"Stroke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... natural conceit, I stretched myself forward the full length of my body, quickly drew the keen knife edge across his bonds, severing them with one stroke, thus setting free his arms. As the sundered cords dropped noiselessly to the floor I drew back into hiding, leaving him to rid himself of whatever might remain. A moment later he joined me, silently as a great shadow, and I cordially ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... go off with a click of the finger; they might get switched off accidentally. To work the switch and the safety you must have two hands, or one hand in the optimum position. My position is about as bad as it could be. I can stroke the switch with one finger; ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... heard it now. Doctor Joe arose, and closely followed by the boys, stepped down beyond the fire glow. In dim outline they could see the silhouette of a canoe containing the lone figure of a man paddling with the short, quick stroke of ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... brave sprang up from the table; a sharp weapon, mickle and long, he drew and dealt Bloedel so fierce a sword-stroke that his head lay straightway at his feet. "Let that be thy marriage morning gift," (2) spake Dankwart, the knight, "for Nudung's bride, whom thou wouldst cherish with thy love. They call betroth her to another man upon the morn. Should he crave the dowry, 'twill be given to him eftsoon." ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... in the common dwelling-house. Now, this morning but first, I must tell you that M. Hardy, who has lately returned from a journey, is again absent for a few days on business. This morning, then, at the hour of breakfast, I remained at work a little after the last stroke of the bell; I was leaving the workshop to go to our eating-room, when I saw entering the courtyard, a lady who had just got out of a hackney-coach. I remarked that she was fair, though her veil was half down; she had a mild and pretty countenance, and her dress was that of a fashionable lady. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... force. All that time Melampus lay bound with hard bonds in the halls of Phylacus, suffering strong pains for the sake of the daughter of Neleus, and for the dread blindness of soul which the goddess, the Erinnys of the dolorous stroke, had laid on him. Howsoever he escaped his fate, and drave away the lowing kine from Phylace to Pylos, and avenged the foul deed upon godlike Neleus, and brought the maiden home to his own brother to wife. As for him, he went to a ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... he presently connected himself with the blacksmithing profession. Not exactly at the forge in the Lafittes' famous smithy, among the African Samsons, who, with their shining black bodies bared to the waist, made the Rue St. Pierre ring with the stroke of their hammers; but as a—there was no occasion to mince the ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... once in my life, had an attachment nearly resembling marriage, to a widow of rank, with whom I was acquainted abroad; and with whom I almost secluded myself from the world near a twelvemonth, when she died of a fever, a stroke I was long before ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... daughter was born to them. To celebrate the event, I suppose, Ruiz executed one or two brilliant forays clear away at the rear of our forces, and defeated the detachments sent out to cut off his retreat. General Robles nearly had a stroke of apoplexy from rage. He found another cause of insomnia than the bites of mosquitoes; but against this one, senores, tumblers of raw brandy had no more effect than so much water. He took to railing and storming at me about my strong man. And from our impatience to end this inglorious campaign ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... hard stroke for me. I was pleasantly situated with a moderate support for my declining years, and ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... on regaining consciousness, I still lay upon my face, but my brain felt more capable of coping with the situation. I lay and reflected. Something had happened to me: was it a stroke of paralysis? I moved the muscles of my face: they were all right on both sides. I turned my head slightly first one way and then the other—no, I was not paralysed. I tried to raise myself, but found that ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... long veil, and the emotion which sympathy brought into Ellen's countenance, proved too much for the enforced prudence of Master Horner. When the rehearsal was over, and the heroes and heroines were to return home, it was found that, by a stroke of witty invention not new in the country, the harness of Mr. Kingsbury's horses had been cut in several places, his whip hidden, his buffalo-skins spread on the ground, and the sleigh turned bottom upwards on them. This afforded an excuse for the master's borrowing ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... as were the attitude and the language of Henry, he was thought to be hoping to accomplish much by bluster. It was certain that the bold and unexpected stroke of Leopold had produced much effect upon his mind, and for a time those admitted to his intimacy saw, or thought they saw, a decided change in his demeanour. To the world at large his language and his demonstrations were even more vehement than they had been at the outset of the controversy; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hawthorn glimmered white, Flashed the spear and fell the stroke— Ah, what faces pale and bright Where the ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... I answered. "She can't, I'm certain, make out what we mean. The woman, for her still, is just what she always was. But she has nevertheless had her stroke, and her blindness, while she wavers and gropes in the dark, only adds to her discomfort. Her blow was to see the ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... story dates from a chance, a seeming stroke of good fortune, one of those terrible gifts of the Danai. A few weeks before her marriage "Trina" drew $5 000 from a lottery ticket. From that moment her passion for hoarding money becomes the dominant theme of the story, takes command of the book and its characters. After their ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... it there once more, he could hardly realise a stroke of good fortune that seemed miraculous—though, in reality, it was less strange than the way he had lost it;* but now, laid bodily on his heart, it set his bosom on fire. Oh, the bright eye, the bounding pulse, the buoyant foot, the reckless joy! He slapped Sharpe on the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... one degrees of heat. The room was darkened till it was only just possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and the very white faces of the players. A tattered, rotten punkah of whitewashed calico was puddling the hot air and whining dolefully at each stroke. Outside lay gloom of a November day in London. There was neither sky, sun, nor horizon,—nothing but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as though the earth ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... is wrath to a degree; he comes down stairs eight or ten steps at a time—muttering, growling, and thumping the banisters all the way: I and the cook's dog stand bowing at the door—rap! he gives me a stroke on the head with his cane; bids me carry that to my master; then kicking the poor turnspit into the area, damns us all, for a puppy triumvirate!—Upon my credit, sir, were I in your place, and found ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... had dared to defy the over-bearing conqueror and had put into the field against him her armies trained by Frederick the Great; but these he had shattered almost at a stroke, winning in one day the decisive battles of Jena and Auerstadt. He had stabled his horses in the royal palace of the Hohenzollerns and had pursued the remnant of the Prussian forces to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... sun seemed a lake of glory and I a boatman, fair and free, sailing vast distances upon it with just one stroke of my wand-oar—and here I began to scare ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... content him, unless his mecometer be an insatiable apparatus. But I fear that in other respects I shall no more satisfy him than the Irish drummer satisfied the poor culprit when, after several times changing the direction of the stroke at earnest entreaty, he was at last provoked to call out, "Bad cess to ye, ye spalpeen! strike where one will, there's ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... With dazzling smiles, and wishes audible, And waving kerchiefs, and applauding hands, Even to the goal!—How many a time have I Cloven with arm still lustier, breast more daring, The wave all roughened; with a swimmer's stroke Flinging the billows back from my drenched hair, And laughing from my lip the audacious brine, Which kissed it like a wine-cup, rising o'er The waves as they arose, and prouder still 110 The loftier they uplifted me; and oft, In wantonness of spirit, plunging ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... name to-day, my Lady! It has been revealed to me as a great secret. It is a name too high for the stroke of the law, if there be any law left us but the will of a King's mistress! God, however, has left us the law of a gentleman's sword to avenge its master's wrong. The Baron de St. Castin will soon return to vindicate ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... in the forehead is of no consequence," said the officer; "the stroke only cut the skin. Let us put this moistened ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... family party, not like the chaffinches and strutting cocks. Among their species the males fly by themselves, and the females by themselves: that, to say the least of it, is not at all seemly. What a miserable sound the stroke of the swans' wings has ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... that Queen VICTORIA has ordered from a Dublin manufacturer an extensive assortment of Balbriggan hosiery for the wedding outfit of the Princess LOUISE. There is a stroke of policy in this. In firemen's phrase it may be called laying on the ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... voulez ... pas ... vous ... en ... aller?" says the soldier, on tiptoe, his chest against Barty's stomach, his nose almost up to Barty's chin, glaring up like a fiend and poising his coupe-choux for a death-stroke. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... taken place to have any desire to go to sleep again, she waited impatiently for daybreak, continuing to keep up the fire and watching the child, whom Germain seemed to have forgotten. Germain, meanwhile, was not asleep; he was not reflecting on his lot, nor was he devising any bold stroke, or any plan of seduction. He was suffering keenly, he had a mountain of ennui upon his heart. He wished he were dead. Everything seemed to be turning out badly for him, and if he could have ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the hat: had it been in the middle of the Loire he would have gone after it under similar circumstances, though he couldn't swim a stroke; he did not go near the hat however, but went head over heels into the water; the impetus carried him through, and he was the second to scramble upon the broken mortar on the other side. The Chevalier was more active; he leapt in and seized the hat as it was ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Fathers of the Revolution with the deepest sorrow and the keenest reproach. I said to their shadows in another world, "Why did you leave this accursed system of slavery for us to suffer and die under? why did you not, with a stroke of the pen, determine—when you acquired your own independence—that the principles which you adopted in the Declaration of Independence should be a shield of protection to every man, whether he be slave or whether he be free?" But, my friends, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and always will be. Why, look you, Teacher, most men pull up a bit when they're courting a girl, no matter how wild they've been and will be again. Paul hasn't. It hasn't made any difference. He was dead drunk night afore last at the Harbour head, and he hasn't done a stroke of work for a month. And ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... late, he found the party already at the table. It was an inflexible rule of Barney Ryan's to sit down to dinner at the stroke of half-past six, whether his guests were assembled or not—a rule which even his wife's cajoleries and commands were ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... serve him to spaake.' This inability, produced no doubt by pain, the other witches explain by saying that the Devil's mark had not been found, which, being found, 'the charm' was 'stinted', and the Doctor, in dread probably of a fourth stroke, confessed unutterably shameful things. Having escaped from prison, of course by the aid of the Devil, he was pursued, and brought back and re-examined before the king. 'But this Doctor, notwithstanding that ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... snapped me up, I secured it with so little trouble. I reported it so perfect that all my wife's fears of a latent objection to it were roused again. But when I said I thought we could relinquish it, her terrors subsided; and I thought this the right moment to deliver a stroke that I had been holding ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Then he recited the stanza which tells by implication how in the long duel Cuchulain was at last driven to use the irresistible stroke of ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... room I did not appropriate the remark to myself, though I thought he had intended it for me. I paid no attention to him, however, until, just as I was turning the sheet inside out, the Spaniard, irritated by another stroke of ill luck, advanced to me, and demanded that I should either lay the newspaper aside or quit the room. I very promptly declined to do either, when he snatched the paper from my hands, and instantly drew his sword. I was unarmed, with the exception of a good sized whalebone cane, but ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... be Thy sacred will That I may go and stroke her hand, Just let me say, "I'm living still! And in a brighter, better land." One word from me will cheer her so, O Lord, if ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... promptness, but the British failed to move quickly enough. Kluck extricated himself from between the blades with supreme generalship, brought his main force back against the French, borrowing a corps from Buelow and presently the French were driven back upon Paris. British slowness had wrecked the master stroke ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... atmosphere of my Lodge of Dreams came the melancholy news that William McClintock, my giant uncle, had been stricken by the same mysterious malady which had broken my mother's heart, and that he was lying motionless on his bed in the narrow space of his chamber. The "stroke" (so my aunt wrote) had come upon him (as upon my mother) without the slightest warning, and with no ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... knocker of quaint design, which in former days was a Mecca for the fugitive, for the shrine of St. Cuthbert enjoyed the right of sanctuary. When the suppliant grasped this knocker he was safe, for over the door two monks kept perpetual watch to open at the first stroke. As soon as admitted the suppliant was required to confess his crime, whatever it might be. This was written down, and a bell in the galilee tolled to announce the fact that some one had sought "the peace of Cuthbert;" and he was then clothed in a black gown with a yellow ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... answer gravely. In one skeleton claw it fumbled a rod and with this it now traced certain symbols in the dust before Varta's webbed feet. When it had done, the girl stooped and altered two of the lines with a swift stroke from one of her talons. The creature of the Chasm nodded its ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... Horror-stricken silence. Then he got kind again, and said I had this precious gift—God, he said, alone knew why I had got it, I a woman; what, he asked, staring prawnishly, is the good of a woman's having such a stroke of luck?—and that it was a great responsibility, and I wasn't to suppose it was my gift only, to spoil and mess up as I chose, but that it belonged to the world. When he said that, cold shivers trickled down ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... reviewed the men, and then gave a talk to the officers. As far as I can recollect, he was most sanguine about the speedy termination of the war. He told us that all we had to do was to keep worrying the Germans, and that the final crushing stroke would be given on the east by the Russians. He also told us that to us was assigned the place of honour on the extreme left of the British line next to the French Colonial troops. I (p. 053) overheard an irreverent officer near me say, "Damn the place of honour", and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... fragments of the "beautiful nonsense" which he had spoken to her in bygone days. For in that bright sunshine of the late summer, among the garden trees, the Black Angel had come without warning to him, and with one swift stroke of his weapon had laid him, with all his dreams and delusions, in the dust; and its tragic ending had given a new dignity, a touch of mournful glory, and something of mystery, to the vain ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Latitude of 15 degrees 45 minutes South, where, on the night of the 10th of June, we struck upon a Reef of Rocks, were we lay 23 Hours, and received some very considerable damage. This proved a fatal stroke to the remainder of the Voyage, as we were obliged to take shelter in the first Port we met with, were we were detain'd repairing the damage we had sustain'd until the 4th of August, and after all put to ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... But ruder records fill the dusky wall: There, deeply carv'd, behold! each Tyro's name Secures its owner's academic fame; Here mingling view the names of Sire and Son, The one long grav'd, the other just begun: These shall survive alike when Son and Sire, Beneath one common stroke of fate expire; [10] Perhaps, their last memorial these alone, Denied, in death, a monumental stone, 160 Whilst to the gale in mournful cadence wave The sighing weeds, that hide their nameless grave. And, here, my name, and many an early friend's, Along the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the sorrow of bereaved, empty hearts may become the gladness of hearts filled with God; and every grief that stoops upon our path may be, and will be, if we keep near that dear Lord, changed into its own opposite, and become the source of blessedness else unattainable. Every stroke of the bright, sharp ploughshare that goes through the fallow ground, and every dark winter's day of pulverising frost and lashing tempest and howling wind, are represented in the broad acres, waving with the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... "old-fashioned" flower were "Little Daisies" and "Bruisewoorte." The latter name, according to Gerarde, was applied for the following reasons: "The leaues stamped, taketh away bruses and swellings proceeding of some stroke, if they be stamped and laide thereon, whereupon it was called in olde time Bruisewoorte. The iuice put into the eies cleereth them, and taketh away the watering;" and here is a dog note: "The same given to little dogs with milke, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... that it was not just the thing to meet two little people in her pasture after dark, and the amiable beast paused to inquire into the case. She let them stroke her, and stood regarding them with her soft eyes so mildly, that Nan, who feared no animal but a bear, was fired with a ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... wherever he went. He was genial and kindly, and his biographer adds that it was never Irving's habit to stroke the world the wrong way. One of his maxims was, "When I cannot get a dinner to suit my taste, I endeavor to get a taste to ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... instant rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long months of days and weeks, ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... like a stroke of thunder to me, for I dreaded nothing so much as confinement again among the Moors, from whose barbarity I had nothing but death to expect. I therefore determined to set off immediately for Bambarra, a measure which I thought ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... he could see big machines working, and he guessed that these were the engines that printed the newspapers. The thump of the presses, as they turned great rolls of white paper into printed sheets, seemed to beat inside his head, causing him pain with every stroke. He pressed his fingers, against his temples in an effort to relieve the ache, but it would not be relieved. "Oh!" he exclaimed aloud after one very sharp twinge, and then, as he spoke, he found himself before a gate and, heedless of what ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... reputation of a false and tricky politician. The latter has been especially blamed for the manner in which he deceived and outwitted the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, by which, as we learn from Thucydides, he brought the truce between the two nations to an end. Yet that stroke of policy, though it again involved Athens in war, rendered her strong and formidable, through the alliance with Argos and Mantinea, which she owed to Alkibiades. Marcius also, we are told by Dionysius, produced a quarrel between the Romans and the Volscians by bringing a false accusation against ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... heart, That I would all my pilgrimage dilate Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not intentively; I did consent; And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffered. My story being done She gave me for my pains a world of sighs; She swore—in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange; 'Twas pitiful; 'twas wondrous pitiful; She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished, That heaven had made her such a man, she thanked me, And ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... her as she rose. She flew round her flanks, and maneuvered round her in a circle with a constantly diminishing radius. She could have annihilated her at a stroke, and Uncle Prudent and his companions would have been dashed to atoms in a ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... stroke of satire on the part of Mr. GRANT, since it is generally understood in Philadelphia, that, outside the ranks of the Mutual Admiration Society to which we have referred, there are no brains to be found among the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... tide of deeper things the woman had let loose in the subconscious part of him. Everywhere he saw the mysterious camels go slouching through the sand, gurgling the water in their skinny, extended throats. Centuries passed between the enormous knee-stroke of their stride. And, every night, the sunsets restored the forbidding, graver mood, with their crimson, golden splendour, their strange green shafts of light, then—sudden twilight that brought the Past upon him with an awful leap. Upon the stage then stepped the figures ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... blue flash of intense light filled every corner of the church, the thunder pealed so sharply and vehemently overhead that the small company looked at one another and at the church, to ascertain that no stroke had fallen. Then the Lord of Whitburn, first recovering himself, cried, "Come, sir knight, kiss your bride. Ha! where is he? Sir Leonard—here. Who hath seen him? Not ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... did not succeed, Monsieur, I have seen too much of men not to appreciate a brilliant stroke. Had I not torn that paper from your hand, you might have scored at least half a trick. There is a high place somewhere in this world for a man of ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... and pleasure of looking upon the broad acres, the shaded walks, the beautiful landscape, planted, improved, and protected by his own hand; the herds of favorite cattle and sheep which love his coming, the kindly tones of his voice, the gentle stroke of his hand; the respect paid by friends and neighbors to the venerable man who waits only the termination of a virtuous life; the faith in 'the sacred covenant, that while the earth remaineth, sunshine and shower, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest shall not fail,' are his who lives ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... don't realize all your talents, Jake. For one thing, you have a gift for narrative, and the portrait you drew of Carmen with a stroke or two was lifelike. Then, when you met and bluffed her into giving Daly away, you couldn't have taken a more effective line if you had been an ambassador. What ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... every country, all waiting for a favourable breeze to enable them to quit the roadstead and put to sea. Pilot luggers and other shore-boats of various kinds were moving about among these; some on the look-out for employment, others intent on doing a stroke of business in the smuggling way, if convenient. Far away along the beach men of the coastguard might be seen, like little black specks, with telescopes actively employed, ready to pounce on and overhaul (more or less stringently according to circumstances) ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... a case, the choice of the wayfarer becomes boundless, and is only limited by the horizon and circumstances. As matters were, he had scarcely enough to live on—not nearly enough to do so as his tastes and habits suggested; and yet, by one bold stroke, with luck to back it, he might, not "one day" (that would have had small charm for him), but at once, and for his life-long, be rich and prosperous. He could not be said to have expectations, but his position was not without certain ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... sent him offerings, and when he had been told of this or that beauty who was in love with his proud, bearing and dashing courage. Women! What were women? He had only cared for the bulls, for the clamor of the people, and the wild excitement of the arena. All he had wished for was to learn the best stroke, the finest leap. But this girl, who had never opened her scornful little mouth to deign him a word—who had never once allowed him to look in her eyes—somehow this one drove him half mad. He could think ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... word,' laughed the sentry, 'that was a smart stroke of business. How the two-legged mouse must have kicked about inside his trap! And how did things go on after ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... stroke the railroad situation in the West had been radically changed. The Huntington system comprehended many properties of large and growing value, which were now feeling the full benefit of the agricultural prosperity at that ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... his mother's house, on the common which Jem rode over when he went to Farmer Truck's for the giant strawberries, he remembered to have seen a great quantity of this heath; and, as it was now only six o'clock in the evening, he knew that he should have time to feed Lightfoot, stroke him, go to the common, return, and make one trial of his skill before he went ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... interrupted the Hibernian, who had sat all this time in silence that spoke his grateful sense of the politeness of his companions, "you will put the finishing stroke to my obligations to you, if you will prove that the ancient figures of speech were invented ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... half pausing in a stroke in which he had started to exert his strength to the utmost. "Lucky I've got you. You always keep cool. How do you manage to ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... him read his Judicious and Savory Treatise of the Gospel Covenant, which has passed through several Editions, with much Acceptance among the People of God." It must be added that "he had a competently good Stroke at Latin Poetry; and even in his Old Age, affected sometimes to improve it. Many of his Composure ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sufficient requital for his contempt of the deity; that a still heavier one awaited him, unless he went immediately and delivered the message to the consuls. The matter was now still more pressing. Hesitating, however, and delaying he was at length overtaken by a severe stroke of disease, a sudden paralysis. Then indeed the anger of the gods aroused him. Wearied out therefore by his past sufferings and by those threatening him, having convened a meeting of his friends, after he had detailed to them all he had seen and heard, and Jupiter's ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... deep adversity—suppose the Christian stripped, like Job, of great honours and possessions at a single stroke; betrayed and sold like Joseph, even by brethren, into bondage and exile; or lying like Lazarus at the gate of the rich man, diseased in body, and suing for the crumbs from off his table; or suppose him, as St. Paul himself, in peril of foes, and even doubtful of friends; in weariness ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... rung, the first stroke it makes unlatches the springs, which assume the position shown in the right-hand cut of Fig. 199, and this, it will be seen from Fig. 200, establishes proper conditions for enabling the subscriber to transmit ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... he said to Heideck, "how hard it is for me to leave India, so dearly purchased. I have devoted twenty years of my life to it, years of hard, unremitting toil. And now my work, like that of so many better men, is rendered useless at a single stroke." ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... a sentimentalist. Nay, it is on the rare occasions when he deliberately sentimentalizes with Captain Shandy that the Captain is the least delightful; it is then that the hand loses its cunning, and the stroke strays; it is then, and only then, that the benevolence of the good soldier seems to verge, though ever so little, upon affectation. It is a pity, for instance, that Sterne should, in illustration of Captain Shandy's kindness of heart, have plagiarized (as he is said to have done) the incident ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... settlers roared with laughter at the joke, They recognized a gentlemanly fellow pulling stroke: 'Twas ROBINSON—a convict, in an unbecoming frock! Condemned to seven ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... drops her pall over river and shore, And scatters eve's merry-voiced throng, Does there rise, keeping time to the stroke of the oar, The wild chant of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... menacing attitude, so that from the middle of July a battle was daily and even hourly expected. It was the interest of the Russians to strike the first blow, and the allies prepared to ward it off, and, if possible, deal in return a more deadly stroke. The great trial of strength on the banks and steep acclivities of "the Black River" was destined to occur in August. On the 16th, the Russians attacked the whole line of the French and Sardinian posts, and, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "We've had a stroke of good luck, gentlemen," said Brisket, in a husky whisper, as they followed him up the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... extremely fortunate that I saw the burglars at work in the jewelry establishment of Mr. Grandin on that memorable night in Damietta. The same stroke of fortune might have fallen to any boy, but it was incomplete until I was able to bring the leader to the ground with the stone which ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... passed the short pier. This would make her head about even with the head of the long pier. He says her head was as high or higher than the head of the long pier. Other witnesses confirmed this one. The final stroke was in the splash door aft the wheel. Witnesses differ, but the majority say that she ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... heart must press towards him who was no turnkey! The more irksomely her captors held her, the more warmly would she remember him. Subconsciously he hoped for a rattle of chains, a scourging with whips. Every bond, every stroke would speed her spirit to the recollection ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... surprised to find me in this port, but I think my secret cruise is nearly over now, and you will say the plan was a master-stroke, and well executed by a poor devil, with nobody to advise him. I am coiling such a web round them, and making it fast, as you may see a spider, first to this point and then to the other, that I won't leave my persecutors one solitary chance of ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... living who in their younger days have undergone the ceremony, always, they say, attended with complete success. On execution days at Northampton, numbers of sufferers used to congregate round the gallows, in order to receive the "dead-stroke," as it is termed. At the last execution which took place in that town, a very few only were operated upon, not so much in consequence of decrease of faith, as from the higher fee demanded ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... There is a Stroke of Nature in Horatio's breaking off, from the Description of the King, and falling into the Exclamation. 'Tis Strange! which ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... means. I have an infinite respect for the great institution of flogging; but a solemn execution is one thing, a random stroke another.' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... violent; then they stopped altogether, but the triangular head raised above the mass of coils was turned toward the crouching Jaguar while the greenish eyes glared at her with a demoniacal hate. Suma knew her enemy well; to move suddenly was to invite the deadly stroke. So she began creeping, so slowly and so evenly that it was impossible to detect the slightest motion. Inch by inch she advanced but not for an instant did her eyes leave those of the snake. The latter took no note of this strategy or else seemed spell-bound by the blazing eyes of ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... now to go to the bedside and do what must be done for the sick woman—to smooth the pillow for the head that had thought such thoughts and to stroke the hand that had done such a deed. She was tempted to take the little black bag and leave the house quietly, before any one was up. That was not a very dreadful thought, of course, but it seemed terrible to her, whose first duty in life was to help ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... At the double stroke of the spring door-bell, twice repeated, his expression changed as if he had been waked from a dream. He dried his cheeks roughly with the back of his hand, and his very heavy black eyebrows were drawn down and together, as if the tension of the man's whole nature had been relaxed ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... maidens, how in one short hour The schemes, pursued in vain for twenty years, Are—by a stroke, though undesired, complete— Crown'd with success, not in my way, but Heaven's! This at a moment, too, when I had urged A last, long-cherish'd project, in my aim Of peace, and been repulsed with hate and scorn. Fair terms of reconcilement, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Hirundelle, in French, a Swallow, & out of France, at the conquest they came, & sixe Swallowes they giue in Armes. The Countrey people entitle them, The great Arundels: and greatest stroke, for loue, liuing, and respect, in the Countrey ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... an almost interminable vista of antecedent states of mind. Confined within the narrow limits of time, the poet is in many subjects obliged to mutilate the action, by beginning close to the last decisive stroke, or else he is under the necessity of unsuitably hurrying on its progress: on either supposition he must reduce within petty dimensions the grand picture of a strong purpose, which is no momentary ebullition, but ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) 275 Than all the imperfect residue can be;— The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, And without her ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... proclamation of social freedom that has yet been heard, and it is this proclamation of social emancipation, and not any religious novelty, that forms the substance of the 'Good News.' It was a master-stroke of the policy of enslavement to represent Christ as a founder of a religion instead of a social reformer: the latter doctrine had quickly won the hearts of the oppressed masses because it promised them release from their sufferings, but the former ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... parts, light in others, and even sometimes thick and sometimes slender, a scientifically accurate outline is perfectly equal throughout; and in your first practice I wish you to use always a pen with a blunt point, which will make no hair stroke under any conditions. So that using black ink and only one movement of the pen, not returning to thicken your line, you shall either have your line there, or not there; and that you may not be able to gradate or change it, in ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... writing words so decisive, and whose consequences had been so serious; and all her endeavors had been applied to mitigate the results. In reflecting upon her conduct in reference to the happiness of France, she applauded herself for having thus, at one stroke, stifled the germ of a civil war which would have shaken the State to its very foundations. But when she approached her young friend and gazed on that charming being whose happiness she was thus destroying in its bloom, and reflected ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... said gayly. Bartley rose and rang the bell. Thomas brought him his hat and stick and ulster. At the sight of these, the supercilious Angora moved restlessly, quitted her red cushion by the fire, and came up, waving her tail in vexation at these ominous indications of change. Alexander stooped to stroke her, and then plunged into his coat and drew on his gloves. His wife held his stick, smiling. Bartley smiled too, and his eyes cleared. "I'll work like the devil, Winifred, and be home again before you realize ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... Patrasche, we shall soon lie quiet together, you and I," said old Jehan Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of Patrasche with the old withered hand which had always shared with him its one poor crust of bread; and the hearts of the old man and the old dog ached together with one thought: When they were gone who would ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... thus, and were they not half savages. The shooting case reminds us of a traveller's story which we heard at a dinner table abroad. A gentleman and esquire of strict veracity, like Mr. Welby, related, in order to shew how common was the calamity of the coup de soleil, or stroke of the sun, in the Island of JAVA, that sitting once in the house of an opulent merchant of Batavia, drinking a cool glass of Madeira after dinner, with the merchant's wife in the room, the lady was, in the twinkling of an eye, reduced to a heap of ashes ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... two hours after that scene before Maltravers left the house. It was then just on the stroke of the first hour of morning. To him, while he walked through the streets, and the sharp winds howled on his path, it was as if a strange and wizard life had passed into and supported him—a sort of drowsy, dull existence. He was like a sleepwalker, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to let any body out of the house, unless we surrendered. My father, who had cut a hole in the roof of the house to catch at rain water for my dying mother, made his escape through it. A neighbor, who handed me a drink of water through a broken pane in a window, had his hand cut off by a stroke from the police sergeant's sabre. My poor mother died before the priest arrived. My oldest brother, seeing his mother dead, and that we had nothing now to guard, surrendered. We were all lodged in jail that night, and all our means were sold at auction. It was lucky for us we were put into ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... necessity of strict obedience. One of these, sitting at the bow oar, looked over his shoulder, and saw a heavy sea rolling towards the boat, and inadvertently expressed some fear. The other man, on hearing this, glanced round, and in doing so missed a stroke of his oar. Such a preponderance was thus given to the rowers on the opposite side, that when the wave struck the boat, it caught her on the side instead of the bow, and hurled her upon a ledge of shelving rocks, where the water left her. Having been kanted ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Troop of Woodbridge had taken upon themselves a real contract. Indeed they felt that they had suddenly all become genuine business men as a result of a bargain they had made with the leading physician of the village, for you see their little stroke of dickering had put them in the way of securing material for a real log cabin on the shores of Long Lake, a site for the cabin, and a chance to make a little money for the troop treasury besides. It had come ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... steadily. "I should like to tell you just how I feel about it, father. Putting aside entirely the question of it being—Christopher—. That was a stroke of Providence, shall we say? I had you and Nevil, and the children. Life was not altogether empty, sir. But I felt I had learnt something from life,—from myself,—mostly from you,—that might be useful to a man. Not to pass this on," the steady voice lost its main ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... we really ought to cut out these words and put them in a frame; long, long we'd search to find a better motto to guide and help us while we play the game. Look pleasant, please, when you have met reverses, when you beneath misfortune's stroke are bent, when all your hopes seem riding round in hearses—a scowling brow won't help you worth a cent. Look pleasant, please, when days are dark and dismal and all the world seems in a hopeless ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... him; "Carry these to Theophilus; say that Dorothea hath sent them, and that I go before him to the garden whence they came, and await him there." With these words she bent her neck, and received the death-stroke. ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... wind I heard the game go forward—stroke after stroke. I tried to believe that I could not hear voices; but that attempt was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... him in so many of his wanderings. In communicating the intelligence of her decease at Shupanga, on the River Zambesi, to his friend Sir Roderick Murchison, Dr. Livingstone said: "I must confess that this heavy stroke quite takes the heart out of me. Everything else that has happened only made me more determined to overcome all difficulties; but after this sad stroke I feel crushed and void of strength. Only three short months of ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of Asia, Alas! thou Persia, treasure-house of wealth, How at one stroke has your prosperity Been overthrown and Persia's glory lost! Ill-luck has he that evil tidings brings, Yet needs must I my tale of woe unfold. Persians, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... from the Old Testament cut off all absolute predestination at a stroke. If God is good to all, or if he is loving to every man, how ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... anything may happen. On the other hand there was this to be said for my style of batting, that the most experienced Cricketer could not tell where or in what direction I would hit any given ball. If it was on the off, that was no reason why I should not bang it to square-leg, a stroke which has become fashionable since my time, but in those old days, you did not often see it in first-class Cricket. It was rather regarded as "an agrarian outrage." Foreigners and ladies would find Cricket a more buoyant diversion if all the world, and especially ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... the beaver's instinct for building, the bee's skill for hiving, the lion's stroke is less than man's trip-hammer, the deer's swift flight is slowness to man's electric speed, the eagle itself cannot outrun his flying speech. It is as if all the excellences of the whole animal creation were ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... political struggle. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the people, whose imagination had been aroused, should have begun to murmur about poison? The party of Germanicus was driven to desperation by this death, which virtually ended its existence, and destroyed at a single stroke all the hopes of those who had seen in Germanicus the instrument of their future fortune. They therefore eagerly collected, embellished, and spread these rumors. Had Agrippina been a woman of any judgment ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... gears of a motor. He thought for a moment that it was Honduras at his own car; then he recognized the stroke of a far heavier engine. The powerful, ungraceful bulk of an English machine was stopping at his door. Immediately after he distinguished the slightly harsh, dominating voice of Peter Provost. The latter entered, followed by Kingsfrere Jannan. Peter Provost, a member of the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... thirteenth green on the golf course. It is a stagnant and unclean pool, but we make rather a fuss of it. We call it the pond; and if you play a ball into it you send a blasphemous caddie in after it and count one stroke. ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... Toby's reasons for wishing to be by himself that afternoon was that he wanted to think over some plan of escape, for he believed that he had nearly money enough to enable him to make a bold stroke for freedom and Uncle Daniel's. Therefore, when the monkey nestled down by his side he was all ready to confide in him that which had been occupying his busy little brain ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... President Leo A. SALCAM (since 9 May 1997); note - the president is both the chief of state and head of government; Vice President Jacob NENA became acting president in July 1996 after President Bailey OLTER suffered a stroke; OLTER was declared incapacitated in November 1996; as provided for by the constitution, 180 days later, with OLTER still unable to resume his duties, NENA was sworn in as the new president; he will serve ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... fearless flocks; all bask at noon Together, or all gambol in the shade Of the same grove, and drink one common stream. Antipathies are none. No foe to man Lurks in the serpent now: the mother sees, And smiles to see, her infant's playful hand Stretch'd forth to dally with the crested worm, To stroke his azure neck, or to receive The lambent homage of his arrowy tongue. All creatures worship man, and all mankind One Lord, one Father. Error has no place; That creeping pestilence is driv'n away: The breath of Heav'n has chas'd it. In the heart No passion touches a discordant ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... of the house was one of them. He was between forty-six and forty-eight years of age. For the last three years he had been quite unable to move from the effects of an apoplectic stroke, which left him with both legs paralysed. He was stout, with a red face, and strong well-marked features; his thick curly hair and beard were streaked with grey, and he had keen, piercing black eyes. His face was ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... though the form is that of Zain; the name of Samech is possibly the origin of Sigma, while the form of Samech is that of X which has not taken over a Phoenician name. lt is probable that the form @ is an abbreviation in writing from right to left of the earlier @, and @ of the four stroke @. That the confusion of the sibilants was not coufined to the Greeks only, but that pronunciation varied within a small area even among the Semitic stock, is shown by the difficulty which the Ephraimites found in pronouncing "shibboleth'' (Judges xii. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... eyes rolled, foam flew to his lips, his mouth grinned, and he was awesome to see. He let fall the head, and, swinging the great axe aloft, rushed at Eric. But Brighteyes is too swift for him. It would not be well to let that stroke fall, and it must go hard with aught it struck. He springs forward, he louts low and sweeps upwards with Whitefire. Skallagrim sees the sword flare and drops almost to his knee, guarding his head with the ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard |
