"Bracing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "it was a good thing I said that to him. David is clever and good and dear and all that, but the trouble is he lacks ambition and push. He needs bracing up and to take things more seriously. Perhaps it will be just as well if I take the reins for ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foothills,—that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating,—he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. "Me and that ass," ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... great service to weak people, and is perhaps the least noxious of all unnatural stimuli; which however, like all other great excitement, may be carried to excess, as complained of by the ancients. The unmeaning application of the words relaxation and bracing to warm and cold baths has much prevented the use of this grateful stimulus; and the misuse of the term warm-bath, when applied to baths colder than the body, as to those of Buxton and Matlock, and to artificial baths ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... embarrassing Mrs. Miller, seemed to relieve her. "I suffer from the liver," she said. "I think it's this climate; it's less bracing than Schenectady, especially in the winter season. I don't know whether you know we reside at Schenectady. I was saying to Daisy that I certainly hadn't found any one like Dr. Davis, and I didn't believe I should. Oh, at Schenectady he stands first; they think everything ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... "switch" upon "switch," and "braid" surrounding "braid," a "frizz" here and a "frizz" there, with a few bows for capitals, and a few curls for streamers, and twenty-four hair-pins for fastenings and bracing-rods, the tower was finished, in less than half the time, as she assured him, owing to the advantageous position she enjoyed in her work, that it would take her to rear the same structure on her own head, and it was precisely like what ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... by sickness to stop several days on the road. He suffered intensely, the trail for many miles being covered to the depth of twelve feet with snow, although it was almost midsummer when he passed over it. He arrived at Rich Bar the latter part of June, and found the revivifying effect of its bracing atmosphere far surpassing his most sanguine hopes. He soon built himself an office, which was a perfect marvel to the miners, from its superior elegance. It is the only one on the Bar, and I intend to visit it in a day or two, when I will give you a description of its architectural ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... being given to the officers for winning that great battle. Wellington, however, had his eye on the football and cricket grounds when he spoke these words, and no doubt intended to convey the idea that these games went a long way in bracing up the nerve which served so well on the battle-field. Close adhesion to the practice of any game really and sincerely creates fresh possibilities of that perfection and discipline. And why should this not be so in football, particularly as it is a game regulated by sharply-defined ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... monsieur's acquaintance. Her husband had told her that monsieur was staying farther up the coast and intended to come to town.. Monsieur was in business; she feared times were not what they were for business in Argyll, but the air was bracing—and much to the same effect, which sent the pseudo wine merchant gladly into the hands ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... right down to the camp stretched a long, sloping rock, whose smooth face, glistened in the light of the camp fire. As the men rose to prepare for the night, Tad began pulling himself cautiously back, bracing ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... what his brother was doing. Bert set some posts in the ground, though it was hard to dig, for the earth was frozen. But the posts did not have to go in very deep. From the top of the posts to the ground Bert next slanted two long boards, bracing them on the under side with shorter posts. Then he made a little platform by nailing boards from the tops of the first two posts to two others which he placed a little back ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... grew even more beautiful than she was when she had first come to her mountain home. The bracing air agreed with her, her health was perfect, while her simple manner of living and her regular habits were calculated to develop to the utmost every charm, and keep her strong, and ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... his thirst seemed to grow upon him every minute. Then he grew desperate, and bracing himself, tried with all of his strength to burst the hollow tree asunder. ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... way through the horse latitudes, embracing every flaw of wind, often accompanied by rain, to get a mile ahead here, half a dozen miles there; and, as these spurts come from every quarter, this involves a lot of bracing—changing the position of the yards; continuous work, very different from the placid restfulness of a "whole gale" of wind, with everything snug aloft and no chance of let-up during the watch. Between these occasional puffs ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... tail, which he twisted about his right arm in a flash, at the same time throwing up his feet and bracing them against a wheel of ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Jill, as she came out of the Pennsylvania Station into Seventh Avenue, with a whirl of powdered snow that touched her cheek like a kiss, the cold, bracing kiss one would expect from this vivid city. She stood at the station entrance, a tiny figure beside the huge pillars, looking round her with eager eyes. A wind was whipping down the avenue. The sky was a clear, brilliant tent of the brightest blue. Energy was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... resolutions. It may be because their hearts are crass, but to stir them properly they must have men entering into glory with some pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of bracing moral influence, are more valuable to England than any material benefit in all the books of political economy between Westminster and Birmingham. Greenville chewing wineglasses at table makes no very ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great storm the weather of the island would become more bracing and exhilarating, and this morning the air seemed filled with the spirit of spring. Emmeline felt it, and as she watched the swimmer disporting in the water, she laughed, and held the child up to watch him. She was fey. The breeze, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... strength, breadth, and charity. Miss Muloch and Gail Hamilton, while cherishing the sanctity of womanhood, are giving broader views, higher aims, truer delicacy, and greater self-reliance to their plastic sex. Their lessons and examples are bracing as the sea breeze, and soothing as air fresh from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... moment when Bettina, already a little intoxicated with the bracing air and liberty, gave forth triumphantly these three exclamations, "No one! no one! no one!" a rider appeared, walking his horse in the direction of the carriage. It was Paul de Lavardens. He had been watching for more than an hour for the pleasure of seeing ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... webbing having been previously stitched on to the sides of the material, it should now be braced with twine by means of a packing needle, passing the string over the stretchers between each stitch taken in the webbing, and, finally, drawing up the bracing until the material is strained evenly and tightly in the frame. If the fabric is one which stretches easily, the bracings should not ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... dreams of fancy in which he so ardently delights. Not only is the Swiss determined by the peculiarities of his geographical position to lead a pastoral life, but the climate, and mountain scenery, and bracing atmosphere inspire him with the love of liberty. The reserved and meditative Hindoo, accustomed to the profuse luxuriance of nature, borrows the fantastic ideas of his mythology from plants, and flowers, and trees. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... which now was caked over with ice, and had every appearance of being hard enough to bear the weight of a man with his skates on. John and Frederick were both running to the edge: and had not their father been with them would have immediately ventured on an amusement, hardy and bracing when followed with prudence, but which requires the caution of experience, not to ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... I am going to do," said Ann firmly, bracing herself for opposition, "and it's as good as done, so you needn't say a word about it. I'm going to have a Christmas dinner, and I'm going to invite every blessed soul in this house to come. They shall be warm and full for once in their lives, please God! And, Katey," she went on breathlessly, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... looked to France for his career. The narrow horizon of his native island was no longer wide enough for him, but from its bracing mountain air and from the quick blood of his race he drew a magnetic force, which imparted to his decisions and actions a rapidity and energy that carried all before them, while at the same time a power of calm calculation, of industry, and of self-control enabled him to employ ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... no doubt that in these ways the Crusades were for our forefathers in Europe the most bracing and stimulating events that occurred in the whole millennium between the complicated disorders of the fifth century and the outburst of maritime discovery in the fifteenth. How far they justified themselves from the military point of view, it is not ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... when we ought to be at work is weakening and demoralizing. Rest and play after work is bracing and invigorating. The sooner we face and conquer a difficulty, the less of a difficulty it is. The longer we put it off the greater it seems, and the less becomes our strength with ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... relieved if you will manage this and take Mary to some fresh scenes, a place or country that she has not visited before. There is nothing like an entirely novel environment for distracting the mind, bracing ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the Himalaya—height 7517 feet—39 miles from Rawalpindi, from which visitors are conveyed by tonga. The views from Murree are magnificent and the neighbourhood of the Hazara Galis is an attraction. But the climate is not really bracing. The summer headquarters of the Northern Army are at Murree, and before 1876 the Panjab Government spent the hot weather there. The Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of Rawalpindi take their work there ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... me," I replied, "you have given the strongest reason why they should be carefully guarded against the slightest pressure. It is very remarkable that kittens and puppies should be so well put together that they need no artificial bracing, and the human family be left wholly to the mercy of a bandage. Suppose a child was born where you could not get a bandage, what then? Now I think this child will remain intact without a bandage, and, if I am willing to take the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... varies in different regions, at different seasons of the year, and even different hours of the day. The odorous, fresh sea-breezes are distinct from the fitful breezes along river banks, which are humid and freighted with inland smells. The bracing, light, dry air of the mountains can never be mistaken for the pungent salt air of the ocean. The air of winter is dense, hard, compressed. In the spring it has new vitality. It is light, mobile, and laden with a thousand palpitating odours from earth, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... come—she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede, her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a stroke of the wind's brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air—and the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would divide, fifty masculine eyes would start, stare, as she gave back forgotten dreams to the husbands of many obese and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... crave more than coffee and a roll in the morning," he continued, after the second omelette, the ham, the waffles, and more coffee had been consumed. "I fancy it's your bracing air." ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... at any moment, and a great deal of disagreeableness might be looked for when he turned up and had it out with Francis. Altogether the Sabine lady felt that she ought to be in a state of panic terror. But she had slept well,—it was an excellent cot—the air was heavenly bracing, Mrs. O'Mara was a joy to think of, with her brogue and her affectionate nature, and altogether Marjorie Ellison found herself wondering hungrily what there would be for breakfast, and dressing in a hurry so that she could ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... a bright day in the latter part of October that Jerome and Clotelle set out for the church, where the marriage ceremony was to be performed. The clear, bracing air added buoyancy to every movement, and the sun poured its brilliant rays through the deeply-stained windows, as the happy couple entered the sanctuary, followed by old Mr. Devenant, whose form, bowed down with age, attracted almost as much attention from the assembly as did ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... particular points to which attention must be given include the proper laying of the pipes, so that the spigot of one is forced home into the socket of the other, the provision and tightening up of all the bolts required to be fixed, the proper driving of the piles and fixing the bracing, the dredging of a clear space in the bed of the sea in front of the outlet pipe, and other matters dependent upon the special form of construction adopted. If a plug is inserted in the open end of the pipes as laid, the rising of the tide will press on the plugged end and ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... already wriggling his way down between the smooth rock walls, bracing himself with back and knees. Within a few seconds he had reached the bottom, some ten feet below. It was a sloping, uneven floor of earth, lighted dimly from above and from the south, where the ledge shelved ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... fall into the hands of his enemies, had given his word of honour that he would welcome us as friends and allies if we went to his assistance, we had heard of his defeat and tragic end. Thus we ourselves were now on our guard night and day. It was a question of either fleeing the country or bracing ourselves for a decisive struggle. Some counselled the former alternative; the others declared their resolve to follow the advice of their dying father and to find a grave under the ruins of the keep. Any suggestion of flight or compromise they denounced as contemptible cowardice. The ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... and Durham was left alone. Bracing his muscles, he strained at the cords which bound him, trying to writhe himself free. The chair creaked. In a moment the man with the yellow beard ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... squirm and run back to hide their heads in their mothers' skirts. It is an open secret that starchy, modern women often long to wilt back into droopy musk roses, that climb over gates and things, but they don't let each other. When I feel myself getting soluble, I write it out to Jane and I get a bracing cold wave of a letter in reply. The one this morning was on the subject of love, or, at least, that is what Jane would have said it was ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a bright bracing day—quite calm, but with keen frost, which tended to increase the feelings of excitement already roused by the object we had in view. As we passed through the lake's fringe of willows, the tops of which just rose a foot or two above the drifted snow, ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... Everet, as they met at Ivy Cliff on the next day, "how charming you look! This pure, sweet, bracing air has beautified you like a cosmetic. Your cheeks are warm and your eyes are full of light. It gives me gladness of heart to see in your face something of the old look that faded from it ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... neighbours for their ambitious acts of self-denial. And one thing was specially worthy of remark,—so far from suffering in health, everyone returned home greatly improved in looks and vigour by this compulsory stay in the clear and bracing atmosphere of Comoro. As for the hypochondriacal gentleman, who had felt so keenly the refusal to be allowed to take his packing-case of medicines with him, he had returned in such a state of spirits that he at once ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... surely we are growing very tired of dramatists who look upon life with a wry face instead of with a brave and bracing countenance. In due time, when (with the help of Mr. Barrie and other healthy-hearted playmates) we have become again like little children, we shall realise that plays like As You Like It are better than all the Magdas and ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... trials, but at last by Billy putting his hind legs against one wall of the well and bracing his forehead against the opposite wall, Stubby managed to jump on his back and climb to his head, from where he gave a big leap and landed outside ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... precarious pecuniary foundation, must have faded and shrivelled indeed, after another year or two of anything but hospitality as generous as that of New York. Well-nourished and undimmed, however, it concealed for them admirably the fact that it was the hospitality they were after, and not the bracing climate or the desire to see the fascinating Americans of London and Paris at home. New York found them agreeable specimens of high-spirited young English people, and played with them indefinitely. Miss Forde, when she sat imperturbably on a cushion in the middle of the floor after dinner and ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... morning of November 23d, in a clear, bracing atmosphere of twenty-five degrees below zero, we arrived at the mouth of the large river called the Penzhina, which empties into Penzhinsk Gulf, at the head of the Okhotsk Sea. A dense cloud of frozen mist, which ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... health appeared to be so infirm and shattered that her brother-in-law, Mr. Hoare, offered her the loan of his house at Cromer. She accepted the offer for a couple of months, and found a little benefit for the bracing air. She mentioned in her diary at this time that she had "an undue fear of an imbecile or childish state"—a not unlikely feeling to be cherished by an energetic woman accustomed all her life long to the work of helping others. At the end of October she returned home, thankfully rejoicing, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... but most days you have the blue cloudless sky and dazzling sunshine, so often sought in vain on the Riviera. At mid-day your sunlit compartment is often too warm to be pleasant, when outside it is 10 deg. below zero. But the air is too dry and bracing for discomfort, although the pleasant breeze we are enjoying here will presently be torturing unhappy mortals in London in the shape of a boisterous and biting east wind. On the other hand, the monotony after a time becomes almost unbearable. All day long the eye rests vacantly ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... road, I bade farewell to my last remaining Poor Traveller, and pursued my way alone. And now the mists began to rise in the most beautiful manner, and the sun to shine; and as I went on through the bracing air, seeing the hoarfrost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all Nature shared in the joy of ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... Fig. 19 shows how the bark is placed like shingles overlapping each other so as to shed the rain. The doorway of the tent shack is made by leaning poles against forked sticks, their butts forming a semicircle in front, or rather the arc of a circle, and by bracing them against the forked stick fore and aft they ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... and since the ballad first saw the light of day in Scribner's Magazine, Mr. Nutt and Lord Archibald Campbell have been in public controversy on the facts. Two clans, the Camerons and the Campbells, lay claim to this bracing story; and they do well: the man who preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead is an ancestor worth disputing. But the Campbells must rest content: they have the broad lands and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these old places! So much strength and youth went into them long ago that even yet they have strength and youth to give, and from them, as from the strong hills, pours out an inexhaustible potency of bracing influence. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... to the side of the canoe to help her to the bank, but she took his hand only to steady herself while rising. Stepping over the bracing-strips between the gunwales, she caught a swaying branch, and swung herself lightly ashore. Back from the water the ground rose into a low hill, covered with oak and elm and ragged hickory trees. Here, for a space, there was little undergrowth, and save under ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... sportsman as he realizes that he has extinguished a spark of life shadowed Terry's thin, sensitive face. It was a face of singular appeal, dominated by a queer twist of upper lip that stamped his mouth with a permanent wistfulness. Even in the bracing cold of the winter morning his skin was white, but the clear pallor was belied by the swift energy with which he moved and the eager sparkle of his dark gray eyes. He picked up the fluffy bundle and stroked the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... had thrown him down, and was trying to wrench the gun from him, while Jim and Joe were hovering around them afraid to strike at the tramp for fear of hitting Tom. But now Harry, having driven off his antagonist, flew to the help of Tom, and seizing the tramp by his hair, and bracing one knee against his back, dragged him backward to the ground, and held him there until Tom regained his feet, and holding the muzzle of the gun at the robber's head, called on him to surrender, which the ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... when, during the brief intervals of breathing time he allowed himself, he would look below and above, he was forced to confess that at every step a belief, an illusion had been destroyed and trodden under foot, and he would wonder, while bracing himself for a new effort, how it would all end, and whether the mitre he lusted for would not after all, perhaps, be placed upon a head that doubted even the existence of a God. He was not a bad man, but merely one of that class who have embraced the priesthood merely as a means ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... in her step-mother's kindness, and she really loved her father; but their petting admiration soon grew oppressive, after the more bracing air of Compton; and their idolatry of her little brother fretted and tried her all the more, because they thought he must be a comfort to her, and any slight from her might be misconstrued. Mr. Venn's obsequiousness, instead of rightful ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills—that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating—he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing, "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and mother to him! Don't you," ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... seen some of them swallow sand, ashes, and do their utmost to destroy their stomachs to get pale complexions. To make a fine Spanish body, what racks will they not endure of girding and bracing, till they have notches in their sides cut into the very quick, and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... in truth, been no ice to break. The child was merely like a plant that had grown in the shade, and to her the strong, healthful youth was sunshine. His smile warmed and vivified her chilled nature, his hearty words and manner were bracing to her over-sensitive and timid soul, and his unaffected, unforced kindness was so constant that she gradually came to regard it as one of the best certainties of her life. She soon learned, however, that behind his sunny good-nature was a fiery and impatient ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the big chair but one thing disturbed her serenity—and that one thing was within. She had everything that she wanted, and for the hour, at least, she was tired of it all. The mood was transient, she knew. It would pass because it was alien to the clear bracing air of her mind; but while it lasted she told herself that the present had palled on her because she had looked beneath the vivid surface of illusion to the bare structure of life. Men had ceased to interest her because ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... wonderfully quiet and beautiful spot where we had come down. The air had a delicate feel and a bracing temperature, while a soft breeze soughed through the leaves of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... way forth. Very soon we were vibrating up a steep street on the first speed of the car, and the yellow reflections of distant furnaces began to shine over house roofs below us. It was exhilaratingly cold, a clear and frosty night, tonic, bracing after the enclosed warmth of the study. I was joyous, but silently. We had quitted the kingdom of the god Pan; we were in Lucina's realm, its consequence, where there is no laughter. We were on ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... and Emma had gone out as usual to milk the cows. It was a beautiful clear day, but there was a bracing air which cheered the spirits, and the sunshine was pleasantly warm in situations sheltered from the winds; one of the few fine days just before the rushing in of winter. They had milked their cows, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... come up, and she could see fairly well; some light being furnished by it, though heavy clouds intervened. White-capped waves dashed against the boat. It was unusually rough for a lake of its size. She inhaled deeply the strong, bracing air, until, discovering that she was getting wet from the spray, the girl hurried below and crawled into her cot, shivering a little. Then she fell into a deep sleep, soothed by the rocking of ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... was telling himself, as he passed an humble cottage where, through a dingy window, a lone lamp could be seen; and some children gathered about the kitchen stove, "I'm thinking this bracing weather that we boys have wanted to see so much, is pretty hard on poor folks. The world is unevenly divided, as mother often says; some have too much for their own good; and others far ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... together and bracing of which hemicycle or arch, worthie of admiration, of a rare and subtile deuise, and exquisite polyture, did thus obiect and present ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... ancient silence and solitude soon separated me even in thought from the familiar scenes I had left. A virginal beauty rested upon the road, and sank deep into my own heart as I passed along; to be silent and open-minded was enough to bring one into fellowship with the hour and the scene. The clear, bracing air, the rustling of leaves slowly sifting down through the lower branches, the solemn quietude, filled the morning with a deep joy that touched the very sources of life, and made them sweet in every thought and emotion. It was like a new beginning in ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... rest they enjoyed—without having been disturbed by anything. One would have supposed that, after so much hardship, they would have got up somewhat wearied. Strange to say, it was not so, for they arose quite refreshed. This Lucien attributed to the bracing influence of the light dry atmosphere; and Lucien was right, for, although an arid soil surrounded them, its climate is one of the healthiest in the world. Many a consumptive person, who has crossed the prairies with flushed cheek, uttering his hectic cough, has returned to his ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... footsteps rustled quickly on the sand and Jason was alone. The leather walls flapped slackly in the wind and there was no other sound. Jason spat on his palms, controlled a slight shiver and slid into the pit. The wrench fitted neatly over the nut, he wrapped both hands around it and, bracing his leg against the pit wall, began ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... had tried to do justice to the inhabitants of the famous city of Peebles[5] in the style of the Book of Snobs. So I might go on for ever, through all my abortive novels, and down to my later plays,[6] of which I think more tenderly, for they were not only conceived at first under the bracing influence of old Dumas, but have met with, resurrections: one, strangely bettered by another hand, came on the stage itself and was played by bodily actors; the other, originally known as Semiramis: a Tragedy, I have observed on bookstalls under ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The captain whirled, bracing himself against the rail with both hands, as though prepared to meet an attempt to thrust him overboard. Then— and Harrigan thought his ears deceived him as he listened—McTee said with a ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... birds and people, by the way, tracing the rushing Sacramento to its fountains around icy Shasta. The first rains had fallen on the lowlands, and the first snows on the mountains, and everything was fresh and bracing, while an abundance of balmy sunshine filled all the noonday hours. It was the calm afterglow that usually succeeds the first storm of the winter. I met many of the birds that had reared their young and spent their summer in the Shasta woods and chaparral. ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... experiences some varieties of temperature. The seaboard is warm, but its considerable southward trend gives it a good Atlantic frontage, which prevents it from being relaxing. Weston is said to be ten degrees warmer than London. The breezes on the uplands are bracing but never searching. The Mendips have been considered a suitable site for a consumptive sanatorium. The central flats are damp. They lie so low that in places the coast has to be protected by sea walls, and the prevalence of large "rhines" or drains makes for humidity. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... fixed it with glue and bracing, and fitting iron rings about it. The vibration of the motor and the straining have pulled the nail heads through the ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... similar to those exhibited when the animal has encephalitis, but the onset is more sudden, the duration is shorter, and there is less fever. There may be frenzy or coma, or alternations one with the other. The intelligence is diminished, staring eyes, bracing with the legs, pressing against the stall partition or manger, red mucous membranes. This condition ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... to force a door—that is, an ordinary door—and at the same time make very little noise. It is done—if the door opens inward—by seizing the knob firmly with both hands, having turned it, and then by bracing the body with one knee pressed firmly against the door directly under the knob. In this position, if it is assumed by a strong man, every effort may be centred upon one sudden impulse forward, which, while there is no visible or perceptible impact, ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... fine line of camel hair. Making one end fast to the teakwood sill he went down hand over hand, his strong hard palms gripping the soft line. At the end of it he still had a drop of ten or twelve feet, but bracing his shoulders to one wall and his feet to the other he let go. Hunsa was shaken by his drop of a dozen feet, but the soft sand of the river bed had broken the shock of his fall. He picked himself up, and crouching in the hiding shadow ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... reached the bridge, they saw strong columns of Greek infantry, dead black in the dim light, crossing the stream and slowly deploying on the other shore. It was a bracing sight to the dragoman, who then went into one of his absurd babbling moods, in which he would have talked the head off any man who was not born in a country laved by the childish Mediterranean. Coleman could not understand ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... see either of them again. Then one glorious day the trolling-lines were out astern, the elders were amidship playing "horse billiards," and "Tuck," the genial purser, was devoting himself to Paquita, when Drummond heard a scream of excitement and delight, and saw the younger sister bracing her tiny, slender feet and hanging on to a line with all her strength. In an instant he was at her side, and together, hand over hand, they finally succeeded in pulling aboard a beautiful dolphin, and landed him, leaping, flapping, ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... thick and long-lying, on the ground when he reached Boveyhayne, and the crunch-crunch of it under their feet, as Mary and he walked home, gave him a feeling of pleasure, and the cold, bracing air exhilarated him so that he laughed at things which would otherwise barely have made him smile. The antics of Rachel's daughter, as related to him by Mary, seemed extraordinarily entertaining, and when he drew Mary's arm in his and pressed it tightly, he felt that there was nothing in heaven ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Lord Dreever enlightened her. That miserable creature was wearing the air of a timid child about to pull a large cracker. He seemed to be bracing ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... economical homes (somewhere else) for young gentlemen who cannot get on without expensive assistance at starting in Mother country, owing to excessive competition in laborious and over-crowded professions. A firm of enterprising Agents offer bracing and profitable occupation (coupled with the use gratis, of two broken spades, an old manure-cart, and an axe without a handle) in a peculiarly romantic and unhealthy district in the backwoods of West-Torrida. Photograph, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... his nerves. He loved to pit himself, his courage, his coolness, his skill and his sagacity against what looked like overwhelming odds, and the formidable aspect of this enormous serpent, which might well have paralysed another man with terror, only had the effect of bracing him and filling him with the joy of combat. With his good sword gripped firmly in his hand he stood his ground, intently watching the movements of his formidable antagonist, with every muscle of his body tense and ready for action, and presently, when the python hurled ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... look!" cried Mickey, waving both hands and bracing on feet wide apart. "Do look! Your age or more, and about half ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of rough but picturesque highlands, which embrace the central ranges of the Suliman system (the prehistoric home of the Pathan highlander), where vegetation is often alpine, and the climate clear and bracing and subject to no great extremes of temperature. The average breadth of this northern Pathan district is 150 m., but it narrows to less than 100 m. on the line of the Gomal, and expands to more than 200 m. on the line of the railway. Here all the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... never to disturb their clients by calling out the names of stations. When New Brunswick is reached many think that they have arrived at West Philadelphia, or (worse still) have been carried on to Wilmington. They rush desperately to the bracing chill of the platform to learn where they are. There is a mood of mystery about this Owl of ours. The trainmen take a quaint delight in keeping the actual whereabouts of the caravan ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... attached to the body proper by rigid flanges, reinforced by wires running from tip to tip of the planes, passing directly over the body, and not elevated on bracing chandelles. These wires were taut and made a part of the planes, much like reinforcing ribs. Beneath the planes three heavy wires ran from their forward tips to the bottom of ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... morning was bright and clear, and cool enough to be bracing. The colonel, alive with pleasant thoughts, rose early and after a cold bath, and a leisurely breakfast, walked over to the mill site, where the men were already at work. Having looked the work over and given certain directions, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... rare time at Cambridge. What delight it was in those cold mornings to take a bracing walk into the country, and looking back over miles of level land, to behold the chapel of King's College, and the tower of St. Mary's church, which had been the land beacons of aspiring students for so many generations! I verily believe that the chapel of King's College is the finest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... isolated and half-civilized. Also, he says that he visited the Galatians on account of an illness (iv. 13). It is incredible that he would have chosen the long unhealthy journey to North Galatia when he was ill. But it is extremely probable that he left the damp lowlands of Pamphylia for the bracing air of Pisidian Antioch. The malady was probably the malarial neuralgia and fever which are contracted in those lowlands. (3) The Epistle contains technical legal terms for adoption, covenant, and tutor, which seem to be used not in the ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... palace of Maxixca, and the rest of the army were quartered in that part of the city over which he exercised special authority. Here they remained for some weeks, during which the wounded recovered from their injuries, the sick regained their strength in the bracing mountain air, and the whole army shook off the effects of the terrible hardships they had undergone, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... it should be. Comparatively few people in the State, outside of Berkshire, are even aware that such a town exists. But it would be a delightful place in which to spend a quiet summer. It is cool and healthy, the air is clear and bracing, and the scenery simply superb. The view from Mount Everett fully equals, if it does not surpass, that from Greylock. In whatever direction the spectator looks a most glorious display greets his eyes. Peak rises above peak on all sides, and the blue surfaces of lakes ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... bracing severity that Wilmet observed to Geraldine, 'Now, don't you go crying, and asking questions, and ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the three horses pressed on abreast, the powerful sweep of the gray Caliente and the chestnut Don Fernando, and the snappy, nervous leaps of the little bay that Jo was riding. With the bracing sea air and the exhilarating speed, the ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... longer be said, as in the days of Augustus, that they were cut off from all the world. England was an integral part of the empire, where, if the proconsul or legionary commander had not the hot sun and blue sky of Italy, there were partial compensations in the bracing air which renewed his wasted strength, the new and peculiar luxuries in the shape of shellfish and wildfowl that enriched his table, and the facilities which his insular authority afforded him for strengthening ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... you go to the bracing climate of the North. But I am sorry you go so soon. Mother cannot stay in Washington after the third week in May. I am afraid we shall not meet again until ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... it, Sir John; but a craft that is foreordained to be a wrack, will be a wrack, in spite of reefing and bracing. Look ahead, you Dick Lion—ay, there you ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hunters of the buffalo. Hendry was alive to the impressions of nature. The intense heat of August was followed in September by glorious weather, with the nights cool and the mosquitoes no longer troublesome. The climate was bracing. He complains only, from time to time, of swollen feet, and we need not wonder since his daily march occasionally went beyond twenty-five miles. Sometimes for days he saw no living creature. At other ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... summer he shrank from the thought of adventurous novelty, and ended by proposing a return to the same western seaside-town, to the familiar lodgings. The climate suited neither him nor his daughter, who both needed physical as well as moral bracing; but they only thought of this on finding themselves at home again, with another long year of monotony before them. And it was so good to feel welcome, respected; to receive the smiling reverences of tradesfolk; to talk ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... The sun was brilliant and the air cool and bracing. I felt better, and after a hard day's work and an evening stroll with my friends in the glorious afterglow, I went to bed cheerful and hopeful as to the climate and its effect on my health. This morning ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... on oat-straw and turnips. Not a handful of hay or of meal is given them. The calves are allowed to suck their dams at pleasure. He is convinced that with this simple system of feeding, together with the bracing air of Aberdeenshire, he has obtained a tribe of animals of hardy and robust constitutions, of early maturity, well calculated to improve the general stock ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... rode along, enjoying the splendid scenery and bracing air, but the gypsy's face was ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... one for the crowd. Did you ever see Officer Whalen practice firing at a mark? Well, I have. The man couldn't hit a barn door thirty feet off. Can't you come over, Frank? I've got something to propose to you. The afternoon is too fine and bracing to stay cooped up in the house. We'll soon have to hibernate, you know. Come ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... trees, foliage, and flowers encircling the water basin that form the attraction of the place. Families make picnic excursions to this spot; and the gentlemen—it is said the ladies also—spend the sultry hours of midday bathing in the cold and bracing waters. The place is classic ground to the Naturalist from having been a favourite spot with the celebrated travellers Spix and Martius, during their stay at Barra in 1820. Von Martins was so much impressed by its magical beauty that he ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... kiss cheeks and make them rosy; I make people wrap up cosy; I bring chilblains, chaps, and nipping; I send people quickly tripping. See my breath all silver lacing; Feel my touch how cold and bracing; Come and race o'er ground so snowy; Come and trip 'mid breezes blowy. I'll make little eyes look brightly; I'll make little hearts beat lightly; And when cheeks grow red as cherry, Then will echo voices merry. For I'm Jack Frost who makes cheeks rosy; I make people wrap up cosy; ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... she should probably, remain in England two or three weeks longer, and thus the house was again clear to the young men, who, forgetting to retrieve their characters, fairly outdid all they had done before. The weather was remarkably clear and bracing, and the greater part of each day was spent in the open air, either in fishing, riding, or hunting; Maggie teaching Henry Warner how to ride and leap, while he in turn taught her to shoot a bird upon the wing, until the pupil was equal to her master. In these outdoor excursions ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... poor alike were wrapped in homespun blanket paletots, whose vivid colours made a charming picture, as the wayfarers trudged over the deep white snow-fields on their buoyant snow-shoes, or coasted through the clear and bracing air on swift toboggans. In the evening they flocked to a chosen rendezvous, where a home-bred violinist tuned them through gay quadrilles; and anon the lonely violin would be drowned in the lusty voices of the dancers, who suited a folk-song ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... up from his stool, and, bracing his feet firmly, gave the spy one hand. The tall man shook upon ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... of bracing or stringing the bow was as follows: Grasping it with his right hand at its center, with the belly toward him, and the lower end on his right thigh, he held the upper end with his left hand while the loop of the string rested between ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... it, was bracing himself for a serious situation. He had a keen eye for a man, a feeling for style; in his judgment Urquhart was momentous, so much so that he could not afford to be irritated. Jealousy to him was a weakness, only pardonable when the cause was trivial. It had been trivial ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... secret bracing of my nerves I looked up and met his eyes fixed with that baffling expression upon mine, I own that I felt an inward alarm, as if something vaguely dangerous had reared itself in my path, which by its very charm instinctively bade me beware. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... once betrayed their confidence. Almost immediately after reaching the Portuguese settlement on the coast, he was prostrated with a very severe illness. An English ship in the harbor was about to sail. In his great weakness, Livingstone longed for the bracing air of the Scottish highlands, and a sight of his beloved wife and children in the home land. But he prepared his reports, charts, and observations, put them aboard the ship, and, after watching it set sail, made ready to march back into the interior. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... brace used as a hand rail was added on top of the frame, bracing frame and acting as a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... looking. Far down below a few cabins appeared like little toy houses, while away beyond could be seen the blue cold waters of the North Pacific. The air was becoming keen. But it was bracing and stimulating. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... from the date of her illness, the frail little child of the old days at Greenwater Broad had ripened, in the bracing Scotch air and the healthy mode of life, into a comely young woman. Her features were still, as in her early years, not regularly beautiful; but the change in her was not the less marked on that account. The wan face had filled out, and the pale complexion had found ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... after the two young men had departed from Winthrop, and had made their way up the road that led along the steep hillside, the exhilaration of the bracing air and the superb view had made Will keenly alive to the beauties of the surrounding region. A soft halo covered the summits of the lofty hills, and the quiet of the valley was almost as impressive as the framework of the mountains. Mott too had been exceedingly pleasant in all that he had said, ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... less than to stand on his head on the mattress. He could rest his hands beside his head, at the outset, bracing his feet against the wall. So far ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... refreshing ourselves from clear little spring-wells, that sparkled over white pebbles at the foot of a gray rock tufted over with blaeberry and foxglove leaves. The poor thing chatted away like a child, inspired by the pure air, bracing, yet mild, and lost herself amongst recollections of her country home, talking of buttercups, hedge-sparrows' eggs, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... a clear, lovely, October morning. The air was sharp and bracing, and the leaves which had taken their autumnal tints were falling from the trees. The road which wound by Westbourne Green, gave him a full view of the hill of Hampstead with its church, its crest of houses, and its villas peeping ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... dressed and went out for a stroll, drinking copious draughts of the bracing morning air. But the tormenting presence of the intercepted letter in his pocket drew him back to the house. He encountered his wife in ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Republican; he had a great capacity for "handling the coloured vote" and his name was Pixley. Hurlbut mistrusted him; the young man had that instinct, which good leaders need, for feeling the weak places in his following; and he had the leader's way, too, of ever bracing up the weakness and fortifying it; so he stopped, four or five times a day, at Pixley's desk, urging the necessity of standing fast for the "Breaker," and expressing convictions as to the political future of a Democrat who should fail to vote for it; to which Pixley ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... South, can never mellow its hard, cold tint of greenish-blue. The distant hills, whether dark or light, are equally cold, and are seen too nakedly through the crystal air to admit of any illusion. Bracing as is this atmosphere, the gods could never breathe it. It would revenge on the ivory limbs of Apollo his treatment of Marsyas. No foam-born Aphrodite could rise warm from yonder wave; not even the cold, sleek Nereids could breast its keen edge. We could only imagine it disturbed, temporarily, by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... and snoring! Under the circumstances, therefore, the doctor, with much judgment, read very short prayers, and immediately afterwards took his departure for his snug little vicarage. The moon shone brightly, the air was clear and bracing, and he felt as blithe as a bird ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... young fellow had no special vocation, and he owned to Max afterwards that he feared that he had done the wrong thing. I am afraid Max thought so too, but he would not discourage him by saying so; on the contrary, he treated him in a bracing manner, telling him that he had put his hand to the plough, and that there must be no looking backward, and bidding him pluck up heart and do his duty as well as he could; and then he smoothed his way by asking him to be his curate and live with him, so saving him from the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lasted for several minutes, she could not imagine what sort of a place she was in. The light above her showed her a square, well-like tunnel, set up on end, and about two feet square, with the window ledge five feet higher than her head. At first she tried to climb up the wall by bracing herself on opposite sides of it, but her muscles were not quite equal to this. It was not until it slowly dawned on her that she could not possibly get out by her own efforts, that she began to call. Of course her voice was carried by the furnace ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... morning, and we have seldom since been so young in feeling as never we are sure in years, as when we walked forth into its bracing air. And Aunt Rachel—she enjoyed it; the broad icy fields, the difficult ascent of the steep slippery hills and the "duckies" down them, and the crackling of the icicles as we thrust our way through the bristling under-brush of those diamond-cressed woods. We loved even to eat the icicles ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... rods, with horizontal tie-bars to resist the thrust. The suspension-bolts are enclosed within spandril pillars of cast iron, which give great stiffness to the superstructure. This system of longitudinal and vertical bracing has been much admired, for it not only accomplishes the primary object of securing rigidity in the roadway, but at the same time, by its graceful arrangement, heightens the beauty of the structure. The arches consist of four main ribs, disposed in pairs ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... passed this scene of watery commotion and got out into the deeper water, the sea smoothed down a great deal; but sea-sickness began to claim its victims, at first a few, then more and more, till the greater part were quite badly affected. I had a touch of it myself, but managed to keep my feet by bracing out pretty wide, and hugging everything I could get hold of that seemed to offer a steady support, and I did not lie down until after I had thrown my ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly |
