once discovered uprightness and kindness of heart, though the air and manner were somewhat stern. He rapidly drew out his letter, gave his name, and, in a broken voice, mentioned his ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... was evidently a command to halt, the wooden bars were lowered and the door thrown open to admit the deep sunset glow, and the stern-looking Malay with his following marched in, their steps rustling amidst the leaves that covered the floor; and the leader bent down curiously over Archie, scowling at him fiercely, before turning his lurid eyes searchingly upon the young private, who ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... lieutenant.' Which he did not fail to do," adds Brantome, "and inflicted exemplary punishment, but not so severe assuredly as the case required." The narrator, it will be seen, was not more merciful than the constable. Nor was the constable less stern or less thorough in battles than in outbreaks. In 1562, at the battle of Dreux, he was aged and so ill that none expected to see him on horseback. "But in the morning," says Brantome, "knowing that the enemy was getting ready, he, brimful ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Hoopdriver, looking very stern and harsh. And then in a forbidding tone, as one who consented ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... singularly open-handed, yet at same time prudent. From his successful concert tours he had put by funds, 20,000 francs for his aged mother, and 20,000 francs for each of the three children he had by the Countess D'Agoult (known in literature as Daniel Stern), and he considered that the position would afford him an opportunity of developing his own talent for composition, and at the same time of affording a hearing for important new works, which, on account of their novelty and originality, were impossible of performance in the theaters of large cities. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... those days of sad suspense Aunt Catharine appeared an altered woman. No longer stern and stately, self-satisfied and self-sufficient, she and her sister seemed to have changed places. She it was who clung to Miss Alice for sympathy and support in the sore trouble that had befallen them. Miss Alice it was who kept brave and cheery—hoping against hope ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... so stern, that my heart failed me, and I wished myself any where but there, though I had before been summoning up all my courage. Good Heaven, said I to myself, give me courage to stand before this naughty master! O soften ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... fabrications are unworthy. Let the little slain children, and the violated women, sleep in honor. Your race was stern enough in doing them to death. Let them alone, now that you have cleared them ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... old workman of ours—touched his hat, and tried to walk steadily past "the master," who looked at once both stern ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... contribute to the Dominion exchequer and thus swell the revenue of Canada. Weather conditions were nothing less than awful. Steele, who, with Constable Skirving, went up the Chilcoot from Dyea where they had come on a craft which was covered from stem to stern with six inches of ice, says, "As we proceeded up the pass we faced a wind so cutting that we had often to make a rush for the shelter of a tree or walk in a crouching position behind the tailboard of a sleigh for a ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... to her mooring-mast in the dock, those who had expected a larger and better Zeppelin seemed justified in their belief. The ship was 512 feet long and 48 feet in diameter, with a blunt bow and a pointed stern. Her capacity was approximately 700,000 cubic feet. The framework was made of a new alloy called 'duralumin', nearly as strong in tension as mild steel and not much heavier than aluminium. It was covered with 46,000 square yards of water-tight silk fabric, so treated ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... flowers. It looked as though the servants had but just left the room. Even the candles had been lit in readiness, and as their flames wavered and smoked in the evening breeze they cast uncertain shadows on the walls and showed the stern faces of the soldier presidents frowning down on the crowded table ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... man looked at him impudently. But the clear, stern eyes of Matt's partner made him wilt, and muttering something under his breath about getting square, he paid over the amount, took the knife, and sneaked out of the ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... plumage, and lifting its heavy wings as if about to scorn the earth, only to drop them again, and to utter one of those long dreary cries which seem to protest so eloquently against a barbarous destiny. Then he proceeded to tell us of the great raptor in its life of hopeless captivity; his stern, rugged countenance, deep bass voice, and grand mouth-filling polysllables suiting his subject well, and making his description seem to our minds a sombre magnificent picture never to be forgotten—at all events, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... personality of the commandant. I heard from those who fought under General Radko Dmitrieff in the early stages of the Galician campaign that when our troops, after sweeping away the resistance at Lwow and Jaroslau, loudly knocked at the doors of the fortress of Przemysl, they met with a stern rebuff. In reply to the summons of the Russians to surrender the keys the commandant wrote a curt and dignified note remarking that he considered it beyond his own dignity or the dignity of the Russian General to discuss the surrender of the fortress ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... bright sunny morning we sought out the judge's office, only to learn that he had not yet for the day exchanged the pleasures of rural life across the Fontaine for less romantic devotions at the shrine of the stern goddess. Later we were informed, upon what seemed credible authority, that upon the morning in question he was intending to sow oats. Though cold March still claimed the calendar, and hence such action on the part of the judge might seem like forcing the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the laboring bark, was steadily becoming more noticeable, while overhead the ropes sang dismally. I wondered that LeVere hung on so long in his perilous position, although, in spite of the increased strain, the anchor still clung firmly. Quite probably he had received stern orders not to shift from his present position until the boat returned, yet surely his judgment as a competent seaman, left in command, must make him aware of the threatening danger. He would never wreck his vessel merely because he had been instructed to remain at that particular spot. It seemed ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... man resolv'd and steady to his trust, Inflexible to ill, and obstinately just, May the rude rabble's insolence despise, Their senseless clamours, and tumultuous cries; The tyrant's fierceness he beguiles, And the stern brow, and the harsh voice defies, And with ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... than purity, courage, and truth. There is in his zeal a narrowness that augments its strength, yet lessens its effect so far as practical issues are concerned. He is an idealist: but surely no young man can read his stern, throbbing pages without a kindling of the soul, and a resolve to be high in deed and aim; and there is no gauging the final influence of such spiritual stimulus. England and mankind must be better for this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the staircase), transferred from the shop parlour. Bulpert announced his intention of taking charge of the musical and dramatic part of the entertainment. Bulpert no longer considered himself a visitor at Praed Street, and on one occasion he entered a stern protest when he found Mr. Trew's hat there, resting upon the peg which he considered his own. Twice he had suggested that Gertie should lend him half a sovereign, reducing the amount, by stages, to eighteenpence; but she answered definitely ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... to see her married!" cried the Irishman, suddenly, and it was a new voice, a voice Ste. Marie did not know. It shook a little with an emotion that sat uncouthly upon this grim, stern man. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... portrait although she had not looked its way. The picture had caught the quiet passion and intensity of Godfrey Langrishe's gaze, as though he looked on deeds of glory and fought his way towards them. The face was less stern than she remembered it; it had yet some of the bloom and bonniness of his boyhood; renunciation had not written its deeper meaning in lines about the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... vessels kept up the job of plying back and forth in the waters. Men were busy at the stern of the ships watching the wooden kites that are made so as to catch the mines by the hawser that is slung between the two steamers. The slightest sign of a ball-like piece of steel in the sea and ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... our torches flared; Kendaia, Kanadesaga, Gothsunquin, Skoi-yase, Kanandaigua, Haniai, Kanasa; acre after acre was annihilated. So vast was one field of corn that it took two thousand men more than six hours to destroy it. And the end was not yet, nor our stern ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... for bass," said Colonel Bangem, while he was distributing the party properly among the boats. "But, in spite of all signs, bass bite when they please. It is a sunny morning: so use bright spoon-trolls, medium size. If the fish rise freely, twenty-five feet of line is enough to have out on the stern lines; and, as the ladies will use the poles, ten feet of line is enough for them. Don't forget, Mrs. Bangem, to keep your troll spinning just outside the swirl of the oar, and as near the surface of the water as possible. You know you will talk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... and if his wheel went merrily round, his spirits whirled with it, and danced and frolicked in the sunshine of good humour, like the spray and sparkle from his own mill-race. But a change was gathering on his wife's countenance: her grief grew sullen; her aspect stern and forbidding:—some hidden purpose was maturing: she seldom spoke to her husband. When addressed, she seemed to arouse from a sort of stupor, unwillingly forcing a reply. "She is bewitched," thought Giles. He had his suspicions; but ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... massacred, pregnant women ripped up, and maidens outraged by brutal lust. Our greatest statesman uttered a clarion-cry which pealed through the whole nation, and the friends of the Turk in high places shrank abashed and dismayed before the stern response of the people. Many clergymen attended public meetings, and denounced not only the Turks, but also their Mohammedanism. They alleged that the Koran sanctioned, even if it did not command, the horrors ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the Nightly shore;— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore." ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... suddenly, and pulled at the oars for dear life, and all the Cubs helped by cheering. "Crash—scrunch," the boat went ashore; the Cub in the bow leapt out, and held her nose steady while everyone else scrambled out. A few "white horses" jumped over the stern and made things a bit wet, but nobody minded. In scrambled the next boatful of Cubs, and, with a good shove, ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... beautiful, soft cheek, down which the tears were now streaming, against his brown hair. "Bob, forgive me, but I love you, love you, Bob, as only a woman can love who has never known love before, never known anything but stern duty. Bob, night after night when all have left I have crept into your office and sat in your chair. I have laid my head on your desk and cried and cried until it seemed as though I could not live till morning without hearing you say that you loved me, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... parting was not as simple and straightforward a procedure as Costigan's speech would indicate, but finally he did seek his own room and relaxed upon a pile of cushions, his stern visage transformed. Instead of the low metal ceiling he saw a beautiful, oval, tanned young face, framed in a golden-blonde corona of hair. His gaze sank into the depths of loyal, honest, dark-blue eyes; and looking deeper ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... from stem to stern of a ship in no time. Every one was talking about it. Padishah went below to hide his feelings. At dinner—he pigged at a table by himself, him and two other Hindoos—the captain kind of jeered at him about it, and he got very ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of the stern god by the name of Chaos whence the world had birth, and by the dread rivers of the nether world, by Styx and Acheron: 'E pel sonante ardor di Flegetonte'; and lastly, turning to 'the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... advance the rising fortunes of Villiers, others deemed it safer to adhere to the established credit of Somerset. The king himself, divided between inclination and decorum, increased the doubt and ambiguity of the courtiers; and the stern jealousy of the old favorite, who refused every advance of friendship from his rival, begat perpetual quarrels between their several partisans. But the discovery of Somerset's guilt in the murder of Overbury at last decided ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... I pray? "Give me forgetfulness"? No, I would still possess Past away smiles, though present fronts be stern. "Give me again my kindred?" Nay; not so, Not idle prayers. We know They that have ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Bellosguardo, near the city, which is so closely associated with Hawthorne's Italian days as the tower of Monte Beni. Here he began to write "The Marble Faun," shutting himself up for an hour or two every day in the stern effort, as he describes it, of coming "to close grip with a romance which I have been trying to tear out of my mind." The scene of his labors was quite remote, such a place as he liked to have to write in, and he was undisturbed unless it were by the Spiritualism of the Browning villa, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... narrow passage, rushed through it with great impetuosity, over-turning and carrying away everything in its course. Our boatmen, with the assistance of a number of the natives, who planted themselves on the rocks on each side of the only channel, and in the stream at the stern of the canoe, lifted it by main force into smoother and safer water. The last difficulty with respect to rocks and sand-banks was now overcome, and in a very little time we came to the termination of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... Dick's answer, if, indeed, he gave me any, was lost in a chorus of ear splitting yells rending the silence of the night like demon cries. Then a single ululation, long drawn and fair blood chilling, answered back, and Jennifer swept the pirogue stern to strand with ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... up from the beached ship. Her stern broke off and settled in the deeper water out from the shore. More smoke spurted out. Her bow split wide. There were the deep rumbles of black-powder explosions. Sergeant Walpole and his two followers stared blankly. More explosions, and the ship was hidden in smoke, ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... mother and sisters to give you all domestic news. Tell Annette I have been looking for her in every stage since her letter last fall, and that I hope for her arrival daily. Nipper is well, and endeavors, by stern gravity, to repress the frivolity of Baxter. All unite in much love, and I am, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... the traditional conception of Him as of One so gentle and unassertive in demeanor as to appear unmanly. Gentle He was, and patient under affliction, merciful and long-suffering in dealing with contrite sinners, yet stern and inflexible in the presence of hypocrisy, and unsparing in His denunciation of persistent evil-doers. His mood was adapted to the conditions to which He addressed Himself; tender words of encouragement or burning expletives of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... colonnades of foreign marbles, no tesselated pavement to the vestibule, no glowing frescoes on the walls, no long lines of exterior windows, glittering with the new luxury of glass. All was decorous, it is true; but all, at the same time, was stern, and grave, and singular ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Tanganyika, without a military campaign. In 1894, two humble Catholic fathers entered Lobemba, walked straight to the chief town, and were told that if they did not leave the country in one day they would be killed. As the stern message was delivered, they saw an old woman on the ground in great pain from a severe wound. The news soon spread that these unwelcome strangers had washed and dressed the wound, and made the old woman comfortable. "These people love men," was the word that passed from lip to lip, as the sick and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... mean?" cried Tom, rather more sternly than he really meant. He had to pretend to be stern at times with his old colored helper and the impulsive and powerful giant. "What are you cutting up for outside my door when I told you I must be quiet ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... changed. Every trace of Nap. or his reign totally done away, as if traced in sand over which the tide has passed. Moreau and Pichegru's portraits hang in the royal ante-chamber. The former has a mean look; the latter has been a strong and stern-looking man. I looked at him, and thought of his death-struggles. In the guard-room were the heroes of La Vendee—Charette with his white bonnet, the two La Rochejacqueleins, Lescure, in an attitude of prayer, Stofflet, the gamekeeper, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Mademoiselle, less stern than Kathleen had ever seen her, presided at supper, which was bread and treacle spread several hours before, and now harder and drier than any other food you can think of. Gerald was very polite in handing her butter and cheese, and pressing her to ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... Whence does it proceed? I think I could make an interesting history of my mind's religious progress, if I may use a word shockingly perverted by modern fanatics, from the hard dry struggles I used to have when first I commenced to study on my own account, to the settling down into a state of stern conviction, and so after some years to the nobler and more soothing evidences furnished by the grand harmonies and beautiful features of religion, whether considered in contact with lower objects or viewed in her own crystal ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... heart was as capable of love as of hate, and her graceful person as fitted to inspire love as it had ever been. Just now Catharine was anxious to please. She thought over the golden hours of her youthful passion, and tried to win a smile from Orloff's stern face. She forgot in him the man who had placed a bloody crown upon her head, she saw but the paramour who had wreathed her brow with the myrtles and roses of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... into his own. It must be an evil dream, he thought at first, but it had all the semblance of reality, and, when he turned his head in fear, he saw another face on the other side of him, carved in red bronze, it too only a foot away and staring at him in stern accusation. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Barry Houston now formed the executive head; to receive the certain statement that somewhere, somehow, something was wrong, something which was working against the best interests of himself and the stern necessities of ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... that mixed with the pride of his poverty there was some feeling of disgrace that he was poor, but that with her, regarding this matter, there was neither pride nor shame. The realities of life had become so stern to her that the outward aspects of them were as nothing. She would have liked a new gown because it would have been useful; but it would have been nothing to her if all the county knew that the one in which she went to church had been ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... a stern, black-bearded man of the ante-bellum type, such as you may see in any old volume of daguerreotypes, and entirely unblessed with a sense of humor. I can even now recall with a sinking of the heart the manner in which, if I abjured my food, he ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... clothed with the likeness and thrilled with the strength and the wrath of a tropic sea. As a wild steed ramps in rebellion, and rears till it swerves from a backward fall, The strong ship struggled and reared, and her deck was upright as a sheer cliff's wall. Stern and prow plunged under, alternate: a glimpse, a recoil, a breath, And she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the throat of death. Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal joy, Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... his account: I obeyed an involuntary impulse. On approaching the water, I heard their voices—hers in friendly persuasion, his in sentimental entreaty,—then the sound of oars in the row-locks. Looking out from the last clump of cedars, I saw them seated in the boat, Eunice at the stern, while Abel, facing her, just dipped an oar now and then to keep from drifting with the tide. She had found him already in the boat, which was loosely chained to a stone. Stepping on one of the forward thwarts in her eagerness to persuade him to return, he sprang past her, jerked away the chain, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... other, at no time had she ever betrayed a weakness that promised to undermine her high sense of duty; and as time increased her means of judging of what those duties were, her submission to them seemed to be stronger and stronger. Had there been anything stern or repulsive in Mary's manner of manifesting the feeling that was uppermost in her mind, one of Roswell Gardiner's temperament would have been very apt to shake off her influence; but, so far from this being the case, she ever met him and parted ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... retreated backward until I stood in the stern of the skiff. The dog had hitherto lain close up to the bow, but after the shots, he had sprung up and taken a position nearer the centre of the boat. In fact, he had been within biting distance of me before I had noticed his madness. The ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... that Napoleon communicated to him the resolution he had adopted; alluded to the reasons for the divorce, spoke of the anguish which the stern necessity caused his affections, and declared his intention to invest the act with forms the most affectionate and ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... myself so far as to say this to Mrs. Torrence. My voice doesn't sound at all like the stern voice of duty. It is the voice of somebody enjoying herself. I am behaving exactly as I behaved this morning at Ostend; and cannot possibly hope for any sympathy from ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... setting sail, the dreamer saw a crowd of ravenous vultures and birds of prey come and alight every where upon the sails and rigging of the ships, as if they were going to accompany the expedition. Upon the summit of a rock near the shore there sat the figure of a female, with a stern and ferocious countenance, and a drawn sword in her hand. She was busy counting the ships, pointing at them, as she counted, with her sword. She seemed a sort of fiend of destruction, and she called out to the birds, to encourage them to go. "Go!" said ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the hull of the Turkish commodore, and, reaching the powder-magazine, the action commenced by blowing up his ship.[12] A carcass-shell exploding in the bows of the brig anchored next to the commodore, she sank forward, while a hot shell striking her stern, which stood up in the shallow water, it was soon enveloped in flames. In a few minutes, another vessel was perceived to be on fire; and a fine Algerine schooner, mounting twenty long brass guns, having received ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... ushered in the year 1842 is but too unanswerable a proof of the opinion I here express; and though innumerable instances of individual gallantry as well amongst the unlettered privates as the superior officers have thrown a halo round their bloody graves, the stern truth still forces itself upon us, that the temporary eclipse of British glory was not the consequences of events beyond the power of human wisdom to foresee or ward off, but the natural results of an overweening confidence in ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... the holly! oh, twine it with bay— Come give the holly a song; For it helps to drive stern winter away, With his ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... rockets increased and the mighty ship quivered as its plummeting descent was checked slightly. Tom quickly adjusted the stabilizer trim tabs to keep the ship perpendicular to the ground, then watched the stern scanner carefully as the huge blast-pitted concrete ramp ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... with the crew in it, a boy of a mid-shipman scrambled down the ship's side and entered it also, a lieutenant followed, when away the cockle of a thing swept on the crest of a sea, and was soon pulling round under our stern. I stood on the lee quarter, examining my visiters, as they struggled against the swell, in order to get a boat-hook into our main chains. The men were like any other man-of-war's men, neat, sturdy, and submissive in air. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... a man stood on the quarter with his glass raised, and scanned the shore from point to point. Then there was an aggravating pause, and the rest of the men seemed to disappear below. Then an increased number appeared on deck, and began clearing the lashings from the stern boat. That was a joyful moment, for it was a proof of their intention to land. Then the boat was lowered away and pulled alongside, when two oarsmen got in, and were followed by two men who sat in the stern sheets, and who turned out ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... thousand and sixty-three years ago, when the combined consular armies of Livius and Nero encountered and crushed near its banks the varied hosts which Hannibal's brother was leading from the Pyrenees, the Rhone, the Alps, and the Po, to aid the great Carthaginian in his stern struggle to annihilate the growing might of the Roman republic, and make the Punic power supreme over all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind's eye out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have passed through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men of the ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging with the stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like tenderness. And all around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of folk eager to give welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison, civilians whom the siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping tears of joy ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... certain other bodies which we consider as immovable; and, according as we look to different bodies, we may see that the same thing at the same time does and does not change place. For example, when a vessel is being carried out to sea, a person sitting at the stern may be said to remain always in one place, if we look to the parts of the vessel, since with respect to these he preserves the same situation; and on the other hand, if regard be had to the neighbouring shores, the same person will seem to be perpetually changing ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood, Land of my sires! what mortal hand Can e'er untie the filial band, That knits me to thy ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... worship, how imbecile such gods. When Africa and Asia, full of relics and crosses, pictures and images, fell before the Mohammedans, those conquerors retaliated the same logic with no little effect. There was hardly one of the fallen towns that had not some idol for its protector. Remembering the stern objurgations of the prophet against this deadly sin, prohibited at once by the commandment of God and repudiated by the reason of man, the Saracen khalifs had ordered all the Syrian images to be destroyed. Amid the derision of the Arab soldiery and the tears of the terror-stricken ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... croaked out, in a variety of tones: "The stage! Why not? Applauded every night—it would be glorious!" Then she seemed in her dream to be falling, falling down from a great height, as one falls from fairyland into stern reality. She opened her eyes: it was noon. Madame Odinska was waiting for her: she intended herself to take her to the convent, and for that purpose had assumed the imposing air ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... possibilities, and to find in the landscape of the soul all sorts of fine sunrise and moonlight effects. "Meantime, while the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely—it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul." To make one's self so much more interesting would help ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Trumpler was already on his feet and, after bestowing on the jury a stern hypnotic stare, he plunged into his reply with a really admirable air of conviction and sincerity. "My lord and gentlemen of the jury: The case which is now before this Court is one, as I have already remarked, in which human ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... nerves Has ever yet been found, For him who like a menial serves Dull lesson's daily round; But gnawing friction, stern and gaunt, Tears flesh and brain away, While ghosts nocturnal ever haunt A soul with fell dismay, Whose mercenary greed has led Itself into a snare That counts by scores its strangled dead, Its hundreds, ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the birds were thus in haste, The leaves came on not quite so fast, And Destiny, that sometimes bears An aspect stern on man's affairs, Not altogether smiled on theirs. The wind, of late breathed gently forth, Now shifted east and east by north; Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know, Could shelter them from rain or snow; Stepping into their nests, they paddled, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various |
