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Crutch   Listen
verb
Crutch  v. t.  To support on crutches; to prop up. (R.) "Two fools that crutch their feeble sense on verse."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crutch" Quotes from Famous Books



... looking up at the sky and the weathercock. I wish he would go too. There's Laurie, looking like a sailor, nice boy! Oh, mercy me! Here's a carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys. One is lame, poor thing, he's got a crutch. Laurie didn't tell us that. Be quick, girls! It's getting late. Why, there is Ned Moffat, I do declare. Meg, isn't that the man who bowed to you one day when ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... according to promise of this autograph of our English Theocritus, Bloomfield. He is in my opinion our best Pastoral Poet. His "Broken Crutch," "Richard and Kate," &c. are inimitable and above praise. Crabbe writes about the peasantry as much like the Magistrate as the Poet. He is determined to show you their worst side; and, as to their simple pleasures and pastoral ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... the crowd still raged about disappointed, pleading for a miracle, the Baal Shem whistled, and his horse flew towards him so suddenly that I nearly fell off, and the crowd had to separate in haste. A paralytic cripple dropped his crutch in a flurry and fell ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... know, Miss Marget; I niver see him. A lame gentleman with a crutch; he looks just lovely!" added ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... to hear a doctor give news of a certain Irish Religious, cured that morning in the piscines; but we were interrupted by the entry of Emile Lansman, a solid artisan of twenty-five who came in walking cheerfully, carrying a crutch and a stick which he no longer needed. Paralysis of the right leg and traumatism of the spine had been his, up to that day. Now he ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson

... so. Doctor said I was a brave girl, so you needn't brag, for you'll have to go on a crutch for a while. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... cause of Amos' trouble arose from a slight blow upon his knee as he sat at his work, increased by subsequent constant pressure upon the spot by the strap which held the boot in place. He worked as long as he was able, and for some time before the operation, he was obliged to use a crutch in passing from his shop to his house. The swelling grew steadily in size, and became more and more troublesome although every remedy then known to New England therapeutics had been tried, including all the nostrums of the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... with a powdered footman, and the postilion in scarlet and leathers, with a badge on his arm. Old Crockey puts on his greatcoat, Jem Bland draws the yellow phaeton and greys to the gateway of the "White Hart," to take up his friend Crutch Robinson; Zac, Jack and another, have just driven on in a fly. In short, it's a brilliant meeting! Besides four coronetted carriages with post-horses, there are three phaetons-and-pair; a thing that would have been a phaeton if they'd have let it; General Grosvenor's dog-carriage, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... effect that there is a "little cherub aloft, looking after the affairs of poor Jack," and keeping him in times of sudden peril. At any rate the sudden whim of Fred's, when he thought to play a joke on Bristles, and pretend that he needed a crutch or a cane, since he was becoming lame and decrepit, was fated to turn out one of the finest things ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... a cripple, making an effort to reach him with his crutch, "will you cast any more spells on us from the top of the towers ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... hope that Philip would become his son-in-law. But when the rod in his hand had failed him, when it proved too big for a staff and too rough for a crutch, he did not attempt to break it. Either from the instinct of a gentleman, or the pride of a strong man, he continued to shower his favours upon Philip. Going to London with his wife and daughter at the beginning of the new year, he appointed Philip ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... in danger, according to the turn of the evidence. My poor eyes have scarcely come round yet from the quantity of sobbing that I had to do, and the horrible glare of my goggles. And then I had a crutch that I stumped with as I sighed, so that all the court could hear me; and whenever I did it, all the women sighed too, and even the hardest hearts were moved. Mr. Mordacks says that it ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... in 1753 a list of curious names of wigs: "The pigeons wing, the comet, the cauliflower, the royal bird, the staircase, the ladder, the brush, the wild boars back, the temple, the rhinoceros, the crutch, the negligent, the chancellor, the out-bob, the long-bob, the half-natural, the chain-buckle, the corded buckle, the detached buckle, the Jasenist bob, the drop wigg, the snail back, the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity— 905 The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which burthen They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch! He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years 910 To come, and how in hours of youth renewed He will renew lost ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the words, and Belle put her own plump hand on the delicate one that held the crutch, saying, in ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott

... slight shrug. "You talk of walking lame—how else do we all walk? It seems to me that life's the tight boot, and marriage the crutch that may help one to hobble along!" She drew Bessy's hand into hers with a caressing pressure. "When you philosophize I always know you're tired. No one who feels well stops to generalize about symptoms. If you ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... for Uncle Patrick, because he is such a very good audience. He laughs, and cries, and claps, and thumps with his crutch, and if things go badly, he amuses ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... after; and Dalton bangs the hall-door, and he took a sort of a turn and a trembling, and back with him to Oliver, the butler, looking as white as the blank leaf of his master's letter, that was between his finger and thumb. "What is it? what is it?" says the butler, catching his crutch like a waypon, fastening his eyes on Dalton's white face, and growing almost as pale himself. "The master's dead," says Dalton—and so he was, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... time a very old woman, who lived with he flock of geese in a waste place among the mountains, and there had a little house. The waste was surrounded by a large forest, and every morning the old woman took her crutch and hobbled into it. There, however, the dame was quite active, more so than any one would have thought, considering her age, and collected grass for her geese, picked all the wild fruit she could reach, and carried everything home on her back. Any one would have thought that the ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid: better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must come at last; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonouring and false substitute deprive it of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... consider the sufferings of the two girls; least of all did he think that Holman or myself was doing anything to safeguard his life or property. He was blind to everything but the natural curiosities around him, and he made frequent entries in the notebook that was to be his crutch to Olympus. ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... but—to enter into Nirvana, which is a sublime state of conscious freedom from all mental and physical disturbance, not to be adequately described in words. At death, the priest is placed in a chair, his chin supported by a crutch, and then put into a wooden box, which on the appointed day is carried in procession, with streaming banners, through the monastery, and out into the cremation-ground attached, his brother priests chanting all the while that portion of the Buddhist ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... from the ground. It was a stick shaped like a crutch. He put it under his left arm and, still bent in two, began to walk like a man who has not the strength to stand erect. Then suddenly and with no apparent cause to explain his change of attitude, he drew himself up and used his crutch as he would a cane. He then walked round the outside ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... in landing, or the wave on a rough sea. In landing they put the canoe round, so as to strike the beach stern on. Their oars or paddles are made of ash, and are about five feet long, with a broad blade, in the shape of an inverted crescent, and a cross at the top, like the handle of a crutch. The object of the crescent shape of the blade is to be able to draw it, edge-wise, through the water without making any noise, when they hunt the sea-otter, an animal which can only be caught when it is lying asleep on the rocks, and which has the sense of hearing very acute. All their ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... in came the father, with at least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limb supported ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... an old hall near the great western seaport, and is one of the very few amongst the English Catholics possessing a grain of sense. I think you could help us to govern him, for he is not unfrequently disposed to be restive, asks us strange questions—occasionally threatens us with his crutch; and behaves so that we are often afraid that we shall lose him, or rather, his property, which he has bequeathed to us, and which is enormous. I am sure that you could help us to deal with him; sometimes with your humour, sometimes with your learning, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... opulence in order to devote himself, an entire and undistracted man, to the instruction or refinement of his fellow-citizens? Or, should we pass by all higher objects and motives, all disinterested benevolence, and even that ambition of lasting praise which is at once the crutch and ornament, which at once supports and betrays, the infirmity of human virtue,—is the character and property of the man, who labours for our intellectual pleasures, less entitled to a share of our fellow feeling, than that of the wine-merchant ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... you did," said Uncle Wiggily, sadly, as he looked for his cornstalk crutch. When he had it he was just going to hop away, and Grandpa Croaker was going with him, for they were afraid to stay there any more, when ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis

... else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, 10 And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... arm to Mother Jean-Jean, who bemoaned her crutch, and little Joseph Herbon took the idiot, la Putois to the dining-room, which was filled with the odor of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... that were left on the Island.] Thus were Sixteen of us left to the mercy of those Barbarians, the Names of which are as follow. The Captain, Mr. Joh. Loveland, John Gregory, Charles Beard, Roger Gold, Stephen Rutland, Nicolas Mullins, Francis Crutch, John Berry, Ralph Knight, Peter Winn, William Hubbard, Arthur Emery, Richard Varnham, George Smith, and my Self. Tho our hearts were very heavy, seeing our selves betrayed into so sad a Condition, to be forced to dwell among those that knew not God nor his Laws; yet ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... lay down and pulled some of the bodies over him, and he was not long there till he saw an old hag coming into the house, having one leg and one arm and one upper tooth, that was long enough to serve her in place of a crutch. And when she came inside the door she took up the first dead body she met with, and threw it aside, for it was lean. And as she went on, she took two bites out of every fat body she met with, and threw away ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... the King and Queen of Saxony and the fat Arch-duchess Stephanie. Austria's Empress looks sadly changed and ill, as does another lady of whom one can occasionally catch a glimpse, walking painfully with a crutch-stick in the shadow of the trees near her villa. It is hard to believe that this white-haired, bent old woman was once the imperial beauty who from the salons of the Tuileries dictated the fashions of the world! Few have paid so dearly for ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... and she saw. She saw Jamie, his whole self alert, deftly balance his weight on one crutch and swing his burden to the ground. She saw the happy light on his face, and she heard him ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... serve another man continuously. Each would have charitably aided his fellow, if things were as they should be. The man with eyes would have led the blind man, the active man would have acted as crutch to the cripple. This world would have been the paradise of Mohammed; and it is the hell which is ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... charge of the postal telegraph office in that city as soon as the line reached there. He remained about town for a month until he found an inviting piece of defective sidewalk, suitable for his purpose, when he stuck his crutch through the hole and fell screaming to the ground, declaring that he had broken his leg. He was carried to a hospital, and after a week's time, during which he negotiated a compromise with the city authorities and collected $1000 damages, a confederate, claiming to be his nephew, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... stolen from the recua, and with the pliant bejuca growing all about them. The men worked merrily, convinced that Drake would find a way to bring the ship to them. As soon as the raft was built, a mast was stepped in her, on which a biscuit sack was hoisted for a sail. A young tree, working in a crutch, served them as a steering oar. The four men went aboard, a line was laid out to the bar, and the curious raft was hauled off into the sea. The last of the storm of the night before was still roaring up aloft. A high sea was running, and the wind blew strong ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... the abbot, asked for leave to open the discussion, and he addressed the Jew in the following words: "Do you believe that the Virgin Mary was a virgin and Mother of God?" When the Jew replied, "No!" the knight took his crutch and felled the poor Jew to the ground. The King, who relates this to Joinville, draws one very wise lesson from, it—namely, that no one who is not a very good theologian should enter upon a controversy with Jews on such subjects. But when he goes on to say that ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... successes, Watson," said he. "But there are some pretty little problems among them. Here's the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife. And here—ah, now, this really ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... in the quiet Haidehof. The father could hobble about the house and garden on a crutch, but he had grown much too lazy to wield the sceptre again. Paul did not know what else to do for him, except to have his favorite dishes cooked, not to measure his rations of ginger and aniseed too sparingly, and to present him each Christmas ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... from thick Films shall purge the visual Ray, v. 5, 6.] And on the sightless Eye-ball pour the Day. 'Tis he th' obstructed Paths of Sound shall clear, And bid new Musick charm th' unfolding Ear, The Dumb shall sing, the Lame his Crutch forego, And leap exulting like the bounding Roe; [No Sigh, no Murmur the wide World shall hear, From ev'ry Face he ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... had been waiting there. Over this he put on the splints again, and for the first time since that bear had knocked me off the rock I felt at ease. We stayed there another fortnight, by the end of which time the bones seemed to have knit pretty fairly. However, I had made myself a good strong crutch from a straight branch with a fork at the end, that the chief had cut for me, and I had lashed a wad of bear's skin in the fork to make it easy. Then we started, making short journeys at first, but getting longer every day as I became accustomed to the crutch, ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... Georgiana were a fairy god-mother who struck her crutch upon the platform and cried: "Se sesame! change!" the young pirates often came through Miss Georgiana's hands and entered high school with the reputation of being very decent ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... were about to begin an old woman came hobbling out of the forest. She was so old that her nose and her chin met and she was so bent that she could barely get along even with the help of the crutch she had. ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... of the Pope, on the Quirinal, is now used for convalescents. In those beautiful gardens, I walk with them,—one with his sling, another with his crutch. The gardener plays off all his water-works for the defenders of the country, and gathers flowers for ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... He wished to talk about many points of this, which he found the same as his own boylife in the neighborhood of Boston; and we could agree that the life of the Anglo- Saxon boy was pretty much the same everywhere. He had helped himself into my apartment with a crutch, but I do not remember how he had fallen lame. It was the end of his long walks, I believe, and not long afterwards I had the grief to read of his death. I noticed that perhaps through his enforced quiet, he had put on weight; his fine face was full; whereas when I first knew him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... It was the little consumptive's ecstatic smile, as she sat resting against an invisible support; it was the joy in Mary Scott's thin eager face, framed now in her loosened dark hair, and with the shadow, like her crutch, laid aside for a while, that somehow brought tears to the eyes that watched. Santa Paloma cheered and applauded these forgotten children of hers; and the children laughed and ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... will be all the happier when she thinks that she has made a poor, fond, lonely old woman more lonely and miserable. If you please, George Barnes, be good enough to tell my people that I shall go back to Baden," and waving her children away from her, the old woman tottered out of the room on her crutch. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... into the street, and slowly sauntered along. At the end of it he stopped and gave a trifle to a beggar who, supported by a crutch, was ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... go about in a carriage, you know, and put in the time as well in one place as the other. I'm sure we could get on very pleasantly there; and the colonel needn't be home for a month yet. I suppose that I could hobble into the stores on a crutch." ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... river-wall, In a long unforgettable row, Man faces tremulous, old; Terrible faces of youth, Broken and seared by the war, Where swift fire kindled and blazed From embers hot under the years, While hands gripped a cane or a crutch; Patient dumb faces of women, Mothers, sisters, and wives: And the vessel hull-down in the sea, Where the waters, just stirring from sleep, Lifted bright hands to the sun, Hiding their lusty young dead, Holding them jealously close Down to the ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... hunter who knows how to set a trap. Also he has the Baas Pereira up there to help him. So perhaps you might be more comfortable here kissing Missie Marie. Why do you not say that you have hurt your leg and cannot run? It would not be much trouble to walk about on a crutch for a day or two, and when the commandant was well gone, your leg might heal and you ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... the "cross potent" from its shape, "potent" being an old English word for a crutch. It is then said to signify the Cross as the sure support of all who ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... anybody did. What Clithering could not understand was that some people—without wanting bloodshed—might prefer it to Home Rule. He left me, still I fancy relying on my well-known moderation. No man ever relied on a more utterly useless crutch. Moderation has never been of the slightest use anywhere in Ireland and was certainly a vain thing in ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... twinkled for leagues under the faint northerly breeze, dazzling Myra's eyes. Tom Trevarthen grinned as he tugged at an enormous sweep with two other men, Methodists both, and sang with them and with Billy Daddo, who steered with another sweep, rigged aft upon a crutch...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... decrepit woman, whose gray hair and infirmities ought to have been her protection, but whose reputation as an evil disposed witch proved quite the contrary. Nanny, for such was her name, was leaning, or rather sitting, against a bank at the road side, shaking occasionally her crutch at her tormentors, and muttering a heavy curse as missile after missile fell thickly around her. The shouts of laughter proceeding from the annoying children, as she tried in vain to rise, and impotently threatened, made ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... that," said Silver, "and I don't see what it's got to do with it, anyway. What I know is this: if there is sich a thing as a Author, I'm his favourite chara'ter. He does me fathoms better'n he does you—fathoms, he does. And he likes doing me. He keeps me on deck mostly all the time, crutch and all; and he leaves you measling in the hold, where nobody can't see you, nor wants to, and you may lay to that! If there is a Author, by thunder, but he's on my side, and you may lay ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... this, Lawrence found himself able, by the aid of a cane and a rude crutch, which Uncle Isham had made for him and the top of which Mrs Keswick had carefully padded, to make his way from the office to the house; and, after that, he took his meals, and passed the greater part of his time in the larger edifice. ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... a terrible state of excitement, and in spite of rheumatic pains was walking up and down the room, gesticulating wildly, and striking her crutch-handled stick ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... power, Mr. Wallingford, you depend on a crutch that will betray you. We have power enough to eat you, should that be necessary—I suppose you ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... relator, to the Consular threshold. Now it happened to me to see the whole of this scene. I was wandering about the Consul's court, gazing at the curiosities scattered around, enough to have set up any European museum with an Egyptian branch, and particularly, I remember, at a lame mummy's crutch, found with him in his coffin, on which it is possible the original owner hopped away from the plague of frogs. An old rural Arab of respectable appearance was standing at the Consul's door, holding in his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various

... after Tenney's accident, when he was getting impatient over inaction, and next day the doctor came and pronounced the wound healing well. If Tenney had a crutch, he might try it carefully, and Tenney remembered Grandsir had used a crutch when he broke his hip at eighty-two, and healed miraculously though tradition pronounced him done for. It had come to the house ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... when, at her door An old decrepid wretch appears; Bent on his crutch he begs an alms, And moves her pity ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... the matter?" The girl, scenting danger, faced it. She swung herself down from the saddle-crutch, picked up her skirt, and taking Madcap's rein close beside the curb, walked slowly up to the verandah. "Have they been bullying you, dear?" she asked in a low ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... cripple in Childe Roland laughs, his mouth-edge is "pursed and scored" with his glee; and his scorn must not merely be uttered, but written with his crutch "in the dusty thoroughfare." This idea is resumed yet more dramatically in the image of the palsied oak, cleft like "a distorted mouth that splits its rim gaping at death." Later on, thrusting his spear into the gloom, he fancies it "tangled in ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... of turf and straw, within the pitch of a bar from the spot where we stood, came out an old woman bent with age, and leaning on a crutch. "I heard the voice of that lad Andrew Lammie; can the chield be drowning that he skirls sae uncannily?" said the old woman, seating herself on the ground, and looking earnestly at the water. "Ou, ay," she continued, "he's doomed, he's ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... taxicabs, returned to their original mission, were already weaving about in their effort to exterminate each other. Battling at the Marne had been but a slight deviation in their mode of procedure, yet when a cab recently ran down and killed a bewildered soldier impeded by a crutch strange to him, Paris raised its voice in a new cry of rage. Beyond the Champs lyses, far beyond, rose the Eiffel tower. Capable, immune so far from the attacks of the enemy, its very outlines seem to have ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... guard over the table and Ivy raised a crutch to strike the foremost but both girls were ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... replied Mrs. Andrews, now looking out of the door. "He ought to be in sight somewheres. He's walkin' with a crutch." ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... have to sit sideways, because the lowest crutch is so far back there's not room for your leg if you sit saddleways," continued his preceptor breathlessly. "I know it—Jimmy said so when he rode her to the meet for me last week. Oh ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... believe a miracle upon man's report. Instead, therefore, of admitting the recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to the full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it is consistent with the character of fable to seek the aid that truth rejects. Thus much ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... stepped on a rusty nail, running it through the shoe sole and her foot. The next morning Brother Christaphersen came and she asked him to make her a crutch, since I was in Europe at the time. She had to walk with her knee on a chair and he said he would. He went out and in a few minutes he came back and said, "The Lord does not want me to make you a crutch. ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... DIAMANTEN UND PERLEN, when I heard a poor cripple man in the gutter wailing over a pitiful Scotch air, his club-foot supported on the other knee, and his whole woebegone body propped sideways against a crutch. The nearest lamp threw a strong light on his worn, sordid face and the three boxes of lucifer matches that he held for sale. My own false notes stuck in my chest. How well off I am! is the burthen of my songs all day long - DRUM ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... above me, scanning with eagle eyes the sea ahead. The other boats were coming flying along behind us, spreading wider apart as they came, while in the bows of each stood the harpooner with his right hand on his first iron, which lay ready, pointing over the bow in a raised fork of wood called the "crutch." ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... not, To things of sale, a sellers praise belongs: She passes prayse, then prayse too short doth blot. A withered Hermite, fiuescore winters worne, Might shake off fiftie, looking in her eye: Beauty doth varnish Age, as if new borne, And giues the Crutch the Cradles infancie. O 'tis the Sunne that maketh ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... her crutch and walked to the door. It was no use; the rain warned her back. She sat down again by the window to watch her ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... glasses any more than you need a crutch." The denial came out with a snap. Persis Dale, patient to the point of weakness, enduring submissively for twenty years the thankless exactions of her brother, proved herself wholesomely human by her prompt resentment. "My eyes are as good as they ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... horseback, and I was longing to distinguish myself. I did distinguish myself. Oscar was a merry horse, but one never knew how he would take things. The first bridge we came to—I was 'sitting easy to a canter' with my foot out of the stirrup and my leg over the third crutch—a bad habit I learnt from a foreign friend—and an express train rushed by. Oscar went on abruptly, but I remained. The next difficulty was at a brook. We ought to have crossed it together; but Oscar changed his mind at the last ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... one in the cosy dining-room, and sitting down, he hammered the floor with his crutch. The homely sound of dishes being washed ceased suddenly in the adjoining room, and Mrs. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... cobbler 'e is too, although a cripple wiv a game leg. Me and 'im's pals, sir, and though we 'as our little turn-ups 'count of 'im coming it so strong agin the Quality, I'm never very 'ard on 'im 'count of 'is crutch, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... everything else as truth. As I said, these stories are included in this series chiefly to provide entertainment; but if they also have the use Mrs. Fenwick wished—if the misadventures of Frank Lawless keep us from robbing orchards, and 'The Broken Crutch' leads to the befriending of weary and wooden-legged sailors—why, so ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick

... spirits of just men made perfect' by this time. I wonder how it seems to him up there," said David, looking far up into the blue above him. "It does seem past belief. I can't think of him but as a lame old man with a crutch, and there he is, up among the best of them, singing with a will, as he used to sing here, only with no drawbacks. It is wonderful. Think of old Tim singing with John, and Paul, and with King David himself. It is ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson

... endure the repeated necessary resetting of the bones, and consequently they grew together irregularly. Her hip-joint was stiff, so that she was never able to walk without the support of a cane or crutch. For eight years she could not leave her own little yard, nor climb into a ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... disclosed William with the plans and specifications of a patent washbowl that would tip over just when it got so full. The result was that I lost all my rings and breastpin down the waste pipe. Then he got up a crutch for a man that could also be used as an opera-glass. Whenever the man leaned on it up it went, and when he put it to his eye to find William, it flew out into a crutch and almost broke the top of his head off. Once he invented ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... grains of snuff, in the middle one a little of something that looked like gold dust, and the third smelt of opium. The top of the cane had a cap of silver, with a screw that went into the lower part of the horse, which thus made a sort of crutch-handle to the stick. He had screwed off, and was proceeding to replace this handle, when his eye was arrested, his heart seemed to stand still, and the old captain's foolish rime came rushing into his head. He started from his chair, took the thing to the window, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... limped closer, smashing the remains of the night with an iron crutch. The half-extinguished Cafe Kloesschen, a gleaming fragment, lay still in the soundless morning. In the background sat the last customer. Kuno Kohn had let his head sink back on his trembling hump. The ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... after my unfortunate brother in office, the Rector of Veilbye had been beheaded for the murder of his servant, it happened one day that a beggar came to my door. He was an elderly man, with gray hair, and walked with a crutch. He looked sad and needy. None of the servants were about, so I myself went into the kitchen and gave him a piece of bread. I asked him where he came from. He ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... chair. Attention, indeed! He knew what that meant. The matter would be submitted to M. P. The old devil had not a leg to stand on, he lacked even a crutch, and in that impotent, dismembered and helpless condition he would be thrown out of court. A ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... old woman, eighty years of age, was supporting herself on a crutch. As they rode up she asked if they were "Yankees," and upon their replying that they were, she said: "Have you got the Stars and Stripes with you? My father fought the Tories in the Revolution, and my old eyes ache for a sight of the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... the elder man demanded, indicating the distant camp with one crutch, and leaning heavily ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... owing either to old age or deficient architecture, threatened to collapse, and the owner, no doubt, had sought to prevent its fall by sinking a row of stakes along one of the walls, against which it leaned like a lame man upon his crutch; another house flaunted like a flagstaff a long stick on its roof with a ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... continued he, always addressing my Brother: and getting no answer from him, he again set to abusing us till he could speak no longer. We rose from table. As we had to pass near him in going out, he aimed a great blow at me with his crutch; which, if I had not jerked away from it, would have ended me. He chased me for a while in his wheel-chair, but the people drawing it gave me time to escape into the Queen's ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of the 'poor things' thought, Miss Margery knew to her regret,—that the Charity was merely a reservoir for the wasteful and the thriftless to draw from at will. Could it ever be, she wondered, what it ought to be,—a crutch to be cast aside with regained health, a hand of brotherhood to lift the fallen and teach them to stand alone, to steady the weak and make them strong? How hard it was to give help, and at the same ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... them! In the church were apparently all the English people who have as yet ventured to Venice; and these, or most of them, seemed to be following in the wake of a little party of four persons—two ladies, a gentleman, and a lame girl walking with a crutch. An excited English tourist condescended to inform Paul that it was "the great English actress, Miss Bretherton," who was creating all the commotion. Then, of course, he went up to her—he was provoked that he could hardly see her in the dim light of St. Mark's—introduced himself, ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... suffered with pain and could not have her feet down until she had taken twelve bottles. When she had taken fifteen bottles—she began to walk on crutches, and later with a cane, for about two or three months, when she could walk without a crutch or cane. The diseased bones gradually came out in pieces, some of them an inch to two inches long and one-fourth of an inch thick; the sores healed as soon as the last dead bone was out. She is now a strong healthy young lady as her ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... "I wish you were a boy. Here, you men help me, or get me a crutch. I will see these women on their knees, ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... light enough to see, Walter made his way back to the edge of the forest, and cut a strong forked limb to serve as a crutch for his chum. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... well-known Jamieson grapnel used for raising submerged submarine cables. The chief feature of the grapnel is that the flukes, being jointed at the socket, bend back against a spring when they catch a rock, until the grapnel clears the obstruction, but allow the cable to run home to the crutch between the fluke and base, as shown in the figures. In the older form the cable was liable to get jammed, and cut between the fixed toe or fluke and the longer fluke jointed into it. This is now avoided by embracing the short fluke within the longer one. The shank, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... racer and in with the screw, We'll show him what Mulligan's talent can do; And if he gets nasty and dares to say much, I'll knock him as stiff as my grandmother's crutch." ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson

... man of large frame, as far as could be made out through the thick wrappings of furs; his head was bent forward and low, resting on his hands, that were crossed on a crutch-handle. He appeared profoundly unconscious of all that was passing, and never moved till Keene addressed him. Then, very slowly, he lifted up his face. Few of us, fortunately for those who have strong imaginations and weak nerves, see its like twice in a lifetime, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... generally adopted. Some bordered the red list with a narrow white edge, others terminated the arms of the cross with short pieces of the same colour, placed transversely, making each arm of the cross have the appearance of a short crutch; the ends of these crutches meeting in a point, make the cross potent. There is so great a variety of crosses used in Heraldry that it would be impossible to describe them within the limits of this introduction to Heraldry. The reader will find a great ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passed it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when a few hundred yards farther on he stood still again to listen, his heart stood still also, for he heard from that space of rugged stones the clinking crutch and labouring feet of ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... dressing myself up au paysan, with a white cap on my head, and a fork on my shoulder, and one of my comrades in the farmer's wife's russet gown and petticoat, like a woman, the other with an old crutch like a lame man, and all mounted on such horses as we had taken the day before from the country, away we go to Leeds by three several ways, and agreed to meet upon the bridge. My pretended country ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... me yet," Aldebaran plead. "Wouldst take my only crutch? It is thy cheerful presence that ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... let down the sails and the yard-arm and stowed them inside the hollow mast-crutch, and at once they lowered the mast itself till it lay along; and quickly with oars they entered the mighty stream of the river; and round the prow the water surged as it gave them way. And on their ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... bank director with his poem! He had mistaken the throbbing of an abscess for the beating of the heart. What he called "a wonderful piece of mechanism" was an imperfect device to remedy an unnecessary defect, the clumsy crutch of a self-made cripple. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... his paralysis never left him. He felt keenly the ingratitude of the Republic which he had served so well, and which yet, in his old age, abandoned him to want, and the story is told that, when the state of Virginia sent him a sword of honor, he thrust it into the ground and broke it with his crutch. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... William Berkeley and Colonel Verney, and all those gold-laced planters who dined with him the other day? That we are to take possession of the colony as picaroons do of a vessel, and hoisting our flag,—a crutch surmounted by a ball and chain on ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... into custody whether it wor asleep or net. Mary's husband wor upstairs confined to bed wi rhumatics, but th' dowters had tell'd him all abaat Burt's adventure, an' as he could hear all 'at wor sed, he furst began to feel uneasy, an' then to loise his temper, soa he seized his crutch an' ran daan stairs like a lad o' sixteen, an' laid abaat him reight an' left, an' i' less nor a minit Burt, th' cunstable, an' ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... bitterly. He did not mind his own broken leg, but to think that he had really killed the little pony nearly broke his heart. For many days he lay on his bed, and at last he was able to get up and move around with the help of a little crutch, which his father had made from the branch ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister

... slackened, so that we never felt them save when we blundered; and I remember that when I once complained, in loving fashion, that she was "teaching me so little," she told me that I was getting old enough to be trusted to work by myself, and that I must not expect to "have Auntie for a crutch all through life." And I venture to say that this gentle withdrawal of constant supervision and teaching was one of the wisest and kindest things that this noble-hearted woman ever did for us. It is the usual custom to keep girls in the schoolroom ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... statistics," replied Doc Madison, and his lips twitched quizzically at the corners. "According to statistics they'll buy another crutch and come back to buck the tiger again. Say, Helena, to-morrow, you go up to the public library and read up on shrines—they've been running since the ark—and they're running still. You never heard any howl about them, did you? What's the ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... weep as he told of what they found. The Vrouw Coetzee was sitting in a chair, smiling with her eyes closed, and her baby was lying in the crutch of her left arm. Her right hand was on his little soft throat—his face blue and swollen, and his little arms stretched out with tight closed fists. He was quite dead, but warm yet, for he had missed life ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... the rickety bed, while Mike took up a crutch that was standing idly in a corner. She coughed resignedly and he limped about, forlorn. They had assumed their parts which were almost to the burlesque of poverty, when the door was pushed open and Billy burst in followed by ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... white-haired, with cross eyes, a large mouth, a big head, set upon a slim, crane-like neck; blue eyes, and an immense brown beard, that flowed downward half-way to the belt about his waist, which contained a small arsenal of knives and revolvers. He hobbled about with a heavy crutch constantly under his left arm, and was certainly a ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... as he gave them their chance they took it decently enough, so much so that all ended happily in what must have been a most uncomfortable dance on the sharp fragments of the Toogood bust which the disgruntled original had smashed with his crutch. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various

... forward in the direction of the noise, we were pretty sure to find our dogs baffled and jumping and barking around the foot of a tree up which Mr. Coon had fled, and whence he was quietly looking down on his pursuers from a limb or crutch. Our movements now were guided by circumstances. If the tree was not too large, one of us would climb it and dislodge the coon. In the other case we generally cut it down. The dogs were always on the alert, and the moment the coon touched ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... made merry—then how he would strive To show his joy; "Good master, let's to play, The world is ours," that gladsome bark would say; "Just yours and mine—'tis fun to be alive!" Our world ... four walls above the city's din, My crutch the bar that ever ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... tearful longing, rather than a struggling, fierce, passionate one. But the Celtic melancholy is struggling, fierce, passionate; to catch its note, listen to Llywarch Hen in old age, addressing his crutch:— ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... day or two. A man like you don't want money—you wouldn't spend it. A man like you don't want stocks or fancy investments, for you couldn't look after them. A man like you don't want diamonds and jewellery, nor a gold-headed cane, when it's got to be used as a crutch. No, sir. What you want is suthin' that won't run away from you; that is always there before you and won't wear out, and will last after you're gone. That's land! And if it wasn't that I have sworn never to sell or give away this house and that garden, if it wasn't ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... a crutch!" he demanded of the Widow; and Mrs. Huff, who had been surveying her work with awe, passed over the shotgun in silence. "All right, now," he went on, turning to Death Valley Charley, who had been patiently holding his lantern, "just show me the trail ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... canticle goes up to heaven, like the hermit in the Campo Santo of Pisa, whom some one saw going up the mountain that the goats liked. I will tell you. The old hermit went up, leaning on the staff of faith, and his step was unequal because the crutch, being on one side, gave one of his feet an advantage over the other. That is the reason why your verses are unequal. I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... heels. Halt! Halt! That accursed stinging smoke! Wait, you dogs! As soon as the pathway widens, we'll run you down with scant ceremony, and may the gods deprive me of a day of life for each one I spare! Another torch out! One can't see one's hand before one's face! At a time like this a beggar's crutch would be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... at the debate. The Jews flocked to the summons, when a prelate, selecting a learned rabbi, mildly put to him the leading question whether he owned the divine conception of our Lord. "Certainly not," replied the rabbi; whereon the pious knight, shocked by such blasphemy, uplifted his crutch and felled the rabbi, and then flung himself among the other misbelievers, whom he soon dispersed in ignominious flight and in a very belaboured condition. The conduct of the knight was reported to the sainted king, with a request that it should be properly reprimanded; but the sainted king ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Most of them, even the daughters, were brutal and rollicking too. Of one of the daughters, now dead, it was reported that, having on one occasion discovered her father, then an old infirm man, sitting calmly by the fire beside the prostrate form of his wife, whom he had just felled with his crutch, she had taken off her wooden shoe and given her father a clout on the head, which left his gray hair streaming with blood; after which she had calmly put the horse into the cart, and driven off to fetch the doctor to both her parents. But among this grim and earthy crew there was one exception, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... which she did with anything but reluctance, having a natural antipathy to this monster of a Colonel, the latter personage tapped with his crutch-handled cane on a chair that stood near, and nodded in an authoritative way to the apothecary to sit down in it. Dr. Dolliver complied submissively, and the Colonel, with dull, unkindly eyes, looked at him sternly, and with a kind of intelligence amid the aged stolidity of his aspect, that ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... money, but could not come to water. At last the tenant fetched an old man from some parish a long way off, who said that he could find springs with a divining rod. He was a curious old man with a crutch, and he came with his rod, and hobbled about till at last the rod twitched just at the tenant's back door—at least the diviner said it did. At any rate, they dug there, and in ten minutes struck a spring of water, which ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... their head; A crutch by his saddle just slants in view, One slung arm is in splints, you see, Yet he guides his strong ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... some dust from the last explosion out of his coffee cup. "Amusing is the word. Funny, I call it. Funny as a crutch. Why, ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... iv action, not th' cause iv it,' he says. 'It's f'r th' end iv th' day, not th' beginnin',' he says. 'Hot whisky is good f'r a cold heart, an' no whisky's good f'r a hot head,' he says. 'Th' minyit a man relies on it f'r a crutch he loses th' use iv his legs. 'Tis a bad thing to stand on, a good thing to sleep on, a good thing to talk on, a bad thing to think on. If it's in th' head in th' mornin' it ought not to be in th' mouth at night. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... annoyances which are its usual concomitants; and, if our untravelled friends are with us, indulge in the comfortable and harmless vanity of describing the wonders and dangers of those distant lands, and like Goldsmith's old soldier, 'Shoulder the crutch and show how fields were won.' I was about to remark, that those who travel only in books travel with much less discomfort, and perhaps enjoy as much, as those who travel in reality; but I fancy there are some of my young readers who would ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... sprinkled field whence a fine Norman stallion snorted ridicule over a wall. But the fortune of Keredec was to sink as I rose. His summer rheumatism returned, came to grips with him, laid him low. We hobbled together for a day or so, then I threw away my stick and he exchanged his for an improvised crutch. By the time I was fit to run, he was able to do little better than to creep—might well have taken to his bed. But as he insisted that his pupil should not forego the daily long walks and the health of the forest, it came to pass that Saffren often made me the ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... sat by the stove in the ostlers' room, grieving at the intelligence he had received from Rockville, a little girl, so lame that she walked with a crutch, hobbled ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... of a belief in the strange and occult! The Christian Science organization is an expediency. It is an intellectual crutch. The book is a necessity. It is a scaffolding. Yet he who mistakes the scaffolding for the edifice is a ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... Clare's childhood, went limping about on a crutch, permanently lame, and full of hatred toward the innocent occasion of the injury he had brought upon himself. Ever since his recovery, he had, loitering about in idleness, watched the boy, to waylay and catch ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... soldier, kindly bade to stay, Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away; Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, Shoulder'd his crutch, and show'd how fields were won. 1756 GOLDSMITH: Des. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... mind to construct a crude crutch to aid in hobbling around, but he decided not to do so. If his recovery continued without relapse he could do well enough ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis



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