"Strain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... verses; and it is possible that the language suffers something, at least temporarily—during the life of a couple of generations, let us say—from the loss of elasticity and rebound brought about by such strain. Moreover, exaggeration has always to outdo itself progressively. There should have been a Durdles to tell this Swinburne that the habit of exaggerating, like that of boasting, "grows ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... others all focussed their eyes on Phil's face. They knew he would not have spoken in such a strain unless he had some good reason for saying ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... is well for you to bear in mind that those very men who use their utmost efforts, who strain every fibre and every nerve to get you, will despise you and detest you as soon as they have succeeded in making you yield to their wishes. This is one of the worst blots on the male man's character, a blot from which the female character is entirely free. And some men—fortunately their number is ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... craft than a canoe, and rowing is not a difficult feat, but there is a difference between the rowing of a heavy flat-bottomed boat and rowing a light skiff or round-bottomed rowboat. In rowing properly one's body does most of the work and the strain comes more on the muscles of the back than on those of ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... rich man,' said the major, with that strain it always cost him to speak of himself, 'but I have got enough to live on. A goodish old house, and a small estate, underlet as it is, bringing me about two thousand a year, and some expectations, as they call them, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... not know just how I can account for a strain of compassion which mingled with this sense of irresponsibility in me; perhaps it was my feeling of security that attuned me to pity; but certainly I did not look at this young girl long without beginning to grieve for her, and to weave about her a web of possibilities, which grew closer and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... can go on in that strain, Max," said Arthur, looking up in a surprised manner, and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... impressive reading the words of each group should be implicated, or tied together. For example, in the line, Once upon a midnight dreary, while I ponder'd, weak and weary, there are naturally three groups; in the line, The quality of mercy is not strain'd, there is but one. In these groups the terminal sound of each word is implicated with the initial sound of the succeeding word. If the terminal sound is a tonic, or a flowing subtonic, the implication consists of a gentle murmuring prolongation of the terminal element ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... few moments longer Ralph wrote on in this strain, then, just as he had completed the last sentence, his special Tape-wire rang him up. He summoned Charley to carry his M.S. sheets to the comp. room. With a word to his Secretary, (who was divided from him by one thickness of wall ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... included in the experimental lot; Chaberte (grafted on black walnut); Franquette (on black and English walnut); Franquette (Vrooman Strain); Mayette (on English Walnut); Parisienne (on the black walnut); Pomeroy (seedling); Pomeroy (on black walnut); Rush ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... old Greek heroes is in the air; there is a hint of the old Border battle-cries from Scotland's hills and tarns; from Jura's rocky wall we can catch the cheers of Tell; and the voice of Cromwell can often be distinguished in the strain. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... been faithful; they were still faithful, but the stress of exhaustion was beginning to sap their morale; to drive them into irritability so that, under the strain of almost superhuman exertion, they threatened to break. Brent was not of their blood and knew little of how to handle them, and though Parson Acup was indefatigable, his face became more ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... But he was happy at having the woman so near to him, and talking to him. At these times he forgot Gray Wolf. The dog that was in him surged over his quarter-strain of wildness, and the woman and the baby alone filled his world. But after Joan had gone to her bed, and all was quiet in the cabin, his old uneasiness returned. He rose to his feet and moved stealthily about the cabin, sniffing at the walls, the door and the things his mistress had done into packages. ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... his approach by an unusually cheerful strain, Al Torrance was already behind the steering wheel of his father's car, with the engine ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... instrument for indicating the presence of a cable on the grapnel, I might remind engineers of the troubles and perplexities which occur incessantly in dragging over a rocky bottom. The grapnel hooks a rock, a large increase of strain is indicated on the dynamometer, and it becomes doubtful whether the cable as well is hooked or not. Again, it frequently happens in grappling over a rocky bottom that one or more prongs are broken off, the grapnel thus becoming useless, great waste of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... And how about those on the other side of the screen, in those fine gold-embroidered dresses? For instance, the dancer with the specter mask, M. Kangourou? or again she who sings in so dulcet a strain and has such a charming nape ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Corps, marching steadily and rapidly, with a cheery look and swinging pace, that made light of the thousand miles that lay between us and Richmond. Some band, by accident, struck up the anthem of "John Brown's soul goes marching on;" the men caught up the strain, and never before or since have I heard the chorus of "Glory, glory, hallelujah!" done with more spirit, or in better harmony of time ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... slid and stumbled, often going to his knees, and more than once barely avoiding a fall that would have sent horse and rider rolling down to be caught by the network of stunted trees. But Tuesday was sure of foot; and so, with muscles quivering under the strain, and his eyes bulging with anxiety and fear, he climbed up and up without disaster, while Marion leaned far forward in the saddle, her nerves on edge, her eyes alert, and her heart pounding wildly, as much from excitement as from its struggle ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... temptations. While actually at the Lord's Table he was "forced to bend himself to pray" to be kept from uttering blasphemies against the ordinance itself, and cursing his fellow communicants. For three-quarters of a year he could "never have rest or ease" from this shocking perversity. The constant strain of beating off this persistent temptation seriously affected his health. "Captain Consumption," who carried off his own "Mr. Badman," threatened his life. But his naturally robust constitution "routed his forces," and brought him through what ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... into bowl, add egg well beaten, milk and Crisco. Beat five minutes then strain into cup. Have kettle of Crisco on fire and heat until cube of bread will become golden brown in sixty seconds. Heat timbale iron in hot Crisco, let stand two or three minutes, then drain and dip into batter ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... A strain of music—desultory, however, and spiritless, like everything else about the place that night—greeted us as Mrs. Ashley opened the door leading directly into ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the joy of your heart in every possible form? The everlasting hum and seething of myriad life satisfies and soothes me. I feel as if something were going on in the world, else why all this shouting, and bedecking of every weed in its best, this endless strain from every tiny weed or great oaken flute? All that cannot sing, dances; the gnats in the air and the long-legged spiders on the water. Even the ants and beetles, the workers that are quoted for examples by hoarding men, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... fighting the duel with Hamilton, was writing to his daughter—a happy, gay, care-free letter, giving no hint of what was impending. To her husband he wrote in a different strain, begging him to keep the event from her as long as possible, to make her happy always, and to encourage her in those habits of study which he ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... indeed. But when the lad turned to the corral, he felt that there was compensation there. Several hundred horses were in the enclosure, of many colors and breeds, but the greater part of them Indian ponies, or containing a strain of the mustang, and smaller and shaggier than the horses he had been accustomed to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the highest heavens are ringing, Choirs angelic lead the strain, And my opened lips in singing Tell the ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... "Was it for this you took such constant care The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare? For this your locks in paper durance bound, For this with tort'ring irons wreath'd around? 100 For this with fillets strain'd your tender head, And bravely bore the double loads of lead? Gods! shall the ravisher display your hair, While the Fops envy, and the Ladies stare! Honour forbid! at whose unrivall'd shrine 105 Ease, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign. Methinks already I your ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the Lightfoots are all alike, you know," he responded. "We are fond of saying that a strain of Lightfoot blood is good for two centuries of intermixing." Then, as he looked up at her faded wrapper and twisted curl papers, he flinched and turned away as if her ugliness afflicted his eyes. "Do not let me keep you," ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Under the strain of talking West's voice had grown weaker. "Miss Barbara," he said quietly, "is in great ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... remodel the map of Europe according to the principle of nationalities, and the real wish of the people living in the contested territories. After so much bloodshed we wish for a peace which will free races, and restore the integrity of nations.... Let us have done with the armaments, the fear of strain, intrigues, and the perpetual threat of the horrible present crisis. Let us make the regulation of European conflicts just and natural." The French republic, of one mind with the Allies, proclaimed through its authorized representatives ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... a man worth twenty millions, and the first thing he did was to give orders to Celeste, her dressmaker, to turn out two new dresses for his wife, every week of the year without fail, not one of them to cost less than two hundred and fifty dollars. It was such a strain on Celeste, thinking of new ideas, that she had to give it up after the first year, though it nearly ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... 'I will come to-morrow as I drive by.' Bar and Bishop had both been bystanders during this short dialogue, and as Mr Merdle was swept away by the crowd, they made their remarks upon it to the Physician. Bar said, there was a certain point of mental strain beyond which no man could go; that the point varied with various textures of brain and peculiarities of constitution, as he had had occasion to notice in several of his learned brothers; but the point of endurance passed by a line's breadth, depression and dyspepsia ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... happy-go-lucky, talkative fellow, whose thoughts do not go beyond creature comforts. He publishes his nature (and incidentally illustrates what has been said above about the naive character of some of the music of the opera) by trolling a ditty with an opening strain as follows:— ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... suddenly through a vigorous revolutionary outbreak. Exhaustion is likely to be a very long and very thorough process, extending over years. A "war of attrition" may last into 1918 or 1919, and may bring us to conditions of strain and deprivation still only very vaguely imagined. What happens in the Turkish Empire or India or America or elsewhere may extend the areas of waste and accelerate or retard the process, but is quite unlikely to ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... zero and Peoria seventeen miles away, and the Illinois out of its banks, there was little that was comforting in her words. The stillness of the grave was upon that little assembly. At length, to relieve the strain of the situation, if possible, the writer inquired, "What was your remark, Doctor John?" to which the Doctor, in a tome somewhat hopeful but by no means confident, replied, "I was just remarking to our beloved landlady, brother ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... continued to speak for a few seconds in the same strain, and I felt my position to be most awkward. With the remembrance of His Majesty's intemperate words to M. de Huebner on New Year's Day, 1859,[14] in my mind, I did not like to leave unnoticed observations of the tendency I have mentioned. At the same time I had to bear in mind that I was not ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... note lasted, or they could sing a song. But that quern was such that it ground anything that the grinder chose, though until then it had ground nothing but gold and peace. So the maidens ground and ground, and one sang their piteous tale in a strain worthy of Aeschylus as the other worked— they prayed for rest and pity, but Frodi was deaf. Then they turned in giant mood, and ground no longer peace and plenty, but fire and war. Then the quern went fast and furious, and that very ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... theatre under such conditions shall be talkative, witty, full of neat swift caricaturing, improvised, unselfconscious; at its worst, glib. Boisterous action often, passionate strain almost never. In Echegaray there are hecatombs, half the characters habitually go insane in the last act; tremendous barking but no bite of real intensity. Benavente has recaptured some of Lope de Vega's marvellous quality of adventurous progression. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... tolerance, men who became very valuable accessions to the nations who received them and a correspondingly significant loss to France. To those two main elements were added sparse accessions from other nations at later intervals, and also a strain of aboriginal blood, of which a more or less faint tinge is still discernible in some families, an admixture which many deplore and others consider as most serviceable, supplying a subtle piquancy for ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... begins with the usual strain of complimentary address to great personages, "Their Highnesses hold it for good service" is ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... and possibly true though partly erring myth, which was also a hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also mine, Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung the hymn in measured and solemn strain. ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... from her bed; and on the 9th of October she was hove at least thirty or forty feet to westward; but the days were getting short, the boisterous winds of winter were setting in, the lighters to which Tracey's apparatus was attached were too old and rotten to bear the strain, and he was ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... and mothers at home see the failures. There are households in England—miserable households, to be counted, Sir Patrick, by more than ones and twos—in which there are young men who have to thank the strain laid on their constitutions by the popular physical displays of the present time, for being broken men, and invalided men, for the rest ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... I am, I have been under a strain. But I'm not too drunk to attend to business; I am never too drunk for that. I wish to say I have ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... in peace, and then a third, with the inaction telling upon us all. For we were constantly on the strain, and the slightest sound suggested the ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... that the living, ruling culture of to-day will be the history of the day after tomorrow, yet because of the vested interests which they rely upon for their power, and because they are satisfied to have the deluge come after them, they oppose each manifestation of the new culture and strain every nerve to make the temporary organization of the world permanent. The more vigorously the new culture thrives, the more eagerly do the representatives of the old order strive ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... This strain upon weaving, which had been tightening through the period of the great spinning improvements, acted as a special incentive to Cartwright, Horrocks, and others to perfect the power-loom in its application, first to woollen, then to ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... much more in the same strain, until it came at last to this, that Erling became Valdemar's man and vassal; and the king led Erling to the earl's seat one day, and gave him the title of earl, and Viken as a fief under his rule. Earl Erling went thereafter to Norway, and was earl afterwards ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... now broken, and when they reached home and had dinner the conversation was resumed in a strain that might be considered as being almost jovial after the mournful tones of the last few days. Dick felt as if a big weight had been lifted from his mind, and the thought again occurred to him that there was no use in making such a fuss over a baby that was ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... boys discussed the incident that had so nearly resulted in a collision. They were all excited and beginning to feel the strain upon their nerves. ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... violently reproaching her with her past misconduct, and telling her in the most unfeeling manner, that eternal destruction awaited her. No word of kindness escaped her. What had then roused her temper I do not know. She continued in this strain several minutes, when I attempted to soften her by remarking, that ——— was very ill, and she ought not thus to torment her, and that I believed Jesus had granted her forgiveness. But I might as well have tried ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sidera contingere plantis." And that exalted strain, which was my perdition, alas, was ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... her; she might have been able to stop Beatrix's great Hungarian, for her white hands were as strong as a man's; but the Arab mare was trained only to the touch of an Arab halter and the deep caress of an Arab voice, and at the first strain of the cruel French bit she threw up her head, swerved, caught the steel in her teeth, and shot forward again at twice her speed. Eleanor tried in vain to wrench the mare's head to one side, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... actual composition of "The Creation," which he found rather a tax, alike on his inspiration and his physical powers. Writing to Breitkopf & Hartel on June 12, 1799, he says: "The world daily pays me many compliments, even on the fire of my last works; but no one could believe the strain and effort it costs me to produce these, inasmuch as many a day my feeble memory and the unstrung state of my nerves so completely crush me to the earth, that I fall into the most melancholy condition, so much so that for days afterwards I am incapable of finding one single idea, till ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... Landers, but they were constrained to submit to it in silence; besides, it was entirely superfluous, for the voices of the people were of themselves loud and powerful enough for all the common purposes of life; and when they have a mind to strain their brazen lungs, no speaking trumpet that has ever been made, be it ever so large, could match the quantity of horrid sound which they made; it would, in fact, drown the roaring ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... strain, not sorrowing for the poor boy, but abusing her son, who was a soldier in the Army of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the awning belonged began to settle themselves to rest; while those who owned the other encampment marched forth, with King Cole at their head. Leaning with no light weight upon his guest's arm, the lover of ancient minstrelsy poured into the youth's ear a strain of eulogy, rather eloquent than coherent, upon the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and to two handfuls of these, add a pound of hog's grease dried. Put it in a stone pot, covered with paper, and set it in the sun or a warm place three or four days to melt. Take it out and boil it a little; strain it out when hot; pressing it out very hard in a press. To this grease add as many herbs as before, and repeat the whole process, if you wish the ointment strong.—Yet this I tell you, the fuller of juice the herbs are, the sooner will your ointment be strong; the last time you boil ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... Halloran came up to relieve me. With a sigh of relief I surrendered the chair and headset. The unconscious strain of being in rapport with ship and crew didn't hit me until I was out of the chair. But when it did, I felt like something was crushing me flat. Not that I didn't expect it, but the "Lachesis" was worse than ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... on his superior strength. For a moment he fairly lifted Roopnarain clean off his legs, swayed him to and fro, and with a mighty strain tried to throw him to the ground. Bending to the notes, Roopnarain allowed himself to yield, till his feet touched the ground, then crouching like a panther, he bounded forward, and getting his leg behind that of the blacksmith, by a deft side twist he nearly threw him over. The little ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... from information brought in, it was evident that any further advance would be stoutly opposed. The road turned out to be much more difficult than had been anticipated, and the hurriedly collected transport proved unequal to the strain. Not a single baggage animal, except the ammunition mules, got up that night; indeed, it was not until the morning of the 22nd—more than forty-eight hours after they started—that the rear guard reached the kotal, a ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... despair. Hands were sent aloft to fish the foreyard, and to knot and splice the most important parts of the running rigging. The main-topgallantsail was let fly, the main-topsail brailed up so as to take the strain off the yard. The two stern guns were in the mean time ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... executed.[*] Sir William Tyrrel, Sir Thomas Tudenham, and John Montgomery were convicted in the same arbitrary court; were executed, and their estates forfeited. This introduction of martial law into civil government was a high strain of prerogative; which, were it not for the violence of the times, would probably have appeared exceptionable to a nation so jealous of their liberties as the English were now become.[**] [18] It ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... which [Greek: kat' exochaen] is termed heroical, or love-melancholy. Other loves (saith Picolomineus) are so called with some contraction, as the love of wine, gold, &c., but this of women is predominant in a higher strain, whose part affected is the liver, and this love deserves a longer explication, and shall be dilated apart in ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... effort to release himself from the strait-jacket in which he was held prisoner. The throat-straps pressed against the neck muscles and the strain on the straps could be heard like pistol-shots as the leather ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... process for the teacher. At most he learns simply to improve his existing technique; he does not get new points of view; he fails to experience any intellectual companionship. Hence both teaching and learning tend to become conventional and mechanical with all the nervous strain ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... chunk of a lad. He walks with his heels down, his calves bulged out behind, his head up, and the regular, proper swagger of a bandsman. He hasn't any uniform, but he's all right. He plays a solo B part, and he and the other solo cornet spell each other. On the repeat of every strain my boy rests, and rubs his lips with his forefinger, while he looks at the populace with bright, expectant eyes. When he blows, he scowls, and brings the cushion of muscle on the point of his chin clear up to his under lip, and he draws his breath ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... her excited cheerfulness astounded her sister, and there were times when her depression caused her the greatest anxiety. Kate was displaying a variableness and uncertainty to which Helen was quite unaccustomed, and it left the girl laboring under a great strain of worry. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... properties which, in common with silk, wool possesses in a greater degree than the vegetable fibres. When submitted to strain the wool fibre exhibits a remarkable strength, and when the breaking point is reached the fracture always takes place at the juncture of two rings of the outer scales, the embedded edges of the lower layer being pulled out of their seat. The ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain, Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain; And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals, And the creature making toothpicks of ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Agrippa, the senate complied with him, and he was sent among others, and privately informed Claudius of the disorder the senate was in, and gave him instructions to answer them in a somewhat commanding strain, and as one invested with dignity and authority. Accordingly, Claudius said to the ambassadors, that he did not wonder the senate had no mind to have an emperor over them, because they had been harassed by the barbarity of those that had formerly been ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... again, Polly," suggested Eleanor, seeing the horses paw the floor, and strain their eyes ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... serene. But all the time this calm prevails you are getting nowhere; you are at a standstill. It is only when the wind rises and the swells begin to move the vessel up and down and the sails begin to strain that good progress begins. You may feel very comfortable in your satisfaction. It may be very delightful and dreamy, but it may be dangerous also. Those who are fully satisfied for very long may be sure that there is need for ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... mean that certain abilities and tendencies are not inheritable—for they are; but they are inherited through the parents—and not from them—directly. These transmitted characteristics are largely "stock" traits, and usually have long been present in the "ancestral strain." ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... Devonshire lane, as I trotted along T'other day, much in want of a subject for song, Thinks I to myself, I have hit on a strain— Sure, marriage is much ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... voice unquestionably was then of a high natural counter-tenor. I should say that he usually spoke at a pitch somewhere about the D natural above the base line; but it was in no respect a falsetto. It was a natural chest-voice, not powerful, but telling, musical, and expressive. In reading aloud, the strain was peculiarly clear, and had a sustained, song-like quality, which came out more strongly when, as he often did, he recited verse. When he called out in pain,—a very rare occurrence,—or sometimes in comic playfulness, you might hear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... is that my attitude towards my fellows is fundamentally and totally wrong, and that it entails on my thinking machine a strain which is quite unnecessary, though I may have arranged the machine so as to withstand the strain successfully. The secret of smooth living is a calm cheerfulness which will leave me always in full possession of my reasoning faculty—in order that I may live by reason instead of ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... dictum, that genius is never quite sane, gives a partial explanation of many of his fantastic schemes. The question of money was his great preoccupation and anxiety, and possibly his pecuniary difficulties, and the strain of the heavy chain of debt he dragged after him, constantly adding to its weight by some fresh extravagance, had affected his mind on this one point. Marriage with poverty he could not conceive; and, as ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Sercombe had stalked him day after day, but without success. And now, with one poor remaining hope, the latter had determined to stalk him at night. To despoil him of his life, his glorious rush over the mountain side, his plunge into the valley, and fierce strain up the opposing hill; to see that ideal of strength, suppleness, and joyous flight, lie nerveless and flaccid at his feet; to be able to call the thicket-like antlers of the splendid animal his own, was for the time the one ambition of Hilary Sercombe; for he was of the brood of Mephistopheles, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... not usual in England to address ladies you have met at a dance without some direct invitation on their part. At the same time, it is evident that the Hiltons and the other man, who of course must be connected with the Foreign Office, are aware of some sudden strain in the diplomatic relations between England and Germany, which as yet is unknown to the public. Your ancient name and your high rank have naturally led them to conclude that you are an agent of the German Government, and an international significance was of course ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... permitted himself a moment of retrospection, and there was a gleam of very different things in his face, a touch almost of the savage in the clenched teeth and sudden tightening of the lips. One might have gathered that this man was living through a period of strain. ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... warningly; 'don't let that fella get underneath the seaweed; keep him clear of dat, or you lose him!' For a 16-lb. fish he pulled tremendously (for a boy of my size); but at last I managed to get a steady strain on him, and then his big blue head, with its thick, negro-like lips, soon appeared at the base of a slanting rock, up which I hauled him, kicking and floundering. 'Tommy' meanwhile had already landed his fish, and had cast his line for the last of the trio; but ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... hoped-for rescuers? The suspense sent the perspiration out in beads on Smith's forehead, and he wiped his moist face with his shirt-sleeve. Then he heard the shoulders against the door, the heavy breathing, the strain of muscles, and the creaking timber. It crashed in, and for a second Smith's heart ceased to beat. He sniffed—and he knew! He smelled buckskin and the smoke of tepees. He spoke a word or two in their own tongue. They laughed softly, without answering. From instinct, he ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... accusations arose. He had taken lands unjustly, owed men for imaginary wrongs, had relations with the tulisanes, by which his plantations and herds were unmolested. The affair became so complicated that no one could unravel it. Your father gave way under the strain, and ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... difficult to imagine that they can be produced by a bird. No bird, indeed, can be seen, however closely the surrounding trees and bushes are scanned. Yet that sweet voice seems to come from a thicket close at hand. The listeners are silent, expecting to hear the strain completed, but disappointment follows. An abrupt pause occurs, and then the song breaks down, finishing with a number of clicking, unmusical sounds, like a piping barrel-organ out of wind ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... seated two gentlemen conversing in a very lively and animated strain, and were apparently much interested with scenery, farm houses, and well trimmed hedges, as the train whirled past. They were not foreigners by any means, decidedly English in every look and action; about eight ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... undergrowth of creepers that prevail in the wider parts of the island gives place to a barren expanse of wind-swept sand, which yet, however, supports some scattered thousand-rooted palms against the sweeping gusts from the westward in the rainy season, and the steady strain of the southeast trades for the rest ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... drowsiness of fatigue on their return, their triumphant bravado at having covered yet more ground than on the precious journey, the delight of being no longer conscious of effort, of advancing solely by dint of strength acquired, spurring themselves on with some terrible martial strain which helped to ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Richmond and of the entire South were as kind and considerate as it was possible to be. Indeed, I think their great kindness tired him. He appreciated it all, was courteous, grateful, and polite, but he had been under such a terrible strain for several years that he needed the time and quiet to get back his strength of heart and mind. All sorts and conditions of people came to see him: officers and soldiers from both armies, statesmen, politicians, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... lion, having ceased to lick him, sniffed about his body. There are some things than which death is to be preferred; and there came at last to the Englishman the realization that it would be better to die swiftly than to lie in this horrible predicament until his mind broke beneath the strain and ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... where he could hold his own and more, live and die apart from all the feverishness and chances of another way of living. And he would awake and sniff in the morning air, and say to himself that he was a cur last night, and that he would stay and hold his own, and, in the end, win somehow. The bulldog strain asserted itself, and he was his own again. At night, after a fruitless day, he might become again depressed, but the morning restrung the bow. Sometimes—these were his weaker days—he would abandon all effort, and seek ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... hear this call from the beginning of their lives. Even their opulent spendthrift youth is "made the more mindful that the sweet days die," by every strain of music, by every gathered flower. All their joy is haunted, like the poetry of William Morris, with the wistful burden of mortality. Even the summer woodlands, with all their pomp and riot of exuberant green and ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... under the wing of God, of our consciousness withdrawing into the shade that it may rest from the burden of thought, and of the tomb, that divine bed, where the soul in its turn rests from life. To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of life, to calm the fever of the soul, to return into the bosom of maternal nature, thence to re-issue, healed and strong. Sleep is a sort of innocence and purification. Blessed ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... than twenty years," concluded the report in a strain of lyric prophecy, "petroleum will have taken the place of all the primitive and useless illuminating mediums now employed. It will replace, in like manner, all the coarse and troublesome varieties of fuel of our day. In less than twenty years the whole world will be lighted ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... continued Mrs. Wentworth in the same strain. "Did you not hear the physician say it is my neglect that had caused ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... it," cautioned Racey. "If I ever get to even thinking that yo're laying for me, Bull, I'm liable to come a-askin' questions you can't answer. Yo're a bright young man, Bull, but you want to be careful how you strain yore intellect. You might need it some day. And if you want to keep on being mother's li'l helper, ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... with perhaps one exception. The masterly series of which this book is a part furnishes a well-stocked gallery of pictures by which posterity will receive vivid and adequate impressions of life in France during a certain period. There was a strain of Greek blood in Zola's veins. It would almost seem that down through the ages with this blood there had come to him a touch of that old Greek fatalism, or belief in destiny or necessity. The Greek tragedies are pervaded and permeated, steeped and dyed with this idea of relentless ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... is hard—our task is unprecedented—and the time is short. We must strain every existing armament-producing facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to war production. That goes all the way from the greatest plants to the smallest—from the huge automobile industry to the village ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Sartor Resartus, shadowing forth some scheme of well-organised socialism, yet anticipates, especially in the chapter on Organic Filaments, the writer's later strain of belief in dukes, earls, and marshals of men: but this work, religious, ethical, and idyllic, contains mere vague suggestions in the sphere of practical life. About this time Carlyle writes of liberty: "What art thou ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... certain—the choice has not been wholly arbitrary; there has been at work an intuitional, subconscious factor. Is it possible that the negativing of a line in one direction by a line in another direction raises subliminally a sense of strain, then of effort, then of purposeful will, and so, lastly, of life? Probably a piece of pure imagination! And yet there must be some real power in the symmetrical form itself to account for its symbolic career. Conscious reason, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... broke, they sought to know how he did? He told them, Worse and worse; and he set to talk once more in the same strain as he had done; but they took no heed of it. By and by, to drive off his fit, they spoke harsh words to him; at times they would laugh, at times they would chide, and then set him at nought. So he went to his room to pray for them, as well as to nurse his own grief. He would go, too, into the ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... was written, it is true, under the strain of serial publication, haste, and anxiety, but it is perhaps, even in style, the most truly complete. The wonderful variety, elasticity, and freshness of the dialogue, the wit of the common scenes, the terrible power of the tragic scenes, the perfection of ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Of the same strain was Statilius' answer, when Brutus courted him into the conspiracy against Caesar; he was satisfied that the enterprise was just, but he did not think mankind worthy of a wise man's concern'; according to the doctrine of Hegesias, who said, that a wise man ought to do nothing ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the five eighths of blue ribbon by the aid of certain brass nails on the counter. He gave good measure, not prodigal, for he was loyal to his employer, but putting a very moderate strain on the ribbon, and letting the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of infinitesimals which betokened a large soul ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Sir Gregory came to look into it, he hardly knew whether those bugbears with which he had tried to frighten Tudor were good serviceable bugbears, such as would stand the strain of such a man's logic and reason. Was there really any reason why one of the commissioners should not sit in Parliament? Would his doing so be subversive of the constitution? Or would the ministers of the day object to an additional certain vote? This last point of view was one in which ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... have to give her something to quiet her," said the doctor. "She is in a worse state than I at first imagined. The strain has been entirely too much for her nervous system. We must get her ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... being a great success in business life. The question was, perhaps, whether the type of man who was pre-eminently successful in promoting his own pecuniary interests was necessarily the best type of public man. Was the average character equal to the strain of many years of concentration on money-making to the exclusion of public interests? When men emerged from the sphere of concentrated money-making, were they worth so very much as public men? Might not the values of things have ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Steel also ought at least to hear it before building on his efforts. The letter would prepare her for his ultimate failure, as it was only fair that she should be prepared, and yet would leave him free to strain every nerve in any fresh direction in which a chance ray lit the path. But it would be a difficult letter to write, and Langholm was still battling with the first sentence when he ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... into my chest of drawers, designing to destroy it, which I did, so soon as the servants were in bed; and then I felt a chill and a slight shiver;—'twas only that I was an older man. I was cool enough, but a strain on the mind was more to me then than twenty years before. So I drank a dram, and I heard a noise outside my window. 'Twas then that stupid dog, Cluffe, saw me, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... imprisonment but cook, think, and sleep. Of the variety and strangeness of my reflections it is impossible to give the faintest conception. Much of my time was given to devising means for escape. I recollected to have read, at the time of their publication, the narratives of Lieutenant Strain and Doctor Kane, and derived courage and hope from the reflection that they struggled with—and survived perils not unlike those which environed me. The chilling thought would then occur, that they were not alone. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... had reached the end of their journey. Nearly exhausted by the hours of physical exertion, and worn with the mental and nervous strain, she sank down upon the blankets that her companion spread for her ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... wickedly treated—impregnated with a deleterious something having the power of destroying a germ destined, if left to age, to become the soul of resonance, bringing it at once to a wretched maturity, its cells starved so, that when the strain of three hours' play in a hot room is put upon it, dumb is its voice, poor at the best, ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... hysterical giggling. I used to think that Father Payne did not like him very much; but he was a quick and regular worker, and it was impossible to find fault with him. He was extremely sociable and appreciative, and I used to find his company a relief from the strain which at times made itself felt. Pollard had a way of getting involved in absurd adventures, which he related with immense gusto; and he had a really wonderful power of description—more so in conversation than in writing—and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ostrich, and the eye of a pariah dog for any stray morsel of food; with an extraordinary capacity for taking rest in snatches, and recouping himself by a roll whenever you take his saddle off; and of course, from the natural toughness of his constitution, too, he is able to stand the long and gradual strain of being many hours under the saddle every day (and perhaps part of the night, too) in a way that unaccustomed horses cannot do. By this time we all know his merits, and there is immense demand from every mounted corps for the Boer ponies. The Major is up to his eyes in ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... about, Norton?" he asked, speaking to the latter, who had stepped forward and now stood beside Greasy. Whatever excitement had resulted from the sudden discovery that his men had captured a rustler and were about to hang him, together with the strain of his hard ride to the cottonwood, had disappeared, and Hollis's voice was quiet as he addressed ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... tied his horse to a seat and walked about. Amidst his emotions and reminiscences the beauty of the place, even in its wintry garb, gradually introduced into his thoughts a subdued, scarcely conscious strain of delight in its ownership. He came at last to the chateau, stood before it, and looked contemplatively along its facade. It was almost too grand to seem by any possibility his, yet in very truth he was lord of Eaux ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... "acts of Libbelism," and discussed all things in the universe. He was wildly gay, and profoundly serious, he had the earnestness of the Covenanter in forming speculations more or less unorthodox. It is needless to dwell on the strain caused by his theological ideals and those of a loving but sternly Calvinistic sire, to whom his love ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him too much for him to continue the strain of thought, and, after a while, he dozed off to sleep. When he awoke, a faint light was streaming in through a slit, two or three inches wide, high up on the wall. He still felt faint and dizzy, from the effects of the blow. ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... eagerness to rescue, an outgoing of God to individual souls. There is a deep personal affection displayed in this final scene in the Upper Chamber. This is our Lord's real parting from His disciples. He will see them again, but under conditions of strain and tragedy, or under such changed circumstances that they cannot well enter into the old intimacy. But here there is no bar to the expression of love. Here He gives them the final evidence of His utter union with ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... flashing and flaming. It is always his voice that rings out in the front, whether preaching on the Pentecost Day, bringing healing to the sick, or fronting the Sanhedrim. His element is in the shock of conflict and the strain of work. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... of his early days. He was not a very old man when he died,—younger than many monarchs and statesmen who in our times have retained their vigor, their popularity, and their power. But the intense labors and sorrows of forty years may have proved too great a strain on his nervous energies, and made him as timid as he once was bold. The man who had slain Goliath ran away from Absalom. He was completely under the domination of an intriguing wife. He showed a singular weakness in reference to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... high strain of panegyric," said the king; and he laid a severe emphasis on the ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... all the cities of his district, but before venturing forth to conquer these he had learned his own city by heart. My Cousin Robert was not aware of the fact that Mr. Bowles "showed" the town to certain customers. He even desired to show it to me, but an epicurean strain in my nature held me back. Johnny Hedges went with him occasionally, and Henry Schneider, the bill clerk, and I listened eagerly to their experiences, afterwards ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the muttered answer, as Mrs. Manners clutched the child—a little, thin-limbed, cunning-eyed girl, of eight or ten years old—and pressed her to her breast, with a strain more like the gripe of a lioness ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... better not talk to me in that strain before Mr. Martin. He is very deeply devoted to me," said Mrs. Howland; "and do not imagine that we have not given you careful consideration. He is willing to adopt you, but insists on your leaving Aylmer ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... Alexandria and have a "blow" at San Stefano, by the sea-side. There were quite a number of deaths in the brigade shortly after the men got into camp, the customary reaction having set in on account of the exposure and strain precedent to the victory of the Atbara. To reduce the numbers quartered at Darmali, the Lincolns and Warwicks, on the 19th of April, were marched a mile farther north along the Nile, to Es Selim, where they formed a separate encampment, the Camerons ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... lips, long silenced, raise A strain so lofty and so strong, Making our matin hymn of praise As jubilant ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... Then, too, our republican institutions were regarded as experiments up to the breaking out of the rebellion, and monarchical Europe generally believed that our republic was a rope of sand that would part the moment the slightest strain was brought upon it. Now it has shown itself capable of dealing with one of the greatest wars that was ever made, and our people have proven themselves to be the most formidable in war of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... business world calls for more power and the aeroplanes answer with the delivery of mail and soon we are told it will enter the strictly commercial field. But what of man? What is being done to make him stand up under this terrific strain; this keener competition? What of the food that must keep him going? What of products that must be put before him with the middle man ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... was remarkable to that extent that it can be explained only on the ground that the intense mental strain prevented his seeing things as they were. He had subjected his muscles to such a tension that he was obliged to pause every few minutes and rest. One of his feet was scarified and bleeding, and the other only a little better. When ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... over two years than her brave sister. Tall though she has grown, Ruth is but a child, and now in all her excitement and anxiety, worn out with the long strain, she begins to cry. She strives to hide it, strives to control the weakness, and, failing in both, strives to turn away. All to no purpose. An arm in a sling is of little avail at such a moment. Whirling quickly about, Drummond brings his other into action. Before the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... something of a strain On the busy human brain Passing through a window-pane To decide what it will do When at last it's safely through. As I gaze around I find— Horror! why, I must be blind! Blind or dead, I don't know which— All about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... the strain that Australian attachment to the imperial connection would bear, we have a right to imagine the contingency of Great Britain being involved in a war with a foreign Power of the first class. Leaving Sir Henry Parkes, we find another authority to enlighten ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... and Hugh went to a public school. In later life, conscious as he became of the strain and significance of personal relations with others, he used to wonder at the careless indifference with which he had entered the big place which was to be his home for several years, and was to leave so deep a mark upon him. In ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... struggling, still weak from the fever, and nearly frantic with fear and passionate resistance. No access to her was given me, and I gave notice that if access were denied me, I would sue for a restitution of conjugal rights, merely that I might see my children. But the strain had been too great, and I nearly went mad, spending hours pacing up and down the empty rooms, striving to weary myself to exhaustion that I might forget. The loneliness and silence of the house, of which my darling had always been the sunshine ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... each day worse than on the day before; Was drunk all night, all day continued so, Indulged in every vice he chanced to know. But long debauch and riotous excess Reduce their strongest votaries to distress; When nature can the strain no longer stand She chastens with a sure and irate hand, So when the day of reckoning had come, She smote with fever and delirium This valiant knight whom we have tried to paint; A very ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... rights round the table): I'm sorry, but my sense of humour can't stand the strain. ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... she could no longer remain as she had been. Here, below her was the face, the mountain face, of her rival. Unless she became one with his plans and lived in the same blazing light with them, she would be a separate landscape, a strain ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... A strain from the new organ—whose heart, however, had prematurely learned its own bitterness—and a thin, clear, but somewhat shrill chanting from a choir of young ladies were followed by a prayer from the Reverend Mr. ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... authority, to the men beside her, the resemblance became at moments stronger, and then again he would say to himself, "Nay, that is not like her." As the men gesticulated and answered her their voices came to him indistinctly, while hers, strain his hearing as he might, he could not catch. There seemed to be a dispute about something which the whole party were engrossed in, when suddenly one man gave a cry and pointed at Estein. Then he saw that in his curiosity he had stepped outside ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... the process of the debasement of the Roman tongue went on with great rapidity. The influence of the provincials began what the irruptions of the northern tribes consummated. In many scattered parts of the empire it is probable that separate Latin dialects arose, and the strain upon the whole structure of the tongue was prodigious, when the Goths poured into Italy, established themselves in the capital, and began to speak and write in a language previously foreign to them. With the close of the reign of Theodoric the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... On the shoulder. On the fight, you understand. He didn't give a continental for any body. Beg your pardon, friend, for coming so near saying a cuss-word—but you see I'm on an awful strain, in this palaver, on account of having to cramp down and draw everything so mild. But we've got to give him up. There ain't any getting around that, I don't reckon. Now if we can get you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... carol, one of nature's most alluring bits of music, fell upon my ear for the first time one memorable morning in June. It was a true siren-strain. We forgot, my comrade and I, what we were seeking in the woods. The junco family, in their snug cave among the roots, so interesting to us but now, might all fly away; the oven-bird, in the little hollow beside the path, might finish her lace-lined ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... depression, and sense of monotony into those Greek choruses: but to us she was always a sunbeam, with her ever ready attention, and the playfulness which resumed more of genuine mirth after the first effort and strain of spirits were over. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we doubt but that we can, If we would search with care and pain, Find some one good in some one man; So going thorough all your strain, We shall, at last, of parcels make One good enough for a ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... produces a feeling of oppression. He can be read in short passages without this feeling; the moment, however, the reader takes his verse in considerable quantities, the continued, though only slight, over-elaboration of the work produces a feeling of strain. Throughout there runs a vein of artificiality which ultimately gives the impression of insincerity. He can turn out phrases of the utmost nicety. Nothing can be more neatly turned than the description of ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... under an intense strain, and Ralph kept a keen lookout from his cab window. Fogg was doing the same. Suddenly he uttered a great shout. It was echoed by Ralph, for there ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... after a short prelude broke forth into a wild and varied strain of verse, in a voice so exquisitely sweet, with a taste so accurate, and a feeling so deep that the poetry sounded to the enchanted listeners like the language that Armida might have uttered. Yet the verses themselves, like all extemporaneous effusions, were of a nature both to ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bookish clan that cannot understand The rhythm and the cadences they never can command— But what is that to him that knows and touches all the strings Of hearts responsive to his strain when gifted Stanton sings? ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... women, as they wended their way to the first drug-store on the list. (The number of places within the city limits where intoxicating drinks were sold was fourteen—eleven saloons and three drug-stores.) Here, as in every place, they entered singing, every woman taking up the sacred strain as she crossed the threshold. This was followed by the reading of the appeal and prayer; then earnest pleading to desist from their soul-destroying traffic and sign ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... he wished to accentuate this antagonism, the author of Pelleas et Melisande is now writing a Tristan, whose plot is taken from an old French poem, the text of which has been recently brought to light by M. Bedier. In its calm and lofty strain it is a wonderful contrast to Wagner's savage and pedantic, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... said Raleigh, "does not that simple strain go nearer to the heart of him who wrote 'The Shepherd's Calendar,' than all artificial ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... comprehended can scarcely fail to produce many cases of permanent or temporary insanity. Most of the faces that one meets, both male and female, are those of the most profound melancholia, associated with an almost absolute disregard of the future. The nervous system shows the strain it has borne by a tremulousness of the hand and of the lip, in man as well as in woman. This nervous state is further evidenced by a peculiar intonation of words, the persons speaking mechanically, while the voices of many rough-looking men are ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... and soaked the earth until it seemed like a vast sponge. It made busy work for the section gangs, who had their hands more than full with landslides, undermined culverts, and overflowing ditches, and it caused enginemen to strain their eyes along the lines of wet track, with an unusual carefulness. At length the week of rain ended with a storm of terrific violence, accompanied by crashing thunder and vivid lightnings. While this storm was at its height, locomotive number 10, drawing a heavy freight, pulled ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... this abstract, as well by his letter preceding this, (for both run in the same strain,) how strangely forward the difficulty of my situation has brought him in his declarations and proposals; and in his threatenings too: which, but for that, I would ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Meldon. "The resemblance I speak of lies in the fact that I've 'earned my night's repose.' The village blacksmith felt that he deserved his after listening to his daughter singing in the local church choir. I've undergone an even severer nerve strain. I've practically arranged the marriage between ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... a double-breasted coat and high hat, lightly shaking the reins across the backs of two sleek thoroughbreds. It was even more alluring than his cherished dream of butlerhood! Already he felt his swelling chest strain against the ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... picking up, in actual experience, much of the mining wisdom which circumstances had denied that he should acquire in college. His Nevada experiences had given him a taste of the desert and he liked it. There was a broad strain of poetry in his make-up, inherited perhaps from his mother, and the desert appealed to that mystical sixth sense in him, arousing his imagination, taunting him with a desire that was almost pre-natal to investigate the formation on the other side of the sky-line. It pandered to the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... hear, now, Anthony's troubled breathing beside her; she could smell whiskey and cigarette smoke. She noticed that she lacked complete muscular control; when she moved it was not a sinuous motion with the resultant strain distributed easily over her body—it was a tremendous effort of her nervous system as though each time she were hypnotizing herself ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... it is a severe strain upon common sense to construe the rules so as to prevent a quorum of the House from taking any proceedings at all required by the Constitution; and it is still more difficult to find any justification for holding that the special resolutions of this House adopted December 19th ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... though their country is beyond anything dreamed of in the days of its nominal independence, is not enviable to us. It were to be wished that they had been cured of the regular—or irregular—spasms of selecting a chief without losing their national autonomy. What we remark is, that the strain of that convulsion was greater than they or their neighbors could bear, and that all concerned, with the trifling exceptions named, must have breathed freer and deeper when it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... glaze, do as follows: Strain the stock first through a colander, and return meat and vegetables to the pot; put to them four quarts of hot water, and let it boil four hours longer. The importance of this second boiling, which may at first sight appear ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... see; hence this necessary comparison with shop, factory, and office work. As to the other professions, taking, for instance, law or medicine, preparations for practice must be very costly. A girl puts her family to a great strain to pay her college expenses, or if some family friend advances funds, when she finally passes all the dreaded examinations, and has the legal right to hang out her shingle, she starts in the race of life ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... calm, matter-of-fact way, but with a strain of deep suppressed feeling. She was about twenty-three, a girl with a fine outline of features, beautiful dark eyes, and a clear brown skin, who would have been very handsome if she had looked better fed and less hardworked. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had seen the ashes; for the ashes I had seen myself here in Kings Port, and had been overwhelmed by the sight, forty years later, more overwhelmed than I could possibly say to Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, or Mrs. Weguelin, or anybody. The strain of sitting and waiting for the end made my hands cold and my head hot, but nevertheless the light which had come enabled me to bend instantly to Mrs. Braintree and murmur a great and abused quotation ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... himself explains, in his Introduction, how, in his quest of novelty, he invaded modern life, and the domain of Miss Austen. Unhappily he proved by example the truth of his own opinion that he could do "the big bow-wow strain" very well, but that it was not his celebrare domestica facta. Unlike George Sand, Sir Walter had humour abundantly, but, as the French writer said of herself, he was wholly ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... sea with a strain like to tear her asunder, and waters went sizzling through lee scuppers above with the hiss of a cataract. M. Radisson inverts a sand-glass and watches the sand trickle through till the last grain drops. Then ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... his slippers had no instep; the other was without a heel. His grizzly beard made him look like a wild man of the woods; a certain sardonic expression of countenance contributed to this effect. He planted his chair on its remaining hind leg at the cabin door, and commenced a systematic strain of grumbling before he was fairly seated ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... impossibly jolting to read all the short stories in a magazine 'seriatim'. On the other hand, the identity of authorship gives a continuity of attraction to the short stories in a book which forms that exhausting strain upon the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... enough if the other sex felt her superiority. Men were valuable only in proportion to their strength and their appreciation of women. If the senator had only been strong enough always to control his temper, he would have done very well, but his temper was under a great strain in these times, and his incessant effort to control it in politics made him less watchful in private life. Mrs. Lee's tacit assumption of superior refinement irritated him, and sometimes made him show his teeth like a bull-dog, at the cost of receiving from Mrs. Lee a quick stroke in return such ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams |
