"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... growing around you. I remember there were four or five great trees in my father's garden when I was a boy living in the country, and I loved them, each in a different way, and had names for them and talked to them. One was an oak tree that grew up almost to the clouds, and its boughs stood out stiff and square as if nothing could bend them. That was the tree I went to when I had some hard task to do and wanted strength. Another was an elm that always whispered comfort to me when I was in trouble. I used to go to it as some boys run to their mother, for I grew up like you without a mother's ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... most kind to Lord Clarendon, and make a marked difference between their marked cordiality to him and the stiff etiquette with which the other Ambassadors ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... part, and is alike imperishable, contrary to common experience in similar cases. This is a timber nearly as lasting as solid granite. For ship or boat lumber, the clear stuff from sound wood is so exceedingly light, stiff, and durable, and so plenty and available, that few timbers excel it, unless the yellow cedar or cyprus (Cupressus nutkaensis) is excepted, which is a little tougher, stronger, perhaps more elastic, and equally durable, if judged apart from thorough tests and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... thought Gondremark. "The damned minx may fail me yet, unless they quarrel. It is time to let him in. Zz—fight, dogs!" Consequent on these reflections, he bent a stiff knee, and chivalrously kissed the Princess's hand. "My Princess," he said, "must now dismiss her servant. I have much to arrange against the hour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Bartlett's Hill, where the boys and girls were coasting, and coasted with them for a full hour,—and then it was discovered by the younger portion of his flock that the parson was not an old, stiff, solemn, surly poke, as they had thought, but a pleasant, good-natured, kindly soul, who could take and give a joke, and steer a sled as well as the smartest boy in the crowd; and when it came to snow-balling, he could send a ball further than Bill Sykes himself, who could out-throw any boy in ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... call a halt. That last narrow escape shall be a lesson. I am getting normal again, and I must stay so. What are Alan Delbridge's operations to me? He has no nerves nor imagination. He could have slept through that last tangle of mine which came within an inch of laying me out stiff and stark. I wonder how all the Drakes are, especially Dolly. She must be fully grown now. Saunders says she is beautiful and as wise as Socrates. I suppose there are a dozen mountain boys after her by this time. For a little girl she was astonishingly mature ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... I can make out, what they are about," observed Walter. "They must have caught sight of the whale, and whether that's a boat or a raft, it's surprising that they should not have come nearer to have a look at us. They seem to have a pretty stiff breeze out there, and it would not have taken them much out ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... from feeling that we were called on to endure too much pain, one of our playground games was thrashing each other with whips about two feet long made from the tough, wiry stems of a species of polygonum fastened together in a stiff, firm braid. One of us handing two of these whips to a companion to take his choice, we stood up close together and thrashed each other on the legs until one succumbed to the intolerable pain and thus lost ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... the widest space he could find, and she seated herself as modestly as if she were not the vehicle of the invisible Powers. The stiff grosgrain strings of her bonnet stood out like small wings under her double chin, and on her massive bosom he saw the cameo brooch bearing the war-like profile of Athene. As she sat there, beaming complacently upon him, with ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... jib, until I could get a look by daylight. When the sun was fairly up, there was no change, and I gave orders to get along some of the larger studding-sails, and to set the main-top-gallant sail, having my doubts whether the spars would bear any more canvass, under the stiff breeze that ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... boulders, of all qualities and sizes, sticking out in bold relief from the surface, like the rock-like protuberances that roughen the rustic basements of the architect, from the line of the wall; but I had no open sesame to form vistas through them into the recesses of the past. I saw merely the stiff pastry matrix of which they are composed, and the inclosed pebbles. But the boulder-clay has of late become more sociable; and, though with much hesitancy and irresolution, like old Mr. Spectator on the first formal opening of his mouth,—a consequence, doubtless, in both ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... at last out of the throat of the gorge into the plain and the sunlight. He was stiff and weary; he sat down in the shadow of a rock, filled up his flask with water from a spring and drank it down, and remained for a time resting before he went on to ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... child,—he might talk Sam Deacon into letting us keep the house, at least. We've got to live somewhere, you know, Faith. It's no sort of use for me to talk to him,—he's as stiff as a crab tree—and I aint. I ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... time had taken of them. "Worn for show, not use," they were still without those hands, which it had been in the contemplation of the Miss Mac Taafs to have replaced by the first opportunity, for the last five years. High-crowned black-beaver hats, with two stiff, upright, black feathers, that seemed to bridle like their wearers, and a large buckle and band, completed the costume of these venerable specimens of human architecture: the tout ensemble recalling to the nephew the very figures and dresses which had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... wings. At that moment I should not have thought it at all extraordinary if it had flown away over the trees. I stood there for a few moments, without knowing whether I was frightened. Then I felt that I could not take my eyes away from the ditch. My eyelids had become so stiff that I thought I should never be able to close them again. I wanted to call out, so that they should hear me at the farm, but I could not get my voice out of my throat. I wanted to run, but my legs ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... of a king which we possess is clumsy and ungraceful. It is chiefly remarkable for the elaborate ornamentation of the head-dress and the robes, which have a finish equal to that of the best Assyrian specimens. The general proportions are not bad; but the form is stiff, and the drawing of the right hand is peculiarly faulty, since it would be scarcely possible to hold arrows in the manner represented. [PLATE XVIII., ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... Peboan, the Spirit of Winter," said the old man. "I blow my breath, and the streams stand still. The water becomes stiff ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... thank you," said Charley shivering still with the cold. "But I never was so wet and cold in my life, and I'm sure I'd have frozen stiff if you hadn't made a fire in a hurry. It's lucky you had some matches in a bottle, for that's all ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... she might find afterwards that she was left in the lurch with all her money." And so he retired, solitary, into a far part of the room, and began to think of Mary Thorne. As he did so, and as his eyes fell upon Miss Dunstable's stiff ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... you are nervous that you are so rigid. Try not to be stiff. Give yourself a little more flexibility in the fingers, the wrists, the elbows, everywhere! You are not tired? No? Be easy then, be easy!" And you remember that you have been likened unto a poker, and sadly think that, ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... 