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More "Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the moment quite overcome, and unable to comply with the proposal of taking an immediate flight from the enemy's country. She soon, however, regains her sober senses, and is able to grasp the reality of the situation, and fully prepared with mental nerve and courage to face the scenes of hardship and fatigue which lay before them. The thought of flight was, indeed, a hazardous one. The journey to the sea board was far and dangerous; roads were miserably constructed, and these, for the most part, had to be avoided; unbroken forests, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... lifted his head and shook it; he was plainly on the verge of tears; as for Cardlestone, it was evident that his nerve was completely gone. And Breton pointed Spargo to an ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... exertion was made by Mr. Hobhouse and his friends, aided by the powerful influence, and still more powerful purse, of Sir Francis. The Westminster Committee now found it necessary to exert their utmost, and to strain every nerve. Canvassing committees were formed in every parish, and meetings were called, at which Mr. Hobhouse attended in person, to solicit the favour of the electors. The reports of these meetings I watched very narrowly, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... interest herself in Lincoln, it was solely for the work of the latter, so much the more as for a year he had perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the painting of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal. Then Florent had seen, on the other hand, the nerve of Maitland reawakened in the warmth of that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... your nerve about you, I'll say that," McKenna commented. "You sit there and talk about it like it was something that was going to happen to Joe Doakes and Oscar Zilch." He looked at Rand intently. "You want us to ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... life Guy Livingstone had done and dared more than most men, but he never ventured on any thing so thoroughly brave, and valiant, and strong-hearted as when he left me, without another word, on that errand. For myself, though weak both in body and nerve, I swear I would rather have gone up the breach at Badajoz with the forlorn hope, than up that bank with the certainty before me of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Jesus! Lord, keep it ever Sealed on the heart, and engraved on the life; Pulse of all gladness, and nerve of endeavor, Secret of rest and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... square. Here they would sing a hymn which always attracted a crowd. Next, any one who wanted a tooth pulled was invited to come forward. Many accepted the invitation gladly and sometimes a long line of twenty or thirty would be waiting, each his turn. The Chinese had considerable nerve, the Canadian discovered, and stood the pain bravely. They literally "stood" it, too, for there was no dentist's chair and every man stood up for his operation, very much pleased and very grateful ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... gave one lightning glance, and surveyed the whole situation. He did not move, but his form was rigid, and every nerve was braced, and his eyes gleamed fiercely. He saw it all—the crowd of women, the calm face of Minnie, and the uncontrollable agitation ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... of the verandah that had been turned into an extra ward by screening it off with native reed-fencing was Gilfillan, the most perfect patient. Propping his foot against the wall to correct the foot-drop that division of the nerve of his leg had caused, he had passed many sleepless nights in his long and ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... companions and marshal music; with the excitement of the battle, the camp, the ever-shifting scenes of war, sustained by the hope of victory; the promise of reward; the ambition for distinction; the fire of patriotism kindling every thought, and stimulating every nerve and muscle to action! How much easier is all this, than to wait and watch alone with nothing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... accomplished this, and he is simply incomparable in his compromise between what is severe and classical, and what is suave and delightful, or passionately exciting. In these works the musician finds nerve, sparkle, elan, and brightness combined with technical charm and richness of thought. Spohr's unconscious and spontaneous force in this direction was the direct outcome of his remarkable power as a solo player, or, more properly, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... It took a little nerve to shut him off; Van Emmon was the one who did it. Somehow they all felt immensely relieved when the gigantic voice was silenced; and at once began discussing the thing with great earnestness. Jackson was for assuming that the first record was worn ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... our disciples. I do not think that church or chapel would have done them much good. Preachers are like unskilled doctors with the same pill and draught for every complaint. They do not know where the fatal spot lies on lung or heart or nerve which robs us of life. If any of these persons just described had gone to church or chapel they would have heard discourses on the usual set topics, none of which would have concerned them. Their trouble was not the forgiveness ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... intermixture of effects is also found in organic processes (which, indeed, are partly chemical): as when a man eats bread and milk, and by digestion and assimilation converts them into nerve, muscle and bone. Such phenomena may make us wonder that people should ever have believed that 'effects resemble their causes,' or that 'like produces like.' A dim recognition of the equivalence of cause and effect in respect ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Constantine,'—which Mr. Newman says had not spread. On the contrary; he assumes that the Christians were 'a small fraction,' and thus does dismiss in two sentences, I might have said three words, what Gibbon had strained every nerve in his ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... in this matter, the former has the advantage. The East, rather than allow the present tendency of the commercial current to set well in toward the Gulf, and wear a channel for itself, should strain every nerve to keep it steadily moving toward its own maritime cities. The great cities of the Atlantic seaboard can better afford to construct a water-line over the mountains at their own cost than to run the risk of the Mississippi River becoming the commercial avenue for its vast valley and drainage, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... resolute and persevering ambition; and this ambition was the governing faculty of his soul. His energies were undistracted by small objects; for he went little into general society, and he especially sought in his studies those pursuits which nerve and brace the mind. He was a profound thinker, a deep political economist, an accurate financier, a judge of the intricacies of morals and legislation—for to his mere book studies he added an instinctive penetration into men; and when from time to time ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mess. He radiated good fellowship and even bandied witticisms with the junior subaltern in an admirable spirit of give-and-take. He had enjoyed excellent sport. Later, in the ante-room, he delivered a useful little homily on the surmounting of obstacles, on patience, on presence of mind and on nerve, copiously illustrated from a day's triumph that will resound on the Murman coast as the unconditional surrender of the intimidated roach. He described how he had cunningly outmanoeuvred the patrols, defeated the vigilance of the pickets, pierced the line of resistance, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... nurses and nursemaids. That this arrangement is advantageous on the whole cannot be doubted. In America and on the Continent, where the children often mingle all day in the general life of the household, and occupy the ordinary living rooms, experience shows that nerve strain and its attendant evils are more common than with us. Nevertheless, the arrangement of a separate nursery has its disadvantages. Nurses are sometimes not sufficiently educated to have much appreciation of the mental processes of ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... made Finn's intelligence upon the whole superior to Matey's in this matter, and, having already satisfied himself by means of hurried investigation that at present he could not escape from the walled-in yard, the Wolfhound stood half a dozen paces distant from the man, waiting, with every nerve and muscle at concert pitch. The man moved forward, with hand outstretched invitingly. The Wolfhound moved backward, with hackles slightly raised. Thus they followed each other round the little yard perhaps six times, the ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... of the pursuit had taken me far from my starting-point, and with the reaction that set in when I was alone in the wood, with all its memories and its ghastly memorials of the carnage, I found it required all my strength of nerve to push me on. I had to plough through open spaces, two feet and more deep in snow, through undergrowth, not knowing at what moment I might stumble across some unseen thing. Above all, I had but the barest recollection ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... did mean the offer as an insult, Merriwell; and I presume I was too hasty. I am rather quick at times, and, as Dare says, I was beaten at my own game, which made me hot. You had nerve, Merriwell; take the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... thorough spring-cleaning with feather dusters. Before imperturbable and mighty chamberlains, up to his ankles in crimson carpet and generally struck with the magnificence of his surroundings, Mac for a moment lost his nerve, but speedily recovering himself, informed a tarbooshed individual that it was a fine day. Unfortunately this conversation did not prove fruitful, for, besides the fact that the subject of the weather in Egypt is a quickly exhausted topic, the gentleman to whom the remark ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... down again, every nerve in her trembling, but forcing herself to go steadily and methodically to work. She made a cup of strong coffee, cooked a nice bit of beefsteak she had in the house, rejoicing that she had it; and while the ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... to the ideas of Jesus came especially from orthodox Judaism, represented by the Pharisees. Jesus became more and more alienated from the ancient Law. Now, the Pharisees were the true Jews; the nerve and sinew of Judaism. Although this party had its centre at Jerusalem, it had adherents either established in Galilee, or who often came there.[1] They were, in general, men of a narrow mind, caring much for externals; their devoutness was haughty, formal, and self-satisfied.[2] ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... her own little room with the door locked, Innocent opened the sealed packet. She found within it a letter and some bank-notes. With a sensitive pain which thrilled every nerve in her body she unfolded the letter, written in Hugo Jocelyn's firm clear writing—a writing she knew so well, and which bore no trace of weakness or failing in the hand that guided the pen. How strange it was, she thought, that the written words should look so living and distinct when ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... of the vertebra becomes completely filled up. In the thoracic region of Crustacea it is not the whole segment with part of the carapace which corresponds to a vertebra, but merely the part round the ventral nerve-cord (endophragmal skeleton). ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... therefore, he strained every nerve to draw away from his enemies, while they strove, with equal desperation, to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... from the north by Hongi, the wretched people of the Thames were between the hammer and the anvil. When at last their persecutors—the Ngapuhi and Te Waharoa—met over their bodies, Te Waharoa's astuteness and nerve were a match for the invaders from the north. In vain the Ngapuhi besiegers tried to lure him out from behind the massive palisades of Mata-mata, where, well-provisioned, he lay sheltered from their bullets. When he did make a sally it was to catch half a dozen stragglers, whom, in mortal defiance, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... speeches, bid defiance to Austria, Russia, and Germany. Great was his disappointment when he learned that, in order to acquire citizenship, he would be obliged to go to the United States and remain there five years. As he was trying to nerve himself for this sacrifice, I presented some serious considerations to him. Knowing him to be a man of honor, I asked him how he could reconcile it with his sense of veracity to assume the rights of American citizenship ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... after having been left an orphan. She was not bright, but he persevered in drilling her into memorising a child's catechism, and it was a most amusing picture to see her standing before him with fixed attention, as if she were straining every nerve, and reciting her answers with the drop of a curtsey at each word. She had not been taught to do this, but it was such an effort for her to learn that ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... now as the fascinated toad watches the snake that is about to devour it. He saw the graceful limbs and symmetrical body motionless as a marble statue as the creature crouched in the concealment of the leafy foliage. Not a muscle, not a nerve moved. He saw the deer coming slowly along the trail, down wind and unsuspecting. He saw a buck pass—an old buck—and then a young and plump one came opposite the giant in ambush, and Schneider's eyes went wide and a scream of terror almost broke from his lips as he saw the agile beast at his ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... are! Just plain scoundrels! When I accuse them of swindling me and others in that Landmark Building deal they have the nerve to ask me to invest money in some secret dye formulae they claim will revolutionize the industry! Bah! They're scoundrels, that's what they are—Field and Melling are scoundrels, and I'm going ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... beyond. There were but few people around; it was hardly possible that he thought his movements had not been perceived by the man he was following. "As a sleuth you're an amateur," thought Evan. "You don't care whether I'm on to you or not. But I must say you have your nerve with you. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... of the Nerves, though the object be absent, the Soul has presently the same {310} sensations, as it would have, if it were present. As, if one should knock on's head forcibly against a wall, the shaking, which the blow gives to the Brain, moving the interior extremities of the Nerve, which causes the sensation of Light, the Soul has the same sensation, which it would have, if it saw a thousand Candles: On the contrary, if the interior extremities of the nerves are not shaken, though the object be present, it causes no sensation; whence it ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... that!" Louis remarked sarcastically. "I like your nerve. You do it on the sly. You don't say a word to me; and not content with that, you give him all of it. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you ask me for ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... [Degree of power.] Strength.— N. strength; power &c. 157; energy &c. 171; vigor, force; main force, physical force, brute force; spring, elasticity, tone, tension, tonicity. stoutness &c. adj.; lustihood[obs3], stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism[obs3]; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, oak, heart of oak; iron grip; grit, bone. athlete, gymnast, acrobat; superman, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... logging season he would annex Joyce Birkdale to his few belongings—the cabin, his dog and gun. The idea had not roused him much, but it had been a pleasurable conclusion to arrive at; and now? Every nerve was aching and the boy's heart was thumping heavily. Again he dropped his head, and he cursed everything his thought touched upon—even the girl he meant, in some way, still ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... colonial. He had repeatedly visited England, and had been called to our bar. He takes a keen interest in mineralogical science, and in the course of his career has exhibited on more than one occasion great personal bravery and indomitable nerve. That such a man, so highly connected, so carefully trained, with the intellect of a lawyer and the experience of a statesman, should be in our midst claiming to be endowed with the gift of healing spoken of in the New Testament as vouchsafed to the Christians of apostolic times, is a portent indeed, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... illustrations of the narrow scope of this Method of Accidents, though genuine within that scope, and how, in all cases, by the Synthetic Method we can find in the facts to be remembered the means of their recollection. One case more: In regard to memorising the statement that "the Posterior Nerve of the Spinal Column is Sensory, and the Anterior Nerve is Motor," using this Method of Accidents, "You observe that Posterior and Sensory go together, and that Anterior and Motor go together. The initial letters of Posterior and Sensory are P and S, and the ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... screw up his nerve, His fingers he'd snap and he'd dance— And LORD LARDY would smile and observe, "How strange ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... of epilepsy also in animals born of parents having been rendered epileptic by the section of the sciatic nerve. ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the voice of the cataract not only roared night and day through every chamber of the house, but the whole building vibrated incessantly with the shock of the mighty fall. I have still health and nerve and spirits to cope with the grand exhibitions of the powers of Nature: the majesty and beauty of the external world always acts as a tonic on me, and under its influence I feel as if a strong arm was put round me, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... temper and character of the officers at the commencement of the voyage. When this is the case, the first night after leaving port will decide the question whether the officers or the men will have command of the ship. If the officers are not firm and peremptory; if they are deficient in nerve, and fail to rebuke, in a prompt and decided manner, aught bordering on insolence or insubordination in the outset, farewell to discipline, to good order and harmony, for the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... to frequent potations, were quickly maddened by the spirit, which mounted to their brains and rushed through their veins like wildfire, causing every nerve in their strong frames to tingle. Their characteristic gravity and decorum vanished. They laughed, they danced, they sang, they yelled like a troop of incarnate fiends! Then they rushed in a body towards their prisoners, and began a species of war-dance round them, flourishing their ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... position. If help was to come to the boy above him, that help must come from where he stood; and, with the recollection of his own peril when he was being hauled up by the rope, forcing itself upon him, he began to act with a feeling of desperation which was ready to rob him of such nerve as he possessed. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... affects one eye, and spreads a little way on that side of the nose, and may sometimes be relieved by pressing or cutting the nerve, where it passes into the bone of the orbit above the eye. When it affects a small defined part on the parietal bone on one side, it is generally termed Clavus hystericus, and is always I believe owing to a diseased dens molaris. The tendons of the muscles, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... that Ed couldn't get John Gilly to come around and call after you. Ed says he'd never get him to steam up his nerve enough to call at a girl's house after her; but ain't it enough he's coming to Gert's to-night just to meet you? You ought to heard him when Ed got to telling him what kind of a girl you was. 'Gee!' Ed says he says. 'Big blue eyes like saucers sounds good to me! Well,' he says, Ed says ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... nerve to tell that to a man dying of starvation?" demanded Sergeant Noll with heat. "Kelly, it takes me four seconds to get my overcoat off, and only two seconds to get off ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... Nervous Control of the Heart. The regular, rhythmic movement of the heart is maintained by the action of certain nerves. In various places in the substance of the heart are masses of nerve matter, called ganglia. From these ganglia there proceed, at regular intervals, discharges of nerve energy, some of which excite movement, while others seem to restrain it. The heart would quickly become exhausted if the exciting ganglia had it all their own way, while it would stand ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... related to him, and whom, besides, he had not seen for such a long period of time. To every such emotion, however, he was absolutely insensible; there was no beating pulse, no heaving of the bosom, not a nerve disturbed by the tremulous vibrations of awakened affection, no tumult of the heart, no starting tear—no! there was nothing of all this—but, on the contrary, a calm, cold, imperturbable spirit, so dead and ignorant of domestic ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... are," exclaimed the baronet; "and the next thing, I suppose, is to land and commence our climb without loss of time. What a wild-looking spot it is, to be sure; if I were to stand looking at it long I believe I should lose my nerve ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... all right, and don't you worry about that," said Sandlot. "I've got plenty of nerve so I don't have to brace it up with booze, and you ain't. That's what's the matter with you. You saw that feller as well as I did. Didn't you ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... at him stupidly, as if his nerve had failed, or he thought the order too risky to obey. There was only one thing to be done, and since it must be done at once, Dick must undertake it himself. The engine was now running down the line after the truck, which had not gathered much speed yet, and he climbed ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... How these things nerve us to increased efforts to save the children and youth from these ways of death. Our hope for the land is in saving them, and our work is largely for them. We have many Sunday-schools connected with our churches and many others where we furnish some helps and where ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... stript of their upper garments to their shirts, the open purple heath about them, the jewelled sky above, this first fresh scent of day was in their lungs and nostrils. That which stirred John Oxon to fury and at the same time shook his nerve, though he owned it not to himself, and would have died rather, was the singular composure of the man who was his opponent. Every feature, every muscle, every fibre of him seemed embodied stillness, and 'twas not that the mere ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cousin, then at her aunt, then back at her cousin. Mrs. Murray involuntarily laid her hand on her son's knee, and watched his face with an expression of breathless anxiety; and Edna saw that, though his lips blanched, not a muscle moved, not a nerve twitched; and only the deadly hate, that appeared to leap into his large shadowy eyes, told that the name stirred some ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... about one; for anyone who loses his temper has but a poor chance indeed against another who keeps cool. Moreover a man who can box well will always keep his head in all times of danger and difficulty. It gives him nerve and self-confidence, and enables him at all times to protect the weak against ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Blackadon Down at this hour of night! My word, sirs, and saving your reverence, but you had a nerve, if you'd ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spectacle through every sense, What sudden ecstasy of joy is flowing! I feel new rapture, hallow'd and intense, Through every nerve and vein with ardour glowing. Was it a god who character'd this scroll, The tumult in my spirit healing, O'er my sad heart with rapture stealing, And by a mystic impulse, to my soul, The powers of nature all around revealing. Am I a God? What light intense! In these ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was conscious in the purple of the mountain, the colour of the trees, and all that magic of light and shade which filled the valley—a pleasure involuntary, physical, automatic, depending on certain delicacies of nerve and brain—rose and persisted, while yet his mind was full ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... generally apt to produce skin diseases. They contain, in almost every instance, substances which are either directly or indirectly poisonous to the skin. The "tooth washes," "powders," and "dentifrices," are hurtful. They crack or wear away the enamel of the teeth, leave the nerve exposed, and cause the teeth to decay. If you are wise, dear reader, you will never use a dentifrice, unless you know what it is made of. The principal constituent of these dentifrices is a powerful acid, and there are some ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... proud eagle soaring to the skies, Intent "the topmost arch" of heaven to scale, When heeding naught that would oppose its rise, It breaks with fearless nerve the tempest-gale— And spreads its wings like a majestic sail, Full on the bosom of the raging blast, Thy spirit soar'd—but ah! too like us frail, When the same breeze which bore it from the dust Wing'd home the fatal shaft that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... of capital punishment without having the nerve to see it inflicted, I suppose," Ideala commented, "and be convinced that it would be good for the human race to have a certain number of their children drowned, like kittens, every year, and yet not be able to see a single one disposed of in ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the nation's nerve whenas swift crises come? What of the brawn that should heave the guns on the beck of ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... not very large,—there are less than eighty pieces, but it is so handled and drilled, that when we hear it give one of the symphonies of Beethoven or Mendelssohn, there is little left to be desired. Bulow is a wonderful conductor, a little man, all nerve and fire, and he seems to inspire every instrument. It is worth something to see him lead an orchestra: his baton is magical; head, arms, and the whole body are in motion; he knows every note of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nothing to alarm you in all this. I want you to think of it quite differently. I want to make it nerve you, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... old Whist will do once she finds herself away from the lee of the breakwater t'night, Bud, but we'll go, and if they're there and we stay afloat, we'll get 'em. And Bo, I could play this hand all night, but two round blue moons to see what you got. Hah? King full, eh? The nerve of you! What did y' think I was only taking one card f'r? There, feast your eyes on that fat black collection, will yuh? In a row? Sure in a row. Look at 'em—a three-toed black regiment of 'em. And these other little round red, white, and blue boys, ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... steady nerve and a thoroughly convincing roar. They have fought their kind and the elements for centuries and centuries, and know no fear. This, then, was the animal we sought in order to secure food for our dog teams. I can conceive of no form of big game hunting so conducive to great mental ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... air, which braces every nerve, and invigorates every limb, causing all the senses to awake and share, as it were, this daily waking up of Nature, fresh as a rose? For what rosiness, in the brightest summer days, can compare with that kiss of the winter's sun on the tree-tops, slowly creeping down their ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... cruise to write about, for nothing really occurred. We were only on the watch for some untoward happening; that made it nerve wracking. But even when we sighted the spur of land which we knew marked the southern boundary of the de la Plata—the widest mouth of any river on the globe, for it is not masked by islands at all—we were not out of danger. The peril of gales still ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... strange guide going on at random, or did he know—something? A suspicion leaped to St. George's mind that made his heart beat. The king—might he be down here after all, and might this weird old man know where? His own consciousness became chiefly conjecture, and every nerve was alert in the pursuit; not the less because he realized that if he were to lose this strange conductor who went on before, either in secure knowledge or in utter madness, he himself might wander for the rest of his life ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... bed about three weeks. The doctor, who was also a personal friend, was shrewd enough to suspect that the brandy was the effect, rather than the cause of the nerve trouble. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... her legs touched the ground. She was three feet high, and nearly five in length; her elastic and fleshy spine, the sinews of her thighs as well developed as those of a race-horse, her deep chest, her enormous jutting shoulders, the nerve and muscle in her short, thick paws—all announced that this terrible animal united vigor with suppleness, and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... flashed away again just as he spied his treasure on the brink of the dashing water. He sprang to save it, intent upon naught else; but in that instant there came a roar such as he had not heard before—a sound so compelling, so nerve-shattering, that even he was arrested, entrapped as it were by a horror of crashing elements that made him wonder if all the fiends in hell were fighting for his soul. And, as he paused, the swirl of a great wave caught him in the darkness like the blow of a concrete thing, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... thirty-two years, strong and vigorous, with no lack of nerve-energy, calls to have his teeth attended to, with the disease in the first stage throughout the mouth. Upon examination, he observes upon the gum of one of the lower cuspids a dark purplish ring encircling the neck, from one-sixty-fourth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... turned with a broad stare on Lady Isabel; but there was something about her which caused them to drop their glasses and their ill manners together. After an interval, there appeared another, a tall, handsome, gentlemanly man. Her eyes fell upon him; and—what was it that caused every nerve in her frame to vibrate, every pulse to quicken? Whose form was it that was thus advancing and changing the monotony of her mind into tumult? It was that of one whom she was soon to find had never ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... blockade, until further reinforcements could reach him. Such was the respect with which he had inspired the Spaniards, that no attempt was made to break the blockade; and in the meantime Tromp had sent urgent messages to Holland asking the Prince of Orange and the admiralties to strain every nerve to give him as many additional ships as possible. The request met with a ready and enthusiastic response. In all the dockyards work went on with relays of men night and day. In less than a month Tromp ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... leave the place. As she did so, she felt a touch on her hand—the hand she laid for a moment on the gate—as she stood giving a last sad look at the mound of earth she was leaving, a touch light and soft as a breath, but which thrilled her through every nerve. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... coronations of the kings of France. The adoption of these titles was, indeed, perfectly consonant with the taste and feeling of those ages, in which the gests of chivalry were the favourite theme of oral and historical celebration; and when the names of Durlindana, of Curtein, or Escalibere, would nerve the warrior's arm with ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that preserve the same unaltered air and attitude. Shakspeare's are historical figures, equally true and correct, but put into action, where every nerve and muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with all the effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of light and shade. Chaucer's characters are narrative, Shakspeare's dramatic, Milton's epic. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the nerve or living muscle of a frog is suddenly dropped upon another living muscle so as to come in contact with its longitudinal and transverse sections, the first muscle will contract on account of the stimulation of its nerve ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... heart were a hundred things; among them fear, that miserable depression which comes with the first defeats of life, the falling of the mercury from passionate activity to that frozen numbness which betrays the exhausted nerve and despairing mind. The horse could not go fast enough; the panic of flight was on him. He was conscious of it, despised himself for it; but he could not help it. Yet, if he were overtaken, he would fight; yes, fight to the end, whatever ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... measure it. Further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not until then is its individuality ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... I'm sorry for poor old Kilbourne. I daresay he didn't kill his wife; but something's happened to him, and she did die uncommonly sudden. Anyhow, from what Bryant said, it's evident he's lost his nerve and his courage. At that rate, he'll precious soon lose ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... into other hands. But our spirit and temper is the same as of old. It has found a new world in the air. War in the air, under the conditions of to-day, demands all the old gallantry and initiative. The airman depends on his own brain and nerve; he cannot fall back on orders from his superiors. Our airmen of to-day are the true inheritors of Drake; they have the same inspired recklessness, the same coolness, and the same chivalry ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... Started from his bed of branches, From the twilight of his wigwam Forth into the flush of sunset Came, and wrestled with Mondamin; At his touch he felt new courage Throbbing in his brain and bosom, Felt new life and hope and vigor Run through every nerve and fibre. ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... world and the communist domain-our politics and our economy, our science and technology against the best they can do—our liberty against their slavery—our voluntary concert Of free nations against their forced amalgam of "people's republics"—our strategy against their strategy-our nerve against ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... he taken on his head and hands this new burden of toil, which was greater than all the others? Why, in general, this climbing a sky-touching ladder with exertion of all his strength of nerve and brain? To what kind of heaven could he climb upon that ladder? New profits, ever-increasing wealth? But he had ceased to desire these! Although that seemed marvellous to the man himself, he had ceased really. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... on foot to agitate the question of abolishing slavery. The movement was exceedingly unpopular, and it required considerable nerve to profess abolition sentiments. Now, when no other principle is avowed, it scarcely seems possible that men, now among us in the prime of life, had to endure obloquy, ridicule, and even danger, for expressing sentiments that no one now dreams of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Alcando quietly. "If I'm to do this sort of work in the jungle, along our railroad, I'll need to have my nerve stiffened." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... harping upon this question. Lord Kitchener had informed the House of Lords on the 15th day of March that the supply of war material was "causing him considerable anxiety." There was not the slightest doubt, even allowing for the tendency of men exposed to nerve-racking experiences or placed in positions of anxious responsibility to find fault, that our army in France and Flanders was at a terrible disadvantage as compared to that opposed to it in the matter of artillery ammunition. The state of affairs was perfectly well known, not merely to the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... that powerful nerve-irritation, such as produces shock, is painless, and this accounts for the fact that wounds received during ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... looked a little flushed. At Bed-time she got the start of me, as usuall; and, on entering our Chamber, I found her quite undrest, sitting at the Table, not reading of her Bible, but with her Head resting on it. I should have taken her to be asleep, but for the quick Pulsation of some Nerve or Muscle at the back of the Neck, somewhere under the right Ear. She looks up, commences rubbing her Eyes, and says, "My Eyes are full of Sand, I think. I will give you my new Crown-piece, Deb, if you will read me to sleep ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... the country nearly so. The press strain every nerve to produce excitement, and the 'Times' has begun an assault on the bishops, whom it has marked out for vengeance and defamation for having voted against the Bill. Althorp and Lord John Russell have written grateful letters to Attwood as ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... then, And nestle in the gulley, then, And watch with deep devotion The shadows on the benty grass, And how they come, and how they pass; Nor must he stir, with gesture rash, To quicken her emotion. With nerve and eye so wary, sir, That straight his piece may carry, sir, He marks with care the quarry, sir, The muzzle to repose on; And now, the knuckle is applied, The flint is struck, the priming tried, Is fired, the volley has replied, And reeks in high commotion;— Was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... there came a loud report—a nerve-shattering sound. She whizzed round. He had a gun, then. She had not seen that he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Smell. The most delicious viands are spread for us in apartments strewed with flowers. The table is adorned with them, and the most exquisite wines are handed to us in crystal goblets. When we have glorified God, by the agreeable use of the palate, and the olfactory nerve, we enjoy a delightful sleep of two hours, in bowers of orange trees, roses, and myrtles. Having acquired a fresh store of strength and spirits, we return to our occupations, that we may thus mingle labour with pleasure, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... inner rooms, lady Feng was, it is true, much cut up at heart; but she strained every nerve to preserve an exterior of total indifference. Noticing that there was no one present in the apartment, she drew P'ing Erh to her. "I drank yesterday," she smiled, "a little more wine than was good for me, so don't bear me a grudge. Where did I ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "The nerve! And that poor little Mrs. Wempner goes to extra trouble in your honor. I hear she's to have pennies attached to the tally cards. Pretty idea, pennies for Penny. Well, I'm not going to worry my life away! Work it out your own way. I'll send you home a steak and some quinine ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... world, the outer impression of pain must have been very intense in order to awaken its proper reflex. The attention may, however, not be disturbed at all and yet the reflex may fail. If we suppose that a reflex action is one brought about through the excitement of an afferent sensory nerve which receives the stimulation and brings it to the center from which the excitement is transferred to the motor series (Landois[1]), we exclude the activity of the brain. But this exclusion deals only with conscious activity and the direct transition through the reflex center ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve, While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... was what the mutter in the ante-room had meant. Sebert would not have been young and a soldier if he had not felt keen delight tingle through every nerve. Indeed, his pleasure was so great that he dared say little in acknowledgment, lest it betray him into too great cordiality toward this stern young ruler who, though in reality a year younger than he, seemed to have become many years his senior. He said shortly, "If ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... no compiler as such can have—because the moment he has it he ceases to be a compiler, and becomes an artist—the sense of grasp, the power to put his finger, and to keep it, on the central pulse and nerve of the story. That he did this deliberately is so unlikely as to be practically impossible: that he did it is certain. The Arthurian Legend is the greatest of mediaeval creations as a subject—a "fable"—just as the Divina Commedia is the greatest ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... difference as there is between the thumb of a man and that of a gorilla. Secondly, the palm is proportionally thicker than ours—the texture of the skin infinitely finer and softer—its average warmth is greater. More remarkable than all this, is a visible nerve, perceptible under the skin, which starts from the wrist skirting the ball of the thumb, and branching, fork-like, at the roots of the fore and middle fingers. "With your slight formation of thumb," said the philosophical young Gy, "and with the absence of the nerve which you ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... great mosaic, from the Fillmore-street hill, at once creates a nerve-soothing impression most uncommon in international expositions, and for that matter, in any architectural aggregate. One is at once struck with the fitness of the location and of the scheme of architecture. Personally, I am greatly impressed with the architectural scheme ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... give her my soul, if it would serve her," said Bold, still addressing his sister; "everything I have is hers, if she will accept it; my house, my heart, my all; every hope of my breast is centred in her; her smiles are sweeter to me than the sun, and when I see her in sorrow as she now is, every nerve in my body suffers. No man can love better ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Service men succeeded in unearthing all the details of the plot against Tom. His life, at times, had been in danger, but at the last minute the man detailed to harm him lost his nerve. ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... him—the figure of Ste. Marie who knew. His reason told him that if due care were used this danger need not be too formidable, and, indeed, in his heart he rather despised Ste. Marie as an individual; but the man's nerve was broken, and in these days fear swept wavelike over reason and had its way with him. Fear looked up to this looming, portentous shadow and saw there youth and health and strength, courage and hopefulness, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... may not know, my specific assignment is to locate the nerve center of rebellious activity," said Maya. "It seems that the rebels have an intelligence network about as effective as the government's, and it was felt that a woman tourist from Earth might be successful where any unusual probing by ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... long leave Aram to the support of his own unassisted presence of mind and calmness of nerve; he advanced, and led the conversation, with his usual tact, into a course which might at once please Aram, and afford him the opportunity to shine. The Earl had imported from Italy some of the most beautiful specimens of classic sculpture which this country now possesses. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him. We turned and spit on our hands, and begun to pull up on the old horse, and he began to get his legs untangled and to go. We forgot about the sausage butcher, as we went down, the fresh air making every nerve ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... idiot! Don't go on drivelling there. How you ever had the nerve to play your part as you did I can't think." She stamped her foot. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... to her Royal Highness, a full year before he could bring it to bear; and that the very same party in the city who, by dint of intrigue, contrived at that period to prevent the Common Hall, likewise strained every nerve to prevent the Address being carried, when the worthy Alderman did at length get a Hall of the Livery convened. Mr. Waithman, who found that there was a great public feeling in favour of the Princess of Wales, brought forward Mr. Sturch, (who had acquired a considerable ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... his horse refused the spur—or whether the rider's nerve was gone: but neither appeared to make an effort, till the animal ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... and dull though our skies, There 's a might in our arms and a fire in our eyes; Dauntless and patient, to dare and to do— Our watchword is "Duty," our maxim is "Through!" Winter and storm only nerve us the more, And chill not the heart, if they creep through the door: Strong shall we be In our isle of the sea, The home of the brave and the boast of the free! Firm as the rocks when the storm flashes forth, We 'll stand in our courage—the Men ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Lemage triumphantly, "no 'a'! Of all the stupid pigs I am he. But I had not given you the credit of such nerve, M. Rohscheimer. I had forgotten how once you lived the rough life in South Africa. It is so? I did not think you had the courage to write—though wobbly—those lying words in presence of the dead Gottschalk. Why did you do it, you bad, foolish fellow? The yataghan already ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... man, inured to danger and trained to emergencies, one who had faced death in many forms. But the lack, of arms shakes the bravest, and it needed even his nerve to confront without a quiver the fate that, if his fears were justified, lay before them: the sudden, violent death, and the black bog-water which would swallow all traces of the crime. But he did not lose his firmness or lower his crest ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the beautiful West, She shall look, and not in vain - For out of its broad and boundless store Come muscle, and nerve, and brain. Let the bards of the East and the South be dumb - For out of the West ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... passed through the post-graduate courses of strait-jacketing. Oh, it is no easy trick to keep the brain in such serene repose that it is quite oblivious to the throbbing, exquisite complaint of some tortured nerve. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... even them it drives to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve of the artistic instinct, it is fatal. But above all in painting ... "correct drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force it into their heads that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and that if drawing were correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... tell you what the people are like," he said. "They are like dumb animals, like sheep. They have suffered so long and so much that their nerve power is numbed. They lack will, they lack initiative. They are narrowed down to a daily life which makes of them something little different from an animal. Yet they can be roused. David Ross himself has done it, done ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ammophila wasp. Sphex urnaria Klug. Lovely, but vicious, little she-demon. Injects the poison from her sting into the caterpillar's central nerve cord. That not only paralyzes but preserves it. The victim is always stowed away with another one in an underground burrow. The wasp attaches one of her eggs to the body of a worm. When the egg hatches, the grub eats both of the worms. They're alive, but they're completely ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... related to electricity; and the same sort of argument which demonstrates the two latter to be related to one another shows that the nervous forces are correlated to electricity; for the experiments of M. Dubois Reymond and others have shown that whenever a nerve is in a state of excitement, sending a message to the muscles or conveying an impression to the brain, there is a disturbance of the electrical condition of that nerve which does not exist at other times; and there are a number of other facts and phenomena of that sort; so that we come to the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... so singularly disproportionate in size, were yet so perfectly matched in the vastly more important qualities of brain and nerve that the contest lost all sense of inequality. Theydon felt himself of no account in this duel. He was like an urchin watching open-mouthed ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... and autumn will speak to one of decay and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to prepare for a new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve; but behind it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and loves. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape and coloring from souls through which they pass; and a free and open mind looks upon the world ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... camp, isolated from the usual social life, July 2 and 3 and 4, Independence Day, was indeed a test of nerve, already tried and sore and raw, for the young Negroes in training. Why should men train to fight for a country that permitted such barbarous atrocities against their race with impunity. In savage Memphis charred ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... must, as it seemed to me, have been a novice or else have lost his nerve in this disturbance, for he drove vilely on the way to the station. Twice we nearly had collisions with other equally erratic vehicles, and I remember remarking to Summerlee that the standard of driving in London had very much declined. Once we brushed ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a frog's, if ever (in short) a human face was all that a human face should be, it was the face of that resentful and respectful cabman. I looked up and down the street; an unusually dark twilight seemed to be coming on. And for one second the old nightmare of the sceptic put its finger on my nerve. What was certainty? Was anybody certain of anything? Heavens! to think of the dull rut of the sceptics who go on asking whether we possess a future life. The exciting question for real scepticism is whether we ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Spugg's massive face as he went on with his meal. Not a nerve of it moved. If he felt any fear, at least he showed no trace ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... distinctly uncomfortable dowager still in command who can't even arrange her dinner-parties and fails to marry her sons to the right people. Perpetually Hatchways is wiping the eye of Holmer, and this touches the nerve of the great lady. Her sons, Wickford, the authentic but hardly reigning duke, and Lord Iveagh Suir, the queer impressionable (on whom the author has spent much pains to excellent effect), both take their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... close to the upper crease of the neck, just above the cervical vertebrae; and, for the moment, completely paralyzed the large nerve of the spine, causing the creature to drop as quickly as though ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... heart is hushed, my tongue is mute, My life is centred in your will; You play upon me like a lute Which answers to its master's skill, Till passionately vibrating, Each nerve becomes a throbbing string. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... hurrying on in his country Kosciuszko, himself ready to strain every nerve in her cause, wrote in the April of 1792 ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... It took a lot of nerve to start on that trip too, let me tell you. Even the Indians were afraid of the river and every one of them said he didn't know really what ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... military arbitrament, and the South African war has proved conclusively how erroneous was that idea. The use of the torpedo-boat and of the weapons which it carries must always demand, like that of the bayonet, men of the strongest nerve, and of the greatest devotion to their duty ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... which began on September 15th, was more nerve-racking for the lawyers than for the defendant. For the witnesses were elusive. The trial seemed to be regarded by the majority of those connected with it as a gracious act of Providence for the redistribution ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... first to get saddled and mounted, and now came up at a steady, swinging gallop, in two platoons, saber and revolver in hand, and led by two Sergeants-Key and McWright,—printer boys from Bloomington, Illinois. They divined the object of the Rebel dash, and strained every nerve to reach the gun first. The Rebels were too near, and got the gun and turned it. Before they could fire it, Company M struck them headlong, but they took the terrible impact without flinching, and for a few minutes ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... be afraid. The doctor said she would live." He did not mean to lay any particular emphasis on the word "live," but somehow he did, and she, whose every nerve vibrated with anxiety, caught ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... strained every nerve, but had found no trace of the missing boy. He had been to Lee, and had seen Dennett, the green-grocer, and his wife, and had satisfied himself that they were seldom sober enough to attend to anything. Poor Mrs. Penn's habit of intemperance had been strengthened ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... of moral faculty, fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. The thing to fear is not pain, but trespass; not suffering, but sin—the peculiar sin of war is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the devil, but because it depraves; and it ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... profitably present itself. Here also is one encompassed and struggling even as they now are. This man also had said to himself, not in mere Catechism-words, but with all his instincts, and the question thrilled in every nerve of him, and pulsed in every drop of his blood: "What is the chief end of man? Behold, I too would live and work as beseems a denizen of this Universe, a child of the Highest God. By what means is a ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... was argued by the prosecution that the weakness of the bomb was a blunder on the part of the socialists, just as its premature explosion, caused by Ernest's losing his nerve and dropping it, was a blunder. And to clinch the argument, there were the several Congressmen who testified to having seen Ernest fumble and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... abhorred it, and had attempted to dissuade his associates from carrying their design into effect. For a man bred to civil pursuits, Wade seems to have had, in an unusual degree, that sort of ability and that sort of nerve which make a good soldier. Unhappily his principles and his courage proved to be not of sufficient force to support him when the fight was over, and when in a prison, he had to choose between death ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had proclaimed their independence, is it just to blame King George, as he often has been blamed, for his steadfast and resolute resistance to that claim? Was it for him, unless after straining every nerve against it, to forfeit a portion of his birthright and a jewel of his crown? Was it for him, though the clearest case of necessity, to allow the rending asunder his empire—to array for all time to come of several millions of his people against the rest? After calling on his ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... the command ship of the fleet, the nerve center of the entire operation, it was still hardly more than a prison ship for the cadets. In direct contrast, the space liner was bright, gay, and full of life. Everything imaginable for the convenience of the colonists had been installed aboard the massive ship. As ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... actually clambered out of the firing-trench and advanced towards our lines. The distance was barely seventy yards. No shot was fired, but you may be sure that safety-catches were hastily released. Suddenly, in the tense silence, the ambassador's nerve failed him. He bolted back, followed by a few desultory bullets. The reason for his sudden panic was never rightly ascertained, but the weight of public opinion inclined to the view that Mucklewame, who had momentarily exposed himself above the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... mothers occasionally experience when domestic cares oppress them. Want of exercise robs them of cheerfulness, and too much devotion to that idol of American women, the teapot, makes them feel as if they were all nerve and no muscle. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... used me worse than ever. He couldn't break my nerve, but I lost my health; and then he began knocking the children about. I couldn't stand that. I wouldn't go back now, if ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to Bennett, hypnosis was characterised by alterations in the functional activity of the nerve tubes of the white matter of the cerebral lobes. He suggested that a certain proportion of these became paralysed through continued monotonous stimulation; while the action of others was consequently exalted. As these tubes connected the cerebral ganglion-cells, suspension ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... ended, and laughter and song were hushed. The stillness of the Arctic night fell upon the Nugget Road House, lying in the somber shadow of the Sawtooth Mountains. And to Baldy and all the others came rest and forgetfulness of such trials as nerve-racking sounds that destroy well-earned sleep, and the enforced companionship of advanced females that insist upon having a paw in the management of affairs that should ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... slaves or tyrants; left to those who had monopolized the soil, the defense of their property: and these, being few in numbers, parsimonious after the nature of their class, and effeminate from luxurious living and habits of indolence, fell easy victims to the rapacity and iron nerve of Goth and Vandal. The great French Revolution would have never occurred but for the monopoly of land, which, after long ages, became centered in a few hands, who by reason of this were a privileged class ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... the servants, or to receive some message sent to him. Never was he more indefatigable. He was generally rather disagreeable, and even with his jokes he brought to bear a certain scornful manner, either real or assumed, that made him more formidable. But now he strained every nerve in the matter, for it was a question of the most stupendous and best-arranged farce that the town of Lancia had ever witnessed since the monks of San Vicente came to found it. The cause of it was that Fernando Estrada-Rosa was to marry (the pen scarcely dares write it), Fernanda ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... "He had his nerve with him," said Old Billee. "But, boys, we mustn't let him get ours. He came to spy out and see ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... said to him: "Mr. President, I am here at almost every hour of the day or night, and I never saw you at the table, do you ever eat?" "I try to," replied the President; "I manage to browse about pretty much as I can get it." After the long wearing, nerve-taxing days were over in which he was glad to relieve himself occasionally with a good story or a merry laugh, came the nights of anxiety when sleep was often banished from his pillow. He frequently wrapped himself in his Scotch shawl, and at midnight stole across to the War Office, and listened ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... a week he suffered. He lay bent over, unable to straighten himself, as if a nerve had been wound up too tightly in the left side. He was fed on gruel and beef-tea, the room was kept very warm; it was not until the twelfth day that he was taken ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... 'Never in my life had I realized the effect which a cool, courageous man could have upon a crowd of men. Call it a miracle if you like,—indeed I always shall think of it as a miracle,—but without once losing his nerve, or once revealing the slightest lack of confidence, he worked upon the fears and hopes of those Boches in such a way that he persuaded them to follow him, and give themselves up in a body as prisoners. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... unbroken fading of one class of society into another. Sperate miseri, cavete felices! In such a state of social organization, we find the utmost and freshest productive activity at every round of the great ladder. Those at the bottom are straining every nerve to rise, and those higher up, not to fall below. But where the rich and the poor are separated by an abyss which there is no hope of ever crossing, how pride on the one side and envy on the other rage! and especially in the foci of industry, the great cities, where the deepest misery is found ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... glossing over, as it had, indeed, been glossed over, by the sudden shock with which they had forced that scene upon him; or, failing in that, they had counted on the fact that his, or any other man's nerve would have failed when it came to open defiance based on a supposition which might, after all, be wrong, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of the odds they might have to face. Though the Hadendowas were well armed, and outnumbered them by two to one, Royson felt that the presence of the Englishmen, all of whom were ex-sailors of the Royal Navy, would nerve his Arab helpers to attack and defeat Alfieri's band of cutthroats. Moreover, von Kerber and his small escort were evidently making a fight of it, and, while daylight lasted, the Hadendowas, once discovered, would endeavor ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve of the artistic instinct, it is fatal. But above all in painting ... "correct drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force it into their heads that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and that if drawing were correct it ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... unbroken wilderness, numbered even in 1846 87,000 inhabitants; and the emigration to the "Far West" is now greater than ever. A giant is therefore growing up there, who will soon be able and disposed to rule the destinies of the United States. The Church of Rome is straining every nerve to have that giant in her own keeping, and already shouts the song of triumph. Says one of her sanguine sons, "The Church is now firmly established in this country, and persecution will but cause it to thrive. Our countrymen may grieve that ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Strength — N. strength; power &c 157; energy &c 171; vigor, force; main force, physical force, brute force; spring, elasticity, tone, tension, tonicity. stoutness &c adj.; lustihood^, stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism^; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, oak, heart of oak; iron grip; grit, bone. athlete, gymnast, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the assistance Nature gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with the soul, it is the link between the ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... foreign chlorophyl performing the respiratory function of native haemoglobin! And the resemblance becomes closer when we bear in mind that haemoglobin sometimes lies as a stationary deposit in certain tissues, like the tongue muscles of certain mollusks, or the nerve cord of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... Sewall. The first, they say, has not wit enough to write anything; the second swears off; and the third must plead guilty or not guilty as soon as I see him. Till matters are settled in England, I dare not leave this town, as men's minds are in such a situation, that every nerve is requisite to keep them from running to some irregularity and imprudence; and some are yet wishing for an ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... peculiar powers of this poet, than would have been afforded by that catastrophe he has chosen to alter. Was the opportunity felt to be too great? Had the poet become wearied and exhausted with his theme, and did he feel indisposed to nerve himself afresh for scenes which called for the strenuous efforts of his genius? We know that it was not his original intention to make this violent departure from history, and that he came to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... intrigues, and on whose back the adroit chevalier would in any case have put those sins with his customary cleverness, was in the dock with no lawyer to defend him. Athanase, the only guest loyal enough to stand by du Bousquier, had not the nerve to emit his ideas in the presence of those potentates of Alencon, whom in his heart he thought stupid. None but provincial youths now retain a respectful demeanor before men of a certain age, and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... of Dale's absence I paid her my promised visit. It was a dull day, and the room, lit chiefly by the firelight, happily did not reveal its nerve-racking tastelessness. Lola Brandt, supple-limbed and lazy-voiced, talked to me from the cushioned ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Hollanders were allowed to have a small place of residence in front of a large city and at the head of a land-locked harbor. There, the foreigners being isolated and under strict guard, the government could have, as it were, a nerve which touched the distant nations, and could also, as with a telescope, sweep the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... house as for the barn? How much water does an ordinary family need for all purposes in a day? How much time does it take to pump and carry this quantity by hand or to draw it from a well? How much strength and nerve force are thus expended that might be saved for more important work? Does lack of time or strength cause the homekeeper to "get along" with less water in the house than is really needed? Is there any natural means at hand for pumping the water—any "brook that ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... resumed, 'is self-willed and resolute; and as these people naturally strain every nerve to catch him, I can entertain very little hope, Mr Clennam, that the thing will be broken off. I apprehend the girl's fortune will be very small; Henry might have done much better; there is scarcely anything to compensate for the connection: still, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... as my brother did, and get stung, as he was; because I thought that would drive you away, because I thought then that I didn't want you down here. I'm ashamed of myself, and I don't know where I'm getting the nerve to tell you this. I hope you will stay on—on and on ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... of each day. Every device is tried to tickle his dead palate; but the succession of dainties is of no avail, for the man cannot assimilate what is set before him, and he becomes soft of muscle, devoid of nerve—a weed of civilisation. Are not the cases analogous to those of the sound reverent student and the weary blase skimmer of books? So, in sum, I say that, even if our enormous output of printed matter goes on increasing, and if the number of readers increases by millions, yet, so long as ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... horse refused the spur—or whether the rider's nerve was gone: but neither appeared to make an effort, till the animal was close ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... the bishop was there, sitting all alone and looking as wretched as a man could. His face was grey and drawn—he had aged so markedly since Mrs Pendle's garden-party that Mr Cargrim was quite shocked—and he started nervously when his chaplain glided into the room. A nerve-storm, consequent on his interview with Mother Jael, had exhausted the bishop's vitality, and he seemed hardly able to lift his head. The utter prostration of the man would have appealed to anyone save Cargrim, but that astute young parson had an end to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... cry shows it. If they hadn't been so mad they'd have followed our trail without a sound. I wish I could have seen the faces of the Ojibway and the Frenchman when they came back and noticed our trace at the end of the tree. They're mad in every nerve and fiber, because they did not conclude to go upon it. It was only one chance in a thousand that we'd be there, they let that one chance in a thousand ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of church, when in that room I goes, 'Oldin' me breaf an' walkin' on me toes. Fer 'arf a mo' I feared me nerve 'ud fail To see 'er lying there so ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... the players, a grim old jailbird who had escaped from the Ceuta penitentiary and who looked just like a fox. "When a guy has the nerve, he rakes in all the dough," and he made a gesture of scooping up all the coins on the table in his fingers—"and ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... case when the vision has become dim through over exertion of the eyes. It was with "Euphrasy and Rue" the visual nerve of Adam was ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... I think of this awful moment, which cannot be conceived in all its horror. My natural instinct made me almost unconsciously strain every nerve to regain the parapet, and—I had nearly said miraculously—I succeeded. Taking care not to let myself slip back an inch I struggled upwards with my hands and arms, while my belly was resting on the edge of the parapet. Fortunately the ladder was safe, for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in some way which she had not seen fit to confide to him, if she were forced to make this tremendous sale, if she were mad or had at last lost her nerve, frightened at the thought of the heavy sums of money to be raised at the end of the winter, well, then it still could do no harm for him to speak his mind to her. Hampton had told him the price which the horses were to bring; it was pitifully small and Lee meant to tell her ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... combinations in the nervous system. For it is obvious that a tail-fin must be used in quite a different way from a tail, which serves as a fly-brush in hoofed animals, or as an aid to springing in the kangaroo or as a climbing organ; it will require quite different reflex-mechanisms and nerve-combinations in ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... with an odd little smile. He had evidently recovered his nerve, and seemed to take pleasure in piquing Charlie's ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... predecessor, partly by the "aching void" of her own life, adopted the disowned son of the premier, and called him, with reproachful significance, P'hra Nah Why, "the Lord endures." And her strong friend, Nature, who had already knit together, by nerve and vein and bone and sinew, the father and the child, now came to her aid, and united them by the finer but scarcely weaker ties of habit and companionship ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... fellow, would you be so kind and obliging as to kick me hard once or twice. No? Well, never mind; I daresay somebody else will, sooner or later, so I will excuse you. But, I say, Lascelles," he continued, as serious now as myself, "it is an awful risky thing to do; do you think we have nerve and—and—impudence enough to carry it through without being found out? We are only two against ten, you know, on board here; and if we are detected it will be a sure case of,"—and he drew his ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... world of the dead much like APO LEGGAN of the Kayans; and the journey involves the crossing of the river on a single log, the passage of which is disputed by a malign being, who tries to shake the nerve of the ghost by flinging ashes at him as he traverses the bridge. Other Malanaus (of Muka) describe this opposing power as a twoheaded dog, MAIWIANG by name, whom it is necessary to propitiate with the gift of a valuable bead. For this reason a bead of some ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's right temple. Alma could sense, rather than see, the ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... were drawn up in three ranks on the shore nearly opposite the fort. Allen then made a short address to us. He was never a man of many words. He said he knew our spirit, and hoped we would remember the cause for which we were about to strike; that would nerve the arm of a coward. He concluded by conjuring us to obey orders strictly, and to commit no slaughter that could be done without. Then, with Arnold at his side, Allen led us stealthily up the rocks to ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... saucepan with the fork; and while doing so she stretched forth her left hand, obtained some salt, and sprinkled the saucepan therewith. The business seemed to be exquisitely delicate and breathless. Her face was sternly set, as though the fate of continents depended on her nerve and audacity in this tremendous crisis. But what she was doing to the interior of the saucepan James Ollerenshaw could not comprehend. She stroked it with a long gesture; she tickled it, she stroked it in a different direction; she lifted it and ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... taking care to stamp heavily with my sea-boots at the foot of the cabin stairs, I made my second entry. But for this unexpected glimpse, no act of his during the next twenty-four hours could have given me the slightest suspicion that all was not well with his nerve. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the Englishman's four and a half, but with better living, more instruction, and improved tools (for the French tools were very poor at first) the Frenchmen came to earn four francs. In the severe and dangerous work of mining, however the Englishman maintained his superiority in nerve and steadiness. The Piedmontese were very good hands especially for cutting rock and at the same time well conducted, sober and saving. The Neapolitans would not take any heavy work, but they seem to have been temperate and thrifty. The men from Lucca ranked midway between the Piedmontese ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... that put out one of the kingdom's eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other. He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, knowing loyalty. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... an awful thought, and for a moment, every nerve in her body tingled with pain. All her strength fled, and she dared not question him further on that point, for her own sake, ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... her name Alan's voice was dead, and he made no movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to pass out of his flesh, and his arms hung limp. She was there, alive! He could see the whiteness leave her face ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... off in all directions. Of the particles which vibrate with any particular velocity, some are gathered by the optical apparatus of the eye, and deflected so as to impinge on the retina and on the fibres of the optic nerve therewith connected, producing in these fibres a change which is followed by other changes in the brain, which, again, by virtue of some inscrutable union between the brain and the mind, create a feeling or consciousness of colour. What the particular colour shall be, depends either on the ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... kept me to it, with my tongue hanging out; again and again I seemed to have him; every time I missed him by an hour or so; and that convinced me that he was straining every nerve, and that he probably had the whole of the loot still with him. At last, I seemed to have him in a perfect trap—Ensenada, on the Peninsula. You get into and out of Ensenada by steamboat only, except back to the mines on foot or donkey. The two days I had to wait over in San Diego for the boat ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... the gun calmly. He had seen guns before. Moreover he didn't believe the man had the nerve to shoot. He wasn't quite so sure of the two dark shadows in the bushes below, but it was well to be on ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... brought about. Instantaneously lassitude and vain repinings were replaced by hopefulness and energy. In a twinkling the young man was on his feet, every nerve a-thrill ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... "Well, I like your nerve!" said she. "Darry's my brother. And I've known Burd Alling since he and Darry went to primary school. And so has Jess. I guess they are not likely to take strangers off on that yacht with them before they ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... the general disturbances of the past five years. The causes are many and obvious. Man is generally guided, not directly by the automatic instincts, working through the lower nerve centers, but rather by ideas acting in the higher nerve centers of his brain. Instincts with him are not instinctive, but are checked and supervised by intelligence. Only when a great shock, a sudden fear or joy, occurs does the instinctive working replace ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... for bravery as though it were a fact which everyone accepted, and was begging me not to make her suffer. What added to my perplexity was that she asked me to act only as I desired to act, but she asked it in such a manner that every nerve ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Hastings heard, but did not change color. There was no sense in losing nerve over a disaster that had ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... valuable information concerning the connection between disease conditions and misplacements of vertebrae and other bony structures, contractions or abnormal relaxation of muscles and ligaments, and inflammation of nerves and nerve centers. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... scalpel, the hidden motives and springs of action. We dream of an art that shall take into account the natural daily decay and up-building of cell-life; the wars that go on in the blood; the fevers of the brain; the creeping paralysis of nerve-exhaustion; above all, we must be able even now from a few bare facts, to re-create a man and make him live and love again for the reader, just as the biologist from a few scattered bones can reconstruct some prehistoric bird or ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... terror-inspiring roar is to the Boer stripling pure romance and non-sense; but what he does realize is that he must hit the animal in a vital spot at the right moment or else run the risk of being clawed and bitten. The confidence, however, which he has in his gun gives him all the requisite nerve, and mishaps are of very rare occurrence. Those lion hunts used to be very profitable, not only for the valuable skins, but especially when a number of young cubs were also caught, which would realize considerably high prices ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... know; but I also knew that if I could nerve myself to bear the pain and the fatigue, I could train the girls as well as ever, and I knew, too, that if you sent me away in the middle of term you would be less likely to take me back. It means everything to me, you see. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely. I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... were at the gate. The door opened below him, his host went out, and the three talked in whispers for a while. Then the horsemen rode away, his host came back into the house, and all was still again. For half an hour the boy waited, his every nerve alive with suspicion. Then he quietly dressed, left half a dollar on the washstand, crept stealthily down the stairs and out to the stable, and was soon pushing his old nag at a weary gallop ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... at Niagara, the voice of the cataract not only roared night and day through every chamber of the house, but the whole building vibrated incessantly with the shock of the mighty fall. I have still health and nerve and spirits to cope with the grand exhibitions of the powers of Nature: the majesty and beauty of the external world always acts as a tonic on me, and under its influence I feel as if a strong arm was put round me, and was lifting me over stony places; and I nothing doubt that the great anthem ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... of course I will, if you want me to," said the Duke, in a more gentle voice. "But you seem awfully upset, and you're upsetting me too. We shan't have a nerve between us soon, if you ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... tolerant warmth that sheds a kind of lustre Over a stout Ausonian filibuster Does not extend to thoroughly bad hats Like abdicated Hellene autocrats. And, if the Allies feel some slight reserve About resisting your confounded nerve, I, GABRIELE, do not. You may be A kind of subject satrap under me; If not, look out. You shall have cause to know The singing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... my teeth were clenched as if in the throes of lockjaw. Had I paused to think for a single instant, all my nerve would have oozed away. But I had no time to spend on thought; I had to work on, to save Miss Falconer. The whole ghoulish business would be futile if the inn servants found the body. The mere flight of all the guests would certainly stir suspicion; let the murder transpire as well, and ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... humiliated at the confession. "I didn't fire a shot. Couldn't, somehow. Everybody was blazin' away at 'em. That's the kind of nerve I've ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... now before long and I hadn't made no break at all. I set and set, and didn't have no nerve. By and by it was too late to ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... and rob you. Fortune befriended me ever after; but the richer I grew, the more keenly I felt how wicked I had been, and the more I foresaw that my victim's vengeance would some day overtake me. Haunted by this thought, I lost my nerve, till one night I beheld your spirit, and from that time forth fell ill. But how you managed to escape, and are still alive, is ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the house the mourners laughed and lit cigarettes and pipes. If no new visitor came they fell to chatting and smoking, but the sight of a fresh and unharrowed person started them off again in their mechanical, though nerve-racking, cry. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... I've no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the others. But it is best as it is. It is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken. The doctors were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful business. I must be firm, for on me this particular burden of silence must rest. I shall not ever enter on the ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... essence of the man. And now what is left? An arched whitish putty-like mass, some fifty odd ounces in weight, with a number of white filaments hanging down from it, looking not unlike the medusae which float in our summer seas. But these filaments only serve to conduct nerve force to muscles and to organs which serve secondary purposes. They may themselves therefore be disregarded. Nor can we stop here in our elimination. This central mass of nervous matter may be pared down on all sides before we seem ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... in the running gear for the 'cross-the-house conveyors. He has his nerve with him. He's putting in three drives entirely different from the way they are in the plans. He told me just now that there wasn't a man in the office who could design a drive that wouldn't tie itself up in square knots in the first ten minutes. I wonder what ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... courageously at the front." In Brazil (and in other mission fields, too,) there is in many places a marvelous breaking away from the old attitude of indifference. The little handful of missionaries we have on the field are straining every nerve to meet the opportunities that are pressing upon them. They are not discouraged. They are as busy as life trying to meet the increasing demands. They are looking to the future with the largest hope. They are a band of the most incurable optimists ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... on the carpet. His wife sat near the window, watching the swallows cutting black circles in the dusky air. Eva was seated at the piano, half turned from it, while with one hand she felt about to touch the nerve of some half-forgotten tune. McElwin dropped down in ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... did not need his words for emphasis. He fairly reeked the beast of prey. She had to nerve herself against faintness. She must not swoon. She ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... figure of Ste. Marie who knew. His reason told him that if due care were used this danger need not be too formidable, and, indeed, in his heart he rather despised Ste. Marie as an individual; but the man's nerve was broken, and in these days fear swept wavelike over reason and had its way with him. Fear looked up to this looming, portentous shadow and saw there youth and health and strength, courage and hopefulness, and, best of all armors, a righteous cause. How was an ill and tired and wicked old man ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... very cleverly, Mrs. Cortlandt," he said. "Of course, I had no chance to win against a person of your diplomatic gifts. I had my nerve to try." ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... have the nerve to dive off a high cliff into the sea, as you did. Be that as it may, my gratitude to you is none the less. If you want a friend, if you have any trouble about that boat, or anything else, send for me, for I would cross the continent to ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... pain quicksilver indeed, there could not be a more striking impression of ebb and flow every second against some stout elastic diaphragm whose percussion seems the pain which is felt. This is especially the case along the course of the sciatic nerve and all its branches, where the pulse of pain is so agonizing that the sufferer can not keep his legs still for an instant. There is occasionally severe pain of this kind in the arms also, but this is very rare. The suffering which usually accompanies ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... not!" came from Jack indignantly. "We will have to do something—protest—make a class matter of it. After what happened at the old mill, for those snobs to have the nerve to come back to ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... connecting things as I find them with the life of this Brassfield. I must take with me the bridge which spans the chasm between Brassfield and Amidon—I mean our friend Clara. Without her, I shall never go back. I haven't the nerve. I should soon find myself in a tangle of mistakes from which I could never extricate myself—I've thought it all out. The Cretan Labyrinth would be like going home ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... his knees and breathed out piercing supplications. Every nerve and fibre within him seemed tense with his agony of prayer. It was not the outcry for purity and peace, not a tender longing for forgiveness, not a filial remorse for sin, but the nervous anguish of him who shrieks in the immediate apprehension of an unendurable torture. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... almost entirely comprised in gum mastic and ivory. At the factory of Mr. Watkins the traveller secured certain figures which he calls "idols"—they are by no means fitted for the drawing-room table. He also noticed the "peace of the household," a strip of manatus nerve, at ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... nights of frenzied fear of the supernatural desire to appease the power above, a fierce quivering excitement in every inch of nerve and blood vessel, there comes a time when nature cannot endure longer, and the spring long bent recoils. We sink down emasculated. Up creeps ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... can you get away from God, nor be rid of yourself. You are on wretched terms with both, and will be, whatever happens, until your nature is brought into harmony with God's will. We are so made, so designed in our every fibre, that evil tortures us like a diseased nerve; and it always will till we get rid of it. Therefore, Egbert, remember—O that I could burn it into your consciousness—the best that you can gain from your proposed evil course is a brief respite in base and sensual stupefaction, or equally artificial ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... at last gave Barbara courage to speak. It seemed to nerve her for the ordeal, and, at the same time, to point a ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Madison was willing to meddle with destiny. "Nature had decreed the union of Florida with the United States," Claiborne affirmed; but he was not so sure that nature could be left to execute her own decrees, for he strained every nerve to prepare the way for American intervention when the people of West Florida should declare themselves free from Spain. Holmes also was instructed to prepare for this eventuality and to cooperate with Claiborne in West Florida "in diffusing ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... busy time with the captain. Only a day or so out from Bombay, now, he was straining every nerve to restore the vessel to something like her normal condition before they should enter port, and it seemed to his daughters that they could scarcely get a daily greeting from him, even, in his intense absorption. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... cafe concert, Sidonie's husband had had a moment of frantic excitement. He leaned on Planus's arm, every nerve in his body strained to the utmost. At that moment he had no thought of going to Montrouge to get the letter ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... they had plenty of ammunition. Then I made Stephen lie down to sleep, telling him that I would wake him to watch later on. This, however, I had no intention of doing as I wanted him to rise fresh and with a steady nerve on the ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of combined temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved. Very agreeable indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time. Deep down in his heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which throughout his life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded; but he was able now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour as much as he pleased. When ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... that I had seen—the submarine shelling the open boats and all the rest of it. She thought it marvelous that we should have been spared in so providential a manner, and I had a pretty speech upon my tongue's end, but lacked the nerve to deliver it. Nobs had come over and nosed his muzzle into her lap, and she stroked his ugly face, and at last she leaned over and put her cheek against his forehead. I have always admired Nobs; but this was the first time ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... recovering nerve and again rising to her feet. "As I've said, he'll dare anything—will Don Antonio Lopez De Santa Anna. Besides, what has he to fear? Nothing. He can show good cause for our imprisonment, else he would never have had us arrested. Enough to ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... found courage to wait quietly for the care of John. His "dear Grace," had thrilled on every nerve, and she afterwards often laughed at Emily for her terror when there was so little danger. The horses were not in the least frightened, and after a little mending, John declared all was safe. To ask Emily to enter, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... was uttered with cold deliberateness. There was nothing to show that a pang quivered on every nerve of the speaker. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Bunn, generously, and he seemed to have added something to his nature through his nerve-racking experience. He had been near death, or at least the possibility of it, and it ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... the body do not all have the same degree of life,—that is, the same degree of irritability. The bone cells and the hair cells, for instance, can hardly be so much alive—or so irritable—as the muscle cells; nor these as intensely alive as the nerve and brain cells. Does not a bird possess a higher degree of life than a mollusk, or a turtle? Is not a brook trout more alive than a mud-sucker? You can freeze the latter as stiff as an icicle and resuscitate it, but not the former. There is a scale of degrees in life as clearly as ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... the door closed, she was alone once more, this time in almost complete darkness. Again she strained her ears upon the retreating steps, afraid yet to move her cramped muscles. The punctured arm throbbed and smarted painfully; every nerve in her body was stretched like a fiddle-string. Finally, far below, sounded the door's slam; a moment later, in front of the house, the whir of a starting engine vibrated upon the still air. The doctor was gone. Now or never, quick, not an instant to waste, every second lost lessened her ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Jessie Bain!" shouted his wife, in an ear-splitting voice that made every nerve in Jessie's ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... quite often. Often, too, the motors would go silent altogether, and the NX-1 would rest almost motionless as her commander felt for an opening. It was a tense, nerve-wringing ordeal. The silence, the waiting, the dainty ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... monolith, chrysolite Logos word, study theology, dialogue Metron measure barometer, diameter *Micros small microscope, microbe Monos one, alone monoplane, monotone *Morphe form metamorphosis, amorphous *Neos new, young neolithic, neophyte *Neuron nerve neuralgia, neurotic Nomos law, science, astronomy, gastronomy, economy management *Onoma name anonymous, patronymic *Opsis view, sight synopsis, thanatopsis, optician *Orthos right orthopedic, orthodox *Osteon bone osteopathy, periosteum *Pais, paidos child paideutics, pedagogue, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... England. The English and American peoples are the greatest sportsmen in the world. Whenever an American workman plays baseball, or an English workman plays cricket, it is safe to say that he strains every nerve to secure victory for his side. He does his very best to make the largest possible number of runs. The universal sentiment is so strong that any man who fails to give out all there is in him in sport is branded as a "quitter," and ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... lives like his The slumberous river washes soft and slow; The lapping water rises wearily, Numbing the nerve and will to sleep; and we Before the goal and crown of mysteries Fall back, and dare ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Afognak are extremely dangerous, for the great tides from Cook Inlet draw through this narrow passage. My nerve was tested a bit as the baidarka swept by the shore, for had it once got well started we should have been drawn into the rapids and then into a long line of angry breakers beyond. At one point it seemed as if we were heading right into these dangerous waters, and then abruptly ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... men with great physical endurance are not as great in moral and spiritual stature! While there are achievements for those who are bent all their days with sickness—achievements of patience, achievements of Christian endurance—I call upon men of health to-day, men of muscle, men of nerve, men of physical power, to devote themselves to the Lord. Giants in body, you ought ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... head of smell—steam, I mean. Over Southwark Bridge, fizz, kick, bang, rattle! Flew along Old Kent Road; knocked down two policemen on patrol duty ('Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road'); fizzed on through New Cross and Lewisham at awful nerve-destroying, sobbing pace, 'toot toot-ing' horn all the way. No good, apparently, to some people, who would not, or possibly could not, get out of the way. Cannoned milk-cart entering Eltham village, ran into 'bus, but shot off it again, at a tangent, ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... while Joseph and Hareton were at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and, with a wild look, bid me come and sit in the house: he wanted somebody with him. I declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... he, "it is impossible that I should make you understand my feelings, nor do I pretend to any great virtue in the matter. The truth is, I want the force of character which might enable me to stand against the spirit of the times. The call on all sides now is for young men, and I have not the nerve to put myself in opposition to the demand. Were 'The Jupiter,' when it hears of my appointment, to write article after article setting forth my incompetency, I am sure it would cost me my reason. I ought to be able to bear with such things, you will say. Well, my dear, I own that I ought. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... brilliancy in the coolness and constant movement of the waves, vanishes on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those intervals of idleness, when the absence of thought leaves the hand inert upon the modelling tool, Felicia, deprived of the sole moral nerve of her intellect, became savage, unapproachable, sullen beyond endurance,—the revenge of paltry human qualities upon great tired brains. After she had brought tears to the eyes of all those whom she loved, had striven to evoke painful memories or paralyzing anxieties, and had reached the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... but for your nerve, Bruce, my boy, we'd have been minus film and motor truck. For pure grit, I think you scouts take the prize. I wish I could think of some way to repay you," cried Mr. Dickle, pumping ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... lymph tissue are coincident with degenerations of the blood, and especially the plasma, such as Scrofulosis, Tuberculosis, Syphilis and Cancer, while other degenerations of the lymph tissue coincide with degenerations of the lymph-fed nerve tissue and are ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... naturally to the incisive. The power to take a subject by its handle and poise it on its centre is perhaps the consummation of merely intellectual culture. When all its nutriment has been converted into bone and muscle and sinew and nerve, then the mind bounds to its work, lithe and strong, like a hunting leopard on its game. It was exactly the power with which our Webster handled his case, till it seemed to the farmer too simple to require a great man ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... disturbed by visions for which no microscope was needed. He offered to sketch what he had seen, but could give no more definite description in words than "figures on the blind" and "streaming hair," so he was left alone to recover his nerve. The Jehu then pointed out that his prophecy had proved correct, and the misty rain had blown off, leaving a clear sky and fine weather, so a start was made en masse for the scene of the ploughing operations. A slight lameness on the part of one of the steeds made it necessary for the smaller ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... a very large extent the moralizing process has been a merely mechanical one. Through slight differences in nerve-structure individuals have varied a little in their response to the pressure of inward cravings and outward perils. The braver, the more prudent, the more industrious have had a better chance of survival. So by the process which we have come ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... thinking myself guilty. The warder said it was ten minutes—I thought it hours! I was quite done for, and could hardly get down-stairs. I knew the spirit was being crushed out of me by the solitary period, and it is plain that I must think of nothing that needs nerve or presence of mind!' he added, in ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but not for an instant does the listening tension of the lake relax. Then the loud bellow rings out again, startling us and the echoes, though we were listening for it. This time the tension increases an hundredfold; every nerve is strained; every muscle ready. Hardly have the echoes been lost when from far up the ridges comes a deep, sudden, ugly roar that penetrates the woods like a rifle-shot. Again it comes, and nearer! Down in the canoe a paddle blade touches the water noiselessly ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... to be against the University of Pennsylvania eleven. The opposition team being an unusually good one that year, the Navy's gridiron pets were preparing to strain every nerve in the hope ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... in bad health and poor circumstances, who had heavy responsibilities in private life, and who were not only unable to pay their fines, but even unable to make any provision for their families during incarceration. Such conditions would tend to shake the nerve ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... child, they are afraid of each other. They are afraid the richer slaves, who are able to comply with the demands will laugh at them and ridicule them, and that is why they strain every nerve to follow the god's wishes. A slave, whether she is rich or poor, grows more cringing year by year, until at last she loses all her individuality, and becomes a mere echo ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... do I pretend to any great virtue in the matter. The truth is, I want the force of character which might enable me to stand against the spirit of the times. The call on all sides now is for young men, and I have not the nerve to put myself in opposition to the demand. Were 'The Jupiter,' when it hears of my appointment, to write article after article setting forth my incompetency, I am sure it would cost me my reason. I ought to be able to bear with such ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... with every nerve under painful control, felt his breath come quick and deep until his chest heaved, and words leaped to his lips which, with a supreme effort, he bit back. This whole intolerable fallacy of outgrown and hard-shelled narrow-mindedness was spurring him to ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... table, several on the floor, and in deck-chairs, I never slept in anything quite so "knobby" as that extraordinary bed. A lump here, and a lump there, always seemed to select the most inconvenient part of one's frame to stick in, and sometimes getting on a nerve quite numbed the spot. After the first night I asked the Vahtimestari to turn and knead the mattress, which he cheerfully promised to do, and no doubt did. But all his turning and pounding was perfectly useless, so after a second restless night, which left me beautifully ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... blue, And seek in vain some answering sign from thee. Look down upon us, guide and cheer us still From the serene height where thou dwellest now; Dark is the way without the beacon light Which long and steadfastly thy hand upheld. Oh, nerve with courage new the stricken hearts Whose dearest hopes seem lost ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke
... games as cricket and football not only their success in various competitions but also their success in the sterner warfare of life. This success has been obtained on the tented field and in the work of exploring, mountaineering, and other pursuits that make great demand not only on nerve and muscle but also on strength of character and powers ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... the wild or pathetic appeal of his expressive countenance, she would relent, and for a while resume her ancient kindness. But these fluctuations shook to its depths the soul of the sensitive youth; he no longer deemed the world subject to him, because he possessed Evadne's love; he felt in every nerve that the dire storms of the mental universe were about to attack his fragile being, which quivered at the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... its confusion, though he had declined joining it previously to the battle. Nothing was easier than to enter the throng, in its present confused state, and move about undetected for hours, if one had the nerve necessary for the service; and, in that property, I felt certain the Onondago was not deficient. There was a coolness in the manner of the man, a quiet observation, both blended with the seeming apathy of a red-skin, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... said Evelyn, with shining eyes, "to think that all the time we were worrying about you and feeling sure you were lost, you were having the time of your life! Oh, if I'd only had the nerve to follow you!" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... force. Grant would have put himself into the relation to McClellan which he sustained to Meade in 1864, and would have infused his own energy into the army. Halleck did not do this. It would seem that he had become conscious of his own lack of nerve in the actual presence of an enemy, and looked back upon his work at St. Louis in administering his department, whilst Grant and Buell took the field, with more satisfaction than upon his own advance from Shiloh to Corinth. He seemed already determined ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... girl of eleven, told the story of Joan of Arc. Other girls followed her, each telling her own pet story. Their skill in this direction was a thing to marvel at. The audience was a joy, with half-raised heads, wide eyes, open mouths, every nerve of them hanging on the reciter's words. Indeed, I, too, found that one of the tale-tellers had "got" me with her story ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... admiration. They won knowledge, sometimes at heavy cost of health and nerve power. They helped to make women's education possible. But what of the fairer side of college life could they ever know? They were accepted always on sufferance; they never "belonged." One such pioneer was a friend of mine. In many walks and talks she ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... S. and C. last year. He was born in the camp and his mother died when he was a baby. God knows how he pulled through! You know what those mining places are. His father, Frank Lee, was killed in a drunken row while I was there, and Abe showed so much cool nerve and downright manliness that I offered him a place with my party. He has been with ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... Monarch's chair, And stood with rustic plainness there, And little reverence made; 340 Nor head, nor body, bow'd nor bent, But on the desk his arm he leant, And words like these he said, In a low voice,—but never tone So thrill'd through vein, and nerve, and bone:— "My mother sent me from afar, 346 Sir King, to warn thee not to war,— Woe waits on thine array; If war thou wilt, of woman fair, Her witching wiles and wanton snare, 350 James Stuart, doubly warn'd, beware: God keep thee as He may!"— The wondering ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... on in his country Kosciuszko, himself ready to strain every nerve in her cause, wrote in the April of 1792 to ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... nerves carrying the message of its impact to the brain-centres, and as there thrills down from those centres through the motor nerves the answer that welcomes or repels, so does every vibration in the universe, which is His body, touch the consciousness of God, and draw thence responsive action. Nerve-cells, nerve-threads, and muscular fibres may be the agents of feeling and moving, but it is the man that feels and acts; so may myriads of Intelligences be the agents, but it is God who knows and answers. Nothing can be so small ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... before a large and crowded assembly—was horror to the mind of the poor Jib; and he would nearly as soon have acceded to a desire to dance a hornpipe, if such had been suggested as the wish of the company. However, there was nothing for it; and summoning up all his nerve—knitting his brows —clenching his teeth, like one prepared to "do or die," he seized the hissing cauldron, and strode through the room, like the personified genius of steam, very much to the alarm of all the old ladies in ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... on, "that I could make you understand, in your superb health, just all I mean by change of conditions. It means change of food, air, surroundings; every thing in short, which addresses itself to the senses. It means an entire new set of nerve impressions." ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... surging, racking, nerve-killing race and Winton had his hand's-breadth of lead and had picked his place for the million-chanced wrestle with death. It was at the C. G. R. station of Tierra Blanca, just below a series of sharp curves which he hoped ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... and more frequently covering the rock, would prove my grave. At length I had to seek a higher and more exposed level, and as water occasionally surged up to the place where I had spent the night, and might at any moment sweep me off, I tried to nerve ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... in her sensitive nostrils, in the mobile lips, in the very pitch and angle of the rounded chin, in her hands, small, muscular and veined, that he knew at sight to be the hard-worked hands of one who had spent long hours at the piano. Pride it was, in every muscle, nerve, and quiver ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... from town, which a few days before would have made every nerve in Elinor's body thrill with transport, now arrived to be read with less emotion that mirth. Mrs. Jennings wrote to tell the wonderful tale, to vent her honest indignation against the jilting girl, and pour forth her compassion towards poor Mr. Edward, who, she was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... dim light and shoot, with a .22 high-power rifle, a tiger which is just ready to charge; when he will go alone and unarmed into the mountains to meet a band of brigands who have been terrorizing the country, it means that he has more nerve than any one man needs ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... back on his head; his long arms dangled, pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were the days, we must remember, when but few men could play at a greater rate than twenty to twenty-five miles an hour; when ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... attitude, the brilliant silk hat, the shaven face, and every inch of the attire. As plainly as one knows a green tree from a dead one, the Crusoe of Grande Pointe recognized one who came from the haunts of men; from some great nerve-centre of human knowledge and power where the human mind, trained and equipped, had piled up the spoils of its innumerable conquests. His whole form lighted up with a new life. His voice trembled with pent feeling as he said ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... only too certain that they were in close pursuit. Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice nearer still, until I could feel their breath and hear their snuffing scent. Every nerve and muscle in my frame were stretched ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... only kept under fire for four days. At the end of that time, they are sent back a few miles in shifts to the nearest village where they find quarters, and rest from the nerve-racking, soul-shaking clamor of guns and buzz of bullets. The trenches were wonderful. Zaidos and Velo, the Red Cross badges on their arms giving them free passage, soon explored every inch until they were perfectly familiar with them all. Zaidos ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... had received more than they wanted. They had not only withdrawn to a good distance, but they did not even have nerve enough to launch a counter-attack. The American advance had been so well prepared that it won ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... you nerve enough to help me replace this ankle? The Countess is too nervous, and J. G. ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... last to go. "I say," he whispered to Patty, "it's been a great success! I don't see how you ever had the nerve to try it, but it worked all right!" Then he went away, and Patty and Mona sank limply into chairs and shook with laughter. Susan instantly returned to her role of servant, and stood before Patty, as if ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... freedom of the soul was waged until at least one hundred millions of human beings—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters—with hopes, loves, and aspirations like ourselves, were sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant faith. They perished in every way by which death can be produced. Every nerve of pain was sought out and touched by the believers ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... most amusing tricks is to let us work with might and main to help her on, while she makes us believe that we are straining every nerve and ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... the latter was joined by their mother, and they went out to the clatter of hoofs, the thin jingle of harness chains, where the barouche waited for them in the street. Once Camilla obtruded into the room. "I wonder you don't give yourself a headache," she remarked; "I never heard more nerve-racking sounds." ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a woman of tact and judgment and refinement, might take into her hands this thing and, in a sense, make it plastic clay, and use its elements of life, and power, and energy, and unscrupulousness, and nerve, and egotism, and mountain courage, and almost make a ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... is one mass, called anteriorly the corpus striatum, or striated body, and posteriorly the optic thalamus or bed of the optic nerve, though the optic nerve has its principal origin in another part, called the optic lobes. The thalamus and corpus striatum are called together, the great inferior ganglion of the brain. They are masses of gray substance, with white fibres from below passing ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... of India in the days long before the canal, when Nelson proclaimed that in that point of view chiefly was it important to Great Britain. In the cluster of island fortresses of the Caribbean is one of the greatest of the nerve centres of the whole body of European civilization; and it is to be regretted that so serious a portion of them now is in hands which not only never have given, but to all appearances never can give, the development which is ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... the forest starts back with dismay as he comes suddenly upon one of these venomous reptiles, and hears its ominous rattle when too near to escape. He must muster all his nerve, and strike it with his stick as it springs; for a wound from its fangs will, as he knows, bring certain death, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Great nerve, considerable skill, and first-rate horsemanship are required for the sport of pigsticking. The horse, too, must be fast, steady, well- trained and quick, for without all these advantages the sport is a dangerous one. The wild ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... thundered beneath. It was fearful to listen and look downward; the heads of all were giddy, and their hearts full of fear. Guapo, alone accustomed to such dangers, was of steady nerve. He and Don Pablo afoot were in ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the air, mingled with the odors of a classroom that was never clean, nor free from the fragments of our breakfasts or snacks, affected his sense of smell, the sense which, being more immediately connected than the others with the nerve-centers of the brain, must, when shocked, cause invisible disturbance to the organs ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... Still let the Lord exist, And call Him by imposing names, A venerable list. But nerve and muscle only count, Gray matter of the brain, And an astonishing amount Of ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... did amusing and surprising things. When first I saw her she was riding a very old bicycle downhill with her feet on the fork of the frame—it seemed to me to the public danger, but afterwards I came to understand the quality of her nerve better—and on the third occasion she was for her own private satisfaction climbing a tree. On the intervening occasion we had what seems now to have been a long sustained conversation about the political situation and the books and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... devil, kind, unselfish he must be, Born to lead when danger threatens—type of ancient chivalry. When you hear a "houndman" jeering at the "customers" in front, Saying they come out to ride a steeplechase and not to hunt, You may bet the "grapes are sour," the fellow's smoked his nerve away; Once he went as well as they do: "every dog will have his day." Though to ride about the roads in state may do your liver good, You see precious little "houndwork" either there or in the wood. He who loves to mark the work of hounds must ride beside the pack, Choosing his own ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Six coming over from the other side would have turned the scale, and this was the idea floating in my mind, which produced the mistake. The second error was in the version of Mr. Adams's expression, which I stated to you. His real expression was, 'that he would not unbrace a single nerve for any treaty France could offer; such was their entire want of faith, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... attempt anything," rejoined Rob, "but I don't think he's got nerve enough to carry out any of his schemes. Hullo!" he broke off suddenly, "there he is now across the street by the post office, talking to Bill Bender and Sam Redding. I'll bet they are hatching up some sort of mischief. Just look at them looking at us. I'll bet a doughnut ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... right to my side, I heard the very low report. I hunt a great deal and shoot, and the flash of a gun doesn't scare me but sets me instantly on my nerve. ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... the Jesuits, resolved that no pope should be elected who would not favor their end. A cardinal was found,—Ganganelli,—who promised the ambassadors that, if elected pope, he would abolish the order. They, accordingly, intrigued to secure his election. The Jesuits, also, strained every nerve, and put forth marvellous talent and art, to secure a pope who would protect them. But the ambassadors of the allied powers overreached even the Jesuits. Ganganelli was the plainest, and, apparently, the most unambitious of men. His father had been a peasant; but, by ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of combined temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved. Very agreeable indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time. Deep down in his heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which throughout his life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded; but he was able now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour as much as he pleased. When King Ferdinand went out to ride Columbus would be ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... farisah): the phrase has often occurred and isour "trembled in every nerve." As often happens in Arabic, it is "horsey;" alluding to the shoulder-muscles (not shoulder-blades, Preston p. 89) between neck and flank which readily quiver in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... forward. His face was only inches from Pop Young's. It was seamed and hard-bitten and nerve-racked. But any man would be quivering if he wasn't used to space or the feel of one-sixth gravity on ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... but net loss and headlong decay of the spirit; that modicum of forbearance and equity that is requisite to the conduct of life in a community of ungraded masterless men is seen by these stouter stomachs as a loosening of the moral fiber and a loss of nerve. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... is undoubtedly right," he said, looking down at Stevens. "But I am quite sure the young woman is capable of taking care of herself. Quade has a tremendous amount of nerve, setting Slim to follow her, hasn't he? Slim may run up against a ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... over his bass-viol. The rehearsal began. Heman forgot all about his keeper sitting by the stove, as the old, familiar tunes swelled up in the little room, and one antique phrase after another awoke nerve-cells all unaccustomed nowadays to thrilling. He could remember just when he first learned The Mellow Horn, and how his uncle, the sailor, had used to sing it. "Fly like a youthful hart or roe!" Were there spices still left on the hills of life? Ah, but only for youth to smell ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... his nerve—suppose he slipped and tell with a splash into that black, spangled water—what could he do? Poor Mike would be swept away directly, and his only chance of life would be for him to swim steadily till he reached the rocks, and then try to find one to which he could ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... then, weary of circumlocution, she added in a bolder tone than she had yet used, "only remember, sir, that what is done must be done effectually; no mistakes, no errors, no flaws! See that you use all your eyes—see that you bend every nerve to the task. I will have no procrastination for the sake of fresh fees—nothing omitted one day to be remembered the next—no blunders to be corrected after long delays and longer correspondence. I know you lawyers ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Her lute and favorite airs lost half their power to please; the day seemed to stand still—she became melancholy, and thought the breakfast-hour would never arrive. At length the clock struck the signal, the sound vibrated on every nerve, and trembling she quitted the closet for her sister's apartment. Love taught her disguise. Till then Emilia had shared all her thoughts; they now descended to the breakfast-room in silence, and Julia almost feared to meet her eye. In the breakfast-room they were alone. Julia found ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... to give classifications except as they exist unnamed in the above titles: (1) straight winged: locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, katydids; (2) tooth-shaped: dragon-flies; (3) ephemerals: may-flies; (4) half-winged: leaf and tree hoppers; (5) nerve-winged: lace-wings, ant-lions, and caddis-worms; (6) two-winged: flies and mosquitoes; (7) scaly winged: butterflies and moths; (8) sheath-winged: beetles; (9) membranous-winged: bees, wasps, ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... of blood reverts; He hears the echo of his victims' cry, Whose agonizing eyes again are fixed Upon his face, pleading for mercy. See! how he writhes in speechless agony! As morning dew-drops on the face of nature, So hangs upon his brow the clammy sweat. Each feature of his face, each limb, each nerve, Distorted with remorse and agony, Is fraught with nature's speechless eloquence, And is a faithful witness to his sin. It is not all a dream, but memory holds Before the sleeper's eyes her magic glass, In which he sees the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... Burke spoke amid the angers and alarms inspired first by the subversive energy, and then by the doctrinaire cruelty of the French Revolution. It was in the process of "diffusing the Terror" that most of his philosophical obiter dicta were uttered. The real nerve of the thinking of a mind so vehement, so passionate, so essentially dramatic is to be sought not in some principle which was the major premise of his syllogisms, but in some pervading emotion. Fanny Burney said of him ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... once lookin' back for fear he might change his mind. When he drives off in his buggy you can see that he's all het up and trembly, like one of them reckless Wall Street speculators you read about. He's spent a cent, but he's had a lovely nerve-wrackin' time doin' it. Oh, a feller has to satisfy his cravin' for excitement somehow, and Jerry satisfies his buyin' one-cent newspapers and seein' his creditors get mad. Do you suppose you can worry such a critter as that by talkin' ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... reserved a special part for the former serving to thaw the reserve which had succeeded to his outbreak of the night before. After some debate Maignan persuaded me that the old woman had not sufficient nerve to play the part I proposed for her, and named Fanchette; who being called into council, did not belie the opinion we had formed of her courage. In a few moments our preparations were complete: I had donned the old charcoal-burner's outer rags, Fanchette had assumed those ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... hisses of every street in the nation, ring it in your ears, and deafen you with their din. The people have a voice of their own, and it must, it will be, sooner or later heard: and I, as in duty bound, will always exert every nerve and every power of which I am master, to hasten the completion of so desirable an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the 3rd of May the new general, Thomas, an enterprising man, tried a fireship, which was meant to destroy all the shipping in the Cul de Sac. It came on, under full sail, in a very threatening manner. But the crew lost their nerve at the critical moment, took to the boats too soon, and forgot to lash the helm. The vessel immediately flew up into the wind and, as the tidal stream was already changing, began to drift away from the Cul de Sac just when ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... from the disturbing effect of all these doubts and of all these unchained passions. Caught in the gearing of those small intrigues, full of fears, mistrustful, curious, feverish, he felt in every aching nerve the truth of the Corsican proverb, "The greatest ill you can wish your enemy is an election ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... watched by an eye that never slept; Richelieu suddenly appearing, at the critical moment, from behind the tapestries where he had concealed himself, fronted and defied his enemy. The King, bewildered, had not nerve enough to face his own servant, who however made him comprehend the dangers which surrounded his throne and person, and compelled him to part with his mother,—the only woman he ever loved,—and without permitting her to imprint upon his brow her own last farewell. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... possessor enjoys the advantage of knowing that whatever gives him joy or sorrow always arouses similar feelings in countless other men. The root of all ambition is the wish to rule over the hearts of our fellows by compelling them to make our feelings their own; the central nerve of all happiness consists in seeing our own sensations shared by those about us and reflected back, as it were, from manifold mirrors. Small annoyances often have a diverting effect on the spectator; great success easily excites his envy; great sorrows and minor joys, on the contrary, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... it—the sharp fresh air, which braces every nerve, and invigorates every limb, causing all the senses to awake and share, as it were, this daily waking up of Nature, fresh as a rose? For what rosiness, in the brightest summer days, can compare with that kiss of the winter's sun on the tree-tops, slowly creeping down their trunks ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... white slash down his favourite's side caught the woodsman's eye at once. He looked at it critically, touched the flour with tentative finger-tips, then turned on his wife a look of poignant interrogation. But Mrs. Jabe was ready for him. Her nerve had recovered. The fact that her victim showed no fear of her had gradually reassured her. What Jabe didn't know would never hurt him, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of flaming rubbish, and in that last hour of grapple a great storm arose out of the sea and swept round the island, and the gigantic fleet was seen no more. The uncanny completeness and abrupt silence that swallowed this prodigy touched a nerve that has never ceased to vibrate. The hope of England dates from that hopeless hour, for there is no real hope that has not once been a forlorn hope. The breaking of that vast naval net remained like a sign that the small thing ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... world, for never in this had a ray of reason shone upon poor Patsy's darkened mind. We have said there were no tears, and yet, although the waters came not to the surface, there was one heart which wept, as with unflinching nerve the cold, stern woman arrayed the ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... Physostigmine, indeed, stimulates nearly all the non-striped muscles in the body, and this action upon the muscular coats of the arteries, and especially of the arterioles, causes a great rise in blood-pressure shortly after its absorption, which is very rapid. The terminals of the vagus nerve are also stimulated, causing the heart to beat more slowly. Later in its action, the drug depresses the intra-cardiac motor ganglia, causing prolongation of diastole and finally arrest of the heart in dilatation. A large ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... never shot," said Carl, "but I sushpect I know vat shooting is." And he smiled again, with trouble in his heart, that would have quite disconcerted a youth of less nerve and phlegm. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... place formerly arose a great semaphoric telegraph, with its gaunt arms tossed up against the horizon. It has been replaced by an observatory, connected with an electric nerve to the heart of the great commercial city. From this point the incoming ships are signaled, and again checked off at the City Exchange. And while we are here, looking for the expected steamer, let ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... over from old editing sessions.) It happened that there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported '*$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'.' It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker managed to stop it with a {Vulcan nerve pinch} after only a half dozen ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... father's steps, and fled to her room to nerve herself for the part she must act before him. But she was far from successful; her pale face and abstracted manner awakened his attention and his surmises as to the cause. Having an engagement out, he soon left her to welcome solitude; ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... tendency may be a universal nervous system, artists are inclined to ganglionate. The nerve-knots vary in size and importance, and one chief ganglion may serve as a feeding brain, but it cannot monopolize the activity. In America, particularly, these ganglia, or colonies, are an interesting and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... the prefixing of dis or un to reverse the meaning: as, please, displease; qualify, disqualify; organize, disorganize; fasten, unfasten; muzzle, unmuzzle; nerve, unnerve. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... about, as though she were a tourist intent upon finding every object starred in Baedeker. To his inward rage and chagrin, Giovanni realized his mistake in having attempted to hurry her, and now changed his tactics. Although his every nerve was strained to catch the sound of Nina's approaching footfall, he went into a long, prosy dissertation upon the history of the ceiling, dwelling purposely upon the dullest facts he could think of, until his tormentor was glad enough ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence. I will go ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... that of a number of separate pieces. The arms, for example, were detached from the trunk, and seemed suspended in the air. In fact, memory and the power of reasoning appeared to be complete long before the optic nerve was restored to healthy action. But what I wish chiefly to dwell upon here is, the absolute painlessness of the shock; and there cannot, I think, be a doubt that, to a person struck dead by lightning, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... much influence in committee ought to have more control of his nerve centres," Ormiston told him. The squire belonged to that order of elderly gentlemen who will have their little joke. "Well, have you and Bingham and Horace Williams made up your minds ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and fell,—strove to rise, was smitten down again, and, in that moment, Barnabas was astride him; felt the shock of stinging blows, and laughing fierce and short, leapt in under the blows, every nerve and muscle braced and quivering; saw a scowling face,—smote it away; caught a bony wrist, wrenched the bludgeon from the griping fingers, struck and parried and struck again with untiring arm, felt the press thin ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... assumption that he may have had to endure some volume of hostile private criticism. Whatever may have been Zuniga's reasons for qualifying his early adhesion to the Copernican theory, it seems safe to think that timidity was not one of them. His nerve was unshaken. Towards the end of his life he was engaged on a task after Luis de Leon's own heart: the bringing to book of ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... was two hours later and Ivan Veliki had rung the hour of eleven, when the silence of the room was broken by the entrance of Piotr, who, at sight of his master asleep at this unwonted hour, halted in surprise and confusion. It took him ten minutes to nerve himself to the waking of the Prince. But it was only ten more before Michael, who had sworn at his valet steadily, meantime, for the delay, entered his public office, fully dressed, to greet General Ryumin, a member of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... was a thing to be acutely remembered—sustained, long-drawn, vindictive; a nerve-wrenching pandemonium of groans, yelpings and cat-calls, in the midst of which the partizans shuffled into loose marching order ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... in material existences and sense-experiences; and every day we are hearing of new discoveries connecting our aesthetic emotions with the structure of eye and ear, the movement of muscles, the functions of nerve centres, nay, even with the action of heart and lungs and viscera. Moreover, all round us schools of criticism and cliques of artists are telling us forever that so far from bringing forth and educating true virtue, art has the sovereign power, by mere ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... to consciousness, hours afterward, she opened her eyes on midnight darkness, though the room was flooded with sunlight. The optic nerve had been injured, the doctor said. It was doubtful if she would ever be able ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... we shall certainly come again unless we can have a Democracy of Supermen; and the production of such a Democracy is the only change that is now hopeful enough to nerve us to the effort that ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... Lord, Clancy, do ye mean it? Why, I ain't got the nerve. It's too chilly, and I ain't slept enough. Run away? I told you, Clancy, I've eat the lettuce. I've lost my grip. 'Tis the tropics that's done it. 'Tis like the poet says: "Forgotten are our friends that we ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... brings its own crop of interminable difficulties. When man leaves his resting-place in universal nature, when he walks on the single rope of humanity, it means either a dance or a fall for him, he has ceaselessly to strain every nerve and muscle to keep his balance at each step, and then, in the intervals of his weariness, he fulminates against Providence and feels a secret pride and satisfaction in thinking that he has been unfairly dealt with by the ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... Italians in Switzerland were a generation younger, and they would not go back, at least not to the old Italy. Suffer as they might, and they did suffer, wincing in every nerve and fibre from the cold material insentience of the northern countries and of America, still they would endure this for the sake of something else they wanted. They would suffer a death in the flesh, as 'John' had suffered in ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... him. "Nerve! If that's a sample of legal brilliancy of wit, I'm sorry for the defendant ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... syllable rapped out decisively. Then his anger, righteous enough in its way, got the better of him. "Listen to me, Stella!' he gritted, clenching his hands beside him. "I can see clear through you. You haven't the nerve to face this down, so you're going to sling me overboard. That's it, isn't it? Well, you sha'n't. I've handled you like a fool, these years, and now I'm going to take charge. You'll stay here—not because of yourself or me—but for the boy!" he ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... ingenious ideas for getting out, each of which appears as though it would work, but in the end does not, usually in a quite entertaining way. Eventually they do think of a way, which I will not divulge here, and they get out, but it had been a long nerve-racking period before their ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... crept to the window. Two horsemen were at the gate. The door opened below him, his host went out, and the three talked in whispers for a while. Then the horsemen rode away, his host came back into the house, and all was still again. For half an hour the boy waited, his every nerve alive with suspicion. Then he quietly dressed, left half a dollar on the washstand, crept stealthily down the stairs and out to the stable, and was soon pushing his old nag at a weary gallop through ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... "Nerve yourself," Melton whispered to Guy. "I have an idea of what is coming," and before Guy could reply they were ushered into the very apartment which they had left so hastily ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... laughing horribly. The pent-up excitements of the night had broken her nerve at last. For an instant he ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... of the bar near the door, his liquor in his hand, lounging in his careless attitude of abstraction. But there was not a lax fiber in his body; every faculty was alert, every nerve set for any sudden development. The scene before him was disgusting, rather than diverting, in its squalid imitation of the rough-and-ready times which had passed before many of these men were old enough to carry the weight of a gun. It was just a sporadic outburst, a pustule ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... a great friend of mine," Valentine said. "He is a famous nerve-doctor. Seeing you hovering about his door led me to suppose you might be ill, and were going to consult him. I ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Meyer's outstretched hand, and been drawn into safety through a kind of aperture above the top step. Then the rope was let down again for her father, who tied it about his middle. Well was it that he did so, since when he was about half-way up, awkwardness, or perhaps loss of nerve—neither of them wonderful in an old man—caused his foot to slip, and had it not been for the rope which Meyer and the Molimo held, he would certainly have fallen into the river some hundreds of feet below. As it was, he recovered himself, and presently arrived panting and very pale. In her ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... me, while every nerve of me tingled; but at last she shook her head. "No," she sighed. "I can not yet say." She did not see the sweat ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... know experimentally that it is faith in a living, personal God,—the God of providence, and the Hearer of prayer, and not the desolate doctrine of Nature,—"the God of the iron foot, stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, and merciless as death,"—that can sustain him under every trial, and nerve him with fresh vigor ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... a large number of interscholastic competitions were held. These were found valuable, not only in broadening the boys' ideas in respect to shooting, but in helping their nerve in competitions. ...
— A report on the feasibility and advisability of some policy to inaugurate a system of rifle practice throughout the public schools of the country • George W. Wingate
... Britain had a recognized capital at all, York and not London best deserved that name. For here was the chief military nerve-centre of the land, the head-quarters of the Army, where the Commander-in-Chief found himself in ready touch with the thick array of garrisons holding every strategic point along the various routes by which any invader who ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... not even guess at what raw nerve I touched, but he suddenly threw his arms wide as men do when a shot is mortal. His cool insolence dropped from him, and he was all fire and helpless defiance. He stamped his foot, till, slender ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... tens, while the monks are counted by tens of thousands. And among many great companies of monks, there may have been one individual, as there is, for instance, in many a country parish a bee-taker or a horse-tamer, of quiet temper and strong nerve, and quick and sympathetic intellect, whose power over animals is so extraordinary, as to be attributed by the superstitious and uneducated to some hereditary secret, or some fairy gift. Very powerful to attract wild animals ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... thee to action-nerve thee to duty! Whate'er it may be, never despair! God reigns on high,—pray to him truly, He will an answer give to thy prayer. Shrinketh thyself from crosses before thee? Art thou so made as to tremble and fear? Confide in thy God; he will watch o'er thee; Humbly and trustingly, brother, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... babblers Every church of the city lent its iron tongue to the peal Fast growing to be an eccentric by profession Foolish trick of thinking for herself Forgetfulness is like a closing sea Fortitude leaned so much upon the irony Good nerve to face the scene which he is certain will be enacted Government of brain; not sufficient Insurrection of heart Grand air of pitying sadness Had taken refuge in their opera-glasses Hated tears, considering them ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their fidelity to King Charles I. could under the circumstances be destruction. They waited with resignation for the impending gloom to overshadow them. Terrible moment for a nation, when despair itself fails to nerve it for further resistance and possible success! Such was the position of the Irish ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... and was brushing my hair before the glass, when suddenly my eyes lit upon something which left me so sick and cold that I sat down upon the edge of the bed and began to cry. It is many a long year since I shed tears, but all my nerve was gone, and I could but sob and sob in impotent grief and anger. There was my house jacket, the coat I usually wear after dinner, hanging on its peg by the wardrobe, with the right sleeve thickly crusted from wrist to elbow with daubs ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anniversary of her wedding. She was so taken up with one fashionable function after another that she had no time to think. Sometimes in the midst of her social activities, she stopped to ask herself if she was really happy, if this nerve-racking existence of idleness and pleasure—with its bridge parties, its dinners, its opera and theatre-going—was the kind of life she had dreamed of in her girlhood days. Sometimes she felt a longing, a yearning for a more useful existence, ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... before, emanated from the wires of my apparatus. The thought flashed through my mind that the Martian held in this instrument a means of communicating sound. If so, what were the words—what language? The possibility of what I heard being words, made me strain every nerve to catch the slightest resemblance to such sounds, but alas, with no success. That they were intended to convey a message, I became fully convinced, but I could not rest in the belief that this jumble of sounds was the Martian language. If the Martians themselves resembled, ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... so, Padre! There isn't any 'suppose' about it! Now look: what makes sight? The eye? No. The eye is made by the sight. The human mind just gets it twisted about. It thinks that sight depends upon the optic nerve, and upon the fleshly eye. But it isn't so. It is the sight that externalizes the 'meaty' eye. You see, the sight is within, not without. It is mental. God is all-seeing; and so, sight is eternal. Don't you see? Of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... her soul being crucified. While Jack stood talking in the hall or on the steps, she tried to conceal from herself what she had done and, when that was impossible, to nerve herself to make reparation. Then she was blinded by the glare of the head-lights and opened her eyes to find that the car had swept beyond reach of her voice. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... broadly ovate, abruptly cuspidate at the apex, and acuminate, 5-nerved (rarely 3-nerved). The second glume is broadly ovate-lanceolate, concave, acuminate, short awned, 5-nerved with two partial nerves one on each side of the central nerve (7- to 9-nerved at the tip), hairs on nerves, a few tubercled. The third glume is similar to the second, broadly ovate-lanceolate, awned, awn 1/8 to 1/4 inch, paleate with usually three stamens, occasionally neuter. Lodicules are present. The fourth glume is chartaceous, shining, ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... boxed me in the stern. Once so caught, and nine or ten inches of the blood-stained dirk would be my last experience on this side of eternity. I placed my palms against the main-mast, which was of a goodish bigness, and waited, every nerve upon the stretch. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... At the same time, a number of the northern colonies had taken incipient steps for the emancipation of their slaves. Here permit me to say, sir, that, with a prudent regard to what the Senator from Maine (Mr. Hamlin) yesterday called the "sensitive pocket-nerve," they all made these provisions prospective. Slavery was to be abolished after a certain future time—just enough time to give their citizens convenient opportunity for selling the slaves to southern planters, putting the money in their pockets, and then sending to us here, on this ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... a pretty tame cruise to write about, for nothing really occurred. We were only on the watch for some untoward happening; that made it nerve wracking. But even when we sighted the spur of land which we knew marked the southern boundary of the de la Plata—the widest mouth of any river on the globe, for it is not masked by islands at all—we were not out of danger. The peril ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... lack the power to step boldly up on to the parapet and go over at once, as the bathers do when they tumble headlong into the stream that has no dangers for them. She had known that she must crouch, and pause, and think of it, and look at it, and nerve herself with the memory of her wrongs. Then, at some moment in which her heart was wrung to the utmost, she would gradually slacken her hold, and the dark, black, silent river should take her. She climbed up into ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... less to a full lootenant commanding six thirty-knot destroyers for the first time? 'E seemed to cherish the 'ope that 'e might use the Gnome for 'is own 'orrible purposes; but what I told him about Mr. Jones's sad lack o' nerve comin' from Pompey, an' going dead slow on account of the dark, short-circuited that connection. 'M'rover,' I says to him, 'our orders is explicit; Stiletto's reported broke down somewhere off the Start, an' we've been ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... somewhat dismantled and disordered room. Her bed had been restored to its place, after the guests had departed the night before, but other appointments were a bit lacking. Nan had forbidden her to rise until noon, for the Bazaar had meant a large expenditure of strength and nerve force, and Patty was ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... feast as the unconscious Hapsburg afforded the ghoul of a priest! It was a loathsome surgery; greedy fingers trembling on the knife, the victim's soul flayed, each nerve of a vanity, or tendon of an ambition, or full-throbbing vein of hope, each and all lifted one by one from the clotted mass and scrutinized exultantly. There was not a feature but held a revelation as sure as vivisection. The high, broad forehead of a gentle poet ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... cloud deepens on his haggard, handsome face. Eight o'clock, and they have been in saddle almost incessantly since yesterday afternoon, weighed down with the tidings of the fell disaster that has robbed them of their comrades, and straining every nerve to reach ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... author of our misfortunes. My heart, thirsting for revenge, eagerly drank in the intelligence, that Bianca was on the point of being married a second time; it was settled—she must die. But as my soul recoiled at the deed, and I attributed too little nerve to Pietro, we looked around for a man to accomplish our fell design. I could hire no Florentine, for there was none that would have undertaken such a thing against the governor. Thereupon Pietro hit upon a plan, which ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... barren resolutions; he must see society, study it, mix in it, without becoming a slave to it, learn to express himself forcibly, and acquire a gentle authority. If he do not feel the need of possessing firmness and nerve, he will not make any real progress; it is time for him to be a man. The life of the region in which he lives is a life of effeminacy, indolence, timidity, and amusement. He will never be so true a servant ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... said Bramble, "I see you've got nerve, so all's right. You had better go and lie down now, for you must be tired; I'll call you in ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... have given me a jolt, for a fact," answered the saddle boy, as his face expressed his surprise. "I allow that you show a lot of nerve in laying out such a big plan; and if you only find out what makes that trembling, roaring sound, you'll get the blessing of many a range rider who believes all the stories told ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... government must pass into the blood-stained hands of rebels, men whose designs were more than doubtful, and who could not, even if their designs had been good, restrain the violence of their followers. In consequence we strained every nerve. Money was freely spent, even to an amount much in excess of our resources. How it was employed, I ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... case. He even thought he scented the sickening odor which he had now and then experienced in the Central Park Zoo. He knew, too, that this was purely imaginary, but the horror of a nightmare was on him, and for only an instant he lost his nerve. ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... great! There never has been such riding in America. Mrs. Hooper lost her hat in the woods, and Mrs. Graves lost part of her habit coming through that break in the hedge over there. That skinny Miss Elperson, who never before has had nerve enough to jump her horse over the lawn hose, cleared the wall that runs along O'Brien's mill,—nobody's ever done it before,—and she came in hanging to the horse's mane and yelling like a wild-cat. Gad, it was two hours before we got 'em quiet and ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... been rehearsing this speech for several days; but was now rather surprised that he had the nerve to utter it. But the old man trusted him. Was not Francis almost a ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... his fist, and hold down by the horns a young bull, however furious. He had had several encounters with bears; and although on two occasions only armed with a knife, he had come off victorious. His nerve and activity equalled his strength. He was no great talker, and he was frequently morose and ill-tempered; but he had one qualification which compensated for all his other deficiencies—he was devotedly ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... bare, whitewashed cell remembered by all Leideners with anguish. There I (and thousands before and thousands after) had sat to wait my dreaded turn with the professors behind the green-baize table in the room next door. There I—among those other nerve-shattered ones—had scribbled my name and scrawled a sketch or two. "Here sweated Rudolph Brederode," read out Miss Rivers, with a sweet look, as if she pitied me now for what I suffered then. But Miss Van Buren showed sublime indifference. She wished, she said, to pick out names that ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... just as the Russian drive was slowing down and while Germany was straining every nerve to meet the eastern crisis, the French and British along the Somme suddenly broke out in a terrific attack over twenty miles of front. The French rapidly approached Peronne, the British more slowly by steadily moving toward Bapaume. Here was the answer to the German assertion ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... bottle of what was called "gammal scherry" (though the Devil and his servants, the manufacturers of chemical wines, only knew what it was), started the flagging circulation. We then went to bed, tingling and stinging in every nerve from the departing cold. Every one complained of the severity of the weather, which, we were told, had not been equalled for many years past. But such a bed, and such a rest as I had! Lying between clean sheets, with my feet buried in soft fur, I wallowed in a flood of downy, delicious sensations ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... forward in defense. He said he had heard that Senator Coot's native State of Indiana was originally settled by people who had started for the West but lost their nerve. In view of the timidity and weak irresolution of his Senate brother, he, Senator Gruff, was inclined to credit the tradition. He must protest against question-asking at this time. Senator Gruff must even warn his friend Senator ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... analysis, even she represented to him a gambler's chance. But in Brandes there was another streak. He wanted to take the chance that he could marry her before he had a right to, and get away with it. But his nerve failed. And, at the last moment, he had hedged, engaging Parson Smawley to play the lead ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... answered. "Up to a certain point he did well. He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger. There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... infer from this what efforts have to be made and what compromises must be acquiesced in by those deputies whose election depends on such institutions which, aware that money is more than ever the nerve of political contests, subscribe to the election expenses, and assure in this way the respectful gratitude of the parliamentary recipients of their benefactions. And all this is executed with order and discipline. Examples could be quoted and ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... is, that as ether is physical matter, etheric sight depends upon the sensitiveness of the optic nerve while spiritual sight is acquired by developing latent vibratory powers in two little organs situated in the brain: the Pituitary body and the Pineal gland. Nearsighted people even, may have etheric vision. Though ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... equal esteem upon man and woman. Sometimes this Satanette came in a blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a flower,—if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful nerve of manliness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... there in camp, isolated from the usual social life, July 2 and 3 and 4, Independence Day, was indeed a test of nerve, already tried and sore and raw, for the young Negroes in training. Why should men train to fight for a country that permitted such barbarous atrocities against their race with impunity. In savage Memphis charred remains of ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... not fit for the big north. Tall and slim, with blond hair in spite of his French blood and name, a quiet and unexcitable face, and an air that Blake called "damned superiority." He wondered how the Fiddling Man had ever screwed up nerve enough to kill Breault. Undoubtedly there had been no fight. A quick and treacherous shot, no doubt. That was like a man who played a fiddle. POOF! He had no more respect for him than if he dressed ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... maintaining gold payments, but only temporarily. In Berlin drastic measures were undertaken to accumulate gold in the Reichsbank. Vienna reports it to be well known that Germany had been for eighteen months before straining every nerve to obtain gold. Whatever sums of gold were included in the so-called "war chest" in Spandau (said to be $30,000,000) were also deposited with the Reichsbank. Gold was even smuggled across the borders of Holland on the persons of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... his daughter; and she, soon after her arrival, made Cambyses acquainted with the fraud. A ground of quarrel was thus secured, which might be put forward when it suited his purpose; and meanwhile every nerve was being strained to prepare effectually for the expedition. The difficulty of a war with Egypt lay in her inaccessibility. She was protected on all sides by seas or deserts; and, for a successful advance upon her from the direction ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... said Meldon. "The resemblance I speak of lies in the fact that I've 'earned my night's repose.' The village blacksmith felt that he deserved his after listening to his daughter singing in the local church choir. I've undergone an even severer nerve strain. I've practically arranged the marriage between ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... Mesoblastic Origin of Excitomotor Nerve Roots, had won him his fellowship of the Royal Society; and his researches, Upon the Nature of Bathybius, with some Remarks upon Lithococci, had been translated into at least three European languages. He had been referred to by one of the greatest living authorities as being the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of hard red earth gave a little respite. It was neither courage nor pride that kept me in the saddle, but the knowledge that much of the way would be worse rather than better, and I would wisely face it at the outset. If it got too nerve-racking I could always betake myself to my chair and, trusting in the eight sturdy legs of my bearers, abandon myself to enjoying ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... was himself that he had carried through it. He had lived face to face with all the corporeal horrors; he had handled them, tasted them, he, the man without a skin, with every sense, every nerve in him exposed, exquisitely susceptible to torture. And he had come through it all as through a thing insubstantial, a thing that gave way before his soul and its exultant, processional vision ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... more intimate way it is dependent on the special sense organs. But the part of the body to which the mind is most directly and intimately related is the nervous system. The sense organs themselves are merely modifications of the nerve ends together with certain mechanisms for enabling stimuli to act on the nerve ends. The eye is merely the optic nerve spread out to form the retina and modified in certain ways to make it sensitive ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... and Beth would answer politely, and tell the truth if possible, instead of making some sulky evasion, as she had begun to do when there was no other way of keeping the peace. She was fearlessly honest by nature, but as she approached maturity, she lost her nerve for a time, and during that time she lied, on occasion, to escape a harrowing scene. She always despised herself for it, however, and therefore, as she grew stronger, she became her natural straightforward self again, only, if anything, all the more scrupulously accurate for the degrading ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... inch in thickness, known as the cortex. It is also found on the surface of the cerebellum. Diffuse masses of grey matter are likewise met in the other parts of the brain, and extending downward through the centre of the spinal cord. The function of the grey matter is to form centres to which the nerve fibres tend and carry in stimulations, or from which they ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... community will never know what a loss it has had in Dr. Dimock. It was not merely her skill, though that was remarkable, considering her youth and limited experience, but also her nerve, that qualified her to become a great surgeon. I have seldom known one at once so determined and so self-possessed. Skill is a quality much more easily found than this self-control that nothing can flurry. She had that in an eminent degree; and, had she lived, she would have been sure to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... sinking, all-gone sensation excessively unpleasant to feel. Perhaps its wearer had a touch of fever! Then the stout tradesman on the other side of the Convent sneezed suddenly, and W. Keyse, with every nerve in his body jarring from the shock, knew that he was simply ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... this I press down with both hands, tossing the cover, when done, into a pan. In spite of myself I hurry; I cannot work fast enough—I outdo my companions. How can they be so slow? I have finished three dozen while they are doing two. Every nerve, every muscle is offering some of its energy. Over in one corner the machinery for sealing the jars groans and roars; the mingled sounds of filling, washing, wiping, packing, comes to my eager ears as an accompaniment ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... venomous snake coiled its glistening folds around his leg he would not have been more startled. But this man of iron nerve soon recovered. He frowned deeply after ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... resulted in forehanded thrift; he now possessed a comfortable holding,—cattle, house, ample land; and he had all the intolerance of the ant for the cricket. As Bedell lifted the bow once more, every wincing nerve was enlisted ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... side, the fire flare up around her at the Smithfield stake, or to promise, with dying Dorothea, celestial roses to the mocking youth, whose face too often took the form of Thurnall's; till every nerve quivered responsive to her fancy in agonies of actual pain, which died away at last into heavy slumber, as body and mind alike gave way before the strain. Sweet fool! she knew not—how could she know?—that she might be rearing in herself the seeds of idiotcy and death: but who ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... mentioned, Jimmy was up in arms. He had a reserve stock of nerve for occasions like this, which could be summoned to ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to me, even when I brought you water?" she answered. She was not afraid. She had nerve ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... his despondent gesture showed how quickly hope had lighted up. "Besides, Billy, I've lost my nerve. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... expenses of his family; for the last year it had not sufficed. It was necessary for the success of his business, or, he supposed, it was necessary that he should be considered a rich man; and he had harassed himself and strained every nerve to keep up appearances, and now he was saying to himself that this new claim upon him could not possibly be met. He was not a hard man, though he had sometimes been called so. At this moment, his heart was ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... certain ghostly radiance that, despite the deluge of spindrift and scud- water with which the air was saturated, enabled one dimly to discern objects as far forward as the foremast. But to rush, at the speed at which we were travelling, into the heart of that pitchy blackness was nerve-racking work, for although the chart assured us that we had a clear sea for some hundreds of miles ahead, there were still such possibilities as derelicts to be reckoned with, and under such circumstances ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... such mastery over this hard-headed and practical race. I could not have believed to what an extent it is carried had I not observed it for myself. We have had a perfect epidemic of it this voyage, until I have felt inclined to serve out rations of sedatives and nerve-tonics with the Saturday allowance of grog. The first symptom of it was that shortly after leaving Shetland the men at the wheel used to complain that they heard plaintive cries and screams in the wake of the ship, as if something were following ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... much, possibly even a little more, and yet the result is never quite equal. Why? A question of health. C'est un temperament de chatte. He cannot pass from masterpiece to masterpiece like Velasquez. The expenditure of nerve-force necessary to produce such a work as the portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell or Miss Alexander exhausts him, and he is obliged to wait till Nature recoups herself; and these necessary intervals he has employed in writing letters signed ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the room until her face had regained its natural look, but her door was always ajar, and Jane fancied she liked to hear Rebecca's quick, light step. Her mind was perfectly clear now, and, save that she could not move, she was most of the time quite free from pain, and alert in every nerve to all that was going on within or without the house. "Were the windfall apples being picked up for sauce; were the potatoes thick in the hills; was the corn tosselin' out; were they cuttin' the upper field; were ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... there was a sad severity in his look, as his fine countenance of deep melancholy turned to the bright moon, which a little comforted her, and indicated that it was pride rather than patience which led to his affected contentment. He had not a parent to nerve his heart to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... when, in January, 1863, he assigned "Fighting Joe" Hooker to the command of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker had believed in a military dictatorship, and it was an open secret that McClellan might have become such had he possessed the nerve. Lincoln, however, was not bothered by this prattle, as he did not think enough of it to relieve McClellan of his command. The ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... from the spine, branch out, like the limbs and twigs of a tree, till they extend over the whole body; and, so minutely are they divided and arranged, that a point, destitute of a nerve, cannot be ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... because upborn by such a tide Of full blown honours, in his unripe age, For he excelled in heart and nerve, beside The riches of his royal heritage, Like Lucifer, the monarch waxed in pride, And war upon his maker thought to wage. He with his host against the mountain went, Where Egypt's mighty ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... horsemen would travel would be far longer than the direct line across country, and he resolved at once to strain every nerve to reach his friends in time to get them to interpose between the captors of the Lady ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... not look more than thirty. His face is ruddy, his eyes bright, his voice firm and ringing. He must be a man of considerable strength and—I should say—of more than ordinary animal courage and animal appetite. There is not a nerve in his body which does not twang like a piano wire. In appearance, he is tall, broad, and bluff, with red whiskers and reddish hair slightly touched with grey. His manner is loud, coarse, and imperious; his talk of dogs, horses, and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... long string of vehicles began to move. Women screamed shrilly, as with their escorts they dodged the horses' hoofs, the trolleys clanged their gongs, electric-signs blinked their pictorial designs, noisy boys yelled hoarsely "final extras!" The din was nerve racking. One had to shout to be heard, yet no one seemed to object. Everybody was happy. New ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... daylight seemed to distress her: flowers were the only links between her and the outer world,—wild ones, for the scent of greenhouse-flowers, and even that of most garden ones, she could not bear. She had been very fond of music, but could no longer endure her piano: every note seemed struck on a nerve. But she was generally quiet in her mind, and often peaceful. The more her body decayed about her, the more her spirit seemed to come alive. It was the calm of a gray evening, not so lovely as a golden ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... a novice must pass before being admitted to holy orders is a severe tax upon nerve and endurance. In the process of a long ritual, at least three, or even so many as nine, pastilles are placed upon the bald scalp of the head. These are then lighted, and allowed to burn down into the skin until permanent scars have been formed, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But they were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known, would not have known how to do it. Throughout those five days in which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they discussed ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and vagabond life, and is celebrated for his comedies. Wallenberg was a clergyman, full of the enjoyment of life, and disposed to see the most amusing side of everything. Lidner and Thorild, unlike the writers just named, were grave, passionate, and sorrowful. Lidner was a nerve-sick, over-excited genius; but many of his inspired thoughts struck deep into the heart of the time, and Swedish literature is highly indebted to Thorild for the spirit of manly freedom and the principles of sound reasoning and taste ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... of a disease. It is the frame of mind of the sluggard in the Bible who says, "There is a lion in the way." Younger people are apt to be irritated by what seems a wilful creating of apprehensions. They ought rather to be patient and reassuring, and compassionate to the weakness of nerve for which ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... therefore, about equally matched, and it was evident that the contest would resolve itself into one of sail-carrying, seamanship, and nerve. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... smoke from the cannon's mouth; Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster. The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating, like prisoners assaulting their walls. Impatient to be where the battle-field calls; Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, With Sheridan only ten ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... Whitley, shortly; and then added, as Frank rose to his feet and began walking the floor again. "Oh, for Heaven's sake quit your tragedy and sit down. You make me tired. You're not cut out for either a gambler or a robber. You haven't the nerve." ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... incident of the music in the streets thus touching so suddenly upon the nerve of memory, and calling away his mind from its dark bodings to a recollection of years and scenes the happiest, perhaps, of his whole life, there is something that appears ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... nothing. Our cousin and Flora were not formally engaged, but their betrothal was understood by all of us as a thing of course. He did not allude to the stranger; but as day followed day, he saw with every nerve all that passed. Gradually—so gradually that she scarcely noticed it—our cousin left Flora more and more with the soft-eyed stranger, whom he saw she preferred. His treatment of her was so full of tact, he still walked ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... we may realise it, our standards of judgment and criticism are purely individual and infinitely variable. Two people see a thing: put scientifically, the result of this is that each experiences a stimulation of the optic nerve. Apart from any differences arising from the varying powers of concentration and observation, the stimulus will be the same. But the next step in the process of seeing is the translation of this nerve-stimulus by ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... effects is also found in organic processes (which, indeed, are partly chemical): as when a man eats bread and milk, and by digestion and assimilation converts them into nerve, muscle and bone. Such phenomena may make us wonder that people should ever have believed that 'effects resemble their causes,' or that 'like produces like.' A dim recognition of the equivalence of cause and effect in respect of matter and ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the thick of it," objected Barkleigh. "When the danger is so close you can see it, a woman's nerve isn't as good as a man's. It can't be. She isn't built ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... said his new-found friend. "Seems like I lose my nerve every time I try to say a word to that girl. Now, I plum forgot to ast you which way you was goin'. Do ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... an old man charged with "exhibitionism." To the normal mind this seems a particularly disgusting proceeding, and the offender's age is regarded as an aggravation. The explanation is that the higher nerve-cells of the old man are degenerating, that he may be thus unable effectively to control his morbid sexual impulses, particularly if stimulated by an enlarged prostate. Such a person is a subject for pity rather than punishment; he must be restrained from annoying others by ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... through life, and we have all sorts of sensations. We hunger and are fed. We are thirsty, and reach an oasis. We are homeless, and find shelter. We are ill, and again walk the streets. We dig and delve and strain every nerve and tissue, and the triumph comes at last, and with it often riches and honor. All these things send shivers of delight through us, and for the moment we spread our wings and soar heavenward. But when we take in our arms the girl we love, and hold close ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... refers scoffingly in the Holy Fair, is said to have been a woman of uncommon beauty and charm of manner. Their daughter, Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, suffered in early and middle life from chest and nerve troubles, and her son may have inherited from her some of his constitutional weakness. Capable, cultivated, companionable, affectionate, she was a determined looker at the bright side of things, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other wall, the murmur of every stream, aye! the hoots and hisses of every street in the nation, ring it in your ears, and deafen you with their din. The people have a voice of their own, and it must, it will be, sooner or later heard: and I, as in duty bound, will always exert every nerve and every power of which I am master, to hasten the completion of so desirable an event." ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that great mosaic, from the Fillmore-street hill, at once creates a nerve-soothing impression most uncommon in international expositions, and for that matter, in any architectural aggregate. One is at once struck with the fitness of the location and of the scheme of architecture. Personally, I am greatly impressed with the architectural scheme and the ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... of mine, a man of great nerve and courage, next inhabited the room, and went through the same experiences. He took every possible means to discover the cause of the sounds, and failed in accounting for them in any way. He said the blows on the door were so violent he ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... turning of a rosy purple, in the weird depths of the gorge were yet the unbroken shadows and stillness of night. But at the earliest peep of dawn the monk had risen, and now, as he paced up and down the little garden, his morning hymn mingled with Agnes's dreams,—words strong with all the nerve of the old Latin, which, when they were written, had scarcely ceased to be the spoken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... to the enemy; no computation swelling them higher than three thousand horse, two of them light cavalry, and nine thousand foot. The strength of his army lay in his Spanish infantry, on whose thorough discipline, steady nerve, and strong attachment to his person he felt he might confidently rely. In cavalry, and still more in artillery, he was far below the French, which, together with his great numerical inferiority, made it impossible for ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... goats and that dog and cat had nerve to face that beast," said one of the men. "I should like to own them ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... if that door should open outward. Every nerve in the miserable fugitive's body thrilled with hope. He examined it from top to bottom, though scarcely able to distinguish its outlines in the surrounding darkness. He passed his hand over it: no bolt, no lock! A latch! He started up, the latch yielded to the pressure of his ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... and all her lovely dark hair floated about her as if it were spread upon a wave that upheld her. She was beautiful indeed as she lay there sleeping, and the man, thus suddenly come upon her, anxious and troubled and every nerve quivering, stopped, awed with the beauty of her as if she had been some heavenly being suddenly confronting him. He stepped softly to her side and bending down observed her, first anxiously, to make sure she was alive ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... lives In many lives; through many a nerve she feels; From child to child the quick affections spread, For ever wand'ring, yet for ever fix'd. Nor does division weaken, nor the force Of constant operation e'er exhaust Parental love. All other passions change With changing circumstances; ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... that I should make you understand my feelings, nor do I pretend to any great virtue in the matter. The truth is, I want the force of character which might enable me to stand against the spirit of the times. The call on all sides now is for young men, and I have not the nerve to put myself in opposition to the demand. Were 'The Jupiter,' when it hears of my appointment, to write article after article setting forth my incompetency, I am sure it would cost me my reason. I ought to be able to bear with such things, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... right," observed Redmond after a pause, during which he keenly scrutinized the young agent's face. "Anyway, I ain't going to let it be said that you've got more nerve than I have. Let the lead hoss go where ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... is the basic cause of all so-called diseases. In the process of tissue-building (metabolism), there is cell-building (anabolism) and cell destruction (catabolism). The broken-down tissue is toxic. In the healthy body (when nerve energy is normal), this toxic material is eliminated from the blood as fast as it is evolved. But when nerve energy is dissipated from any cause (such as physical or mental excitement or bad habits) the body becomes weakened or enervated. When ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... and Hanson felt a vise clamp down around his throat. He tried to break free, but there was no escape. The old man mumbled, and the vise was gone, but something clawed at Hanson's liver. Something else rasped across his sciatic nerve. His kidneys seemed to be wrenched out ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... A few years ago there was a boxing match between Sam Mac Vea and Joe Jeannette that will remain famous in the history of the sport. Mac Vea was a heavy weight, strong, all muscle: a veritable black giant. Joe Jeannette, light, well proportioned, all nerve: a mongrel of the best sort. The match was epic. It went on for forty-two rounds and lasted three hours. At the third round, and again in the seventh, Sam Mac Vea threw Joe Jeannette, and his victory seemed assured. But little ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... ninth week in Boston. He had failed considerably since I last saw him, but he still continued to exhibit the bears and chuckled over his almost certain triumph. I laughed in return, and sincerely congratulated him on his nerve and probable success. I remained with him until the tenth week was finished, and handed him his $500. He took it with a leer of satisfaction, and remarked, that he was sorry I was a teetotaller, for he would ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... passing them from hand to hand. Of what tragedies were they not the cause! In August 1851, Antonio Sciesa, of Milan, was shot for having one such leaflet on his person. The gendarmes led him past his own house, hoping that the sight of it would weaken his nerve, and make him accept the clemency which was eagerly proffered if he would reveal the names of others engaged in the patriotic propaganda. 'Tiremm innanz!' ('come along') he said, in his rough Milanese dialect, and marched incorruptible to death. On a similar charge, Dottesio and Grioli, the latter ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... which wash out with a 5 per cent solution of permanganate of potash. As this is a dangerous location for a layman to interfere with, owing to the branching of the carotid artery, pneumogastric nerve and jugular vein, it should be done by ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... blusher, she was in her girlhood at mention or print of the story of men and women. Who, not having known her, could conceive it! But who could conceive that, behind the positive, plain-dealing, downright woman of the world, there was at times, when a nerve was touched or an old blocked path of imagination thrown open, a sensitive youthfulness; still quick to blush as far as the skin of a grandmother ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which was to come in May. Vane, with some petulance, refused to entertain the motion; but Endicott put the question, and it was carried. As the time drew near the excitement increased, the clergy straining every nerve to bring up their voters from the country; and on the morning of the day the feeling was so intense that the Rev. Mr. Wilson, forgetting his dignity and his age, scrambled up a tree and harangued the people from its branches. [Footnote: ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... express cars by dynamite, bank robbery, and the like exploits of the Anglo-American desperado, to steal, are unknown to the temperament of the Spanish-American. The latter are creatures of impulse, and lack the "nerve" for a well-planned murderous exploit of the above nature. Nor are they capable of the lynching, burnings of negroes, and race riots which characterise those parts of the United States which bound Mexico on the north, and once formed ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... an amused, detached interest, but Hobart's admiration had traveled past that point. He found it as impossible to define her charm as to evade it. Her inheritance of blood and her environment should have made her a finished product of civilization, but her salty breeziness, her nerve, vivid as a flame at times, disturbed delightfully the poise that held her when ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... and every nerve in his body quivering with wrath, the proud, unhappy boy strode through the gay streets. They had betrayed him then, these accursed Beauforts! they circled his steps with schemes to drive him like a deer into the snare of their loathsome charity! The roof ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with dates, figs, almonds, plantains, bananas, and a dozen other species of fruits, piled upon salvers of silver, were set before us: in fact, every product of the tropical clime that could excite a new nerve of the sense of taste. We were fairly astonished at the profusion of luxuries that came from ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... large must be the type in textbooks in order that young children may easily read it? What variations from the present school program are necessary in order to make adequate provision for change in the use of different sets of muscles, and relief from nerve strain? ...
— Health Work in the Public Schools • Leonard P. Ayres and May Ayres
... dream of such a thing. The shock would kill him. Therefore, I shall strain every nerve to keep him from ever learning the truth. I have a plan in mind, but before trying it you ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... thirty-six vessels for Stockholm, intending to capture the city. The Swedish fleet, being much inferior in numbers, was forced to retire under shelter of the fortress of Waxholm, which guards the access to the capital. In this dire dilemma, Gustavus strained every nerve to avert the threatened disaster. With a small force, chiefly of Dalecarlians, he marched day and night, and hastened to Waxholm in the hope of surprising the Danish fleet which had been detained by adverse winds. But the enemy, being probably informed of his approach, saw that their opportunity ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... do you think you possess sufficient courage and nerve to enter one of the prisons of the Blood Council? If you do, I may promise you the freedom of your friend. But recollect the risk you run is a very fearful one. If you are captured, your life will pay ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... spy is not a dishonourable person—at least, he need not be. I saw a monument in Westminster Abbey to a man who was hanged as a spy. A spy must be brave; he must have nerve, caution, and resource. He sometimes does more for his country than a whole regiment. Oh, there are worse persons than ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... hands. I had been there but an instant, however, when she vanished without looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what dreadful face she had to show; and I wondered whether, if instead of being above I had been below, I should have had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, there continued to be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night after my latest encounter with that gentleman—they were all numbered now—I had an alarm that perilously skirted ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... recruit was passed as "fit" by the doctor and turned over to a Corporal to make note of his scars. I was mystified. Suddenly the Corporal burst out with, "Blime me, two of his fingers are gone"; turning to me he said, "You certainly have your nerve with you, not 'alf you ain't, to bring this ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... plunge into the depths her patience gave out, and with a vow to be a slave no longer to her treacherous memory, she tumbled every thing in, performed a solemn jig on the lid till it locked, then pasted large, but illegible placards in every available spot, and rested from her labours with every nerve in a throbbing condition. ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Since the night he had flung himself out of her house, tortured in every nerve, she had not for a moment left him. When he walked through the house, she followed him, her stealthy footfall sounding just the merest fraction of a second after his. He avoided the bare polished floors and walked on the rugs whenever possible, that he might not hear that soft, slow ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... fighters had received more than they wanted. They had not only withdrawn to a good distance, but they did not even have nerve enough to launch a counter-attack. The American advance had been so well prepared that ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... of animals to be found with more brilliant abilities and livelier imagination than the Snail, but for gravity of demeanour and calmness of nerve who is his equal? And if a sound judgment be not behind such outward signs, there is no faith to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... "I do not. I told Mr. Sawyer so on the train. It is hotter in the country than it is in the city. I can't bear the ticking of a clock in my room, and I think crickets and owls are more nerve-destroying than clocks, and I positively detest anything that buzzes and stings, like bees, and wasps, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Orchard, we must not fail to see, is quite genuinely exasperated by the deadness of religious life, and is straining every nerve to quicken the soul of Christ's sleeping Church. This discontent of his is an important symptom, even if his prescription, a very old one, gives no hope of a cure. He is popular, influential, a figure of the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... dark reflection upon the prisoner, meditating her sentence; the prisoner, young enough to tremble in the suspense, old enough to enjoy the nerve-tension and the moment of drama, gazed back at him. Her hair lay in damp rings, and hung in rats'-tails about her forehead. Her small face, with the silver-clear skin, stippled here and there with ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... careless ease with which he took unnecessary and avoidable risks I had a feeling that there was deep design under everything he did. Though I couldn't have proved it if I'd been asked, I felt sure that he was trying my nerve. After all there's no better test of that than the crowded traffic of a big city. I've met men who'd cheerfully face a crowd of howling cannibals and yet would develop a very bad case of jumps if asked to cross a street roaring and humming ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... noble animal. The good people object to racing, because of the betting, but bad people, like myself, object to the cruelty. Men are not forced to bet. That is their own business, but the poor horse, straining every nerve, does not ask for the lash and iron. Abolish torture on the track and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the window, in a state of conflagration, every strained nerve vibrating. What need to attempt to recount what he said or thought? Dark Rosaleen has made trouble often enough between nearer and dearer than Larry and his young cousin. She will send brothers to fight each other to the changing music of her harp, crowned and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... week ahead had been enough to poison life for him. He was one of those young men whose souls revolt at the thought of planning out any definite step. He could do things on the spur of the moment, but plans made him lose his nerve. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... anything," said the lawyer, "except that I could bear testimony to the effect that your experience with flat life was similar to mine. This young person, with his customary nerve, tries to make it appear that I said you sang comic songs ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... yet Hath done no injury." A mingled sense Of fear and of confusion, from my lips Did such a "Yea" produce, as needed help Of vision to interpret. As when breaks In act to be discharg'd, a cross-bow bent Beyond its pitch, both nerve and bow o'erstretch'd, The flagging weapon feebly hits the mark; Thus, tears and sighs forth gushing, did I burst Beneath the heavy load, and thus my voice Was slacken'd on its way. She straight began: "When my desire invited thee to love The good, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... two men set up the tent and made a fire to boil the kettle, a short expedition was made by the three young naturalists, it being a settled thing that there was to be no collecting next day, but every nerve was to be strained to reach the ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... with one hand convulsively clutching the back of the chair he was leaning on, Pascal tried to nerve himself for some terrible blow. For was not his life at stake? Did not his whole future depend upon the revelations Madame Ferailleur was about to make? "So this was your object in going out, mother?" ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... "Darn his nerve, if he ain't wavin' his hand to me to say, 'I see you little boy, you're it!' Spotted me, danged if he didn't, by ginger! an' now the fun's a'goin' to start right along. Wow! this is what I like, an' pays up for a wheen o' lazy days. How the blood does leap through a feller's veins when he feels ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... inefficiency, discomfort. The woman lives all day in stifling rooms, poorly lighted, with the nerve-racking life of neighbors pouring itself through walls and windows. The men come from crowded shops and the children from crowded schoolrooms to crowd themselves into these rooms, to snatch a meal, or to sleep. How can there be real family life? What joy can ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... a supreme struggle began. All the coolness and nerve of the practitioner had returned to him. Till now he had not ventured to try any violent remedies, for he dreaded to enfeeble the little frame already almost destitute of life. But he no longer remained undecided, and straightway dispatched Rosalie for a dozen leeches. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... caused the older man to laugh. "No, my friend," said he to himself, "you shall not lose!" But what he said aloud was, "You must not be excited, Dunwody. You may need all your nerve. I thought you cooler in ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... of all is that of the man who keeps the gun on the target, whose true right eye may send twenty-five thousand tons of battleship to perdition. No one eye of any enlisted man can be as important as the gun-layer's. His the eye and the nerve trained as finely as the plugman's muscles. He does nothing else, thinks of nothing else. In common with painters and poets, gun-layers are born with a gift, and that gift is trained and trained and trained. It seems simple to ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... moments of dejection this was one of Willy's commonest thoughts. "I did my best, but I was opposed. Father doesn't care, and as for the girls, they'll take up with any man so long as he is young. Still, in spite of them I should have got on if I hadn't lost my nerve and had to give up hunting; and without hunting there is no ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... congratulate you both," he said to Ralph, "upon your coolness and presence of mind, in a very frightful position. The oldest aeronaut could not have shown more nerve." ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... joke—now," she said with a catch in her voice that showed how desperately hard she was trying to meet Chet's fortitude and force her own words to steadiness. "That takes—real nerve. I like that!" ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... suppression of normal sexual life. The past has shown, moreover, that when society succeeded in spreading alarm and in decreasing prostitution by fear, the result was such a rapid increase of perversion and nerve-racking self-abuse that after a short while the normal ways were again preferred ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... month is scarcely sufficient. It would be folly, such as you never show, to trust a nerve so undermined as mine till time has restored its power. For an enterprise like this you need a man of ready strength and resources; not one whose condition you might be obliged to consider ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... in whom we trust, to direct your counsels by His unerring wisdom, guide you with His effectual spirit. We now conjure you by the sacred charities of kindred, by the solemn obligations of justice, by every consideration of domestic affection and patriotic duty, to nerve every faculty of your minds to the investigation of this important subject, and let not the united voices of your mothers, wives, daughters and kindred have sounded in vain in your ears."—Drewry, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... hours before dark. Rachael was conscious of every nerve in her body, and paced up and down the long line of rooms which terminated in the library, until Alexander's legs were worn out trotting after her, and he fell asleep on the floor. Twice she went to the roof to look for Hamilton's ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and said, "Now direct the nerve of sight across the ancient scum, there yonder where ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... and knocked. The inmate there was still in bed, as was his custom, and answered Mr Wentworth through his beard in a recumbent voice, less sulky and more uncertain than on the previous night. Poor Wodehouse had neither the nerve nor the digestion of his more splendid associate. He had no strength of evil in himself when he was out of the way of it; and the consequence of a restless night was a natural amount of penitence and shame in the morning. He met the Curate with a depressed countenance, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... boy, from boy to youth he grew, But more in grace and knowledge than in years. At play his joyous laugh rang loud and clear, His foot was fleetest in all boyish games, And strong his arm, and steady nerve and eye, To whirl the quoit and send the arrow home; Yet seeming oft to strive, he'd check his speed And miss his mark to let a comrade win. In fullness of young life he climbed the cliffs Where human foot had never trod before. He led the chase, but when soft-eyed ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... of other matters than the hidden Numa by a shrill scream of warning from the Ape. Turning his eyes quickly in the direction of his companion, the boy saw that, standing in the path directly before him, which sent tremors of excitement racing along every nerve of his body. With body half-merging from a clump of bushes in which she must have lain hidden stood a sleek and beautiful lioness. Her yellow-green eyes were round and staring, boring straight into the eyes ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lighted caboose. Night freights do not stop at Gatun, nor anywhere merely to let off a "gum-shoe." But just beyond New Gatun station is a grade that sets the negro fireman to sweating even at midnight and the big Mogul to straining every nerve and sinew, and I did not meet the engineer that could drag his long load by so swiftly but that one could easily swing off on the road that leads ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... enemy's artillery became less active and we sent off the wounded. Those who could walk were compelled to follow the bearer parties. One man, who was not badly hit, had lost his nerve and refused to leave. The doctor had to tell him sharply that he need not expect to be carried, as there were too many serious cases to be attended to. I went over to him and offered him my arm. At first he refused to come, and then I ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... your fieldglasses, and did not wait for it to reach me, in which case it would have pecked out my eyes and struck me with its claws, probably tearing my chest open, but sprang to meet it. Death seemed absolutely certain, and though my nerve was set, and, as it were, I mentally gave up my life, I met the bird with a thud. With both hands I caught its neck before it could lift a foot to strike; we both rolled over, and, with strength given me at the moment, I clung to its neck until I came up, 'top dog.' But then ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... main-spring of the universe. Modern science is more and more inclined to find the explanation of all vital phenomena in electrical stress and change. We know that an electric current will bring about chemical changes otherwise impracticable. Nerve force, if not a form of electricity, is probably inseparable from it. Chemical changes equivalent to the combustion of fuel and the corresponding amount of available energy released have not yet been achieved ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... to be distinctly marked. While there were but two parties, that is the liberal and the illiberal among the patricians, there were no less than three among the plebeians. Only one of the three could be called a plebeian party. That was the party containing the nerve and sinew of the order, which united only with the liberal patricians, and with them only on comparatively independent terms. The other two parties were nothing but servile ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... so nerve-racked that she was on the point of tears, the girl put off the attempt. But days passed, and when no inspiration came, and she was still haunted by the thought of a duty undone, she compromised by telegraphing ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... us, his words put fire into our hearts; and in order to show him that we really were his children, and not the kind of men to shrink from danger, we used to march right up to great blackguards of cannon which bellowed and vomited balls without so much as saying "Look out!" Even dying men had the nerve to raise their heads and salute him with the cry of "Long live the Emperor!" Was that natural? Would they have done that for a ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... history was winding toward an unhappy conclusion. Many feared that the end of that foreign war of men and machines meant the beginning of a domestic war of recrimination and reprisal. Friends and adversaries abroad were asking whether America had lost its nerve. Finally, our economy was ravaged by inflation—inflation that was plunging us into the worst recession in four decades. At the same time, Americans became increasingly alienated from big institutions. They were steadily losing confidence, not just in big government but in big business, big labor, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford • Gerald R. Ford
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