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More "Posture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart thumped and he could feel the blood beat in his ears, but he was not trembling or unmanned, though curious chills crept all over his body. This person had advanced now half the way toward him, moving with the same half bent posture, and the left hand gripping the gray cloth at the throat, forming a hood. Then the woman, within three feet of him, raised her face, and looked at him with the wildest eyes ever set in a human visage. They were shot with horror, terror ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... naturalist says, "As soon as any one appears in the fields where the nest is, the bird runs quietly and rapidly in a stooping posture to some distance from it, and then rises with loud cries and appearance of alarm, as if her nest was immediately below the spot she rose from. When the young ones are hatched, too, the place to look for them is, not where the parent birds ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... rocket. Kalora saw him give an upward twist and wriggle, fling himself free from the pole and disappear on the other side of the wall, the camera following like the tail of a comet. As he did so, number two, coming to a sitting posture, began to shriek for reinforcements. Number one was up on his elbow, regarding the affairs of this world with ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... of them, they need but turn their eyes that way. We know some men will not read a letter which is supposed to bring ill news; and many men forbear to cast up their accounts, or so much as think upon their estates, who have reason to fear their affairs are in no very good posture. How men, whose plentiful fortunes allow them leisure to improve their understandings, can satisfy themselves with a lazy ignorance, I cannot tell: but methinks they have a low opinion of their souls, who lay out all their incomes in provisions ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... a supposedly professional posture, Bertram wrought with hammer and last, while putting off, with lame, blind and halting, excuses, such as came to call for their promised footgear. By a triumph of tact he had just disposed of a rancid-tongued ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... o'clock struck, and my patient slept tranquilly. At a quarter to one, however, I was abruptly roused from a reverie by a sob, a sob of fear and agony that proceeded from the bed. I looked, and there—there, seated in the same posture as on the previous evening, was the child. I sprang to my feet with an exclamation of amazement. She raised her hand, and, as before, I collapsed—spellbound—paralysed. No words of mine can convey all the sensations ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... his arms: whenever asked to dance, he does it with great readiness; his motions at first are very slow, and are regulated by a dismal tune, which grows quicker as the dance advances, till at length he throws himself into the most violent posture, shaking his arms, and striking the ground with great force, which gives him the appearance of madness. It is very probable that this part of the dance is used as a sort of defiance, as all the natives which were seen when we first arrived at Port Jackson, always joined this sort of dance to ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... obediently as a child, but at first remained in a sitting posture and asked, in scarcely intelligible broken Greek, how he came to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that could not be, for now Seth, apparently sure that the coast was clear, emerged from his hiding place and ran in a stooping posture until he reached another clump further off and nearer the end of the cove. He remained there an instant and then ran, still crouching, until he disappeared behind a high dune at the rear of the bungalow. And there he stayed; at least Brown did ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... betray," said Rienzi, smiling; "but rise, my friend,—this posture is only due to ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the throes and struggles which proclaimed a painful return of life, Harrington lifted Mabel to a sitting posture and supported her there. His heart was wrung by every spasm of anguish that swept over her; yet at each one, he sent up a brief thanksgiving, for it was a proof of returning consciousness. Still she looked ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... brought forward, and placed in the midst of the armed body of men; then each youth was made to sit down, holding his head downwards, with his hands clasped, and his legs crossed under him, in which painful posture it was said they were to remain all night, without looking up or taking any refreshment whatever.[39] The Carrahdis, or persons who were to perform the operation, now began some of their strange mummeries. Each one of these, in his turn, appeared to suffer most extreme agony, and put himself ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... leave them pretty much to the parson; though I will own it is not quite as easy leaning on the edge of one of the new-school pews as on one of the old. They are better for sitting, but not so good for standing. But then the sitting posture at prayers is quite coming into favour among our people, Miss Effingham, as well as among yours. The sermon is the main ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the other way, in the direction of his own camp. His attitude was in sharp contrast with the easy, lounging posture of a few moments before. He was tense and alert, straining forward a little, his lean body poised as if he balanced for a jump. There was a clattering on the small stones which strewed the ground thickly there, as ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... had taken the bread which repaid the toil of heart and brain from the coarse palms which offered it in the world's rude market. It was not for herself alone that she had bartered away the life of her youth, that she had breathed the hot air of schoolrooms, that she had forced her intelligence to posture before her will, as the exigencies of her place required,—waking to mental labor,—sleeping to dream of problems,—rolling up the stone of education for an endless twelvemonth's term, to find it at ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sleeper. The snoring changed to a series of loud choking snorts, then ceased. Martin, well pleased at the success of his experiment, was about to return to his bed when old Jacob struggled up to a sitting posture. ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... slipped down into a sitting posture on the stone door-step, and sat there, her great eyes staring out seaward, her hands lying loose upon her knee, ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... vestry I met old friends. The maternal Sellars, stouter than ever, had been accommodated with a chair—at least, I assumed so, she being in a sitting posture; the chair itself was not in evidence. She greeted me with more graciousness than I had expected, enquiring after my health with pointedness and an amount of tender solicitude that, until the explanation broke ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... he cast himself upon his knees before the Dowager. He cast himself down, and the Dowager experienced a faint stirring of surprise that she heard no flop such as must attend the violent falling of so fat a body. But the next instant, realizing the purpose of his absurd posture, she shrank back with a faint gasp, and her face was mercifully blurred to his sight once more amid the shadows of her chair. Thus was he spared the look of utter loathing, of unconquerable, irrepressible disgust ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... about one hundred yards from them, which filled them with anxiety and terror; the Major's horse was galloping away, and the Major not to be seen. Under a large tree, Swanevelt was in a sitting posture, holding his hands to his body as if severely wounded, his horse lying by his side, and right before him an enormous bull buffalo, standing motionless; the blood was streaming from the animal's nostrils, and it was evidently tottering from weakness and loss of blood; ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... corner of the wall which is in the way, it is removed; here is a redan which may afford protection, they take shelter behind it. Left-handed men are precious; they take the places that are inconvenient to the rest. Many arrange to fight in a sitting posture. They wish to be at ease to kill, and to die comfortably. In the sad war of June, 1848, an insurgent who was a formidable marksman, and who was firing from the top of a terrace upon a roof, had a reclining-chair brought there for his use; a charge of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... turned out as I requested; we sat down, and when we had drank to each other's health, Frank requested me to make known to him how I had contrived to free myself from my embarrassments in London, what I had been about since I quitted that city, and the present posture of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... goody-goody ways, that they were so damned pious they made her sick. Then rage and lust seemed to possess her and she would talk about men in a shocking way, using unspeakable words, while the expression of her face and the posture of her body became those ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... conscientious scruples in regard to choosing a profession, and wish much I had the power of giving you advice that would be of the least service. But that, I fear, in my total ignorance of yourself and the posture of your affairs, is pretty nearly impossible. The profession of the law is in many respects a most honorable one, and has this to recommend it, that a man succeeds there, if he succeeds at all, in an independent and manful manner, by force of his own talent and behavior, without needing to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... she had been half-asleep, for when I entered her room she started up in a sitting posture, looking wild, and putting her hands to ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... wicker-work fastened on the elephant's back. Before Jack could recover himself from his fall, the Malay and two other men bounded into the howdah, and flung themselves on the prisoner. In a trice they had strapped his ankles together again. Then they swung him into a sitting posture, and lashed his arms firmly to ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... B—— was at Madame Rogt's house, M. Beauvais, who was going out, told her that a gendarme was expected there, and she, Madame B., must not say anything to the gendarme until he returned, but let the matter be for him.... In the present posture of affairs, M. Beauvais appears to have the whole matter looked up in his head. A single step cannot be taken without M. Beauvais; for, go which way you will, you run against him.... For some reason, he determined that nobody shall have any thing to do with the proceedings ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that no search may trace its origin. If I am reading, doubtless a thought, a phrase, possibly a mere word, on the page before me serves to awaken memory. If I am otherwise occupied, it must be an object seen, an odour, a touch; perhaps even a posture of the body suffices to recall something in the past. Sometimes the vision passes, and there an end; sometimes, however, it has successors, the memory working quite independently of my will, and no link appearing between ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... dead in a sitting posture on a woven grass mat, with an olla, and frequently a bone dagger, beside them. In the clean, dry air of the uplands of Arizona the process of decay is slow. Sundown, unaware of this, hardly anticipated that ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... They slowly rose to their feet, and patiently trudged out into the road. Smith gave them a hand, and they climbed upon the footboard of the ambulance, and over into the interior. One of the black men called harshly to the man in the ditch down the road. He turned from his sitting posture, fell over on his face, and then came crawling on his hands ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... put to death, three Gothic nobles whom she suspected of intriguing against her rule, and at the same time opened negotiations with the emperor Justinian with the view of removing herself and the Gothic treasure to Constantinople. Her son's death in 534 made but little change in the posture of affairs. Amalasuntha, now queen, with a view of strengthening her position, made her cousin Theodahad partner of her throne (not, as sometimes stated, her husband, for his wife was still living). The choice ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... towards the top of the street. She longed to know what they were doing, but not being one of those unimaginative and tactless folk who rush headlong into the mysteries of children's doings, she passed them at first in silence. It was only when she found them still in the same silent and expectant posture half an hour later that she said tentatively: "I wonder whether you would tell me what you are doing here?" After some hesitation, one of them said, in a shy voice: "We're waitin' for the barrer." It then transpired that, once a week, a vegetable-and-flower-cart ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... help little to an understanding of the terrible force of entreaty he put into this speech. His face, his hands, the posture of his body, all joined in pleading. He had cast off all shamefacedness, and spoke as if his life depended on the answer she would return; the very lack of refinement in his tone, in his pronunciation of certain words, made his appeal the ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... support the back in lieu of an arm-chair. Each person had a cord knotted by the ends so as to form an endless loop or hoop. The size depended upon the measurement required, so that if the hoop were thrown over the body when in a sitting posture upon the ground, with the knees raised, the rope would form a band around the forepart of the knees and the small of the back, which would thus ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the Texan raised himself to a sitting posture. "Where's Bat?" he asked. "An' why ain't he onsaddled those horses, an' built ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... animal; (2) Quantity, of such a height or weight; (3) Quality, fair or dark; (4) Relation, shorter or taller than Xanthippe; (5) Where, at Athens; (6) When, two thousand and odd years ago; (7) Action, that he questions or pleads; (8) Passion, that he is answered or condemned; (9) Posture, that he sits or stands; (10) Habit, that he is clothed ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who gazed on the Medusa's head, and felt, without a struggle, the human being gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not idiocy,—it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as the night advanced ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... threshold of one of the cells, he whispered to me, in a voice full of entreaty, to put off my shoes; at the same time prostrating himself with a movement and expression of the most abject humility before the door, where he remained, without changing his posture. I stooped involuntarily, and scanned curiously, anxiously, the scene within the cell. There sat the king; and at a sign from him I presently entered, and sat down ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... as one exhausted by the pangs of childbirth (Isaiah lxvi. 7), or to exhibit assistants as washing the heavenly Infant. "To her alone," says St. Bernard, "did not the punishment of Eve extend." "Not in sorrow," says Bishop Taylor, "not in pain, but in the posture and guise of worshippers (that is, kneeling), and in the midst of glorious thoughts and speculations, did Mary bring her Son into ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Instructions teach a Boy Modesty, Civility, and Manners becoming his Age, in what Posture he ought to stand while he talks to his Superiors; concerning Habit, Discourse, and Behaviour at Table and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... him on the floor. He kicked out, and the next moment his ankle was gripped and held by a row of keen teeth. He yelled again, and tried to free his leg by kicking with the other. Then he realised he had the broken water-bottle at his hand, and, snatching it, he struggled into a sitting posture, and feeling in the darkness towards his foot, gripped a velvety ear, like the ear of a big cat. He had seized the water-bottle by its neck and brought it down with a shivering crash upon the head of the strange beast. He repeated the blow, and then stabbed and jobbed with the ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... on with the chain, was a political acrobat, ready for any kind of posture. A friend of mine gave me several times an account of a mission to him. A Tory member—those who know the old Tory world may look for his initials in initials of two consecutive words of "Pay his money with interest"—who was, of course, a political opponent, thought Cobbett had ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... bank on a clear day, looking up into the sky and watching the ascent of a skylark while you listen to his song. That is a posture in which several poets of repute have placed themselves from time to time: so we need not be ashamed of it. Well, you see the atmosphere reaching up and up, mile upon mile. There are no milestones planted ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Rev. D. Griffiths, who was then residing at Antananarivo. The nine condemned Christians were taken past Mr. Griffiths' house. "Ramonisa," he says, "looked at me and smiled; others also looked at me, and their faces shone like those of angels in the posture of prayer and wrestling with God. They were too weak to walk, having been without rice or water for a long time. The people on the wall and in the yard before our house were cleared off by the swords and spears of those ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... mouth, in order that He may syllable them anew,—making them sweeter than honey to our lips, yea, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb;—what is Man that he should reply against GOD? What should be our posture, at witnessing such a spectacle, but one of Adoration? What, our ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... support incumbent floor or roof, For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, That crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the beholder's fancy; so I saw These fashion'd, when I ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the Doctor refused. However, by the skilfulness of one Doctor Brady of that place, I began at last to amend; but, although I was so sore and bad with the wounds I had all over me that I could not rest in any posture, yet I was in more pain on account of the captain's uneasiness about me than I otherwise should have been. The worthy man nursed and watched me all the hours of the night; and I was, through his attention and that of the doctor, able to get out of bed ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... than usually contrary and provoking—and if it had not been for some recent disgrace which his prying disposition had occasioned at the hall, he would long ago have satisfied himself by a personal inquiry into the present posture of affairs. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... baby-house and doll idol, and it frequently has in addition a roll of paper, four feet by one, like a window curtain, with, a gay picture of Joss, in a scarlet dress, in the act of dancing, and generally in a very absurd posture ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out from the gallery of the commandant's house, the wind blowing her curls back from her shoulders. A bastion of Fort St. Louis was like a balcony in the clouds. The child's lithe, long body made a graceful line in every posture, and her face was ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of these were, I suppose, what Winthrop calls "business-women, fighting their way out of vulgarity into style." The process is rather uninteresting, but the result may be glorious. Yet a good many of them were good honest, kind, common girls, only demoralized by long lying around in a waiting posture. It had taken the fire and sparkle out of them. They were not in a healthy state. They were degraded, contracted, flaccid. They did not hold themselves high. They knew that in a market-point of view there was a frightful glut of women. The usually ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... started as though cut by a knife, and bent low over the fallen detective, who was now struggling to a sitting posture. ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... tears and flung himself upon my breast, nearly knocking me down. I wrenched myself free of him and ran to Marie, who was lying face upwards on the ground. She seemed to hear my step, for her eyes opened and she struggled to a sitting posture. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... artist that the figure stands as much more than a portrait, having in it something more living, more typical, deeper than the mere outward mould of the man. St. Gaudens's Farragut has the bearing of a seaman, balanced on his two legs, in a posture easy, yet strong. He is rough and bluff with the courage and simplicity of a commander; his eye is accustomed to deal with horizons, while the features are clean-cut and masterful. The inscription is happy: ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... mating season the female may be seen perching — a posture one rarely catches her gay lover in — preening her dainty but sombre feathers with ladylike nicety. The young birds do a great deal of perching before they gain the marvellously rapid wing-motions of maturity, but they are ready to fly within three weeks after they are hatched. By the time ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... here was a complex of at least a hundred and ten major planets, inhabited by a fairly homogenous, civilized people, speaking from a technological point of view at least. And almost overnight some force changed the entire cultural posture. I made him see that identification of that force is of no small interest to us right now. If it operated once, it could operate again—and would its results be ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... because nothing improper will be likely TO BE DONE, but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping affairs in the same unfavorable posture in which they may happen to stand at particular periods. Suppose, for instance, we were engaged in a war, in conjunction with one foreign nation, against another. Suppose the necessity of our situation demanded peace, and the interest or ambition of ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Sadler's Wells? [Q] Though at that time Intolerant, as is the way of youth Unless itself be pleased, here more than once Taking my seat, I saw (nor blush to add, 270 With ample recompense) giants and dwarfs, Clowns, conjurors, posture-masters, harlequins, Amid the uproar of the rabblement, Perform their feats. Nor was it mean delight To watch crude Nature work in untaught minds; 275 To note the laws and progress of belief; Though obstinate on this way, yet on that How willingly ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... by my bedroom fire, thinking, and, I am afraid, conjuring up all sorts of terrible reasons for my dear husband's silence, until I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke chilly and cramped from the uncomfortable posture I had slept in. The fire was out, and the house silent as the grave; not even a carriage passing to take up some late guest. I looked at the clock, half-past three, and then from my window. It was that "darkest hour before dawn," and I hurried ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... round; and as often as he rose for these purposes, so often did he observe the glittering eye of the Black Swan glaring round the encampment, although its owner never once moved from his recumbent posture. ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... lived, then! He looked at me! It was an awful discovery to make, and the contrast of his anxious and feverish stare with the collapsed posture of his body was full of intolerable suggestions of fate blundering unlawfully, of death itself being conquered by pain. I looked away only to perceive something pitiless, belittling, and cruel in the precipitous ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and wood of Finnieston, in which my reverend preceptor had the privilege of walking for study, and to which he had a key that was always at my command. Near one of the stiles, I perceived a young man sitting in a devout posture, reading a Bible. He rose, lifted his hat, and made an obeisance to me, which I returned and walked on. I had not well crossed the stile till it struck me I knew the face of the youth and that he was some intimate acquaintance, to whom I ought to have spoken. I walked on, and returned, and walked ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... like the natives of Port Jackson, having fallen to the low pitch of their voices, recommenced their song at the octave, which was accompanied by slow and not ungraceful motions of the body and limbs, their hands being held up in a supplicating posture; and the tone and manner of their song and gestures seemed to bespeak the goodwill and forbearance of their auditors. Observing that they were attentively listened to, they each selected one of our people and placed his mouth close to his ear, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... displayed with an extravagant but not ungraceful foppery. His gown waved in loose folds; his long dark curls were dressed with exquisite art, and shone and steamed with odours; his step and gesture exhibited an elegant and commanding figure in every posture of polite languor. But his countenance formed a singular contrast to the general appearance of his person. The high and imperial brow, the keen aquiline features, the compressed mouth; the penetrating ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at his changed expression, and then swung herself easily to a sitting posture on the low projecting branch of a hemlock. The act was still girlish, but, nevertheless, she looked down upon him in a superior, patronizing way. "Now, Clarence," she said, with a half-abstracted manner, "don't you ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... should behold the ravenous brute, in spite of our cries, and all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it;—to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel animal grunt with savage pleasure over the horrid banquet; to hear and ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... morning was just breaking when a final bump of the train ended the none too musical snoring of Slim Goodwin and he came to a sitting posture, his first yawn almost instantly to give way to ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... before us the King of smiles. His is the wooer's posture. He speaks, but not with his usual voice of command. Oberon, as it were, calls Titania to the woodland when stars are torch and candle to the ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... youngster who had called for volunteers for his attack against this strange enemy. It touched his plane—and the plane vanished instantly, while for a fraction of a second the pilot was visible in his place, in the posture of sitting, hand on a row of buttons which did not exist, head forward slightly as he aimed guns ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... not without design. I had meant only to arouse a feeling of compassion for a young girl half-orphaned; but something more than was in my mind had been suggested to hers. She quickly raised herself from a reclining posture, threw off the concealing handkerchief, and gazed intently in my face, while saying slowly, as if to herself: "Not only motherless, but ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... trapper glided in a stooping posture down the side of the hillock, and round the base of it, until he got immediately behind the youthful sentinel. Then lying down, and creeping towards him with the utmost caution, he succeeded in getting so near that he could almost touch him. With one cat-like ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... among my workmen when they came, and set them in good order at work on all hands, which, though it at first began angrily, yet I pleased myself afterwards in seeing it put into a good posture, and so I left them, and away by water to Woolwich (calling in my way in Hamcreek, where I have never been before, and there found two of the King's ships lie there without any living creature aboard, which troubled me, every thing being stole away that can be), where ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... less than five minutes when I heard a swift, elastic step approaching through the next room, and a second or so later, before I had time to take up an appropriate posture, the door was thrown open and the exquisite vision of my waking dreams—the beautiful ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... At the end bowls of rice, which is brought in in a big lacquer dish with a cover looking some like a small barrel. This is put into bowls by one of the older dancers and handed about by the younger ones who get up and down from their kneeling posture by just lifting themselves as if they had no weight, on their toes. Many of the Japanese take the regulation three bowls full of rice, and eat it very fast. I must say their rice is delicious, but I cannot get away with more than one bowl, partly because I cannot gobble. Then, for the last, ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... from his crouching posture to his knees. The other, all his savage instincts primed for onslaught, saw menace in the movement, and stood braced and ready. Like Susan he understood that David had guessed the secret. He could judge him only by his own measure, and he ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... himself squatted behind the vat, and Bouvard lay like one who had fallen over a stool. For ten minutes they remained in this posture, not daring to venture on a single movement, pale with terror, in the midst of broken glass. When they were able to recover the power of speech, they asked themselves what was the cause of so many ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... only by drunken brawls at midnight on deck, waking us from sound slumbers; or the sight of a whale spouting during the day. Sometimes a breeze would spring up from the wrong direction, rolling us for a few hours, causing us to prefer a reclining posture instead of an upright one, and giving our complexions a still deeper lemonish cast; sometimes we were well inclined to feed the fishes in the sea, and did not; but at all times we were thankful that matters ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... forward at these words, and Mr. Pecksniff stepped back so hastily that he missed his footing, tumbled over a chair, and fell in a sitting posture on the ground, where he remained, perhaps ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... in a dingy and battered hat, an old surtout, and a more than shabby general aspect; a thin face and a red nose, a patch over one eye, and the other half drowned in moisture. He leans in a slightly stooping posture on a stick, forlorn and silent, addressing nobody but fixing his one moist eye on you with a certain intentness. He is a man who has been in decent circumstances at some former period of his life, but, falling into decay, he now haunts about the place, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... climate rendered necessary. They are now used as granaries by the country people. While I sat here, from the town of Tents not far off, many of the women flocked in to see me, and we were equally entertained with viewing one another. Their posture in sitting, the colour of their skin, their lank black hair falling on each side their faces, their features, and the shape of their limbs, differ so little from their country-people the baboons, 'tis hard to fancy them a ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... a report; Friedel leaped back, staggered, fell; Ebbo started to a sitting posture, with horrified eyes, and a loud shriek, calling on his brother; Moritz sprang to his feet, shouting, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whose name I forget, succeeded in killing this queen of the moose tribe with great difficulty, while her calf was killed somewhere among the islands in Penobscot Bay; and to his eyes this mountain had still the form of the moose in a reclining posture, its precipitous side presenting the outline of her head. He told this at some length, though it did not amount to much, and with apparent good faith, and asked us how we supposed the hunter could have killed such a mighty ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... when they were interred in other places. In many houses in which I made diggings I regularly found the following arrangement. Under a stratum of earth two feet deep lay the body, in a state of good preservation, and generally, but not always, in a sitting posture. On clearing away another stratum of earth equally deep there is found a variety of household vessels for cooking, together with water-pots of clay, gourds, hunting and fishing implements, &c. There is frequently a ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... hours of simple patience, with nothing to entertain one's thoughts but the steady roar of the line under the wheels, the blinking and dripping of the oil lantern, and the more or less ungainly wretchedness, and variously sullen compromises and encroachments of posture, among the five other passengers preparing themselves for sleep: the last arrangement for the night being to shut up both windows, in order to effect, with our six breaths, a salutary modification ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... posture, took the verdict of the ring of faces and in a trice tugged open the two buckles. The central fastening was not locked, and yielded to a touch. The flannel shirt, the weird collar and a few other garments in the nature ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... no suggestions, and L but few. "I'll lay," has no reference to eggs or to a recumbent posture, but implies a wager. Some years ago, I was riding to the meet, and came up inaudibly, upon the wayside grass, with two grooms on their masters' hunters, peering over their pummels at a mounted horse in the distance before them and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... king and queen resolved to hold a counsel of three upon it; and so they sent for the princess. In she came, sliding and flitting and gliding from one piece of furniture to another, and put herself at last in an armchair, in a sitting posture. Whether she could be said to sit, seeing she received no support from the seat of the chair, I do not ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... Indeed, the chances seemed to be a hundred to one against the lieutenant, who could handle with terrible effect a cutlass or a boarding-pike, but was almost a stranger to a weapon, to excel in the use of which, a man must be as loose in the joints as a posture maker, and as light in the heels as a dancing master. And yet there was something in the cool, resolute, business-like bearing of the Yankee which inspired his friends with some confidence in his success; and they watched the proceedings under ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... and put himself into a posture of defence. Wenlock perceiving he was serious in his anger, began to soothe him; he persuaded, he flattered, he promised great things if he would be composed. Markham was sullen, uneasy, resentful; whenever he spoke, it was to upbraid Wenlock with his treachery and falsehood. Wenlock tried ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... the breath is departed, the body is dressed in the same attire it usually wore, his face is painted, and he is seated in an erect posture on a mat or skin, placed in the middle of the hut, with his weapons by his side. His relatives, seated around, each harangues the deceased; and if he has been a great warrior, recounts his heroic actions nearly to the following ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... rich from the detritus of the basalt that forms or caps the hills; but it is now in a bad state of cultivation, partly from several successive seasons of great calamity, under which the people have been suffering, and partly from over-assessment; and this posture of affairs is continued by that loss of energy, industry, and character, among the farmers and cultivators, which must everywhere result from these two evils. In India, where the people have learnt so well to govern themselves, from the want of settled government, good or bad government really ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... or convulsions, the poor old woman was made to touch them, and they immediately sprang to their feet. Samuel Parris had his minions well trained. On any special action of her body, shaking of her head, or the turning of her eyes, they imitated her posture and ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... square or cubical man," as the words may be translated—was a term used to designate a man of unsullied integrity. Hence one of their most eminent metaphysicians[112] has said that "he who valiantly sustains the shocks of adverse fortune, demeaning himself uprightly, is truly good and of a square posture, without reproof; and he who would assume such a square posture should often subject himself to the perfectly square test of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... damask, in Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil Of Phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother, As if that whatsoever god, who leads him, Were slyly crept into his human powers, And gave him graceful posture. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... fists belligerently. His debtor raised both arms in a posture of defense. The principal tiptoed noiselessly around the end of the fence. John sparred for an opening and his ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... size at all, wandering about and living a thin and half-awake life for want of good old-fashioned solid matter to come down upon with foot and fist,—in fact, having neither foot nor fist, nor conveniences for taking the sitting posture. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... possessor! Art thou minded to put on the splendour of official dignity? Thou must beg from those who have the giving of it; thou who covetest to outvie others in honour must lower thyself to the humble posture of petition. Dost thou long for power? Thou must face perils, for thou wilt be at the mercy of thy subjects' plots. Is glory thy aim? Thou art lured on through all manner of hardships, and there ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... on, no one knows to what length, had not the servant entered to set the table for supper. Under her mistress' directions she was about to place it beside the bed, when the young girl sprang into a sitting posture and with ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... rise upon his hind legs and look in front of him. This posture was not hard, for in his native jungle, he had often thus obtained a breakfast of venison for his wife and family. But oh, to stand a half hour on two legs only, when he had four, and would gladly have used all of them, was hard. Yet this was the position, called ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... basis of the emotion. What makes the sense of peace in the atmosphere of the Low Countries? Only the tendency, on following those level lines of landscape, to assume ourselves the horizontal, and the restfulness which belongs to that posture. If the crimson of a picture by Bocklin, or the golden glow of a Giorgione, or the fantastic gleam of a Rembrandt speaks to me like a human voice, it is not because it expresses to me an idea, but because it impresses that sensibility which is deeper than ideas,—the region of ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Hester that has a word for old Roger Chillingworth?" answered he, raising himself from his stooping posture. "With all my heart! Why, Mistress, I hear good tidings of you on all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve, a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the council. It was ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is marked off from that of natural sleep, first of all, by the fact that the accompanying hallucinations are wholly due to external suggestion (including the effects of bodily posture). Dreams may, as we have seen, be very faintly modified by external influences, but during sleep there is nothing answering to the perfect control which the operator exercises over the hypnotized subject. The largest quantity of our "dream-stuff" comes, as we have seen, from ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... always been a delicate boy, although, while in the country, his health was good; but now the confined air of the shop, and the odour of the leather, and the stooping posture consequent on his trade, began to tell painfully upon him. He wondered what was the matter that he did not now ever feel bright and hopeful. He went about his work mechanically, was listless and silent. His features assumed a cast of anxiety unnatural in a child, ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... heaven. I shall, therefore, only give you my comment on the text, which is, that France has done too much and much too little. Too much, since she alarmed England, and made that country put itself in a better posture of defence than before; or at least, strengthened the hands of her Ministers for that purpose; much too little, because, depending even on that little, we looked not out ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... and significant motion of her finger, remained in the room, and, resuming his position at the table, prepared to continue his writing. The poet Emilius could not, of course, fail to notice this somewhat confused alteration of posture, but no suspicion of having intruded upon an embarrassing scene crossed his mind. He merely saw a proudly erect mistress and a cowering slave; and it was no unusual thing to interrupt a Roman lady in the act ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Glarus they endeavored to secure by the same means which had proved abortive with Bern. Here, however, they seemed to succeed better. In fact, the general assembly of the canton handed over at their request a sealed promise not to separate themselves in matters of faith. In this posture of affairs, they held immoveably firm to the opinion, that whatever seven or eight out of thirteen states thought fit, should be considered the decision of the Confederacy. But our whole earlier history shows how varying the practice ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... stoole I sit, and tell The warlike feats I haue done, his spirits flye out Into my Story: say thus mine Enemy fell, And thus I set my foote on's necke, euen then The Princely blood flowes in his Cheeke, he sweats, Straines his yong Nerues, and puts himselfe in posture That acts my words. The yonger Brother Cadwall, Once Aruiragus, in as like a figure Strikes life into my speech, and shewes much more His owne conceyuing. Hearke, the Game is rows'd, Oh Cymbeline, Heauen and my Conscience knowes Thou didd'st vniustly banish ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... think, but the effort increased the pain in my head. I felt cramped, as though I had lain long in one posture. I tried to turn, but was able only to stretch my ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... broadly uttered, in last words as he turned over with a grunt, for easier posture, near me, "hooray! If it simmers down to you and Dan'l, I'll ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... each stretched out in a forecastle bunk with a bag of other greasy rags for a pillow. Rogers was the first to roll out, and after a blear-eyed inspection of the forecastle, which included the other two, he ejaculated, "Well, I'll be blanked!" Then he shook each into sitting posture, listened to their groaning protests, and sat down on a chest, shaking with silent laughter, while the other two ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... Harry, "I think that cannot be the reason; I rather imagine that it must be owing to our roof lying so flat; for I have observed that all houses that I have ever seen have their roofs in a shelving posture, by which means the wet continually runs off from them and falls to the ground; whereas ours, being quite flat, detained almost all the rain that fell upon it, which must necessarily soak deeper and deeper into the straw, till ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... repaired to his house, and my friends did the like to mine, particularly the Marquises of Rouillac and Camillac, famous both for their courage and extravagances. As soon as the latter saw Rouillac, he made me a low bow in a withdrawing posture, saying, "Monsieur, I came to offer you my service, but it is not reasonable that the two greatest fools in the kingdom should be of the same side." The Prince came to the House with a numerous attendance, and though I ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... boy was lying asleep under his tree, Janoo saw two wolves come up stealthily, and smell at him. They touched him, and he awoke; and rising from his reclining posture, he put his hands upon the heads of his visitors, and they licked his face. They capered round him, and he threw straw and leaves at them. The khidmutgar gave up his protege for lost; but presently he became convinced that they were only at play, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... an unconsecrated place, led by unconsecrated lips, in words nowhere set down; what could equal the irregularity and the impropriety? The two women, in their weakness, kneeling, and the master of the house showing by his unmoved posture that he disallowed the whole thing! Incongruous! unfortunate! I am bound to say that Betty understood little of the words she so disapproved; the sea under a stormy wind is not more uneasy than was her spirit; and towards the end her one special thought and effort was bent upon quieting the ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... principle, and on a large scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit the direst offences against the peace and purity of womanhood; but that true and hearty, though simple and unostentatious, reverence for the sex, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enough, now. There is never any sense in a mere plebe refusing to follow the commands of a yearling. "You will remain in that kneeling posture, mister, unless you are released from it. Now, thrust your head down into the water, as far as you can without interfering with your breathing. Remain in that position. Take your hands off the floor, sir, and do not rest them on the ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... hundred drachms of silver for his share. Alnaschar, who hated labor, laid out his money in fine glasses, and having displayed his stock to the best advantage in a large basket, he took his stand in the market-place, with his back against the wall, waiting for customers. In this posture he indulged in a reverie, talking ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... cocked pistol had not power to restrain the fierce—almost brutal—rage of the settler, whose growing intoxication added fuel to the fire which the presence of his enemy had kindled in his heart. Heedless of the determined air and threatening posture of the Aid-de-Camp, he made a bound forward, uttering a sound that resembled the roar of a wild beast rather than the cry of a human being, and struck over Jackson's shoulder at the chest of the officer. Gerald, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... opened once more—but the light was dying out of them, and they were filming now. And then suddenly the man forced himself forward into a sitting posture, and his voice ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... complied with, even from the commencement of the funeral service; and, in fact, the manner of adhering to the established practice of exhibiting in the church to the people the bodies of the deceased clergy, clad in vestments, prior to their interment (on which occasions an altar-ward posture was naturally selected for the head, in order that the remains might be more easily seen), appears to have originated the idea of the fitness of retaining an unjustifiable priestly prerogative at ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... he had left her, in the same tea-gown and the same posture, and on the same sofa. But a small table had been put by the sofa; and on this table was a penny bottle of ink in a saucer, and a pen. She was studying some kind of official form. The pucker between ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... their appearance extremely disagreeable in the eyes of civilized man. A little grating or lattice of very hard wood is formed, and raised one foot from the ground. The monkey is skinned, and bent into a sitting posture; the head generally resting on the arms, which are meagre and long; but sometimes these are crossed behind the back. When it is tied on the grating, a very clear fire is kindled below. The monkey, enveloped in smoke and flame, is broiled and blackened at ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... thyself also to keep thy body fixed and steady; free from all loose fluctuant either motion, or posture. And as upon thy face and looks, thy mind hath easily power over them to keep them to that which is grave and decent; so let it challenge the same power over the whole body also. But so observe all things in this kind, as that ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... the prisons of the Inquisition had not been opened. One night, about ten or eleven o'clock, as he was walking one of the streets of Madrid, two armed men sprang upon him from an alley, and made a furious attack. He instantly drew his sword, put himself in a posture of defence, and while struggling with them, he saw at a distance the lights of the patrols,—French soldiers mounted, who carried lanterns, and who rode through the streets of the city at all hours of the night, to preserve order. He called to them in French, and as they hastened ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... burial chamber were ranged massive stone shelves, or sometimes benches, or tables, upon which the dead were laid in a reclining posture, to sleep their long sleep. It often happens that on these rocky biers lie the helmet, breastplate, greaves, signet ring, and weapons, or, if it be a female, the necklace, ear rings, bracelet, and other ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... &c. n.; be on a footing, do, fare; come to pass. Adj. conditional, modal, formal; structural, organic. Adv. conditionally &c. adj.; as the matter stands, as things are; such being the case &c. 8. % Relative % 8. Circumstance. — N. circumstance, situation, phase, position, posture, attitude, place, point; terms; regime; footing, standing, status. occasion, juncture, conjunctive; contingency &c. (event) 151. predicament; emergence, emergency; exigency, crisis, pinch, pass, push; occurrence; turning point. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... repeal, but by heaping abuse on the constitution and on those who are chosen to administer the laws, by avowing their hostility to the government and its policy, or their purpose to resist and war against it,—are in a posture of rebellion. Those who, being in office, commanding the arms and other property of the government, cause them to be removed so as to weaken its power and strengthen those in actual rebellion, or who are ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... features, which expressed a mixture of cunning and simplicity, matched his figure. He gazed a while in silence, but at length he uttered a grunt of satisfaction as the figure of a woman rose gradually into sight. She came slowly towards him in a stooping posture, dragging behind her a great load of straw, which completely hid the little sledge on which it rested, and which was attached to her waist by ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the coffin was secretly deposited at night in a vault at the west end of the middle aisle of Westminster Abbey, under a gorgeous cenotaph which had recently been erected. The effigy was now removed to a more spacious chamber; it rose from a recumbent to an erect posture; and stood before the spectators not only with the emblems of royalty in its hands, but with the crown upon its head. For eight weeks this pageant was exhibited to the public. As the day appointed for the funeral obsequies approached, rumours ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... definite bull ancestry. Boodles was a dog about town, wearing many scars of combat, a swashbuckler of a dog, rough-mannered, raffish; if not actually quarrelsome, at least highly sensitive where his honour was concerned. He made it a point to know every dog in town, and as he rose from a sitting posture, where he had been taking the air before his inn, it could be observed that Frank was new to him—certainly new and perhaps objectionable. He stepped lightly halfway across the now empty street and stopped for a further look. He seemed to be saying, "Maybe it ain't ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... observers saw a great upright beam of light which majestically moved across the heavens, stalking like an apparition in the midst of the auroral pageant, of whose general movements it seemed to be independent, maintaining always its upright posture, and following a magnetic parallel from east to west. This mysterious beam was seen by no less than twenty-six observers in different parts of the country, and a comparison of their observations led to a curious calculation indicating that the apparition was ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... side of which, that fronted towards the river, this temple appeared to have been constructed. Among the ruins saw two large lions of red granite, one broken, and the other little injured, and a small headless statue, about two feet high, in a sitting posture. On approaching the front of the rock, found it excavated into a small temple, whose interior was sculptured with the usual figures and symbols seen in the temples of ancient Egypt. Its roof, and that of the porch before it, exhibited several traces of the azure with ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... just now of Ada the Dark-eyed?" said Glumm sternly, as he took up his sword and threw himself into a posture of defence, with the energetic action of a ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... sailor. It is to be placed in Madison Square, New York. The pedestal is to be of granite, having at its base a large seat, on the back of which will be an inscription mentioning the important events in the life of the hero. The statue, of bronze, represents Farragut in a standing posture, a little larger than life-size. It is now being cast, and will be ready to be placed in position within two months. Mr. Saint-Gaudens is now at work on a statue of Richard Robert Randall, the founder of the Sailors' Snug Harbor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... me, to see if I could be more skilful than they, because he had known me in Piedmont. Then I made him rise from his bed, and told him to put himself in the same posture that he had when he was wounded, which he did, taking a javelin in his hand just as he had held his pike to fight. I put my hand around the wound, and found the bullet. ... Having found it, I showed them the place where it was, and it was taken out by M. Nicole ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the sultan observed the stipulations of the treaty, he felt bound in honor, he said, not to break it. He knew, however, he added, that the restless spirit of the sultan would not long allow things to remain in the posture they were then in, and that on the first occasion given he would not fail to ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... prostrate at their feet. The revenge which Attila inflicted on this monument of Roman vanity, was harmless and ingenious. He commanded a painter to reverse the figures and the attitudes; and the emperors were delineated on the same canvas, approaching in a suppliant posture to empty their bags of tributary gold before the throne of the Scythian monarch. [52] The spectators must have confessed the truth and propriety of the alteration; and were perhaps tempted to apply, on this singular occasion, the well-known fable of the dispute ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... exertions now made, both by the besiegers and the besieged, to carry on the contest with the utmost vigor. Hamet went the rounds of the walls and towers, doubling the guards and putting everything in the best posture of defence. The garrison was divided into parties of a hundred, to each of which a captain was appointed. Some were to patrol, others to sally forth and skirmish with the enemy, and others to hold themselves armed and in reserve. Six albatozas, or ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... side of him showed he had at some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On he came! nearer—nearer—oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, "Halt, or you die!" the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... a thread, the ply in a cord, the curve of wrist or finger, each has special and proper delineation. The reader smiles at a complete and elaborate set of tailor's patterns. He shudders as he comes upon the knives, the probes, the bandages, the posture, of the wretch about to undergo the most dangerous operation in surgery. In all the chief departments of industry there are plates good enough to serve for practical specifications and working drawings. It has often been told how ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... whole of their religion from the Chaldean mother country, that this ornament was selected not only as appropriate to the sacredness of the royal person, but as a consecration and protection. The holiness of the symbol is further evidenced by the kneeling posture of the animals which sometimes accompany it (see Fig. 22, page 67), and the attitude of adoration of the human figures, or winged spirits attending it, by the prevalence of the sacred number seven in its component parts, and by the ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... major test of management relationships among different governmental levels. Federal, State, and local officials, however, are quick to point out serious shortcomings in their ability to respond to a catastrophic earthquake. An analysis of the preparedness posture of 60 local governments, 34 California State organizations, and 17 Federal agencies, carried out by the California Office of Emergency Services (OES) and FEMA, indicates that response to such an earthquake would become disorganized and largely ineffective. Many governmental units have generalized ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... round, I suddenly came upon him at about thirty yards off, standing broadside on. I gave him a shot and heard the bullet strike, but there was not the slightest motion. I could hardly believe that he was dead in such a posture. I went up close, and finally stopped in front of him; his neck was stretched out, his mouth open and eyes rolling, but he seemed paralysed. I stepped up close and put a ball through his ear, when he fell dead with a groan. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... day, his attendants, alarmed at the evident symptoms of approaching dissolution, came precipitately to call the friend who has now the melancholy task of recording the mournful event: not a moment was lost in repairing to his house. He was lying on a bed in a posture of meditation, and the only symptom of remaining life was a small degree of motion in the heart, which after a few seconds ceased, and he expired without a pang or groan. His bodily suffering, from the complacency of his features, and the ease of his attitude, could not have been severe; ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... in passing into the hands of John Lovell, a teacher of elocution, and a better teacher for my purpose I can not conceive of. His system consisted in drill, or the thorough practise of inflections by the voice, of gesture, posture and articulation. Sometimes I was a whole hour practising my voice on a word—like justice. I would have to take a posture, frequently at a mark chalked on the floor. Then we would go through all the gestures, exercising each movement of the arm and throwing open the hand. All ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... have to do," cried Dr. Skihi with sparkling eyes, "is to get in a convenient posture; allow me to set off this retort of mine behind you—" here he produced a "glass concern" from a side pocket, to the horror of his friends—"and heigh, presto! you will find yourself ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... sudden cry of pain into a sitting posture, and trembling in every fibre, and with a voice half choked, cried, "Who says that?" Then glaring wildly at the envoy, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... cabbages, until, as an everlasting warning to others, he was placed in the moon, where he constantly holds in his hand a bundle of cabbages. The people of Rantum say that he is a giant, who at the time of the flow stands in a stooping posture, because he is then taking up water, which he pours out on the earth, and thereby causes the flow; but at the time of the ebb he stands erect and rests from his labour, when the water ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture. "Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... worshipped the figure of a man in a sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at the period of junction, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... fearfully at our schoolroom window, lest I should be discovered in so unmanly a posture. It seemed that we were ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... means?" he retorted; "what do I think it means? Why, it means—it means—it means what it says; that he leaned ag'in' the tree, that is, that he assumed a recumbent posture ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... she dropped back with a cry. Pluckily she tried it again, this time coming to a sitting posture with a gasp of pain. Her ankle had twisted when she fell, ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... meat. They in the pride of their feasting began to break their jests in mirthful manner, when they saw one looking so poor and so aged approach. He, who expected no better entertainment, was nothing moved at their behaviour, but, as became the character which he had assumed, in a suppliant posture crept by turns to every suitor, and held out his hands for some charity, with such a natural and beggar-resembling grace that he might seem to have practised begging all his life; yet there was a sort of dignity in his most abject stoopings, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... when the territory of Avignon was styled by the kings of France the "derriere du Pape," from the convenient posture in which it lay for their correction, one may fancy the same scenes to have taken place on a larger scale, which are described as occurring at the bridge of Kennaquhair, the same struggle between secular and monastic authority, the same sullen important bridgeward, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... their dead in a sitting posture on a woven grass mat, with an olla, and frequently a bone dagger, beside them. In the clean, dry air of the uplands of Arizona the process of decay is slow. Sundown, unaware of this, hardly anticipated that which confronted him as the match flamed blue ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... lacking attractiveness. Not so much pudgy as shapeless; he had been shapeless originally. His squat figure showed, to be sure, a certain hardiness and vigor gained in his outdoor life, but he had not even the rude grace of a stalwart manhood about him. He sank apologetically into a lax posture, even as he stood. His pale blue eyes lacked fire. His hair, uneven, ragged and hay-colored, seemed dry, as though hopeless, discouraged, done with life, fringing out as it did in gray locks under the edge of the battered hat he wore. He had been unshaven for days, perhaps weeks, and his ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... Theodoret wrote his account of him; in which are these other particulars, that he spent the first part of Lent in praising God standing; growing weaker, he continued his prayer sitting; and towards the end, finding his spirits almost quite exhausted, not able to support himself in any other posture, he lay on the ground. However, it is probable, that in his advanced years he admitted some mitigation of this wonderful austerity. When on his pillar, he kept himself, during this fast, tied to a pole; but at length was able to fast the whole term, without any ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... a wild scream and a shout from the major,—"Arrah, my darling, where are you after going to?" though, before the words were well out of the speaker's mouth, down came flop on the top of the leg of mutton the rotund form of Mrs Major Molony, fortunately head uppermost, in a semi-sitting posture,—the joint of meat serving as a cushion to that part of her body which is usually thus accommodated, while one of her feet stuck into a dish of potatoes and the other into one of curry and rice, the gravy flying on all sides like the ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... they are all from six and a half to seven heads high; but no motion of limbs happens under the draperies, and the hands and feet, like the faces, are expressed by a set of arbitrary conventions. It is not even easy to determine whether the posture of the woman on the right is intended for sitting or kneeling. She holds a tray, on which is an idol, and to provide sufficient balance for the composition the artist has placed a yellow umbrella in the idol's hand. Examine this design from end ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... merits of Sir Charles Lyell's discussion, we wish to glance at some preliminary matters touching the great debate now pending between science and theology. We wish to review the posture and temper of the parties; and particularly to refer to the tone and spirit of the religious press and the pulpit, respecting the alleged discoveries and claims of science, and their bearing upon the religious opinion of ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... stone floor of the bakeroom. This place sounded hollow underneath—it certainly was not the bakeroom. He rolled over and over. Presently he touched a wall—it was stone. He drew himself up to a sitting posture, but his head struck a curved stone ceiling. Then he swung round and moved his foot along the wall—it touched iron. He felt farther with his foot-something clicked. Now he understood; he was in the oven of the bakehouse, with his hands bound. He began to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... response, he lifted the latch without further ceremony and stepped into the chamber, Mr. Taggett a pace or two behind him. The figure of Father O'Meara slowly rising from a kneeling posture at the bedside was the first object that met their eyes; the second was Torrini's placid face, turned a little on the pillow; the third was Brigida sitting at the foot of the bed, motionless, with her arms ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... particles of the masculine seed; everyone being rightly, according to his proper place, disposed and ordered with the other; fixes and conjoynes those spiritual Atomes, that they still afterwards remain in that posture they are placed in.[18] ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... Himself. If it please Him to make Himself known, He can make the heart conscious of His presence. Our posture must be that of holy reverence, of quiet ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... a better fate," was all he said, as he continued his kneeling posture, until the family and servants, whom Nellie had summoned, came crowding round, the cries of the latter grating on the ear, and seeming sadly out of place for her whose short life had been so dreary, and who had welcomed death as a release from ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... was then cleared amidst much applause, and the dead hobby-horses dragged solemnly away by two Moorish pages in yellow and black liveries, and after a short interlude, during which a French posture-master performed upon the tightrope, some Italian puppets appeared in the semi-classical tragedy of Sophonisba on the stage of a small theatre that had been built up for the purpose. They acted so well, and their gestures were so ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... Roome and strip him, her, or them, starke naked."[22] The clergyman Gaule has given us further particulars:[23] "Having taken the suspected Witch, shee is placed in the middle of a room upon a stool, or Table, crosse-legg'd, or in some other uneasie posture, to which if she submits not, she is then bound with cords; there is she watcht and kept without meat or sleep for the space of 24 hours.... A little hole is likewise made in the door for the Impe to come in at; and lest it might come in some lesse discernible ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... stood for a moment in the phalanx of men surrounding the shed, and surreptitiously eyed Bates and Harriet. Her back was towards him as she stood, her cloak on her arm, still politely watching her escort's movements. She looked so pretty, and there was such appealing grace in her posture. He saw Bates join her and take her arm, and then he watched them no longer. He knew they were coming, and he went in at the end of the shed and found a seat near the centre on the left. He saw Luke Bradley drive up and help his wife and Mrs. Dawson ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... or passage. Thus I conjecture: for I have, upon innumerable occasions, observed him suddenly stop, and then seem to count his steps with a deep earnestness; and when he had neglected or gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and, having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and join his companion[1421]. A strange instance of something of this nature, even when on horseback, happened when he was in the isle of Sky[1422]. Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed him to go a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... morning at sea, takes nearly two hours; and I had hardly strength enough to get through it. After we had finished, swabbed down, and coiled up the rigging, I sat down on the spars, waiting for seven bells, which was the sign for breakfast. The officer, seeing my lazy posture, ordered me to slush the main-mast, from the royal-mast-head, down. The vessel was then rolling a little, and I had taken no sustenance for three days, so that I felt tempted to tell him that I had rather wait till after ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... timid downcast glance, Behold the well-pair'd couple now advance. In such sweet posture our first parents moved, While, hand in hand, through Eden's bower they roved. Ere yet the devil, with promise fine and false, Turned their poor heads, and taught them how to waltz. One hand grasps hers, the other holds ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... impossible, he had proceeded instantly to cut the throats of each. All this tallied with the appearances as now presenting themselves. Mrs. Williamson had fallen backwards with her head to the door; the servant, from her kneeling posture, had been incapable of rising, and had presented her head passively to blows; after which, the miscreant had but to bend her head backwards so as to expose her throat, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the guards piled out, the latter with the stretcher. The orderly-driver got out his tablet pistol and checked the chamber, then settled into a posture of watchful relaxation. Major Slater was waiting for them by one of the vertical ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... for a while and then said, 'Yes, it must be so. Having been in a hurry I performed my ablutions (after meal) in a standing posture.' King Paushya then said, 'Here is a transgression, purification is not properly effected by one in a standing posture, not by one while he is going along.' And Utanka having agreed to this, sat down with his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... her gesture, I dropped into a chair opposite to her, she herself not varying her posture and still regarding me with the laugh ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... same posture some time without answering, but at last lifted up her eyes to look at her brothers, and then held them down again, telling ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... darkness he spied something darker yet by the roadside. Going up to it, he found an old woman, half sitting, half standing, with a load of peats in a creel upon her back, unable, apparently, for the moment at least, to proceed. Alister knew at once by her shape and posture who she was. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and rested his head on his hand in a somewhat studied "pose." But as he wished not to be interrupted, it may not have been altogether unpardonable to pretend sleep. However, the sleeping posture had exactly the opposite effect to that ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... top, broke through the wall of the cave, high up, close to the roof. He turned, and his eyes followed Vashti, who had caught up Eli's lantern, and was picking her way across the rocky floor. Presently she bent to a kneeling posture, as the rays fell on what at first appeared to be a long bundle. He hurried after her, but stopped short with ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... copying here, I have quoted at great length the experience with "Hatha Yoga" of a very gifted European friend of mine who, by persistently carrying out for several months its methods of fasting from food and sleep, its exercises in breathing and thought-concentration, and its fantastic posture-gymnastics, seems to have succeeded in waking up deeper and deeper levels of will and moral and intellectual power in himself, and to have escaped from a decidedly menacing brain-condition of the "circular" type, from which he had ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised to the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who is to make good his thesis against all comers. I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other good men write, as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... heard for three years successively, but nobody was converted: so on the last day of the year, at four o'clock in the morning, all the inhabitants were changed in an instant into stone, every one in the same condition and posture they happened to be then in. The king, my father, had the same fate, for he was metamorphosed into a black stone, as he is to be seen in this palace; and the queen, my mother, ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... the wall, he would order the pupil to sit down on it with his back pressing against the wall. Then he would remove the stool, leaving the offender in a sitting posture, with his back to the wall and his knees flexed. By the time the victim had been there ten minutes, he wished never to repeat the experience. I know whereof I speak, for I "sat on ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... i.e.:—on the flat of his back, when he was aware of a crash in the hedge above, and then, of something that hurtled past him, all arms and legs, that rolled over two or three times, and eventually brought up in a sitting posture; and, lifting a lazy head, Bellew observed that it was a boy. He was a very diminutive boy with a round head covered with coppery curls, a boy who stared at Bellew out of a pair of very round, blue eyes, while he tenderly cherished a knee, and an ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... the cotton, but, as she did not want to die, she placed it far enough from her face to breathe the fresh air, while nevertheless her room was filled with the asphyxiating odor of the narcotic, for she knew that some one was coming, and taking a suitable posture, a pose ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... past the mouth of the Paris moat, and then made for the left bank. Exhaustion seized me as I laid hold of the earth, but I had strength to clamber up. I fell into a sitting posture and rested my tired arms and legs. What pains of cold and heat I felt I cannot describe. Presently, with returning breath, came the strength to walk,—a strength of which I would have to avail myself, not only that I might put distance between myself and Paris, but also to keep my wet clothes ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... for answer, and arose From her reclining posture at my side, Threw back the clust'ring ringlets from her face With a quick gesture, full of easy grace, And, turning, spoke to Vivian. "Will you guide The boat up near that little clump of green Off to the right? There's where the lilies grow. We quite forgot our errand here, Maurine, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... lads swiftly passed. In all but one they found ghastly occupants, some stretched out in the posture of sleep, some sitting at table like the first seen, but all showing that death had come suddenly ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... beside him on the floor. He kicked out, and the next moment his ankle was gripped and held by a row of keen teeth. He yelled again, and tried to free his leg by kicking with the other. Then he realised he had the broken water-bottle at his hand, and, snatching it, he struggled into a sitting posture, and feeling in the darkness towards his foot, gripped a velvety ear, like the ear of a big cat. He had seized the water-bottle by its neck and brought it down with a shivering crash upon the head ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Alexis was drunk,—by the guests on the floor of the hall in Champagne, by those in the galleries in kislischi and hydromel. The orchestra played; a choir of serfs sang an ode by Simon Petrovitch, in which the departure of Prince Boris was mentioned; the tumblers began to posture; the jugglers came forth and played their tricks; and the cannon on the ramparts announced to all Kinesma, and far up and down the Volga, that the company were rising from ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... prisoner!" cried von Mitter, tumbling out of the carriage. He tried to stand up, but a numbness seized his legs, and he sank to a sitting posture. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the corner within the door, to which the men repaired occasionally, as they felt thirsty. There were no chairs or benches, except such as were brought from the house for our party, the congregation were sitting on their heels, in which posture they sang the hymns, and remained so during the prayer, only covering the face with the right hand; a ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... twain, meantime, was occupied in feeling for the deer's fat, when he was approached by the other, who pointed in the direction of the house. The former raised himself from his kneeling posture, and both appeared to listen attentively. Luke fancied he heard a slight sound in the distance; whatever the noise proceeded from, it was evident the deer-stealers were alarmed. They laid hold of the buck, and, dragging it along, concealed the carcass among the tall fern; they then retreated, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... spiritual power. It is perhaps owing to the very intensity of his imagination that he has been so little understood—for, as I before said, imagination can never be met by vanity, nor without earnestness. His Florentine followers saw in him an anatomist and posture-master—and art was finally destroyed by the influence over admiring idiocy of the greatest mind ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... in the aspect of this mysterious being—something ineffably grand and imposing in her demeanor—as she thus suddenly rose from her almost recumbent posture, and burst into the attitude of a resolute ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... As soon as I entered the chamber, I saw her sitting on a sofa in a pensive posture, and tears in her eyes. I asked her what she thought of Lucy Sterling's advice, and whether it would not have been better to have followed it than suffer her conduct to be exposed ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... of the cells, he whispered to me, in a voice full of entreaty, to put off my shoes; at the same time prostrating himself with a movement and expression of the most abject humility before the door, where he remained, without changing his posture. I stooped involuntarily, and scanned curiously, anxiously, the scene within the cell. There sat the king; and at a sign from him I presently entered, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... maybe; then she would hang her head as though she dared not look him in the face even at that distance; and anon she would recover herself with a noble exaltation, lifting her head with a fearless mien. And so presently her body drooping gradually to a reflective posture, she falls dreaming again, to rouse herself suddenly at some new prompting of her spirit, and give us all her thoughts, all eagerness for two moments, all melting sweetness the next, with her pretty manner of clinging to her father's arm, and laying ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... so; and his history thenceforward was destined to prove a continued justification of their high opinion of him. He was of an active, mercurial turn, and, as might have been seen, was not inclined to remain long in one place or posture. He had now thrown aside his rapid pen, and, with a quick, light step and deeply-cogitating air, was traversing back and forth the open space between his table, in front of the president, and the closed door of the apartment. Both in form ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... was rising to a sitting posture he could feel his revolver, and wondered why he had not been disarmed. A glimmer of joy shot through him. His hands were free, and he had no pain, except the sore feeling that was keen on the side of his head, and which was, no ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... were there present were greatly amazed, and they made a great outcry and great rejoicings to God for this miracle, and for the power which he had shown through the body of the Cid in this manner; for it was plain that what the Jew said was verily and indeed true, because the posture of the Cid was changed. And from that day forward Diego Gil remained in the Monastery as longed as he lived, doing service to the ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... Smith gave them a hand, and they climbed upon the footboard of the ambulance, and over into the interior. One of the black men called harshly to the man in the ditch down the road. He turned from his sitting posture, fell over on his face, and then came crawling on ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... was a sharp knock at the corridor door. She glanced quickly at the clock—then, picked up a book and, sinking back in easy posture, assumed to read. ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... end she returned and once more brought the breakfast-tray to the bed. Ste. Marie raised himself to a sitting posture and took the thing upon his knees, but his hands ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... small corral behind him and pulls out a sheep. With a dexterous fling the animal is put in a sitting posture between the shearer's knees, and then the steel clippers begin clipping off the wool. The machine-shearing saves much wool, as it gets closer to the skin of the sheep and shears more evenly. In fact, some sheep owners say that the increased weight ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... herself on her cushions to a sitting posture and looked round her with a curious little ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... instant, and Jared Long, who was so anxious to help his friend, saw only the deft movements of the archer. Grimcke could not fire at both in time to save himself, but he instinctively did the very best and indeed the only thing that could be done. Without moving his feet, he dropped to a sitting posture, instantly popping up again like ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... man stumble heavily, then stop. He stopped also. He had the back and Carlier the front of the house, as before. He heard him drop into a chair cursing, and suddenly his own legs gave way, and he slid down into a sitting posture with his back to the wall. His mouth was as dry as a cinder, and his face was wet with perspiration—and tears. What was it all about? He thought it must be a horrible illusion; he thought he was dreaming; he thought he was going mad! After a while he collected his senses. What did they ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... to the posture in sexual intercourse known among the Greeks as [Greek: hippos], in Latin 'equus,' the horse, where the woman mounts the man in reversal of the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... little girls. Her half-open hands were resting on her hips, with the palms turned outward—thin, old woman's hands, awkward and stiff, and swollen with gout at the knuckles and finger joints. Sitting in the huddled, crouching posture that compels old people to raise their heads to look at you and speak to you, she seemed to be buried in all that mass of black, whence nothing emerged but her face, to which preponderance of bile had imparted the yellow hue of old ivory, and the flashing glance of her brown eyes. One ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... arrows, poisoned darts, and swords, attended the landing of the governor in warlike array, because the hostile tribe had come there to view our ship, taking advantage of the truce. These his armed attendants for the most part approached him in a kneeling posture, and kissed the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... In this posture of affairs, both new and delicate, I resolved to adopt general rules which should conform to the treaties and assert the privileges of the United States. These were reduced into a system, which will be communicated to you. Although I have not thought myself at ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... the Red Dragon three men stooped in conclave over the hind foot of a horse. Deio, the ostler, and Roberts, the farrier, agreed in their verdict for a wonder; and Caradoc Wynne, the owner of the horse, straightened himself from his stooping posture with a nod ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... luminous wherein we stood, But natural dungeon where ill footing was And scant supply of light. "Ere from th' abyss I sep'rate," thus when risen I began, "My guide! vouchsafe few words to set me free From error's thralldom. Where is now the ice? How standeth he in posture thus revers'd? And how from eve to morn in space so brief Hath the sun made his transit?" He in few Thus answering spake: "Thou deemest thou art still On th' other side the centre, where I grasp'd Th' abhorred worm, that boreth through the world. Thou wast on th' other ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... paint, in the same manner as the hair on their heads. In other respects, they are well-proportioned; though the belly seems rather projecting. This may be owing to the want of compression there, which few nations do not use, more or less. The posture of which they seem fondest, is to stand with one side forward, or the upper part of the body gently reclined, and one hand grasping (across the back) the opposite arm, which hangs down by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... apart. But here it is: prepare To see the Life as liuely mock'd, as euer Still Sleepe mock'd Death: behold, and say 'tis well. I like your silence, it the more shewes-off Your wonder: but yet speake, first you (my Liege) Comes it not something neere? Leo. Her naturall Posture. Chide me (deare Stone) that I may say indeed Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she, In thy not chiding: for she was as tender As Infancie, and Grace. But yet (Paulina) Hermione was not so much wrinckled, nothing So ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... thorough-going an evolutionist as Professor Fiske gave it as his mature opinion that "in the course of evolution there is no more philosophical difficulty in man's acquiring immortal life, than in his acquiring the erect posture ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... human; and the interchange of everlasting hatred degrades the tormentor and his victim to the same demoniac ferocity. To this design the science of foreshortening, and the profound knowledge of the human form in every posture, give its chief interest. Paradise is not less wonderful. Signorelli has contrived to throw variety and grace into the somewhat monotonous groups which this subject requires. Above are choirs of angels, not like Fra Angelico's, but tall male creatures clothed in voluminous ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... hour passed, and the old gentleman's arms and loins began to ache from the novel and constrained posture in which he stood. He grew nervous and uneasy at the want of sport; and thinking that perhaps the little fellow was acquainted with the locality, he turned towards him, saying, in the blandest but still most indifferent tone he could assume, lest he should compromise ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... land. If this shall be admitted as a just view of the system of this globe, we may next examine, how far there are to be found any marks of certain parts of our earth having more than once undergone that change of posture, or vicissitude of things, and of having had reiterated operations of the mineral kingdom changing their substance, as well as altering their positions in relation to the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... this region. The boyaloa, or beer of the country, has more of a stupefying than exciting nature; hence the beer-bibbers are great sleepers; they may frequently be seen lying on their faces sound asleep. This peculiarity of posture was ascribed, by no less an authority than Aristotle, to wine, while those who were sent asleep by beer were believed ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... pride and amazement that he felt neither faint nor rigid. He glanced round him, seized a bottle of beer by the neck as an improvised club, and went out by the garden door. Uncle Jim stopped amazed. His brain did not instantly rise to the new posture of things. "You!" he cried, and stopped for ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... natives waved them off. Seeing therefore they could not be prevailed upon to a friendly commerce, my men, being resolved to have some provision among them, fired some muskets to scare them away; which had the desired effect upon all but 2 or 3, who stood still in a menacing posture till the boldest dropped his target and ran away; they supposed he was shot in the arm: he and some others felt the smart of our bullets but none were killed; our design being rather to fright than to kill them. Our men landed ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... squatted behind the vat, and Bouvard lay like one who had fallen over a stool. For ten minutes they remained in this posture, not daring to venture on a single movement, pale with terror, in the midst of broken glass. When they were able to recover the power of speech, they asked themselves what was the cause of so many misfortunes, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... stomach then becomes perfectly tense, and you cannot tell whether pressure on it causes pain or whether the cries are not altogether the consequence of fretfulness and fear. It is therefore the best plan to pass your hand beneath the child's clothes and to examine its stomach without altering its posture, while at the same time the nurse in whose arms it is talks to it to distract its attention, or holds it opposite the window, or opposite a bright light, which seldom fails to amuse an infant. If there is no tenderness of the stomach the child will not cry on pressure; or if ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... and rose to a sitting posture, in order to bow graciously to Monsieur Bianchon, and beg him to accept something else than money for the good news he gave her. She said a few words in her mother's ear, and Madame Sauviat immediately led away the ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... to the serpent: "I created thee to be king over all animals, cattle and the beasts of the field alike; but thou wast not satisfied. Therefore thou shalt be cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field. I created thee of upright posture; but thou wast not satisfied. Therefore thou shalt go upon thy belly. I created thee to eat the same food as man; but thou wast not satisfied. Therefore thou shalt eat dust all the days of thy life. Thou didst ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... heard but their gentle breathing. Suddenly Harry, who always talked in his sleep when any thing exciting was going on, turned over in bed with a jerk, and began to mutter some unintelligible words. All at once, raising himself to a sitting posture, he sang out, at the top of ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... gone half an hour, but she was still in the drawing-room when Nanda came back. The girl found her, on the sofa, in a posture that might have represented restful oblivion, but that, after a glance, our young lady appeared to interpret as mere intensity of thought. It was a condition from which at all events Mrs. Brook was quickly roused by her daughter's presence: ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... under the arms and elevated her to a standing posture. She recovered her breath and her self-possession promptly and glowed upon him with the brightest of smiles. He had never before ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... saw in an instant what was wanted. Margaret was settled in the right posture, but the pain would not immediately depart, and Dr. May soon found out that she had a headache, of which he knew he was at least as guilty as ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... a state &c. n.; be on a footing, do, fare; come to pass. Adj. conditional, modal, formal; structural, organic. Adv. conditionally &c. adj.; as the matter stands, as things are; such being the case &c. 8. % Relative % 8. Circumstance. — N. circumstance, situation, phase, position, posture, attitude, place, point; terms; regime; footing, standing, status. occasion, juncture, conjunctive; contingency &c. (event) 151. predicament; emergence, emergency; exigency, crisis, pinch, pass, push; occurrence; turning point. bearings, how the land lies. surroundings, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his head. He was abject, crushed. He dared not show his swollen, blackened face. His fierce, cramped posture revealed more than his features might have shown; it betrayed the torturing shame of a man of pride and passion, a man who had been confronted in his degradation by the woman he had dared to enshrine in his ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Bill Swinton with a sigh fell across Ned's body. In two or three minutes four more men, accompanied by George and Polly, whose anxiety would not let her stay behind, hurried up. Luke and his companions had raised Ned and Bill into a sitting posture. ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... not [Greek: anapeson] which has the testimony only of B and about twenty-five uncials, [Symbol: Aleph] and C being divided against themselves) on the breast of the Lord, being still in the general posture in which he was ([Greek: houtos][117]), and asked Him in a whisper 'Lord, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... Such distaste animated the tone of that response that Mariana involuntarily raised herself from her listening posture, and the dishes clinked. "What's that? Didn't you hear suthin'? Why, Jake Preble's a kind of a hind wheel. He goes rollin' along after t'others, never askin' why nor wherefore, and he thinks it's his own free will. He never so much as dreams 'tis ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... at the threshold, to admire the graceful pose of Jessie's fairy figure,—the lazy nonchalance of Stanley's posture,—and the finely shaped head that rose above both, like some stately lily, surrounded by clustering croci; but Salome was listening for his footsteps, and turned her head ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... lead them in prayer was, however, a matter of great difficulty. They seemed to regard the attitude of kneeling as very amusing, and were reluctant to commit themselves so far to the ridicule of their companions as to be caught in such a posture. After reading to them a portion of the Holy Scriptures and telling them of Jesus, they were dismissed, greatly pleased with their first ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... almost trembled at the Talk of Spirits) to Counterfeit a Ghost, by which means I wou'd quickly use a Stratagem which shou'd Relieve him without Danger. And as soon as he had put himself into a Suitable Posture, and Plac'd himself in a convenient Corner to play the Devil with my Husband, (in case the Cuckold should come into the Room which he had taken for his Sanctuary) I fram'd a Counterfeit Smile, and let ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... Duke stands before us the King of smiles. His is the wooer's posture. He speaks, but not with his usual voice of command. Oberon, as it were, calls Titania to the woodland when stars are torch and candle ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... Prince de Conde's humble servants repaired to his house, and my friends did the like to mine, particularly the Marquises of Rouillac and Camillac, famous both for their courage and extravagances. As soon as the latter saw Rouillac, he made me a low bow in a withdrawing posture, saying, "Monsieur, I came to offer you my service, but it is not reasonable that the two greatest fools in the kingdom should be of the same side." The Prince came to the House with a numerous attendance, and though I believe he had not so many as I, he had more persons of quality, for ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... herself in. She always does that. Well, I suppose I shall see her next week." And Mrs. Touchett's husband slowly resumed his former posture. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... at Mr. Simon Rattar's villa. This morning he approached it without any of the curious shyness he had exhibited on the occasion of his recent visit. His advance was conducted openly up the drive and in an erect posture, and he crossed the gravel space boldly, and even jauntily, while his ring was firmness itself. Mary answered the bell, and her pleasure at seeing so soon again the sympathetic gentleman with the eyeglass was a tribute to ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... the table jammed the hidden dog against his chest. When he sought relief by sitting back over the form, Clem corrected the irregular posture with a pin. At bedtime he undressed in terror lest the creature should jump out and patter on the boards as live things will. But at last the gas was turned off at the main, and he cautiously groped for his pet among his little heap of clothes under ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... with half-bared dagger and lips drawn back in rage, he glowered upon De Lacy, forgetful of all things save his hate. And so imminent seemed the danger, that Aymer put hand to his own poniard and fell into the posture to receive attack. And doubtless there, before the Throne itself, would these two men have fought to the death for very lust of the other's blood, had not the clear, stern voice of the King aroused them, like cold water ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... faith. When they pass into the unseen world, they do not seem to be possessed with the fear of punishment. The utensils placed upon the grave are all broken as if to indicate that they will never be used by the departed again. The body is put into the grave in a sitting posture, and the hands are folded in front. In some parts of the country there are tales which we could translate into faint glimmerings of a resurrection; but whether these fables, handed down from age to age, convey that meaning to ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Richard, and discovered the statue which formerly decorated his tomb. This statue, which is hewn out of a single block of very fine free stone, has been deposited provisionally in the chapel of the Virgin. It is six feet and a half long, and represents king Richard in a recumbent posture, his head supported by a square cushion, wearing a crown enriched with precious stones; his feet are supported by a crouching lion. On his left hand was a sceptre of which we only see the remains; the right hand has disappeared. The princes, mantle descends ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... events to come. Not the meanest of the Roman race am I, the offspring of an illustrious chieftain, lord of the world in the one case, or in the other the destined heir to my father's calamity. I stand on a tremendous and giddy height: snatch me from this posture of doubt; let me not blindly rush on, and blindly fall; extort this secret from the Gods, or force the dead to confess ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... his supine posture, had half opened his eyes, and turned his head towards the window, whilst his breast heaved with a deep-drawn sigh, for, beneath that thick dome of moist verdure, the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... envied the privilege of an old palsied fellow, chief boatman of the forest lake, for, thinks I, hang him! he can nod his head and I can not. Let me assure you, twenty minutes of an ordeal like that,—one posture, mind you, no raising of your eyelids, taking your breath mechanically, and your heart beating—jumping like an enraged balletdancer boxed in your bosom—a literal description, upon my honour; and not only jumping, jumping every now ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be done in the circumstances but wait; and wait he did, in a half-recumbent posture, his head leaning on his hands, and his elbows on his knees, like a man roused suddenly ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... such volunteers as are willing to join you, and can be expeditiously raised, repair to the City of New York, and calling upon the commanding officer of the forces of New Jersey for such assistance as he can afford, and you shall require, you are to put that city into the best posture of defence which the season and circumstances will admit, disarming all such persons upon Long Island and elsewhere (and if necessary otherwise securing them), whose conduct and declarations have rendered them justly suspected of designs ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... set sail from this extraordinary country, when, to our astonishment, all the trees upon shore, of which there were a great number very tall and large, paid their respects to us twice, bowing to exact time, and immediately recovered their former posture, which was ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... For a minute or two I lay passively where I was, in the bottom of the canoe, blinking up at the pallid zenith, near which the sun blazed with blinding brilliancy; and then, no one saying me nay, I slowly and painfully raised myself into a sitting posture and looked about me. ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... last signal the voice of another enemy who had hitherto remained silent, or was it Nacaytzusle who had changed his position? At all events it was safer to rise and go directly toward the spot, rather than approach it in a creeping posture. He walked deliberately onward, at the same time calling ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... knight essayed to speak, But words responded tremulous and weak, And mustering his dissipated strength, A sitting posture he assumed at length,— "Whate'er thou art, thou harbinger of gloom, Thou fiend or ghoul, fresh from the new made tomb, Thou vampire, diabolical and fell, Thou stygian shade or denizen of hell, I charge thee, thing of evil, to confess Why thou hast thus disturbed my ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... possibly from the artist's fondness for attitude. He seems to have regarded posture-making as a peculiar attribute of genius. His figures are always in a constrained and over-studied pose: twisting about in the throes of giving birth to a great idea: filled with the divine afflatus, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... crying, sobbing, talking, O'er it hung, like March a-shivering O'er the birth of infant April. Lightly then her husband toucht her On the shoulder; but she look'd not— Spake not—moved not. Slowly rose she From her kneeling, crouching posture; And she stood a hopeless dreamer, With the child a corpse ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... sat at his desk, Wrapped in appropriate gloom; His posture was pensive and picturesque, Like ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... leave the room once to fetch something I wanted, when she suddenly struggled into a sitting posture, and begged me, in a voice of horror, not to ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... centre of the cemetery is the grave of M. De Rance. His monument, with his figure carved at full length in a recumbent posture, was removed when the destruction of the old church took place; it is now a complete ruin, and a few stones alone mark the spot of its ancient founder's grave, which is kept free from weeds with pious reverence and care. The revolution, which like a torrent ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... God; it is this general conception which has shaped the architecture of the temple, cast out statues, dispensed with paintings, effaced ornaments, shortened ceremonies, confined the members of a congregation to high pews which cut off the view, and governed the thousand details of decoration, posture, and all other externals. This conception itself again proceeds from a more general cause, an idea off human conduct in general, inward and outward, prayers, actions, dispositions of every sort that man is bound to maintain toward the Deity; it is this which has enthroned the doctrine ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... body lying in the doorway of the room adjoining Cateye's. He stooped and rolled the body over so that he could see the face. "Pole!" he gasped. Stepping over Pole's inert form and into the room, Judd saw Potts lying in a sitting posture, half-dressed, against the ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... the morning, wash your face and hands, rinse out the mouth and cleanse the body. Then turn toward the province of Yamato, strike the palms of the hands together twice, and worship, bowing the head to the ground. The proper posture is that of kneeling on the heels, which is ordinarily assumed in ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... in sleep is a good thing, but the routine belongs to the baby, not to the nurse. The child must be educated to sleep, not taught to cry. A baby has but little power of altering his position when it becomes strained or uncomfortable. He cannot turn over and nestle down into a new posture. If we watch him wake, the first stirring may be very gradual, and in a moment he may fall again to sleep. A few minutes later he stirs again more strongly, and is wider awake and for longer. It may only be after a third waking, by a summation ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... postpone the celebration of the mass till he returned. About three hours afterwards, Dunstan went into the cathedral, put on his robes, and waited at the altar in expectation of the king—where, reclining with his arms in a devotional posture, he was absorbed in tears and prayers. A gentle sleep suddenly possessed him; he was snatched up into heaven; and in a vision associated with a company of angels, whose harmonious voices, chaunting Kyrie eleyson, Kyrie eleyson, Kyrie eleyson, burst upon his ravished ears! He afterwards ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... I replied; "but surely that posture was unworthy of yourself, and your many resources. It is my intention to let ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of selfish motive, and sometimes showing that it is a mere cloak for selfish motives. In a characteristic passage of his 'Voyage to Lisbon' he applies his theory to his own case. When the captain falls on his knees, he will not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain for a moment in that posture, but forgives him at once. He hastens, however, utterly to disclaim all praise, on the ground that his true motive was simply the convenience of forgiveness. 'If men were wiser,' he adds, 'they would be oftener influenced by that motive.' ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Jurgen," says Heitman Michael, "that is the end of your nonsense. Why, no, there is not any occasion to posture like a statue. I do not intend to kill you. Why the devil's name, should I? To do so would only get me an ill name with your parents: and besides it is infinitely more pleasant to dance with this lady, just as I first intended." And he turned ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of the works exhibited. They made the circuit of the room, and began a second tour, when their attention was attracted by a girl who stood in one corner, with her hands clasped behind her. She was gazing very intently on an Ecce-Homo, and, though her face was turned toward the wall, the posture bespoke most unusual interest. Irene looked at her an instant, and held her breath; she had seen only one other head which resembled that—she knew the purplish waving hair, and gliding up to ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... preceded it, endured seven days. All the time the land was enveloped in darkness, only it was not always of the same degree of density. During the first three days, it was not so thick but that the Egyptians could change their posture when they desired to do so. If they were sitting down, they could rise up, and if they were standing, they could sit down. On the fourth, fifth, and sixth days, the darkness was so dense that they ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... from her seat Frighted, and Pan also made a half movement towards rising, but instantly sank back again to his negligent, easy posture. ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... He wore a white waistcoat and a flowing black tie, which helped to carry out the impression of his being a boy whose hair had accidentally turned gray. As he danced he put every possible embellishment of posture and step into his task, and when he bowed to Roberta his attitude expressed the deepest reverence, offset only by his laughing face as he advanced ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... almost imperceptibly, keeping his eyes on the figure which now stood within the shade of the trees in an attitude which might suggest listening, or perhaps merely a posture ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... The rigidity of his posture, straining forward there on his seat, became suddenly painful and absurd. He tried to relax, but the effort was more than it was worth, and he sat forward ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... anthropomorphous animals contributes to render their appearance extremely disagreeable in the eyes of civilized man. A little grating or lattice of very hard wood is formed, and raised one foot from the ground. The monkey is skinned, and bent into a sitting posture; the head generally resting on the arms, which are meagre and long; but sometimes these are crossed behind the back. When it is tied on the grating, a very clear fire is kindled below. The monkey, enveloped in smoke and flame, is broiled and blackened at the same time. On seeing the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Wednesday morning, and the sun was two hours high. Three suns, Nantauquas had said: on Friday, then, the blow would fall. Three days! Once at Jamestown, it would take three days to warn each lonely scattered settlement, to put the colony into any posture of defense. What of the leagues of danger-haunted forest to be traversed before even a single soul of the three thousand ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... and her hair seemed light in contrast. It was evident that she had studied grace so thoroughly that her manner and carriage appeared unstudied and natural. She never seemed self-conscious, and yet no one had ever seen her in an ungainly posture or had known her to make an awkward gesture. This grace, however, like a finished style in writing, was tinged so strongly with her own individuality that it appeared original as compared with the fashionable monotony which characterized the manners of so many of her age. ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... reveal no stage worthy for God to act upon. They give no help to the imagination to realise Him as near. A church which never lifts her eyes above her own denominational details, petty differences in doctrine or government, petty matters of ritual and posture, cannot continue to believe in the nearness of the living God. The strain on faith is too great to last. The reason recoils from admitting that God can help on such battle-fields as those on which the churches are often so busy, that He can come to help such causes ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... himself all the better with a view of the perishing capital. Therefore he halted, in the neighborhood of Aqua Albana, and, summoning to his tent the tragedian Aliturus, decided with his aid on posture, look, and expression; learned fitting gestures, disputing with the actor stubbornly whether at the words "O sacred city, which seemed more enduring than Ida," he was to raise both hands, or, holding in one the forminga, drop it by his side ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in his posture—a stark stillness which arrested his eye. He stepped quickly to his side and bent ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... companion. Some faint noise had caught his ear, and, excellent bushman that he was, he would not rest content until he had located and defined it. Silently as a shadow he slipped from his saddle and dropped recumbent on the ground. With one ear to the earth beneath he listened. He remained in this posture for perhaps a minute and a half, then he rose abruptly and turned to ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... man, and, though he lay back upon the rugged wooden bed and half dozed again, nature had aroused him a trifle beyond the point of relapse into absolute, unknowing slumber. There was coming to him a sharpness of perception which affected the quiescence of his enjoyment. He rose to a sitting posture and looked about him. At once his eyes flashed, every nerve and muscle became tense and the blood leaped turbulently in his veins. He had seen that for which he had come into this region, the girl who had so reached his rude, careless heart. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... rose from her stooping posture her face had resumed its cold and rigid appearance. Turning to the old negro who was looking on in silent wonder and grief, she enquired in a calm tone: "Have you any of the money left that I gave ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... of this court, were also several youths, who had recently had the tufts of their hair tied together, who all dropped their hands against their sides, and stood in a respectful posture. Madame Wang then led Tai-y by the hand through a corridor, running east and west, into what was dowager lady Chia's back-court. Forthwith they entered the door of the back suite of rooms, where stood, already in ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that good lion-tamer is not standing at the window, but kneeling, while he looks out. Most photographs are taken of those in standing or sitting posture. I now remember but one picture of a man kneeling, and that was David Livingstone, who in the cause of God and civilization sacrificed himself; and in the heart of Africa his servant, Majwara, found him in the tent by the light of a candle, stuck on ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... long a time. He stalked too in the open day, committing his mighty depredations. And when good men, whose duty it was to mark him as the object of their destruction, began to assail him, he did not fly, but gnashed his teeth at them, growling savagely at the same time, and putting himself into a posture of defiance. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... me the lever, George; you don't put enough force to it." George obeys and grins. "Now then, once more, with will—ho! hi! hup!" Father strains at the lever, which, not having been properly fixed, slips, and he finds himself suddenly in a sitting posture, with the water round his waist. As the cool element embraces his loins, he "h-ah-ah!" gasps, as every bather knows how; but the shock to his system is nothing compared with the aggravation to his feelings when he hears the joyful yell of triumph that issues from the brazen ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... among its cogs and levers. They are done with life, with buying and selling and with the perpetual errand. And they have become a swarm of little ornaments. Men and women denuded of the city. Their outlines posture quaintly in the mist. Their little faces say, "The clock is gone. There is nothing any more to make us alive. So we have become our ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... choosing out a graceful posture, even with no one to behold him but myself, and all the more if there were any element of peril. He sat now with one knee flung across the other, his arms on his bosom, fitting the swing of the ship with an exquisite balance, such as a featherweight might ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stole noiselessly forth upon the loggia, accompanying the noble improvisatrice with lute and rhythmic posture; the night deepened and the stars came out, and still her hearers listened breathlessly, as in moments of emotion the chant leaped wildly to meet the urgency of her thought, or deepened in melting tenderness to its pathos; for such was the intensity of Margherita's emotion and dramatic ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... a large face, strong-featured and rugged, balanced on wide, square shoulders, yet some oddness of posture held the gaze of the other till the stranger clambered over the wheel to the ground. Then Bailey removed his brier and heaved tempestuously in the throes ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... The present posture of Indian affairs, and the peculiar situation of the Indian nations east of the Mississippi, have caused that unfortunate people to be the topic of much political controversy and conversation; a succinct account of the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... of rum was to be perceived, and breath, although so feeble as to be unseen, still passed in and out of the tightly-drawn nostrils. The touch, that would have been reverent to a corpse, was now rough. He shook the fallen man and shouted. He raised him to a sitting posture, but finding that, standing as he did upon soft snow, to lift him was impossible, he laid him again in the self-made grave. That posture at least would be most conducive to the continued motion of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... death was proverbially that of a dog, no man regarded it. Even the ordinary free man was simply buried in the ground in a sitting posture and forgotten. But the departure of a chief of rank and fame, of great mana or prestige, was the signal for national mourning. With wreaths of green leaves on their heads, friends sat round the body wailing the long-drawn cry, Aue! Aue! or ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... portrait, but so combined with the attitude of the artist that the figure stands as much more than a portrait, having in it something more living, more typical, deeper than the mere outward mould of the man. St. Gaudens's Farragut has the bearing of a seaman, balanced on his two legs, in a posture easy, yet strong. He is rough and bluff with the courage and simplicity of a commander; his eye is accustomed to deal with horizons, while the features are clean-cut and masterful. The inscription is happy: 'That the memory of a daring and sagacious commander ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... a certain tallness and robustness, with an erect posture of the body; a skull narrowing from the eyebrows upward; prominence of the cheek-bones; the eyes black, deep-set, and having, it is thought, a slight tendency, in many cases, to strabismus; the hair coarse, very black, and ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... see it, undoubtedly," said Mr. George. "It is one of the most celebrated statues in the world. It is called the Dying Gladiator. I presume the sculptor of it made it from his recollections of the posture and expression of face which were witnessed in the case of real gladiators in the arena, when they had been mortally wounded, and were sinking down ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... and declination of princes, changes of government and lawes ... Then again in the subjects case, the state of favour, disfavour, prosperitie, adversity ... and all other moodes of private fortunes or misfortunes, in which traverses, I know, his purpose was to limn out such exact pictures of every posture in the minde, that any man might see how to set a good countenance upon all the discountenances of adversitie."[201] When Greville wrote thus, Sidney was dead, and in his retrospect of his friend's life he was with perfect good faith discovering high, not to say holy motives, for ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... could not be, for now Seth, apparently sure that the coast was clear, emerged from his hiding place and ran in a stooping posture until he reached another clump further off and nearer the end of the cove. He remained there an instant and then ran, still crouching, until he disappeared behind a high dune at the rear of the bungalow. And there he stayed; ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... her hands behind her head, which was a favourite posture of hers. She stood looking down at her mother with a curious expression on her face. Mrs. Lessing could make nothing of it; she merely thought Hilda "queer"; she had travelled farther than she ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... a sitting posture was interesting enough—like a T upside down, with a globe for a head and a cross-bar for arms. The hands had three fingers each, but there were only two ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... nothing; nothing except a rather large hole at the far end—some three feet from the casing. With some difficulty he squeezed himself through the open panel, and took a half-kneeling, half-sitting posture within. There he struck a match, and it was a most unfortunate thing that in striking, the box being half open, he set fire to all the matches, and was half smothered in the atrocious stink of phosphorus which resulted. One match burned clear on the floor of the cavity, and, rubbing his eyes, ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... mysterious names;(652) his back is the corpse-god; his elbows are Makati; the nape of his neck, Horus Thoth; his lips Mehur; his phallus is Tonen;(653) ...(654) the goddess of Cher; ...(655) the two hidden gods; his sitting posture the two goddesses; his legs, he who traverses the hidden places; his shin-bones are uraeus. His members are gods, he is throughout a god, no one of his members is without a god, the gods are of his substance. The royal Osiris is an intelligent essence, his members guide him, his flesh ...
— Egyptian Literature
... in this contest for the presidency, was one of great delicacy and difficulty. He was precisely in that critical posture, that, whatever course he might pursue, he would be subject to misrepresentation and censure, and could not but raise up a host of enemies. Originally one of the four candidates for the presidency, he failed, by five electoral votes, in having a sufficient ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... found such occurrences as seven, eight, and ten persons in one cottage, I cannot say for one day, but for whole days, without a morsel of food. They have remained on their beds of straw for two successive days, under the impression that in a recumbent posture the pangs of hunger were less felt."—Lord Brougham's Speech, 11th July, 1842. A volume of frightful scenes might be quoted to corroborate the inferences to be necessarily drawn from the facts here stated. I will not add more, but pass on to the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... themselves of their routine, which was to tumble and scurry among its cogs and levers. They are done with life, with buying and selling and with the perpetual errand. And they have become a swarm of little ornaments. Men and women denuded of the city. Their outlines posture quaintly in the mist. Their little faces say, "The clock is gone. There is nothing any more to make us alive. So we have become ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Florence and Susan Nipper presented themselves at Mrs MacStinger's door, that worthy but redoubtable female was in the act of conveying Alexander MacStinger, aged two years and three months, along the passage, for forcible deposition in a sitting posture on the street pavement: Alexander being black in the face with holding his breath after punishment, and a cool paving-stone being usually found to act as a powerful restorative in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... cried Hawbury, starting up from an easy posture which he had secured for himself after fifteen minutes shifting and changing. "A girl! You, Dacres, spooney! A fellow like you, and a girl! ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... Dean, the spot had to be disturbed for the coffin of Sir Robert Wilson, and the Dean sent his son Frank, now so well known as an agreeable writer on Natural History, to see whether he could observe anything to confirm, or otherwise, the tradition about Jonson being buried in a standing posture. The workmen, he tells us, 'found a coffin very much decayed, which from the appearance of the remains must have originally been placed in the upright position. The skull found among these remains, Spice, the gravedigger, gave me as ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... I have some merit in effecting it; but you shall hear. After the ceremonies of our nuptials were over, I went in my military dress, and with my sword by my side, to the apartment of Hooseinee. She was sitting in a most dignified posture to receive me, and her looks were anything but inviting. As I entered the room, a beautiful cat, evidently a great favourite, came purring up to me. I deliberately drew my sword, struck its head off, and taking that in one hand and the body in the other, threw them out of the window. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... May, 1884, which happened to be my birthday, the statue of John Marshall, formerly Chief Justice of the United States, was dedicated. This is a bronze statue in a sitting posture, erected by the bar of Philadelphia and the Congress of the United States. A fund had been collected shortly after the death of Marshall, but it was insufficient to erect a suitable monument, and it was placed in the hands of trustees and invested as "The Marshall Memorial Fund." On the death ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... lights were turned on again, and the room was full of brilliancy. Betty jumped up from her posture on the floor. The girls flocked ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... from the sounding notes; but Bruce heard as though he heard them not; they sooth his mood without his perceiving what it was that calmed, yet deepened, the saddening thoughts which possessed him. His posture remained the same; and sigh after sigh gave the only response to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... his inert posture in the deep cushions of a divan, "when the time is ripe, I shall strike a decisive blow for ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... rabies in the dog are occasionally very obscure. In the greater number of cases, these are sullenness, fidgetiness, and continual shifting of posture. Where I have had opportunity, I have generally found these circumstances in regular succession. For several consecutive hours perhaps he retreats to his basket or his bed. He shows no disposition to bite, and he answers the call upon him laggardly. He is curled up and his face is buried between ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... poise and posture, not to mention proclivities, and, taking to the better foot-hold on the clumps of grass along the bank, a little farther from the bridge, she managed to scamper after both her tormentors. Mary was also in the race, and on reaching the road ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... sat down. He sat awkwardly, his big body, in a kind of squat posture, the broad Mongolian face emerging, as in a sort of deformity, from the collar of his evening coat. Then he began to speak, with that conscious effect of bringing his words through various ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... forbear inserting here a pleasant story that passes for an uncontested truth amongst the inhabitants of this place; which is, that the ship which brought the first colonies does often appear amongst them, under sail, in a gallant posture, which they call Sir Walter Raleigh's ship. And the truth of this has been affirmed to me by men of the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Devil and his innumerable Legions to the edge of the Bottomless-pit, it remains, before I bring them to action, that some enquiry should be made into the posture of their affairs immediately after their precipitate Fall, and into the place of their immediate Residence; for this will appear to be very necessary to Satan's History, and indeed, so as that without it, all the farther account we have ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... his limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining weapon raised on high, in the faint hope that one well-directed thrust (for he knew that he should have time but for one) might penetrate through the eye to the brain ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... volumes, wherein all the postures are exactly delineated. I must confess I am shy of letting people see me at this exercise, because of my flannel waistcoat, and my spectacles, which I am forced to fix on, the better to observe the posture ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... powerful, he had already prostrated a few, but, a host of men bore him down, and appeared to be trampling on him; at the same moment I was myself seized by eight men, who forced me back into the hut, and down on the log, where they held me in a sitting posture, pressing me against the wall; here I spent a few moments of agony, as I heard my friend's stifled cries grow fainter and fainter. I struggled but little, and that only at first, for at least five-and-twenty men crowded round and laid their hands ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... auditors, stretches his jaws so wide, that instead of instructing youth, it rather frightens them: likewise in reading prayers, he has such a careless loll, that people are justly offended at his irreverent posture; besides the extraordinary charge they are put to in sending their children to dance, to bring them off of those ill gestures. Another evil faculty he has, in making the bowling-green his daily residence, instead ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... behind the clergy, the row of kneeling heirs, who instead of praying were looking at him with eyes that were brighter than the tapers, he could not restrain a smile. The abbe turned round, saw them, and continued to say the prayers slowly. The post master was the first to abandon the kneeling posture; his wife followed him. Massin, fearing that Zelie and her husband might lay hands on some ornament, joined them in the salon, where all the heirs were presently ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... as the words may be translated—was a term used to designate a man of unsullied integrity. Hence one of their most eminent metaphysicians[112] has said that "he who valiantly sustains the shocks of adverse fortune, demeaning himself uprightly, is truly good and of a square posture, without reproof; and he who would assume such a square posture should often subject himself to the perfectly square ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... in the square iron bed looked startlingly like Bob, too, but, unlike her sister, her eyes were dark. She lay quietly, her cheeks scarlet and her hands nervously picking at the counterpane. When she saw Betty she struggled to a sitting posture and tried to talk. It was pitiable to watch her efforts for her voice was quite gone. Only when Betty put her ear close down to the trembling lips ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... sitting very straight with his thin chest up, and he managed to maintain this posture as the trail turned down over the rim. Then he grasped the pommel in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... say the Chinee— you have freed from the fear of invasion, Should he presently seem in a posture to be which is open to Moral Persuasion,— How you take him in hand, a philanthropist band! how you toil to improve his condition, With a noble disdain of the trouble and pain of a ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... by a very narrow staircase, pretty Mistress Margaret's apartment, where she, the cynosure of the eyes of every bold young bachelor in Fleet Street, sat in a posture which hovered between the discontented and the disconsolate. For her pretty back and shoulders were rounded into a curve, her round and dimpled chin reposed in the hollow of her little palm, while the fingers were folded over ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... foliage, and walked across one end of the open space where the duel had taken place, casting curious and astonished glances in our direction. They had not yet disappeared, when De Berg, whom we had raised into a sitting posture, caught sight of them. He started, and uttered an exclamation of vexation, then looked at Oakley, who had left his ground and stood ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... saluted him with the grace which had been before remarked; and Lothair, who was by nature courteous, and even inclined a little to ceremony in his manners, especially with those with whom he was not intimate, immediately rose, as he would not receive such a salutation in a reclining posture. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not the dangerous and expensive War we are engaged in, together with the present Posture of Affairs, a sufficient Reason for this, tho' the Play-Houses were less mischievous to the Nation than ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... flickering of the candle-flames, and the shadows they sent waving huge over all, like the flaunting of a black flag. Through the flicker and the shadow the laird was still peering at him, when suddenly, without opening his eyes, the old man raised himself to a sitting posture—all of a piece, like a figure of wood lifted from behind. The laird then saw his face, and upon it the expression as of one suffering from some horrible nightmare—so terrified was it, so wrathful, so disgusted, all in one—and rose in haste to rouse him from a drunken dream. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... him they should be better advised in their business. Which they did incontinently, and found him very willing and fully resolved to assist them, and therefore was of opinion that they should send some one of his company to scout along and discover the country, to learn in what condition and posture the enemy was, that they might take counsel, and proceed according to the present occasion. Gymnast offered himself to go. Whereupon it was concluded, that for his safety and the better expedition, he should have with him someone that knew the ways, avenues, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... month was early June, the weather perfect, the solitude of my own choosing, and my posture comfortable enough to invite drowsiness. I had bathed and, stretched supine in the shade of a high sand-bank, was smoking the day's first cigarette. Behind me lay Ambleteuse; before me, the sea. On the edge of it, their shrill ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... founder of the temple having been Rameses II, that the sculpture refers to the circumcision of two of his children. The knife appears to be a stone implement, and the operator kneels in front of the child, who is standing, while a matron supports him in a kneeling posture, and she holds his hands from behind him.[2] In this bas-relief we can see the great difference that existed between the two forms of the operation, that of the Hebrews being performed, as a rule, on the eighth day after birth, while in the bas-relief they are ten ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Jarvis's reposeful posture had become an active one, and he took care that neither peach-coloured skirts nor white ones fluttered against anything on the outside of the car that might ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... wife and three children had been sold from him, determined to seek his freedom, even if he died in the effort. Weighing nearly two hundred pounds, he was encased in a box two feet long, twenty-three inches wide, and three feet high, in a sitting posture. He was provided with a few crackers, and a bladder filled with water. With a small gimlet he bored holes in the box to let in fresh air, and fanned himself with his hat, to keep the air in motion. The box was ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... general belief, however, there was but one land of shades for all alike. The spirits, in form and feature as they had been in life, wended their way through dark forests to the villages of the dead, subsisting on bark and rotten wood. On arriving, they sat all day in the crouching posture of the sick, and, when night came, hunted the shades of animals, with the shades of bows and arrows, among the shades of trees and rocks: for all things, animate and inanimate, were alike immortal, and all passed together to the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... of that dreadful day, and until two o'clock the ensuing night, the royal family remained, almost without a change of posture, in the narrow seat which had served them for an asylum. Who can measure the amount of their endurance during these fifteen hours of woe? An act was passed, during this time, in obedience to the demands of the mob, dethroning the king. The hour of midnight had now come and ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... stood guard at the hall door of 'The Turret,' the house of his uncle, John Balfour, at Leven. Two of them were life-size with their hands discreetly folded in prayer, two of them were smaller and made in a kneeling posture, and, as something rattled if you shook them, it was our juvenile belief that treasure was concealed inside their bodies. This idea Mr R. L. Stevenson eagerly fostered in the slightly younger generation, and, with the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... courtyard of the prison, where, before the jailer's lodge, Marcellina is performing her household duties—ironing the linen, to be specific. Jaquino, who has been watching for an opportunity to speak to her alone (no doubt alarmed at the new posture which his love affair is assuming), resolves to ask her to marry him. The duet, quite in the Mozartian vein, breathes simplicity throughout; plain people, with plain manners, these, who express simple thoughts in simple language. Jaquino ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... find her submissive to my caresses and my inquisitiveness, but she surprised me greatly when, as I placed myself in readiness for the consummation of the act, and was already in the proper posture between the two columns, she moved in such a way as to hinder my advance. I thought at first that it was only one of those devices intended to make the final victory more sweet by putting difficulties in the way; but, finding that her resistance was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... looking round to the bed she brightened, for she saw that Jude was apparently sleeping, though he was not in the usual half-elevated posture necessitated by his cough. He had slipped down, and lay flat. A second glance caused her to start, and she went to the bed. His face was quite white, and gradually becoming rigid. She touched his fingers; they were cold, though his body ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... fingers, she started to peer under the bed to ascertain if there was any dust there, when, hearing a noise, supposing that the minister had come, she turned and closed the closet door, and reseated herself, wiping her mouth with her apron as she did so. This change of posture brought her into full view of the stairs leading to the loft above, which humble place, under the roof, the clergyman used for a study when he wished to be very much retired. On the stairs, descending with solemn step and slow, was Bub, with the minister's old hat on, which he kept ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... remained a whole day in immovable meditation, his eyes and countenance directed to one spot, as if in the stillness of death. LA FONTAINE, when writing his comic tales, has been observed early in the morning and late in the evening in the same recumbent posture under the same tree. This quiescent state is a sort of enthusiasm, and renders everything that surrounds us as distant as if an immense interval separated us from the scene. Poggius has told us of DANTE, that he ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Luxembourg gallery at Paris, The Decadence of the Romans, which made the fame and fortune of Couture, the painter. It represents an orgie in the court of a temple, during the last days of Rome. A swarm of revellers occupy the middle of the picture, wreathed in elaborate intricacy of luxurious posture, men and women intermingled; their faces, in which the old Roman fire scarcely flickers, brutalized with excess of every kind; their heads of dishevelled hair bound with coronals of leaves, while, from goblets ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... he thought, spinning round and surveying with composure the warlike posture of Lieut. Feraud, with a ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Antananarivo. The nine condemned Christians were taken past Mr. Griffiths' house. "Ramonisa," he says, "looked at me and smiled; others also looked at me, and their faces shone like those of angels in the posture of prayer and wrestling with God. They were too weak to walk, having been without rice or water for a long time. The people on the wall and in the yard before our house were cleared off by the swords and spears of those leading ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... being one of those unimaginative and tactless folk who rush headlong into the mysteries of children's doings, she passed them at first in silence. It was only when she found them still in the same silent and expectant posture half an hour later that she said tentatively: "I wonder whether you would tell me what you are doing here?" After some hesitation, one of them said, in a shy voice: "We're waitin' for the barrer." It then transpired that, once a week, a vegetable-and-flower-cart ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... steamers, and held the lake wholly at command. It was the same day, I think, that one of the boats was seen to be getting up steam, and shortly afterward she paddled out from the island, and came directly toward Virgin Bay. Things were quickly put in posture for a fight. The neutral residents, who had returned from San Juan, again set out over the Transit road. The squad of infantry which had just come in from Rivas was placed at the extreme end of the wooden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... man was the taller of the two; as he lay on the bank beneath the hedge, he might even in that posture have been seen to own a figure of great strength and beauty. His face, bold of outline, with well curved, wide jaw and strong cheek bones, was shaded by the tangled mat of his wig, tousled in his sleep. His hands, long and graceful, lay idly at his side, though ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... were just facing the buildings of the General Electric Company, when our attention was attracted by a photographer who seemed to be very desirous of taking a photo of the yacht and her passengers; for he aspired to gain the most favorable posture, apparently quite a task under the circumstances. How well he succeeded in his endeavors, the readers can judge for themselves by glancing at the ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Great-Britain. Every Man about him has, perhaps, a News-Paper in his Hand; but none can pretend to guess what Step will be taken in any one Court of Europe, 'till Mr. Beaver has thrown down his Pipe, and declares what Measures the Allies must enter into upon this new Posture of Affairs. Our Coffee-house is near one of the Inns of Court, and Beaver has the Audience and Admiration of his Neighbours from Six 'till within a Quarter of Eight, at which time he is interrupted by the Students of the House; some of whom are ready ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... self, and the lovely simplicity of her manner came as a revelation to those of her admirers who had longed to know more of her private character. For several minutes they applauded while she smilingly bowed, but at last the clapping died away, and each auditor shrugged himself into an easy posture in his chair, waiting for the great star to ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... his posture—a stark stillness which arrested his eye. He stepped quickly to his side and bent ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Mr. Dinsmore, stepping out upon the veranda, where Harold stood leaning against a vine-wreathed pillar, his blue eyes fixed with a sort of wistful, longing look upon Elsie's graceful figure and fair face, as she sat in a half-reclining posture on a low couch but a few ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... well-grounded hope, and who are about to engage with their inferiors, let us place our spears at our feet, and arm our right hands only with our swords. I would not even wish that any should push forward beyond the line; but that, standing firm, you receive the enemy's charge in a steady posture. When they shall have discharged their ineffective missives, and, breaking their ranks, they shall rush on you as you stand firm, then let your swords glitter, and let each man recollect, that there are gods who aid the Roman; those gods, who ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... chapter we come to quite a different theme. Like a fever-tossed patient, Ecclesiastes has turned from side to side for relief and rest; but each new change of posture has only brought him face to face with some other evil "under the sun" that has again and again pressed from him the bitter groan of "Vanity." But now, for a moment, he takes his eyes from the disappointments, ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... humanity, or beguiling the players to act like solemn automata. For children are usually quicker than grown-ups to see these droll resemblances. I came by degrees to like the game's variety, its tense excitement, its beauty of posture and curve. And before long I vaguely felt what I later learned consciously: that tennis is a sure revealer of character. Three sets with a man suffice to give one a working knowledge of his moral equipment; ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... of very little use. What passes by the name of "Etiquette" is often of the essence of unpoliteness and untruthfulness. It consists in a great measure of posture-making, and is easily seen through. Even at best, etiquette is but a substitute for good manners, though it is often but their ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antick of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... straightened himself from his stooping posture, turned and made Lady Ostermore a bow, his whole manner changed again to that which was habitual to him. "And no less decidedly, my lady," said he with a tight-lipped smile, "may I congratulate your ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the wall, returned to the other cell, took from the hiding-place the needle and thread, flung off his rags, that they might feel only naked flesh beneath the coarse canvas, and getting inside the sack, placed himself in the posture in which the dead body had been laid, and sewed up the mouth of the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tub-shaped clay dish. On the dish there was frequently an ornamental design, but beyond this, there was no attempt at decoration. The body was frequently pressed together in order to be brought within the compass of the dish. Sometimes, the knees were pulled up or the body placed in a semi-sitting posture, and there are indications that the bodies were often divided into two or three parts prior to burial. On the stele of vultures,[1261] representing the triumph of Eannatum over his enemies, attendants are seen building a mound over ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... if they durst. They were agan summoned for their arms, and cautioned to lower their demand for tithes. To this they sent an exasperating response of defiance, and a challenge, after which they seriously went about fortifying their dwelling, and putting it into the best posture of defence against the assault which they were very certain would be made on ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... forward, brandishing his crook and shaking his fists with great vehemence, gestures which I soon learned were, in that country, signs of amity and good-will. But before knowing that fact I had risen to my feet and thrown myself into a posture of defense, and as he approached I led for his head with my left, following with a stiff right upon his solar plexus, which sent him rolling on the grass in great pain. After learning something of the social customs ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... was the short reply of the soldier; and with clenched hands and set teeth, he took a stiffer posture on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... changing any part of a typical ordinance, 483 How the Holy Supper was administered in Rome in the second century, 484 The posture of the communicants—sitting and standing, 485 The bread not unleavened, ib. Wine mixed with water, ib. Bread not put into the mouth by the minister, 486 Infant communion, ib. How often the Lord's Supper celebrated, ib. The words Sacrament and Transubstantiation, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... brought into his Majestie's affairs, from his ability and activity had wrought himselfe much into his Majestie's confidence; and about the year 1632 was appointed by the King to be Lord Deputy of Ireland, where the state of affairs was in no very good posture, the revenue of the crown not defraying the standing army there, nor the ordinary expences; and the deportment of the Romanists being there also very insolent, and the Scots plantations in the northern ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... of thee? Whither canst thou fly for refuge against the unjust prince who persecutes thee? Was it not enough to be afflicted by the death of so dear a father? Must fortune needs add new misfortunes to just complaints?" He continued a long time in this posture, but at last rose up, and leaning his head upon his father's tombstone, his sorrows returned more violently than before; so that he sighed and mourned, till, overcome with heaviness, he sunk upon the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... made to touch them, and they immediately sprang to their feet. Samuel Parris had his minions well trained. On any special action of her body, shaking of her head, or the turning of her eyes, they imitated her posture and seemed under ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... right arm raised upward, the left crossed behind the back. Lean far back, then bend forward and touch the floor with the right hand, without bending the knees, as far in front of the body as possible. Raise the body to original posture, reverse position of arms, and repeat the exercise. Inhale while leaning backward and changing position of arms, exhale while ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... cruise in the Mediterranean, she happened to sail out of Port Mahon in what was then supposed to be very bad trim for the sea. Her bows were rooting in the water, and her stern kicking up its heels in the air. But, wonderful to tell, it was soon discovered that in this comical posture she sailed like a shooting-star; she outstripped every vessel on the station. Thenceforward all her Captains, on all cruises, trimmed her by the head; and the Neversink gained ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... her strength and rose to a sitting posture, in order to bow graciously to Monsieur Bianchon, and beg him to accept something else than money for the good news he gave her. She said a few words in her mother's ear, and Madame Sauviat immediately led away the doctors; then Veronique requested the archbishop to postpone ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... beasts of prey, and safely sleeps under the same canopy with the wolf and bear. His vengeance is concealed, and sends the tidings in the fatal blow. The first settlers were obliged to stand in a continual posture of defence; and as they could not be supposed to understand the political methods of managing their barbarous neighbors, they must have been subjected to all the hardships arising from their ignorance ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... with surprise that for a short period he was hardly sensible to their further proceedings. When able to reflect, he found himself pinioned, and in a sitting posture. A damp chill was on his forehead. He had been dragged downwards, and, from the motion, steps were the medium of descent. A door or two had been raised or opened, a narrow passage previously traversed, and a short time only elapsed from the cool freshness of the evening air to the damp and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... even discover the stage. He observed that every person in the theatre carried a long black glass, which he kept perpetually fixed to his eye. To sit in a huge room hotter than a glass-house, in a posture emulating the most sanctified Faquir, with a throbbing head-ache, a breaking back, and twisted legs, with a heavy tube held over one eye, and the other covered with the unemployed hand, is in Vraibleusia ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... punishment of death for having disobeyed my commands; and if you ever dare to open your lips on the subject, depend upon it, you shall not escape!" And with these words he strode away, leaving the astonished informer on his knees, in which posture he remained for some time afterwards, not daring to raise his head until the Decurio's steps had ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... myself at an experiment attempted by Dr. Luys. Ah, it was inspiring! At the charity hospital there was a poor girl paralyzed in both legs. She was put to sleep and commanded to rise. She struggled in vain. Then two interns held her up in a standing posture, but her lifeless legs bent useless under her weight. Need I tell you that she could not walk, and that after they had held her up and pushed her along a few steps, they put her to bed again, having ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the top, there was a sort of undignified scuffle, and in the end I found myself standing above a ghastly white gentleman who, from a sitting posture, was gasping out, "I'll commit you!... I swear I'll commit you!..." I helped him to his feet rather apologetically, while the admiral behind me was asking insistently who the deuce I was. The man I had picked up retreated a little, and then turned back to look at me. The ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... a hostile nation, and it was only after repeated and positive assurances of the amicable intentions of the strangers that he was induced to lower his fighting tone. He said something to his warriors explanatory of this singular posture of affairs, and in vindication, perhaps, of the pacific temper of his son-in-law. They all gave a shrug and an Indian grunt of acquiescence, and went off sulkily to their village, to lay aside their ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... ago," replied Oldham. His spare figure in the gray business suit did not stir from its lazy posture, nor did the expression of his thin sardonic face change, but somehow, after swallowing his drink, Bob decided to revise his first intention ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... feeling for Nature is, however, only the background of his work. He is no idyllic posture-monger. The march of events as they drive forward the primitive earth-born men and women of Wessex, thrills one with the same weight of accumulated fatality, as—the comparison is tedious and pedantic—the fortunes of the ill-starred houses of Argos and Thebes. One peculiarity of Mr. Hardy's method ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... his eyes, and rested his head on his hand in a somewhat studied "pose." But as he wished not to be interrupted, it may not have been altogether unpardonable to pretend sleep. However, the sleeping posture had exactly the opposite effect to that ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... when they suddenly found themselves face to face with the bushrangers. A fight followed as a matter of course, and every one of the four was killed. When the corpses were discovered, one of them was found in a kneeling posture, as though he had died in the act of begging for mercy. A ten-pound bank note was found sticking in a wound in his breast, and evidently the bushrangers put it there, to show that in this instance, at least, their object ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Pul or Buddha in the centre, two brass candlesticks by his side, and a small incense burner at his feet. "Joss sticks" are constantly burned before him and fill the temple with scent and haze. Buddha, as found in Corea, has generally a sitting and cross-legged posture; the feet are twisted with the soles upwards, and, while the right arm hangs down, the left is folded, the forearm projecting, and the hand holding a bronze ball. By his side, generally on the left, is a small tablet in a frame of elaborate wood-carving. At the foot of ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit the direst offences against the peace and purity of womanhood; but that true and hearty, though simple and unostentatious, reverence for the sex, that teaches men to regard ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in the boards upon the window. To my dismay the room looked even smaller and dingier than when I had examined it by the light of my match some hours before. The young Marquis lay unconscious in his corner just as I had last seen him, but with the widening light I discovered that his curious posture was due more to extraneous circumstances than to his own weakness, for I could see that he was fastened to the wall by a ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... exquisitely fine even on the first night, and every repetition disclosed augmented excellence. In the second scene of the second act, where Bertrand prostrates himself before Eugenia, Mr. M'Kenzie presented in his posture of supplication, such a natural yet terrible, picture of the humiliating effects of guilt and consequent remorse, as could not fail to make an awful impression on the most hardened and unfeeling ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... a picture in the tomb of Shopsisuri. Four registrars of the funerary temple of Usirniri advance in a crawling posture towards the master, the fifth has just risen and holds himself in a stooping attitude, while an usher introduces him and transmits to him an order to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to see it resolve itself into a board, and laughed tumultuously to note how it righted itself up in a mysterious manner, and stood in an easy reclining posture till the curtain fell. ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... you will be less likely to be sick if you get some good place where you can take a reclining posture, and so remain pretty ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... At the word Go, place your prisoner on the bench in a sitting posture; and take your seats right and ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... sound startled the girl into a straighter posture. It rang out so merrily that she laughed too after making up her mind that he was ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... of thanks, implied, that they should express their satisfaction at the present situation of affairs both at home and abroad. The motion was carried, notwithstanding the opposition of those who observed, that the nation had very little reason to be pleased with the present posture of affairs; that the French were employed in fortifying and restoring the harbour of Dunkirk, contrary to the faith of the most solemn treaties; that the British merchants had received no redress for the depredations committed by the Spaniards; that the commerce of England daily decreased; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of Vesta, she is generally represented upon ancient coins in a sitting posture, with a lighted torch in one hand, and a sphere or drum in the other. As Cyb{)e}le, she makes a more magnificent appearance, being seated in a lofty chariot drawn by lions, crowned with towers, and bearing in her hand a key. Being goddess, not of cities only, but of all things ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... rose and opened it. His dog came in carrying her bone, and putting it down by the bed divided her attention between it and her master's legs, revealed by the nightshirt which, in deference to the great Disraeli, he had never abandoned in favour of pyjamas. Having achieved so erect a posture Mr. Lavender, whose heated imagination had now carried him to the convalescent stage of his indisposition, felt that a change of air would do him good, and going to the window, leaned out above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... faith, and baptised the dreary solitude Cross Island. But these pilgrims, as they now approached the spot, found no worshippers there, while, as if in horrible mockery of their piety, two enormous white bears had reared themselves in an erect posture, in order the better to survey their visitors, directly at the foot of the cross. The party which had just landed were unarmed, and were for making off as fast as possible to their boats. But Skipper Heemskerk, feeling that this would be death to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to a sitting posture and looked out. To his astonishment, he found himself and boat upon the deck ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... required, in addition, regular fees for the discovery of a witch. Besides pricking the body to find the witch-mark, he compelled the wretched and decrepit victims of his cruel practices to sit in a painful posture, on an elevated stool, with their limbs crossed; and, if they persevered in refusing to confess, he would prolong their torture, in some cases, to more than twenty-four hours. He would prevent their going to sleep, and drag them about barefoot over ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... I was reading these fables of my millions, there lay on the desk before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs—a memorandum made by myself for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as I mastered it. On the face of the figures the balance against me was appalling. My chief asset, indeed my only asset that measured ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... by instinct, advancing his foot mechanically, to save himself from falling, when he was pushed gently forwards. When standing, he could not seat himself—and when sitting, he could not get up without help. In whatever posture he was placed, there he remained. Altogether insensible to question and remark, he looked wildly round upon us, and smiled, and winked with both eyes. These were his sole remaining capabilities—to wink, and to look agreeable. He had been recommended as an object worthy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... one-legged man must sit down for work, while for his part he stood, but he had not realized that Ike considered any more restful posture essential. "A blind man sees more'n most folk" is a common claim of Emile's. It is tedious pegging away when fish are scarce, yet fishing is a trade where "'tis dogged as does it." He suspected that Ike took it easy in the stern while he worked in the bow; and his ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Sprouse had noiselessly removed his coat, a proceeding that puzzled Barnes. Something light fell to the ground. It was Sprouse who stooped and searched for it in the grass. When he resumed an upright posture, he put his lips close to ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... was in lodgings. I am now in chambers, No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see you any evening. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with you. I have two sitting-rooms: I call them so par excellence, for you may stand, or loll, or lean, or try any posture in them; but they are best for sitting; not squatting down Japanese fashion, but the more decorous use of the post——s which European usage has consecrated. I have two of these rooms on the third floor, and five sleeping, cooking, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... its way into the great constructive arcades, but not into any of the smaller arches. But the taste of those who designed its capitals must have been singular. Any kind of man, beast, or bird, it has been said, can put himself into such a posture as to make an Ionic volute. When the volutes are made by the heads of eagles, well and good; but it is certainly strange to make them out of the heads of cranes, who are holding down their long necks to peck each one at a human skull which he firmly holds down with one of his feet. ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... St John Nepomucene is a single figure, standing in melancholy weeping posture on the balustrade of the bridge, without any of that ponderous strength of wide-spread stone which belongs to the other groups. This St John is always pictured to us as a thin, melancholy, half-starved ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... cries, and all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it;—to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel animal grunt with savage ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... body and that of any brute is marked along the whole line, from the solid basis of the feet, enabling him to stand erect, look upward and behold the stars; along the line of the stiff backbone, maintaining the dignified posture; to the hands, on which treatises have been written, displaying their wonderful superiority over those of all other creatures, and enabling man to do what no other animal has done, to fill the world with ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... was not dreaming.... She knew she had lost consciousness and was coming back to life.... She asked herself could she possibly be alive? Fantomas had threatened her with death, and yet she lived.... Where was she?... Bobinette felt so weak and giddy that she remained in a sitting posture.... What exactly had happened?... Ah!—yes!—when Fantomas had announced she was to die, she had fallen down on the road: her skirt was still wet and muddy, her testing fingers told her that! She was cold! ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... of the sand from the upper part or ceiling of the passage causes it to be nearly filled up. In some places there is not more than the vacancy of a foot left, which you must contrive to pass through in a creeping posture, like a snail, on pointed and keen stones, that cut like glass. After getting through these passages, some of them two or three hundred yards long, you generally find a more commodious place, perhaps high enough to sit. But what a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... from her desk, putting her hand to her forehead, as if to soften a shock of headache that her change of posture had sent there. "I will leave the letter with you, and you can send it or not as you think best. It's merely a formality, my writing to your mother. Perhaps you'll see it differently in the morning. Effie!" she called to the ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... mendicants and mountebanks who infest the great roads of India and the streets of its cities, and who impudently claim the title "Yogi." The Western student is scarcely to be blamed for thinking of the typical Yogi as an emaciated, fanatical, dirty, ignorant Hindu, who either sits in a fixed posture until his body becomes ossified, or else holds his arm up in the air until it becomes stiff and withered and forever after remains in that position, or perhaps clenches his fist and holds it tight until his fingernails ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... would be a great deal worse. She wanted to write from his dictation, but he would not consent, thinking that his mother might not consider it proper, and he began vigorously; but though long used to writing in a recumbent posture, he found himself less capable now than he had expected, and went on soliloquizing thus: 'What a pen you've given me, Charlotte. There goes a blot! Here, another dip, will you! and take up that with the blotting paper before it ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mr. Polly remembered afterwards with pride and amazement that he felt neither faint nor rigid. He glanced round him, seized a bottle of beer by the neck as an improvised club, and went out by the garden door. Uncle Jim stopped amazed. His brain did not instantly rise to the new posture of things. "You!" he cried, and stopped for a ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... his knees from the side of his bed. It was his custom to pray in this posture both morning and night; in the morning to thank his Lord for having brought him safely through the night and to offer Him all his prayers and works and sufferings of the day. At night to implore pardon for his shortcomings of the day and to commend ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... man were, servility to his superiors, and tyranny towards his inferiors: the poor detested this race of beings. In speaking to them, however, they always used the most abject language, and the most humble tone and posture—"Please your honour; and please your honour's honour" they knew must be repeated as a charm at the beginning and end of every equivocating, exculpatory, or supplicatory sentence; and they were much more alert in doffing their caps to these new men, than to those of what ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... I assembled the companies at Bethlehem, the chief establishment of those people. I was surprised to find it in so good a posture of defense; the destruction of Gnadenhut had made them apprehend danger. The principal buildings were defended by a stockade; they had purchased a quantity of arms and ammunition from New York, and had even plac'd quantities of small paving stones ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... leaned against the safe in the same posture of seeming ease, but he expected Barney to strike at any moment, and held himself in readiness for a flashing fist. Barney had been hard to hold in leash in the old days; now that all ties of partnership ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... with my father Plutus, and therefore called by Homer the Golden Goddess? Beside, she imitates me in being always a laughing, if either we believe the poets, or their near kinsmen the painters, the first mentioning, the other drawing her constantly in that posture. Add farther, to what deity did the Romans pay a more ceremonial respect than to Flora, that bawd of obscenity? And if any one search the poets for an historical account of the gods, he shall find them all famous for lewd pranks and debaucheries. It is needless ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Ravenswood was borne to the grave; but by the introduction of the Lord Keeper and of the village crones into that funeral scene he opened the whole subject, indicated all the essential antecedents of the story, and placed his characters in a posture of lively action. That the tone is sombre must be conceded, and people who think that the chief end of man is to grin might condemn the piece for that reason; but Ravenswood is a tragedy and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... harassed by the Civil War. This was especially the case in the county of Oxford. Still you may see avenues of venerable trees that lead to no house. The old mansion or manor-house has vanished. Many of them were put in a posture of defence. Earthworks and moats, if they did not exist before, were hastily constructed, and some of these houses were bravely defended by a competent and brave garrison, and were thorns in the sides of the Parliamentary army. Upon the triumph of the latter, revenge ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... taught him to do, while Archer, tremulous and unstrung, stood awkwardly by, watching. He knelt down over the lifeless form of the old man and straightened the prostrate figure so that it lay becomingly and decently upon the hard floor. He bent the one arm and laid it across the breast in the usual posture of dignity and peace. He took the threadbare covering from the old melodeon and placed it over the face. So that the last service for old Pierre Leteur was performed by an American boy; and at least the ashes of the home fire were left in order by a scout from ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... about in his bed and kicking the slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and regarded his environment with ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... where he was governor, and threatened to put him to death unless he renounced the faith he had newly embraced. The prince, in order to prevent the execution of his father's menaces, began to put himself into a posture of defence; and many of the orthodox persuasion in Spain declared for him. The king, exasperated at this act of rebellion, began to punish all the orthodox christians who could be seized by his ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... moment I should not have been surprised if she had suddenly taken shape before my eyes, in the old seat, the slim, girlish woman in her white dress, her hands folded in her lap, her quiet eyes gazing dreamily into the red fire, a subtile air of distinction in her whole posture.... She would be old now, I suppose. Would she? Ah no, she was not one of the women who grow old.... I caught up the thread of my host's discourse just as he was pointing it with a sharp rap upon one ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... out of sight, the women pressed in again, and each first let down her hair, and seized her nearest neighbour, and they all flung themselves on the ground and knocked their heads against it, and then, rising to a sitting posture, they held on to one another, swaying backwards and forwards and chanting in time to the swaying, in chorus and antiphone. All this, even to the hair-tearing and head-knocking, was copied by the children who ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the charitable. At night a flickering tallow dip sheds a dismal glare around. The man's head is tied up in a piece of white muslin, his eyes are closed, and his face and posture are expressive of the most intense misery. He turns the crank slowly, and the organ groans and moans in the most ludicrously mournful manner. At one side of the queer instrument sits a woman with a babe at her breast, on the other side sits a little boy, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... vase modeled to represent a grotesque human figure. It is painted with designs in red and white, the ground color being a reddish yellow. The figure has a kneeling posture. The hands are upraised against the shoulders, with palms turned forward. Height, 10-1/2 inches; width of shoulders, 8 ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... at Hampton Court is a beautiful little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of A Startling Introduction. This belonged to Charles I., for his cypher is branded on the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the Commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a Dutch lady by Bott." The painter's monogram H.P. appears on the large chimney piece before which the "soldier" ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... once ugly and beautiful—than like anything else; only that they were a thousand and a million times as big. And with all this there was something partly human about them, too. Luckily for Perseus, their faces were completely hidden from him by the posture in which they lay, for had he but looked one instant at them, he would have fallen heavily out of the air, ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... thy bounty perfect. Drop My hand. That posture which dishonours thee, Quit!—for 'tis shame on shame to show respect Where we do feel disdain. Throw ope thy gate And let me pass, and never seek with me, By look, or speech, or aught, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... Phil Turner, bound hand and foot, and cruelly cramped in every limb, hitched himself to a sitting posture and began to calculate how long he ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and raised her to a sitting posture, so that she leaned against him. Holding her so, he gently rubbed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... with the other drawn over us, were lying down and trying to doze a little, when about ten o'clock we heard a horseman coming at full speed from the direction of Bolivar. We thereupon rose to a sitting posture, and awaited developments. The horseman, on nearing our post and being challenged, responded, "Friend, without the countersign!" and in a peremptory manner told the sentinel on duty that he wanted to ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the pretty girl under the arms and elevated her to a standing posture. She recovered her breath and her self-possession promptly and glowed upon him with the brightest of smiles. He ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... bury their deceased in the earth; they dig a four- foot, square, deep pit under the cabin, or couch which the deceased laid on in his house, lining the grave with cypress bark, when they place the corpse in a sitting posture, as if it were alive, depositing with him his gun, tomahawk, pipe, and such other matters as he had the greatest value for in his lifetime. His eldest wife, or the queen dowager, has the second choice of his possessions, and the remaining effects are divided ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... must not be seen sitting. Rise!—and stand in humble posture while they pass. You are a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Vogelstein no better foil could be imagined than Brush. If they recalled the tusked monsters that charged in the van of Asiatic armies, his analogue was the desert horse. Small, spare, sensitive, shy, his every posture suggested race, training, spirit, and docility. His flair for classical art had become proverbial. By mere touch he detected those remarkable counterfeits of Syracusan coins. It was he who segregated the ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... concerned about him or his feelings when Steingall touched an electric switch and revealed a bound and gagged man fastened to a leg of the bed. At first, owing to the extraordinary posture of the body, it was feared that another tragedy had been enacted. The victim of an uncanny outrage was lying on his side, and his arms and legs were roughly but skillfully tied with a stout rope in such wise that he resembled a fowl trussed for the oven. After securing ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... many breasts, is in a sitting posture. Near her stands a little child, lifting her garment off her shoulders. On the other side stands Truth, holding a mirror before her, wherein she views herself down to the middle, and is seemingly surprised at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... But these must have time to perform their operation, and must be used for a considerable time, or you will reap but little benefit from them. The act of coition being over, let the woman repose herself on her right side, with her head lying low, and her body declining, that by sleeping in that posture, the cani, on the right side of the matrix, may prove the place of conception; for therein is the greatest generative heat, which is the chief procuring cause of male children, and rarely fails the expectations of those that experience it, especially if they do but keep warm, without ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... deep, and, then facing about, presented the point of an espontoon or kind of spear, which he had carried in his hand. The bear arrived at the water's edge, within twenty feet of him; but, as soon as the captain put himself in this posture of defence, the animal seemed frightened, and, wheeling about, retreated with as much precipitation as ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... above the suicide; the tide that rose and stretched itself abroad in the sunshine, carrying hither and thither the burden with which it knew not what to do; the arrest, as by some ghastly caprice of fate, of the dead girl, in that upright posture, in which she should meet the quest for her, as it ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... as he gained an erect posture, and turned a threatening look upon his assailant, the onlookers, who all knew him, and all hated and feared him, saw a sudden and surprising transformation. The red all died out of his face, the eyes seemed starting from their sockets, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... half in his stocking-feet—offered a preliminary obstacle to this attack. But here, in the first skirmish of the battle, intellect already began to triumph over matter. By means of a pair of library steps, the injured householder gained a posture of advantage; and, with great swipes of the coal-axe, proceeded to decapitate ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... although much dilapidated, is still very beautiful. The exterior is full with fine reliefs, especially on one side, where a figure, in the form of an angel, is represented holding two garlands of fruit together over its head. On the lid of the sarcophagus are two figures in a reclining posture. The heads are wanting; but all the other parts, the bodies, their position, and the draping of the garments, are executed in a ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... coach in which he snored, overcome by Hungarian wine, lastly his train of lackeys. Then he saw his Serene Highness thrown on his mother-in-law's dirty bed, booted and spurred; for his gentlemen, as they passed the inn, had thought it best to give his slumbers a more comfortable posture. Here, surrounded by valets, pages, and negroes, he had snored on all night, while the indomitable widow cooked her meals and chopped her wood in the very room as usual. And here, in a sooty public-house, with broken windows, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... by Claverhouse, when attending on public worship, they completely routed him and his troops, rescued Mr. John King, and a number of other prisoners, whom Claverhouse had seized that morning, from their hands. Afterward they declared the grounds and causes of their present defensive posture, in that short manifesto, or declaration, published at Glasgow, June 6th, 1679. But when their numbers multiplied, their divisions increased, and lawful means for honestly defending the cause were by the majority refused. Mr. Welsh and that Erastian party ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... evening your parents and I entrained for Benares. We took a horse cart the following day, and then had to walk through narrow lanes to my guru's secluded home. Entering his little parlor, we bowed before the master, enlocked in his habitual lotus posture. He blinked his piercing eyes and leveled them on ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... urged to activity and perseverance by a desire to gratify numerous artificial wants; but the necessities of the Indian are few, and provided for by nature almost spontaneously. He detests labor, and will sometimes sit for whole days together without uttering a word or changing his posture. Neither the hope of reward nor the prospect of future want can ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... that occasion, proved how gladly they came to her when she could no longer, with ease, be conveyed to them. The enfeebled state of her bodily frame seemed to have left the powers of her mind unshackled, and she took, though in a sitting posture, almost her usual part in repeatedly addressing the meeting. She urged, with increased pathos and affection, the objects of philanthropy and Christian benevolence with which her life had been identified. After the meeting, and at her own desire, several members of the committee, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... le 17 Fevrier, 1673, a l'age de 51 ans." At the corner of the same street, where a small passage way branches off, is a fine monument to the memory of the great poet and the noblest comic writer of France. The statue is of bronze, in a sitting posture; on each side are figures,—one humorous, the other serious,—both looking at the statue. At the foot of the monument is a basin to receive water, which flows from three lions' heads. This work was put up in 1844, with public services, on which occasion the first men of France took a part. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... for just at the bottom of the hill, when he was going like a greyhound, Sable stopped short, lowered his head, flung up his heels, and, without the slightest protest or delay, Bert went flying from the saddle, and landed in the middle of the dusty road in a sitting posture with his legs stretched out before him. The saucy pony paused just long enough to make sure that his rider was disposed of beyond a doubt, and then galloped ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... able to get hold of his collar. In this position he managed to hold Bobby's head above water, but found it perilous to move or attempt to pull him up on the ice. His right arm grew numb with the weight and his left hand, cramped and twisted by his sprawling posture, pained him severely. He knew that help would come soon, but an eternity seemed to pass before he heard Mr. Grey's encouraging call, "Hold on Peri, just a minute longer." Periwinkle did hang on desperately until Mr. Grey, ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... but no one could have doubted its potency. Yaqui pointed down the lava slope, pointed with finger and arm and neck and head—his whole body was instinct with direction. His whole being seemed to have been animated and then frozen. His posture could not have been misunderstood, yet his expression had not altered. Gale had never seen the Indian's face change its hard, red-bronze calm. It was the color and the flintiness and the character of the lava ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... captains are put to charges on account of the troops for whom the King makes them responsible, and whom they are obliged to provide in the way of service. Every Saturday the dancing-girls are obliged to go to the palace to dance and posture before the King's idol, which is in the interior of his palace. The people of this country always fast on Saturdays and do not eat all day nor even at night, nor do they drink water, only they may chew a few cloves to sweeten the breath. The King always gives large sums in charity; ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... stooped over the German soldier he had so recently knocked unconscious and raised him to a sitting posture. Reaching over the side of the boat the lad wet his handkerchief and applied it to the German's head. Soon the man ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... air of languor, ill concealed by the most studied artifice of countenance, and even of posture, characterizes Lord Hervey. He would have abhorred robustness; for he belonged to the clique then called Maccaronis; a set of fine gentlemen, of whom the present world would not be worthy, tricked out for show, fitted only to drive out fading majesty in a stage coach; ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... met, the assemblage of facts presented in the President's speech, with the multiplied accounts of spoliations by the French West-Indians, appeared, by sundry votes on the address, to incline a majority to put themselves in a posture of war. Under this influence the address was formed, and its spirit would probably have been pursued by corresponding measures, had the events of Europe been of an ordinary train. But this has been so extraordinary, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... prisoner struggled up to a standing posture, and pressing both hands to his head, he ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... already under the coals): in short the nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says, "I vow, I believe they must have fit." The public, that is half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement this breach, and that we shall all unite hand and heart ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... dancing are more gentle in their manner than the men; they make fewer bending motions and do not posture so much. In other respects the dancing of the men ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... them all to rise. They did so, and then the superiority of Panthea was still more apparent than before. There was an extraordinary grace and beauty in her attitude and in all her motions. She stood in a dejected posture, and her countenance was sad, though inexpressibly lovely. She endeavored to appear calm and composed, though the tears had evidently been ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the body, all assume a stooping posture, bending forward from the hips, in order better to get a low as well as a high pitch. Some, like Daily, of Indianapolis, crouch almost to the ground, but such a position must be not only more fatiguing, but destroy somewhat ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... as best he could under that limitation. A man in a grey top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a certain elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock, whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. Soames looked quickly at his feet. How funnily feet moved, one after the other like that! Winifred's voice said ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... than in the words written many years previously by the author of Lothair himself. "The ladies did their best to signalize what the Cardinal was and what he represented, by reverences which a posture-master might have envied and certainly could not have surpassed. They seemed to sink into the earth, and slowly and supernaturally ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... proceeded instantly to cut the throats of each. All this tallied with the appearances as now presenting themselves. Mrs. Williamson had fallen backwards with her head to the door; the servant, from her kneeling posture, had been incapable of rising, and had presented her head passively to blows; after which, the miscreant had but to bend her head backwards so as to expose her throat, and the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... trumpets did blare, and caught up their arms, and smiting the water with their oars, overhauled the ship. The advancing galleys were observed while they were yet a great way off by the ship's crew, who, not being able to avoid the combat, put themselves in a posture of defence. Arrived at close quarters, the illustrious Gerbino bade send the ship's masters aboard the galleys, unless they were minded to do battle. Certified of the challenge, and who they were that made it, the Saracens answered that 'twas in breach of the faith plighted to ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... notice whatever of Toovey. He sat about a minute longer in his familiar posture, looking before him, his little round hands on his little round ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... partook of the refreshing beverage; thereupon they left the room and went into the entrance-hall. The clergyman, however, continued to discuss the affairs of the community with the Justice, who, with his hat in his hand all the time, stood before him in reverential posture. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... behaving towards the favorite with complaisance and modesty, Mary de' Medici, whose mouthpiece he appeared to be, assumed a different posture, and used different language; she complained bitterly of the slavery and want of money to which she was reduced at Blois; a plot, on the part of both aristocrats and domestics, were contrived by those about her to extricate her; she entered into secret relations with a great, a turbulent, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was addressed to the police agent who was at that moment engaged in binding up the horrible wound in the man's throat. Both were drenched with blood, partly from the dog and partly from the man. Le Cochon had been assisted to a sitting posture, sullen, revengeful, with ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... year he was the only one whom the first glance fixed in my memory, but there he is now, at this moment, just as he caught my eye on the morning of his entrance. His head was between his hands (I wonder if he does not sometimes study in that same posture nowadays!) and his eyes were fastened to his book as if he had been reading a will that made him heir to a million. I feel sure that Professor Horatio Balch Hackett will not find fault with me for writing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... upright beam of light which majestically moved across the heavens, stalking like an apparition in the midst of the auroral pageant, of whose general movements it seemed to be independent, maintaining always its upright posture, and following a magnetic parallel from east to west. This mysterious beam was seen by no less than twenty-six observers in different parts of the country, and a comparison of their observations led to a curious calculation indicating that the apparition ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... that they are incompetent and fail to support the column of blood which bears back upon them. Normally the valves in the femoral and iliac veins and in the inferior vena cava are imperfectly developed, so that in the erect posture the great saphena receives a large share of the backward pressure of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... exulting throb of gratitude for this well-nigh unexpected boon, Benson forced himself up into a sitting posture. He was shaking, ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... instinct, I might say, in the deep of sleep, he kept his place and was not rolled off upon the floor. Also, he lightly held a half-smoked cigar in one hand. I watched him for an hour, and knew him to be asleep, and marvelled that he maintained his easy posture and did not ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... reveals Itself to the inward Eye that is prepared for it."[48] "Things that are connatural in the way of Religion," he once said, "the Illapses and Breakings in of God upon us, require a mind that is not subject to Passion but is in a serene and quiet Posture, where there is no tumult of Imagination. . . . There is no genuine and proper effect of Religion where the Mind is ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... its warmth and recumbent posture he found favourable to composition. At other times he would compose or prune his verses, as he walked in the garden, and then, coming in, dictate. His verse was not at the command of his will. Sometimes he would lie awake the whole night, trying but unable to make ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... woman's face under him. A real woman! He knew her. By all that is wonderful! Taminah! He jumped up ashamed of his fury and stood perplexed, wiping his forehead. The girl struggled to a kneeling posture and embraced his legs in ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... routine, which was to tumble and scurry among its cogs and levers. They are done with life, with buying and selling and with the perpetual errand. And they have become a swarm of little ornaments. Men and women denuded of the city. Their outlines posture quaintly in the mist. Their little faces say, "The clock is gone. There is nothing any more to make us alive. So we have ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... wait, Sprouse had noiselessly removed his coat, a proceeding that puzzled Barnes. Something light fell to the ground. It was Sprouse who stooped and searched for it in the grass. When he resumed an upright posture, he put his lips close to ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... that pleases him, he takes up his Staff with both Hands, and lays it upon the next Piece of Timber that stands in his Way with exceeding Vehemence: After which, he composes himself in his former Posture, till such Time as something new ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... head of the couch reposed a fat tobacco jar and pipes. The jar was more than half full. Into it, Gavin Brice dumped his valuables, and with a clawing motion, scraped a handful of loose tobacco over them. Then he returned to his former inertly supine posture. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... take out of my pocket a paper of pins, when all the women begged for some of them. This lovely child still remained silent in the posture of exquisite grace which she had so unconsciously assumed, but, nevertheless, she looked as pleased as any of them when I gave her, also, a row of the much-coveted treasures. But I found I had got myself into business, for all the men wanted pins too, and I distributed the entire contents ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... came, and, kneeling beside her, he implored a blessing on each member of the family individually, his mother alone being conspicuous by her absence. Then, rising from his devout posture, the little suppliant fixed a keenly triumphant look upon her face, saying, as he ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... column next in rank appear'd, On which a shrine of purest gold was rear'd; Finish'd the whole, and labour'd every part, With patient touches of unwearied art: The Mantuan there in sober triumph sate, 200 Composed his posture, and his look sedate; On Homer still he fix'd a reverend eye, Great without pride, in modest majesty. In living sculpture on the sides were spread The Latian wars, and haughty Turnus dead; Eliza stretch'd upon the funeral pyre, AEneas bending with his aged sire: Troy flamed in burning gold, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... about him has, perhaps, a newspaper in his hand; but none can pretend to guess what step will be taken in any one court of Europe, till Mr. Beaver has thrown down his pipe, and declares what measures the allies must enter into upon this new posture of affairs. Our coffee-house is near one of the inns of court, and Beaver has the audience and admiration of his neighbours from six till within a quarter of eight, at which time he is interrupted by the students of the house; some of whom are ready dressed for Westminster ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the aspect of this mysterious being—something ineffably grand and imposing in her demeanor—as she thus suddenly rose from her almost recumbent posture, and burst into the attitude of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... never saw two closely alike. Each fight is a spectacle by itself, entirely different from any other. I don't mean the difference between the fighters in respect to their equipment and appearance, though that contributes to the variety also; I mean the difference in posture, method of defense and attack, style of lunge and parry, and all that; and the countless variations in form in the men, the subtle differences of character which makes them face similar situations so very differently. You'll get the feeling for it in a half a dozen shows and be as ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... he struggled into a sitting posture and turned a rapturous face upon the sea. "Water!" he shouted. "Water! Water!" And before any of the sailors could raise a hand to stop him he had rolled over the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... which he exposed their meanness and ingratitude. His troubles, however, did not prevent him living to the great age of one hundred and three. The author of the little book about schoolmasters had seen his statue in his native town. It was a marble figure, in a sitting posture, with two writing desks beside it. The favorite authors of Orbilius, who was of the old-fashioned school, were, as has been said, the early dramatists. Caecilius, a younger man, to whom Atticus the friend and correspondent of Cicero gave his freedom, lectured on Virgil, with whom, as he was ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... out my task, although I have been much affected this morning by the Morbus, as I call it. Aching pain in the back, rendering one posture intolerable, fluttering of the heart, idle fears, gloomy thoughts and anxieties, which if not unfounded are at least bootless. I have been out once or twice, but am driven in by the rain. Mercy on us, what poor ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... on just then and presented himself for the last time at the store of Flitter Bill. Bill was sitting on the stoop in his favorite posture. And in a moment there stood before him plain Mayhall Wells—holding out the order Bill had given ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... alone to take away or not to take away the country out of my hands. In case my honor is not left to me, how shall I be equal to the business of the government? Whoever, with his hands in a supplicating posture, is ready with his life and property, what necessity can there be for him to be dealt with in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the ice to bask in the warmth of the sun. A walrus rose in one of these pools close to the ship, and, finding everything quiet, dived down and brought up its young, which it held to its breast by pressing it with its flipper. In this manner it moved about the pool, keeping in an erect posture, and always directing the face of the young towards the vessel. On the slightest movement on board, the mother released her flipper, and pushed the young one under water; but, when everything was again quiet, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... observation of appearances, and in this way began a new era. He was so perfect in the observation of external signs of disease that he has never in this respect been excelled. The state of the face, eyes, tongue, voice, hearing, abdomen, sleep, breathing, excretions, posture of the body, and so on, all aided him in diagnosis and prognosis, and to the latter he paid special attention, saying that "the best physician is the one who is able to establish a prognosis, penetrating and exposing first of all, at the bedside, the present, the past, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... feelings of Natty had found vent: and he rested on the bar for a moment, in a musing posture, when he lifted his face, with his silent laugh, and, pointing to where the wood- chopper ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... physical condition of the school-house was reflected in the physical condition of the children. For example, a poorly lighted and badly ventilated school-house always housed children with eye strain and nervous disorder, and in a school-house having ill-fitting desks were children of poor posture. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... even on the first night, and every repetition disclosed augmented excellence. In the second scene of the second act, where Bertrand prostrates himself before Eugenia, Mr. M'Kenzie presented in his posture of supplication, such a natural yet terrible, picture of the humiliating effects of guilt and consequent remorse, as could not fail to make an awful impression on the most hardened and unfeeling sinner. In Longueville Mr. Warren was, as he always is, correct and respectable, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... accurately put into their proper places and tied together, clothed in the best robes of the deceased, and ornamented with beads and feathers, all of which are cleaned or changed once a-year. These skeletons are placed in a sitting posture in a row, with all the weapons and other valuables belong to each laid beside him. The pit is then covered over with beams or twigs, on which the earth is spread. An old matron of each tribe is appointed to the care ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... quite a tasty design, and is represented by six females in a kneeling posture, supporting a circular shield, on the top of which stands a young and handsome fireman, dressed in his regalia. In his right hand he grasps a hose pipe, the end of which rests on the top of an imitation hydrant, which ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... half-clasped one to another. He handed me the lantern for a better look, and in the rays of it the two wretches peered forward as if drawn against their will. I cannot well say if they or I first perceived the miracle; that these corpses, as they lay in the posture, so bore the very likeness of the two lovers on my sculptured slab. But I remember that, as John and Grace Magor screamed back and clung to me, and as by the commotion of them clutching at my knees the lantern fell and was extinguished, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Benachie, not relishing what he considered an intrusion on his legitimate beat, took up a large stone and threw at him as he was passing. Noth, on hearing it rebounding, coolly turned round, and putting himself in a posture of defence, received the ponderous mass on the sole of his foot: and I believe that the stone, with a deeply indented foot-mark on it, is, like the bricks in Jack Cade's chimney, "alive at this day to testify." Legendary lore and fabulous ballads aside, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... provost-marshal, {179} as the latter gave the words "Ready! present!" But at this instant his vociferous daring forsook him. As the men levelled their muskets at him, with inconceivable rapidity he sprang bodily round, still preserving his squatting posture, and received the fire from behind; while the less noisy, but more brave, Ogston looked the firing-party full in the face as they discharged their ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... he sat on the ground were not the most cheerful. He was sitting in a constrained posture, his hands and feet being tied, and, moreover, the cold air chilled him. The cold was not intense, but as he was unable to move his limbs he, of course, felt ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... footing, do, fare; come to pass. Adj. conditional, modal, formal; structural, organic. Adv. conditionally &c. adj.; as the matter stands, as things are; such being the case &c. 8. % Relative % 8. Circumstance. — N. circumstance, situation, phase, position, posture, attitude, place, point; terms; regime; footing, standing, status. occasion, juncture, conjunctive; contingency &c. (event) 151. predicament; emergence, emergency; exigency, crisis, pinch, pass, push; occurrence; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... halting or unsteadiness of one of the legs, which the patient draws after him like an ideot. If the hand of the same side be applied to the breast, or any other part of the body, he cannot keep it a moment in the same posture, but it will be drawn into a different one by a convulsion, notwithstanding all his efforts to the contrary.' Sir Joshua Reynolds, however, was of a different opinion, and favoured ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... and Anita, laughing at her posture, clambered upon his back, her arms about his neck, arms which seemed to shut out the biting blast of the blizzard as he staggered through the high-piled snow and downward to the road. There he continued to carry her; Fairchild ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... as the groundwork for Old Moody. "An elderly ragamuffin, in a dingy and battered hat, an old surtout, and a more than shabby general aspect; a thin face and a red nose, a patch over one eye, and the other half drowned in moisture. He leans in a slightly stooping posture on a stick, forlorn and silent, addressing nobody but fixing his one moist eye on you with a certain intentness. He is a man who has been in decent circumstances at some former period of his life, but, falling into decay, he now haunts about the place, as a ghost haunts the spot where ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... said, "was always a person of excellent good taste—except when he cut off his second son, Julius, with two hundred a year for turning Anglican, wearing a soft hat and Roman collars, and joining the staff at that clerical posture shop in Wendish Street ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in hurling the Discus, put themselves into the posture best adapted to add force to their cast; that is, they advanced one foot, upon which they leaned the whole weight of their bodies. They then poised the Discus in their hands, and whirling it round several times almost ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... arrived to unlock the gates, and the band of outcasts straggled indolently towards the nearest sheltered seats. Some went to sleep at once, in a sitting posture. Darkey produced a clay pipe, and, charging it with a few shreds of tobacco laboriously gathered from his waistcoat pocket, began to smoke. He was accustomed to this sort of thing, and with a pipe ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... he is!" cried a voice from the landing; "here he is! I see him!" The brigadier had put his eye to the keyhole, and had discovered Andrea in a posture of entreaty. A violent blow from the butt end of the musket burst open the lock, two more forced out the bolts, and the broken door fell in. Andrea ran to the other door, leading to the gallery, ready to rush out; but he was stopped short, and he stood with his body a little thrown back, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of a great weight: observing that as they had arranged their joint affairs so satisfactorily, he would now be glad to look into those of Bully Sawyers. Which, indeed, had been left over-night in a very unpromising posture, and for whose impending expedition against the Persians the weather had been by no means favourable ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... way behind him, when through the darkness he spied something darker yet by the roadside. Going up to it, he found an old woman, half sitting, half standing, with a load of peats in a creel upon her back, unable, apparently, for the moment at least, to proceed. Alister knew at once by her shape and posture who she was. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... it is," said Daisy, laughing. Absolutely, the sober, sober little face had forgotten its care, and the eyes were alight with intelligence and curiosity, and the lips were unbent in good honest laughter. The doctor raised himself up to a sitting posture. ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... his back, when he was aware of a crash in the hedge above, and then, of something that hurtled past him, all arms and legs, that rolled over two or three times, and eventually brought up in a sitting posture; and, lifting a lazy head, Bellew observed that it was a boy. He was a very diminutive boy with a round head covered with coppery curls, a boy who stared at Bellew out of a pair of very round, blue eyes, while he tenderly cherished a knee, and an elbow. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... Talleyrand, who was almost dying, begged my eldest brother to go and see him, so that he might add his warning to all the others. Raising himself to a sitting posture, and with death in his face, he said: "It won't be a knife or a pistol, it will be a hail of paving- stones thrown from the roofs, which will crush you all!" We were grateful for the warning, and we were glad it did not come to pass. Nothing happened, either in the street or at the ball, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... eyes, as if to save them from being dazzled by an expected burst of light, awaited the answer to his summons. The Anglo-Dane, desirous to obey his leader, imitating him as near as he could, stood side by side in the posture of Oriental humiliation. The little portal opened inwards, when no burst of light was seen, but four of the Varangians were made visible in the entrance, holding each his battle-axe, as if about to strike down the intruders who had disturbed the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to see and impossible to describe. It was a crowd, a mob, a masquerade, a revel, a hell, a terrible buffoonery. Negroes, negresses and mulattoes, in every posture, in all manner of disguises, displayed all sorts of costumes, and what was worse, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the shirted Indians rose to his feet. With rifle sloped over forearm, he padded into the dark. Fenner's relaxed posture tensed into alert readiness. His head turned, his attitude now one of listening concentration. Drew strained to see or hear what lay beyond. But the noise from the plaza and torchlight made a ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... the white bundle that was Hadj made a sudden, though slight, movement, as if the thing inside it had shivered. Irena noticed it with her half-closed eyes. Domini leaned forward and held out the money, then drew back startled. Irena had changed her posture abruptly. Instead of keeping her head thrown back and exposing her long throat, she lifted it, shot it forward. Her meagre bosom almost disappeared as she bent over. Her arms fell to her sides. Her eyes opened wide and became full of a sharp, peering intensity. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... this court, were also several youths, who had recently had the tufts of their hair tied together, who all dropped their hands against their sides, and stood in a respectful posture. Madame Wang then led Tai-yue by the hand through a corridor, running east and west, into what was dowager lady Chia's back-court. Forthwith they entered the door of the back suite of rooms, where stood, already in attendance, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... turbulent and unquiet made an expedition into France, under the command of Hastings [d]; and, except by a short incursion of Danes, who sailed up the Thames, and landed at Fulham, but suddenly retreated to their ships on finding the country in a posture of defence, Alfred was not for some years infested by the inroads of those barbarians [e]. [FN [d] W. Malm. lib. 2. c. 4. Ingulph. p. 26. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... its fury, and Forster was obliged to cling for his existence as he sank, from his kneeling posture, flat upon the wet herbage. Still he had approached so near to the edge of the clift that his view below was not interrupted by his change of posture—Another flash of lightning.—It was enough! "God have mercy on their souls!" cried he, dropping his face ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... restore cheerfulness and content shall not be wanting. But where is Eliza?" By this time we had reached the back parlor, whither Mrs. Wharton led me; and, the door being open, I saw Eliza reclined on a settee, in a very thoughtful posture. When I advanced to meet her, she never moved, but sat, "like Patience on a monument, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... remains ingrained in Preanger character, and the crouching obeisance known as the dodok, formerly insisted upon, is still observed by the native to his European masters, the humble posture giving place to kneeling on a nearer approach. The kind proprietor of the Soekaboemi Hotel offers every facility to those guests anxious to penetrate below the surface of Soendanese life, placing his carriage ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Woburn, and, as soon as I arrived, the Duke carried me off to his room and told me everything that had taken place, and the exact present posture of affairs. John Russell has for some time past been impressed with the necessity of bringing the Eastern Question to a settlement, to avert all possibility of a war with France, and he has repeatedly ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... moment, but Aurelia had no word of reply to this exordium. Seeing her keep the same haughty posture in her chair, with eyes scornfully averted as if she scarce listened, Leander proceeded to disclose his mind in less ornate terms By subtle grades of confidential speech, beginning with a declaration of the sympathy moved in him by the parent's love, the daughter's distress, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... panting and dripping William dragged him through the kitchen, where the cook cried out unintelligibly, seeming to summon Adelia, who was not present. Through the back yard went captor and prisoner, the latter now maintaining a seated posture—his pathetic conception of dignity under duress. Finally, into a small shed or tool-house, behind Mrs. Baxter's flower-beds, went Clematis in a hurried and spasmodic manner. The instant the door slammed ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... seeing a party of the natives sporting in the surf on their surf-boards; now they swam out through the breakers, amid which it seemed impossible any human being could exist; then, mounting to the summit of a huge roller, one of them would leap up on his board in a standing posture, and glide down the side of the watery hill, balancing himself in a wonderful manner. Another would perform the same passage while sitting, or a third would throw himself full length along his board. ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... healthful breezes there, but they do not quite sweep away the scent of frangipani. Warlike, with a proviso, the Scot might have been designated, but he was not to be compared with these ojaladeros; he would fight if he had a lime-lit stage to posture upon; they would not fight at all, but they moved about mysteriously, as if their bosoms were big with the fate of dynasties, held hugger-mugger caucus, and were ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... maliciously. All the demoniac, pantherlike cruelty of his race looked at me out of his deep eyes. He was taking his time about it, unwilling to lose the slightest flavour of his vengeance. I played up to him nobly, squirming as if in an agony of terror. But by this time I had got a comfortable posture on the rock, and my ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... and face to face, once a year—no more—in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government, and so it was no wonder that the balance of propriety [i.e., property] was in one hand, and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war; but it was carried by ballot, that it was a steady government, though it is true by the voices it had been carried before that it was an unsteady government; so to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Lucius—I'd just as lieve be shot in an awkward posture as a genteel one; so, by my valour! I will ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... with acclaim. The crowd was too dense for any one to prostrate himself, but every Egyptian, potentate or slave, assumed as nearly as possible the posture of humility. Kenkenes bent reverently, but he lifted his eyes and looked long at the passing ark. Six priests bore it upon their shoulders. It was a small boat, elaborately carved, and the cabin in the center—the retreat of the deity—was picketed with a cordon of sacred images. The ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... first general direction that should be given to the speaker is, that he should stand erect and firm, and in that posture which gives an expanded chest and full play to the organs of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... were extremely striking, and were displayed with an extravagant but not ungraceful foppery. His gown waved in loose folds; his long dark curls were dressed with exquisite art, and shone and steamed with odours; his step and gesture exhibited an elegant and commanding figure in every posture of polite languor. But his countenance formed a singular contrast to the general appearance of his person. The high and imperial brow, the keen aquiline features, the compressed mouth; the penetrating eye, indicated the highest degree of ability and decision. He seemed absorbed ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... week in Melrose, and John appearing most punctually at the cross to challenge all comers, and being short legged, he inveigled every dog into an engagement by first attacking him, and then falling down on his back, in which posture he latterly fought and won ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... she ended Dicky had raised himself to a sitting posture. "The whole business was a dirty shame," he declared. "This Ishmael was his own son, eh? Then why should he cast out one son ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of you willingly stay till part of the meeting be come,[145] especially such who should be examples to the flock. One or two things are omitted about your comings-together, which I shall here add. I beseech you, forbear sitting in prayer, except parties be any way disabled; 'tis not a posture which suits with the majesty of such an ordinance. Would you serve your prince so? In prayer, let all self-affected expressions be avoided, and all vain repetitions. God hath not gifted, I judge, every brother to be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... construction, and by galleries. The floor of the galleries is rugged, the steps and the cement of the conglomerate having worn out from between the masses of rock. The images all occupy niches in the face of the hill: two are gigantic, the rest not very large. They are generally in the usual sitting posture, and rather high up, while the larger ones are erect, and reach the base of the cliffy portion of the rock. They are all male, and all obviously Boodhistical; witness the breadth, proportion, and shape of the head, and the drapery; both are damaged, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... pointed arch having made its way into the great constructive arcades, but not into any of the smaller arches. But the taste of those who designed its capitals must have been singular. Any kind of man, beast, or bird, it has been said, can put himself into such a posture as to make an Ionic volute. When the volutes are made by the heads of eagles, well and good; but it is certainly strange to make them out of the heads of cranes, who are holding down their long necks to peck each one at a human skull which he firmly holds down with one of his feet. And on the other ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... The parcel was addressed: "General Barry St. Leger, in camp before Stanwix." I sat down on the grass and began to open it, when a groan from the prostrate prisoner startled me. He had struggled to a sitting posture, and was facing me, eyes bulging from their sockets. Every vestige of ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... past, and theorizing on the present, she lay restless, changing her posture from one side to the other and back again. Finally, when courting sleep with all her art, she heard a clock strike two. A minute later, and she fancied she could distinguish a soft rustle in the passage outside ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... At first the bashful Crinoline could not bring herself to utter a distinct consent, and Macassar was very nearly up and away, in a returning fit of despair. But her good-nature came to his aid; and as she quickly said, 'I will, I will, I will,' he returned to his posture in somewhat nearer quarters, and was transported into the seventh heaven by the bliss of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... obvious and Jess published personal history. Yes, it described him to say that, in addition to all the rest of him, and of his personal history, and of his family, and of theirs, in addition to their social posture, as that of a serried phalanx, and to their notoriously enormous wealth and crushing respectability, she might have been ever so much less lovely for him if she had been only—well, a little prepared to answer questions. And it wasn't as if quiet, cultivated, earnest, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... that consciousness which horses have of the approach of other beings, scent, hearing, or a sense of their own which we can not understand—made the chestnut race-horse lift his head and nicker. One of the men rose silently to a sitting posture, and reached for his rifle. For a moment he seemed to be looking right at me; but his eyes passed on, and he carefully examined every bit of foliage and every ant-hill and grass-mound, and all the time he strained ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... images of past thoughts and experiences and their distorted combination. Somewhat closer to actual dreaming is the rise of images accompanying present bodily and mental states. I sometimes see a body in the posture my own body has that moment assumed and one night, when recalling a passage from Wilhelm Meister, I saw a young man seated bareheaded on a doorstep, plainly a picture of Wilhelm at Marianna's threshold. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... banqueta along one side of his cell offered a resting-place. On this the wretched man sank down into a lying posture. The fastenings on his arms and legs would not allow him to ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... body, which must be that of my opponent who had fallen under me. What had happened? I could hear no sounds of any conflict in progress. Had the enemy taken possession of the state-rooms, and were all of our party prisoners or dead? I rose painfully into a sitting posture, and put out a hand to guide myself. It fell on a quiet face. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... shall often laugh in Hell to think of the crack-brained marquis that I made on earth. It was my will to make a beggar of Tom's son, but at the last I play the fool and cannot do it. But do you play the fool, too, dearie, and"—she chuckled here—"and have your posture and your fine ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... no interest in the result. In truth, the feelings it excited pervaded every bosom, from the kitchen to the parlor. Terror and horror had prevented the ladies from being spectators, but they did not feel the less. Frances continued lying in the posture we have mentioned, offering up fervent and incoherent petitions for the safety of her countrymen, although in her inmost heart she had personified her nation by the graceful image of Peyton Dunwoodie. Her aunt and sister were less exclusive in their devotions; but Sarah began ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... walk only by instinct, advancing his foot mechanically, to save himself from falling, when he was pushed gently forwards. When standing, he could not seat himself—and when sitting, he could not get up without help. In whatever posture he was placed, there he remained. Altogether insensible to question and remark, he looked wildly round upon us, and smiled, and winked with both eyes. These were his sole remaining capabilities—to wink, and to look agreeable. He had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... and twelve o'clock struck, and my patient slept tranquilly. At a quarter to one, however, I was abruptly roused from a reverie by a sob, a sob of fear and agony that proceeded from the bed. I looked, and there—there, seated in the same posture as on the previous evening, was the child. I sprang to my feet with an exclamation of amazement. She raised her hand, and, as before, I collapsed—spellbound—paralysed. No words of mine can convey all the sensations ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and smaller waterproof narwhal bag in which were the Kogmollock fire materials. There was no food. This fact was evident proof that the Eskimos were in camp somewhere in the vicinity. He had finished his investigation of the pouches when, looking up from his kneeling posture, ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... walk winding under an arch of the yew hedge to the more distant bowling-green. On one side of this arch an admirably-carved stone figure in broadcoat and ruffles played perpetually upon a stone fiddle to an equally spirited shepherdess in hoop and high heels, who was for ever posed in dancing posture upon her pedestal and never danced away. As I wandered round the garden whilst luncheon was being prepared, I was greatly taken with these figures, and wondered if it might be that they were an enchanted ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... did availed him nothing; the disturbances continued in the churches, and scarcely a service was held without a quarrel arising as to the manner of conducting it, some fighting for one posture, some ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... to listen patiently, Brother Calvert," said John Cross, clasping his hands together, setting his elbows down upon the table, shutting his eyes, and turning his face fervently up to heaven. Old Hinkley imitated this posture quite as nearly as he was able; while Mrs. Hinkley, sitting between the two, maintained a constant to-and-fro motion, first on one side, then on the other, as they severally spoke to the occasion, with her head deferentially bowing, like a pendulum, and with a motion ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... consequence to my Lord, the House being mighty vehement in it. We could say little but advise that his friends should labour to get it put off, till he comes. We did here talk many things over, in lamentation of the present posture of affairs, and the ill condition of all people that have had anything to do under the King, wishing ourselves a great way off: Here they tell me how Sir Thomas Allen hath taken the Englishmen out of "La Roche," and taken ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Steuben, with his recruits; their force then consists of two thousand regulars, and three thousand two hundred militia. Lord Cornwallis thinks he must evacuate Richmond; the 20th, the Marquis de Lafayette follows him, and retains a posture of defence, seeking to manoeuvre, and avoiding a battle. The enemy retires on Williamsburg, six miles from that town; their rear-guard is attacked in an advantageous manner by our advanced corps under Colonel Butler. Station taken ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... double entendre—with allusion to the posture in sexual intercourse known among the Greeks as [Greek: hippos], in Latin 'equus,' the horse, where the woman mounts the man in reversal of the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the prescribed line. Or suppose Jimmy crowds up to him a little too closely, and feeling that he can't breathe as freely as he wishes, gives him a hunch; or suppose Betty, during a temporary fit of fretfulness, induced by long setting in one posture, or overcome with the heat of a midsummer afternoon, or the sweltering temperature of a room where an old-fashioned box stove has been converted into a furnace; suppose Betty gives her seat-mate a sly pinch to make her move ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... raise them or put them in place, is an additional argument of their skill, since it shows that they had no fear of any accident happening in the transport. It appears from the representations that they placed their colossus in a standing posture, not on a truck or wagon of any kind, but on a huge wooden sledge, shaped nearly like a boat, casing it with an openwork of spars or beams, which crossed each other at right angles, and were made perfectly tight by means of wedges. To avert the great danger of the mass toppling over sideways, ropes ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... blanket the operator sits on the ground with her legs folded under her. The warp hangs vertically before her, and (excepting in a case to be mentioned) she weaves from below upwards. As she never rises from this squatting posture when at work, it is evident that when she has woven the web to a certain height further work must become inconvenient or impossible unless by some arrangement the finished web is drawn downwards. Her cloth-beam does not revolve as in our looms, so she brings her ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews
... sources of mischief. The chief source of the "problem of discipline" in schools is that the teacher has often to spend the larger part of the time in suppressing the bodily activities which take the mind away from its material. A premium is put on physical quietude; on silence, on rigid uniformity of posture and movement; upon a machine-like simulation of the attitudes of intelligent interest. The teachers' business is to hold the pupils up to these requirements and to punish the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... when death takes place. The two great toes are tied together, to make the body look decent; and formerly the hands were placed with the palms together, as if in the attitude of prayer, and were kept in that posture by tying ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the whites, as to the protection of person and property; but they were disqualified from political rights and social equality. But ... it is always to be remembered that in their contact with white men, they did not assume that creeping posture of debasement—nor did the whites expect it—which has more or less been forced upon them in fiction. In fact, their handsome, good-natured faces seem almost incapable of despair. It is true the whites were superior to them, but they, in their turn, were superior, and infinitely ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... public schools might not well be made to supply knowledge, as well as gentlemanly habits, a strong class feeling, and eminent proficiency in cricket. They seem to think that the noble foundations of our old universities are hardly fulfilling their functions in their present posture of half-clerical seminaries, half racecourses, where men are trained to win a senior wranglership, or a double-first, as horses are trained to win a cup, with as little reference to the needs of after-life in the case of the man as in that of the racer. And, while as zealous for education ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... colleague a "bold, reckless man" who realized that heresy, and was resolved to work it for his own ends. From the day when Mr. Chamberlain launched his scheme, or dream, of Tariff Reform, Mr. Balfour's authority steadily declined. Endless ingenuity in dialectic, nimble exchanges of posture, candid disquisition for the benefit of the well-informed, impressive phrase-making for the bewilderment of the ignorant—these and a dozen other arts were tried in vain. People began to laugh at the Tory leader, and likened ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... The tread and posture of the stranger, when he gained the half-deck of the periagua, was finely nautical, and confident to audacity. He seemed to analyze the half-maritime character of the crew and passengers, at a glance, and to feel that sort of superiority ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... he reached Paris, however, sufficed to prove that he was totally unprepared for the existing posture of affairs, and that he had taken every precaution to enforce his claims, should he find the public mind disposed to admit them. His retinue consisted of three hundred horse, and he travelled with all the pretensions ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Such a posture could not be preserved for any considerable period without shifting side for side. Three or four times during the four hours I would be startled from a wet doze by the hoarse cry of a fellow who did the duty of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... February, 1895, agrees with Dr. Dubois in his view of the distinct position of this form in the animal kingdom, and says that the discoverer "has proved the existence of a new prehistoric anthropoid form, not human, indeed, but in size, brain power, and erect posture much nearer man than any animal hitherto ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... the fire, head bent forward, as though he had an audience. I shrank back closer into the shadows, drawing my coat collar more snugly about my throat. It was incredible that he should play a part before her—and now alone! His very posture suggested a martyred, deserted old man. I felt myself in the presence of something inexplicable.—Then, in a frenzy of suppressed rancor, such as I had never felt before, I climbed the hill, the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... astute enough to give out that he came not to claim a crown, but only a right to be put in nomination for it. To the mind of the Londoner, such quibbling failed to commend itself, and the citizens lost no time in putting their city into a posture of defence, determined not to surrender ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... out into the night: and then, by some impulse, which we hope was a good one, he went up and kissed the picture of Fairoaks, and flinging himself down on his knees by the bed, remained for some time in that posture of hope and submission. When he rose, it was with streaming eyes. He had found himself repeating, mechanically, some little words which he had been accustomed to repeat as a child at his mother's side, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... allowances would be made for whatever Andy might say, and feeling that, on this account, he would do better than either of his brothers. Richard, of course, could not go. He scarcely had strength to move, and did not look up from his stooping posture by the stove, when, at day-dawn, Andy drew on his butternut overcoat, and tying a thick comforter about his ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... in the patio, to which I had free admission whenever I pleased, by permission of the alcayde, I went up to the Frenchman, who stood in his usual posture, leaning against the wall, and offered him a cigar. I do not smoke myself, but it will never do to mix among the lower classes of Spain unless you have a cigar to present occasionally. The man glared at me ferociously for a moment, and appeared to be on the point of refusing my offer ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Struggling to a sitting posture, I saw that the thick white fog had closed densely, and that the woodland back of us was barely distinguishable. We too seemed shut in, as in a room. "You live at Mrs. Libby's," said the young woman, after a moment's hesitation. "I am Agnes ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... attack of gout, and could not himself appear in Parliament; but a narrative in writing, which was to be the basis for asking for a liberal grant, was laid before the House. The treachery of the Dutch and their open aggressions were exposed; and as the King was thus "forced to put himself in the posture he is now in for the defence of his subjects at so vast an expense," he trusted that Parliament "would cheerfully enable him to prosecute the war with the same vigour he hath prepared for it, by giving him supplies proportionate to the ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Postures, your Postures, begin, Sir. [He puts himself into a ready Posture as if he would speak, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... be slow work. Not till about four did a solitary man mount the ladder, and take stand, far down under the bell, gazing up a long while, with stoops, and changes of posture. Hogarth thought that it was the bell-foundry expert whom he had seen; but could only guess: for all here ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... scruples in regard to choosing a profession, and wish much I had the power of giving you advice that would be of the least service. But that, I fear, in my total ignorance of yourself and the posture of your affairs, is pretty nearly impossible. The profession of the law is in many respects a most honorable one, and has this to recommend it, that a man succeeds there, if he succeeds at all, in an independent and manful manner, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... am sure it doesn't," said Grace in haste, quickly assuming an erect posture. "Pray ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... His teeth grated upon the blade of the knife as he opened it, and the next instant Ignacio, with a long deep sob, rolled over among the ashes. The Carlist rose painfully and with difficulty into a sitting posture, and with a grim smile gazed upon his enemy, whose eyes were glazing, and features settling into the rigidity of death. But the conqueror's triumph was short-lived. A deep bark was heard, and a moment afterwards a wolf-dog, drenched with mud and rain, leaped into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... hold. For the fall had thrown the mongrel on his side. And so long as Lad should be able to keep the great foaming head in that sideways posture, the other dog could not get his feet under him again. With his legs in their present position, he had no power to get up; but lay thrashing and snapping and snarling; and trying with all his cramped might to free himself from the muscular grip ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... Rose," he said, falling back into a sitting posture at the first attempt, "where's my writing-case? If I go off my head, will you give this to the Rector, and ask him if it will be any good in the matter he knows of?" and he handed her an envelope. "And this keep," he added, giving her one addressed to his father. "Don't let ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as seventeen human individuals, besides some works of art and bones of animals. We know nothing of the arrangement of these bones when they were first broken into. M. Lartet inferred at first that the bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting attitude, a posture known to have been adopted in most of the sepulchres of primitive times; and he has so represented them in his restoration of the cave: but this opinion he has since retracted. His artist also has inadvertently, in the same drawing, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... in any exertion, either mental or corporeal, for some hours only, we find ourselves fatigued, and unfit to pursue our labours much longer; if in this state, several of the exciting powers, particularly light and noise, be withdrawn; and if we are laid in a posture which does not require much muscular exertion, we soon fall into that state which nature intended for the accumulation of the excitability, and which we call Sleep. In this state, many of the exciting powers cannot act upon us, unless applied with some violence, for we are insensible ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... That portion of them to which he had given rattles and the shining eye were appointed rulers over all the other and inferior species of snakes. And he bade them remember that he had formed them to crawl in the dust all the days of their lives, and on no account to attempt an upright posture. 'But,' said he, as he concluded the word which bade them be ever of the dust, 'this is no place for your tribes. Ye are a thin-skinned, or rather a skinless race, and should have a habitation and a name only where fervid suns beam, and the frosts and snows of winter are little known. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... as the others in Master AEsop's scandalous chronicle, clapped one bear's paw on Faenza's shoulder and another bear's paw across Faenza's mouth, and thus forced him at once, by sheer effort of brute strength, to a sitting posture and to silence. This action on the part of the man whom for the time being he had consented to accept as his general, combined with the cold glance of cruelty and scorn which AEsop gave him, served to cool Faenza's hot blood. He heard ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... standards, for the eminence he had attained. At the full of his extraordinary powers, battling for the high place he had and the higher he aspired to, there was nowhere to be seen his equal as a debater or a politician,—nowhere but in the ungainly figure, now once more erected into a posture of rivalry and defiance, of the man whom he had long ago outstripped and left behind him in the home of their ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... I remain a longer or shorter time, according as the day promises to turn out. If it is bad, and I feel irritation and uneasiness, I have recourse to the method I have just mentioned. I change my posture, pass from my bed to the sofa, from the sofa to the bed, seek and find a degree of freshness. I do not describe to you my morning costume; it has nothing to do with the sufferings I endure, and besides, I do not wish to deprive you ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of novelties was in the act of showing forth to an admiring crowd, the docility of a tame hare. On a table in the street, on which was placed a drum, the little animal stood, in an erect posture, and with surprising tractableness obeyed the commands of its exhibiter, delivered in very broken English, with which, nevertheless, it seemed ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... side of the fire, opposite the one window, whence he saw a little patch of yellow sand over which the spent waves spread themselves out listlessly. Under this window there was a bench, upon which the daughter threw herself in an unusual posture, resting her chin upon her hand. A moment after, the youth caught the first glimpse of her blue eyes. They were fixed upon him with a strange look of greed, amounting to craving, but, as if aware that they belied or betrayed her, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... came." The people appear, however, some time after, to doubt if the English had any religion at all. Again, "I have seen the prince have his eyes immovably fixed upon the Infanta half an hour together in a thoughtful speculative posture." Olivares, who was no friend to this match, coarsely observed that the prince watched her as a cat does a mouse. Charles indeed acted everything that a lover in one of the old romances could have done.[2] He once leapt ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... (Parkinson's disease, shaking palsy) Progressive nervous disease causing destruction of brain cells that produce dopamine, muscular tremor, slowing of movement, partial facial paralysis, peculiarity of gait and posture, and weakness. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and moderation, worthy of Washington; exchanged grave salutations with the members of the convention; and then, retiring from the hall where he had solemnly consecrated his life to his native Commonwealth, proceeded at once to energetic work to get the State in a posture of defence. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... crushed a path for her through the ripe grain until we reached the rick. The rain was beginning to pelt us sharply. Furiously I went to work, tearing out straw by the handfuls, armfuls, and in a few seconds I had excavated a hole large enough for Salome to enter in a crouching posture. ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... boy, Slipping down until he had assumed a sitting posture. He lay down and was asleep in a short time. Stacy woke with a start when another giant rock smote the wall just above their cave, exploding into thousands of pieces from the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... continued our route, Lion going on just before me, and turning round frequently to see if I was following. By his conduct, I was very sure that he understood the object of our expedition. We kept as much as possible under cover; occasionally when we came to open ground we ran across it in a stooping posture, so that, should we be seen by those at a distance, we might be mistaken for animals. We had gone nearly a league without observing a human being, when we caught sight of a small hamlet in the distance, with a wood on one side, and ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon their knees. One after another the recalcitrant members grovelled in the dust before him, and begged that he would show them mercy. This was the sort of ceremony that the monarch loved. He kept his enemies in their humble posture till his vanity was glutted, and then declared that he would go before the diet ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... Phurnutus, and other authors have said on the subject, explains the story of Cinyras and Myrrha in the following manner. Cynnor, or Cinyras, the grandfather of Adonis, having one day drank to excess, fell asleep in a posture which violated the rules of decency. Mor, or Myrrha, his daughter-in-law, the wife of Ammon, together with her son Adonis, seeing him in that condition, acquainted her husband with her father's lapse. On his repeating this to Cinyras, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... her recumbent posture, she approached the water at the entrance of the cave till the spray mingled with her long, white locks, and the light falling upon her brow, revealed a sharp beautiful outline of face scarcely touched by years, white, even ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... clotted with paint, in the same manner as the hair on their heads. In other respects, they are well-proportioned; though the belly seems rather projecting. This may be owing to the want of compression there, which few nations do not use, more or less. The posture of which they seem fondest, is to stand with one side forward, or the upper part of the body gently reclined, and one hand grasping (across the back) the opposite arm, which hangs down ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... old Adam fresh from his Maker's hand. A servant of the house, or farm-labourer, perhaps!—fallen asleep there by chance on the fleeces heaped like golden stuff high in all the corners of the place. A serf! But what unserflike ease, how lordly, or godlike rather, in the posture! Could one fancy a single curve bettered in the rich, warm, white limbs; in the haughty features of the face, with the golden hair, tied in a mystic knot, fallen down across the inspired brow? And ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... others the attendant visual images of past thoughts and experiences and their distorted combination. Somewhat closer to actual dreaming is the rise of images accompanying present bodily and mental states. I sometimes see a body in the posture my own body has that moment assumed and one night, when recalling a passage from Wilhelm Meister, I saw a young man seated bareheaded on a doorstep, plainly a picture of Wilhelm at Marianna's threshold. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... were fired into the room, wounding John Taylor and killing Hiram Smith. Joseph Smith now attempted to escape by jumping out of the second-story window; but the fall so stunned him that he was unable to rise, and being placed by the conspirators in a sitting posture, they despatched him by four balls shot through ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of his fingers, and kept them there. He uttered not a word, but held his head slantwise and steadfast, as if listening. Only for a few seconds did he remain in this attitude; and then, as if suddenly satisfied with the examination, he rose from his stooping posture, exclaiming as he ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... known me a little longer. But a death like that, suffocated in that mud, that filthy, dirty water that smells so bad, doesn't at all appeal to me. If it were some green, transparent Swiss lake!... I want beauty even in death; I'm concerned with the 'final posture,' like the Romans, and I was afraid of perishing here like a rat in a sewer.... And nevertheless, I couldn't help laughing at my aunt and our poor servants to see the fright they were in!... Now the water is no longer rising, and the house is strong. Our ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... building, where a subject was to be drawn, had been accurately ruled with squares, the figures were introduced, and fitted to this mechanical arrangement. The members were appended to the body, and these squares regulated their form and distribution, in whatever posture ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... "Worship, mostly of the silent sort," worship, that finds no expression in word or gesture,—worship away from pealing organs and chants of praise, or the simpler music of the human voice, where no hands are uplifted, nor tongues loosened, nor posture of reverence assumed, becomes with most mortals a vague, aimless reverie, a course of distraction, dreaminess, and vacancy of mind, no more worth than the meditations of the Lancashire stone-breaker, who was asked what he thought ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Such was the posture of affairs at home, and at Mr. Sherwin's, when I went to see Margaret for the last time in my old character, on the last night which yet remained to separate us from ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... having saluted her, and taking care not to surprise her, he said, Thecla, my spouse, why sittest thou in this melancholy posture? What strange impressions are made upon thee? Turn ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... says: "I think the main design of Comedy is to make us laugh." (Abel Boyer, Letters of Wit, Politicks, and Morality, London, 1701, p. 362). But, she adds, since Collier has taught religion to the "Rhiming Trade, the Comick Muse in Tragick Posture sat" until she discovered Farquhar, whose language is amusing but decorous and whose plots are virtuous. This insistence on decorum and virtue indicates a concession to Collier and to the public. Thus ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... having bundled up these they threw them down upon the floor, tied their ankles to one another, and left them hanging, one on one side, and the other on the other side of the parlour door; in which posture they were found the next day at noon, at the very point of expiring, their blood having stagnated about their necks, which put them ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... with his thin chest up, and he managed to maintain this posture as the trail turned down over the rim. Then he grasped the pommel in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... in my chamber and call in and invite God and His angels thither, and when they are there I neglect God and His angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God, and if God or His angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer I cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... thin patches of soil, with here and there a shrub, and here and there a tree. Striking his heels into the soil, and catching at whatever branch or stem presented itself, he took the plunge. Clinging, sliding, falling, he arrived at the bottom. In a posture half sitting, half standing, and considerably jarred, he found himself face to face with Bruin. The animal had settled down on all fours, and now, with his surly, depressed head turned sullenly to one side, he looked at Penn, and growled. Penn looked at him, and said nothing. He had heard ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... disappointments, of his wayward youth: he got up from the bed: threw open the window, and looked out into the night: and then, by some impulse, which we hope was a good one, he went up and kissed the picture of Fairoaks, and flinging himself down on his knees by the bed, remained for some time in that posture of hope and submission. When he rose, it was with streaming eyes. He had found himself repeating, mechanically, some little words which he had been accustomed to repeat as a child at his mother's side, after the saying of which she would softly take him to his bed and close ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unscrambled himself and resumed a normal posture, from his immediate rear there rent the quiet morning air a clear and musical laugh. It floated out on the breeze and hit ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... limitation to set out for a particular place. The fun is in the going. You keep right along with the procession until old age gets you. The thing is just to keep it up as long as you can." He swung himself into a sitting posture on the edge of the desk and noted that the slight pucker had not left his partner's eyes. "What's the idea?" he wished affectionately ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... slipped down on the deck into a sitting posture beside him, and placed her soft, ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... raising himself from his reclining posture, and staring Morrice in the face, gravely ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... or three days, the child is perfectly well again, without having taken either medicines or globules. But have we done nothing? When the heart was striving to restore the balance of the circulation, by adopting the recumbent posture, we gave it less work to do. The equable warmth of bed was soothing to the nervous system, and solicited the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided ministering to congestion of the viscera, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... came out, when Jack, in few words, told them what had happened. Some of the servants ran in, and a young lady made her appearance, while the others were helping the old lady out of the carriage, who had recovered her senses, but had been so much frightened that she had remained in the posture in ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... 385. Ward. Posture of defence; a technical term in fencing. Cf. Falstaff's "Thou knowest my old ward" (1 Hen. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... doorway at the far end of the shop appeared Emma with her two visitors. Mrs. Orton-Wells stopped and said something to a girl at a machine, and her very posture and smile reeked of an offensive kindliness, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... the fire, for the evening was a little cool, and, as we came in, roused herself from her sad posture to give me welcome. How white her face was! It was grievous to see such a young spirit so blanched,—so utterly unelastic. If she could receive tidings of his death, she would reconcile herself to the inevitable; but this wearing, gnawing pain, this grief ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... was now slower than ever. Several times the deer had looked up, apparently suspecting that danger was near; but still Uncle Jeff advanced, in a stooping posture, unwilling to stir even the smallest twig for fear of alarming the wary herd. I moved on more rapidly; the panther was now not more than twenty yards from us, and would in a few seconds make his ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... eternal in the grace of simple airs or in the Christian innocence of Mozart was apparent, nay, had increased, in her features as the days in passing had added to them not only experience but also revelation and security. She was serene. The posture of her head was high, and her body, which was visibly informed by an immortal spirit, had in its carriage a large, a regal, an uplifted bearing which even now as I write of it, after so many years, ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... competent, ordinarily very good-tempered; but there was red in his hair. When he got sufficiently near he tucked the speaking-trumpet under his arm, where it looked uncommonly like a fat cotton umbrella, himself suggesting a farmer inspecting an intended purchase, and in this posture delivered to us a stump speech on our shortcomings. This, I fear, I will have to leave to the reader's imagination. It would require innumerable dashes, and even so the emphasis would be lost. My relief had cause to be pleased ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... commonwealth. I think I see a path, as clear and as direct as a ray of light, which leads to the attainment of that object. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality, are necessary to make us a great and happy people. Happily, the present posture of affairs, and the prevailing disposition of my countrymen, promise to co-operate in establishing those four great and essential pillars of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... with the whole of their religion from the Chaldean mother country, that this ornament was selected not only as appropriate to the sacredness of the royal person, but as a consecration and protection. The holiness of the symbol is further evidenced by the kneeling posture of the animals which sometimes accompany it (see Fig. 22, page 67), and the attitude of adoration of the human figures, or winged spirits attending it, by the prevalence of the sacred number seven in its component ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... but the grass and his gun, he nevertheless was not troubled, for he thought that he had miscalculated the distance. He searched still further; but to his surprise the game-bag was still missing. He now raised himself up in a sitting posture, and rubbing his eyes vigorously, he searched the ground closely. But his eyes, usually so good, must have been dimmed by some enchantment, for he could perceive neither the hares nor the partridges, which he could ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... scurry among its cogs and levers. They are done with life, with buying and selling and with the perpetual errand. And they have become a swarm of little ornaments. Men and women denuded of the city. Their outlines posture quaintly in the mist. Their little faces say, "The clock is gone. There is nothing any more to make us alive. So we have ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... artificial wants; but the necessities of the Indian are few, and provided for by nature almost spontaneously. He detests labor, and will sometimes sit for whole days together without uttering a word or changing his posture. Neither the hope of reward nor the prospect of future want can overcome this ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... awful developments. The eyelids remained opened, disclosing two great, dull eyes like poorly polished agates, which stared expressionlessly at him. There was a convulsion like a minor earthquake, and the mass shortened and heightened its bulk, raising itself to a sitting posture. The three hinged, irregular arms suddenly extended themselves to the full in a thrust that barely missed him. They were tipped, those arms, with immense claws, like interlocking, rough-hewn stone fingers. They crashed emptily together within a few feet of Harley. Then, and not till then, did ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... formed into a half-circle, and shot at him with barbed arrows, six feet long. By this time a few of his guards had climbed up the wall, and were coming down to his help, at the moment when an arrow pierced his breast, and he sank down in a kneeling posture, with his brow on the rim of his shield, while his men held their shields over him till the rest could come to their aid, and he was taken up as one dead, and carried out on his shield, while all within the fort were slaughtered in the rage of the Macedonians. When the king had been ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the young huntsman kindled with rapture. He essayed to speak, but the words died upon his tongue. Falling on his knees, he seized the count's hand, and pressed it to his lips and heart. Tekeli raised him from his humble posture. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... were often performed. The lower or "knoll" mounds were used as the sepulchres of the dead. They yield up to the modern antiquary numberless skulls, of a type distinctly different from those of the Red Indians. The Mound-Builders buried their dead, most often, in a sitting posture, adorned with shell beads and ivory ornaments. Sometimes the dead were burned. Finally, the mounds were employed ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... Hadj made a sudden, though slight, movement, as if the thing inside it had shivered. Irena noticed it with her half-closed eyes. Domini leaned forward and held out the money, then drew back startled. Irena had changed her posture abruptly. Instead of keeping her head thrown back and exposing her long throat, she lifted it, shot it forward. Her meagre bosom almost disappeared as she bent over. Her arms fell to her sides. Her eyes opened wide and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... show me the Zeno Chapel; but I declined, preferring the church, where I found the space before the high altar filled with market-people come to hear the early mass. As I passed out of the church, I witnessed the partial awaking of a Venetian gentleman who had spent the night in a sitting posture, between the columns of the main entrance. He looked puffy, scornful, and uncomfortable, and at the moment of falling back to slumber, tried to smoke an unlighted cigarette, which he held between his lips. I found none of the shops open as I passed through ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... their eye by faith on Jesus, as only able to do their business, to bear up their head, to carry them through discouragements, to apply cordials to their fainting hearts, and remain fixed in that posture and resolution, looking for strengthening and encouraging life from him, and from him alone; and thus declare, that, (1.) They are unable of themselves to stand out such storms of discouragements, and to wrestle through such difficulties. (2.) They believe he is only able to bear them ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... before he could even discover the stage. He observed that every person in the theatre carried a long black glass, which he kept perpetually fixed to his eye. To sit in a huge room hotter than a glass-house, in a posture emulating the most sanctified Faquir, with a throbbing head-ache, a breaking back, and twisted legs, with a heavy tube held over one eye, and the other covered with the unemployed hand, is in Vraibleusia called ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... somewhat resemble those of bronchitis, later they are quite distinctive. Cough is very markedly paroxysmal in character, and though severe is intermittent, the patient being entirely free for many hours at the time. The effect of posture is very marked. If the patient lie on the affected side, he may be free from cough the whole night, but if he turn to the sound side, or if he rises and bends forward, he brings up large quantities of bronchial secretion. The expectoration is characterized by its abundance and manner of expulsion. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... and coming to where she, who was the unwitting cause of all this, yet lay, stopped all at once, for it seemed to him that her posture was altered; her habit had become more decorous, and yet the lashes, so dark in contrast to her hair, those shadowy lashes yet curled upon her cheek. Therefore, very presently, Barnabas stooped, and raising her in his arms bore her away through the wood towards the dim ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... satisfied with these conditions and terms," replied Don Quixote; and so saying, they betook themselves to where their squires lay, and found them snoring, and in the same posture they were in when sleep fell upon them. They roused them up, and bade them get the horses ready, as at sunrise they were to engage in a bloody and arduous single combat; at which intelligence Sancho was aghast and thunderstruck, trembling ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... air, that, to please him, I yielded to his entreaties and lay down, wrapped in its warm folds. The good-natured fellow then wished me a "Buon riposo, signor!" and descended to his own resting-place, humming a gay tune as he went. From my recumbent posture on the deck I stared upward at the myriad stars that twinkled softly in the warm violet skies—stared long and fixedly till it seemed to me that our ship had also become a star, and was sailing through space with its glittering companions. What inhabitants peopled those fair planets, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... there Mr. Trimm didn't know. It may have been the shrieks of the victims or the glare from the fire that brought him out of the daze. He wriggled his body to a sitting posture, got on his feet, holding his head between his coupled hands, and gazed full-face into the crowning railroad horror ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... like a sunny garden which one could only reach by squeezing oneself through some painfully narrow aperture. The fountains, the flowers, the lawns were still hers—if she would stoop and crawl; and for Imogen the mere imagining of herself in such a posture brought a hot blush to her forehead. Not only would she have scorned such means of reaching the life of ample ease and rich benevolence, but they were impossible to her nature. A garden that one must crouch to enter was a prison. Better, far better, her barren, dusty, lonely life than such ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... is a large family comprising the various forms of monkeys, baboons, man-apes, such as the gibbon, gorilla, chimpanzee, orang-outang, etc., all of which have big jaws, small brains, and a stooping posture. This family also includes MAN, with his big brain and erect posture, and his many races depending upon shape of skull, color of skin, character of ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the bench]. At the word Go, place your prisoner on the bench in a sitting posture; and take your seats right ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... idea. They believe the evil spirit, "Mungia," is a black spectre dwelling in the woods. They think the souls of the good and brave enter beautiful birds and feed on delicious fruits, while cowardly souls become dirty reptiles. Polygamy is common. They bury in the sitting posture, with the hammock of the deceased wrapped around him. The very old men are buried with the mouth downward. They make use of a narcotic drink called Ayahuasca, which produces effects similar to those of opium. The Zaparos are pacific and hospitable, but there is little social life ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... attempting to do them any farther hurt, they recovered their canoe, and hauled in their wounded companions. They set them both upon their feet to see if they could stand, and finding they could not, they tried whether they could sit upright: One of them could, and him they supported in that posture, but perceiving that the other was quite dead, they laid the body along at the bottom of the canoe. After this some of the canoes went ashore, and others returned again to the ship to traffic, which is a proof that our conduct ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... lingered, and seemed waiting for his father to go with him. Platt had sunk very rapidly, and this day had made a great change. Margaret had taken the moaning and restless child on her lap, for the ease of change of posture: and she was now shading from his eyes with her shawl, the last level rays of the sun which shone in upon her from the window. She was unwilling to change her seat, for it seemed as if the slightest movement would quench the lingering life of the child: and there was no one to draw ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... other.—THIRD, Silesian War lies handy to us, and is the only kind of Offensive War that does; Country bordering on our frontier, and with the Oder running through it as a sure high-road for everything. FOURTH, "What suddenly turned the balance," or at least what kept it steady in that posture,—"news of the Czarina's death arrives:" Russia has ceased to count against us; and become a manageable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... must rise upon his hind legs and look in front of him. This posture was not hard, for in his native jungle, he had often thus obtained a breakfast of venison for his wife and family. But oh, to stand a half hour on two legs only, when he had four, and would gladly have used all of them, was ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... If it please Him to make Himself known, He can make the heart conscious of His presence. Our posture must be that of holy reverence, of quiet ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... sitting-room; two figures were outlined in strong relief against the dark teak walls, both absorbed in conversation. Ma Chit presented a particularly attractive picture, with her rose-crowned head, graceful posture, and waving hands; even as they gazed, her rippling ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... him by the arm, dragging himself slowly into a sitting posture. "I'll hang myself if you let them get me," he urged hysterically. " I'll hang myself in gaol rather than let them do it. I can't face it all I can't—I can't. It isn't grandpa I mind; I'm not afraid of him. He was a devil. But it's the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... thought I! Though this humble posture so little affects this proud beauty, she knows not how much I have obtained of others of her sex, nor how often I have been forgiven for the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... oaks, she perceived the figure of a young man sitting in her favourite alcove. His back was turned towards the side upon which she was. Having finished the air, he threw his flute carelesly from him, and folded his arms in a posture the most disconsolate that can be imagined. He rose and advanced a little with an irregular step. "Ah lovely mistress of my soul," cried he, "thou little regardest the anguish that must for ever be an inmate of this breast! While ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... devil in the most saintly disposition, and that which slumbered in the breast of the young Shawanoe now flamed to a white heat. Swinging back to the upright posture he called: ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... warning received in a dream,[664] counterfeited, once a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched out for charity. A statue formerly in the villa Borghese, and which should be now at Paris, represents the Emperor in that posture of supplication. The object of that self-degradation was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual attendant on good fortune, of whose power the Roman conquerors were also reminded by certain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. The symbols were the whip ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... undertook at the beginning of my child H.'s ninth month to experiment with her with a view to arriving at the exact state of her colour perception, and also to investigate her sense of distance. The arrangements consisted in this instance in giving the infant a comfortable sitting posture, kept constant by a band passing around her chest and fastened securely to the back of her chair. Her arms were left bare and quite free in their movements. Pieces of paper of different colours were exposed before her, at varying distances, front, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... Gerald rose from his squatting posture at the stern of the boat, while Phil and Jack amiably made way for the newcomer at the edge of the wharf, where, for some unexplained reason, men always like to stand. Claud, finding himself between Gerald and his father, ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... whatever of Toovey. He sat about a minute longer in his familiar posture, looking before him, his little round hands on his little round knees. Then ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... let you go; you are either mad or drunk—incapable of taking care of yourself," said a low, clear voice; and Tom was lifted to a standing posture by the ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... her sitting posture, and fixing her eyes on Hans, with an angry gleam in them, she said, in a deeply-shaken voice ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... foes than like two teams before a cricket-match, or two wrestlers who shake hands and afterwards grin amicably as they move in circles seeking for a hitch. As I lay, however, the bathing-place could only be brought into view by craning my neck beyond the tent-door: and my posture was too well chosen to be shifted. Moreover, I had a more singular example of these amenities in face of me, on the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pugilism. There were pictures of giants, monsters, and outlandish beasts, most prodigious, to be sure, and worthy of all admiration, unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his subject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were prepared to work; and posture-makers dislocated every joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inextricable knots, wherever they could find space to spread a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst of the confusion, while everybody was treading on his neighbor's toes, some little boys ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reputations! Ay, just as he is a keeper of secrets, another virtue that he sets up for in the same manner. For the rogue will speak aloud in the posture of a whisper, and deny a woman's name while he gives you the marks of her person. He will forswear receiving a letter from her, and at the same time show you her hand in the superscription: and yet perhaps he has counterfeited the hand too, and sworn to a truth; but he hopes not to be believed, and ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... face. "I had not suspected you of so much diplomacy," she observed, dryly; "but, after all, Miriam, how does this change the posture of affairs to me? I shall be all the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... a wrestling-match, a foot-race, a lance-fight, a disk-hurling, a strife of archery and of darters. AEneas, on the first anniversary of his father's funeral, proposes five trials of skill—for the chariot-race of Homer, suitably to the posture of the Trojan affairs, a sailing-match; then, the foot-race, the terrible cestus, archery, and lastly, the beautiful equestrian tournament of Young Troy. The English Homer of the Dunces treads in the footsteps of his august predecessors, and celebrates, with imitated solemnities, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I have been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence, impelled me to abandon ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... keep Thy posture here, and sleep'st a marble sleep, May the repose unbroken be, Which the fine Artist's hand hath lent to thee, While thou enjoy'st along with it That which no art, or craft, could ever hit, Or counterfeit to mortal sense, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... found himself squatted behind the vat, and Bouvard lay like one who had fallen over a stool. For ten minutes they remained in this posture, not daring to venture on a single movement, pale with terror, in the midst of broken glass. When they were able to recover the power of speech, they asked themselves what was the cause of so many misfortunes, and of the last above all? And they ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and still he sat there before the fire, head bent forward, as though he had an audience. I shrank back closer into the shadows, drawing my coat collar more snugly about my throat. It was incredible that he should play a part before her—and now alone! His very posture suggested a martyred, deserted old man. I felt myself in the presence of something inexplicable.—Then, in a frenzy of suppressed rancor, such as I had never felt before, I climbed the hill, the lumps of mud and ice seeming ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... engagements be observed in their genuine sense; but in my opinion it is unnecessary, and would be unwise, to extend them. Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, in a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies." In a previous part of the same letter Washington makes the following admirable and just remark: "The nation which indulges towards ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... stunned seconds he dragged himself to a sitting posture; his head throbbed cruelly, and when he put his hand to his forehead he found that it was bleeding. He tried to stand, but when he placed his weight upon his left foot it gave him ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... selfishness which our present institutions inspire, such questions are wonderfully endearing. I answered him that I had found a friend, whose principles were as liberal and enlarged as they were uncommon; and that I would take an early occasion to give him an account of my present designs, and the posture of my affairs. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... rest, those Centre Grenadiers of the Observatoire are disbanded,—yet indeed are reinlisted, all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new quarters. The King must keep his Easter in Paris: meditating much on this singular posture of things: but as good as determined now to fly from it, desire being ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a little girl, endeavoured to steady herself by holding to one of the thin pieces of grating; it broke, and her arm fell through and struck the water, and in an instant she gave a dull, smothered wail. Palu, the woman, seized her by her hair and pulled the child up to a sitting posture, and then shrieked with terror—the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... thenceforward was destined to prove a continued justification of their high opinion of him. He was of an active, mercurial turn, and, as might have been seen, was not inclined to remain long in one place or posture. He had now thrown aside his rapid pen, and, with a quick, light step and deeply-cogitating air, was traversing back and forth the open space between his table, in front of the president, and the closed door of the apartment. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... went to the American mission school and see the native children settin' flat on the floor. Josiah wuz awful worked up to see 'em settin' down in such a oncomfortable posture, and he said to me that if he had some tools and lumber he would make 'em some seats. But that is their way of settin' ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... decide in my mind whether the elevated chin posture of the passenger was the result of pride, bravado or a boil on the Adam's apple, when the scudding comet reached the shelter of the protecting bank in which was located the chiselled dog kennel that I occupied. As the machine came to halt, the superior chin depressed itself ninety degrees, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... into a flood of tears, and quitted the room, as my lord raised up Harry Esmond from his kneeling posture, put his broad hand on the lad's shoulder, and spoke kindly to him. Then, suddenly remembering that Harry might have brought the infection with him, he stepped back suddenly, saying, "Keep off, Harry, my boy; there is no good in running into ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the Queen and Empress, have now been almost a fortnight at Aranjuez, to their great content, and also of this Court, to hear his Majesty is so vigorous there, as at one time to have set on horseback a matter of three hours, and in that posture to have killed a wolf from his own hands; whereas, before his going hence, it was doubted by many whether he had sufficient health and strength to perform the journey, though but seven leagues, in a coach or litter, and that in two ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... which is preserved in the Vatican, mentions that Francis, having directed the body of Brother Peter to be removed sometime afterwards, it was found that it was turned and kneeling, the head bowed down, and in the posture of one who obeys a command given him. To mark the value of obedience and the respect due to it, God was pleased to permit a dead person to obey the orders of a superior, as ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... its work. With that, he declared that he was too brave a man to suffer any longer. He seized a tomahawk and raised it over the head of the prisoner: still a muscle did not move. He did not even change his posture. The blow was given, and ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... comfortable posture, I watched him till he fell asleep, his placid countenance, notwithstanding the dangers he had been in, showing a mind at rest and nerves unshaken. I found, on going on deck, that we had already risen the sails of the stranger ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... relaxed hand of the old clergyman who had fallen in a sitting posture on the bed, slipped from his wounded head which he had clasped just before he died, and for a moment seemed to point at him. He shivered, but still he could not stir. How dreadful and solemn was that face! And those eyes, how they searched out the black record of his heart! The quiet ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the front room of the little drab cottage at the edge of town. That was limned upon his brain in startlingly perfect detail still—that and one other thing. The memory of John Anderson's pitifully wasted form huddled slack upon the high stool, arms outstretched and silvered head bowed in a posture of utter weariness, remained with him, too, clinging in spite of every effort to ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... the servants, but instantly fell down dead; suffocated, I imagine by some gross and noxious vapor. As soon as it was light again, which was not until the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and free from any sign of violence, exactly in the same posture that he fell, so that he looked more like ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... religious mood. Speaking in his diary of a weakness and fluttering at the heart, from which he had suffered, he says, "It is an awful sensation, and would have made an enthusiast of me, had I indulged my imagination on religious subjects. I have been always careful to place my mind in the most tranquil posture which it can assume, during my private exercises of devotion."[39] And in this avoidance of indulging the imagination on religious, or even spiritual subjects, Scott goes far beyond Shakespeare. I do not think there is ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... the corner of the flagstaff, a young girl came suddenly into sight by the jutting edge of sandstone bluff near the High Wickham; and Herbert, jumping up at once from his reclining posture, raised his bat to her with stately politeness, and moved forward in his courtly graceful manner to meet her as she approached. 'Well, Selah,' he said, taking her hand a little warmly (judged at least by Herbert Le Breton's ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the door." A certain Miss Finnegan, who served a brief apprenticeship in the household, acquired lasting fame in the garrison for the mimetic power which enabled her to portray "Mrs. Gineral's" instantaneous change from a posture of fury to one of rapt devotion. She could look like Hecate Hibernicized, and in one comprehensive second drop into a chair, "smooth her wrinkled front" and side curls, shake out her rumpled draperies, and rise from an instant's searching of the Scriptures ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... known that an armament was fitting out at New York many suspected that the southern States were to be assailed, and such was the unhappy posture of American affairs at that time, that no sanguine expectations of a successful resistance could be reasonably entertained. The magazines of the Union were everywhere almost empty, and Congress had neither ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... to make their difference appeare more cleerly, let us suppose one man endued with an excellent naturall use, and dexterity in handling his armes; and another to have added to that dexterity, an acquired Science, of where he can offend, or be offended by his adversarie, in every possible posture, or guard: The ability of the former, would be to the ability of the later, as Prudence to Sapience; both usefull; but the later infallible. But they that trusting onely to the authority of books, follow the blind blindly, are like him that trusting to the false rules of the master ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... said the fat boy, Slipping down until he had assumed a sitting posture. He lay down and was asleep in a short time. Stacy woke with a start when another giant rock smote the wall just above their cave, exploding into thousands of pieces from ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... that smacked of his uncle Everard Romfrey, Beauchamp said of the fantastical posture of the young man, 'One can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... herself to a sitting posture, and, lifting both hands to her face, pushed back the hair from her forehead and temples, with a gesture which Ellen knew meant that she was making up her mind to some disagreeable or painful effort. Then taking both Ellen's ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... sun. "Fling away ambition," mourns old Cardinal Wolsely in Henry VIII; "by that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?" "It often puts men upon doing the meanest offices," says Swift, "as climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping." It has been aptly called by Sir ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... early and warmer part of the night, served to melt the icy covering of the mother earth just under him. When the cold increased, this was again frozen, rendering the portion of the body nearest to the ground almost benumbed. By frequently reversing the posture a little, some relief from suffering was obtained, but not sufficient to reach a degree which could be called comfortable, or, in the least, be claimed as desirable. Every member of this expedition can truthfully assert that they have experienced a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... look upwards, the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me, but in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... as I entered the chamber, I saw her sitting on a sofa in a pensive posture, and tears in her eyes. I asked her what she thought of Lucy Sterling's advice, and whether it would not have been better to have followed it than suffer her conduct to be exposed ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... satisfaction arising out of the effect they made, kept pace with the emotions of the reader. At first, Mr Nadgett sat with his spectacles low down upon his nose, looking over them at his employer, and nervously rubbing his hands. After a little while, he changed his posture in his chair for one of greater ease, and leisurely perused the next document he held ready as if an occasional glance at his employer's face were now enough and all occasion for anxiety or doubt were gone. And finally he rose and looked out of the window, where he stood with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... lazulites, were crowded in the form of bracelets and chains, and his feet rested on a golden basin. The grandees of the realm lay prostrate on the ground, with their heads covered with dust. A hundred complainers and accused persons were in a similar posture; behind them twenty executioners, with drawn sabres in their hands waited the royal signal, which generally terminated each cause, by the decapitation of one ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... building the lads swiftly passed. In all but one they found ghastly occupants, some stretched out in the posture of sleep, some sitting at table like the first seen, but all showing that death had come suddenly ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... [62] The posture of respect, as to stand motionless like a statue, the eyes fixed on the ground, and the arms ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... the potion, put the cup on the mantelpiece, and then tilted his head to the right so as to submerge the affected tooth. In this posture he remained, awaiting the sweet influence of the remedy. The girls, out of a nice modesty, turned away, for Mr. Povey must not swallow the medicine, and they preferred to leave him unhampered in the solution ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... to. You left England undefended that you might posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a woman preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and in return asks nothing—God have mercy on us!—save that you nightly chafe your feet with a bit of woollen. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... tired now of disappointments, that I must talk a little with my padre in their defiance, and in a manner now, thank God! out of their reach. Ah, how long will letters be any safer than meetings! The little world I see all give me hope and comfort from the posture of affairs but I am too deeply interested to dare be sanguine while ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... one rose at length, as by a sudden effort, to the sitting posture. For a few moments it turned its yellowish skull to this side and that; then, heedless of its neighbour, got upon its feet by grasping the spokes of the hind wheel. Half erected thus, it stood with its back to ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... as Barbara looked again she saw the Mexican rising to a sitting posture and with his hand to his head look around in a dazed manner as though awakening out of a deep sleep. The young woman drew a long breath of relief and, with a faint smile, said to the surveyor, who had drawn nearer: "I'm sorry I came, Abe. I'm afraid you'll think ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... of economics, his position seems to me unassailable; but it is a position which suggests the posture of a lecturer in front of his black-board rather than that of a shepherd seeking the lost sheep of his flock. If the socialist must think again, at least we may ask that the Bishop should sometimes raise his crook to defend the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... to act," rejoined the other, as she forsook the kneeling posture, with an abruptness not common to devotees; "only tell me how. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... them it was a question just where he might find room to sleep. Not that the swamp boy was at all particular; for he could have snuggled down on deck, or found rest in a sitting posture; for he was used to ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... that we were not being deceived, we instituted a strict overhaul of the gunyahs, in hopes of finding something that might give us a clue to the fate of the missing men. When we broke up our circle for this purpose, the component parts of the "heap" assumed an upright posture, and it was remarkable to witness the awe with which they regarded Lizzie. At first they seemed afraid to approach her, and stood some five yards distant, watching her whilst she puffed out the smoke from her relighted pipe, and posed herself in an attitude of becoming superiority, for she saw ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
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