"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite dusk before he reached the hotel. The country was all new and strange to him, and he had missed his way more than once. But though he was tired, and stiff, and hungry, he felt that his mental energies were braced, his mind at ease, and the disturbing and torturing memories of the previous night no longer ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... and gave me time. She was in an ecstasy; reasoning, supplicating, conjuring, panting. I, her friends, the whole world must join her: and join her I did. It was the very relief of which hypocrisy stood in need. I entreated this straight-backed youth, stiff in determination, to condescend to lend a pitying ear to our petitions; to suffer us to permeate his bowels of compassion, and avert this fatal and impending cloud, fraught ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the evidence is slender, but idolatry in the sense of "image-worship" is frequently mentioned in the lives of early saints.[982] Gildas also speaks of images "mouldering away within and without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features."[983] This pathetic picture of the forsaken shrines of forgotten gods may refer to Romano-Celtic images, but the "stiff and deformed features" suggest rather native art, the art of a people unskilful at reproducing the human form, however artistic ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... used to at home. When they passed through the village, nodding and smiling to nearly every one they met, and making little friendly remarks to the people at their cottage doors, she could not help thinking of her stiff walk in the park with Miss Mervyn, which always lasted a certain time if it was fine, and from which she often came back feeling very cross. If the walk at Fieldside were "odd," it was certainly amusing, and she began to wish there ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... gold crescents from Guiana. Out swung the stars, blazing, mighty, with black spaces in between. Again rang the trumpet, a high voice proclaiming eternal endeavor. The wind began to blow, and on the plain the cacti, gloomy and fantastic sentinels, moved their stiff bodies, waved their twisted arms in gestures of strangeness and horror. The Spaniard turned on his heel, went down to his men-at-arms where they kept watch and ward, and at midnight, riding like Death on a great, pale steed, led a hundred horsemen out ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... war office, with which he (Lord Aberdeen) did not think it his duty to comply; that he, and the government of which he was the head, would resist Mr. Roebuck's motion, which he considered a vote of censure upon the ministry. The premier's address was cold, stiff, haughty, and quietly defiant, but did not appear to make the least impression upon the peers, who were, like the rest of the public, burning with impatience to know the terms and result of Lord John's explanation in the commons. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... quiet field on the hillside, where the spruce trees, straight and stiff, stand like faithful sentinels, the grass that had grown over Bill Cavers's grave was now sere and gray; only the hardy pansies were green still and gay with blossoms, mute emblems of the ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... answering her as he had answered La Boulaye, "was my wife less a woman think you? Pah! There is yet another here who was wronged," he announced, and he waved his hand in the direction of La Boulaye, who stood, stiff and pale, by ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... pieces. I had turned the soles of them into sandals, held up by numerous bits of string, which cut my toes and ankles very badly every time I knocked my feet against a tree or stone. My feet were full of thorns, so numerous that I had not the energy to remove them. The left leg was absolutely stiff with the big boil, and I could ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... pointed to his kodak. They smiled and nodded, showing all their teeth, and the mother took the littlest baby, for there seemed to be a very generous number of the smaller members of the family, and sat down with it in her lap on the rickety step. Then they all drew up stiff as sticks, and didn't ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... belonged to the Allertons for three hundred years, and the recumbent effigy, in stone, of the founder of the family's fortunes, with his two wives in ruffs and stiff martingales, was to be seen in the chancel of the parish church. It was the work of an Italian sculptor, lured to England in company of the craftsmen who made the lady-chapel of Westminster Abbey; and the renaissance delicacy ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... to him, to-day," said Captain Gregg, "but the moment I began to speak of his great kindness to our men he froze as stiff as Mulligan's ear. What was the use? I simply couldn't thaw an icicle. What made him so effective in getting the frost out of them was his capacity for absorbing it into his ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... discussions, and by imagining what 'the civilised world' (p. 225) will think. As he gets nearer to his subject, he has definite statistical reports made for him by 'Welby and Hamilton on the figures' (p. 306), has 'stiff conclaves about finance and land' (p. 298), and nearly comes to a final split with Parnell on the question whether the Irish contribution to Imperial taxation shall be a fifteenth ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... were bloodless, and whose locks were hoar Mustaches strouting long and chin close shave, A steepled turban on her head she wore, Her garment wide, and by her side, her glaive, Her gilden quiver at her shoulders hung, And in her hand a bow was, stiff and strong. ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... sat together in the shady drawing-room, and she asked him about Paris and his family, and he replied with a stiff formality which had in it ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Brandreth. He was delighted with my design. The steam pile-driver would be, in his opinion, the prime agent for effecting the commencement of the great work originated by himself. At first the feat of damming out such a high tide as that of the Hamoaze seemed very doubtful, because the stiff slate silt was a treacherous and difficult material to penetrate. But now, he thought, the driving would be rendered comparatively easy. With Captain Brandreth's consent the contractors ordered of me two of my steam hammer pile-drivers. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... filled the air, but this time louder, more intense, a cry of great agony. The sweat dripped from McCurdie's forehead. They lifted the dead man and brought him into the room, and after laying him on a dirty strip of carpet they did their best to straighten the stiff limbs. Biggleswade put on the table a bundle which he had picked up outside. It contained some poor provisions—a loaf, a piece of fat bacon, and a paper of tea. As far as they could guess (and as they learned later they guessed rightly) the man was the master of the house, who, coming home blind ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... as immaculate and lustrous as an island of snow in a sea of ink—as a good deed in a naughty world. Its punctilious array of crystal and silver was no more foreign to the setting than were the men who sat round it, stiff in that black-and-white armour of civilisation, impregnable against the insidious ease of the East, in which your expatriate Englishman nightly encases himself wherever he may be, as loath to forego the ceremony of "dressing for ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... that followed Tom and his friends worked hard. The air glider was made as nearly perfect as any machine is, and in a fairly stiff gale, that blew up about a week later, Tom did some things in it that made his friends open their eyes. The young inventor had it under nearly as good control as he had his dirigible ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... mind is absorbed in conversation with a third person. The operator meanwhile points with his finger to one of the fingers of the subject, which finger alone responds to this silent selection by becoming stiff or anaesthetic, as the case may be. The interpretation is difficult, but the phenomenon, which I ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the house at half-past five, and after some conversation with Mrs. Hittaway, was left there all alone to await the coming of Lord Fawn. He was in appearance and manners very different from the Andy Gowran familiarly known among the braes and crofts of Portray. He had a heavy stiff hat, which he carried in his hand. He wore a black swallow-tail coat and black trousers, and a heavy red waistcoat buttoned up nearly to his throat, round which was tightly tied a dingy black silk handkerchief. At Portray no man was more voluble, no man more self-confident, no man more equal to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Our fiercest strength. For when the conquering wolves Into that village won, we in our huts Lay hearkening to their rejoicing hunger; But Gwat stayed out in the stars all night long. I peered at him as much as that whipt dog, My heart, had daring for; and he stood stiff, With all his senses aiming at the noise. Some strong bad eagerness kept tightly rigged The cordage of his body, till his nerves Loosed on a sudden. He yelled, "What do we here, High up among bleak winds, always afraid Of murder from the wolves? ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... dexterous cast, over the place where you observe the fish rise. Dapping or Dibbing, or perhaps more properly Dipping,—this is another method of using the natural flies, and a very killing way too; your rod for this fishing must be of a good length, with a stiff top; your line composed solely of good, fine, strong gut, must be about but not less than a yard in length,—put your flies on the same sized hooks, and after the same way as you are directed to adopt in the other method where a longer line is used. Having stationed ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... between them a long narrow box, over which the Middler class colors, green and white, had been draped, and on which rested a stiff wreath of white artificial flowers tied with streamers of vivid green. Advancing to the front, the six bearers deposited their burden before the rostrum, then took their places with the other robed figures upon the ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... corner a little round pillar, the height of the head, rears itself up. On the top of the head there is an ornamental battlement, composed of dog-tooth pieces of cork. As the clock has a head, it ought to have a face; indeed, the face is one of the chief parts of a clock. Take a piece of stiff white paper or thin cardboard, cut it square the exact size of the head, and on it mark, in your neatest style, the proper number of figures and the two black hands: fasten the paper on a square of cork the same size, and put it in at the back of the head. Keep it in its place ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... had retired so early, and in so exhausted a condition, Bennington de Laney could not sleep. He had taken a slight fever, and the wound in his shoulder was stiff and painful. For hours on end he lay flat on his back, staring at the dim illuminations of the windows and listening to the faint out-of-door noises or the sharper borings of insects in the logs of the structure. His mind was not active. He lay in a semi-torpor, whose most vivid consciousness ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... Mix decorated her shoes. However, Mix didn't perceive the mistake, but darted down stairs, put on his hat and walked off to the courtroom. It was a very cold morning, and by the time Mix reached his destination the varnish was as stiff as a stone. He felt a little uncomfortable about the head, and he endeavored to remove his hat to discover the cause of the difficulty, but to his dismay it was immovable. It was glued fast to the skin, and his efforts to take it off gave him ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... gaunt and terrible too, smoulder in her ruined heart as the fire may do in the ashes when all that was living and glorious has been consumed. Almost nothing as she became when Charlemagne left her, a mere body still wrapt in gorgeous raiment stiff with gold, but without a soul, she still dreamt of dominion, of empire, and of power. Governed by her archbishops, she rebelled against Rome, struggled for a secular and sometimes a religious autonomy, and came at last, as surely might have been prophesied, to consider herself as a feudatory ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... command to that place. There I came first under the direct command of Major- General Robert H. Milroy, then distinguished for his zeal for the Union and for personal bravery. He was tall and of commanding presence. His head of white, shocky, stiff hair led his soldiers to dub him the "Gray Eagle." He had much military learning, and had fought in many of the bloodiest battles of the war, notably at the second Bull Run under Pope. He had seen service also in ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... was a good lot o' field-ice floatin', with seals lyin' on it, and we began to catch them. One day, when we was goin' down to the ice as usual, we saw a black object sittin' on a floe that had drifted in the night before with a stiff breeze. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... old rascal said this, there wasn't a man on deck who didn't look pale, in spite of his dirt and his sunburn. The chief officer tried to keep his knees stiff, but I could see him shaking. 'What's a Water-devil?' said he, trying to make believe he thought it all stuff and nonsense. The Portuguese touched his forelock. 'Do you remember, sir,' said he, 'what was the latitude and longitude when you took your observation to-day?' 'Yes,' said ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... Hill," interrupted Coristine, "for saying that your perfectly correct expression calls up that of a friend of mine. Meeting an old college professor, very stiff and precise in manner and language, he had occasion to tell him that, as a student, he had enjoyed very poor health. 'I do not know about the enjoying of it, sir,' he answered, 'but I know your health was very poor.' Ha, ha! ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... second only to Sir Francis Drake, was astir within her. She sat there with the salt sea wind in her nostrils, and her hair flung upon it like a pennant of victory, and looked at the ship wet with the ocean surges, the sails stiff with the rime of salt, and the group of English sailors on the deck, and those old ancestral instincts which constitute the memory of the blood awoke. She was in that instant as she sat there almost as truly that ardent Suffolkshire lad, Thomas Cavendish, ready to ride to the death the white ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... seemed struggling in all her gestures, and in every syllable that she articulated—a naturally free, familiar, good-natured, precipitate, Irish manner, had been schooled, and schooled late in life, into a sober, cold, still, stiff deportment, which she mistook for English. A strong, Hibernian accent, she had, with infinite difficulty, changed into an English tone. Mistaking reverse of wrong for right, she caricatured the English pronunciation; and the extraordinary precision of her London phraseology betrayed ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... of my fellow-creatures has revealed to me that there are many intelligent persons who think that a suit at law commences in court. This is not so. Many suits are fought and decided by the special pleaders, and so never come into court; and, as a stiff encounter of this kind actually took place in Hardie v. Hardie, a word of prefatory explanation may be proper. Suitors come into court only to try an issue: an issue is a mutual lie direct: and towards this both parties are driven ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... some explanations on the expression 'baccia in bocca', and on the love which made Ricciardetto's arrow so stiff, and I, only too ready to comment on the text, made her touch an arrow as stiff as Ricciardetto's. Of course, she was angry at that, but her wrath did not last long. She burst out laughing when she came ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... answered by a sort of inclination of the head as slight and stiff as could be imagined. Yet it encouraged our man of law to proceed. "I can promise You, Mr. Hazlewood, few people have taken the interest in that matter which I have done, both for the sake of the country, and on account of my particular respect for your family, which ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... I have got to man's estate, and have a wholesome fear of killing myself. Do you think I would lie down now on wet sea-weed, and get slowly soaked through with the rain for a whole hour, on the chance of a seal coming on the other side of the rock? Of course when I tried to get up I was as stiff as a stone. I could not have lifted the rifle if a hundred seals had been there. And it was no wonder at all I ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... this character very frequently, and though I believe that the stiff formality of the past age was more congenial than the present to the formation and growth of these peculiar beings, there are still a sufficient number of the species in existence for the philosophical cosmopolite to study and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... hope it will be a good fat one. When it comes, I fancy we shall be able to put up something rather pretty in the way of a defence. The Salient is stiff with guns—I don't think the Boche quite realises how stiff! And we owe the swine something!" he ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... cheek she did remember, and his glaring eyes, and even the roughness of his beard as he pressed his face against her own; but she could not say whence had come the blood, nor till her arm became stiff and motionless did she know ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... of a day and a night, in which we experienced the vicissitudes of a stiff breeze, and a dead calm, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... wouldn't do it. Miss, I would starve till I was as stiff as a peckerwood peckin' at a hole 'fore I'd sign anything on my deed. Miss, I wouldn't put a scratch on my deed. I wouldn't trust 'em, wouldn't trust 'em if ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... move away from the altar, pronounced man and wife, they know they are starting a great adventure. His beaming face masks a stiff determination to keep his bride happy in spite of any worldly obstacles. Her radiance hides a solemn inward vow to do everything humanly possible to make smooth the way of their life together. They are right. Unless they are very different from most people, this new joint ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... which met their view; but at the next instant they advanced to the couch, and contemplated with mournful attention the scene presented to them. For there—upon that couch—side by side, lay Fernand Wagner and Nisida of Riverola—stiff, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... sector, yet the state still plays a major role in basic industry, banking, transport, and communication. The largest industrial sector is textiles and clothing, which accounts for one-third of industrial employment; it faces stiff competition in international markets with the end of the global quota system. However, other sectors, notably the automotive and electronics industries, are rising in importance within Turkey's ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... it. If you were given to compliment and insincerity, I should be afraid of asking you; because, among other evident reasons, I might then appear to be asking for your praise instead of your opinion. As it is—I want to know what you think of my book. Is the translation stiff? If you know me at all (and I venture to hope that you do) you will be certain that I shall like your honesty, and love you for being honest, even if you put on the very ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... it all came about. He was conscious of himself, of his power. And while for the first years he had drifted, he was always conscious of his power. Knew that he had but to rise, to assume gigantic stature. And then, just because he was very stiff, and the pain of stiffness and stretching made him uncouth, he grew angry. He resented his captivity, chafed at his being limited like that, did not understand how it had come about. It had come about through love. Through sheer, sheltering love. The equivalent ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... was presumably well to do," I remarked, endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. "Such paper could not be bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly strong and stiff." ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... illustrating, this purpose will be even more thoroughly accomplished during the exercise itself, as the muscular and other tissues are virtually flushed out owing to the more fluid character of the blood and its more ready and perfect circulation through all parts. One who feels stiff from severe exercise, or finds his tissues sore for other reasons, should be able to overcome this stiffness and gain a sense of refreshment through ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... "Stiff!—wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course this"—he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head—"is quite different. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... was to send air down to him, Edgar Berrington was in a state of decided comfort. Above water nought was to be seen but a bleak, rocky, forbidding coast, a grey sky with sleet driving across it, and an angry indigo sea covered with white wavelets. Nothing was to be felt but a stiff cutting breeze, icy particles in the air, and cold blood in the veins. Below water all was calm and placid; groves of sea-weed delighted the eye; patches of yellow sand invited to a siesta; the curiously-twisted ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... pretty, the dance step he executed—a sort of stiff-legged skip accompanied by a vulgar hip wriggle and concluding with ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... by joining her horns; they, according to their custom (for use had made custom), uttered lamentations; among whom Phaethusa, the eldest of the sisters, when she was desirous to lie on the ground, complained that her feet had grown stiff; to whom the fair Lampetie attempting to come, was detained by a root suddenly formed. A third, when she is endeavoring to tear her hair with her hands, tears off leaves; one complains that her legs ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... nothin' further to do an' less to be said. That cavalcade, erstwhile so gala an' buoyant, drags itself wearily homeward, the exhausted dogs in the r'ar walkin' stiff an' sore like their laigs is wood. For more'n a mile the complainin' howls of the hysterical yeller dog is wafted to our years. Then they ceases; an' we figgers his sympathizin' master has done took him into the shanty an' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... by Johnson in the Spectator vein, issued in 1750-52, but written in that "stiff and cumbrous style which," as Professor Saintsbury remarks, "has been rather unjustly identified with Johnson's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Miss Esther to no sich. She's sweet, she is, and she ain't noways stiff. She has just which I call the manners a ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Common began to put on spring attire. The marsh grass over beyond sent up stiff green spikes and tussocks that looked like little islands, and there were water plants with large leaves that seemed continually nodding to their neighbors. The frog concerts at the pond were simply bewildering ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... stiff breeze in our favour we slowly stemmed the current. Look at the current side, and you would think we were doing eight knots an hour or more, but look at the shore side, close to which we kept to escape as far as possible from the current, and you saw how ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... There was no tangle of vines about its blank walls of cream-colored brick with white trimmings, nor even trees to soften the stare with which it surveyed the dusty highway; and the formal precision of the place was unrelieved by flowers, except for a stiff design in foliage plants on ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... to undertake the commission. "My wife's pretty grateful not to have to be worrying herself to death about my supper and she'll be tickled stiff to have a chance to go spend some money even if it isn't for herself. She used to be saleslady in the biggest shop in Louisville, before she married me. She's just about Miss ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... should make a sound, and they proceeded to untie his hands. Then they motioned to him that he was to get on his hands and knees and go before them, which, with muffled grunts, and after two or three attempts, he succeeded in doing. He was evidently dazed yet and stiff from the cramped attitude in which he had been lying, but stern necessity was on him and he finally wobbled and staggered on ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... of your energies, I have never yet been able to satisfy myself as to whether I ought to class you amongst our rougher sex, or include you in the ranks of those who wear high heels, and very low dresses. Sometimes you fix your place of business in a breast adequately covered by a stiff and shining shirt-front and a well-cut waistcoat. Sometimes you inhabit the expansive bosom of a matron. Nor do you confine yourself to one class alone out of the many that go to the composition of our social life. You have impelled grocers ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... like any bourgeoise chit. Who'd think you educated highly? No, not so stiff. Do blush a bit, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... worthy the imitation of all nations. The mairie in each arrondissement has become no less than a community center. The XIV arrondissement in Paris is but the pattern for many. Here the wife of the mayor, Mme. Brunot, has made the stiff old building a human place. The card catalogue carrying information about every soldier from the district, gives its overwhelming news each day gently to wife or mother, through the lips of Mme. Brunot or her women assistants. ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... a stiff silk and loaded with showy jewelry, sat in the drawing-room at Roselands in a bay-window overlooking the avenue. She was gazing eagerly toward its entrance, as though ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... think. Maybe twice." Her eyes seemed to light up somewhere from far back in her head. "But enough of this mad passion," she said. "I want an invitation to have a drink—a stiff one." ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the 27th, Simpson appeared to be at the last extremity; his limbs were already stiff and frozen; his difficult breathing formed a sort of mist round his head, and convulsive movements announced that his last hour was come. The expression of his face was terrible, desperate, and he threw looks of powerless anger towards the captain. ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... native lines had now been driven, had been turned into a hospital for the wounded Tagalogs left by their comrades on the field. Beneath a broad thatched shed behind the church lay the bodies of the dead, stiff and still under the coverings of cocoanut-fibre cloth thrown hastily over them. The light of a full tropic moon threw the shadow of the roof over them like a soft, brown velvet pall. They were to be buried between day-break ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... attentive housewife, While cheerful groups at every door conven'd Bawl cross the narrow lane the parish news, And oft the bursting laugh disturbs the air. But see who comes to set them all agag! The weary-footed pedlar with his pack. How stiff he bends beneath his bulky load! Cover'd with dust, slip-shod, and out at elbows; His greasy hat sits backward on his head; His thin straight hair divided on his brow Hangs lank on either side his glist'ning cheeks, And woe-begone, yet ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... our superior—our facile princeps, from the first. Some of us set agoing a little weekly periodical, called "The Legal Examiner," to which he was a constant contributor—his papers being always characterised by point and precision, though the style was dry and stiff. It grieves me to say, that he met with no encouragement as a special pleader, consummately qualified as he was for success in that department, and scarcely ever to be found absent from his chambers; where he was at all hours to be found, modest, patient, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... to higher flights of wit. The other men stared. This was a new aspect of the stiff-necked young teamster they had known. They did not relish it overmuch. None of them dared talk back to ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Roy Dennis and Mabel Farrar," Ethel went on, her face flushing. The four girls bowed coldly. Mabel Farrar acknowledged the introduction by a stiff nod. The young man took off his cap for the first time ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... Homais for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... courses, bent a new jib, and stood out to windward close hauled, in hopes to make a good offing, and then put his ship dead before the wind, which was now rising to a stiff breeze. In doing this he crossed the crippled pirate's bows, within eighty yards; and sore was the temptation to rake him; but his ammunition being short, and his danger being imminent from the other pirate, he had the self-command to ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... before my face, and tell me this?" he roared, infuriated by their cold resistance. He flung out an arm in a gesture of terrible dismissal. "Out of my sight, you proud and evil men! Back to your cells, to await my pleasure. Since in your arrogant, stiff-necked pride you refuse to do my will, you shall receive the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... fragile creature who held a microphone, its wires attached to an interpreting machine. He blinked his huge eyes slowly, his stiff mouth fumblingly forming words of a language his race had not ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... occasional puffs. It increased in strength. The four boats inside him stooped to it. They sped across and across the channel towards the stone perch in short tacks. Kinsella hoisted his sail and took the tiller. The boat swung up into the wind and coursed away to the south west, close hauled to a stiff west wind. The thunder cloud burst ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... that Richard and that—what's his name? George—and all the rest, I should think I was in Cap'n Cyrus Whittaker's settin-room back home. The furniture looks like Cap'n Cy's and the pictures look like those he has, and—and everything looks as stiff and starched and old-fashioned as can be. But the Cap'n never had a Henry. No, sirree, Henry don't belong on Cape Cod! Hosy," with a sudden burst of confidence, "it's a good thing I saw that Lord Erskine ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... you're English! Then in Heaven's name, speak English—not that gabble." And then he repeated his order, "Speak English," in English, and continued in that language, which he spoke with stiff formal correctness. ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... we may have daily forgiveness for our daily sins and trespasses, mercy and goodness must follow us; or as Moses has it, 'And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord! let my Lord, I pray thee, go amongst us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance' (Exo 34:9). Join to this that prayer of his, which you find in Numbers: 'Now I beseech thee let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Chansons Spirituelles, that the defenders of Margaret's claim to be a poet rest most strongly. In the former her love, not merely for her brother, but for her husband, appears unmistakably, and suggests graceful thoughts. In the latter the force and fire which occasionally break through the stiff wrappings of the longer poems appear with less difficulty and in ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... the boys learn some trade. James she had already apprenticed to learn the mystery of shoemaking. And for Lloyd she now sent and apprenticed him, too, to the same trade. Oh! but it was hard for the little man, the heavy lapstone and all this thumping and pounding to make a shoe. Oh! how the stiff waxen threads cut into his soft fingers, how all his body ached with the constrained position and the rough work of shoemaking. But one day the little nine-year-old, who was "not much bigger than a last," was able to produce a real shoe. Then it was probably that a dawning ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... in opposite directions, and the voices ring as their heels do on the cobbles. He is not a man of arguments, but of convictions. He is so full of convictions that, though not an indolent man, he has no time for arguments. "On this stiff ground," he says in North Wiltshire, "they grow a good many beans and give them to the pigs with whey; which makes excellent pork for the Londoners; but which must meet with a pretty hungry stomach to swallow it in Hampshire." ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... himself in the deserts. There was no fear, there was no hastening after me, I did not listen to an evil plot, my name was not heard in the mouth of the magistrate; but my limbs went, my feet wandered, my heart drew me; my god commanded this flight, and drew me on; but I am not stiff-necked. Does a man fear when he sees his own land? Ra spread thy fear over the land, thy terrors in every strange land. Behold me now in the palace, behold me in this place; and lo! thou art he who is over all the horizon; the sun rises at ...
— Egyptian Literature
... laws of the commonwealth, they frequently flatter themselves with the hopes of impunity. But no man escapes the punishment of their censure and dislike, who offends against the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps, and would recommend himself to. Nor is there one of ten thousand, who is stiff and insensible enough, to bear up under the constant dislike and condemnation of his own club. He must be of a strange and unusual constitution, who can content himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own particular society. Solitude many men have sought, and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... the growling collie. "He's had all he can carry, for one day. He's not going to follow us. By this time, he'll begin to realize, too, that his face is battered pretty much to a pulp, and that some of my body-smashes are flowering into bruises. I pity him when he wakes up to-morrow. He'll be too stiff to move an inch, without grunting. His pluck and his nerve are no match for his strength .... Here we are!" he broke off, beginning to skirt the hither edge of the swamp. "Unless all my dope is wrong, it ought to be somewhere close ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... unintelligently mauled and mishandled by it. Marcus Dods, when he was an old man, said: "I do not envy those who have to fight the battle of Christianity in the twentieth century." Then, after a moment, he added, "Yes, perhaps I do, but it will be a stiff fight." It is a stiff fight, and for this reason if for no other, that before we can get on much further in a progressive world we must achieve with wisdom and courage some fundamental ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... said he, "and that I no longer spoke with the ambassador, but with the Duke de Nivernois, whom I know and love, and whose intellectual conversation will afford me a rare pleasure. Let us, therefore, chat together innocently, and forget the stiff ceremonies with which, I think, we have both been sufficiently burdened today. Tell me something of Paris, monsieur, of that lovely, enchanting, but overbold coquette, Paris, whom the world adores while it ridicules, and imitates ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... passed along so that the supporting infantry would know not to fire on them. The first line of trenches was to be consolidated the first day. On the second day the second line was to be assaulted and on the third day the third line. In a similar manner everybody knew there was stiff work ahead. That evening my battalion was relieved in the trenches by the Royal Montreal Regiment. When we got back to our quarters we received orders to "sleep on our arms" that night. That meant in our clothes, with our belts ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... take us home. So I had to catch an Injun and make him take a note to the nearest station for gas, and wait till he got back with some. I'd have sent word on to you, but I was in such a darned hurry I forgot—and the Injuns were all scared stiff, and it was only by making them understand I wanted water for the Bird, and nothing ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... not, as the reader will hear, thoroughly uncover my prick tip without pain, till I was sixteen years old nor well then when quite stiff unless it went up a cunt. My nursemaid I expect thought this curious, and tried to remedy the error in my make, and hurt me. My mother, by her extremely delicate feeling, shut herself off from ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... as though expecting an introduction. His lips were half parted; he had the air of one about to make a remark. Then suddenly a curious change seemed to come over his manner. His natural ease seemed to have entirely departed. He stood stiff and rigid, and there was something forbidding in his face as he looked down at the girl who had glanced timidly towards him. A word—it was inaudible but it sounded like part of a woman's name—escaped ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... English mile. The immediate approach to BOLBEC is that of the entrance to a modern and flourishing trading town, which seems to be beginning to recover from the effects of the Revolution. After Rouen, and even Caudebec, it has a stiff modernized air. I drove to the principal inn, opposite the church, and bespoke dinner and a bed. The church is perfectly, modern, and equally heavy and large. Crowds of people were issuing from Vespers, when, ascending a flight ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and ourselves were the last to go. Judy walked with us along the moonlit drive to the gate, which is so unnecessary a luxury in India that the servants always leave it open. She swung the stiff halves together. ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... tormenting us with gibes and sneers, and bringing us the San-benitos in which we were to appear in the great square next morning. It was already turning gray in the east when two of these men entered my dungeon, where I lay still stiff and bruised because of the racking which I had undergone a few days before. They woke me rudely and without consideration, caring naught for the woes I had already suffered or the sorrow I was ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... hind quarters, the act of climbing with them cannot have had anything of the nimbleness or activity generally associated with it. On the contrary, they probably were barely able to support their huge bodies on their hind limbs, which are exceedingly massive, and on the stiff, heavy tail, while they dragged down with their front limbs the branches of the trees, and fed upon them at leisure. The Zooelogical Museum at Cambridge is indebted to the generosity of Mr. Joshua Bates for a very fine set of casts taken from the Megatherium in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in a party of prisoners, and we were marched to the Buttes de Chaumont, passing in our way many a barricade, or rather the remains of them. Here, the body of a man shot through the head was lying stiff and cold upon the pavement; there, was a pool of coagulated blood; there, the corpse of a gentleman in plain clothes, apparently sleeping, with his head buried in his arms; but a small red stream issuing from his body told that he slept the sleep of death. Some, as we marched on, kept silence, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... satin to the richest of silks, and almost always wore it. Now and then she would attempt a change, but was always defeated and driven back into satin. She was precise in her personal rules, but not stiff in the manners wherein she embodied them: these were indeed just a little florid and wavy, a trifle profuse in their grace. She kept an excellent table, and every appointment about the house was in good ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... and scrubbing a little, and baking a Christmas cake, I just ironed out a few pieces, my best cap and apron, and the likes of that, and before I had finished, I give you word my back began to ache. Now what do you make of it? And then, my joints—stiff! Yes, Dr. John, stiff! How am I to do my work with stiff joints, ...
— Up the Chimney • Shepherd Knapp
... would be Deaf, sometimes Dumb, and sometimes Blind, and often, all this at once.... Their necks would be broken, so that their Neck-bone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it; and yet on the sudden, it would become again so stiff that there was ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... wood fire, in a stiff, high-backed chair sat a young woman, in her hat and wrap and gloves, "jest a settin' and a waitin'." She was a well-made and comely young woman under thirty, with a ruddy face, smooth hair and bright eyes that the Sheriff knew ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... in the kitchen window; nae wonder ye're nickering (neighing); ... it's been a stiff journey; a'm tired, lass ... a'm tired tae deith," and the ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... and there to the Treasury-Chamber, where the East India Company and three Councillors pleaded against me alone, for three or four hours, till seven at night, before the Lords; and the Lords did give me the conquest on behalf of the King, but could not come to any conclusion, the Company being stiff: and so I think we shall go to law with them. This done, and my eyes mighty bad with this day's work, I to Mr. Wren's, and then up to the Duke of York, and there with Mr. Wren did propound to him my going to Chatham to-morrow with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... dare to publish any paper therein prohibited, that editor and that editor's newspaper would assuredly be crumpled up in a manner very disagreeable, if not altogether destructive. Editors of newspapers are self-willed, arrogant, and stiff-necked, a race of men who believe much in themselves and little in anything else, with no feelings of reverence or respect for matters which are august enough to other men;—but an injunction from a Court of Chancery is a power which even an editor respects. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... presented a singular contrast to the French officer's enthusiastic vivacity, made a stiff bow, and in his Russian accent replied: "First of all, permit me to express my surprise at seeing you here. I left you on a continent, and here I have the honor of finding ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... The sons of Troy gave judgment. Victory And those immortal arms awarded they With one consent to Odysseus mighty in war. Greatly his soul rejoiced; but one deep groan Brake from the Greeks. Then Aias' noble might Stood frozen stiff; and suddenly fell on him Dark wilderment; all blood within his frame Boiled, and his gall swelled, bursting forth in flood. Against his liver heaved his bowels; his heart With anguished pangs was thrilled; fierce stabbing throes Shot through the filmy veil 'twixt bone ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... cottage nor house of any kind between this and the high-road, except the Robin Redbreast itself,' said she. 'And that's not a place where one could ask for a glass of water even. The old lady's very stiff in her ways, and the servants are ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... as "Pink and Blue." Sometimes I thought from her manner that she would a little rather I wouldn't come so often. I thought she didn't look up at me so pleasantly as she used to at first, and seemed a little stiff; but, as I had a majority in my favor, I continued my visits. I always had one good look at her when I said good-night; but it made the red come, so that I had to hurry out before she saw. It seemed to me that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... master," added Hatch, with a certain embarrassment, "if this Amend-All should get a shaft into me, ye might, mayhap, lay out a gold mark or mayhap a pound for my poor soul; for it is like to go stiff with me in purgatory." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came back with notes in his pocketbook and a mare running behind the cart. It was the same kind of horse as the one he drove, only a little more stiff in its movements; he had bought it for next to nothing—to ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... used to ten hours of solid sleep, to get up three or four times in your sleep-time makes you feel as though you had been up all night. Bobbie felt quite stupid and her eyes were sore and stiff, but she tidied the room, and arranged everything neatly ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... mile, and the tall Kentuckian was not the man to make a mistake in calculating such a distance. But the way was rugged, and often a gully or a wall of rock brought the pair to a halt. Yet the gullies were not so wide but that each could be covered by a stiff jump, and they helped one another up the steep places. The Kentuckian advanced with hardly any noise, and Deck followed his example, although not ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... stiff and bitter: Flies buzz, but no birds twitter: Slow bullocks stand with stinging feet, And naked fishes scarcely stir ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... absolutely nothing on him except one sleeve, which he seemed to treasure for the sake of comparative respectability! Wounded men frequently lose so much blood before they are found that their clothes become quite stiff, and the best thing to do is to cut the whole uniform off them and wrap ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... booming of down-hurled stones and walls died away; the echoes ceased. A wind-whipped cloud of steam and smoke burst up, fanlike, beyond the edge of the roof. It bellied away, dim in the night, upon the stiff ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... broke the force of the waves, so that there was smooth water within. He did drift nearer and nearer, and at last came so near to one rock that the mast, which was floating by the side of the boat, was lifted up and down the slope of the rock by the waves. Stiff as all his joints were with sitting and holding on, he yet succeeded by great exertion in climbing up on to the rock, where he hauled up the ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... is a square, stiff pocket of silk over cardboard, in which the Altar-linen is carried ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... stiff breeze, and the vessel making near ten knots an hour. My fear was that before the boats could be lowered we should be too far off; but I was mistaken. The grateful dog plunged down when he saw his mistress sink, and rose with her clothes ...
— The Lost Kitty • Harriette Newell Woods Baker (AKA Aunt Hattie)
... uncomfortable, all crushed up into a little ball, I went to sleep! I went to sleep as soundly as if I had been in my own little bed, and afterwards I found, from what they told me, that I must have slept quite two hours. When I woke up I could not think where I was. I felt so stiff and sore, and when I tried to stretch myself out I could not, and then I remembered where I was! It seemed quite dark; I wondered if it was night, till I noticed the little chink of light at the edge ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth
... by far more elaborate than the head of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preeminence of the former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was first executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in execution, and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather suppose it to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... he couldn't stop to talk about it. He had done the best he could to keep Rodney out of the clutches of that Yankee cotton-factor in St. Louis, and now the boy must look out for himself. He gave the latter's hand a hasty shake, told him to keep a stiff upper lip and give a good account of himself when he met the Lincoln invaders in battle, and shouted to the deck-hands to "let go and haul in." The steamer gave him a parting salute from her whistle as she backed out into the river, Captain Howard and his friends ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... Monsieur La Mothe. Monsieur from Valmy, you have my leave to go. Come, Father John." With a stiff little bow he hooked his arm into the brown sleeve of the Franciscan, and the two ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... terrible crisis was now fast approaching. Sidney Herbert had consented to undertake the root and branch reform of the War Office. He had sallied forth into that tropical jungle of festooned obstructiveness, of intertwisted irresponsibilities, of crouching prejudices, of abuses grown stiff and rigid with antiquity, which for so many years to come was destined to lure reforming Ministers to their doom. 'The War Office,' said Miss Nightingale, 'is a very slow office, an enormously expensive office, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... writes:—"This bird is an early breeder in Naini Tal; a nest found on the 25th April contained half-fledged young. It was in a natural hollow of a tree about 10 feet from the ground in a thick trunk; the hole was closed up with a kind of stiff gummy substance, leaving only a circular entrance about an inch in diameter, just as I have seen in nests of Sitta europaea. The old birds were busily engaged in feeding the young. Another nest ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... during this, stood breathless, his hands clasped, and his eyes turned to heaven, praying in anguish for the delivery of his darling. The mother's look was still wild and fixed, her eyes glazed, and her muscles hard and stiff; evidently she was insensible to all that was going forward; while large drops of paralytic agony hung upon her cold brow. Neither of the sisters had yet recovered, nor could those who supported them turn their eyes from the more imminent danger, to pay them any particular attention. Many, also, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... to see you," was the prompt, brief greeting from Mr. Atwood, who was uneasily tramping up and down the small stiff parlor, which was so rarely used that it might almost have been dispensed with as a part of the residence. Roger came forward with some anxiety, for his uncle lowered ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... but to be hoisted on deck and sent below for the immediate care of my wound. It was hardly more than a severe laceration of flesh, yet was quite enough to prevent me from bending my knee, though it did not deny locomotion with a stiff leg. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... scrubbed, so Woot shrank away from the energetic girl, trembling fearfully. But Jinjur grabbed him by his paw and dragged him out to the back yard, where, in spite of his whines and struggles, she plunged him into a tub of cold water and began to scrub him with a stiff brush and a cake ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum |
