"Stroke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and put all your muscle into it," and Dick set a stiff stroke that his brother followed ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... Mallarmet, Felix Bony, Luneau, an ex-Captain of the Republican Guard, Camille Berru, editor of the Avenement, gay, warmhearted, and dauntless, and that young Eugene Millelot, who was destined to be condemned at Cayenne to receive 200 lashes, and to expire at the twenty-third stroke, before the very eyes of his father and brother, proscribed and ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Alton, Illinois in the lead works thirteen years ago and I had a stroke. I been cripple ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... not woman more in word than act, Then unrevenged thy brother Albanact Had given his blood to guard his realm and thine: But he that slew him found thy stroke, Locrine, Strong ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "watch him. If he tries to escape—" A swift downward stroke completed the command. "We'll settle with ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... was Surrey's sister. This lady told Sir Gawin Carew that her brother had advised her so to bear herself toward the King that possibly "his Majesty might cast some love unto her, whereby in process she should bear as great a stroke about him as Madame d'Estampes did about the French king." Madame d'Estampes was the most notorious and influential of Francis I.'s many mistresses; and if Carew's evidence is to be depended upon, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... taught to pierce the secret caves Of humid earth, and lift her ponderous waves; Bade with quick stroke the sliding piston bear The viewless columns of incumbent air;— Press'd by the incumbent air the floods below, 370 Through opening valves in foaming torrents flow, Foot after foot with lessen'd impulse move, And rising seek the vacancy ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... I would have searched for him; I would have clambered among the ruins to see if I could discover his mangled form. If I could but reach his faithful head I would stroke and caress it, living or dead. But excitement, fatigue, and want of food had made me so weak that I could do nothing but sit upon the ground with my back ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... British were embarking, and would attack on Long Island and up the North River. Washington received the information during the storm on the following evening, and immediately sent word to Heath at King's Bridge that the enemy were upon "the point of striking the long-expected stroke." The next morning, the 22d, he wrote again instructing Heath to pick out "eight hundred or a thousand, light, active men, and good marksmen," ready to move rapidly wherever they were most needed; and he promised to send him some artillery, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... proverbially called changeful, yet her caprice often takes the form of repeating again and again a similar stroke of luck in the same quarter. It appeared that Miss Keeldar—or her fortune—had by this time made a sensation in the district, and produced an impression in quarters by her unthought of. No less than three offers followed Mr. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Petawanaquat paddled his canoe to the same point and hid it and himself among the overhanging bushes of the creek. In the course of his gambols Tony approached the place. One stroke of the paddle sent the light birch-bark canoe like an arrow across the stream. The Indian sprang on shore. Tony gave him one scared look and was about to utter an appalling yell, when a red hand covered his mouth and another red hand ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... absolute, which leads ever to the same intoxication, but the same disasters. Always mad for the war between nations, for the war of classes, for universal peace. It seems as if when humanity stuck its nose out of the boiling mud of the Creation, it had a sun-stroke from which it has never recovered, and which, at intervals, subjects it ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... with The Nig." "Just for all the world like the deuce of spades! The Black Watch would better adopt the two of 'em for their colors. The Nig is a pretty bit of property; but this is the brute for me." And Paddy bent over in the saddle to stroke the neck of Piggie who snapped ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... was the notary's eloquence of physical violence. Then his brutality received an unexpected check. Imagine that a sparrow-hawk had seized a trembling pigeon, and that a royal falcon swooped, and with one lightning-like stroke of body and wing buffeted him away, and there he was on his back, gaping and glaring and grasping at nothing with his claws. So swift and irresistible, but far more terrible and majestic, Josephine ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... why you are going? Do you suppose old Madariaga has not seen your languishing looks and those of my dead fly of a daughter, clasping each others' hands in the presence of poor China who is blinded in her judgment? . . . It's not such a bad stroke, Frenchy. By it, you would be able to get possession of half of the old Spaniard's dollars, and then say that you ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... aggressive words, ironical thanks and bitter smiles. Sempronie's only revenge was to attend to his wants more thoroughly, more gently, more patiently than ever. Her devotion was destined to be subjected to one final test; the old man had a stroke of apoplexy which left him with one whole side of his body stiff and dead, lame in one leg, and asleep so far as his intelligence was concerned, although keenly conscious of his misfortune and of his dependence upon his daughter. Thereupon, all the evil that lay dormant in the depths of ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... or pity, as if one were the butcher, the other the poor ox, who only resists because he does not wish to give up his life; and in this case all would be the butchers, and none the oxen, therefore each one gives his stroke bravely to preserve ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... there, Flashed as its owner square Treated his soldiers there, Charging a bar-room, while All the "beats" wondered. Choked with tobacco smoke, Straight for the door they broke, Pushing and rushing, Reeled from the Bourbon stroke, Shattered and sundered; Thus they went back—they did— ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... land, though we have passed through amongst the Friendly Islands, with the Samoa or Navigator's Islands lying to the west. It is now a clear course to Honolulu. Not being able to go on deck in the heat of the day, at risk of sun-stroke, I wait until the sun has gone down, and then slip on deck with my rug and pillow, and enjoy a siesta under the stars. But sometimes I am disturbed by a squall, and have to take refuge ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... he watched the approach of this feathered monster, a scream sounded just behind him and the next instant the stroke of a mighty wing sent him whirling over and over ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... himself was concerned. The impression of Mary M'Loughlin's perfidy had been now so thoroughly stamped into his heart, that he neither could, nor would listen to any attempt upon the part of their mutual friends at her vindication. This last stroke of anguish was owing, also, to Phil's diabolical ingenuity. Harman on reflecting day after day, and hour by hour, upon the occurrence, and comparing it with her conduct and confusion on previous occasions, felt, as we before said, strongly inclined to believe her guilty. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... A single stroke of the shaft, however, proved more than enough. To the surprise and dismay of us all, the firm ringing surface turned out but a shell, and all beneath, a loose bed of sparkling snow-crystals, like white sand. The flag sunk down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... all but the name stand where the buffalo was wont to disport himself, and where the American eagle in human form once flapped his wings and screamed most viciously in contempt of the effete civilization of the older world. Sons and daughters of the pioneers who bolted their dinners on the stroke of twelve find seven too early for elegant convenience. Among the reddest and palest of hot-house roses, which deck their tables, glisten glass of Venetian pattern and china from the bankrupt stock of kings. According to their intellectualities ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... nature carried life back to a period which, as Sir William Logan has observed, is as remote from that during which the Cambrian rocks were deposited, as the Cambrian epoch itself is from the tertiaries. In other words, the ascertained duration of life upon the globe was nearly doubled at a stroke. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... incident as had been supplied in the enterprising stroke of business accomplished by Tony Scollop was needed to fan the sparks of resentment into a flame. The flame was already burning in the bosom of Mr. Billy O'Fake, and when he and the dwarf reached the Brotherhood's headquarters they were ready to ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... show His hate of sin that man, too, might know its hatefulness and learn to hate it with intensest hate. His love for man is to be the measure of man's hate for sin. The death of Jesus was God's master-stroke. At one stroke He told man His estimate of man and His estimate of man's sin; His love and His hate. It was the measureless measure of His hate for sin, and His love for man. It was a master-stroke too, in ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... breast stroke is useful, for it is one that is used in carrying a tired swimmer and is used to go to the bottom for lost articles and to search for a person who has sunk before help has reached him. It is possible, you know, to go to the bottom ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... this precise moment that the grandfather clock in the kitchen gave out the first stroke of five, and at the same moment Jessie entered bearing a tray, on which were the five drawing-room tea-cups which were intact, the single ditto with a piece out, two breakfast cups and ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... C. A., to get some costume samples for Mr. Corbett," she said calmly, as she began to draw on her gloves and pull down the veil that reefed in the narrow brim of the jaunty hat Miss Lindsey and she had by a great stroke of luck discovered on a side street ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the beach, some of them wading out and seizing the boat and the camel's-hair cable that held it to the anchor. These fellows got blows instead of dinars, one, who would not let go, having his hand cut off by a sword stroke. The edge of a scimitar cut the cable, the sail was set, and the lonely exile set forth upon the sea to the conquest of a kingdom. It was evening of a spring day of the year 756 that the fugitive prince landed near Malaga, in the land of Andalusia, where ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... extremely fortunate that I saw the burglars at work in the jewelry establishment of Mr. Grandin on that memorable night in Damietta. The same stroke of fortune might have fallen to any boy, but it was incomplete until I was able to bring the leader to the ground with the stone which I ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... that William McClintock, my giant uncle, had been stricken by the same mysterious malady which had broken my mother's heart, and that he was lying motionless on his bed in the narrow space of his chamber. The "stroke" (so my aunt wrote) had come upon him (as upon my mother) without the slightest warning, and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... square block of rock, that rested just above the dangerous rapids, and close to the southern shore. I knew if I could reach the shore inside that rock I was safe, so striking out vigorously, and aiming for a point far above it, I swam as strongly as I knew how, making every stroke tell, refusing to be alarmed or confused by the terrifying roar of the rapids, which now seemed but a step away. I did not have to test my method of going through the rapids. I reached the shore in safety, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... information that I had money hid. One day his Momkes took me before him. My appeals for mercy and justice were useless. I was thrown down on my face, and received 617 strokes on my soles, praying for courage to hold out. At the 618th stroke my strength of mind and body failed, and I yielded up all my money, seven hundred dollars, to preserve my life. For a whole year I drank not a drop of wine, nothing ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... modern, actually was archaic. The Chaldean savants knew of but one really existing god. To them, all others were his emanations. The deus exsuperantissimus was represented by a single stroke of the reed, a sign that in its vagueness left him formless and incommunicable, therefore unworshipable, hence without a temple, unless Bab-ili, Babylon, the Gate of God, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... other and there are no bruises resulting. Some half-dozen or a dozen boys play kag-kag-tin' charging and retreating, fighting with the bare feet. The naked foot necessitates a different kick than the one shod with a rigid leather shoe; the stroke from an unshod foot is more like a blow from the fist shot out from the shoulder. The foot lands flat and at the side of or behind the kicker, and the blow is aimed at the trunk or head — it usually lands higher than the hips. This game in a combat between individuals of the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... once rebelled against the Belly. "You," they said to the Belly, "live in luxury and sloth, and never do a stroke of work; while we not only have to do all the hard work there is to be done, but are actually your slaves and have to minister to all your wants. Now, we will do so no longer, and you can shift for yourself ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... begun a new page of life, and then to have ripped the page away—and possibly spoilt the whole book. Deference to Eve, of course! Respect for Eve! Or was it merely that he must always be able to look Eve in the face? In sending the car for his idle use, Eve had performed a master-stroke which laid him low by its kindliness, its wifeliness, its touches of perverse self-sacrifice and of vague, delicate malice. Lady Massulam hung in the vast hollow of his mind, a brilliant and intensely seductive ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... are really satisfied with that position? We think not. I dare say they are afflicted with apathy, and game-hogs. The latter can easily back up General Apathy to an extent that spells "no game laws." In one act, and at one bold stroke, Delaware can step out of her position at the rear of the procession of states, and take a place in the front rank. Will she do it? We hope so, for her present status is unworthy of any right-minded, red-blooded state this ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... most of the day in the burning sun. But although I lay down like a jaded horse, I was too feverish to sleep. To make matters worse, there was a cock in the yard just underneath my window, and the fiendish creature considered it his duty to crow every two or three minutes after the stroke of midnight. How well did I then enter into the feelings of a man I knew who, under similar provocation, got up from his bed, and, taking a carving-knife from the kitchen, quietly and deftly cut off the cock's head before the astonished bird had time ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... mouth, and hitting the bowl so sharply against the hob that it broke in pieces. 'There! But never mind! I say, not he, Roger! He's none troubled about the money. It's easy getting money from Jews if you're the eldest son, and the heir. They just ask, "How old is your father, and has he had a stroke, or a fit?" and it's settled out of hand, and then they come prowling about a place, and running down the timber and land—Don't let us speak of him; it's no good, Roger. He and I are out of tune, and it seems to me as if only God Almighty ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... word or two in the Gaelic to Sandy, who was rowing stroke; and Sandy answered with a short, quick ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... more wearily at their oars, their eyes glassy and sunken with hunger and toil, and their minds beginning to wander as the intense heat of the midsummer sun struck on their heads. One man became insane; the others frequently lay down, declaring that they could not row another stroke, and were quite willing to die. Sturt animated them, and, with enormous exertions, he succeeded in bringing the party to the settled districts, where they were safe. They had made known the greatest river of Australia and traversed ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... coach, and he felt that Phil had not appreciated his munificence. The remembrance of his encounter with her mother rankled, and as he thought of Fred's rejection of his proposal about the bonds and of Kirkwood's persistent, steady stroke in the traction matter, he was far from convinced by the lessons of the lecture. The sight of Montgomery in its best clothes, showing its delight in optimism, had only aroused his contempt. He had been annoyed by Phil's manifestations of pleasure; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the current, heading to weather Sant' Elena. Lawrence took an oar silently. He liked the rush on the forward stroke, the lingering recovery. The evening puffs were cool. They slid on past a ghostly full-rigged ship from the north, abandoned at the point of Sant' Elena, until the black mass of trees in the Giardino Pubblico loomed up. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... tie up for lunch; besides, he wanted to see how Smaltz handled his sweep. Smaltz came on, grinning, and Porcupine Jim, bare-headed, his yellow pompadour shining in the sun like corn-silk, responded instantly to every order with a stroke. They were working together perfectly, Bruce noted with relief, and the landing Smaltz made in the eddy was quite as good as the ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... of the two young gentlemen handled his weapon with a grace that marked the possession of extraordinary talent. His feint of thrusting, followed instantly by a happily delivered blow which unhelmeted the Parthian, was received with hearty applause. He was not thoroughly up in the backhanded stroke, but it was very gratifying to his numerous friends to know that, in time, practice would have overcome this defect. However, he was killed. His sisters, who were present, expressed considerable regret. His mother left the Coliseum. The other youth maintained the contest with such spirit as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up above the fins; then the man fell into a swoon, and all those who were present were filled with fear. Then the lad Kjartan sprang forward, took up a large iron sledge-hammer and struck at the seal's head; it was a heavy blow, but it only shook its head, and looked round. Then Kjartan gave it stroke after stroke, and the seal went down as though he were driving in a stake. Kjartan hammered away till the seal went down so far that he beat the floor close again above its head, and during the rest of the winter all the portents were most afraid ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... was about to strike, when, at the moment, the basket was again quickly lowered to the ground. It bore Nizza Macascree, who, rushing between them, arrested the stroke. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... great charge laid down (The force of Rome, and fate of Macedon), In his lost sons did feel the cruel stroke Of changing fortune, and thus highly spoke 20 Before Rome's people: 'We did oft implore, That if the heavens had any bad in store For your Aemilius, they would pour that ill On his own house, and let you flourish still.' You on the barren ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... dived, avoiding the blows, but the third time he was not so successful, for the reptile followed him into the deep water and dealt him a fearful stroke before he could either sink or rise. He felt the rough scales cut into his flesh and a sensation as though every bone in his body was breaking and his eyes were starting from his head. Faintly and more faintly he struggled, but in vain, for now life and ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any illusion to the "exposure" of the objects they so solidly sheltered was obviously unpleasant to him. But then it was as if he found at a stroke both his own reassurance and his daughter's. "How can there be a question of it when he ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... house. He would not allow them to learn any language, saying, with a sneer, that "for a woman one tongue was enough." The Nemesis, however, that follows selfish sacrifice of others is so sure of stroke that there needs no future world of punishment to adjust the balance. The time came when Milton would have given worlds that his daughters had learned the tongues. He was blind, and could only get at his precious book—could only ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... he had been to Mahommed. He fenced and jousted with him, instructed him in riding, trained him to sword and bow. Every day during certain hours he had his new master's life at mercy. With a thrust of sword, stroke of battle-axe, or flash of an arrow, it was in his power to rid Mahommed of an opponent concerning whom he wrote: "O my Lord, I think you are his better, yet if ever you meet him in ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... plundering as he passed, leaving Muckhart, Dollar, and, above all, Castle Campbell, the lowland hold of the detested Argyles, heaps of blackened ruins, a march which was to end in the bloody Battle of Kilsyth, that "braw day" when, as the Highlander with grim humour remarked, "at every stroke I gave with my broadsword I cut an ell o' tamn'd Covenanting breeks." When Chambers says[8] that "the Covenanting army marched close upon the track of Montrose down Glendevon, at the distance of about a day's march behind," he, of course, means down the Devon valley, and ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... had turned out to be a stroke of paralysis. People cannot act with unnatural harshness toward a child, and then discover they have been in the wrong, with impunity. Thus it proved with Mr. Justice Hare. He was recovering, but would never again ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... House to please me, because I was a fool and wanted to see him there. But I must say when his constituents turned him out last year I thought they would have been a mean-spirited set if they hadn't. They knew very well he'd never done a stroke for them. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at her—and suddenly felt the penetration of the remark. At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed. He laughed, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... skins from the wilderness, Jimmie fondled them, and passed upon their quality, as to colour and size and fur. Jim Grimm and his wife exchanged smiles. Jimmie did not know that upon the quality and number of the skins, which he delighted to stroke and pat, depended his cure. Let the winter pass! Let the ice move out from the coast! Let the steamer come for the letters! Let her go and return again! ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... and he toiled in the cellar, stuffing wood into the flaming maw of the steam-heater, till it was time to ring the bell. As he gave the last stroke, Deacon Bradley approached him. "Jehiel, I've got a little job of repairing I want you should do at my store," he said in the loud, slow speech of a man important in the community. "Come to the store to-morrow morning and see about ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... be at your peril; I have been cleared out once before just about this same spot, and I do not intend to be robbed a second time. Keep off, I tell you! If you advance another stroke ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... them take an interest in him, which was not the case theretofore. What really affected Chief more than anything else was the confidence imposed in him some days after, when Harry gave him one of the bolos. It was almost touching to see the joy he expressed. The Professor thought it would be a stroke of policy to have the present come from ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... trust like her mother's, "But only think, Annie dear, how much worse it might have been! What a great deal we have to be thankful for. Look at poor Mr. Carey sitting paralyzed, and quite childish; and do you know the sad news arrived last night that poor poor Colonel Russell is dead? He had a sun-stroke, and died within twelve hours; he has not been three months at his new post. Dear father has all his senses, and he says himself he may live for years ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... the young women came in equal abundance, that they might preserve their charms, and when twice as old as Ninon de l'Enclos, be more captivating than she; while men were not wanting who were fools enough to imagine that they might keep off the inevitable stroke of the grim foe by a few drops of the same incomparable elixir. The countess, sooth to say, looked like an incarnation of immortal loveliness, a very goddess of youth and beauty; and it is possible that the crowds of young men and old, who at all convenient seasons haunted the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the voice of the man who had said to his father, "You have a little mad dog; muzzle him!" The voice said, "Ay, ay, you have called me a fool many times. Now you shall see what I have gotten for two hundred dirty florins. Potztausend! never did YOU do such a stroke of work." ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... sky. Truly, that's not an exaggeration of the sunset-wonder of the Delaware Water Gap! The hills were a deep, almost sullen purple that evening, the purple of darkest hyacinths. They made a high wall for the valley; then, in an instant, the wall was gone, as if hewed down with a firm, straight stroke, and there was that immense open window of golden light. Why, it was worth crossing the ocean to see as we saw it then! And we had come through such winding ways of hill and valley that it felt ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... caught, And fell in trance that wist of nought, Swooning: but softly Balen sought To win from her the sword she thought To die on, dying by Launceor's side. Again her wakening wail outbroke As wildly, sword in hand, she woke And struck one swift and bitter stroke That healed her, ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... billiards. "It was sometimes a wonderful and fearsome thing to watch Mr. Clemens play billiards," relates Elizabeth Wallace. "He loved the game, and he loved to win, but he occasionally made a very bad stroke, and then the varied, picturesque, and unorthodox vocabulary, acquired in his more youthful years, was the only thing that gave him comfort. Gently, slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though they had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came this stream ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the attempt to carry off the earl's daughter had failed, the baron, seeing that his bold stroke to obtain a hostage which would have enabled him to make his own terms with the earl had been thwarted, knew that the struggle ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... bay, a wild enthusiasm seized me; I strained with all my strength upon the paddle, and the sparkling drops flew in showers behind me as the little canoe flew over the water more like a phantom than a reality—when suddenly I missed my stroke; my whole weight was thrown on one side, the water gurgled over the gunwale of the canoe, and my heart leaped to my mouth, as I looked for an instant into the dark water. It was only for a moment; in another instant the canoe righted, and I paddled ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Turks saw a chance to help his captain and made a vicious blow at his opponent with his scimiter. Reuben James, a sailor, who was so wounded in his arms that he could not use them, thrust his head forward and received the stroke upon his skull. The wound was a frightful one, but, beyond dispute, it saved the life of Decatur, who never forgot the man that had ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... of Balder Helwyse's life had vanished, leaving nakedness. Henceforth he must depend on fence, feint and guard, not on the downright sword-stroke. With Adam, the fig-leaf succeeded innocence as a garment; for Helwyse, artificial address must do duty as a fig-leaf. The day of guiltless sincerity was past; gone likewise the day of open acknowledgment of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Owens, wrapped in their saddle blankets, had picked out their beds near the fire, as the night was cold. On concluding the reading of his correspondence, Fremont turned in and was soon sound asleep. All was quiet for awhile, when Kit Carson heard a noise that awaked him; the sound was like the stroke of an axe. Rising to his feet, he discovered Indians in the camp. While in the act of reaching for his rifle, he gave the alarm, to his slumbering companions; but, two of them were already sleeping their last sleep, for the fatal tomahawk had been ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... destruction; and as they were victorious at Marseilles, the counter-revolutionists concluded their treaty with Lord Hood; and thus the most important maritime place of the kingdom, with immense magazines, and with a fleet of seventeen ships of the line and five frigates, fell, without a stroke of the sword, into the hands of the English. Lord Hood, however, had scarcely put the port in order and taken possession of the town, before General Cartaux arrived with his victorious army from Marseilles, and cantoned himself in the surrounding villages and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone; and mine hope hath he removed like a tree." "Even to-day is my complaint bitter; my stroke is heavier than my groaning. O that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!" "Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: on the left hand, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... I am making a small steam engine. The cylinder has, inside diameter, about 1 inch with 21/2 inches stroke. What would be the most suitable material and dimensions for the boiler? A. Make one 10 or 12 inches in diameter and 18 inches high, of 1/8 inch iron. You can carry ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... redoubled, stroke on stroke Achieved the bleeding model that he sought. Calmly to work he went; no ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... worked himself so high up the elm, and the mist had so thickened, that he could only just be discerned as a dark-gray spot on the light-gray sky: he would have been altogether out of notice but for the stroke of his billhook and the flight of a bough downward, and its crash ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... hurt. There were ragged tears in his flank and back, and a last stroke of Gargantua's talons had stabbed his shoulder to the bone. Blood dripped from him, and one of his eyes was closing, so that shapes and shadows were grotesquely dim in the night. Instinct and caution, and the burning pains in his body, urged him to lie ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the year 1820 that the young King Rihoriho, who had ascended the throne established by his victorious father, no longer believing in the power of his idols, and weary of the restraints of the old religion, at one stroke broke through the hitherto sacred taboo and ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... Vosges. There are tales of fresh troops that the Germans are sending to Metz, to Duesseldorf, to Neu Breisach." He struck his hand suddenly on his desk. "But this I feel—that when war comes it will be like the stroke of lightning from a clear sky! When there is much talk, there is never war. When it comes it will be because the diplomats will not have time, they and the men with money, the Rothschilds and the others, to stop it. And if there should be trouble, not a man would be left in this ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... to speak and closed it again, pursing it up precisely as once more he addressed himself to the balls, and this time brought off a really brilliant stroke. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... dreamed of the day when, through some sudden bold and savage stroke, he could deliver himself from a life of fear and live in a city, grossly, replete with the pleasures of satiation, never again to see a tree or a lonely lake or the blue peaks which, always, he had hated because they seemed to spy on ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... goes antagonizing on, and never prospers but by fits. We thrive by casualties. Our chief experiences have been casual. The most attractive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely and not by the direct stroke; men of genius, but not yet accredited; one gets the cheer of their light without paying too great a tax. Theirs is the beauty of the bird or the morning light, and not of art. In the thought of genius there is always a ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... populace of crowding beauties, 100 Plebeian as patrician, cheered us on With dazzling smiles, and wishes audible, And waving kerchiefs, and applauding hands, Even to the goal!—How many a time have I Cloven with arm still lustier, breast more daring, The wave all roughened; with a swimmer's stroke Flinging the billows back from my drenched hair, And laughing from my lip the audacious brine, Which kissed it like a wine-cup, rising o'er The waves as they arose, and prouder still 110 The loftier they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... knee where she could stroke the gleaming silk. Eric sprawled on the floor at her feet, his face ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... when a suitable space has been made in the cell through the gradual disappearance of the victuals. Others again—more hurried these—find means of obeying the common law pretty early by engaging in stercoral manufactures. By a stroke of genius, they make the unpleasant obstruction into building-bricks. We already know the art of the Lily-beetle (Crioceris merdigera. Fabre's essay on this insect has not yet been translated into English; but readers interested in the matter will find a ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... spirited young horses that he was breaking. Everybody warned him that if they ever ran away they'd be spoiled for life, and he got carefuller and carefuller of them. One day he and his father were haying beside a river, and the father, who couldn't swim a stroke, fell in. The horses were frightened by the splash and began to prance, and the son ran to their heads, beside himself with fear. The old man came to the top and screamed, 'Help! help!' and the son answered, fairly jumping up and down in his anguish ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... floated and advertised in the matrimonial field, what may not be accomplished in that time by a beautiful and vivacious girl of eighteen or nineteen? I was recalled from such speculations by finding that it was beyond me to row another stroke, and I was in a fix. A slight wind turned the boat, and she drifted on to a fallen tree a little below the surface, and, though not upsetting, stuck there, and was too much for me to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... By a double stroke of ill-luck, the complete and wholly independent Romance here translated has thus been printed by its two former editors as if it were only a part of some other story. M. Potvin describes it as the "First Part, the Romance in Prose," of his "Perceval le ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... listened and was interested. Yes, that was the land from which seafarers in a former king's time had brought home golden sand. There might be more. It couldn't be far from Cuba and Hispaniola, those golden coasts. If one were to go equipped for trading, no doubt a fine stroke of business might be done. Thus the Right Reverend Bishop Krog of Trondhjem, and ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... voraciously; whereupon she put forth her hand, and sought to pat the little creature on the head. The attempt was successful. With many slight grins, as though to say, "Take care, now, else I'll bite," the small monkey allowed Ailie to pat its head and stroke its back. Then it permitted her to take hold of its hand, and draw it towards her. In a few minutes it showed evident symptoms of a desire to be patted again, and at length it drew timidly towards the child, and took hold of her hand in both of its delicate ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... I had seen murder in a man's eyes, I saw it then in the mate's. He lunged into the room, his arm tensed to strike, the hand not open but clenched. One stroke of that bear's paw and Mulligan Jacobs and all the poisonous flame of him would have been quenched in the everlasting darkness. But he was unafraid. Like a cornered rat, like a rattlesnake on the trail, unflinching, sneering, snarling, he faced the irate giant. More than ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the clock struck nine; and as Arthur entered the large iron gate, he caught sight of some thirty or forty boys rushing across the play-ground, some tumbling over the others, to be in their seats by the time the last stroke of the clock sounded. Arthur thought the best thing he could do would be to follow them; so keeping in sight two or three boys who had loitered after the others, he walked behind them, up a long passage; ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... air rang out the sound of a tocsin—the stroke of a hammer upon a steel rim from a locomotive wheel, and which was hung aloft in the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... persons catch quite the same rhythm in the sounds of the animate and inanimate world, because no two persons have absolutely identical pulse-beats, identical powers of attention, an identical psycho-physical organism. We all perceive that there is a rhythm in a racing crew, in a perfectly timed stroke of golf, in a fisherman's fly- casting, in a violinist's bow, in a close-hauled sailboat fighting with the wind. But we appropriate and organize these objective ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... convinced me that inferior races feel pain to a less extent than civilised man. I once pulled six hairs at a time from the head of a sleeping child without disturbing it at all; I asked for more, and when twenty-three hairs were pulled out in one stroke, the child only scratched its head ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... what it was the instant he yelled 'La mort!'" said Godfrey quietly. "And he knew what it was the instant he felt the stroke. It is evident enough that he had seen it used before, or heard of it, and knew that ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... favourite proverb of Catharine of Siena has it, one dead man cannot bury another dead man; and the Middle Ages, after this tedious dying of the fifteenth century, required to be shovelled into the tomb, nay, rather, given the final stroke, by the Renaissance. This that we foolishly call—giving a quite incorrect notion of sudden and miraculous birth—the Renaissance, and limit to the time of the revival of Greek humanities, really existed, as I have repeatedly suggested wherever, during the mediaeval ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... pulpit mentions no name; but he talks of "The hand of God made visible amongst us." He tells us how, when the white stroke fell, quivering and naked, the soul fled, robbed of his earthly filament, and lay at the footstool of God; how over its head has been poured out the wrath of the Mighty One, whose existence it has denied; and, quivering and terrified, it has ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... come to think about it, isn't it? I told him you were honing to see him: and that we'd be looking for him along about eleven. And I intimated that if he didn't show up then I'd go after him with a gun. He said he'd be here on the stroke." After a moment, he added gently: "I figured they'd be here ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the light boat forward by the impulse of her last stroke, said, as if it were quite in line with all that ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Dickie, in a low whisper; "you will soon hear the tack of a hammer that was never forged of earthly iron, for the stone it was made of was shot from the moon." And in effect Tressilian did immediately hear the light stroke of a hammer, as when a farrier is at work. The singularity of such a sound, in so very lonely a place, made him involuntarily start; but looking at the boy, and discovering, by the arch malicious expression of his countenance, that the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Frank struck him a blow, so quick and strong that the first intimation of danger to the fish was the sharp spear crashing through the strong bony scales, through flesh and vertebrae, into the spinal cord, just behind the head. So instantaneous was the death of the great sturgeon under this fatal stroke that there was not even the usual spasmodic spring. Like as a log might have lain there on the water, so did the great fish. The only movement was, as is the case with most large fish thus killed, he rolled over, and at once began to float away on ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... on the bed, putting out her hand. Unconsciously she began to stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... what he said, as the mere fact that he could say it, which sent a wave of happiness through my maternal old body. So I made for him with my Australian crawl-stroke, and kissed him on both sides of his stubbly old face, and rumpled him up, and went to bed with a touch of silver about the edges of the thunder-cloud still hanging away off ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... silver wings. And Bhimasena, the son of Pandu, having penetrated that elephant division, began to wander over the field, crushing those beasts around him like Indra himself crushing the mountains. And we beheld elephants slain in that battle by Bhimasena, each with only one stroke (of his mace), like hills riven by thunder. And many elephants, huge as hills, were slain there, having their tusks broken or temples, or bones, or backs, or frontal globes. And others, O king, deprived of life, lay there with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fitted with bells round his neck, and some pieces of gold were daintily twisted into his beard. With these aids to diplomacy, and doubtless also with the help of a dram or two of spirits or of the wine of Oporto, the treaty was soon concluded, and a very shrewd stroke of business accomplished for the King of Portugal; for it gave him the sole right of exchanging gaudy rubbish from Portugal for the precious gold of Ethiopia. When the contents of the two freight-ships had been unloaded they were beached and broken up by the orders of King John, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the sad news reached Clare that his best friend and patron, Lord Radstock, had succumbed to a stroke of apoplexy. Admiral Lord Radstock died on the 20th of August, at his town residence in Portland Place, in a very sudden manner, after but a few days' illness. The loss of his noble patron would ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Newspapers are very full of events: War with the Turk going on there; Russia and Austria both doing their best against the Turk. The Russians had hardly finished their Polish-Election fighting, when they decided to have a stroke at the Turk,—Turk always an especial eye-sorrow to them, since that "Treaty of the Pruth," and Czar Peter's sad rebuff there:—Munnich marched direct out of Poland through the Ukraine, with his eye on the Crimea and furious business in that quarter. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... with the iniquitous labour-laws that, in the face of such a reduction, kept down the rate of wages in the interest of the landlords; with the frightful law of settlement that, to enforce this wrong, reduced at a stroke the free labourer again to a serfage from which he has yet fully to emerge. That terrible revolution of social sentiment had begun which was to turn law into the instrument of the basest interests of a class, which was with the Statute of Labourers and the successive labour-regulations ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... arsenals of hell; And beside him, sick and white, Sin to left and Death to right Turned a countenance of fear On the flaming mutineer. Over us the darkness bowed, And the anger in the cloud Clenched the lightning for the stroke; But ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... stragglers, these had passed and gathered themselves in the red shadow beneath the gateway towers waiting for the summons, an unusual thing occurred. For a few moments the Road was left quite empty. After that last great stroke Death seemed to be resting on his laurels. When thus unpeopled it looked a very vast place like to a huge arched causeway, bordered on either side by blackness, but itself gleaming with a curious phosphorescence such ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... expectation or apprehension of it saw this apparition coming down upon him, had no other way of saving himself from the stroke of the lance but to let himself fall off his ass; and no sooner had he touched the ground than he sprang up more nimbly than a deer and sped away across the plain faster than ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... pavement. Then commending his cause and the cause of the Church "to God, to St. Denys, the martyr of France, to St. Alfege, and to the saints of the Church," he fell under the blows of the knights' swords. The last stroke was from the hand of le Bret, it severed the crown of the archbishop's head, and the murderer's sword was shivered into two pieces. Then the assassins left the church, ransacked the palace, and plundered its treasures, and, lastly, rode off on horses from the stables, in which Becket had to the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... and, as many of his fellow shareholders were defaulters, it cost 15,000 pounds before all was over, and if it had not been that he left the farm in the capable hands of Aunt Margaret, there would have been little or nothing left for the family. When he had a stroke of paralysis he wanted to turn over Thornton Loch, the only farm he then had, to his eldest son, but there were three daughters, and one of them said she would like to carry it on, and she did so. She was the most successful farmer in the country ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... dear old lady made herself ill by nursing us two children day and night when we had the smallpox. She had a stroke, and died before my father could be fetched from London; but I knew nothing of all that; I only grieved, and wondered that she did not come to me, till at last the maid who was nursing me told me flatly that the old lady was dead. I think that ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blow.—Davidson," said he to the gentleman who brought the intelligence, "thou shalt be my guide.—Hie thee on, Glendinning—Say to Foster, I conjure him, as he respects his mistress's service, that he will leave the matter in my hands. Say to the Abbot, I will burn the Monastery over his head, if he strikes a stroke till I come—Tell the dog, Julian Avenel, that he hath already one deep score to settle with me—I will set his head on the top of the highest pinnacle of Saint Mary's, if he presume to open another. Make haste, and spare not the spur for fear of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... were dark days for Gladys. Her father, whom she loved—and, until now, had never realized how much she loved—lay seriously ill. He had had a stroke which, although fortunately slight, must, as the doctor said, be regarded as a prelude to what would happen, unless he was kept very quiet. And to keep him quiet was not an easy thing to do. His mind continually reverted to ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... bayonet, which, he presenting, the colonel struck aside, and seized him. He was immediately secured, and ordered to be silent, on pain of instant death. Meanwhile, the rest of the men surrounding the house, the negro, with his head, at the second stroke, forced a passage into it, and then into the landlord's apartment. The landlord at first refused to give the necessary intelligence; but, on the prospect of present death, he pointed to the General's chamber, which being instantly opened by the negro's ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Dickis. To hugge thee, stroke thee, and embrace thee thus, And teach thee twentie thousand prety things, So thou tell no tales; and boy this night Thou must along with me to a ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts |