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 ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Belgian consuls in prison in Tabora, gripped their vitals. Hastily they sent their women and children at all speed east along the line to Tabora, the new Provincial capital, and planned to put up the stiff rearguard actions that should delay the enemy, until the English might take Tabora and save their women from Belgian hands. For the English, those soft-hearted fools, who had already so well treated the women at Wilhelmstal, could be as easily persuaded to exercise their flabby sentimentalism ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... enlisted, armed in a suitable manner, with such caps and hats as became the variety of trades to which the wearers belonged, the rear being brought up by a most singular figure, with a small drum-shaped black cap on the very top of a stiff pale head, a long oil-skin cloak, and in his left hand a huge Toledo ready drawn, which he carried upright. The militia are better dressed, and are now employed in regular turn of duty with the royal troops, who are going over to ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... good fortune of starting in life as a graduate," explained Tzu-tsing as he smiled, "and yet are not aware of the saying uttered by some one of old: that a centipede even when dead does not lie stiff. (These families) may, according to your version, not be up to the prosperity of former years, but, compared with the family of an ordinary official, their condition anyhow presents a difference. Of late the number of the inmates has, day by day, been on the increase; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... male ego had revolted. He shrugged and turned his attention to the autopsy report, but it was hopeless. He couldn't concentrate. He jotted a few notes and dropped them on the desk—tomorrow would be time enough. What he needed now was a stiff ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... country, so as to feel his way more surely and gradually to its ultimate aim; but he had no intention of burning his shining talents in a grazing district, however tall its grass might grow. His business was not with these stiff-jointed, slow-witted graziers, but with the supple, dangerous, far-seeing men who sit scheming by the gas-light in the great cities, after all the lamps and candles are out from the Merrimac to the Housatonic. Every ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the gears in place of your own. He's as gentle as a spaniel, and goes like a deer. You know the back track to my house, and I'll come after you, and bring your creature along. I 'spose he's not so stiff but ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... "O only worthy, whom the earth all fears, High God defend thee with his heavenly shield, And humble so the hearts of all thy peers, That their stiff necks to thy sweet yoke may yield: These be the sheaves that honor's harvest bears, The seed thy valiant acts, the world the field, Egypt the headland is, where heaped lies Thy fame, worth, justice, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... sound asleep. He was very tired, and fairly worn out with the excitement as well as the fatigue of the long summer's day, and he slept heavily. How long he did not know, when he started to his feet suddenly, to find himself quite damp from a heavy dew, chilled, stiff, sore, and, worst of all, hungry. The park was quite deserted and very dark, still he knew his way tolerably well, and hurried towards the gate, shivering partly with cold, partly with nervousness, at finding himself quite alone in ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... been the occasion of disturbing you," he said with stiff formality, "and I am very much obliged, certainly," he added, as ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... dog with the rheumatism, and—isn't he funny? The funniest thing I've seen to-day! Does he always have his table set in that way? Won't he break the saucer? He's fumbling it all around, and he's as stiff in his joints as father ever was the very worst day he's had. ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... an Apostel-Krug, of Kruessen, was solemnly dancing a minuet with a plump Faenza jar; a tall Dutch clock was going through a gavotte with a spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of Littenhausen was bowing to a very stiff soldier in terre cuite of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona was playing itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive music that thought itself merry came from a painted spinnet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... the crows fly. But by the trails it's every bit o' twice that distance. An' some putty stiff travelin', too, in some spots, believe me!" added ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... a certain cottage he pedaled faster than ever, and with his head bent nearly to the handle-bars, flew by without a glance, or pause. Yet, without looking, he had discerned Rachel standing on the new square porch, exceptionally trim and stiff in a light muslin, while the children swarmed about her admiringly. He could also hear Mrs. Hemphill, from indoors somewhere, screaming her commands to the scattered family in a high key, though no one seemed paying the slightest ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... smiling, but, while she looked, the smile froze stiff as it were on his face, and changed to a nervous grin the sort of grin men wear when they are not quite easy in their saddles. The mare seemed to be sinking by the stern, and her nostrils cracked while she was trying to realise what was happening. The rain of the night before had rotted ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... book with an anxious gesture. The description corresponded with that given by the author of the pamphlet. Outside was a parchment cover, dirty, stained and worn in places, and under it, the real binding, in stiff leather. With what a thrill Beautrelet felt for the hidden pocket! Was it a fairy tale? Or would he find the document written by Louis XVI. and bequeathed by the queen to ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... although the science of boxing was not unknown to him, he was dog-tired and his wrenched back agonized him at every move. The sheer weight of the other man was bearing him down, and Hess seemed to realize it, for with a grunt of satisfaction he swung in and landed a stiff body blow ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... the brains of the whole bunch," put in Jimmy. "Probably the others didn't know anything about radio until he put them on to it. He'll be there all right. And he's likely to put up a pretty stiff fight before he lets himself be captured, for he knows what it means to him to be sent back to prison. With a new sentence tacked on to the old one it'll probably mean that he'll be ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... tell you about myself? I am not stiff, I have ... I don't know what. Bromide of potassium has calmed me and given me eczema on the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... opportunity of gratifying his godmother's taste for stateliness. Old Mr. Donnithorne, the delicately clean, finely scented, withered old man, led out Miss Irwine, with his air of punctilious, acid politeness; Mr. Gawaine brought Miss Lydia, looking neutral and stiff in an elegant peach-blossom silk; and Mr. Irwine came last with his pale sister Anne. No other friend of the family, besides Mr. Gawaine, was invited to-day; there was to be a grand dinner for the neighbouring gentry on the morrow, but to-day all the forces were required ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... this place and people no American scenery or population have an atom; and isolated, ugly, mean, matter-of-fact farm-houses, or whitewashed, clap-boarded, stiff, staring villages, alike without antiquity to make them venerable or picturesqueness to make them tolerable, are all that there represent the exquisitely grouped and colored masses of building, or solitary specimens of noble time-tinted ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Half-suffocated in the hoary fell And many-wintered fleece of throat and chin. But Vivien, gathering somewhat of his mood, And hearing 'harlot' muttered twice or thrice, Leapt from her session on his lap, and stood Stiff as a viper frozen; loathsome sight, How from the rosy lips of life and love, Flashed the bare-grinning skeleton of death! White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puffed Her fairy nostril out; her hand ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Three Cranes or the Vintry. The bounty so much delighted mine host, that he ran to fill the stirrup-cup (for which no charge was ever made) from a butt yet charier than that which he had pierced for the former stoup. The knight paced slowly to horse, partook of his courtesy, and thanked him with the stiff condescension of the court of Elizabeth; then mounted and followed the northern path, which was pointed out as the nearest to Edinburgh, and which, though very unlike a modern highway, bore yet so distinct a resemblance to a public and frequented ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... from this phantom than from the last, and, while she did so, called out his name, and stepped to his side, stooping down and even touching him. He was breathing, though he was very cold and stiff, and she did not rouse him. Oh, Joanna was very thankful! But what should she do next? Life must be very faint, and frozen in the muscular, active young man. He had loitered at his sport till the dusk; he had been bewildered on the moor—strange ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... a petticoat or two, you hinder us," he cried in a heat. "There's no petticoat in the world, though it were so stiff with gold that it stood on end of itself, that's worth a single second of the next ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... you bade me read is delightful. I have not quite finished it yet, for I have scarcely any time at all for reading; for want of the habit of thinking and reading on such subjects I find the political economy a little stiff now and then, though the clearness and simplicity with which it is treated in this story are admirable. I did not know that I was supposed to be the original of Letitia.... God bless you, my ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... stones, from their greater gravity, lie beneath, mixed with a rounded quartz gravel, which in ages past must have been subjected to the action of running water. This quartz gravel, with its mixture of gems, rests upon a stiff ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... to Castle Howard and brought one of the bottles of whisky, a little store that they had never touched except in the compounding of the barkstone for the capture of beaver. He gave Albert a good stiff drink of it, after which the boy felt better, well enough, in fact, to help ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... Joanna's personal appearance, it is really edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the highroad, a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff-necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since her "foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... comes with his little girl and mother-in-law, and borrows 50 cents to pay for the supper. He would also have brought his wife, but she could not leave home. Some eat their supper and leave. Others are sitting in the school-room looking at pictures and talking a very little, but it is rather stiff. The door opens and in walk the Doctor and Agency Clerk. No more stiffness after this. Those would be hard hearts indeed that would not thaw in the presence of these genial countenances. Other white people come. The Captain with his family take supper. He also brings in some of the outsiders ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... clothespress in the corner, into which Mr. Spear says we may look. On the door is a slippery-elm button, and within, hanging on wooden pegs, are dainty dresses; stiff, curiously embroidered gowns they are, that came from across the sea, sent, perhaps, by John Adams when he went to France, and left Abigail here to farm and sew and weave and teach the children. June examined the dresses ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... hands Steer the plough o'er stubborn lands. How through far-spread broom and heath Tear his sharp, smooth coulter's teeth— Old-time relic, heron-bill, Rooting out fresh furrows still, With a noble, skilful grace Smoothing all the wild land's face, Reaching out a stern, stiff neck ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... glances seemed to regard him as something alike suspected and dreadful, yet on no account to be provoked. He heeded them not, but stalked on in the manner affected by the distinguished fanatics of the day; a stiff solemn pace, a severe and at the same time a contemplative look, like that of a man discomposed at the interruptions which earthly objects forced upon him, obliging him by their intrusion to withdraw his thoughts for an instant from celestial things. Innocent pleasures of what kind soever they held ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... his visitor had something more of the look of a client than a cleaner of linen; a conclusion which was destined to be confirmed, when the woman, taking up one of the high-backed chairs in the room, placed it right opposite to the man of law, and, hitching her round body into something like stiff dignity, seated herself. Nor was this change from her usual deportment the only one she underwent; for, as soon appeared, her style of speech was to pass from broad Scotch, not altogether into the "Inglis" of the upper ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... But I left my lodge at a quarter past five to light the gas on the stairs; that took me twenty minutes, because I am stiff in my joints, and during this time some one might have gone up and down the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... assured. "It isn't playing the game to trap you while you are upset like this. But I don't believe you'll be sorry. Come find some one to tie this up for me; I can't have it stiff to-morrow." ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the sergeant major with his usual stiff salute. "Oh, it's you, sir," he cried as the light fell upon Barry's face. "We're glad to ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... trees to move. At last I was nigh blind. I struck against one tree and another till I fell to the ground. How long I lay there I can't tell; but when I came to I was on the sand, the sun blazing hot upon me and my skin scorched up. I was so stiff and ached so, I could hardly stand upright. I didn't feel or think anything after this; and hardly knew where I was till somebody came and touched me, and asked me whether I was walking in my sleep; and I looked up ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... did not seem to believe in it themselves. Was not this too much for human patience? Would not one suppose that the benign visitants from Europe, provoked at their incredulity and discouraged by their stiff-necked obstinacy, would for ever have abandoned their shores, and consigned them to their original ignorance and misery? But no: so zealous were they to effect the temporal comfort and eternal salvation of these pagan infidels that they even proceeded from the milder means of persuasion ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Christmas, in an old sailing ship of about eight hundred tons burthen; for, unless time is of importance, I prefer a sailing ship to a steamer, and one pleasant companion is worth a shipload of commonplace fellow-voyagers. A stiff westerly blow caught us off Sandy Hook, and never left us till we were halfway across the Atlantic, increasing in violence every day, until it gave me, what I had always longed for, but never seen, a first-class gale ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... examine in detail, lean, pale, the transparent skin stretched tightly over cheekbones, nose, and chin. That chin was built on good fighting lines, though somewhat over-delicate in substance and the mouth quite colourless, but oddly enough the upper lip had that habitual appearance of stiff compression which is characteristic of highly strung temperaments; it is a noticeable feature of nearly every great actor, for instance. The nose was straight and very thin and in a strong sidelight a tracery of the ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... I felt pretty stiff as I walked round to the hall door with the mask and the brush while James went with the hounds and the two horses to look for the stables. I rang a bell marvellously encrusted with rust, and after a long while the door opened a little way revealing a hall with much old armour in it and the ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... When he had gone through them, the Chancellor quitted his seat, and went towards him with a smile, putting out his hand warmly to welcome him; and, though I did not catch his words, I saw that he paid him some compliment. This was all thrown away upon Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow, and put the tips of his fingers into the Chancellor's hand. The Chancellor did not press a welcome so received, but resumed his seat; while Lord Byron carelessly seated himself for a few minutes on one of the empty benches to the left of the throne, usually occupied by the lords ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... pulp by forcing well-cooked beans through a colander or a press. Add all the seasoning and the beaten egg yolks. Beat the egg whites stiff and fold them into the mixture. When well blended, pour into a greased baking dish, or individual dishes, place in a pan containing hot water, and bake in a moderate oven until the souffle is set, which will require from 30 to 45 minutes. Test by tapping slightly with the finger. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... said. And in a moment his reserve had vanished. Kindly and indulgently he helped me to overcome my timidity, moved the piano, inquired whether I were comfortably seated, let me play till I had become calm, then gently found fault with my stiff wrist, praised my correct comprehension, and accepted me as a pupil. He arranged for two lessons a week, then turned in the most amiable way to my aunt, excusing himself beforehand if he should often be obliged to change the day and hour of the lesson on account of his delicate health. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... "As soon as I sniffed the salt air of the sea my strength seemed to return to me. My wound is well-nigh healed; but the joint has stiffened, and my leg will be stiff for the rest of my life. But that matters little. And now tell me all your adventures. We have heard from the messenger you sent how shrewdly you hunted ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... was grey everywhere, and dark, almost black, in front of him; it seemed to hang low, frowning and ominous, over the desolate snowy waste that stretched before him: there was no snow falling yet, only the threat of it written in the black and dreary sky that faced him. His cheeks and chin felt stiff and frozen already, as if a thin mask of ice were drawn over them, and his eyes were sore and tired from the continuous glare of the snow. The little pony beside him plodded along the path patiently, and his master at intervals drew a hand from a comfortable ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... was released, when he went to Rome, where he was welcomed by the kindly old Pope, who remembered the benefits conferred by Napoleon on the Church, while he forgot the injuries personal to himself; and the stiff-necked Republican, the one-time "Brutus" Bonaparte, accepted the title of Duke of Musignano and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... intersection marked the location of a three-foot conveyer ball, loaded with a sleep-gas bomb and rigged with an automatic detonator which would explode it and release the gas as soon as it rematerialized on the Abzar Sector. Higher, on stiff wires that raised them to what represented three thousand feet, were the disks that stood for ten hundred-foot conveyers; they would carry squads of Paratime Police in aircars and thirty-foot air boats. There was ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... all looking at Her Majesty, now. She returned them stare for stare, her back stiff and straight and her white hair enhaloed in the room's light. "Sir Kenneth," she said—and her voice was only the least bit unsteady—"they ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... not only "la mia patrona e signora," but "la prima donna del mondo," "the first lady in all the world." For her he translated Breton legends and Provencal romances; for her he set Virgil and Petrarch to music; for her fair sake, old and stiff as advancing years have made him, he is ready to break a lance or join once more in the dance. At Christmas-time, in the last days of 1491, the impatient Marchesana had written to remind him that she had never yet received ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... wonder that she dreaded the thought of returning; it meant hard work to keep a stiff upper lip and to smile in spite of her heartache. Only one thought was clear, and that was ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... the rusty safeguards yielded to key or sledge, and the gates shrieked disapproval when at length they reluctantly turned on their stiff hinges, that had not moved for centuries. Into the cavern strode the king, followed by his fearful but curious train. The rooms, as tradition had said, were many, and from room to room he hurried with rapid feet. He sought in vain. No gold appeared, no jewels glittered on his sight. The ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... inshore immediately; the body was quickly got out; and M. Verdeil, with three or four other doctors, laboured for some hours to restore animation; but she only sighed once. After all that time, she was obliged to be borne, stiff and stark, to her father's house. She was his only child, and but 17 years old. He has been nearly dead since, and all Lausanne has been full of the story. I was down by the lake, near the place, last night; and a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... rock, while the angry waves thundered beneath, and cast their cold spray every instant over him. With the ebbing of the tide, the sea receded from the cavern; but Frank hesitated to attempt crossing the chasm again; his limbs had become stiff and benumbed, and his long abstinence had so weakened his powers that he shrank from the dangerous enterprise. While giving way to the most desponding reflections, a stentorian hilloa rang and echoed through the cavern; and never had the human ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... beginning to end there is only one character. Even the fascinating Cordelia is but a silver cloud on the far horizon. "The King is coming" is the cry of the play. His madness is more, as to display and effect, than the sense of all the others. The scene is stiff and cold until his wild hair is observed to approach the front, and then the whole spectacle is alight with feeling and purpose. The other actors are not to blame that, to a large extent, they are thrown into the shade; indeed, they are to be warmly congratulated upon their self-suppression ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... sea-level; as the elevation of Sarikamish was given as 6700. This high-road constituted the main line of communications of the Russian forces in the field beyond railhead, and the traffic along it was unceasing. With a long, stiff upward incline, there were the usual sights of broken-down vehicles and of dead animals on all hands; but the organization appeared to be good, if rough and ready, and the transport was serviceable enough. Getting ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... bed time for tepid and again early in the morning for almost scalding hot. Keep this hot for an hour by setting the vessel containing the soaking fish on the side of the range. Wash next in cold water with a stiff brush or rough cloth, wipe perfectly dry, rub all over again with salad oil and vinegar or lemon juice and let it lie in this marmalade for a quarter of an hour before broiling. Place on a hot dish with a mixture of butter, lemon ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... scorching. Poor horses! they were white with sweat; but still the drivers urged them on, for relays there were none. Terror had almost depopulated the country. Toward nightfall the fugitives were compelled to halt, for their tired animals were too stiff to travel farther, and ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the commandment, and without any delay went and broke it. Why need I say more? Why need I delay you by my words and by my tears? This proud servant, stiff-necked, full of contumely, and puffed up with conceit, sought an excuse for his transgression, and retorted the whole fault on his Lord. For when he said, "the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she deceived me," he threw all the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... be summoned to perform before a queen and her court, and at the age of sixty, when I fumbled more atrociously than do children who have had a few months' lessons?... With great difficulty I forced my old stiff fingers to run through some scales and exercises. I learned a few waltzes, and some other dance airs, and thus prepared, ventured to challenge the judgment of the severe Aristarchuses ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... was a broad tree, and must, in summer, have borne a goodly load of leaves: but now, in November, these were strewn thick over the green, and nothing left but stiff, naked boughs. Beneath it lay a crack'd bowl or two on the rank turf, and against the trunk a garden bench rested, I suppose for the convenience of the players. On this a man ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... picturesque style, Mademoiselle de Cardoville resembled that day one of those proud portraits of Velasquez, with stern and noble aspect. Her gown was of black moire, with wide swelling petticoat, long waist, and sleeve slashed with rose-colored satin, fastened together with jet bugles. A very stiff, Spanish ruff reached almost to her chin, and was secured round her neck by a broad rose-colored ribbon. This frill, slightly heaving, sloped down as far as the graceful swell of the rose-colored stomacher, laced with strings of jet beads, and terminating ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... mistress, had trotted downstairs; and smelling on the floor wherever Rea had set her feet, had followed her tracks, and had reached the veranda just in time to be spied by Skipper, who arched his back, set his tail up straight and stiff as a poker, and, making one bound from the ground to the middle of the veranda floor, clutched Fairy with teeth and claws, and would have made an end of her in less than one minute if Ah Foo had not been there. But Ah Foo could move almost ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... all times, my children, that you are an obedient and a docile people, content to accept the word of God from those whom he has sent to teach it to you—that you are not a stiff-necked generation, prone to follow your own vain conceits, or foolish enough to conceive that your little earthly knowledge can be superior to the wisdom which comes from above, as others are. I have always rejoiced at this, my children, for in it I have seen hope for you, when I ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the old gentleman, "a rajah rode on him—a rajah no bigger than your finger. And his turban was encrusted with the most precious of jewels, and his robe was stiff with gold. The elephant wore anklets of beaten silver, and they clinked ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... ye looked like a 'crazy Jane,'" cried the grandmother, with sudden exasperation. "Yer white sun-bonnet plumb off an' a-hangin' down on yer shoulders, an' yer yaller hair all a-blowsin' at loose eends, stiddier bein' plaited up stiff an' tight an' personable, an' yer face burned pink in the sun, stiddier like yer skin ginerally looks, fine an' white ez a pan o' fraish milk, an' the flabby, slinksy skirt o' that yaller calico dress 'thout ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... with the discovery and with his own acuteness in making it, the Captain laughed aloud; then in an instant he sat bolt upright, stiff and still, listening intently. For through the barricade had come two sounds—a sweet, low, startled voice, that cried half in a whisper, "Heavens, he 's there!" and then the rustle of skirts in hasty flight. Without an instant's thought—without remembering his ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... gain them honourable standing in the foreground of a landscape. We had a couple of these fellows with us, each leading a baggage-horse, to the tail of which last another baggage-horse was attached. There was a world of trouble in persuading the stiff angular portmanteaus of Europe to adapt themselves to their new condition and sit quietly on pack-saddles, but all was right at last, and it gladdened my eyes to see our little troop file off through the winding lanes of the city, and ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... little bunch of flowers that had been frozen and broken while he was struggling in the snow. But at that instant he saw in the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha's little boots, which the landlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old, patched, rusty-looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his lips to it, began kissing it greedily, crying, "Ilusha, old man, dear old man, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the hands would be simply telegraphic movements, were it not for the inflections of the voice, and, above all, the expression of the eyes. The expressions of the hand correspond to the voice. The hands are the last thing demanded in a gesture; but they must not remain motionless, as (if they were stiff, for instance) they might say more ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... won't get like the New Yorkers, Honora," said Aunt Mary. "Do you remember how stiff they were, Tom?" She was still in the habit of referring to that memorable trip when they had brought Honora home. "And they say now that they hold their ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... also under the nut. For a span of from 15 to 30 feet, we can use the combination shown in Plate II, Fig. 3. The piece A F must have the same dimensions as a simple string piece of a length A B—so that it may not yield between B and either of the points A or D. The two braces D F and E F must be stiff enough to support the load coming upon them. Suppose the weight on a pair of drivers of a Locomotive to be 10 tons, then each side must bear 5 tons, and each brace 2-1/2 tons 2-1/2 x 2240 5600 lbs. Now, ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... the salt lagoon there is not a blade of grass either in the bed of the creek or on the neighbouring flats, the soil of both being a stiff cold clay. We passed this ungenial line, therefore, and encamped near a fine pool of water, where both our own wants and those of our horses, as far as feed and ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... rose for prayer, Mrs. Murray noticed Peter Ruagh appear from beneath the book-board and quietly slip out by the back door with his hand to his face and the blood streaming between his fingers; and though Ranald was standing up straight and stiff in his place, Mrs. Murray could read from his rigid look the explanation of Peter's bloody face. She gave her mind to the prayer with a sore heart, for she had learned enough of those wild, hot-headed youths to know that before Peter Ruagh's face would be healed ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... against the wall in his chair, continued to stare at the store-keeper; Cap'n Jabez Wray, did not look up from whittling the chair between his legs; their cousin, Cap'n Wray Storrell, seated on a nailkeg near the stove, went on fretting the rust on the pipe with the end of a stiff, cast-off envelope; two other captains, more or less akin to them, continued their game of checkers; the Widow Seth Wray's boy rested immovable, with his chin and hand on the counter, where he had been trying since the Widow Holman went out to catch Hackett's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... difficulty draw their legs home and to bed. Indeed, there were nights when Dick, hardly the equal of his brother in weight and strength, lay sleepless from sheer exhaustion, while Barney from sympathy kept anxious vigil with him. Morning, however, found them stiff and sore, it is true, but full of courage and ready for the renewal of the long-drawn struggle which was winning for them not only very substantial financial profits, but also high fame as workers. The end of the harvest found them hard, tough, full of nerve and fit for any call within ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... character of a few accessories, for example, the crown on the Virgin's heads instead of the invariable Byzantine veil, betrays," says Kugler, "a northern and probably a Frankish influence." The attendant saints, generally St. Peter and St. Paul, stand, stiff and upright on ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... is of wood, 21 ins. diam., with equidistant notches around the circumference, equal in number to the number of pickets to be used, usually 8 to 14, less if the brush is large and stiff, more if it is small and pliable. The notches should be of such depth that the pickets will project to 1 in. outside the circle. The pickets should be 1-1/4 to 1-3/4 ins. diam., 3 ft. 6 ins. long and sharpened, half at the small and half at ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... crab along, stiff and sore as he was, they marched to the monkey's castle. The wasp flew inside, and found that their enemy was away from home. Then all entered and hid themselves. The egg cuddled up under the ashes in the hearth. The wasp flew into the closet. The mortar hid ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... ten minutes later, he stood with Mrs. Scott, her bright young daughter and Trudy in Mr. Conover's livery-stable, he kept a stiff upper lip and waited ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... during a fit of absent-mindedness on his part when their former owner had not been looking. Tucked at intervals in the top of the corduroys (the exceptions making convenient shelves for alkali dust) was what at one time had been a stiff-bosomed shirt. This was open down the front and back, the weight of the trousers on the belt holding it firmly on the square shoulders of the wearer, thus precluding the necessity of collar buttons. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... woman can impose on long-suffering male humanity. As Madame Fosco (aged three-and-forty), she sits for hours together without saying a word, frozen up in the strangest manner in herself. The hideously ridiculous love-locks which used to hang on either side of her face are now replaced by stiff little rows of very short curls, of the sort one sees in old-fashioned wigs. A plain, matronly cap covers her head, and makes her look, for the first time in her life since I remember her, like a decent woman. Nobody (putting her husband out of the question, of course) now sees in her, what ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... be not the hand-writing of De Berenger, I will not (for it is not my province) draw the conclusion which might be drawn from looking at that letter; it appears to me evidently an artificial, upright, stiff hand, as contrasted with the ordinary natural character of hand-writing of that gentleman. It is sometimes useful to look where the same words occur in different parts of the same letter; and when you come to look at the words, "I have the honour to be," ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... service. Some of the furniture seems new; but many old presses, inlaid with marbles, agates, and lapis-lazuli, such as Italian families preserve for generations, have an air of respectable antiquity about them. Nor is there any doubt that the young Napoleon led his minuets beneath the stiff girandoles of the formal dancing-room. There, too, in a dark back chamber, is the bed in which he was born. At its foot is a photograph of the Prince Imperial sent by the Empress Eugenie, who, when she visited the room, wept much pianse molto (to use the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the Commons, do not know? But heresy, you churchmen teach us vulgar, Supposes obstinate, and stiff persisting In errors proved, long admonitions made, And all rejected: ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... nature, profited her nothing, underwent the transforming operation of Time and changed to absurdities. For our absurdities spring, in fact, for the most part, from the good in us, from some faculty or quality abnormally developed. Pride, untempered by intercourse with the great world becomes stiff and starched by contact with petty things; in a loftier moral atmosphere it would have grown to noble magnanimity. Enthusiasm, that virtue within a virtue, forming the saint, inspiring the devotion hidden from all eyes and glowing out upon the world in verse, turns to exaggeration, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... hands. At last, when he was satisfied, he went to his easel and began to work. Olive had never before realised how hard it is to keep quite still. The muscles of her neck ached and her face seemed to grow stiff and set; she felt ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... his mother to the window, and there she saw her little boy setting out alone with the cab in the gray of morning. She tugged at the window, but it was stiff; and before she could open it, Diamond, who was in a great hurry, was out of the mews, and almost out of the street. She called "Diamond! Diamond!" but there was no answer except ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... Sunday, he was already incased in funereal morning-clothes and warning himself that he must not arrive at Miss Winslow's before five. His clothes were new, stiff as though they belonged to a wax dummy. Their lines were straight and without individuality. He hitched his shoulders about and kept going to the mirror to inspect the fit of the collar. He repeatedly re brushed his hair, regarding the unclean state of his military brushes ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... I was bored stiff with the whole thing. And whether she had Van Ruyne's emeralds or not I saw no particular mystery in the Valenka girl's disappearance: she had probably had some one outside who had taken her clear away in a motor car. I said so, more ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... about a hundred miles out on the road to a good, stiff grade," Tom told him, having shaken hands in welcome. "If you want ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... westward, he had a hard fight against it all day and night. He sighted a great many vessels and signaled them to pick him up; but they did not see him for they all continued on their way. The constant battle against the stiff land breeze began to tell on him toward morning. The compass would not work and he was compelled to determine his course by the stars. The morning sun showed him that he was out of sight of land. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... replied Mrs. Evringham. She kept a stiff upper lip until she was alone, and then a troubled line ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... alone inhabited it. She only occupied the rooms on the first floor, where she shut herself up for days together with an old serving woman, the sole domestic that she had retained. Gowned in black, as if bent on wearing eternal mourning for Maurice, always erect, stiff, and haughtily silent, she never complained, although her covert exasperation had greatly affected her heart, in such wise that she experienced at times most terrible attacks of stifling. These she kept as secret as possible, and one day when the old servant ventured to go for Doctor Boutan she ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... is possible to group under one head so vast and varied an amount of composition, produced by men of the most diverse casts of mind, and extending over so long a period as a hundred years, one may perhaps fairly characterise the typical eighteenth century sermon as too stiff and formal, too cold and artificial, appealing more to the reason than to the feelings, and so more calculated to convince the understanding than to affect the heart. 'We have no sermons,' said Dr. Johnson, 'addressed to the passions that are ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... four men were sitting round a table strewn with papers. Lavinia easily recognised the portly form of her patron, Gay. Next to him was a diminutive man, his face overspread by the pallor of ill-health. He was sitting stiff and bolt upright and upon his head in place of a fashionable flowing wig was a sort of ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... human face." He rose and looked, Stirred by that heavenly flattery to the soul. Her hair, unbraided and unfilleted, Rained in a glittering shower to the ground, And cast forth lustre. Round her zone was clasped The scintillant cestus, stiff with flaming gold, Thicker with restless gems than heaven with stars. She might have flung the enchanted wonder forth; Her eyes, her slightest gesture would suffice To bind all men in blissful slavery. She sprang upon the mountain's dangerous side, With feet that left their print in flowers ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... costume so necessary to grandeur, and the historical air in his portraits. His sitters also possessed countenance and figure well calculated to engender and support the noblest character of painting. The sitters of Reynolds, notwithstanding the pomatumed pyramids of the female hair, or the stiff, formal curls of the male, which set every attempt to beautify the features at defiance, either by extension of the forms or harmonizing the several parts of the countenance, (serious obstacles to pictorial beauty,) were still in possession of that bland and fascinating ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... Mary 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 ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... replied Ruth, shortly. She faced about for a second and gave a stiff nod, which seemed directed at the stew-kettle rather than at the Wigginses. "Good-bye," said she. Then ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... damp," he said; "and I'm not hot at all. Just take hold of my hands. They're like wet crumpets. I wonder what makes me so stiff. A man mustn't sit at business too long at a time. Sure to make people think he's ill. What was that about a doctor? I seem to remember. I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... slandering the dead, anger, envy, the evil eye, shamelessness, looking at with evil intent, looking at with evil concupiscence, stiff-neckedness, discontent with the godly arrangements, self-willedness, sloth, despising others, mixing in strange matters, unbelief, opposing the Divine powers, false witness, false judgment, idol-worship, running naked, running with one shoe, the breaking of the low (midday) ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... stiff, and very anxious she felt, but she was obliged to go down as soon as she was dressed, since she always took charge of her mother before breakfast on Sunday while Sibby went to mass. It was so late that she could only listen in vain at the top of the stairs before she went into ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... amazement, one day Saint Lambert and Madame d'Houdetot came to the Hermitage, asking him to give them dinner, and much to the credit of human nature's elasticity, the three passed a delightful afternoon. The wronged lover was friendly, though a little stiff, and he passed occasional slights which Rousseau would surely not have forgiven, if he had not been disarmed by consciousness of guilt. He fell asleep, as we can well imagine that he might do, while Rousseau read aloud his very ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... thought it was a long, long week since he had sat in the old church and heard that hymn. How natural it looked! The bare white walls, with here and there a crack which had carved a not inartistic line up the sides. The stiff wooden pulpit, almost hid to-day under the June roses. The same preacher who had said that Christmas night, "Wilt thou be baptized in this faith?" The little organ in the corner. The old familiar faces looking up from the benches, and some new ones. ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... good common paste with a pound and a half of flour, and three quarters of a pound of butter. [Footnote: Or three quarters of a pound of beef suet, chopped very fine. Mix the suet at once with the flour, knead it with cold water into a stiff dough, and then roll it out into a large thin sheet. Fold it up and roll it again.] When you roll it out the last time, cut off the edges, till you get the sheet of paste ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... They were following on each other's heels like misery itself, and their singing was more than enough to turn a man's stomach. I was nearly sick, and Frederick was shaking on the box like an old woman. We had to take a stiff glass at the first opportunity. I wouldn't be a manufacturer, not though I could drive my carriage and pair. [Distant singing.] Listen to that! It's for all the world as if they were beating at some broken old ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... quickly arms him for the field, A little cockle-shell his shield, Which he could very bravely wield, Yet could it not be pierced: His spear a bent[14] both stiff and strong, And well-near of two inches long: The pile was of a horse-fly's ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... tools and put on a pair of mittens which I had in my pocket. It snowed about an hour that day. On the tenth of June, my wife brought in some clothes that had been spread on the ground the night before, which were frozen stiff as in winter. On the fourth of July, I saw several men pitching quoits in the middle of the day with thick overcoats on, and the sun shining bright at the same time. A body could not feel very patriotic in such weather. ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... the sea, on the right, formed a bay and natural harbour, from which, towards the setting sun, many fishing-boats were diverging into the wide sea, as the children, stiff and weary, were getting out of the cart. Herbert's fatigue was soon forgotten in watching their brown-dyed sails, glowing almost red in the sunset, as they went out far into the dark, hunters of the deep, to spend the night ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... drawn over his head. His face was large; his nose small, and nearly lost between the fat billows of his cheeks; his eyes were much drawn up at the corners, and very far apart; and his mouth, a very wide one, was fringed about with stiff, straggling black bristles. The cast of his countenance was decidedly repulsive. Kit made signs for him to drink his coffee; but he merely eyed it suspiciously. I then helped him to a heavy spoonful of mashed potatoes. He looked at it a while; then, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... I should think, somewhat stiff and uninteresting. Gore's Bampton Lectures on much the same subject are far more interesting to my mind, far more human. Lectures IV, V, VI of Gore would perhaps interest and educate ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... the knee. One hand sought the pavement to balance himself and aid in locomotion; the other arm, the right, was twisted out from his body in the shape of an inverted V, the palm of his hand, with half curled, contorted fingers, almost touching his chin, as his head sagged at a stiff, set angle into his right shoulder. Hair straggled from the brim of a nondescript felt hat into his eyes, and curled, dirty and unshorn, around his ears and the nape of his neck. His face was covered with a stubble of four days' growth, his body with rags—a coat; a shirt, the button long ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... tall and stout, was General Brentz, and he eyed the three with a close gaze. All gave the stiff German ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... in two forms, both with beautifully executed relief (embossed)—the cheaper ones of plain stiff paper similar to drawing paper (these are to be substituted for and used as outline map blanks), the others covered with a durable waterproof surface, that can be quickly cleaned with a damp sponge, adapted to receive a succession of markings and ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... collection. The first I will mention was called the superb bird of paradise. The plumage was black, though, as the sun shone on it, the neck showed a rich bronze tinge, while the head appeared to be covered with scales of a brilliant metallic-green and blue. Over its breast was a shield of somewhat stiff feathers, with a rich satiny gloss and of a bluish-green tint, while from the back of the neck rose a shield—in form like that on the breast, but considerably larger and longer—of a rich black, tinged with purple and bronze. It would be ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... employment. It has a strong and rapidly growing private 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 electonics industries, are rising in importance within Turkey's export mix. In recent years the economic situation ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... herself lying on the floor by a sofa in her own sitting-room, and alone. So she supposed she must have sat down upon the sofa and afterward fallen. She raised herself up, with difficulty, for the air was chilly and her limbs were stiff. She turned up the gas and sought the glass. She hardly knew herself, so worn and old she looked, and so marred with blood were her features. The night was far spent, and a dead stillness reigned. She sat down by her table, leaned her elbows upon ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... out again. The girls were hardly out of their teens, and yet their faces seemed set already and stiff with earnestness. And whenever Peer had managed to set them laughing unawares, they seemed frightened the next minute at having been betrayed into doing something there was ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... I allude to Stout Cortez staring at the Pacific. Shortly after the appearance of this narrative in serial form in America, I received an anonymous letter containing the words, "You big stiff, it wasn't Cortez, it was Balboa." This, I believe, is historically accurate. On the other hand, if Cortez was good enough for Keats, he is good enough for me. Besides, even if it was Balboa, the Pacific was open for being stared at about that time, and I see no reason why Cortez ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... the pale, boyish faces, strangely refined by the exaltation of spirit which was upon them, as the twins waded out toward the preacher. Bohannon called to Jeff, shook hands with him, shouted, "Praise God, brother. Glory! Glory! Now—make yo'se'f right stiff. Let me have ye. Don't be scared. I won't drop ye. I've baptised a many before you was born, son." His right hand was lifted dripping above the dark head. "I baptise ye, Thomas Jefferson Turrentine, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... recklessness of his new confidence, had mixed himself a pretty stiff dose. As he raised his glass with Garthorne's, something seemed to drag upon his arm, and something in his soul rose in revolt; but the old lurking poison was already aflame in his blood. He nodded to ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Pharbitis nil (Convolvulaceae).—Seedlings of this plant were observed because it is a twiner, the upper internodes of which circumnutate conspicuously; but like other twining plants, the first few internodes which rise above the ground are stiff enough to support themselves, and therefore do not circumnutate in any plainly recognisable manner.* In this particular instance the fifth internode (including the hypocotyl) was the first which plainly circumnutated and twined round a stick. We therefore wished to learn whether circumnutation ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... little of Allah, and are not much better than donkeys in their understandings." The slaves assembled to the number of some fifty in the Souk. Here they performed a species of walking dance, in two right lines, very slow and very stiff and measured, having attached to it some mysterious meaning. They were gaily dressed, attended with a drum and iron castanets, making melodious noises. Each had a matchlock slung at his back. The women carried a chafing-dish ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... so stiff with me? You hardly look at me, and you touch me as if I were a piece of dirt. Supposing I take a brace and we start over, somewhere else? I am tired of knocking round. Come over ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... evening, there was an old woman sitting bolt upright in the courting chair. At least, I came to the conclusion that she really was old after a moment or two's watchfulness. Her flowered hat, her shape—though a little angular and stiff,—her gestures and her bright lively damson-coloured eyes were all youthful enough. But one could see that her inquiet hands, which were folded on her lap, had been worn by many a washing-day. Her skin, though wrinkled, was taut over the outstanding facial ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... trout, as they are called, from the yellow mark across their throats, and I saw at short range a black-tailed deer bounding along in that curious, stiff-legged, mechanical, yet springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once, affording a ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... thoughts. And, while he rested, he fell to talking as though Ralph were living, and merely rested with him. He talked and answered himself, and, later, leaned over his dead, crooning like some woman over her child. The time passed. Again he rose, and once more shouldering the body, now stiff ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... has found to his cost. His tree-climbing accomplishments are likewise remarkable, when we consider his great size and weight. The grizzlies, and some other large varieties, do not do tree-climbing, except when they are young. A grizzly cub can climb a tree, but his wrists soon become too stiff to permit of their bending ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... pages, and Roger Williams even to-day looms up with all the more power because we have become "rather fatigued by the monotony of so vast a throng of sages and saints, all quite immaculate, all equally prim and stiff in their Puritan starch and uniform, all equally automatic and freezing." It is most comfortable to find anyone defying the rigid and formal law of the time, whether spoken or implied, and we have positive "relief in the easy swing of this man's gait, the limberness of his personal movement, his ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... as they loathe him, and, personally, the writer suffered such tortures that her ankles became hot and swollen, and at last, in spite of lavender oil, ammonia and camphor baths, grew so stiff that walking became positively painful, and her ears and eyes mere distorted lumps of inflamed flesh! Therefore, dear lady reader, be prepared when you visit Midgeland to become absolutely hideous and unrecognisable. When a kindly servant brings a rug to wind round your legs under the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... and a bench; the walls bare, or ornamented with a few old pictures of Saints and Virgins, and bare floors ornamented with nothing. To this add a kitchen and outhouses, a garden running to waste and overrunning with flowers, with stiff stone walks and a fountain in the middle, an orchard and an olive-ground; such are most of the haciendas that I have yet seen. That of the Countess C—-a, which seems to be the handsomest in Tacubaya, is remarkable for commanding from its windows one of the most beautiful views imaginable ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... after nine o'clock that evening before I again saw young Holman, and by that time Levuka was far behind. We had taken advantage of a stiff breeze that had sprung up about sunset, and The Waif was plunging through a moon-washed ocean, sending furrows of foam from her forefoot while the wind snored through her canvas. I forgot the happenings of the day as I felt the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... and small-scale manufacturing. The vulnerability of the tourist sector was illustrated by the sharp drop in 1991-92 due largely to the Gulf war. Although the industry has rebounded, the government recognizes the continuing need for upgrading the sector in the face of stiff international competition. ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency |
