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More "Herculean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... minds How dark'nd; innocence, that as a veile Had shadow'd them from knowing ill, was gon, Just confidence, and native righteousness, And honour from about them, naked left To guiltie shame hee cover'd, but his Robe Uncover'd more. So rose the Danite strong Herculean Samson from the Harlot-lap 1060 Of Philistean Dalilah, and wak'd Shorn of his strength, They destitute and bare Of all thir vertue: silent, and in face Confounded long they sate, as struck'n mute, Till Adam, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Bertrand edged nearer the herculean Monsieur Danton. "Pardon, M'sieur," he commenced, nervously, "it is not an Englishman—it is an American—a young American officer—Monsieur Calvert—aide-decamp to Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette, before Yorktown. A patriot of patriots, Messieurs," he went on, turning to ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the experience in the Russo-Japanese war, in which the losses were by no means so heavy as they have been in this war, but where in a few cases numbers have been lacking the surgeons and their assistants have put forth herculean efforts. Many surgeons are now wearing the iron cross for bravery, winning the insignia by dragging out wounded from the rain of bullets. TREATMENT ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... agriculture and the populousness of a country have been considered as nearly connected with each other. And, as a rule, for the purpose intended, numbers, in the view of simplicity and certainty, are entitled to a preference. In every country it is a herculean task to obtain a valuation of the land; in a country imperfectly settled and progressive in improvement, the difficulties are increased almost to impracticability. The expense of an accurate valuation is, in all situations, a formidable objection. In ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... much in favour of the vice of gambling, as to make them shut out its horrible deformity, must possess more than ordinary powers, and we question much whether, of the whole fraternity of gamblers, one could be found better adapted for the Herculean task which Mr. Freeman set himself. That which the mind is accustomed steadily to dwell upon, and upon which action is had repeatedly, will scarcely want for self-justification—and while the error of proceeding ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... man, who has long filled a distinguished place in the service of his sovereign and the eyes of the world, in whose hands the task of regenerating Sardinia, herculean as it may appear, would be not only a labour of love, but facile comparatively with any others on which it may devolve. I speak of General the Count Alberto di Marmora, known to all Europe by his Topographical ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... at the door, which, shivering and bending from the battering without, showed signs of giving in. With herculean efforts they dragged a heavy divan over and wedged it tightly against it; then added other furniture in a tight supporting pile. But the door, of some light metal, was not built to stand such a siege, and was buckling ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... Dink was the polite correctness of her letters. But then something, he said to himself, must be allowed for maiden modesty. His own letters were the product of afternoons and evenings. The herculean difficulty that he experienced in covering four sheets of paper—even when writing a flowing hand and allowing half a page for the signature—secretly worried him. It seemed as though something was lacking in his character or in the strength ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... for letters; in short, by throwing me into rages which I alone know! This has brought a frightful disorder into my affairs, for instead of getting my liberty February 15, I have before me a month of herculean labor, and on my brain I must inscribe this which will be contradicted by my heart: 'Think no longer of your star, nor of Dresden, nor of travel; stay at your chain and work miserably! . . . Dear Countess, I decidedly advise you to leave Dresden ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... the animal became aware that it was being pursued, it redoubled its efforts to gain the island, which was not very distant. And this it would have succeeded in doing had it not been for the almost herculean exertions of Ramrod, by which it was ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... herself somewhat of a silly and an incapable in the eyes of Smollett's old Scotch friends. But to maintain such a position—to keep the bailiffs from the door from year's end to year's end—was a truly Herculean task in days when a newspaper "rate" of remuneration or a well-wearing copyright did not so much as exist, and when Reviews sweated their writers at the rate of a guinea per sheet of thirty-two pages. Smollett was continually ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... not have been sitting here had he been all by himself, for this Herculean young parson never yet set eye on a hill he meant to climb without going straight to the top ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... altered at all in the year and a quarter, and with his herculean shoulders and powerful head, his fair hair, blushed into a great tuft above his forehead, only just beginning to turn gray, he was still the very type and picture of ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... paradox; daily experience shows the truth of these observations. It is almost impossible to elevate the spirits of a man groaning under ideal calamities; but nothing is easier than to render him wretched, though on the pinnacle of felicity: as it would be an herculean task to hoist a man to the top of a steeple, though the merest child could ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... commands our wonder and respect; and it was at Vaucluse that he either meditated or wrote his most important compositions. Here he undertook a history of Rome, from Romulus down to Titus Vespasian. This Herculean task he never finished; but there remain two fragments of it, namely, four books, De Rebus Memorandis, and another tract entitled Vitarum Virorum Illustrium Epitome, being sketches of illustrious men from the founder of Rome ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... widow—and her gaunt frame, strong if angular features, gave me the sight of another ghost from the past. Ghosts, ghosts, the world is getting old and weary, and astride of it just now is the pessimist Nietzsche, who, disguised as a herculean boy, is deceiving his worshippers with the belief that he is young and a preacher of the joyful doctrines of youth. Be not deceived, he is but another veiled prophet. His mask is that of a grinning skeleton, his words are bitter with death ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... stereotyped formula concerning the supreme authority of general councils, and the imperative necessity of a reformation of the Church in its head and in its members, the fathers addressed themselves professedly to the herculean task thus indicated; but little or nothing was effected ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... giants had performed this herculean undertaking, and were now being cut up—the reward of many who attempt such ambitious tasks. In reality, though, this charnel-house was the sculptors' studio, in which were modelled the gigantic figures which were to be placed on the buildings and ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... "The sublime martyrdom of maternity". Left alone immediately after infant's birth. Husband dangerously ill, and cannot help. A kindly miner. Three other women at the Bar. The "Indiana girl". "Girl" a misnomer. "A gigantic piece of humanity". "Dainty" habits and herculean feats. A log-cabin family. Pretty and interesting children. "The Miners' Home". Its petite landlady tends bar. "Splendid material for ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Oracle Mighty (though vocally flighty), Great Creature, omniscient (if a bit youthful), Panjandrum-plus-CAESAR, Herculean Teaser Of tendencies vicious, or tame, or untruthful! You mastered the Moral while sucking your coral— You set the world right—in idea—in your cradle. Omnipotent Bumble, our pride let us humble, And take our ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... seemed to live, as one might say, in the cool freshness of its flesh, and in its warmth of color. He gazed upon it long and fixedly, estimated the prodigious labor that had been bestowed upon it, and, not being able to find any recompense sufficiently great for this Herculean effort, he passed his arm round the painter's neck, and embraced him. The surintendant, by this action, had utterly ruined a suit of clothes worth a thousand pistoles, but he had satisfied, more than satisfied, Lebrun. It was a happy moment for the artist; it was an unhappy one for M. Percerin, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of literary ideals thus involved, it is easier to be confused by the novel flashing of strange lights than to discern the central vivifying altar-flame. It may prove that what seem to us the regrettable accidents of Browning's genius are no malfortunate flaws, but as germane thereto as his Herculean ruggednesses are to Shakspere, as the laboured inversions of his blank verse are to Milton, as his austere concision is to Dante. Meanwhile, to the more exigent among us at any rate, the flaws seem flaws, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... while surveying Frederick County, which was then very large, embracing what is now Berkeley, Jefferson, and Shenandoah Counties. She had seven sons, William, Valentine, John, Hugh, Dick, James, and Mark, all stalwart fellows. These seven young men, in Herculean size and strength, were equal, perhaps, to any seven sons of any one mother in Christendom. This was a family exactly to George's mind, because promising him an abundance of that manly exercise in which ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... whites. Eleven volunteers were selected for the expedition, and the young and fragile Kit Carson was entrusted with the command. In manners he was gentle as a girl, with a voice as soft as that of a woman. He had no herculean powers of muscle, but he had mind, mental powers which had been developed in a hundred emergencies. And these stout, hardy veterans of the wilderness seem with one accord to have decided that he was the fitting one to lead them into battle, where they were to encounter ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... honest, and I do not blush for having done it,"—and he did whatever honest work he could find that would help keep body and soul together. Through all these years, every moment of the day that could be saved from bread-winning toil, and much of his night-time, went into the herculean task to which he had dedicated himself—the complete translation of the Bible from its original languages into both Latin and French.[5] Being himself one of the common people he always had the interests and needs of the common people in view, and he put the Bible into current ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... the pigs are constantly seen doing Herculean service in this way through every quarter of the city; and though it is not very agreeable to live surrounded by herds of these unsavoury animals, it is well they are so numerous, and so active in their capacity of scavengers, for without them the streets would ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... commanded by the Church of Rome. It was for Paul III. he painted the "Last Judgment." His former work upon the Sistine Chapel had been the story of the creation. All his work was of a mighty and allegorical nature; tremendous shoulders, mighty limbs, herculean muscles that seemed fit to support the universe. These allegories are made of hundreds of figures. To-day they are still there, though dimmed by the smoke of centuries of incense, and dismembered by the cracking of plaster and ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... replied the man, addressing him with dry, parched lips, whilst his Herculean breast heaved up and down with agitation; "I didn't intend to do it, or to break in upon it, but now I must, for it's life or death with the three that's left me; and I durstn't go into the town to ask it ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... to-day with ropes and axe, pick and shovel. But the task is vast, it is herculean, like unto the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the room, when the diamond broker, who was close behind, flung a long silk scarf round his neck, and, pushing his knee into his victim's back for a support, he attempted to give, with Herculean force, the famous stroke of Father Francis Vigozous; energetic, Thomery did not lose his presence of mind.... He knew that to resist such a pull by simple force was impossible.... Quickly he threw himself backwards, ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the most herculean efforts at gaiety. She laughed very shakily at the solicitude expressed by Columbus, and told him tremulously how absurd and ridiculous he was to make such a fuss ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... at him. Three shots were fired. The brave Prussian still kept the saddle, but his hand dropped the bridle, and the horse stood still. The Dutch chasseurs surrounded and cut him. He lay helpless on the ground—that herculean man. He was still alive; his eyes, that had so beamed with courage, cast their last glance toward heaven, and his lips, that smiled so sweetly, murmured, "Tod du suesser fuer das Vaterland!" A powerful sabre-stroke at last ended his ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... all their researches but go to prove the fact that apart from all creed and all forms of creed, Crime carries Punishment as surely as the seed is born with the flower,—thinkers who are fully aware that not all the forces of all mankind, working with herculean insistence to support a Lie, can drive back the storm-cloud of the wrath of that "Unknown Quantity" called God, whose thunders do most terribly declare the truth "with power and great glory." "How long O Lord, how long!" Not ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... theatre in the Rue Pigalle. He was a big fellow of fifty with broad shoulders and a full, bearded face. His most disagreeable characteristic was the narrow dogmatic pedantry which he had acquired at the Ecole Normale, and had never since been able to shake off. All his herculean efforts to be sceptical and frivolous, and the twenty years he had spent in Paris mingling with every section of society, had failed to rid him of it. Magister he was, and magister he remained, even in his most strenuous ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... nations of the West, from whom she was separated by differences of language, customs and religious beliefs. It was as if Europe had been divided into two halves by a formidable barrier, which condemned the unfortunate Russians to isolation. The herculean task of demolishing this barrier was, as we all know, begun by Peter the Great. He built for himself a new capital on the northwest frontier of his dominions—the beautiful city on the Neva, recently christened Petrograd—in order to have, as he expressed it, a window through which he might look ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... more grasps the tree. The enormous hind-quarters, the limbs and the loins, the broad pelvis and thick spinal cord, supplying abundant nervous energy to the swelling muscles inserted in the ridged and keeled bones, all come into play as a point d'appui for the Herculean effort." [Gosse's "Natural History."] ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... obscured for the greater period of their working lives. Unobserved, they received, and made their own preparations for utilising, the legacy of the mid-Victorian novel—moral thesis, plot, underplot, set characters, descriptive machinery, landscape colouring, copious phraseology, Herculean proportions, and the rest of the cumbrous and grandiose paraphernalia of Chuzzlewit, Pendennis, and Middlemarch. But they received the legacy in a totally different spirit. Mark Rutherford, after a very brief experiment, put all these elaborate properties and conventions reverently aside. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Athenians, by the dog I swear!—for I must tell you the truth—the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... party. So soon as he discovered Capt. Gibson, he raised the war whoop and fired [61] his rifle—the ball passed through Gibson's hunting shirt and wounded a soldier just behind him. Gibson sprang forward, and swinging his sword with herculean force, severed the head of the Little Eagle from his body—two other Indians were shot down, and the remainder escaped to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... During the Herculean labour of my tedious progress through these books, few of which afford the germ of a single idea, I have often wished that the authors of them had been satisfied with giving us the results of their own practice and experience, instead ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... situation will exhibit the difficulties of the Khedive in his thankless and Herculean task of cleansing the Augean stables. He incurred the wrath of general discontent; his own officials accused him of deserting the Mahommedan cause for the sake of European Kudos, and while he sacrificed his popularity in Egypt, his policy was misconstrued ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... gigantic trees of the torrid zone, with a number of open huts, and a crowd of good-humoured islanders assembled beneath, to greet, in their fashion, the lovely evening, which is fast approaching. Before one of the huts a circle is formed, and in the centre sit two herculean and half-naked natives, beating time most vigorously on small drums. Five similar colossi are seated before them, moving the upper parts of their bodies in the most horrible and violent manner, and more especially the arms, hands, and fingers; the latter they have ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... complete breakdown, pitiful from its contrast with the man's herculean physique and fine, if contracted, features. If the end, it was a sad end, and Mr. Gryce, whose forehead had taken on a deep line between the eyebrows, slowly rose and took his stand by the young man, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... left, "short-commons" was the fate in store for them. The Wanguana, instead of regarding these poor creatures as soldiers, treated them like children; and once, as a diminutive Tot—the common name they go by—was exerting himself to lift his pack and place it on his mule, a fine Herculean Mguana stepped up behind, grasped Tot, pack and all, in his muscular arms, lifted the whole over his head, paraded the Tot about, struggling for release, and put him down amidst the laughter of the camp, then saddled his mule and patted ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... conclusion. Mr. Wilberforce said too little on this occasion of one, compared with whom he was but the frontispiece to that great chapter in the history of the world—the mask, the varnishing, and painting—the man that effected it by Herculean labours of body, and equally gigantic labours of mind was Clarkson, the true Apostle of human Redemption on that occasion, and who, it is remarkable, resembles in his person and lineaments more than one of ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... many miles along the banks of the river were erected by the systematic herculean toil of generations ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... brain that dares to think! Give me the mind that grasps with herculean power the rocks that crush the treasures of intellectual growth, and tears them from their foundation! Give me the mind that dares to step from the fallen stones, that leaps from rock to rock past the dark rift torn in the superstitions of ages ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... again, was one of the herculean artists, working, in Emerson's phrase, "in a sad sincerity," with the patience of an ant and the energy of a volcano. Of his Les Miserables—perhaps the greatest novel ever written, as it is, I suppose, easily the longest—he said, "it takes me nearly as long to publish a book as to write ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... picked up the herculean frame of the unconscious doctor and hoisted him up on the table. Carson seized his head and bent it forward and the dwarf took from a case a syringe with a five-inch needle. He touched the point of it to the base of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... piper calls the tune," and in this I am not only speaking literally of shekels of gold and silver, but of the power incorporated in certain personalities; and man, if he chose to exert it, has always force majeure at his command in the last extremity, although in these days of Herculean young women he may lose even ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... is beauty, this Indian was most beautiful, for he was the ugliest creature imaginable, ugly even to perfection. One eye had been gouged out, a knife-scar extended from his ear down across his mouth, and he was Herculean in physical proportions. I am a large man, but once when I gave him an overcoat he tried vainly to button it over his vast frontal protuberance, looking at me and ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... the idea engraven upon Bismarck's heart. What cared this herculean despot for the Diet chosen year after year simply to vote down every measure he proposed? He was indifferent to all opposition. He simply defied and sent home every Diet which opposed him. He could play the game alone. To make Germany the greatest power in Europe, to make William ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... were received at the Rock, as if they had returned from a victory. The garrison beheld with admiration the wonderful efforts which were made to meet a still more formidable foe. Every day marked the progress of the Herculean labours in preparation for that event; the exertions, zeal, and intrepidity of Sir James's officers and crews increased in proportion to the multiplied force of the enemy, which, to men of any other ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... their annual conventions in Omaha, the chief city of the State, and to support as many speakers[90] as possible through the campaign, that meetings might be held and tracts distributed in every county of the State, an Herculean undertaking, as Nebraska comprises 230,000 inhabitants scattered over an area of 76,000 square miles, divided into sixty-six counties; and yet this is what the friends of the measure proposed to do. The American Association[91] held its convention September 12, 13, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to the rickshaws, for they were run by Zulus and charged by the hour. You would climb in, the shafts would go up in the air, until you thought you were going to be tipped out at the back, and a herculean Zulu, decorated with horns and red and white stripes so that he might look like the devil, whom he, in reality, outdevilled, would rest himself on the body of the rick and trot along at a rate of six or seven miles an hour, quite able to keep ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... said Bailey, a herculean creature of 6 ft. 6 in., and stepping into "Wreck House" he brought out a chair, seated Lucy on it, and amidst applause and laughter, lifted it up on his mighty shoulders as if she was no more ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... pushed himself up with his whole force, careless of what might happen to his head. The top of it came bang against the stone, and lifted it so far that he got head and neck through. The thing was done! With one more Herculean lift of his body and the stone together, like a man rising from the dead, he rose from ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... warriors to return to their camp, near by, and bring buffalo meat for the starving white men. Notwithstanding the apparent kindness of this herculean chief, there was something about him that filled the white men with distrust. Gradually the number of his warriors increased until there were over a score of them in camp. They began to be inquisitive and troublesome, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Among Herculean deeds the miracle That mass'd the labour of ten years in one Shall be thy monument. Thy work was done Ere we could thank thee; and the high sea swell Surgeth unheeding where thy proud ship fell By the lone Orkneys, at ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... his Herculean task was accomplished, the reality of his weakened physical condition was painfully apparent,—he walked round the jail, to satisfy himself that no one was in the vicinity. The sun was set, and the shades of night were gathering upon the earth. The time ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... it. To have "put in" a winter in Camp One was the mark of a master; and the ambition of every raw recruit to the forest. Probably Thorpe's name is remembered to-day more on account of the intrepid, skillful, loyal men his strange genius gathered about it, than for the herculean feat of having carved a great fortune from the wilderness in ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... was advised of the danger of such an attempt, his spirit and determination made him invincible. He proceeded to a place where some colored men were working. With a firm and determined look, and a herculean shout, he called out to them, "To arms, to arms! boys, we must rescue this man; I shall lead if you will follow." "We will," was the immediate response. And they went and overtook them, and dispersed his claimants. They brought Dorsey ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... these terrible injuries, the traces of which had disappeared so miraculously, were inflicted by the prisoner Byron, a young gentleman tenderly nurtured, and visibly inferior in strength and hardihood to his herculean opponent. Doubtless Byron had been emboldened by his skill in mimic combat to try conclusions, under the very different conditions of real fighting, with a man whose massive shoulders and determined cast of features ought to have convinced him that such an enterprise was ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... looked only fit for the most placid fortune—when the dismal emergencies which checkered his life arose, he acted with as much promptitude and vigor as if he had never penned a stanza nor taken a glass too much, or was strung with herculean sinews. None of those temptations, in which misery is the most potent, to hazard a lavish expenditure for an enjoyment to be secured against fate and fortune, ever tempted him to exceed his income, when scantiest, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... the beating wings of the storm swooped down upon him sideways, as he twisted the ropes and tugged at them in a herculean effort to balance the plunging boat and keep her upright,—and in the loud serpent-like hiss of the waves around him, he did not hear his companion's wild warning cry—a cry of despair and farewell in one! A toppling dark-green mass of water, moving ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... below rather than above the medium size: although there were moments of intense passion when his frame actually expanded and belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity—singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet—and a profusion of curling, black ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... from some wild dream to poverty and social revolution. In a time of perfect calm, amid willing neighbors and streaming wealth, the social uplifting of 4,000,000 slaves to an assured and self-sustaining place in the body politic and economic would have been an herculean task; but when to the inherent difficulties of so delicate and nice a social operation were added the spite and hate of conflict, the Hell of War; when suspicion and cruelty were rife, and gaunt Hunger wept beside Bereavement,—in such a case, the work of any instrument of social regeneration ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... left his lips a little figure scrambled up the ladder, a blanket in her arms. Polly had seen all and had not waited for orders. Gym work back in Annapolis stood in good stead at that moment. Shelby flung the blanket about Tzaritza's sizzling fur, smothered out the flame, then by some herculean mustering of strength, caught the huge dog in his arms and crawled step by step down the ladder from which Polly had quickly scrambled. A dozen hands lent aid and poor burned Tzaritza was carried to the stables, Peggy and Polly close ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Herculean size was brought to the institution, and the case is thus described by the author of the "Description": "He had been afflicted several times before; and so constantly, during the present attack, had he been kept chained, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... action is that of cause to effect; nor, placed in this point of view, is it, or ever has it been, the subject of popular or philosophical dispute. None but the few fanatics who are engaged in the herculean task of reconciling the justice of their God with the misery of man, will longer outrage common sense by the supposition of an event without a cause, a voluntary action without a motive. History, politics, morals, criticism, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... may be quickly told. M. Roussillon had taken advantage of the first moment when he and Hamilton were left alone. One herculean buffet, a swinging smash of his enormous fist on the point of the Governors jaw, and then he walked out of the fort unchallenged, doubtless on account of his lordly ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... remained in it until the end. But it is a hard story to tell; there is too much of it. My special duties were of a kind to keep me constantly in touch with "the Chief," and I was able to realize, as only a few others were, the load of nerve-racking responsibility and herculean labor carried by him behind the more open scene of the public money-gathering, food-buying and transporting, and daily feeding of the ten million imprisoned people of occupied Belgium and France. In the relief of these helpless peoples Hoover put, ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... scattering destruction and death on every side. Every species of fire was rained down, a horrible tempest, upon the immovable mass. Shrieks from the wounded and the dying filled the air; and the mighty multitude swayed to and fro, in Herculean, yet unavailing efforts to escape. The horses, maddened with terror, reared and plunged, crushing indiscriminately beneath their tread the limbs of the fallen. The young bride, in her carriage, with a brilliant ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... thought of dropping it, and felt himself in motion as he slid in behind Frank who crossed in front of him. Ten—fifteen—twenty yards he traveled ... conscious that frenzied Pomeroy forms were being dumped heavily to earth by fellow team-mates ... and that Frank, directly ahead, was doing herculean work at clearing the way for him. On the thirty yard stripe, Frank suddenly went down, blocking off another tackler as he fell ... and Mack was forced to veer toward the sidelines as he was left upon his own. He saw now that Dizzy Fox, Pomeroy's star backfield man, was bearing ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... soon dressed in these diving suits, as were Captain Nemo and one of his companions—a herculean type who must have been prodigiously strong. All that remained was to encase one's head in its metal sphere. But before proceeding with this operation, I asked the captain for permission to examine the rifles set aside ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... minister thought it ought to be. Dursun Sing assured them that he would do his best to effect all the objects they had in view; and, after recovering possession of his estates, and conciliating, by suitable gratuities, all the reigning favourites at Court, he went to work heartily at his Herculean task after his wonted way. But he, soon after, became ill, and retired to his residence at Fyzabad, where he died on the 20th of August, 1844, leaving his elder brother, Bukhtawar Sing—my Quartermaster-general—at Court; and his three sons, Ramadeen, Rughbur Sing, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... the great Artist in his enthusiastic rendering of the master-pieces of the man he loved; prepared to greet him when he electrifies us with his wonderful Cyclopean harmonies, written for his own Herculean grasp, sparkling with his own Promethean fire, which no meaner hand can ever hope to master! "Hear Liszt and die," has been said by some of his enthusiastic admirers—understand him and live, were ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... away with them, and possessing himself of their wealth. No sooner had he disposed of Alan, than he assailed Luke, who met his charge half way. With the vigor and alacrity of the latter the reader is already acquainted, but he was no match for the herculean strength of the double-jointed ferryman, who, with the ferocity of the boar he so much resembled, thus furiously attacked him. Nevertheless, as may be imagined, he was not disposed to yield up his life tamely. He saw at once the villain's ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... difficulties to be encountered been fully realized before the road was begun, it is doubtful if it would have been built. The cost has slightly exceeded ten million dollars. That which seemed easy enough, as designed upon paper, proved to be a herculean task in the consummation. It was a portion of the original plan, when the Mexican Central Railroad was surveyed, to build this branch, and six years after the completion of the main trunk the Tampico road was duly opened. The distance from this harbor on the Gulf of Mexico to Aguas ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... native city, and to his own house, where he was as ever a rare and inattentive guest. Pie was laboring again. In the first week, on the first day almost, he discovered a new field; he was very anxious to seize this field, and begin his Herculean efforts on it. But the seizure depended on a certain very highly placed personage to whom, up to that time, he had not ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... its delusive radiance in the obscure haunt of Old Philosophy. This word Old had great charms for him. The good old times were always on his lips; meaning the days when polemic theology was in its prime, and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic with Herculean vigour, till the one wound up his series of syllogisms with the very orthodox conclusion of roasting ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... Magee. "What Herculean tasks you set. I'm not equal to that one." He picked up their traveling-bags and led the way up-stairs. "I'm something of a bell-boy myself, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... an old wayside inn where, 'towards the close of the year 17—,' several gentlemen in three-cocked hats were playing bowls. A friend of mine preferred the Malabar coast in a storm, with a ship beating to windward, and a scowling fellow of Herculean proportions striding along the beach; he, to be sure, was a pirate. This was further afield than my home-keeping fancy loved to travel, and designed altogether for a larger canvas than the tales that I affected. Give me a highwayman and I was full to the ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... a large room, that opened at once on the confined and crowded lane. Before the threshold was a group of men, whose iron and well-strung muscles, whose short and Herculean necks, whose hardy and reckless countenances, indicated the champions of the arena. On a shelf, without the shop, were ranged jars of wine and oil; and right over this was inserted in the wall a coarse painting, which exhibited gladiators drinking—so ancient and so venerable is the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Then they resumed their Herculean efforts till the water came, and then they got into the wagon, and we drove into the blackberries once more, where we arrived just in season to escape a thunder—shower, and pile merrily into one of several coaches waiting to convey passengers in various directions as soon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... delicious, rich, brown gravy may be made by adding flour and water. Strain the juice through a fine sieve and allow to stand a few minutes so as to be able to skim or pour off all the grease. Do not serve gravies with half an inch of pure grease on top. It does not require a scientific education nor a herculean effort to ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... Expeditionary Force. I have stated that there are eighty-two signs in Grade II Braille; but Braille shorthand contains six hundred and eighty word and letter signs that have to be committed to memory. A herculean task was before me, but by dogged effort on my part and patience on the part of my instructor, I succeeded so well that in a few weeks I was able to take shorthand notes as speedily as the average sighted stenographer. Meanwhile, I had been diligently at work ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... when his host was in his prime. 'Scott,' he said, 'was the most manly and natural character in the world. His hospitality was free and open as the day; he lived freely himself, and expected his guests to do the same.... He never ate or drank to excess, but he had no system; his constitution was Herculean, and he denied himself nothing. I went once from a dinner-party at Sir Thomas Lawrence's to meet Scott at another house. We had hardly entered the room when we were set down to a hot supper of roast chicken, salmon, punch, etc., and Sir Walter ate immensely ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... "No Herculean task to bend this willow wand," observed Antiochus, even his hard stern countenance relaxing into a smile. "Bring her nearer." The guards obeyed. Zarah approached the king, but with timid, faltering steps; how different from the firm tread with which a captive Maccabeus would have drawn nigh ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... homage, with their lord at their head, set off at full gallop from the right flank of the French squadrons, and arriving before the throne, which was yet empty, they at once halted. The rider at the head of the band was a strong herculean figure, with a decided and stern countenance, though extremely handsome, looking out from thick black curls. His head was surmounted with a barret cap, while his hands, limbs, and feet were covered with garments of chamois leather, over which he in general wore the ponderous and complete armour ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the right hand of two emperors, set to the task of stealing a dog—for that is what I should have to do—from an unscrupulous gang of thieves whose identity, abode and methods were alike unknown to me. Truly, Sir, you will own that this was a herculean task. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... getting the work started, but the task was a Herculean one. Duncan hurried to the scene of action as soon as he returned from New York to Cairo. He found that the space to be built over was very low-lying, and that the nearest source of supply for earth ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... those in charge of the education of the blind, whether in residential schools or public school classes, have a herculean task before them, but if their hearts are in the work, if they are alive to their wonderful opportunity for service, and if they have faith in the ability of their pupils, the future success of these ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... cursing, two more men came from obscurity with fish dangling from birch twigs. The pudgy man made an obviously herculean struggle and a meal was prepared. As he was drinking his cup of coffee, he suddenly spilled it and swore. The little man was ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... able to cloak his ambitious designs with the pretence of the royal authority, and deprived of a brother whom the army had appropriately surnamed "le chevalier sans peur,"[683] the task might well appear to demand herculean strength. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the rest of the week and you will have them at your fingers' ends. It is no trick at all. It is as easy as learning the names of the more important parts of the mechanism of your motor. There is nothing impossible or difficult, or even tedious, about it; but it seems Herculean because you have never taken the trouble to try to remember anything. It is the same attitude that renders it almost physically painful for one of us to read over the scenario of an opera or a column biography of its composer ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... however, that the Science of Society shall be, at some time in the future, completed, and in such form as shall give to the world the fruits of Professor Sumner's intellectual power, clarity of vision, and truly herculean industry. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Indian trading-posts on Lewis river. Peter himself was one of the most ferocious-looking men I ever beheld. He was short in stature, not more than four feet eight inches high, but his limbs were of Herculean mould. His hands, especially, were so enormously thick and broad as hardly to retain a human shape. His arms, as well as legs, were bowed in the most singular manner, and appeared to possess no flexibility whatever. His head was equally deformed, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and 'Cruiser' arrived here safely on the 10th.... I have just accomplished the Herculean task of looking over a two-months' supply of newspapers, and this occupation, interlarded with a certain number of letters and visits to and from the Imperial Commissioners, and, to-day, an address from the British community of Shanghae, has pretty fully occupied my time.[3] ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... grinned welcome impartially to the newcomers. "Hullo! This is luck. Delighted to see you. Grange, my boy, here's a little job exactly suited to your Herculean strength. Climb down like a good fellow, and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... at his cabin door he rushed out, shouting hospitable welcome in a tremendous voice. If he ever spoke in anything less than a roar he would make his Herculean body and Jovian head ridiculous. As he ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... and organizer of untiring energy and illimitable patience could have performed so herculean a labor. Balthazar was all this, and more. He knew how to rule men despotically yet secure their love. The Indians did his bidding without hesitation and wrought for him without pay. In the absence of this quality his task had never been done. On the ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... contrary to the idea of it that we should go back to metaphysical elements in order to make the notion of duty purified from everything empirical (from every feeling) a motive of action. For what sort of notion can we form of the mighty power and herculean strength which would be sufficient to overcome the vice-breeding inclinations, if Virtue is to borrow her "arms from the armoury of metaphysics," which is a matter of speculation that only few men can handle? Hence ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant
... up the wide shirt sleeve from his herculean arm and Szilard was astonished to see the half healed and cross-like scar—it had been a ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... wrecks lay along the pathway of history, and from the unwritten Constitution of the mother country, as their only guides, the leaders of the Convention were at once in the difficult role of constructive statesmen. The Herculean task to which with unwearied effort they now addressed themselves was that of "builders" of the Constitution; the establishers, for the ages, of the fundamental ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Condemning the system of violence and of legal fraud, which had too long been practised, as being calculated to defeat its own object, he sought the gradual restoration of confidence by the only means which could restore it:—a punctual and faithful compliance with his engagements. Herculean as was this task in the existing derangement of American finances, he entered upon it courageously; and, if not completely successful, certainly did more than could have been supposed possible with the means placed in his hands. It is, in no inconsiderable degree, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Ruby put forth an herculean effort, and tore the kegs out of the earth. After a short pause he carried Minnie out of the cavern, and led her to the field above by the same path by which they ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... an effort of his herculean arms, hurled the chest into space, throwing it toward the sea. It whirled over and over several times and descended rapidly in a slight curve, reflecting the moonlight on its polished surface. The old man ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... dark apartments, where many of the workmen are negroes, is especially high-flavored and like a chapter in Vathek. Writers usually talk of "life in the iron-mills" as conducing to the development of herculean strength. But iron-workers are apt to be dry and wiry, their flesh half sweated off and their complexions unnaturally pale. For true muscular development, rather Flemish and beefy in quality, we would instance the workmen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... provocation. With almost supernatural force and quickness he sprung upon the forester, and seized him by the throat. But the active young man freed himself from the gripe, and closed with his assailant. But though of Herculean build, it soon became evident that Ashbead would have the worst of it; when Hal o' Nabs, who had watched the struggle with intense interest, could not help coming to his friend's assistance, and made a push at Demdike with ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bride's costume beggars the English language; and human imagination falls faint and feeble before the Herculean task. From the everlasting stars she stole the glittering diamonds that decked her alabaster brow and hid them in the Stygian umbrage of her hair. From the fleecy, graceful cloud she snared the marvellous drapery that floated ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... pervades most of Ossian's poems he is seldom introduced in propria persona. Even when attention is directed to him the poet merely and meagerly sketches the herculean outline, and leaves our imagination to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... tithes to the church, provincial privileges, feudal rights, serfdom, the law of primogeniture, seigniorial dues, and the gabelle, or tax on salt. Mirabeau was not present, being absent on his pleasures. These, however, seldom interfered with his labors, which were herculean, from seven in the morning till eleven at night. He had two sides to his character,—one exciting abhorrence and disgust, for his pleasures were miscellaneous and coarse; a man truly abandoned to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... or wolf, plunged through and dropped into the stream. Cap. took a shot at it from the wobbling raft but of course failed. The fawn landed at the bottom of a mud wall ten feet high and for a moment seemed dazed, but by some herculean effort it gained the plain and sped away to freedom and we were not at all sorry to see it go. All the next day we kept on down White River on the raft and at seven o'clock were still five miles from camp in a direct ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... a second in which the athletic baronet stood, as it were breathless and incredulous, and then his Herculean fist whirled in the air with a most unseemly oath: the girl screamed, and a crash of glass and crockery, whisked away by their coats, resounded ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of Julian was finished on Christmas Day, but it took over a year more before the entire work, as we now possess it, was completed. "A Herculean labor," the author called it, when he finally laid down a weary pen in February, 1873. The year 1872 had been very quietly spent in unremitting literary labor, tempered by genial visits from some illustrious Danes of the older generation, as particularly Hans Christian Andersen and Meyer Aron ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the Potato Famine with anything like complete success, would have been a Herculean task for any government. The total failure of the food of a nation was, as Mr. Monsell said, a fact new in history; such being the case, no machinery existed extensive enough to neutralize its effects, nor was there extant any plan upon which such machinery ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... after the model of his vaulting in the second bay from the west end, or would he have diminished the number of piers so as to give a distance between them equal to the space between the west wall and the first pier he erected? It is difficult to realise how such a herculean task would have been carried out ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... smoke covered us. I felt the man I bore struggle and then go limp in my arms; I felt my knees getting warm and wet. The smoke rose; the tall, herculean back of D'ri was just ahead of me. His sleeve had been ripped away from shoulder to elbow, and a spray of blood from his upper arm was flying back upon me. His hat crown had been torn off, and there was a big ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... the air of bold daring and almost insolent recklessness pervading every movement of this man; and it was difficult to say whether the haughtiness of bearing peculiar to Ponteac himself, was not exceeded by that of this herculean warrior. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... a chaste soul, but it was lodged in a powerful Herculean body, and carnal images began to disturb his sleep and his vigils. He drove them away; they came back again; and he murmured from time to time, smiling ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... There were gloomy depths in his big black eyes, although the slightest movement, the faintest play of expression would cause them to dance with vitality and fun; the petulant expression, round lips, curved and cut with the delicacy of a cameo, was very manifest. The lad was built in almost Herculean mould, so broad were his shoulders, so upright and tall his young figure. With his head thrown back, the listening attitude on his face, his black hair swept from his forehead, he looked almost like a ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... Maxwell's men seemed not quite to get the range. The flag and flagstaff were riddled with bullet holes, and the dead were being piled around. Still, dervish after dervish sprang to uphold the black banner of Mahdism. A herculean black grasped the staff in one hand, and leaned negligently against it for what appeared to be the space of five or ten minutes,—probably less than one minute,—ere the soldiers managed to give him his final quietus. Then ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... full of surprise, of violence, of unrest; and with these the poet is not yet (if I dare say so) quite strong enough to deal. Apollo has not yet put on the sinews of Hercules. At a later date we may fancy or may find that when the Herculean muscle is full-grown the voice in him which was as the voice of Apollo is for a passing moment impaired. In Measure for Measure, where the adult and gigantic god has grappled with the greatest and most terrible of energies and of passions, we miss the music of a younger note ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as best they could the stubborn slope to the summit. But the fatigue which was thus imposed upon the tender limbs of women, upon the ancient frames of ecclesiastics, was not to be borne by the new King of Sicily. He was carried up the incline in a chair by two herculean Moorish slaves, so strong and surefooted that the stubborn ascent could be made with the least possible discomfort to his royal body. While the others had groaned and sweated as they scuffled up the hill—that they might reach the goal ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... might be proud. The god of Beauty need not want a better form or face; nor he of Strength a set of sinews tougher, or limbs more tersely knit. Young though he may be, Jupe has performed feats of Herculean strength, requiring courage as well. No wonder at his ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to the Colony, and the state of chaos and utter confusion in which he had the misfortune to find everything on his arrival; and we are therefore of opinion that the thanks of every loyal colonist are due to his Excellency for the herculean efforts he has since made under the most trying ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... above were guarded by a three-banked battery. Eight miles of batteries lined the shore above and below Vicksburg. Grant made several fruitless attempts to get to the rear of the city by digging canals across the strip of land on which it stood, and making an inland route; but each one, after herculean labor, had been abandoned. He now decided on the bold enterprise of running the gauntlet of these batteries with his transports. This desperate feat was successfully accomplished; but before he could land his troops at Grand Gulf, which he had selected ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... "You have now read the outlines of my Herculean task, you now know who I am. A Prince of long titles, not one of which has its foundation in truth and reality. And this is my Herculean task, to make these titles real, and to give a good kernel to these ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... and another fellow entered. Steve was Ridings' hired hand, a herculean fellow, with a drawl, and a liability for ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... to me very forcibly at that moment that to harbour Miss Howard and Alfred Inglethorp under the same roof, and keep the peace between them, was likely to prove a Herculean task, and I did not envy John. I could see by the expression of his face that he fully appreciated the difficulty of the position. For the moment, he sought refuge in retreat, and left ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... man endowed with herculean strength who is compelled by circumstances to follow a sedentary occupation, some minute exquisite work of the hands, for example, or to engage in study and mental labor demanding quite other powers, and just those which he has not got,—compelled, that is, to leave unused ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... magnificent specimen of an Arab that I have ever seen. Although upwards of eighty years of age, he was as erect as a lance, and did not appear more than between fifty and sixty; he was of Herculean stature, about six feet three inches high, with immensely broad shoulders and chest; a remarkably arched nose; eyes like an eagle, beneath large, shaggy, but perfectly white eyebrows; a snow-white beard of great thickness ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... you are saying about Piero de' Medici and small wits, Messer Niccolo?" said Nello, whose light figure was at that moment predominating over the Herculean frame of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... we possess too much of them. That sketch of four cherub heads from and English girl, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, at Kensington, is an incomparably finer thing than ever the Greeks did. Ineffably tender in the touch, yet Herculean in power; innocent, yet exalted in feeling; pure in color as a pearl; reserved and decisive in design, as this Lion crest, —if it alone existed of such,—if it were a picture by Zeuxis, the only one left ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... which did not look to me like the abode of that amphibious and carnivorous creature. "Well, old alligator, what's the time o' day?" asked another man, bringing down a brawny paw, with a resounding thump, upon the Herculean shoulders of the first querist, thereby giving me the information that in the West alligator is a designation of the genus homo; in fact, that it is customary for a man to address his fellow-man as "old alligator," instead of "old fellow." At eight we left Rock Island, and, turning my unwilling ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... is an old Roman tale told by Petronius. It is put in the mouth of one Niceros. Late at night he left the town to visit a friend of his, a widow, who lived at a farm five miles down the road. He was accompanied by a soldier, who lodged in the same house, a man of Herculean build. When they set out it was near dawn, but the moon shone as bright as day. Passing through the outskirts of the town, they came amongst the tombs, which lined the highroad for some distance. There ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... about the unfailing supply of water—in fact, Scott talked more about water than he did about gold. Bartley realized that the big miner would have been a misfit in town, that he belonged in the rugged hills from which he wrested a scant six dollars a day by herculean toil. ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... fine, herculean-looking fellows, broad-shouldered and handsome, and every man had his face tattooed in a curious scroll-like pattern, which ended on the sides of ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... in check. In another, it may be a raging torrent, and he may slave night and day, gathering stone and sand, and sealing them with his very blood. But suppose in the end the torrent gets away from him! He fails, you say. Yet is he weaker after that herculean task than the other chap who dammed up his stream of tendency with the side of his boot? He publicly goes under,—yes! But may he not still be finer than his two-by-four brother whose temperament ran only from the ice-box to family prayers and back to the ice-box? I want to tell ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... it could be seen that Mr McCarthy's imagination had been quicker than his eyesight, for there was no one looking out over the gunwale—least of all Bill Moody, whose tall herculean form and peculiar visage would have been easily recognisable even at ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... animal became aware that it was being pursued, it redoubled its efforts to gain the island, which was not very distant. And this it would have succeeded in doing had it not been for the almost herculean exertions of Ramrod, by which it was eventually headed ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... also, the troops were hurried from point to point of the Confederacy, thus keeping the Federal armies so long outside the charmed circle of the seceded States. With worn-out rails, scant supply of carriage-material, and wheezy engines, they performed herculean labor throughout the war. Consequently it became the favorite pastime and the almost sole business of Union cavalry to destroy or attempt destruction of railroad communication. Thousands upon thousands of valuable lives were sacrificed in such movements, and without any material damage ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... Celtic head Outdid, when all is done or said, That classic stunt—the herculean Minerva ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... civilizing the Germanic nations was a task of herculean proportions and of tremendous significance. Out of these tribes were to be constructed the nations of modern Europe. To this important mission the monks addressed themselves with such courage, patience, faith and zeal, as to entitle them to the veneration ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... Chancellorsville bristles with points of criticism, and there are some few points of possible disagreement. Of the latter the principal ones upon which Hooker's formal apologists rely, are the destruction of the Eleventh Corps through Howard's alleged carelessness, and the failure of Sedgwick to perform the herculean task assigned to him in coming to Hooker's support. Allowing, for the moment, that Howard and Sedgwick were entirely at fault, and eliminating these two questions entirely from the issue, let us see what Hooker himself did, bearing in mind that he has officially ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... to follow, step by step, the difficulties that he knew awaited him. Now, as the days stretched into weeks and on into months, he was forced to take every laborious step, and it was borne in upon him just how nearly impossible that Herculean labor was to prove—just how dependent any given earthly activity is upon a vast number of others. Here he was alone—everything he needed must be manufactured by his own hands, from its original sources. He had known that progress would be slow and he had been prepared for that; ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... I was struggling in the herculean grasp of the Irishman. Resistance was useless; I was a child ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... men, young women, soldiers, shopkeepers, and pretres, scuffling and shoving together. Careless at once of grammar and of grace, I pulled and shouted with the best, till at length our plunder was caught, corded and poised on an herculean neck. We followed in the wake, H. trembling lest the cord should break, and we experience a pre-Alpine avalanche. At length, however, we breathed more freely in rooms au ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... no further provocation. With almost supernatural force and quickness he sprung upon the forester, and seized him by the throat. But the active young man freed himself from the gripe, and closed with his assailant. But though of Herculean build, it soon became evident that Ashbead would have the worst of it; when Hal o' Nabs, who had watched the struggle with intense interest, could not help coming to his friend's assistance, and made a push ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... weary war where fierce Numantia bled, Fell Hannibal, the swoln Sicilian main Purpled with Punic blood—not mine to wed These to the lyre's soft strain, Nor cruel Lapithae, nor, mad with wine, Centaurs, nor, by Herculean arm o'ercome, The earth-born youth, whose terrors dimm'd the shine Of the resplendent dome Of ancient Saturn. You, Maecenas, best In pictured prose of Caesar's warrior feats Will tell, and captive kings with haughty crest Led ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... health of Mr. Pease began to fail under his herculean labors. He had carried his enterprise to a successful issue, however. He had done good to thousands, and had won friends for the institution, who were resolved, and possessed of the means, to carry it on. A Society was incorporated for the conduct of the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Elector. "You have now read the outlines of my Herculean task, you now know who I am. A Prince of long titles, not one of which has its foundation in truth and reality. And this is my Herculean task, to make these titles real, and to give a good kernel to these empty nut shells. Look, Leuchtmar, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... after to-morrow, and I must have my petition ready.' And he talked away like a man who had got a care off his mind, and is in high spirits; and when grinning, beetle-browed Giant Despair shook his hand, and wished him luck at parting, he stopped him, laying his white hand upon his herculean arm, and, said he, 'I've a point to urge they don't suspect. I'm sure of my liberty; what do you think of that—hey?' and he laughed. 'And when I get away what do you say to leaving this place and coming after me? Upon my life, you must, Sir. I like you, and if you don't, rot ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... retention as a substitute for the Assessed Taxes, which at present press so heavily on all, but particularly on the working-classes! But while Sir Robert Peel was remodelling the Corn-Laws, and creating a new source of direct revenue, he also undertook another task—a herculean task, one utterly hopeless, and beyond the reach or even conception of any but a Minister conscious of occupying an impregnable position in the confidence of the country: we allude to his reconstruction of our entire commercial system, as represented by his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... "skin a bowhead in forty minutes;" and although we were certainly longer than that, the celerity with which what seemed a gigantic task was accomplished was marvellous. Of course, it was all plain-sailing, very unlike the complicated and herculean task inevitable at the commencement ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... to adequately describe what the last fifty years have brought us, in inventions and kindred achievements, and what is the result of this Herculean work? An expansion undreamt of in the annals of history. By 50% the population of several countries had increased, they became too small to feed and clothe their people from their own resources, but the new spirit, which dominated all, has solved ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... keeping the telegram a secret, grew more and more anxious as there came no news of Katy. What did the silence mean? Uncle Ephraim pondered the matter all day long, holding conversations with himself upon the subject, and finally making up his mind to the herculean task of going to New York to see what was the matter. To the family, who asked the reason of his sudden journey, he said: He had a notion that something ailed Katy, and he ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... eyes and unclosing lips; the "harsh thunder" of his articulation, and the horrisonous stamp of his ample foot, impress us with the same reverence which was felt by his literary visitants. It was here, doubtless, where the Herculean task of compiling his dictionary was achieved; the monotony of which was relieved by writing the periodical papers of his Guardian, and the more flowery composition of poetry and biography. But he is gone, and though the mist of years may obscure his personal history, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... he screamed, and before the other realized his intention he struck him a fearful blow in the face with his naked fist. Always a man of unusual strength, his rage had bestowed upon him a Herculean force. He seized the dazed man by the throat and waist belt ere he fell to the deck from the force of the blow, and lifting him up literally pitched him overboard. Before the crew had recovered from their astonishment ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Incoherently he called his family around him, and addressed his sons as to their peculiar avocations for life, giving advice to one ever to be temperate in all things, and to another urging the importance of knowledge. After midnight he became much worse, and was ungovernable. With herculean strength he now raised himself from his pillow; with eyes of meteoric fierceness, he grasped his bed covering, and in a most vehement but rapid articulation, exclaimed to his sons, "Boys! study Bolingbroke for style, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... and a sign from Basil made us understand that we were to keep in the shade, lest, perchance, some of the enemy might be straggling in our direction. I was growing tired and breathless, when our herculean guide signed to me to look upwards. My eye following the lead of his finger, travelled across a curtain of foliage—the delicate ash leaf, faded and ready to drop away; the sturdier oak, brown, yellow, dull green, or blotted with crimson. At the top of all was a hut ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... certain strained and angry menace. All the long afternoon The Bedford Castle lay at her moorings subjected to the customary eleventh-hour delays. As the time dragged on, and the liquor died in the fishermen, it became a herculean task to prevent them from issuing forth into the street, while the crowds outside seemed possessed of a desperate determination to force an entrance and bring the issue to a final settlement. But across the shore end of the dock a ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... with the Gallipoli Expeditionary Force. I have stated that there are eighty-two signs in Grade II Braille; but Braille shorthand contains six hundred and eighty word and letter signs that have to be committed to memory. A herculean task was before me, but by dogged effort on my part and patience on the part of my instructor, I succeeded so well that in a few weeks I was able to take shorthand notes as speedily as the average ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... as the children put it, to "get even with" the man or woman whose speech offends us. The apostle showed marvelous knowledge of the weakness of sinful mortals when he affirmed that the tongue was an unruly member, for it is easier to perform a herculean feat, to strain physical strength and muscle to the utmost, than to bite back the sharp retort, or repress the acrid reply. And there is such a hopelessness in the sentence once uttered! It is gone from us forever. We may regret it and show ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... was promising a great deal, but for Polly's sake he felt that he could make even that Herculean effort. Aunt Kipp was surprised and touched; but the contrary old lady couldn't make up her mind to yield so soon, and wouldn't have done it if Toady hadn't taken her by storm. Having a truly masculine horror of tears, a very tender heart under his tailless jacket, and being ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... west end, or would he have diminished the number of piers so as to give a distance between them equal to the space between the west wall and the first pier he erected? It is difficult to realise how such a herculean task would have been carried out ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... are busy to-day with ropes and axe, pick and shovel. But the task is vast, it is herculean, like unto the cleaning of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the Romans under Arrius, the Senate had called Crassus to the chief command, resolving to make an herculean effort to destroy their terrible enemy. The accounts are somewhat confused, but, according to Plutarch, Crassus commenced operations against Spartacus before the latter marched for Sicily. He sent one of his lieutenants, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... I have already informed the reader, had been endowed by nature with great corporeal strength; indeed, I have been assured that, at the period of his prime, his figure had denoted the possession of almost Herculean powers. The strongest forms, however, do not always endure the longest, the very excess of the noble and generous juices which they contain being the cause of their premature decay. But, be that as it may, the health of my father, some few years after his retirement from the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... is her flight o'er the meads, but she hardly outstrips the canoemen. See! the voyageurs bend to their oars till the blue veins swell out on their foreheads; And the sweat from their brawny breasts pours; but in vain their Herculean labor; For the oars of Tamdoka are ten, and but six are the oars of the Frenchmen, And the red warriors' burden of men is matched by the voyageur's luggage. Side by side, neck and neck, for a mile, still they strain ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... engraven upon Bismarck's heart. What cared this herculean despot for the Diet chosen year after year simply to vote down every measure he proposed? He was indifferent to all opposition. He simply defied and sent home every Diet which opposed him. He could play the game alone. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... to preserve the stability of the structure. A few years ago the east end showed signs of subsidence, and ominous cracks appeared in the north transept, a part of the old Norman church. An examination of the fabric proved that herculean tasks were essential to save this portion of the edifice. It was agreed that only by extensive underpinning could the work be accomplished. It has been very costly, and funds are most urgently needed to complete the preservation, not only of the eastern ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... decided to hold their annual conventions in Omaha, the chief city of the State, and to support as many speakers[90] as possible through the campaign, that meetings might be held and tracts distributed in every county of the State, an Herculean undertaking, as Nebraska comprises 230,000 inhabitants scattered over an area of 76,000 square miles, divided into sixty-six counties; and yet this is what the friends of the measure proposed to do. The American Association[91] held its convention September ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... became aware, as the year advanced towards the sere and yellow leaf, that in opposing her wayward will in single combat against a simple little association in the public mind she was undertaking a somewhat herculean task. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... They were grave, it is true, and thoughtful, but of an invincible serenity. For the moment we could only sit among the bushes in patience and wait the coming of Zambo. Presently his honest black face topped the rocks and his Herculean figure emerged upon the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to think the only chance of life to his host and Sibyll was in flight by some back way, when he beheld a man, clad somewhat in the fashion of a country yeoman, a formidable knotted club in his hand, pushing his way, with Herculean shoulders, through the crowd; and stationing himself before the threshold and brandishing aloft his formidable weapon, he exclaimed, "What! In the devil's name, do you mean to get yourselves all hanged for riot? Do you think that King ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the week and you will have them at your fingers' ends. It is no trick at all. It is as easy as learning the names of the more important parts of the mechanism of your motor. There is nothing impossible or difficult, or even tedious, about it; but it seems Herculean because you have never taken the trouble to try to remember anything. It is the same attitude that renders it almost physically painful for one of us to read over the scenario of an opera or a ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the short-lived republics whose wrecks lay along the pathway of history, and from the unwritten Constitution of the mother country, as their only guides, the leaders of the Convention were at once in the difficult role of constructive statesmen. The Herculean task to which with unwearied effort they now addressed themselves was that of "builders" of the Constitution; the establishers, for the ages, of the fundamental law ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... consisted of what we left, "short-commons" was the fate in store for them. The Wanguana, instead of regarding these poor creatures as soldiers, treated them like children; and once, as a diminutive Tot—the common name they go by—was exerting himself to lift his pack and place it on his mule, a fine Herculean Mguana stepped up behind, grasped Tot, pack and all, in his muscular arms, lifted the whole over his head, paraded the Tot about, struggling for release, and put him down amidst the laughter of the camp, then saddled his mule and patted him on ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... members of parliament into every hospital. Votes were brought down in flannels and blankets, till the floor of the House looked like the pool of Bethesda. 'Tis wonderful that half of us are not dead—I should not say us; Herculean I have not suffered the least, except that from being a Hercules of ten grains, I don't believe I now weigh above eight. I felt from nothing so much as the noise, which made me as drunk as an owl- -you may imagine the clamours of two parties so nearly ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... boundless deep of eternity! Oh Time! thou greatest of all anomalies! Friend yet foe, "preserver and yet destroyer!" Whence art thou, great immemorial? When shall thy wondrous mechanism be dissolved? When shall the "pall of obscurity" descend on thy Herculean net-work? Voices of the past echo through thy deserted temples, and shriek along ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... curious how she did not think of Peggy. She was like a lover who has been set a herculean task to accomplish before he may even ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... anxiety to obtain good places, the most extraordinary risks were run, and feats of activity displayed. Here might be seen individuals clambering up perpendicular buildings, by the aid of ledges and projections which appeared far too narrow to afford either grasp or foot-hold; further on, some herculean gondolier or peasant served as base to a sort of human column, composed of five or six men, who, scrambling over each other's shoulders, attained in this manner some seemingly inaccessible position. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... (which was impossible) if his Messiahship had been espoused by both, and by their consent and influence had been handed down, and declared to have been evidenced by all the miracles recorded in the four Evangelists, do you not see that your first proposition would be of Herculean strength against this religion? On the contrary, it being well established, from unquestionable authority, that as St. Paul observed, Christ crucified was a stumbling block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness, the whole force ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... triumph, Andrew brought his new friend to see his darlings. He greatly hoped that Jack would not appear on the scene just now. While Maggie was up in her bedroom taking off, her hat, he had, with herculean strength, managed to move an old wooden door and put it in such a position that Jack's hutch was completely hidden, while his hutch shone forth in all its glory, with those fascinating creatures Spot-ear, Angelus, Dove, and Clover looking ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... for a last try with the Dewey's hardworked engines. Jack and Ted had spent the long evening in the wireless room with Sammy Smith, hearing not so much as a trace of a passing vessel. Eagerly they awaited the last herculean effort for freedom. At ten minutes to one the engines were set in motion again and the signal given to back away as before. Lieutenant McClure had resorted to the expedient of shifting everything movable within the Dewey to the bow bulkhead in the hope ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... departed from his favorite theories, in wedding a yeoman's daughter. On the contrary, he believes he has acted on a system, and crossed the breed so judiciously as to attain greater physical perfection by means of a herculean dam, yet retain that avitam fidem, or traditional loyalty, which (to use his own words) "is born both in Rabys and Dences, as surely as a high-bred setter comes into the world with a ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... said that fatigue killed more German soldiers than fell to British bullets; and the fact may well be believed when we consider the herculean task General von Fuechter had accomplished in one week. His plan of campaign was to strike his hardest, and to keep on striking his hardest, without pause, till he had the British Government on its knees before him; till he had the British public—maddened by sudden fear, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... remark, when the proposition was submitted to him. Not that Mr. O'Rourke had the faintest idea of gardening. He did n't know a tulip from a tomato. He was one of those sanguine people who never hesitate to undertake anything, and are never abashed by their herculean inability. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... this said by way of paradox; daily experience shows the truth of these observations. It is almost impossible to elevate the spirits of a man groaning under ideal calamities; but nothing is easier than to render him wretched, though on the pinnacle of felicity: as it would be an herculean task to hoist a man to the top of a steeple, though the merest child ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... by throwing up a line of earthworks, behind which he placed his heavy guns, hoping to batter down the towers and ramparts, while his pikemen and halberdiers were scaling the unprotected parts. But his men at first were lukewarm. The task seemed herculean, and every effort to ascend the ramparts met with certain death. Those in the castle fought like maniacs, the men with guns and crossbows, and the women firing stones. Gustavus, it is reported, stormed and swore, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... that will read it. When I first undertook this Poem, or, as some very skilful in this kind have pleased to term it, this Herculean labour, I was by some virtuous friends persuaded, that I should receive much comfort and encouragement therein; and for these reasons; First, that it was a new, clear, way, never before gone by any; then, that it contained all the Delicacies, Delights, and Rarities of ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... in the hands of the king. Louis XIII. was the feeblest of the Bourbons, but he made his throne the first in Europe. Richelieu was a great benefactor to the cause of law, order, and industry, despotic as was his policy and hateful his character. When he died, worn out by his herculean labors, the nobles tried to regain the privileges and powers they had lost, and a miserable warfare called the "Fronde" was the result, carried on without genius or system. But the Fronde produced some heroes who were destined to be famous ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Porson, add "cum notis Bentleii," &c.: so that such a catalogue would present, not only every volume in the Public Library, but every valuable edition of a work in the whole University. Nor is the task so Herculean as may be thought. The tutors of the respective colleges would, I am sure, be happy, as well as able, to contribute their proportionate share of labour towards the accomplishment of so desirable and invaluable ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Mike Lambourne and Tressillian, and rebuilding in its neighbourhood the ruins of Cumnor Hall, on which the dews fell softly? Alas! the wizard would weave no more spells. A month before that princely "progress" Sir Walter Scott, after Herculean labours to pay his debts like an honest man had wrecked even his robust frame and healthful genius, lay dead ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the slave-trade in 1850, on the threshold of the critical decade which by a herculean effort was destined finally ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... full length on the floor, from a tremendous open-handed box on the ear. Dumollard was a very Herculean person—though by ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... the importance of Pix in the eyes of the community were the Herculean porters under his command. When these men rolled mighty casks about, and lifted hundred weights like pounds, they seemed to the new apprentice like the giants of fairy lore. Some of them belonged to this firm ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Double Show," repeated Agnes, carefully. "There was another came—Twomley & Sorter's Herculean Circus and Menagerie; but we ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... my first meeting with Marmaduke, Sir Massingberd unexpectedly appeared before me. He was a man of Herculean proportions, dressed like an under-gamekeeper, but with the face of one who was used to command. On his forehead was a curious indented frown like the letter V, and his lips curled contemptuously upward in the same shape. These two together gave him a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... cafe simultaneously uttered a cry of terror. Lazet's violence of character, his herculean strength and undaunted courage, were well known. He sprang across the table between them, and seized Gaston by the throat. Then arose a scene of excitement and confusion. Clameran's friend, attempting to assist him, was knocked down with billiard-cues, and kicked ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... times she repented; and a presentiment that she should yet marry him, together with a terror at the idea which prevented her from wishing for the marriage, assailed her. Her mind, stimulated by these feelings, was much occupied by du Bousquier. Without being aware of it, she was influenced by the herculean form of the republican. Madame Granson and the Chevalier de Valois, although they could not explain to themselves Mademoiselle Cormon's inconsistencies, had detected her naive glances in that direction, the meaning of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... which filial duty or politeness could not bridge. No stories of the desert were ever told at home, though it was so easy to tell them to Burleigh or Mathewson, those contrasts in a pale fitter of clothes and a herculean rustler of dry-goods boxes. But echoes of the tales came to the father through his assistants. He had the feeling of some stranger spirit in his own likeness moving there in the streets of his city under the talisman ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... galloped into the main street, and he saw at a glance that the news had, as he expected, arrived before him. In front of the Griqualand Saloon a great crowd of miners had assembled, who were talking excitedly among themselves. The light of the torches shone down upon herculean figures, glaring shirts, and earnest bearded faces. The whole camp appeared to have assembled there to discuss the situation, and it was evident from their anxious countenances and subdued voices, that they took no light view ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "been, Had you the gauntlets of Alcides seen, Or view'd the stern debate on this unhappy green! These which I bear your brother Eryx bore, Still mark'd with batter'd brains and mingled gore. With these he long sustain'd th' Herculean arm; And these I wielded while my blood was warm, This languish'd frame while better spirits fed, Ere age unstrung my nerves, or time o'ersnow'd my head. But if the challenger these arms refuse, And cannot wield their weight, or dare not ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... clawing the restless sea, chugging, hissing with shouts of vengeance hurtling from their decks, First ploughed the flag-ship El Toro, next El Teuera, and last the "battleship" El Manuel, sitting almost on her stern, plugging along doggedly in a Herculean effort to be first in at the ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... preliminary question. But this period had not as yet been reached, and it was thought by the entire City that Mr. Palliser was much too sanguine. It was so probable, many said, that he might kill himself by labour which would be Herculean in all but success, and that no financier after him would venture to face the task. It behoved Lady Glencora to see that her Hercules did ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... irony in such a result of the Herculean labours of Scott to found and endow a new branch of the clan of Scott. When fifteen years after his death the estate was at length freed from debt, all his own children and the eldest of his grandchildren were dead; and now forty-six years have elapsed, and there only remains one ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... sir; and the first four or five female patients that favored me with it, made me disbelieve my other senses; but Miss Lusignan is now about the thirtieth who has shown me that marvellous feat, with a calm countenance that belies the herculean effort. Nature has her every-day miracles: a boa-constrictor, diameter seventeen inches, can swallow a buffalo; a woman, with her stays bisecting her almost, and lacerating her skin, can yet for one moment make herself seem slack, to deceive a juvenile physician. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... nothing could be better than the original bronze statue shown in Fig. 177. It was found in Rome in 1885, and is essentially complete, except for the missing eyeballs; the seat is new. The statue represents a naked boxer of herculean frame, his hands armed with the aestus or boxing-gloves made of leather. The man is evidently a professional "bruiser" of the lowest type. He is just resting after an encounter, and no detail is spared to bring out the nature of his occupation. Swollen ears ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... but this defect had increased; his herculean back was rounded, and he stooped a little. His forehead, always of the broadest—no one else's hat would fit him- -was now one of the highest, that is to say, he had lost all his hair, except a ragged lock over each ear and ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... goods were to be transported through a trail of the forest, encumbered with snow, around the falls, a distance of about twenty miles, on the shoulders of men. The Indians, with fraternal kindness, aided in these herculean labors, and were amply repaid for days of toil, by a knife, a hatchet, or a few trinkets, as valuable to them as are diamonds and pearls to a duchess. La Salle constructed a fortified depot at this place, to serve as a base for future operations. Here ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... his scarce-begun pursuit of the hoydenish-queenly girl, for Damocles de Warrenne had a reputation for the cool prosecution of his undertakings and the complete fulfilment of his promises. Likewise he had a reputation for Herculean strength and uncanny skill. Yet the gay Captain had been strongly attracted by the beauty and grace of the unspoilt, unsophisticated, budding woman, with her sweet freshness and dignity (so quaintly enhanced by lapses into the slangy, unfettered schoolgirl ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... eight abreast. In the van were a number of big, square-headed fellows, who seemed to possess the herculean strength and naive confidence of giants. They would doubtless prove blind, intrepid defenders of the Republic. On their shoulders they carried large axes, whose edges, freshly ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... of the wilderness found the minds of his countrymen we cowed with fear, or so benumbed with indifference as to their fate, that there was scarcely a man among them all, outside his own near kindred, to lend him an ear, or join him in his self-imposed, herculean labor. But toward the end, when every hill and valley, plain and forest, river and lake of the great North-west had been made to resound full many a year with the echoes of that awakening voice, behold the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Padua, purposely to look out for a wife, who, nothing discouraged by these reports of Katherine's temper, and hearing she was rich and handsome, resolved upon marrying this famous termagant, and taming her into a meek and manageable wife. And truly none was so fit to set about this herculean labour as Petruchio, whose spirit was as high as Katherine's, and he was a witty and most happy-tempered humourist, and withal so wise, and of such a true judgment, that he well knew how to feign a passionate and furious deportment, when his ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... another—apparently belonging to no country and having no home. He usually wore a white felt hat with the brim turned up, a velveteen or jean square-tailed coat, a scarlet plush waistcoat with little black spots, and a bright-coloured kerchief round his herculean neck, when, as often happened, it was not left entirely bare. His corduroy breeches were retained in position by a leathern strap round the waist, and were tied and buttoned at the knee, displaying beneath a solid calf and foot encased in strong high-laced boots. Joining together ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... women—how Tommy had fought for it since first he drank of them in Pym's sparkling pages! To some it seems to be easy, but to him it was a labour of Sisyphus. Everything had been against him. But he concentrated. No labour was too Herculean; he was prepared, if necessary, to walk round the world to get to the other side of the wall across which some men can step. And he did take a roundabout way. It is my opinion, for instance, that he wrote his book in order to make a beginning with ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... —to-morrow—next week,' and by making me wait for letters; in short, by throwing me into rages which I alone know! This has brought a frightful disorder into my affairs, for instead of getting my liberty February 15, I have before me a month of herculean labor, and on my brain I must inscribe this which will be contradicted by my heart: 'Think no longer of your star, nor of Dresden, nor of travel; stay at your chain and work miserably! . . . Dear Countess, I decidedly advise you to leave Dresden at once. There are princesses in that ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... aberration which ended his life, and does not hesitate to attribute the final catastrophe to the overworking of his powers in the service of pretentious and unsanctified science. Noble and true-hearted son of the Church though he was, and though laboring with herculean strength to set the Bible and science in harmony, he has not escaped the envenomed shafts of a portion of the religious press. By some he has been openly branded as a traitor ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... for. No time was given for reflection. Off ran the mule again, and made a pedal attack on a small Hebrew with a huge nasal organ, seated on top of a decayed coach, drawn by a horse, a cow, and three negroes. The quadruped made a herculean effort to kick the diminutive Shylock from his seat, but all in vain. The altitude was too great, and, in the midst of his exertions, he kicked himself off his feet, and fell over into a gulley, in which he alighted and stood on his head, as ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... see far beyond the obvious; he missed good things sometimes, but he gained more than he lost; he knew that it is always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident that the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty is obtainable. His life was not one of Herculean effort, but, like the lives of all those organisms that are most likely to develop and transmit a useful modification, it was one of well-sustained activity; it was a long-continued keeping open of the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... done it,"—and he did whatever honest work he could find that would help keep body and soul together. Through all these years, every moment of the day that could be saved from bread-winning toil, and much of his night-time, went into the herculean task to which he had dedicated himself—the complete translation of the Bible from its original languages into both Latin and French.[5] Being himself one of the common people he always had the interests and needs of the common people in view, and he ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... instantly became charged with a thousand fires; my heart seemed to swell with mighty exultation; my brain seemed to swim in a sea of delight. I laughed with mad glee to think of the superb vengeance I was about to wreak on my enemies; then I raised the corpse of Lagrange with Herculean strength, thrust it into the cask, and pressed it into the smallest possible compass; but found to my inexpressible chagrin, that it would be absolutely impossible to re-adjust the head of the cask, unless the body was in some manner made smaller. ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... given a black breakfast, he wrote his hurry-call message and corked it into the flask. And there only remained the somewhat herculean task of getting that flask flung into ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... he manages to draw him away from the rest of the company by the pleasing manner in which he engages him in conversation and arrests his attention. Nobody, they say, has yet been able to reclaim him, and the prince will deserve to be immortalized in an epic should he accomplish such an Herculean task. I am much afraid, however, that the tables may be turned, and the guide be led away by the pupil, of which, in fact, there seems to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to his business and ruinous to his purse. Viewed in this respect the national testimonial was but an act of justice, apart from any consideration of the great services which he rendered to the cause of free-trade. None but those immediately cognizant of his efforts could conceive his herculean labours to promote the repeal of the corn laws. His eloquence was characterised by intelligence, directness, the absence of all meretricious ornament, and an eagerness to convince and carry his hearers with him, which was singularly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... increasing, and will continue to increase in a ratio which is alarming in the extreme, and must overwhelm our descendants in ruin? Why then should we shut our eyes and turn our backs upon the evil? Will delay render it less gigantic, or give us more Herculean strength to meet and subdue it at a future time? Oh, no—delay breeds danger—procrastination is the thief of time, and the refuge ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... with herculean strength who is compelled by circumstances to follow a sedentary occupation, some minute exquisite work of the hands, for example, or to engage in study and mental labor demanding quite other powers, and just those which he ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the others, aiming their muskets at him. Three shots were fired. The brave Prussian still kept the saddle, but his hand dropped the bridle, and the horse stood still. The Dutch chasseurs surrounded and cut him. He lay helpless on the ground—that herculean man. He was still alive; his eyes, that had so beamed with courage, cast their last glance toward heaven, and his lips, that smiled so sweetly, murmured, "Tod du suesser fuer das Vaterland!" A powerful sabre-stroke at last ended his life. His enemies despoiled his ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... words to the Duke had not been difficult, but this letter seemed to be an Herculean task. It was made infinitely more difficult by the fact that Lady Cantrip had not seemed to think that this marriage was impossible. "Young people when they have set their minds upon it do so generally prevail at last!" These had been her words, and they discomforted him greatly. She had thought ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... and that a monotonous but very musical cadence was being repeated at intervals, in muffled tones, somewhere on board. I went down to the cargo department of the lower deck and found the singers,—the herculean porters. One after another they bent their backs, and two mates hoisted the huge bales, chanting a refrain which enabled them to move and lift in unison. The words were to the following effect: "If all don't grasp together, we cannot lift the weight." ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... anointed his body with oil, bound his head with poplar leaves, and throwing a lion's skin across his shoulders, with a club in his hand, presented himself to Alexander, in the place where he held his public audience. Alexander, astonished at his Herculean figure, desired him to approach, demanding, at the same time, his name:—"I am," said he, "a Macedonian architect, and am come to submit to you designs worthy of the fame you have acquired. I have modelled Mount Athos in the form of a giant, holding ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... shirt sleeve from his herculean arm and Szilard was astonished to see the half healed and cross-like scar—it had been a ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
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