"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my body began to ache. I was, of course, rottenly trained, without a sound muscle in my body, and my legs threatened cramp, my heel grated against my boot and sent a stab to my stomach with every movement, my shoulders seemed to pull away from the stretcher as though they would separately rebel against my orders ... and my hand began again to slip. The Feldscher also began to feel the strain. Once he ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... moment's thought, "I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people's opportunities ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... while those who rejected both had private prejudices as to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent fever, the first assistant rheumatism, and the second assistant congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion, and swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within bullet-range of any hospitalities on the other shore. But I knew the folly of most alarms about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination peoples the water with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... down as an axiom among poets that their ethical natures must develop spontaneously, or not at all. An attempt to force one's moral instincts will inevitably cramp and thwart one's art. It is unparalleled to find so great a poet as Coleridge plaintively asserting, "I have endeavored to feel what I ought to feel," [Footnote: Letter to the Reverend George Coleridge, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... such an intense cramp seized him that he could not speak for some time. Then he began again, but in a ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... kind of cramp, and needs an easier position. Try and get a little change; read novels; don't get tired; sit in the open air. "A recumbent position," said a witty lady of my acquaintance, "is a great aid ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the panther suddenly opened her eyes; then she put out her paws with energy, as if to stretch them and get rid of cramp. At last she yawned, showing the formidable apparatus of her teeth and pointed ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... I had not yet got to the end of my trouble. The effort I made gave me so severe a spasm that I became cramped and unable to use my limbs. However, I did not lose my head, but kept quiet till the pain had gone off, knowing by experience that keeping still is the best cure for the false cramp. It was a dreadful moment! In two minutes I made another effort, and had the good fortune to get my two knees on to the parapet, and as soon as I had taken breath I cautiously hoisted the ladder and pushed it half-way through the window. I then took ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... probability of her doing that, or any other act of passion. From bewailing herself, she went on to say things of her husband and Lord Lovat, and of her purposes in regard to them, which Mr Forster felt that he and others ought not, for her own sake, to hear. He quickened his pace, but she complained of cramp in her side. He then halted, whispered to two men who watched for his orders, and had the poor lady again silenced by the cloth being tied over her mouth. She tried to drop off, but that only caused the strap which bound her to the rider to be buckled tighter. She found herself treated like a wayward ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... participate in their full benefits; and below the capacity of the superior ranks, who, though fitted for the right use and enjoyment of more liberal and higher social adaptations, are nevertheless obliged to cramp their natures and dwarf their activities to the measure of the capacities of the more numerous ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... will not be surprised to learn that Caroline missed every mass and had no breakfast. This hunger and thirst for Adolphe gave her a violent cramp in the stomach. She did not think of religion once during the hours of mass, nor during those of vespers. She was not comfortable when she sat, and she was very uncomfortable when she stood: Justine advised her to go to bed. Caroline, quite ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... cramp out of that leg, boys, I'll 'fess up' everything," he began. "That leg feels as if some one were trying to pull some teeth out of it by the roots. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... admitted that their flowing garments, which did not cramp the figure, preserved in men and women alike the fine proportions which are seen in their statues. These are still the models of art, although nature is so disfigured that they are no longer to be found among us. The Gothic trammels, the innumerable bands which confine our limbs as in a press, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... with them, as with all pets, the most important of all rules is perfect cleanliness. The best cages are wooden ones with unpainted wires, and the perches should be of different thicknesses, as, if they are all one size, the bird is likely to get cramp in his feet. Once in a week at least the perches and tray should be scrubbed with very hot water with soda in it, but they must be dried thoroughly before they are put back into the cage; therefore if possible it is best to have two sets of perches and to use them alternately. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... more during the second winter than I did during the first. My limbs were benumbed by inaction, and the cold filled them with cramp. I had a very painful sensation of coldness in my head; even my face and tongue stiffened, and I lost the power of speech. Of course it was impossible, under the circumstances, to summon any physician. My brother William came and did all ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp his mind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is much misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full of ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... it; that is to say, its effect upon his attitude toward men and life was never completely lost. His skin was broken in three or four places; every bone in his body ached from the heavy kicks he had received; an intolerable thirst kept him gasping for every breath he drew; the cramp set up in his fore-legs by their being strapped tightly together, one across the other, was an exquisite pain; and his muzzle was held hard down against the grimy floor-boards of the cart, while his mind was full of a ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... are supposed to log any reading over sixty, and report downtown with anything over eighty. Sure they are! If they logged everything over sixty they'd have writer's cramp the first hour they were on watch. And believe me, Sonny, any operator who reported downtown on every reading over eighty would be back pounding a beat before the end of his first day. They just do the best they can, and you'd be surprised at ...
— The Circuit Riders • R. C. FitzPatrick
... a rule, so moderate in drinking that the wine he had taken, supplemented by his misery, made him feel physically ill. He shuddered with cold as he dived into the water, and as he swam out he felt, for the first time in his life, a slight twinge of cramp. At another time he would have been somewhat alarmed, for the strongest swimmer is absolutely helpless under an attack of cramp, but this morning he was indifferent, and the thought struck him that it would be well for him if he flung up his arms and ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... day. Gruby says very soon. But doctors are so inconsistent. Last week, after I had had a frightful attack of cramp in the throat and chest, 'Pouvez-vous siffler?' he said. 'Non, pas meme une comedie de M. Scribe,' I replied. So you may see how bad I was. Well, even that, he said, wouldn't hasten the end, and I should go ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... himself so outrageously, that they were provoked to throw him into the Rhone, where he had nearly perished. But this is an inaccurate account of the accident which actually befell him. He was seized with the cramp when bathing in the river. His comrades saved him with difficulty, but his danger was matter ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing-space; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... very clever fellow, I know, and I'm very glad to have you with us—but remember I have organized this movement for years, planned it out as I sat toiling in Belcovitch's machine-room, written on it till I've got the cramp, spoken on it till I was hoarse, given evidence before innumerable Commissions. It is I who have stirred up the East-End Jews and sent the echo of their cry into Parliament, and I will not be interfered with. Do ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... than did the Jews of Jerusalem, with their provincial horizon, how fatal such conditions as they meant to impose would be to the success of Christianity outside Judaea. The proud Romans, the highminded Greeks, would never have consented to be circumcised and to cramp their life within the narrow limits of Jewish tradition; a religion hampered with such conditions could never ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... of an hour—a half hour. Still Jimmie Dale lay there—still motionless—still breathing with slow regularity. His muscles began to cramp, to give him exquisite torture. Around him all was silence—only distant sounds from the street reached him, muffled, and at intervals. Another quarter of an hour passed—an eternity of torment. It seemed to Jimmie Dale, for all his will power, that he could not hold himself in check, that ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to small children must be assessed from this two-fold point of view. What relationships are they based on? And in what terms are they told? Fairy stories should not be exempted. We are inclined to accept them uncritically, feeling that they do not cramp a child as does reality. We cling to the idea that children need a fairy world to "cultivate their imaginations." In the folk tales we are intrigued by the past,—by the sense that these embodiments of human experience, having survived the ages, should be exempt ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... stones at the windows. She likes to snooze, in the sun, and count her money-bags. France is too old to care about religion, or the future—she is thinking how best to be comfortable—here in this world, when she has rheumatism and a cramp in the stomach!" And the old priest wrapped his own soutane about his lean knees, suiting his ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... pre-eminently a useful man. He does not "cramp his mind, nor take half views of men and things." He knows that there is much misery, but that misery is not the rule of life. He sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly joyously, puppies play, kittens ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... her after she reached her sixth birthday. Ah! she is very delicate. For some days past she had seemed ill at ease. She was at times taken with cramp, and plunged in ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... while all were giving attention to the rescued Andy, there occurred with Jack one of those events which people call a cramp. I do not know what to call it, but it is not a cramp. It is a kind of collapse—a sudden exhaustion that may come to the best of swimmers. The heart insists on resting, the consciousness grows dim, the will-power flags, and the ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... with a double-tongued fluency they can plead indifferently for either side, and deem it a very doughty exploit if they can but interlard a Latin sentence with some Greek word, which for seeming garnish they crowd in at a venture; and rather than be at a stand for some cramp words, they will furnish up a long scroll of old obsolete terms out of some musty author, and foist them in, to amuse the reader with, that those who understand them may be tickled with the happiness of being acquainted with them: ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... transmission points for cortical messages, perform a special function by immediately receiving sensory impressions and transmitting motor impulses. A person, for instance, whose mind is occupied with a problem, may move a limb to relieve a cramp, wink the eye, etc., without any conscious control of the action. In such a case the sensory impression was reported to a lower sensory centre, directly carried to a lower motor centre, and the motor impulse given to perform the movement. In the same way, after ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... C. Collodi. Walter Cramp's translation of this little Italian classic will be highly appreciated. Ginn ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... other hand, and she was urgent on the necessity of thoroughness in the wringing out of one's floor cloth, because a dry floor cloth takes up twice as much water as a wet one, and thus lightens labor; also she advised Mary to change her positions as frequently as possible to avoid cramp when scrubbing, and to kneel up or stand up when wringing her cloths, as this would give her a rest, and the change of movement would relieve her very greatly, and above all to take her time about the business, because haste seldom resulted ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Helen Cameron could not have gained entrance to Briarwood; without the attested examination papers of Miss Cramp, teacher of the district school, who had prepared Ruth for entering Cheslow High School before it was supposed that she could go to Briarwood, the girl from the Red Mill would not have ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... the show were very hard boards, and the sun made one awfully drowsy; but about half-an-hour before lunch Lord Valmond came up again, and asked me if I should not like to go for a turn. I thought I had better, so as not to get cramp. He said he had been afraid he would never get the chance of speaking to me, I was always so surrounded. I told him I had only come now because of the cramp. I am quite determined, Mamma, not to unbend to him at all. I was not once agreeable, or anything but stiff and ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... increasing it. I am here to-night to ask you to issue, during the next three months, fifty thousand dollars' worth of city bonds, interest on which is to be 3 per cent., payable semi-annually. If you will agree to do this promptly, Bartlett, Cramp & Company, of New York, will take the entire amount at once. At the expiration of twenty years these bonds are ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... had an attack of cramp, for he believed this fable, which Coctier had invented to protect his own life. But when he recovered consciousness, he continued to ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... beards), met us in a friendly manner, but absolutely refused to take us in at first. He said he had absolutely nothing in the house but a little goat's cheese, and no beds. However, we were desperate; to go to the village meant another hour's cramp in the canoe, and perhaps no better accommodation than here. Here ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... of those who do not know, it is necessary to say that the jubarte, once dead, must be towed as far as the "Pilgrim," and firmly lashed to her starboard side. Then the sailors, shod in boots, with cramp-hooks would take their places on the back of the enormous cetacean, and cut it up methodically in parallel bands marked off from the head to the tail. These bands would be then cut across in slices of ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... false in fact. Mechanic arts, as agriculture, etc., will indeed be discouraged where the profits and property are, from the nature of the government, insecure. But why the despotism of a government should cramp the genius of a mathematician, an astronomer, a poet, or an orator, I confess I never could discover. It may indeed deprive the poet or the orator of the liberty of treating of certain subjects in the manner they would wish, but it leaves them subjects ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... chief representative of the American policy of France. He felt that, cost what it might, she must hold fast to Canada, and link her to Louisiana by chains of forts strong enough to hold back the British colonies, and cramp their growth by confinement within narrow limits; while French settlers, sent from the mother-country, should spread and multiply in the broad valleys of the interior. It is true, he said, that Canada ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... troops, but later returned to his village and installed himself in the hospital as scribe. He wrote from morning until night, and, watching him stretching his lean old hands, I asked him if he suffered much pain from writers' cramp. He looked at me almost reproachfully before answering, "Mademoiselle, it is the least I can do for my country; besides my pain is so slight and that of the comrades so great. I am proud, indeed proud, that at sixty-seven years of age I am ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... and the little speck on her lungs which brought us here after—after we had found that we had not as much money as we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material facts of board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know the fulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to the spirit of America—the spirit of youth and accomplishment. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Junius.—Mr. Cramp, in his late publication, Junius and his Works, conjectures that the printer having bound a copy of Junius for and under the direction of the writer of the letters, followed the pattern in the binding of other copies; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... wife of Eben Tollman, the bigot whose narrowness would cramp her life into a dreary torture. His imagination eddied in bewildered wretchedness about that whirlpool of thought, bringing transient impulses ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... tried to leap out of his bunk on to the floor and hop on one leg as a specific for the cramp. Then, as he realized his position, he strove madly to rise and straighten the afflicted limb. He was so far successful that he managed to stand, and in the fantastic appearance of a human snail, to shuffle slowly round the kitchen. At first he thought only ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... place in another direction: even the perch was given way in the centre!" "Alas, for my voiture de voyage!" exclaimed I to my companion. Meanwhile, a man came forward with a red-hot piece of iron, in the shape of a cramp, to fix round the perch—which hissed as the application was made. And all this—before I could say wherefore! or even open my mouth to express astonishment! They were absolutely about to take off the wheels of the carriage; to examine, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... for a cramp seized him with such violence that he was obliged to sit down and rest ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... that my soul craved for, I had satisfied none but the most transitory desires and I had incurred a tremendous obligation. That obligation didn't restrain me from making desperate lunges at something vaguely beautiful that I felt was necessary to me; but it did cramp and limit these lunges. So my story flops down into the comedy of the lying, cramped intrigues of a respectable, married man...I was still driven by my dream of some extravagantly beautiful inspiration called love and I sought it like an area sneak. Gods! What a story it is when one brings it all ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Hollister dropped from their saddles in front of the hotel at just eleven o'clock. They had ridden thirty miles and stood for a moment stretching the cramp out ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... shoes are much better for footmen than boots, as they are lighter, and do not cramp the ankles; the soles should be broad, so as to allow a square, firm tread, without distorting or pinching ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... in seeming—rightlier judged Beneficent surprise, publicity Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale Cowardice thinks a covert: one bold splash Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends, Though cramp and drowning may ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... to be a carpenter, so I don't go... That's a summer-house, but it's so earwiggy that we leave it alone... That was meant to be a swimming-bath, but the water comes straight from a well, and it is so deadly cold that the girls got cramp, and Miss Bruce forbade them to use it any more. It looks wretchedly deserted now. If you want to be miserable all by yourself you couldn't have a better place. It's so still and dark, and the birds have built their nests in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... un, I was going in if you hadn't. I shall get my boots ready to kick off now, so don't you be frightened if you get numbed with the cold, or a touch of cramp; just sing out and I will be with ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... se detourne ensuite sur de petites choses qu'il releve par la beaute de son genie et de son style."—Les Caracteres, etc., "Des Ouvrages del'Esprit."]—because they have no grasp of reality in its fullness, and therefore either cramp and limit me or awaken my distrust. The French lack that intuitive faculty to which the living unity of things is revealed, they have very little sense of what is sacred, very little penetration into the mysteries of being. What they excel in is the construction of special sciences; the art ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... murmured Amy. "Now what? I'll tell you frankly, as man to man, that I can't go on walking all night, Clint. I'm dog-tired and my left leg's got a cramp in it and I'm weak with hunger. Let's find a cosy corner somewhere ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... copy of the current of the ocean, the shadowed part by the copse representing the Polar area. Directly any one began to swim he found the difference, the legs went down into cold water, and in many cases cramp ensued with alarming results and danger. Down to the chest it was warm, quite warm, while the feet were very cold. Not much imagination is needed to conceive the effect on persons not used to rough bathing, and even a strong man might suffer. People insisted ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... hands of the deceased herself, in the paroxysm of a rush of blood to the brain; and he fortified his wise position by the instance of a late statesman, who, he averred, cut his throat with a pen-knife, to relieve himself of pressure on the temples: while another surgeon—Stephen Cramp, he was farrier as well, and had been, until lately, time out of mind, the village AEsculapius, who looked with scorn on his pert rival, and opposed him tooth and nail on all occasions—insisted that it was not only physically ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... company swim over and fetch it, rather than walk several miles on foot, it being very hot weather; but none of the party could swim but himself; and so he plunged in, and, as he was swimming over, was taken with the cramp a few roods ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... ill-directed and tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him, the keen interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the house and estate of Abbotsford, and finally, notwithstanding obstinate and agonizing attacks of internal cramp which were undermining his constitution, Scott continued to produce rapidly the wonderful series of the Waverley Novels. "The Bride of Lammermoor," "Legend of Montrose" and "Ivanhoe" appeared in 1819, "The Monastery," "The Abbot" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... myself." Walton declares that it was from consumption that Donne suffered; but he had probably the seeds of many diseases. In some of his letters he dwells miserably on the symptoms of his illnesses. At one time, his sickness "hath so much of a cramp that it wrests the sinews, so much of tetane that it withdraws and pulls the mouth, and so much of the gout ... that it is not like to be cured.... I shall," he adds, "be in this world, like a porter in a great house, but seldomest abroad; I shall have many things to make me weary, and yet not ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... I have been, we remain strangers. At this time my father died suddenly. Last spring four suicides of friends in so many weeks had a very bad effect on my nerves. I am now in Berlin in better spirits, but the cramp ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... be doubted that her trials were at least equal to her encouragements. Long before, Mr. Boardman had written, "the thoughts of this people," the Burmans, "run in channels entirely different from ours. Their whole system has a tendency to cramp their intellectual powers;—professedly divine in its origin, it demands credence without evidence; it spurns improvement, disdains the suggestions of experience, and flatly denies the testimony of ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... every pallate; Then mark what ensu'th, I swear by my youth That every line in my ballad is truth. A ballad of wit, a ballad of worth, 'Tis newly printed and newly come forth; 'Twas made of a cloak that fell out with a gown, That cramp'd all the ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... rather shortly, "I guess we've done our duty. We've taken a prisoner. I owe a duty to my backbone, which is sore from these rocks; and my right leg, which has been tied in a knot with cramp ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sixteen-inch howitzer helped; but it was the multitudinous Kanonenfutter that nearly snowed us under. The British soldier at Cambrai and Le Cateau killed and killed until his rifle was too hot to hold and his hand was paralyzed with slayer's cramp; but still they came ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... are hot and damp, and my legs are stiff with cramp, And the office punkahs creak! And I'd give my tired soul, for the life that makes man whole, And a whiff of the jungle reek! Ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear boys, With office stool and pew, For it's time to turn to the lone Trail, our own Trail, the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... brown mare, would rather travel ten miles straight ahead than go backward ten feet. Brit was obliged to "take it out of her" with the rein ends and his full repertoire of opprobrious epithets before he could cramp the wagon and head them ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... laws and customs having for their perpetuation the only plea that they are time-honored, which in any way infringe on woman's equal rights, cramp her energies, cripple her efforts, or place her before the eyes of her family or the world as an inferior, are wrong, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... late September that the mail brought her a note from Jim. Julia's heart felt a second of paralyzing cramp as she put her hand on the letter; she read its dozen lines in a haze of dancing light; the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Bickerton, excessively frightened, gave a great scream, and calling on Harriet to follow her, ran up a steep bank, cleared a slight hedge at the top, and made the best of her way by a short cut back to Highbury. But poor Harriet could not follow. She had suffered very much from cramp after dancing, and her first attempt to mount the bank brought on such a return of it as made her absolutely powerless—and in this state, and exceedingly terrified, she had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret floor and set down his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon, brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to command the mouth ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... neither singing nor prayers when they started out, and in these regards they have not apostatized from their first faith, for they are up to this time a praiseless and prayerless people, never praying unless it is when they have the cramp or some other disease. Their wants seem to be few and easily supplied. Health and hominy are the staples of spiritual food with them at the present. The time was when, as a society, they wished to wear some of the main elements of the Christian religion, such as belief in the existence ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... the cramp in my fingers, I'll vow, mem. And all to no purpose. But when your laship pins it up with poetry, it fits so pleasant the next day as anything, and is so pure and ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... practise softly until the voice be well formed, when it will be easy to increase the volume of sound. Constant shouting causes the muscles of the larynx to lose their contractile power, and a condition is brought about which is analogous to writer's cramp. Sometimes no voice can be produced, while at others it is given forth in a series of uncontrollable jerks. Singers deficient in resonance, and who have not acquired the best use and control of the various parts of the resonator, ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... the right place; but she was scrupulously clean, and "maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness." She carried in her pocket "a handkerchief, a piece of wax-candle, an apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp-bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors, a handful of loose beads, several balls of worsted and cotton, a needle-case, a collection of curl-papers, a biscuit, a thimble, a nutmeg-grater, and a few miscellaneous articles." Clemency Newcome married ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... painful and sometimes ludicrous inaptness shown on the decks of her ships of war. Doubtless such a result is not to be attributed to one cause only. Doubtless the government of Spain was in many ways such as to cramp and blight a free and healthy development of private enterprise; but the character of a great people breaks through or shapes the character of its government, and it can hardly be doubted that had the bent of the people been toward trade, the action of government ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... to say she had the cramp, or that her foot was asleep, and rush off to play with the children, or to see if my mother wanted her. My mother did not care for the reading, but she did want Nan to learn to sit in her chair and embroider, like a demoiselle bien elevee, instead of a wild maiden of the civil wars. ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out of the room, but the door once closed, her manner changed. One might have supposed a sudden cramp had seized her, from her distorted face, and twitching and panting, and beating the air with her clinched fists, and her quivering ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... Cross nurses to shop, tiny midshipmen to visit the movies, and the sailors and officers of the Russian, French, British, Italian, and Greek war-ships to stretch their legs in the park of the Tour Blanche, or to cramp them under a cafe table. Sometimes the ambulances blocked the quay and the wounded and frost-bitten were lifted into the motor-boats, and sometimes a squad of marines lined the landing stage, and as ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... of medicines. It is particularly useful in confined habit of body, as also diarrhoea, bowel complaints, affections of the kidneys and bladder, such as stone or gravel; inflammatory irritation and cramp of the urethra, cramp of the kidneys and bladder, strictures, and hemorrhoids. This really invaluable remedy is employed with the most satisfactory result, not only in bronchial and pulmonary complaints, where irritation and pain are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... seaman it was impossible in the darkness to determine, lay grovelling on his belly in the wet scuppers, and kicking feebly with his outspread toes. We asked him what was amiss, and he replied incoherently, with a strange accent and in a voice unmanned by terror, that he had cramp in the stomach, that he had been ailing all day, had seen the doctor twice, and had walked the deck against fatigue till he was overmastered and had fallen ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... corners. The small holes are for the bent steel cramps 2 to hold by when the linings are being fixed to the ribs, etc., and the three larger ones to hold down the centre rib in the same way by means of fitted wood block 33, and for the corner blocks, when they are fitted properly to the shaped ribs. (Cramp 11 is used ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... death passed on a criminal by a judge:—he has just undergone the cramp word; sentence has just ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... the largest aggregations of fresh wetness in the world, if not the largest. When I stop to think that some day all this cold, cold water will have to be absorbed by mankind, it gives me a cramp in the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... summer of 1665. He seems to have gone ashore to see the French authorities. Perhaps he drank too strong a punch of rum and sugar—a drink very prejudicial in such a climate to one not used to it. Perhaps he took the yellow fever, or the coast cramp; the fact cannot now be known. At any rate he sickened, and died there, "before he could accomplish his desires"—"all things hereby remaining in suspense." One account, based on the hearsay of a sea-captain, says that Mansvelt was taken by the Spaniards, and brought to Porto Bello, and ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... style, on pony or donkey's back. Europeans, as a rule, like the latter mode of travelling best, as the Corean sedan-chairs are somewhat too short for the long-legged foreigner, and a journey of six or seven hours in a huddled-up position is occasionally apt to give one the cramp, especially as Western bones and limbs do not in general possess the pliability which characterises those composing the skeleton of ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... permitted no interruptions. But then I took exercise, and for ten days of the fifteen attended the Court of Session from two to four hours every day. This is nothing, however, to writing Ivanhoe when I had the actual cramp in my stomach; but I have no idea of these things preventing a man from doing what he has a mind. My love to all the party at Brighton—fireside party I had almost said, but you scorn my words—seaside party ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... two loving ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in, the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their wo, And now they keep an ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... His impatience grew more vehement with every hinderance. He seized an old iron bar which he found in the anteroom, and laboured with all his strength to move the wardrobe; and at last, after much heaving and wrenching and a hundred fruitless efforts, it gave way with a loud cracking as if an iron cramp or chain had snapt. The cabinet now by degrees came forward, and Antonio was at length able to squeeze himself in between it and the wall. He immediately saw his beloved portrait. It was lying upon the broad knob of a door, which jutted out of ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... my triumph early and in one big chunk! I figure that that one huge breakfast of triumph, if properly distributed, would have fed me through the whole two thousand miles of back-strain and muscle-cramp. And yet, through all the days of snail-paced toil that followed, I remained truly thankful for that ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... distant spectators of the incident, seemed to give themselves no uneasiness on his account, she supposed that he was accustomed to the exercise, and that there was no danger. But whether, in swimming, the boy had struck his breast against a sunken rock, or whether he was suddenly taken with cramp, or whether he had over-calculated his own strength, it so happened, that when he had disembarrassed the little plaything from the flags in which it was entangled, and sent it forward on its course, he had scarce swam a few yards in his ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... hoary knave Grows, here, immortal, and eludes the grave, Thy virtues immaturely met their fate, Cramp'd in the limit of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... or five hours' journey from the inn at Stradella, we broke up our little company before the hotel door, with divers manifestations of friendly feeling on all sides. The old priest was taken with the cramp again, before he had got half- way down the street; and the young priest laid the bundle of books on a door-step, while he dutifully rubbed the old gentleman's legs. The client of the Avvocato was waiting for him at the yard-gate, and kissed him on ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... proper, and even elegant, and there was a great display of jewels. Our English ladies, though quite of the second rate of even colonial gentility, however, bore away the prize of beauty and grace; for after all, the clothes, however elegant, that are not worn habitually, can only embarrass and cramp the native movements; and, as Mademoiselle Clairon remarks, "she who would act a gentlewoman in public, must be ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... district is fertile in relics. From Ringmer come rusty shield bosses and the mouldering skull of an Anglo-Saxon; from the old Lewes gaol come a lock and a key strong enough to hold Jack Sheppard; and from Horsham Gaol a complete set of fetters for ankles and wrists, once used to cramp the movements of female malefactors. Here, in a case, is a tiny bronze thimble that tipped the pretty finger of a Roman seamstress—one only among scores of tokens of the Roman occupation of the county. Flint arrow heads and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... famous swimmer at Eton, the Honorable Frederick undertook while at the Cowes to swim a certain considerable distance for a wager. In the midst of this enterprise he was suddenly seized with a cramp, and would inevitably have drowned had not the Lieutenant, who happened in a boat close at hand, leaped overboard and rescued the young gentleman from the watery grave in which he was about to be engulfed, ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... indication of discontent, on the part of laboring men and women, at conditions which cramp or fetter the free utterance of their manhood or womanly glory. In that divine discontent is the hope of the ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... beach they walked in days that seem to man long, long ago. How brief and strange the little lives of men, and so beset with customs framed to cramp the heart and curse the soul before its time! To me,—here since Time began to build that bridge of sighs and tears that link the two eternities—it seems but yesternight that, hand in hand they ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... pheasants; the wife hid pheasants; they were all (especially the policeman) as true as death. But there was something more true to death than true to life about it all: the figures were frozen with a magic frost of sleep or fear or custom such as does not cramp the movements of the poor men of other lands. I looked at the poacher and the policeman and the gun; then at the gun and the policeman and the poacher; and I could find no name for the fancy that haunted and escaped me. The poacher believed in the Game ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... the house No. 16, Rue de Provence. Madame Blanchard essayed to fall there without danger: but the balloon and the car struck on the roof of the house with a light shock. 'Save me!' cried the wretched woman. I got into the street at this moment. The car slid along the roof, and encountered an iron cramp. At this concussion, Madame Blanchard was thrown out of her car and precipitated upon the pavement. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... himself, and, especially in the case of large forces, will only enter into details when details are absolutely necessary. Any attempt to prescribe to a subordinate at a distance anything which he, with a fuller knowledge of local conditions, should be better able to decide on the spot, is likely to cramp his initiative in dealing with unforeseen developments, and will be avoided. In {179} particular, such expressions as 'Will await further orders' should be avoided" ("Field Service ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... least. But worse than that was feared, as, once overturned, the miserable conception of a boat would be beyond the power of any one in the water to right it again. And, moreover, the water was still intensely cold, and a very few minutes would have sufficed to give the cramp to a much ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... would have been more pleasant than the previous, but the sour apples, and a draught of cold water, had produced anything but a favourable effect; indeed, I suffered most of the day with severe symptoms of cramp. The day passed away again without any further incident, and as I set out at nightfall, I felt quite satisfied that I could not pass another twenty-four hours without nourishment. I made but little progress during the night, and often sat down, ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... the swaying lamp Shows how the vessel reels: As o'er her deck the billows tramp, And all her timbers strain and cramp With every shock she feels, It starts and shudders, while it burns, And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... transplant into Selenite ground, they were stowed away in the upper part of the projectile. There was a sort of granary there, loaded with things which the extravagant Frenchman had heaped up. What they were no one knew, and the good-tempered fellow did not explain. Now and then he climbed up by cramp-irons riveted to the walls, but kept the inspection to himself. He arranged and rearranged, he plunged his hand rapidly into certain mysterious boxes, singing in one of the falsest of voices an old French refrain to ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... the journal was kept so regularly, as Miss Macnaughtan suffered from writer's cramp, and the entries could only have been written with great difficulty. Frequently a passage is begun in the writing of her right, and finished in that of her left hand, and I have seen her obliged to grasp her pencil in her ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... potatoes, as boys say, "for a lark," and digging them because otherwise you will starve, digging them day after day as a dull, unavoidable imperative. The essence of toil is that imperative, and the fact that the attention must cramp itself to the work in hand—that it excludes freedom, and not that it involves fatigue. So long as anything but a quasi-savage life depended upon toil, so long was it hopeless to expect mankind to do anything but struggle to confer just as much of this blessing as possible upon one another. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... influence, upon humanity! Bridge over the space between, and you have directly the huge continental barrack-yard system all over England. And once get into the condition of a great continental military power, and you get the arbitrary power; you cramp down the people, and you unfit them from being what they ought to be—FREE And all the good influences together at work in this country could not have secured us against this, but for that blessed separation between ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... had thought it was all the same to him whether or not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips quivered ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... writer's cramp," said Cleggett, indulging the pleasant humor that was on him. He was really thinking that, with $500,000 of his own, he had written his last headline, edited his last piece of copy, sharpened ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... fine summer night, and after a long day of traveling, might I not naturally take a bath in the cool water before I went to bed? And, practiced as I was in the exercise of swimming, might it not nevertheless be my misfortune to be attacked by cramp? On the lonely shores of Greenwater Broad the cry of a drowning man would bring no help at night. The fatal accident would explain itself. There was literally but one difficulty in the way—the difficulty ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... all we had to say about it. Every word. You'd thought we'd exhausted the subject, or got the tongue cramp. But I expect we each had a lot of thoughts that didn't get registered. I know I did. And next mornin' the breakaway came sort ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... thousandfold. In the same way then any mental faculty becomes atrophied if it is unused. Bad company is that which produces this atrophy of the finer powers; and it is strange to see how soon the deadly process of shrinkage sets in. The awful thing to think of is that the cramp may insensibly be set in action by a company which, as I have said, is composed of rather estimable people. Who can forget Lydgate in "Middlemarch"? There is a type drawn by a woman of transcendent genius; and the type represents only too many ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the gnarled tree-root, suddenly appeared, and as suddenly vanished. Another half-hour went by, and yet another, but no further sign was given. My companion, unused to such a long vigil, shifted uneasily, and protested that he was tingling with cramp and longing for sleep; presently, unable to endure his discomfort, he arose, and stretched his limbs before settling ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... being reserved for the hypaethral part. The admirable hydraulic cement is here and there made to take the place of broken corners, and flaws have been remedied by carefully letting in small cubes of sound stone. There are also cramp-holes for metal which, of course, has been carried off by the Bedawin: the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... were. I do not say that people don't judge their neighbours' conduct, sometimes, doubtless, unfairly. But I do say that there is no unvarying conventional set of rules by which people are judged; no bed of Procrustes to stretch or cramp their minds and lives; no hypocritical excommunication which people are forced to pronounce, either by unconsidered habit, or by the unexpressed threat of the lesser interdict if they are lax in their hypocrisy. Are ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... forty inches in girth, and of gray chin whiskers and mustache. He was well shod and well clad; so much could be seen as he climbed down between the wheels and stood stamping his feet to shake the travel cramp out of his legs. He looked thirsty and unhappy and bored. A flush of recognition crossed his face when he saw the tall ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... in water athletics. He was like a duck himself, and never tired of teaching those boys who showed an inclination to learn. It was of vast importance to know just what ought to be done should a swimmer be suddenly seized with a cramp while in deep water, and with no one ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... quite died away, when the feet I stood on seemed suddenly seized with the cramp. Cup and coffee-pot dropped as dead from Don Marzio's hand as the ball from St. Francis's palm. There was a rush as if of many waters, and for about ten seconds my head was overwhelmed by awful dizziness, which numbed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... emotions of to-day could only be adequately expressed by the elbows!" Quite myriads of people made him write, "Your affectionate friend, Ivan Rowdidowsky," in their autograph-books, till at last he had cramp in the hand and Sir William Kiddem had to be called in. There were reassuring bulletins telling the public that they needn't be alarmed about their favourite, as cramp in the band is rarely fatal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... men, presidents and others, who view this situation with equanimity, if not with satisfaction. Teachers are born, not made, it is said. Can pedagogy furnish better teachers than specialized scholarly training? it is asked. If we train definitely for teaching, we shall diminish scholarship, cramp and warp native teaching faculty, and mechanize our ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... peacefulness possessed me, overcoming me in spite of myself. Feverish impatience and resistance seemed futile, and in my resignation I began to realise that to avert cramp and disablement from cold—for a chill, moist breeze from the ravine played continuously on me—some sort of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... just be permitted to indicate the wide and promising field for missionary labour that lies open in Canada West. No fetters of a foreign tongue need cramp the ardent thought of the evangelist, but in his native English he may tell the story of salvation through a land large as half a dozen European kingdoms, where thousands of his brethren according to the flesh are perishing for want of knowledge. A ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the people keep the balance of their property in their own hands, to be used for their own profit. Each State will then support its own government and contribute its due share toward the support of the General Government. There would be no surplus to cramp and lessen the resources of individual wealth and enterprise, and the banks would be left to their ordinary means. Whatever agitations and fluctuations might arise from our unfortunate paper system, they could never be attributed, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... that is known can be briefly stated. Browning's father was a gentleman of wealth and of original character, who allowed the striking individuality of his son Robert to develop itself in a natural way instead of attempting to cramp him into the mould of the other young Englishmen of his rank and time. At an early age he went to Italy, where he passed several years in diligent study of the institutions and art of that favored land as well as of her literature both ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... instruction that may tend to perpetuate mannerism, to cramp originality, and fetter genius, has of late years led to considerable opposition to art-academies generally, whenever more is contemplated by them than the mere school-teaching of the pupil, and the affording him assistance at the outset of his professional life. Haydon was fond ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... sail set, and the crew cleaning guns, suddenly there arose the cry "Man overboard! Away lifeboat!" The order was "Heave to!" The poor fellow, however, had sunk beneath the sea almost instantly. The water being so bitterly cold it was supposed the cramp seized him. He, at the time of the accident, was outside the ship cleaning the muzzle of a gun, when she gave a lurch which overbalanced him into the sea. No frivolity was there that day, or for the ensuing week, amongst the crew. The unhappy event had a moral effect ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... said Dan. "Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o' sea you're liable to turn her over. Ain't she a ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... strength, and health, Cramp the soul's endeavour; Drive it down In hell to drown, Hell ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... but perhaps the most characteristic of the whole. Despite the apparently unsuitable forms, it is evident that the writer is striving, without knowing it, at what we call journalism. But fashion and the absence of models cramp and distort his work. Its main features are to be found in the personal and satirical pieces, in the vivid and direct humanity of some touches in the euphuist tract-romances, in the delightful snatches of verse which intersperse ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... birds are so long coming," said Dick; "I'm getting the cramp. I say, Dave, are there ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... stag were on the other. There was no chance of fording the stream, and there was then no bridge. He did not care to swim back, for the excitement was out of him. He was trembling with cold, and afraid of cramp. "A mother-naked man," in a wilderness, with a flood between him and his raiment, was in a pitiable position. It did not occur to him to flay the stag, and dress in the hide, and, indeed, he would have ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... sound and sight of remote persons to the firesides of millions: the first faint scientific intimations that man is an all-pervading spirit. Not a body confined to a point in space, but the vast soul, which the ego in most barbaric modes conspires in vain to cramp. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... was strong among the poorer class of parishioners. Old stiff-jointed Mr. Tozer, who was still able to earn a little by gardening 'jobs', stopped Mrs. Cramp, the charwoman, on her way home from the Vicarage, where she had been helping Nanny to pack up the day before the departure, and inquired very ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... when the pressure is applied, they are likely to slip, particularly when the peg-box diminishes rapidly in width under the volute. They must therefore be cut more or less wedge like, according to the modelling or proportion of the parts, so that when placed on, the screwing of the cramp will be direct. When this is done to satisfaction, the usual process advised for the glueing may be proceeded with, and being carefully seen to be in proper order, the cramp with pads against the outside cheeks of the peg-box may be screwed on rather tightly. When quite dry, the ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... we knew instantly who he was—and somebody caught my feet, spreading our weight as much as possible. Over the bridge we made, Ongyatasse and Tiakens, who had come to himself by this time, crawled out on firm ice. In a very few minutes we had stripped them of their wet clothing and were rubbing the cramp out ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... chops, which we promptly laid as they were on one of the niggers' wood fires and ate in our fingers ravenously. The leg I also cooked and kept for to-day (I am writing on the morning of the 4th), and it is hanging on my saddle. I was rather sleepless last night, owing to cramp from a drenched blanket, and got up about midnight and walked over to the remains of one of our niggers' fires. Crouching over the embers I found a bearded figure, which hoarsely denounced me for coming to its fire. I explained that it was our fire, but that he was ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... deprive one of his senses. Then there is no rallying from the weakness they produce. A little attack, which one would only laugh at in India, prostrates you for a week or more, and this weakness brings on other disorders: cramp, for instance, of the most painful kind, very often follows. When lying in bed, my toes have sometimes curled round and looked me in the face; at other times, when I have put my hand behind my back, it has stuck there until, with the other hand, I have seized the contracted muscles, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... artist, one Dirzed, into her own service. This Dirzed was spoken of as a generally respected member of something called the Society of Assassins, and that'll give you an idea of what things are like on that sector, and why I don't want to send anybody who might develop trigger-finger cramp at the wrong moment. She and Dirzed left the home of the gentleman who had just had himself discarnated, presumably for Dalla's apartment, about a hundred miles away. That's the last that's been heard of either ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... a chum of mine got in the water, and was taken with a cramp," Smithy went on hurriedly, his blue eyes sparking with delight; "why, after what you showed me this morning, I believe that as soon as I know a little more about swimming, I could get ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... with himself what turn to make next. His head bent in meditation, he passed along lamely, his hands in the pockets of his torn trousers, where there was nothing, not even the thickness of a dime, to cramp his finger-room. Pausing in the aimless way of one who has no unfinished business ahead of him, he looked around, marking the changes which had come upon the street during those ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... which resources are four, namely, a patent fire-escape, a patent carriage pole, a coal plate, and a dog muzzle. But the labels, though verbose, are scarcely full enough. They do not tell you, for instance, if you wish to prevent cramp while bathing, whether the dog muzzle or the coal plate should be employed, nor do they show how the fire-escape will prevent the explosion of a paraffin lamp. However, this is a detail. We feel assured that no intelligent person will regret a visit to this most interesting and instructive exhibition. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... boat sat three men, unquestionably brave, whose courage no man would have dared dispute; nevertheless, at that voice, that accent and those gestures, they felt a chill access of terror cramp their veins. As for Grimaud, his hair stood on end and drops of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which not a single letter has been seen for many ages; but this habile observateur, perceiving a great number of irregular holes upon the frontal and frize of this edifice, concluded that they were the cramp-holes which had formerly held an inscription, and which, according to the practice of the Romans, were often composed of single letters of bronze. Mons. Seguier therefore erected scaffolding, and took ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... lowering myself gently by the rattlin of my hammock, descended slowly and noiselessly into the sea. I hung on thus for a couple of seconds, half fearing the attempt, and irresolute of purpose. Should strength fail, or even a cramp seize me, I must be lost, and none would ever know in what an enterprise I had perished. It would be set down as a mere attempt at escape. This notion almost staggered my resolution, but only for a second or so; and, with a short prayer, I slowly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... these latter kind of geniuses is lest they cramp their own abilities too much by imitation, and form themselves altogether upon models, without giving the full play to their own natural parts. An imitation of the best authors is not to compare with a good original; ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... cramp my style any." He had sprung on his horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any measure of ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... was Change of Life and cramping. No human tongue can describe what I suffered with the cramp. I dreaded from one time to another so much that I almost wanted ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... was once supposed to be a cure for many diseases. Lord Bacon says that in his time people afflicted with cramp wore bands of green periwinkle tied about their limbs. It had also its supposed moral influences. According to Culpepper the leaves of the flower if eaten by man and wife together would revive between ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... more than a woman, and at last the eyes grew hazy, while every joint ached. There was a horrible cramp in her shoulder, and to lessen it she moved a trifle so that her arm rested on the pillow. That was easier, and while she struggled with her weariness her head followed it, until it sank down close by Alton's shoulder. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss |
