"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Borne by' those who, stiff and mangled, Paid, upon that bloody field, Direful, cringing, awe-struck homage To the sword our heroes yield; And who felt, by fiery trial, That the men who will be free. Though in conflict baffled often, Ever ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... slightly theatrical, and he was dressed up to the same dashing part, having a white top hat, an orchid in his coat, a yellow waistcoat and yellow gloves which he flapped and swung as he walked. When he came round to the front door they heard the stiff Paul open it, and heard the new arrival say cheerfully, "Well, you see I have come." The stiff Mr. Paul bowed and answered in his inaudible manner; for a few minutes their conversation could not be heard. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... pleasant than this ride of a mile over the prairie. The plain was quite level, and despite the extraordinary speed attained, the wagon glided almost as smoothly as if running upon a railroad. Although the air was still, the velocity created a stiff breeze about the ears of the four seated on the ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... die here upon it, and never see the masters who must be—ruling over these things! We may freeze and die here, and the air will freeze and thaw upon us, and then—! Then they will come upon us, come on our stiff and silent bodies, and find the sphere we cannot find, and they will understand at last too late all the thought and effort that ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... by her sides, her head heavy and her heart oppressed by a sad presentiment, had scarcely strength to go up to her room, and after having mechanically trimmed the lamp, sank on her bed as pale and stiff as a corpse. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... readiness, with twenty rowers in the queen's colours of green and white; and Arundel, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, Derby, and other lords went off to the vessel which carried the royal standard of Castile. Philip's natural manner was cold and stiff, but he had been schooled into graciousness. Exhausted by his voyage, he accepted delightedly the instant invitation to go on shore, and he entered the barge accompanied by the Duke of Alva. A crowd of gentlemen was waiting to receive ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... indicate greater antiquity. The black figures were occasionally painted over in white or violet. These vessels are mostly small and somewhat compressed in form; they are surrounded with parallel stripes of pictures of animals, plants, fabulous beings, or arabesques. The drawings show an antiquated stiff type, similar to those on the vessels recently discovered at Nineveh and Babylon, whence the influence of Oriental on Greek art may be inferred. This archaic style, like the strictly hieratic style in sculpture, was retained together with a freer treatment at a more advanced period. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... saw looked very like plantations of gooseberry bushes, and the best of them were not so graceful or picturesque as a Kentish hop-ground. As to olives, admirable as they undoubtedly are when flanking a sparkling jug of claret, we find little to admire in the stiff, greyish, stunted sort of trees upon which they think proper to grow. But neither vines nor olives are to be found around Marseilles. Nothing but dust; dust on the roads, dust in the fields, dust on every leaf of the parched, unhappy-looking trees that surround the country-houses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... not merely taught, she wrought—and wrought consummately. She revived and transformed the fable; perfected, if she did not invent, the beast-epic; brought the short prose tale to an exquisite completeness; enlarged, suppled, chequered, the somewhat stiff and monotonous forms of Provencal lyric into myriad-noted variety; devised the prose-memoir, and left capital examples of it; made attempts at the prose history; ventured upon much and performed no little ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Captain Hardy met me and said that "owing circumstances" (a stupid but convenient phrase), "he rather thought the Independence would not sail for a day or two, and that when all was ready, he would send up and let me know." This I thought strange, for there was a stiff southerly breeze; but as "the circumstances" were not forthcoming, although I pumped for them with much perseverance, I had nothing to do but to return home and digest my ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of Mr. Saffron's, lifted it, and let it fall again; it fell back just in the position from which he had lifted it. Then he straightened himself up, looking a trifle green perhaps, but reassured, and called out to Mike, in a penetrating whisper, "He's a stiff ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Henrico County, Virginia, had a slave who used frequently to work for my father. One morning he came into the field with his back completely cut up, and mangled from his head to his heels. The man was so stiff and sore he could scarcely walk. This same person got offended with another of his slaves, knocked him down, and struck out one of his eyes with a maul. The eyes of several of his slaves ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fine young fellow, though a great deal too Frenchified, from all I hear. And why my friend Twemlow cold-shoulders him so, is something of a mystery to me. Twemlow is generally a judicious man in things that have nothing to do with the Church. When it comes to that, he is very stiff-backed, as I have often had to tell him. Perhaps this young man is a Papist. His mother was, and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the spirit. Learn the grammar, certainly. But read Latin—till you can speak Latin, think Latin. It is more difficult to think Greek. Our stiff-necked, stubborn Lowland nature, produce of half-a-score of conquering nations, has not the right suppleness. But if there is any poetry in you, it will find you out when ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... vulnerability of the tourist sector was illustrated by the sharp drop in 1991-92 due largely to the Gulf war. Although the industry has rebounded, the government recognizes the continuing need for upgrading the sector in the face of stiff international competition. Other issues facing the government are the curbing of the budget deficit and further privatization of public enterprises. Growth slowed in 1998-99, due to sluggish tourist and ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... all eras, in various parts of the globe, but confined in general to situations not very elevated, there is a layer of stiff clay, mostly of a blue colour, mingled with fragments of rock of all sizes, travel-worn, and otherwise, and to which geologists give the name of diluvium, as being apparently the produce of some vast flood, or of the sea thrown into an unusual agitation. It seems ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... realized that there was a painting of a girl over the mantel and that the girl was Mary Ogden. He stepped forward eagerly, almost holding his breath. The portrait ended at the tiny waist, and the stiff satin of the cuirass-like bodice was softened with tulle which seemed to float about the sloping shoulders. The soft ashen hair, growing in a deep point on the broad full brow, was brushed softly back and coiled low on the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... out straight in front of her and arms ending with finger tips laced over her black head, Judith looked longer than she really needed to measure up or down. Also, she looked too stiff to be comfortable, but the wooden pose was Judith's favorite. She rested that way, defying every known law for relaxation. Jane, au contraire, was curled up like a kitten, with one red sweater balled under her ruffled head ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... a little breathless and self-congratulatory. "There! Wasn't that clever of me? Taxis are scarce. If I hadn't collared you that one you might have—— Come on, Tabs, if you're stiff in your lame leg, give me ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... is a little taste and dexterity, for of course you must try to avoid making your frames look stiff. Begin at the top of the frame, and make it higher and more imposing than the sides; put first a fir-cone, and then a couple of beech-nuts, and then an oak-ball, or a piece of lichen, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... two teaspoonfuls of baking powder sifted with the flour, a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt, a large heaping tablespoonful of butter, milk enough to make a stiff dough. Beat with a rolling pin or in a biscuit-beater for ten or fifteen minutes until the dough blisters. Roll out about half an inch thick or less, prick well with a fork and bake in ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... commonly of a greyish hue, and has a disagreeable odour. A weighed quantity of the cake—say 100 grains—in the state of powder should be formed into a paste with an ounce of water; if it be good, the paste will be light colored, moderately stiff, and endowed with a pleasant odour and flavor. If the paste be thin, the presence of bran, or of grass seeds, is probable. The latter are easily seen through a magnifying-glass; indeed, most of them are readily recognisable by the unassisted eye: they may, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... singular man. He looks considerably like the print you have of him. He is a moderate Quaker, but not precise and stiff like the Quakers of Philadelphia. He is a very pleasant and sociable man and withal very blunt in his address. He is a man of excellent information and is considered among the greatest literary characters ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... to eat, for the grass was good, but she'd had nothing. She pulled a little piece of dried buffalo-meat out of her bosom, which she'd brought along, all she could find at the lodge, and now nibbled at that, for she was mighty hungry. She was terribly sore and stiff too, but she mounted at once and pushed on, loping and walking him by spells. Just at daylight she could make out the Arkansas right in front of her in the dim gray of the early morning, not very far off. On ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... was accompanied on that journey to Yorkshire by the pretty dark-eyed girl who was his daughter Lola, and by his valet, a very silent, stiff-necked, morose individual, whose personality did not attract me. He seemed, however, to be an exceptionally efficient person, so far as his duties were concerned, and on our arrival at the little wayside station about twelve miles beyond Thirsk, where we had changed trains, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... and a certain irresistible healthfulness that surrounds him, as they are to his skill and his prescriptions. The lawyer who is a humourist is a man of ten thousand. How easily the worldly-wise face, puckered over a stiff brief, relaxes into the lines of laughter. He sees many an evil side of human nature, he is familiar with slanders and injustice, all kinds of human bitterness and falsity; but neither his hand nor his heart becomes "imbued with ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... and vanished quite away, and the lowing of cattle and tremulous bleating of sheep died out of hearing, so that the last leagues were a blank to me, and I only came back to my senses when it was dark and they lifted me down, so stiff with cold and drowsy that I could hardly ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... approach of danger. When a strange object comes within sight or smelling distance, these sentinels immediately give the alarm by tossing up their heads and tails and bellowing furiously. The whole herd instantly heed the warning and are soon in motion. Buffalo run with forelegs stiff, which fact, together with their ugly-looking humps and the lowness of their heads, gives a rocking swing to their gait. If a herd, when in full motion, have to cross a road on which wagons are traveling, they change their ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... in print, the other day, the statement that salesmanship is the "fourth profession." It is not; it is the first. The salesman, when he starts out to "get there," must turn more sharp corners, "duck" through more alleys and face more cold, stiff winds than any kind of worker I know. He must think quickly, yet use judgment; he must act quickly and still have on hand a rich store of patience; he must work hard, and often long. He must coax one minute and "stand pat" the next. He must persuade—persuade the man he approaches ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... treasured stores those cormarants consume, Whose bones, defrauded of a regal tomb And common turf, lie naked on the plain, Or doom'd to welter in the whelming main. Should he return, that troop so blithe and bold, With purple robes inwrought, and stiff with gold, Precipitant in fear would wing their flight, And curse their cumbrous pride's unwieldy weight. But ah, I dream!-the appointed hour is fled. And hope, too long with vain delusion fed, Deaf to the rumour of fallacious fame, Gives to the roll of death ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... said, "come here. This lady is my pal. There are times when a man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to H lne. Don't be afraid of that peacock of a doorman; push him over. He's so stiff he'll topple easy." ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... anger to righteous indignation at bad playing. Helen came up before the beginning of the second half. "What about playing this, Hester?" she asked. "You did some hard playing for a new girl. Do you think you can stand it for a second half? You'll be stiff to-morrow. I'll ask Renee to have Edna ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... last able to enter the reception-room. There Madeleine found herself before two seemingly mechanical figures, which might be wood or wax, for any sign they showed of life. These two figures were the President and his wife; they stood stiff and awkward by the door, both their faces stripped of every sign of intelligence, while the right hands of both extended themselves to the column of visitors with the mechanical action of toy dolls. Mrs. Lee for a moment began to laugh, but ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... companion left him, and returning to his friends reported that he hadn't made much out of the chap. He wasn't from New York, nor Boston, nor Chicago, and "I don't know where in thunder he is from, nor his name nuther. I forgot to ask it, he was so stiff and offish. He was in college with Tom Hardy and visited him years ago; that's all I know," the planter said, and after that the stranger was left mostly to himself, while the passengers busied themselves with gossip, and the scenery, and ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... into such a shop as this, in Florence, that Giotto went, and soon he was to become greater than his master. Even so, we cannot think him great, excepting for his time, because his pictures, compared with later art, are crude, stiff, and strange. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... hardly call to mind the nature of the struggle she had undergone. His hot breath close to her own cheek she did remember, and his glaring eyes, and even the roughness of his beard as he pressed his face against her own; but she could not say whence had come the blood, nor till her arm became stiff and motionless did she know that she had ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... There a strong breeze found him, blew his cap off and left him bareheaded in the doorway, and the smoking-room steward, understanding that he was a voyager of experience, said that the weather would be stiff in the chops off the Channel and more than half a gale in the Bay. These things fell as they were foretold, and Dick enjoyed himself to the utmost. It is allowable and even necessary at sea to lay firm hold upon tables, stanchions, and ropes in moving from place to place. On land the man who feels ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... apparent influence from Alexandria, though not independently of the Greek spirit, had already created a multitude of intermediate beings between God and the world, avowing thereby that the idea of God had become stiff and rigid. "Its original aim was simply to help the God of Judaism in his need." Among these intermediate beings should be specially mentioned the Memra of God (see also the Shechina ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... medium between crudeness and a vitiated taste: life was not insipid and colourless, as it is nowadays: men still ventured to appear what they were; there was still poetry in reality. Our German poets, in an age of rouge and powder, of hoops and wigs, of stiff manners, rigid proprieties, narrow society, and cold impulses, had indescribable trouble in struggling out of this dulness and deformity, which they had first to conquer in themselves before they could discern and approve what was better. In Shakespeare's ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... favorable for the departure of the Hoonah. Sunshine flooded the peaks, the hills, the post of Katleean. A stiff easterly breeze ruffled the bay into pale golden-green, and overhead long, white, scarf-like clouds streaked the blue. "Mares' tails" Kayak Bill called them, as he stood on the beach shifting his sombrero forward ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... sweat which broke out over her skin. Towards this hour another figure was to be seen in the park also—less active, less noisy, dragging rather than walking, leaning against the walls and railings—a poor round-shouldered being, shaky and stiff, a figure from which life seemed to have gone out, never speaking, when he was tired giving a little plaintive cry towards the servant, who was always near, who helped him to sit down, to crouch upon some step, where he would stay for hours, motionless, mute, his mouth hanging, his eyes ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... "Emperor" pricked up his ears a little uneasily passing the Ebenezer chapel in Richmond, where the congregation were singing a hymn, but beyond this no accident occurred; nor was Mr. Eglantine in the least stiff or fatigued by the time the party reached Richmond, where he arrived time enough to give his steed into the charge of an ostler, and to present his elbow to the ladies as they ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a stately room, with handsome furniture, all arranged with stiff propriety, needing the trifling signs of a woman's presence to give grace ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... good fortune of starting in life as a graduate," explained Tzu-tsing as he smiled, "and yet are not aware of the saying uttered by some one of old: that a centipede even when dead does not lie stiff. (These families) may, according to your version, not be up to the prosperity of former years, but, compared with the family of an ordinary official, their condition anyhow presents a difference. Of late the number of the inmates has, day by day, been ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... unmanageable. My guards, now, are just as stiff-necked. To tell you the truth, I have asked them already to exhibit their prowess on these Libyans, and what do you ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... was a few blocks further up the same street; a capacious house in the Western fashion of the Seventies. In front, on the lawn, there was a fountain with a leaping play of water; maples and shrubbery were everywhere; and here and there stood a stiff sentinel of Lombardy poplar. It was all cool and incongruous and comfortable; and, on the porch, sheltered from publicity by a multitude of palms and flowering plants, a white-jacketed negro appeared with a noble smile and a more important tray, whereon tinkled ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... me if I can save you from him? I don't say I can, for 'tis a pretty stiff job; but I might do so if I took a ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... tender flesh. The wild eyes that flamed into his asked for no quarter and received none. He drew her slowly down toward him, inch by inch, till she lay crushed and panting against him, but still unconquered. Though he held the stiff resistant figure motionless she still flashed ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... "It's pretty stiff, certainly, for the Head to go whisking away like this," agreed Magsie Wingfield, sitting on the other shaft of the wheelbarrow. "And without any notice either! It leaves ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... nor confirmed, and at the corner nearest Esther's house he stopped, lifted the hand from his arm and placed it in a stiff rigour at her waist. He then took off his hat, prepared to stand while she went on. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Pssst, pssst! Stiff little kitten, spitting at a dog. Pssst, pssst! Hair standing up on her humped-up back. Pssst, pssst! Sharp white teeth, sharp, sharp, claws. Pssst, pssst! Ready to jump and to bite and ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... parted for the killing grip. His whole frame was perfectly poised for the thrust from which no dog placed as Sourdough was could possibly escape. A swift shudder passed through him as though his sovereign's words reached him on a cold blast, and, stiff-legged, wondering, his shoulder hair all erect, and jaws still parted for the fray, Jan ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... he deeply felt the want of sympathy on the part of England for Prussia in her struggle to unite and regenerate the whole of Germany. "It is quite entertaining," he writes, with a touch of irony very unusual in his letters, "to see the stiff unbelief of the English in the future of Germany. Lord John is merely uninformed. Peel has somewhat staggered the mind of the excellent Prince by his unbelief; yet he has a statesmanlike good-will towards the Germanic ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... worn out. Many of them pulled off their shoes to relieve their blistered feet and marched barefooted and carried their shoes in their hands, and, like myself, stopping almost every hundred yards to rest a few minutes. We were afraid to stop long at a time. We would have become too sore and stiff ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... howdah-house there were many howdahs that were made of silver, one of gold, and one of old ivory, and equipped with cushions and canopies of rich and costly stuffs. The wardrobe of the elephants was there, too; vast velvet covers stiff and heavy with gold embroidery; and bells of silver and gold; and ropes of these metals for fastening the things on harness, so to speak; and monster hoops of massive gold for the elephant to wear on his ankles when he is out in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... trust theater, used it one winter twice a week for the presentation of Ibsen and old French comedy. A visit from the Irish poet Yeats inspired us to do our share towards freeing the stage from its slavery to expensive scene setting, and a forest of stiff conventional trees against a gilt sky still remains with us as a reminder of an attempt not ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... said I, "thank Heaven. Putting it up's done that. But I'm in for a stiff leg, dear. I know that. Not that that matters really, but it ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... bullet wounds where large masses of the tissues had been completely torn away. It was difficult to see how human beings could survive such awful injuries, and, indeed, our death-roll was a long one. Added to this, the men had been working in the wet and the mud for weeks past. Their clothes were stiff with it, and such a thing as a clean wound was not to be thought of. Simple cases at Antwerp were here tedious and dangerous, and they required all the resources of nursing and of surgery that we ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... We are making it all of pansies—they were father's favorite flowers. He always called them floral butterflies. Fancy a wreath of butterflies!" and Dot gave a weak little laugh. It was a very ghost of a laugh, but it was his first, and I hailed it joyfully. I praised the quaint stiff wreath. In its way it was picturesque. The rich hues of the pansies blended well—violet and gold; it was a pretty idea, laying heartsease on the breast that would never ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... air of being hewn in granite. There was nothing soft about her but three detachable corkscrew curls on each side of an immobile face and a heart that every one knew to be as maternal as milk. Dressed in stiff black silk, a heavy gold chain around her neck, and a huge gold brooch at her throat, and wearing fingerless black-silk mittens, she might have walked out ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... is one where the diagnosis lay between hysteria and epilepsy. The symptoms were as follows: The patient had attacks in which she became unconscious, gasped, and spittle ran from her mouth. She also bit her tongue. She becomes stiff, eyes stark, and is left tired and weak. These attacks were first noticed about five years ago. Since then she has had about five similar attacks, the last three coming within five months. The last two were within a day of each other and frightened ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first: latterly she had begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in tidy and ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to pay their respects to the millionaire who had newly returned from India. He did not particularly encourage people's visits, but he submitted himself to such festivities as his daughter declared to be necessary, and did the honours of his house with a certain haughty grandeur, which was a little stiff and formal as compared to the easy friendly grace of his high-bred visitors. People shrugged their shoulders, and hinted that there was something of the "roturier" in Mr. Dunbar; but they freely acknowledged that he was a fine handsome-looking fellow, and that his daughter was an angel, rendered ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... countenance first fixed my attention; the splendid eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, upright, dark hair, the stern brow, the inflexible mouth,—it is one of the most ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... it's late," replied Ruth, shortly. She faced about for a second and gave a stiff nod, which seemed directed at the stew-kettle rather than at the Wigginses. "Good-bye," said ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... girdles and long tunics are carved in low relief with an intricate pattern. While some of the designs are undoubtedly symbolic of the rank, achievements, or attributes of the divinities or chiefs here portrayed, there is nothing hieroglyphic. The images are stiff and show no appreciation of the beauty of the human form. Probably the ancient artists never had an opportunity to study the human body. In Andean villages, even little children do not go naked as they do among ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... most uncommon small man, with a most uncommon large Ed; and what he had inside that Ed, nobody ever knowed but himself: even supposin himself to have ever took stock of it, which it would have been a stiff job ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... used his Engine so long, it could hold together no longer; and being obliged to write to his Subjects to pick him out some new Feathers, they did so; but withall sent him such strong Feathers, and so stiff, that when he had placed 'em in their proper places, and made a very beautiful Engine, it was too heavy for him to manage: He made a great many Essays at it, and had it placed on the top of an old Idol Chappel, dedicated to an old Bramyn Saint of those Countries, called, Phantosteinaschap; ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... struggle is described elsewhere in this volume. Its event illustrates the danger of an alliance succeeding beyond the expectations in which it was formed. The constituent powers had looked for a stiff struggle with the Ottoman armies, but for final success sufficient to enable them, at the best, to divide Macedonia among themselves, at the worst, to secure its autonomy under international guarantee. Neither they nor any one else expected such an Ottoman ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... the last struggle of John; his agony was short. Rutler heard him make several convulsive shudders and that was all. His companion was dead. Then Rutler advanced and seized the sailor's leg. The leg was already cold and stiff; for the venom of ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... putting up a stiff fight, and the jimmy flashed in the air. Before it could descend, Buck Badger flung himself into the midst of them, with the impetuous leap of a mountain-lion. The man with the uplifted jimmy went down before a blow from ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... the back and the long stiff tail, instead of being warted like the true toad's upper surface, is set with thorny excrescences. That of the lower surface is a dry tough tissue, almost horny. Whether this armour is given him to defend himself from the rattlesnake, it is difficult to say. The creature itself is of a peaceable ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... he woke the chill of the winter dawn was in the room. He felt cold and stiff and hungry, and ashamed of being hungry. He rubbed his eyes and went to the window. A red sun stood over the grey rim of the fields, behind trees that looked black and brittle. He said to himself: "This is ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... enable us to paddle or drift along the deep channels of the river, and allow us to steal upon the flocks of birds feeding at the edges. Often in memory I enjoy those days again—the planning, the modelling, the fitting, the setting-up, and at last, the visit of inspection of our parents. Alas, stiff-necked in our generation, we had insisted on straight lines and a square stern. Never shall I forget the indignation aroused in me by a cousin's remark, "It looks awful like a coffin." The resemblance had not previously struck either of us, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... suply their kinde: A knaue, that moues as light as leaues by winde; That bendeth not, nor fouldeth anie deale, But stands as stiff as he were made of ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... a couple of stiff tots of "squareface" to pull myself together, and at length went to sleep, to awake before dawn with a headache. Looking out of the wagon, to my surprise I saw Scowl and the hunters, who should have been snoring, standing in a group and talking to each other ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Sibyl; "ask her to tell you a story about a man like yourself. Make him rather pwoper and stiff and shy, and let him blush sometimes. You do, you know you do. Maybe it will do you good to hear about him. Now come along ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... the movements of the regiment on the side of the mountain were discovered, and the enemy began to retire. Now orders were given to press them hard. The rattle of Bushrod Johnston's rifles on our left told of a pretty stiff fight he was having. As the long row of bristling bayonets of Kershaw's men debouched upon the plain in front of the enemy's works, nothing could be seen but one mass of blue, making way to the rear in great confusion. Our artillery was now brought ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... still, save when the ghostly wind Swept o'er the plains with melancholy moan. That night the shadowy shape of one long dead Stood face-to-face with Saul, in lonely cave, The Witch of Endor's haunt. Ah, me—the fall! To degradation deep that man hath slid Who 'gainst the Lord in stiff-necked folly strives Choosing the path of cabalistic wiles— The dark and turbid garniture of toads, And philters rank of necromantic knaves— Who spurns the hand which, by the light of Heaven, Points clear and straight ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... circulation through the shrunken arteries without the shock of the electric battery, and of putting intelligence into the dull stare of lunacy, and of restringing the auditory nerve of the deaf ear, and of striking articulation into the stiff tongue, and of making the stark-naked madman dress himself and exchange tombstone for ottoman, and of unlocking from the skeleton grip of death the daughter of Jairus to embosom her in her glad father's ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... would of a bee wandering in at a window on a summer's day, used at first to watch her with a kind of frightened curiosity. She was so old and so much a part of the place, it was difficult to think of her exactly as a living thing. Old Shep, the white-nozzled, stiff-limbed collie, waiting for his time to die, seemed almost more human than the withered, dried-up old woman. He had been a riotous, roystering puppy, mad with the joy of life, when she was already a tottering, hobbling dame; ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... "and I should think that in that reclamation work there would be lots of chance for it. It would be worth watching, too, just to see how they got at that work. I should think they would find themselves up against a pretty stiff job, engineering down in those swamps. And then there must be barrels of ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the mist upon our jackets In the bitter air congeals, And our lines wind stiff and slowly From off the frozen reels; Though the fog be dark around us, And the storm blow high and loud, We will whistle down the wild wind, And laugh ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... difficult task to drive the Turks out of these fastnesses, and while they held on to them it was almost impossible to outflank some of the places like Et Tineh, a railway station and camp of some importance on the line to Beersheba. They had already had some stiff fighting at Tel el Safi, the limestone hill which was the White Guard of the Crusaders. The Division suffered severely from want of water, particularly the 5th Mounted Brigade, and it was necessary to transfer to it ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... head there is an ornamental battlement, composed of dog-tooth pieces of cork. As the clock has a head, it ought to have a face; indeed, the face is one of the chief parts of a clock. Take a piece of stiff white paper or thin cardboard, cut it square the exact size of the head, and on it mark, in your neatest style, the proper number of figures and the two black hands: fasten the paper on a square of cork the same size, and put it in at the back of the head. Keep it in its place by ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in the house to which she is going; I owe that small service to the child of her parent.... Dear Harriet, if you will come to Switzerland this summer, nothing but some insuperable impediment shall prevent my meeting you there. If you are "old and stiff," I am fat, stuffy, puffy, and old; and you are not of such proportions as to break a mule's back, whereas if I got on one I should expect it to cast itself and me down the first convenient precipice, only to avoid ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... and change our costumes," said Mrs. Peterkin, who already found her Elizabethan ruff somewhat stiff; "but, alas! I could not get at ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... 'Nothing,' says he. 'Then what has she been up to?'"—this with a wink at Emilia—"'Nothing,' says he again, and pours out the whole story, or so much of it as he knew and guessed, and winds up with 'I release you,' and a bow very formal and stiff. 'How about Miss Nancy?' I asked; 'does she release me too?' 'I haven't asked her,' he says, and goes on that he is not in the habit of being guided by his daughters. To which I replied: 'Well, I am—by one of 'em, anyhow—or hope to be. And, if you don't mind, I'll ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... then some," Seth had declared, with a look of contempt; as though he could see no reason why they should not come in on time easily. "Why, of course we c'n do it, and then not half try. Now, you'd think I'd be feeling stiff after that crouching work in the swamp. All a mistake. Never fitter in my life. I could start on a run right now, and cover some miles ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... all in him when we acted together that foggy night, but he could express very little. Many of his defects sprang from his not having been on the stage as a child. He was stiff with self-consciousness; his eyes were dull and his face heavy. The piece we played was Garrick's boiled-down version of "The Taming of the Shrew," and he, as Petruchio, appreciated the humor and everything else far more than I did, as Katherine; yet he played badly, nearly as badly ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... I hope that we shall soon agree! For now your fancies to expel, Here, as a youth of high degree, I come in gold-lac'd scarlet vest, And stiff-silk mantle richly dress'd, A cock's gay feather for a plume, A long and pointed rapier, too; And briefly I would counsel you To don at once the same costume, And, free from trammels, speed away, That what ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... drew a waving field of corn back of the dream cottage, and tomatoes and peas to the right and left—with onions in a stiff row along the border, and potatoes storming the hillside. But the gate which led to the Lovesome Garden was open wide, so that one might see the Cupid as ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... screamers are always getting something to stop their mouths, a sop, not a gag. Steady, quiet, hard-working folks are of no account. The Belfast men ask for nothing, and get it. They want no pecuniary aid, being used to self-help, and liking it best. Stiff in opinion, they know their own minds, and are accustomed to victory. They do not in turn threaten and complain and cringe and curse and fawn. They keep a level course and run on an even keel. They are bad to beat, and can do with much letting alone. They are pious in their way, and talk like Cromwell's ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... she called out in her piping old voice. "Come in, me dear, I'm that stiff with me rheumatics to-day I can't scarce ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Dahlias ripened against a wall, Gillyflowers stood up bravely for all their short stature, And a trumpet-vine covered an arbour With the red and gold of its blossoms. Red and gold like the brass notes of trumpets. The Poet knocked off the stiff heads of the dahlias, And his cane lopped the gillyflowers at the ground. Then he severed the trumpet-blossoms from their stems. Red and gold they lay scattered, Red and gold, as on a battle field; Red and gold, prone and dying. "They were ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... incredulously. He had always been willing to accept Austen's judgment on men and affairs, but this was pretty stiff. "What ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fibers. This twist of the fibers is peculiar to cotton, being present in no other animal or vegetable fiber. On account of this twist, cotton cloths are much more elastic in character than those woven from linen, the fibers of which are stiff and straight. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... to refresh my memory. Yes," continued the venerable wreck, after a short pause,—"yes, I like my residence pretty well; I enjoy a calm conscience, and a clean shirt: what more can man desire? I have made acquaintance with a tame parrot, and I have taught it to say, whenever an English fool with a stiff neck and a loose swagger passes him—'True Briton—true Briton.' I take care of my health, and reflect upon old age. I have read Gil Blas, and the Whole Duty of Man; and, in short, what with instructing my parrot, and improving myself, I think I pass my time as creditably ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... anyone think that the penmanship is mine. Well may I handle oar, and fairly well axe and sword, as is fitting for a seaman, but the pen made of goose feather is beyond my rough grip in its littleness, though I may make shift to use a sail-needle, for it is stiff and straightforward in its ways, and ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother died. But wait awhile. You'll all get a short shrift and a long day from me. Low blackguardism! I'm going to get rid of you. Wouldn't care if I was stretched out stiff. He's dead. The man upstairs ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... their village the following day, after having sent word to the tribe that I wished to have a council with them. The Indians all met me in council, as I had desired, and I then told them that the men who had taken part in shooting the woman would have to be delivered up for punishment. They were very stiff with me at the interview, and with all that talent for circumlocution and diplomacy with which the Indian is lifted, endeavored to evade my demands and delay any conclusion. But I was very positive, would hear of no compromise whatever, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... share in the type, be sure, that for it, we shall never be sharers in the antitype itself. "Understand therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it, for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... church had an ancient and holy smell. It was very cool in there out of the sun. I turned into the nave, and wandered about for a few moments, noting the timbered roof, the remains of old frescoes on the walls; the tomb of a knight who lay still and stiff, his head resting on his hand. I read an epitaph or two, with the faint cry of love and grief echoing through the stilted phraseology of the tomb, and then I went ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... square mile or more. It clung to the ground, nowhere more than fifty or sixty feet high, and glittered with all the colors of the rainbow. It moved with a velocity of anywhere from ten to twenty miles an hour. In its path were a myriad small tragedies—nesting birds stiff and still, and rabbits and other small furry bodies contorted in queer agonized postures. But until twelve-thirty no human beings were known to ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... by the mendicant, Dousterswivel struggled and laboured among the stones and stiff clay, toiling like a horse, and internally blaspheming in German. When such an unhallowed syllable escaped his lips, Edie ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... hand sought the pavement to balance himself and aid in locomotion; the other arm, the right, was twisted out from his body in the shape of an inverted V, the palm of his hand, with half curled, contorted fingers, almost touching his chin, as his head sagged at a stiff, set angle into his right shoulder. Hair straggled from the brim of a nondescript felt hat into his eyes, and curled, dirty and unshorn, around his ears and the nape of his neck. His face was covered with a stubble of four days' growth, his body with rags—a coat; ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... make much progress towards my house; the crowd in front of the great gymnasium stopped me. Octavianus had gone into the city, and the people, I heard, had greeted him with acclamations and flung themselves on their knees before him. Our stiff-necked Alexandrians in the dust before the victor! It enraged me, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been gentle enough all day, but now a devil of unrest seemed to have entered it. The sound of trampling hoofs thudded on the hard, sun-baked earth as the bronco came down like a pile-driver, camel-backed, with legs stiff and unjointed. Skyward it flung itself again, whirled in the air, and jarred down at an angle. Wildly flapped the arms of the cattleman. The quirt, wrong end to, danced up and down clutched in his flying ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... must have it to show, if we have all the venison spoiled. Mr. Henry, tell Martin only to take the prime pieces, and not to mind the hides, for we shall not be able to carry much. And tell him to be quick, Mr. Henry, for it will not do for Mr. Alfred to remain till his arm gets stiff. We have many miles to ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... after nine o'clock that evening before I again saw young Holman, and by that time Levuka was far behind. We had taken advantage of a stiff breeze that had sprung up about sunset, and The Waif was plunging through a moon-washed ocean, sending furrows of foam from her forefoot while the wind snored through her canvas. I forgot the happenings of the day as I felt the quivering vessel that seemed to thrill with ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... were already turning away their heads, for this was to be a battle, not a game; but the vast majority of New York merely watched and waited and smiled a slow, stiff-lipped smile. All the surroundings were changed, the flaring electric lights, the vast roof, the clothes of the multitude, but the throng of white faces was the same as that pale host which looked down from the sides of the Coliseum when the lions ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... knee to him with a strange and Eastern grace, while Wulf bowed his head, and Godwin, since his neck was too stiff to stir, held up his hand in greeting. The old man looked at him, and there was pride in ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... I stood up; this low couch made my knees stiff. She took my movement as a dismissal of her, and flushed deeply. I smiled at her embarrassment, and went down on one knee to bring my face level with hers where she half ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... ground again and touched the horse's hoof, and it seemed cold to him. And he moved his hand higher and touched the leg of the horse, and it seemed quite cold. At last he touched Welleran's foot, and the armour on it seemed hard and stiff. Then as Welleran moved not and spake not, Seejar climbed up at last and touched his hand, the terrible hand of Welleran, and it was marble. Then Seejar laughed aloud, and he and Sajar-Ho sped down the empty pathway and found Rollory, and he was marble too. Then ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... light, lest the darkness come upon you.' That is the summing up of the whole history of that stiff-necked and marvellous people. For what has all the history of Israel been since that day but groping in the wilderness without any pillar of fire? But there is more than that in it. Christ gives us this one solemn warning of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... them to sleep on the floor rolled up in their rugs. These men it appeared were not accustomed to the saddle, and having ridden forty miles on the day they arrived at the parsonage, found themselves so stiff on the morrow as to be barely able to continue their journey; indeed, two of their party gave in, and never reached the ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a short time, and a stiff wind from the west-north-west began to blow, with the result that the sea became very rough, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... past evening. When, however, late in the afternoon, he awoke, and went over in his mind the events of the last few days, a dismal feeling of anxiety came over him and dispelled the comfort of his present situation. He got out of bed slowly and painfully, for he was very stiff and footsore. He knew not at what moment his guardian might return to the unpleasant topic of last night's conversation, and he resolved to end his own suspense as speedily as possible. He took a bath ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... what damps are here! how stiff an air! Kelder of mists, a second fiat's care, Front'spiece o' th' grave and darkness, a display Of ruin'd man, and the disease of day, Lean, bloodless shamble, where I can descry Fragments of men, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... to where, on the outside wall of the garage, the hose was screwed on the faucet. He tried to turn the brass handle. But it was stiff, and more than his little ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... sudden panic laid hold on the invading force, who turned their arms against each other. So when Judah came to some rising ground, on which stood a watch-tower commanding a view over the savage grimness of 'the wilderness,' it saw a field of corpses, stark and stiff and silent. Three days were spent in securing the booty, and on the fourth, Jehoshaphat and his men 'assembled themselves in the Valley of Blessing,' and thence returned a joyous multitude praising God for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I understand you too well,' was the stiff reply. 'Of course I am old-fashioned, and I suppose old-fashioned people are a little coarse; their feelings are not quite as fine as they might be. We will say no more for the present, Adela. I will do my best not to lead you into ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... right moment. All the effects, and more than all, that had been predicted by the Mantuan wizard had come to pass. The famous bridge was cleft through and through, and a thousand picked men—Parma's very "daintiest"—were blown out of existence. The Governor-General himself was lying stark and stiff upon the bridge which he said should be his triumphal monument or his tomb. His most distinguished officers were dead, and all the survivors were dumb and blind with astonishment at the unheard of, convulsion. The passage was open for the fleet, and the fleet, lay below ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... The conversation was somewhat stiff; Edred spoke a few kind words to the young stranger, and then conversed in an undertone with Dunstan, the whole dinner time; the princes themselves were awed by the presence of their uncle and his ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... refreshing breakfast, paying a dollar for it, and another for lodging, and was starting down the mountain, surprised at the exhilaration I felt, in view of my extreme exhaustion of the evening before. I naturally expected to feel stiff and sore in every joint, languid and woe-be-gone; but such was not the case. It is wonderful how soon one recovers strength among these heights. How bracing is the cool mountain air, if you breathe it deeply! As I began the descent, I whistled and sang,—that is, I tried ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... him an excellent profit, but he expected also, as we know, to drive a stiff bargain with the new railroad company, for such land as they would require ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... are made in two forms, both with beautifully executed relief (embossed)—the cheaper ones of plain stiff paper similar to drawing paper (these are to be substituted for and used as outline map blanks), the others covered with a durable waterproof surface, that can be quickly cleaned with a damp sponge, adapted to receive a succession of markings and cleansings. Oceans, lakes, and rivers, as well ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... some of its contemporaries. The Niagara Mail, January 1857, said: "The Toronto Globe comes out with a new and remarkable platform, one of the planks of which is the annexation of the frozen regions of the Hudson Bay Territory to Canada. Lord have mercy on us! Canada has already a stiff reputation for cold in the world, but it is unfeeling in the Globe to want to make it deserve the reproach." The Globe advised its contemporary not to commit itself hastily against the annexation of the North-West, "for it will assuredly ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... Ames, villain, had been transformed into a demure little maiden with rumpled hair and a high, stiff collar showing above her rain-coat, Betty took her departure. A wave of literary and dramatic enthusiasm had inundated the Chapin house. The girls were constantly suggesting theme topics to one another—which unfortunately no one but Mary Brooks could use, at least until the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... Ah, he was frightening to see, with the play of faint yellow light and diffused shadows upon him. Such heavy-arched eyebrows, such an aspect of pain and menace, the massive jaw of a savage come from the plains of Tartary to be the Scourge of God, the stiff, thick, spreading beard. This was a form akin to the gallery of old nobles at Kasan, and young Rouletabille imagined him as none other than Ivan the Terrible himself. Thus appeared as he slept the excellent Feodor ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... was broken. The stiff writing-paper of the outer cover revealed a second cover of stiff writing-paper precisely similar to the first; but on this last there was no superscription. It was tied round with fine white twine. Lionel cut it, Tynn and Mrs. Tynn waited with the utmost eagerness; even Mrs. Verner's ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the rush to the woods. It was not one in which tenderfeet deserted their jobs and took to the hills, but a stirring amongst the stiff bones of old prospectors who had given up the fight but were now infused with new courage. In Fisette they saw the man who had won out for the second time while they sat and smoked. There was a seeking out and sharpening of picks blunted by inumerable ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... state still plays a major role in basic industry, banking, transport, and communication. The largest industrial sector is textiles and clothing, which accounts for one-third of industrial employment; it faces stiff competition in international markets with the end of the global quota system. However, other sectors, notably the automotive and electonics industries, are rising in importance within Turkey's export mix. In recent ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... down, there's no doubt of it," replied Dent. "That skiff is built of stiff teak planks, with a nose as sharp and hard as an iron spike. If they once hit this light sampan they'll cut it in ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... selection Providence makes at times; we could have spared that lazy half-breed with pleasure! Joe! Oh, here you are! Where in thunder—" But here the doctor stopped abruptly. The agony in the dark face before him was too much even for the bluff doctor. Straight and stiff Joe stood by the horse's head till the doctor had mounted, then with a ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... for books began very early. At the age of four I had formed the plan of collecting a library. Not of limp, paper-covered picture-books, such as people give to babies; no! I wanted books with stiff covers, that could stand up side by side on a shelf, and maintain their own character as books. But I did not know how to make a beginning, for mine were all of the kind manufactured for infancy, and I thought they deserved no better fate ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... a feeling in which disgust and anger were blended. I wish to be understood, more particularly as I know I am writing for a stiff-necked generation. I never was guilty of the weakness of decrying a thing because I did not happen to possess it myself. I knew my own place in the social scale perfectly; nor was I, as I have just said, in the least inclined to ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... tight. The trousers fell in ample folds on the uppers of the gigantic boots. Big James had a way of sticking out his chest and throwing his head back which would have projected the tip of his beard ten inches forth from his body, had the beard been stiff; but the soft silkiness of the beard frustrated this spectacular phenomenon which would have ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... brother the attache, and his daughter," answered Consul Garman, while with a movement peculiar to himself he adjusted his smoothly shaven chin in his stiff neckcloth. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... god, which you made to yourselves." Moreover it is stated expressly (Deut. 9:6): "Know therefore that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this excellent land in possession for thy justices, for thou art a very stiff-necked people": but the real reason is given in the preceding verse: "That the Lord might accomplish His word, which He promised by oath to thy fathers Abraham, Isaac, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... dey tuck'n kyar Brer Wolf mammy ter town en sell 'er, en dey start back wid a waggin-load er vittles. De day wuz a-wanin' den de sun wuz a-settin'. De win' tuck'n blow up sorter stiff, en de sun look red when she settin'. Dey druv on, en druv on. De win' blow, en de sun shine red. Bimeby, Brer Wolf scrooch up ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the cord by which she had been guiding her horse and slipped down to the ground. Her legs were rather stiff from riding. She held on to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... abbreviations, Olive, Livy. It was difficult to abbreviate Julia; Ju I had called her in my rudest school-boy days. I wondered how high Olivia would stand beside me; for I had never seen her on her feet. Julia was not two inches shorter than myself; a tall, stiff figure, neither slender enough to be lissome, nor well-proportioned enough to be majestic. But she was very good, and her price was ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... and the sea settles.] He wat[gh] no tytter out-tulde[11] at tempest ne sessed, e se sa[gh]tled {er}-w{i}t{h}, as sone as ho mo[gh]t. 232 e{n}ne a[gh] her takel were torne, {a}t tot{er}ed on ye[gh], [Sidenote: The stiff streams drive the ship about.] Styffe stremes & stre[gh]t hem strayned a whyle, at drof hem dry[gh]lych adou{n} e depe to serue,[12] [Sidenote: At last they reach a bank.] Tyl a swetter ful swye he{m} swe[gh]ed to bonk. 236 [Sidenote: ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... the regular Dutch army will compare favourably with any of their neighbours. They are not as stiff on parade as the Germans, and they are more solid than the French. Their physique is good, although, owing to the practice of purchasing a substitute, which has too lately ceased to allow of the change to come ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... but, until he does, he is merely a convicted sinner. When God applies the rod of His Spirit, the rod of His providence, the rod of His Word, sinners will cry, and wince, and whine, and make you believe they are praying, and want to be saved, but all the while they are holding their necks as stiff as iron. They will not submit. The moment they submit, they become true penitents, and get saved. There is no mistake more common than for people to suppose they are penitents when they are not. There are some of you in this condition, I know. I am afraid ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... as savage as I thought you did,' says he. Haw-haw! I felt like sayin', 'If you don't go way I'll give you a slight tap on the wrist.' I'd like just one pass at a stiff like that up a dark alley." (Mr. Tiernan almost groaned in anguish.) "And then he begins to say he doesn't see how there can be any reasonable objection to allowin' various new companies to enter the street-car field. 'It's sufficiently clear,' he says, 'that the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... The terms were stiff, but Rockefeller, a few years later, got even with the slightly arrogant Rogers by passing him this: "I would have paid you and Pratt twice as much if you had demanded it." "Which you are perfectly safe in saying now—since ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... peculiar skin disease, accompanied with abnormal swelling; so called because the skin becomes hard and stiff like an elephant's hide; attacks the lower limbs and scrotum; is chiefly confined to India and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... country is extremely pretty, being a corn and not a maguey district. Instead of the monotonous and stiff maguey, whose head never bends to the blast, we are surrounded by fields of waving corn. There are also plenty of trees; poplar, ash, and elm; and one flourishing specimen of the latter species, which we see from the windows in front of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... word tyrant was seen, afterward, with the utmost surprise. In the midst of the general indignation, Mr. Warendorff called upon the Jew to come forward and give his evidence. This Jew was an old man, and there was something remarkable in his looks. His head was still; his neck was stiff; but his eyes moved with incessant celerity from side to side, and he seemed uneasy at not being able to see what was passing behind him: there was a certain firmness in his attitude, but his voice trembled when he attempted to speak. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... she saw it all distinctly still—more distinctly than before, she thought. The level light rose slowly from the floor; very, very slowly, stiff and straight as a stark, shrouded corpse, and stood upright between her and the window. She felt the heavy hair rising on her scalp, and an intense horror took possession of her body, and thrilled through her from head to foot ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... halls in little flocks like merry snow-birds, all in black and white, chattering and whispering together. This was no day for tedious task-work, no day for grammar or arithmetic, no day for picking out illuminated letters in red and gold on stiff parchment, or patiently chasing intricate patterns over thick cloth with the slow needle. It was a holiday. A famous visitor had come to ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... the last words struck Edith—she burst out laughing. But somehow the laugh sounded unnatural, and her lips felt stiff and strange. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... introduce into our perfect intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was useless to attempt to convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in the dark, he fairly shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; never, never yet had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such tenderness as those with which, while I rested against the bed, I held him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, in ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... and Congressmen from political motives and for political services rendered, it is impossible to expect that while in office the appointees will not regard their tenure as more or less dependent upon continued political service for their patrons, and no regulations, however stiff or rigid, will prevent this, because such regulations, in view of the method and motive for selection, are plainly inconsistent and deemed hardly ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... considerable for condescending to act as guide and servant to the Western moneyed civilian who clothes his lower limbs in straight, funnel-like cloth casings, shaped to the strict resemblance of an elephant's legs, and finishes the graceful design by enclosing the rest of his body in a stiff shirt wherein he can scarcely move, and a square-cut coat which divides him neatly in twain by a line immediately above the knee, with the effect of lessening his height by several inches. The Desert-Born surveys him gravely and in civil compassion, sometimes with a muttered prayer ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... I'll tell Miss Mauger," she smiled; and I stepped inside, and was shown into one of the front rooms with the very straight curtains. The room inside was very stiff and straight also. It occurred to me that if all the other rooms were like it Carette must have found them a very great change from Brecqhou. Perhaps it was living among these things that had such an effect upon her that she could not shake it off when she came ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... worked hard, killing the cattle, stripping off their skins and hanging the green or fresh hides over poles to dry in the sun. When dried hard and stiff as a board the skins were folded hair-side in, and were then worth about two dollars apiece. The beef-suet, or fat, from these cattle was put into large iron kettles and melted. While still hot it was dipped out with wooden ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... wretched bereavement, the nearness of death, was strong on her. He had been kind to her in his way, and the inevitable closeness of their relationship, repugnant as it had been to her, made its claims felt. An hour ago he had been standing here, the strong and virile ruler over thousands. Now he lay stiff and cold, all his power shorn from him without a second's warning. He had kissed her good-by, solicitous for her welfare, and it had been he that had been in need of care rather than she. Two big ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine |
