"Braced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... started, doing his best to work sideways from the plunge. Hazard, every sense on the alert, almost exulting in his perfect coolness, took in the slack with deft rapidity. Then, as the rope began to tighten, he braced himself. The shock drew him half out of the crevice; but he held firm and served as the center of the circle, while Gus, with the rope as a radius, described the circumference and ended up on the extreme southern edge ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... leaned forward in their interest to watch the progress of the trial, all saving Joe Pollard, who sat with his elbows braced in sprawling fashion on the table, at ease, his eyes twinkling contentedly at the girl. Why she refused to examine the dice at once was plain to Terry. If they proved to have been gummed, it would mean a gun fight with the men at a battling temperature. ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... so courageously braced herself for the contest, experienced an overwhelming revulsion of feeling, and a great wave of gratitude and compunction swept over her. To Uncle Seth's speechless astonishment she flung her arms around his big neck, and, with some thing very like a ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... column produces a combination of bending with compressive stress over the section, the compressive stress being maximum at the section of greatest deflection on the concave side. The convex surface is under tension, as in an ordinary beam test. (See Fig. 6.) If the same stick is braced in such a way that flexure is prevented, its supporting strength is increased enormously, since the compressive stress acts uniformly over the section, and failure is by crushing or splitting, as in small blocks. In all columns free to bend in any ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... footing he braced himself against the mad rush of waters and forged ahead. But out where the current ran swimming deep he floundered desperately under his double burden. While his strength lasted he kept his head above water, struggling gamely ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... to find himself in the stable unperceived. What a lot of horses were there with nobody to look after them! He saw one that suited him, a handsome beast he had seen in Collingwood, the travelling powers of which he knew. To that stall he went, and braced himself against the partition for a spring, after he had loosed the halter, and slipped on a bit and bridle. He backed his steed out, turned in the passage way and made for the door. Another moment and he would be free. No horse in the stable, even if ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... abutments, 3 ft. wide, 3 ft. apart, and about 1 ft. high, were built and filled solidly with sand. Wooden walls, 3 ft. apart and 4 ft. high, were then built crossing the abutments, and solidly cleated and braced frames were placed across their ends about 2 ft. back of each abutment. A false bottom, made to slide freely up and down between the abutments, and projecting slightly beyond the walls on each side, was then blocked up snugly to the bottom edges of the sides, thus obtaining a box 3 ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... I braced my soul for battle. All civilisation was behind me, but I doubt if it kept the colour in my face. I buttoned my jacket and clenched my fists and advanced on my antagonist—he had, I suppose, the advantage of two years of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... a great battle the next day. The two armies had been long manoeuvring for position, and now they stood like wrestlers who have selected their holds and, with body braced against body, knee against knee, wait for the signal to begin the struggle. There had been during the afternoon some brisk fighting, but a common desire to postpone the decisive contest till the morrow had prevented the main forces from becoming involved. Philip's regiment had thus ...
— An Echo Of Antietam - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... to the latter apartment the proceedings followed the order observed at the previous seance. Mrs. Legrand rose from her chair and walked feebly through the back parlour into the cabinet. Dr. Hull then locked and braced a chair against the door opening into the hall, giving the key to Paul. Then, having arranged the three chairs as before, across the double door between the parlours, he seated Miss Ludington and Paul, and, having turned the gas down, took the ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... in the day when Moses sent me. As my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out and to come in.' For fighting, and for all the intercourse and manifold activities of life, his sinews are as braced, his eyes as clear, his spirit and limbs as alert as they were in those old days. No doubt you will say that was due to miraculous intervention. No doubt it was; but is it not true that, in a very real sense, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... gently, and, seeing a small stick of wood on the floor, stuck this under the barrier and shoved it as tight as possible. Then he took up the bench and braced this under the handle of the door, so that to shove the door inwards ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... wait for the open window, but as one recalled to the active duties of life from liquefaction in a Turkish bath, takes a cold plunge as far as the front gate without so much as a hat on—to see if the post is coming, which is absurd—and comes back braced. But though she only wonders what can have put such an idea as her mother marrying Mr. Fenwick in the Major's dear silly old head, she keeps on a steady current of speculation about who that Rosalind ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... But to a man of my nature that is the ghastly part of the matter. If it would hate me, I could bear it. If it would attack me, if it would try to do me some dreadful harm, I should become a man again. I should be braced to fight against it. But this gentleness, this abominable solicitude, this brainless worship of an idiot, persistent, sickly, horribly physical, I cannot endure. What does it want of me? What would it demand of me? It nestles to me. It leans against ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... dangling therefrom, very happily in keeping with a common fustian coat. His legs, which, being long, were afflicted with weakness, graced a pair of Oxford-mixture trousers, made to show the full symmetry of those limbs. Being somewhat negligently braced, however, and, moreover, but imperfectly buttoned, they fell in a series of not the most graceful folds over a pair of shoes sufficiently down at heel to display a pair of very soiled white stockings. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... face was almost against mine, but his arms were pinioned to his sides, powerless, and then I was aware that we both were encircled by the ape-like arms of the mate, Mr. Trunnell. How the little fellow held on was a marvel. He braced his short legs wide apart, and giving a hug that almost took the breath out of me, bawled lustily for some man to ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... got to take it, hain't he?" she demanded fiercely. "He's GOT TO! An' things you've got to do, you do. That's all. You'll see. Keith Burton ain't no quitter. He'll take it with his head up an' his shoulders braced. I know. You'll see. Don't I remember the look on his blessed face that day he went away, an' stood on them steps there, ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... as if he braced himself for further blows. But he laid aside the violin, and with a supreme effort of will got himself in hand. That early training in self-control worked a miracle now. Here was no longer the wild, white-lipped ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... and the thunder's crack. The Indians glared at us. We stared at the Indians, each measuring the other. Not a sound broke the stillness of that desolate spot, save the noisy panting of the horses as they stood, still braced from the ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... gazed at him, startled, fascinated. Could "it" be coming so suddenly, in this casual, abrupt manner? "No, I don't know," she managed to say; and braced herself. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... was made in silence. Loder went first, his shoulders braced, his head held erect; Eve, mechanically watchful of all his movements, followed a step or two behind. With weary monotony one flight of stairs succeeded another; each, to her unaccustomed eyes, seeming more colorless, more solitary, more ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... lack of food; but he mentally braced himself to perform the task, and Gus cried as he struck him a blow ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal, or on the fact that Bill Carter's air-gun cost more than mine, I cannot now recall. Either cause would have been sufficient. At any rate I apparently braced up and smiled once more, for the next page is blank. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... many barometers, and our animal spirits like their quicksilver; so "servile" are we to all the "skyey influences." Take, for example, the same man at three different periods of the year: on a fine morning in January, his nerves are braced to their best pitch, and, in his own words, he is fit for any thing; see him panting for cooling streams in a burning July day, when though an Englishman, he is "too hot to eat;" see him on a wet, muggy ninth of November, when the finery of the city coach and the new liveries appear ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... As these two forms are the chief ones, as yet, of heavier than-air machines, it would be well to understand them. The monoplane has single large surfaces like the wings of a bird, the biplane has two large surfaces braced together one over the other. At the present writing a triplane has been introduced into the domain of American aviation by an English aeronaut. Doubtless as the science progresses many other variations will appear in the field. Most machines, though fashioned on similar lines, possess ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... He was in shirt and trousers only, and he sat up with braced arms. For one half second he stared at them, his face a mask of horrible contorted terror. His upper lip was drawn back so that the gums of the teeth appeared, and his eyes were focused not on the two who approached him but on something ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... straps, and a crooked sword with a silver scabbard, covered with gold trimmings. I felt quite small with those big officers, but I tried to look brave, and as though I was accustomed to attending councils of war. The colonel smiled at me as I came in which braced me ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... I braced me wi' pride, The broose I hae won, and a kiss o' the bride; And loud was the laughter good fellows among, As I uttered my banter or chorused my song; Dowie and dree are jestin and glee, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... corral fence to await the time when he had strangled and tired himself to a standstill. Several times he threw himself heavily by tripping on the rope or by tightening it suddenly. And at last he gave it up, standing with legs braced, with heaving flanks and ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... with her brilliant eyes he tightened his shoulders and stood firm, while his spirit braced itself against persuasion. If it ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... made a mistake! It was Dorothy, and not Gilbertine, whom he had seen leaving the room. I braced myself ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag in dream, and I felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I arched my neck and braced ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... I did not wish to be braced. Bingley suited my mood. It was gray and dark, and it rained all the time, and the sea slunk about in the ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... stick, tottered weakly and fell,—strove to rise, was smitten down again, and, in that moment, Barnabas was astride him; felt the shock of stinging blows, and laughing fierce and short, leapt in under the blows, every nerve and muscle braced and quivering; saw a scowling face,—smote it away; caught a bony wrist, wrenched the bludgeon from the griping fingers, struck and parried and struck again with untiring arm, felt the press thin out before him as his assailants gave back, and so, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... and waited her husband's pleasure to speak. He ordinarily rose from the Sunday dinner and went back to his office; to-day he had taken a chair before the stove. But he had mechanically put his hat on, and he wore it pushed off his forehead as he tilted his chair back on its hind legs, and braced himself against the hearth of the stove ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Coffin braced his muscles. The rules wouldn't apply if a large meteor struck, he reminded himself. What has come up is more dangerous than that. So never mind ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... city between New York and Chicago. Business made it. Business runs it. Business is going to keep on running it. Anybody who works on a different principle, I don't care whether it's in politics or journalism or the pulpit, is going to get hurt. I don't deny you've braced up the 'Clarion.' People are beginning to talk about it already. But the best men, the moneyed men, are holding off. They aren't sure of you yet. Sometimes I'm not sure myself. Every now and then the paper takes a stand I don't like. It goes too far. You've put ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... themselves on the point of being abandoned by their allies to a fate the most ghastly and appalling; and they urged upon the commandant the necessity of escaping to Michilimackinac before it was too late. Dubuisson appears to have met the crisis with equal resolution and address. He braced the shaken nerves of his white followers by appeals to their sense of shame, threats of the governor's wrath, and assurances that all would yet be well; then set himself to the more difficult task of holding the Indian allies to their ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... she gritted, and got off and went to the cabin door, walking straight-backed and every mental and physical fiber of her braced for the coming struggle. She even regretted not having a gun; rather, she wished that she was not more afraid of a gun than of any possible need of one. She felt, at that minute, as though she could shoot Bud Moore with ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... woman—wait a minute, and I will read you a little. We have got them running. St. Augustine in his 22d book says: "A woman ought to serve her husband as unto God, affirming that woman ought to be braced and bridled betimes, if she aspire to any dominion, alleging that dangerous and perilous it is to suffer her to precede, although it be in temporal and corporeal things. How can woman be in the image of God, seeing she is subject to man, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... ripeness for the killing thrust—the throat-hold. But Jan had learned his lesson. At the psychological fraction of a moment he changed his position, and, instead of passing on comfortably through space after his attack, Sourdough's shoulder met another bigger shoulder, braced like a granite buttress to receive the impact, and the husky reached earth on his side. That rather shook the wind out of him; but that was nothing by comparison with the fact that, in the same moment, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... the bare rock was a good shelter in summer. But she also knew that it would soon be too cold to live in such an open space. So she cut long poles and braced them under the roof so as to make a framework for front and side walls. Then she covered the framework with plaited branches, and left a narrow doorway which she closed ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... to pieces and put together again, strengthened, soldered, tinkered, mended, and braced every accordion, guitar, melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the neighboring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this way, but very little, as people in general regarded this "tinkering" as a pleasing diversion in which they ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... As Johnny went round one side of the house the Captain left the meagre shelter of the butt and went round the other, bent now on finding some better hiding-place till it should be safe for him to go to his precious store. And seeing that he was braced by an insatiable whisky thirst and so possessed by one idea that he had almost a madman's cunning in achieving his purpose, it is not wonderful that he succeeded. While Johnny hastily searched the out-buildings he lay hid. And when at last Mr. Gillat went back to the house, being convinced ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... the best place to dump his hodful, he went to work. He opened his beak and, in the most matter-of-fact way, pushed out his lump of plaster with his tongue, on top of the nest wall. Then he braced his body firmly in the nest and began to use his trowel, which was his upper beak, pushing the fresh lump all smooth on the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... was a walking edition of Stepping-Stones to Success, Millionaires who Have Never Smoked, and Young Man, Get up Early. Galahad, Parsifal, and Marcus Aurelius, as I say, might have remained tranquil in his presence, but Robert Ferguson found the contract too large. After one month he had braced himself up ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Shaw, and others like-minded, entered heartily into the work of charity, and eventually some ten thousand pounds were distributed among those who had suffered. To many this was as life from the dead. Some who would never have recovered the blow took heart again, braced their energies anew, and ere long the wattle-and-dab cottages were rebuilt, the gardens replanted, and the lands ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... Davison stood up too and the three members of the Capella unit were suddenly and horribly aware of the presence of Connel. They immediately braced themselves, their faces white with ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... felt the place going round him, yet he steadied and braced himself. "But this is the natural atmosphere of such people," he thought. He tried to find satisfaction in the thought that Glory was not with them. Perhaps they had exaggerated ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... breaking away of the social barrier of whose existence she, at least, must have been convinced. The mere whispering together in this lonely part of the ship might account for it, to some extent, so he braced himself for the effort to restore ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... assented with a motion of the hand, and she left him where he was. He braced himself for the interview. Assuredly a man loses something of natural courage and self-confidence when he has done a thing of which he should ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Injun's turn to shoot first, and he pulled back his bowstring and braced himself to let go. Right here it may be said that at thirty yards an arrow propelled by an Indian-made bow is just as deadly as a bullet, if it hits its mark. But Injun shot a little high and caught ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... glass and yet fully as tough as steel, had been used for her hull, making her a perfect vehicle for undersea exploration. Her bow was capped with steel, and her stern, propellers, diving rudders; her port-locks, for the releasing of torpoons, were also of steel, as were the struts that braced her throughout—but the rest was quarsteel, glowing and golden ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... but arose out of circumstances which we could not avert nor control. Finding too late the error into which we had fallen, in suffering ourselves to be cajoled and plundered out of our property by interested speculators, we braced our minds to bear the worst, and determined to meet our difficulties calmly and firmly, nor suffer our spirits to sink under calamities which energy and industry might eventually repair. Having once come to this resolution, we cheerfully shared together the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... With arms braced at his sides and head bent forward, he set out at a jog-trot, which was better suited for getting through the deep snow than an ordinary walk. Fortunately he was in the very pink of condition. The steady, hard work of the preceding months, combined with the ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... cushion, who was followed by Mr. Buck in a great hurry. When the King saw his strong animal face and steady eyes, he knew that he was in the presence of a great man of business, and consciously braced himself. ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of Plato is a Being proportioned to human sympathies; the Father of the World, as well as its Creator; the author of good only, not of evil. "Envy," he says, "is far removed from celestial beings, and man, if willing, and braced for the effort, is permitted to aspire to a communion with the solemn troops and sweet societies of Heaven. God is the Idea or Essence of Goodness, the Good itself [τό άγαθόν]: in goodness, He created the World, and gave ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Seymour, and as an instructor and guide of youth I felt that I ought to be thoroughly ashamed of myself for flocking with the dissipated crowd I had just left. Acting upon this elevating thought, I braced up considerably, assumed an air of virtue, and not knowing exactly what to do next, joined a throng of people who were jostling one another in their efforts to get on a steamboat. A sail, I fancied, would do me no end of good, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... away to a dance, Vernon betook himself to his club and Mr. Halstead, forgetting his expressed intention of a talk with her, shut himself in his study. When she found herself alone with her hostess, Willa mentally braced her nerves for a cross-examination, but the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... He braced himself, as had been his custom when a battle was in prospect, and went down to the beautiful villa which would be Laura's home but ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... way—the Queen must send for the Duke of Wellington. When, next morning, the Duke came, he advised her Majesty to send for Sir Robert Peel. She was in "a state of dreadful grief," but she swallowed down her tears, and braced herself, with royal resolution, for the odious, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... the mast-head, and then ran on deck. As he surmised, he was immediately ordered aloft. He had not been there more than five minutes, when a sudden squall carried away the main-top-gallant mast, and away he went flying over to leeward (for the wind had shifted, and the yards were now braced up). Had he gone overboard, as he could not swim, he would, in all probability, have been drowned; but the book in his pocket brought him up in the jaws of the fore-brace block, where he hung until taken out by the main-topmen. Now it so happened that ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... credit of Drumtochty rested on a broad basis, and no one could live with us without having his speech braced for life. You felt equal to any emergency, and were always able to express your mind with some degree of accuracy, which is one of the luxuries of life. There is, for instance, a type of idler who exasperates one to the point of assault, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... something in the crisp Sark air that, by degrees and all unconsciously, braced both mind and body;—something broadening and uplifting in the wide free outlook from every headland; something restorative of the grip of life in the rush and roar of the mighty waves and the silent endurance of the rocks; something ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... Basilio, your son!" cried the child, falling from fatigue. But Sisa would not budge. Her feet braced against the ground, she offered an energetic resistance. Basilio examined the wall, but could not scale it. Then he made the tour of the grave. He saw a branch of the great tree, crossed by a branch of another. He began to climb, and his filial love did miracles. He went from ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the ragged stone in his hand and braced himself for the explosion that he was sure was ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... Blithe as the squirrel of the forest flew; Blue rushes wreathed her head; her dark-brown hair Fell, gently lifted, on her bosom bare; 90 Her necklace shone, of sparkling insects made, That flit, like specks of fire, from sun to shade. Light was her form; a clasp of silver braced The azure-dyed ichella[198] round her waist; Her ancles rung with shells, as unconfined She danced, and sung wild carols to the wind. With snow-white teeth, and laughter in her eye, So beautiful in youth she bounded ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... he could indistinctly observe the growing cube of light, with a dark shape lying huddled in one corner of the floor. A second figure, rapidly taking shape as Anisty's, stood by the controller, braced against the side of the car, one hand on the lever, the other poising a shining thing, the flesh-colored oval of his face turned upwards in a supposititious attempt to discern the location ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the rudder. He sat back in the stern on a crossbeam flush with the gunwale, his feet braced against the ribs on either side and in his hands the rudder lines, one on each side, close to ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... to guess his extraction," said one of our dinner-party. "In the East there are sorcerers with two pupils in each eye. For his part, he seems to be braced with two pans in each knee. He is long in the stilts like a heron, square—headed and square-shouldered: I give you my word he is a Scotchman. For certain," he added, "I have seen his likeness somewhere—Ah yes, in an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... contemporaries. But when the perpetual stimulus was removed, I soon fell back to the less strenuous methods of my own country. I had time, once more, for the calm reflection that is so unlike the urgent, forced, inventive thought of the American journalist. I was braced by that thirty months' experience, perhaps hardened a little, but by September my American life was fading into the background; I had begun to take an interest ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... garments, and with a long crape veil put back from her face, the prisoner was escorted to her accustomed place; and braced by a supreme effort for the critical hour, which she felt assured was at hand, her pale set features gleamed like those of a marble ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.—One must he an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, 'He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies.'—When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Elijah's life had been no failure, after all. Seven thousand at least in Israel had been braced and encouraged by his example, and silently blessed him, perhaps, for the courage which they felt. In God's world, for those who are in earnest there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... pretty soon after I had braced the old man to send me out, a merchant in Iowa wrote in that he wanted to buy a bill of clothing. They looked him up in Dun's and found that he was in the grocery business. My father didn't wish to go out—the town was in his territory. I overheard the old man in the office say to him: 'Let's ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... man who heard the honk of a motor-car in the street outside. Instinctively he braced himself, and none too soon. There was a light knock, then in the doorway stood the dearest girl in the world, a large basket and a ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... ordered her foresails brailed in to the mast to windward and her foreyards braced flat, this that she might sail closer to ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... He took courage. He braced himself. The seriousness which he had felt on the day of leaving school revisited him. He looked back across the seven years of his life in the world, and condemned them unsparingly. He blamed no one but Edwin. He had forgiven ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... song began each man had quietly braced himself for one grand effort. At the sound of the last word ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... to one of the tent-poles, and placed her with her back to it. Then he set one of his own hands against it over her head, braced himself and stood, keeping a little space about her, ruggedly letting the crowd surge against him as it would; no one should touch her ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... forward and tested it with his weight and it held. Then, without another word, he braced his feet against the wall and in almost less time than it takes to write it, he was ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... to fling it into the bottom of the boat, Olive wished that her uncle kept a toll-gate on the sea. Then she could go out with him and stop the little boats and the great steamers, and make them drop seven cents or thirteen cents into her hands as she stood braced in the stern; and she was just beginning to wonder how she could toss up the change to them if they dropped her a quarter, when the captain began to sing Tom Bowline. He was just ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... Then he braced himself for the violent assault that, he felt, was sure to come. To his intense astonishment, however, Tag heaved a ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... with him, the evening before his departure, in the avenue from which the snow had been swept, leaving a smooth, wintry surface below. I was wrapped in furs, and the cold, frosty air braced me like ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the best thing for her, after all. For a sort of dogged determination to go through with it all, at any cost, braced her to ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ever see clearer footprints?" exclaimed the more practical-minded Galloway. "Look how deep they are near the edge of the pit, where the murderer braced himself to throw the body off his back into the hole. See! there is a spot of blood ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... King, that the youth pursued to Taj al-Muluk:—"And when the two days were past she said to me, "Be of good cheer and clear thine eyes of tears and take courage to dress thyself and go to her, according to thy tryst." Then she rose and changed my clothes and perfumed me with incense smoke. So I braced myself up and heartened my heart and went out and walked on till I came to the by-street, where I sat down on the bench awhile. And behold, the wicket suddenly opened and I looked up and seeing her, fell down in a swoon. When I revived, I called up resolution and took courage and gazed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... well as a physical one. He felt a cold exclusion round about him, as if the good people did not quite know what to do with him. He belonged to the summer. For him and others of his world they had braced for action and thawed out to the extent of making him feel he was not intruding, while occupying his own house. But they resented his prolonged stay and necessary infringement upon their well-earned liberty. Not that Devant imposed his presence upon them—he ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... She had braced her nerves to act the part of her sister at the dangerous moment, and her excitement made every instant of waiting seem ten times its length. Inez did not answer the question at once. Dolores ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... imagination. She always said that the one feature in his proposal which overcame her hesitation was the obvious purity and straightforwardness of his intentions. He showed himself to be so virtuous and kind; he treated her with a respect to which she had never before been accustomed; and she was braced to the obvious risks of the voyage by ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... haggard and unfit. One foot dragged, and he acted like a person in acute pain. At the encouraging word, however, he braced up, made a prodigious spurt, but at the end of fifty ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... exquisitely, that words which one knew by heart seemed suddenly filled with new meaning. When the time came for the sermon I expected great things. It seemed to me that the man who could so wonderfully interpret the words of others, must be endued with the gift of eloquence for himself. I even braced myself for a mental effort, in case his argument should soar above my head. And then—a child could have followed him! It was absolutely the simplest, plainest, and most intimate address which I had ever heard from a church ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... were heard, her mind flew to the forbidding St. Michael on his gold background in her den and she could fairly hear Harwood saying to all of us, "Three to one on the Saint, who takes me?" The jangling of the bell recalled her to Crocker, and she braced herself in the full sunlight to receive him. For a moment, as he loomed in the archway, she indulged that especial pride which we reserve for that which we might possess but austerely ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... the Indian started up the dogs again, an' we went on, though the road ahead looked like the ice-forest of a disordered dream. Presently, without a moment's warnin' one of the huge snow pillars came rushin' straight at us, an' I braced myself by the sledge to hold to it if I could, but it swerved before it reached us an' ran along beside the trail. About fifty feet ahead it swerved again and cut across the trail, an' the extreme edge caught the ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... two farmers to pull us down, no easy task in the rather high wind then blowing. They grasped the rope and braced themselves as had others the night before, and presently were flying through the air in prodigious if ungraceful somersaults. Amazed but unhurt, they again seized the rope and got a turn about a stout board fence, only to see a section ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... leaping and dropping broadside among the combers. The lantern now shone as clearly as a beacon. A sea broke over the sloop, but she staggered up bravely, and with a plunge was swept nearer and nearer the jagged point of rocks awash with spume. Braced against the tiller was a man in drenched tarpaulins; two other men were holding on to the shrouds like grim death. On the narrow deck between them I made out a bale-like bundle wrapped in tarpaulin and heavily roped, ready to ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... metal latch-parts had frozen together, molecule bonding itself to molecule, since the door had last been closed. Hubert Penrose came over with the jack-hammer, fitting a spear-point chisel into place. He set the chisel in the joint between the doors, braced the hammer against his hip, and squeezed the trigger-switch. The hammer banged briefly like the weapon it resembled, and the doors popped a few inches apart, then stuck. Enough dust had worked into the recesses into which ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... are rarely computed. Experience has shown that the maximum spans of various thicknesses of lagging between supports are: 1-in. boards, 24 ins.; 1-in. plank, 4 ft., and 2-in. plank, 5 ft. Studding will vary in size from 24 to 46 ins., strutted and braced horizontally to meet conditions. Column forms, like wall forms, are rarely computed, yokes being spaced 2 ft. apart for 1-in. lagging up to 3 to 3 ft. apart for ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... earth upon his robe of white, Stood side by side with Hobbes and Locke, And, braced by many an acolyte, With Edwards standing on his rock, And all New England's men ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... it better done, and I set my teeth, waiting for the grinding crash that was to send the English ship to the bottom, but lo! her creaking yards were braced round, and, paying off before the wind (which now blew strongly) she stood away upon a course at right angles to her old, whereby both vessels were running parallel as before. Yet it had been close, so very close indeed that as we drove past her I heard the sickening crack of our oars as ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... heavy rifles, which the Indians usually make choice of for killing the buffalo, elk, and other animals whose wildness renders them difficult of approach. He then, unbidden, and as if tutored to the task, placed himself in a stiff upright position in front of his master, with every nerve and muscle braced to the most inflexible steadiness. The young officer next threw the rifle on the right shoulder of the boy for a rest, and prepared to take his aim on the object that ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... face to face and from the lists are gone; Here stand the champions of my Cid, there those of Carrion; Each with his gaze intent and fixed upon his chosen foe, Their bucklers braced before their breasts, their lances pointing low, Their heads bent down, as each man leans above his saddle-bow. Then with one impulse every spur is in the charger's side, And earth itself is felt to shake beneath their ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... earthquakes and storms, we must be built on the rock, and build rock-like upon it. Build thy strength upon God. Let His Holy Spirit be the foundation of thy life, and then thy tremulous and vagrant soul will be braced and fixed. The building will become like the foundation, and will grow into 'a tower of strength that stands four-square to every wind.' Rooted in God, thou shalt be unmoved by 'the loud winds when they call'; or if ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... He braced his courage when he rang the bell, but John, who let him in, did not seem to find anything remarkable in his choice of a companion. Pete looked very big and rather truculent in his rough, wet clothes, but ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... there blew up such a storm as I never see before an' hope never to see again. It was fearful, fearful. I couldn't describe it to you if I tried. We just lay in our berths, every one of us, our backs agin the wall, our knees braced agin the board in front, an' we holdin' on for dear life expectin' every moment to be dashed out on to the floor an' have all our bones broken. We was too frightened to say a word, but we prayed, oh, my! how we did pray, every mother's son of ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... time Archie was in the condition of a hunted beast. He had come, braced and resolute; he was to trace out a line of conduct for the pair of them in a few cold, convincing sentences; he had now been there some time, and he was still staggering round the outworks and undergoing what he felt to be a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson |
