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More "Rigidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suspended while he delicately nibbled from between her fingers her edible offering. For her, he would make an almost painfully real pretence of being a dead cat: extending himself upon the rug with an exaggeratedly death-like rigidity—and so remaining until her command to be alive again brought him briskly to rub himself, rising on his hind legs and purring mellowly, against her ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... which had gained some colour during his conversation with the King, had relapsed into earthly paleness; that his eyes were closed, and opened not again; and that his features expressed, amid their quietude, a rigidity which is not that of sleep. They ran to his assistance, but it was too late. The light that burned so low in the socket, had leaped up, and expired ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... their petals. Their perfume was the potent spell that now melted her to tears, and the tension of her overtaxed nerves gave way in a passionate burst of sobs. When she rose a few moments later, the storm had passed; the face regained its stony rigidity, and henceforth she fronted ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that the constant use of the language in the national forum for purposes of argument and persuasion would help to make it flexible and subtle; and that the almost total absence of such employment would tend toward narrowness and rigidity. In this instance exactly the contrary is the case. If we may trust the testimony of those who know, we are forced to the conclusion that the English language, compared with the Russian, is nothing but an awkward dialect. Compared with Russian, the English language ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... wherefore it is written (Ps. 36:15): "Let their sword enter into their own hearts." Now he that flatters another induces him to sin mortally: hence a gloss on Ps. 140:5, "Let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head," says: "The false praise of the flatterer softens the mind by depriving it of the rigidity of truth and renders it susceptive of vice." Much more, therefore, does the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and laid her head back upon her husband's bosom. The rigidity and distress went out of her face. In this hour of darkness and distress, God, to whom she looked and prayed for strength, came very close to her, and in his nearer presence there ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... closed, like a somnambulist, she sniffed the perfume and began to seek its source. In that seeking, there was both innocence and maddening wantonness. A fine quiver went through her body, like the quiver of a moth in its sultry love-play. At last she smelt of the flower itself, and her sudden rigidity showed that she had perceived the great ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and apart from the others, where the strap of the sandal came; while the others gradually diminish and sweep round to the outside of the foot, with the greatest regularity of curve; the nails are short, and the toes broad at the points, indicative of pressure on the ground." Rigidity he considers to have been the character of the first epochs, changing ultimately as in the Elgin marbles, "from the hard characteristics of stone to the vivified character of flesh." He thinks Reynolds "would have acknowledged the supremacy of beautiful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... with the abnormal rigidity of the old pillars around. He faced the south-east, and was as silent as ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... TO THE LONGEVITY OF FISHES, it is affirmed to surpass that of all other created beings; and it is supposed they are, to a great extent, exempted from the diseases to which the flesh of other animals is heir. In place of suffering from the rigidity of age, which is the cause of the natural decay of those that "live and move and have their being" on the land, their bodies continue to grow with each succeeding supply of food, and the conduits of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... is made up of two hulls, one inside the other; between them, joining them together, are iron T-bars that give this ship the utmost rigidity. In fact, thanks to this cellular arrangement, it has the resistance of a stone block, as if it were completely solid. Its plating can't give way; it's self-adhering and not dependent on the tightness ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... soon as I began to speak that I had won my case. There was no struggle to escape from my arms; and, as I went on, she relaxed even her rigidity, and reposed on my breast with ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... unfailing regularity and reliability of her fundamental laws—of her "constitution"—that freedom and progress are possible. If we could not depend upon perfect law we could make no advance whatever. We should all be abroad and uncertain. Yet in spite of her unbending rigidity over fundamentals, she does also show mercy and pity. A child toddling along downhill unregardful of the force of gravitation falls on its face and screams with pain. But Nature, represented by the mother, rushes up, seizes ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... audience, with eyes screwed up and making a venomous gesture at the Governor. Next to him, at the edge of the group, are Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky, gesticulating at each other, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. The other guests remain standing stiff. The whole group retain the same position of rigidity for almost a minute and a ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... that I adopted was the exact opposite. I decided to dive deep. I went down to 114 metres. At this exceptional depth, three rivets in the pressure hull began to leak, and jets of water with the rigidity of bars of iron shot into the boat. I held on for five minutes, which was sufficient to save me from the depth-charge attack, though two which went off almost above me broke some lamps. I then came up to twenty metres and slowly crawled on. Throughout ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... peculiar difficulties and disadvantages. As one of the most apt instances, I select his speculation (in the proceedings of the Royal Society for May 16, 1861) on the relations between muscular irritability, cadaveric rigidity, and putrefaction. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... and I walked up and down I took in mine the small hand which emerged from the great fur cuff of her boat cloak, and gradually its rigidity relaxed under my friendly pressure. I remembered, as I occasionally tightened my grasp upon it, that my dear little baby sister Lois, who was taken away from us before she outgrew her babyhood, used to squeeze my hand in this fashion, and when I asked her what it meant, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... of the forest range!—intently observing your dog and anticipating the wily artifices of some old cock, with spurs as long as a dragon's, who will sometimes lead you for a mile through bog, brake, fern, and heather, before the sudden drop of your staunch companion, and a rigidity in all his limbs, satisfy you that you have at last compelled the bird to squat under that wide holly-bush, from whence you kick him up, and feel some little exultation as you bring him down with a snap-shot, having ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of her rigidity, and Mr. Baxter answered for her, in an excited, nervous tone, while he waved his cane on which he had hung his stiff black hat, as if in grotesque imitation of ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... this knowledge had often been called into requisition for the benefit of many of the people as well as the animals of the neighborhood. Never had his skill been needed more than now, for poor Tiepoletta had not recovered consciousness, and her rigidity and the ghastly pallor which had overspread her features seemed to indicate that she had ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... matter of fact this ultramarine joke of yours is about east. It was blue on the Mercy G.—mighty blue, too. And it needed the inspiring hope of the gold I was soon to pick up in nuggets to stiffen my back-bone to a respectable degree of rigidity. I was about ready to wilt. But I discovered two Englishmen on board, and now I get along all right. We have formed a little temperance society—just we three, you know—to see if we cannot, by a course of sampling and severe study, discover which of the captain's liquors is most dangerous, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... the fraudulent shrine got back into their carriage, and drove sadly away, instructing their driver with the rigidity which their limited German favored, not to let any house with a bust in its front escape him. He promised, and took his course out through Konigstrasse, and suddenly they found themselves in a world of such ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... well as outward rigidity Van Landing waited. To the movements of Carmencita's hand waving him away he paid no attention. In thick, heavy throbs his heart sent the blood to his face, then it receded, and for a moment the room was dark and he saw nothing. To the "come in" of Carmencita the door ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... worthy Baron of Bradwardine. The uniform in which he was now attired, a blue coat, namely, with gold lace, a scarlet waistcoat and breeches, and immense jack-boots, seemed to have added fresh stiffness and rigidity to his tall, perpendicular figure; and the consciousness of military command and authority had increased, in the same proportion, the self-importance of his demeanour, and the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Iron Age or "Hallstatt period" the bow and its accessories are thickened and modified in various directions, so as to give greater rigidity, and prominences or surfaces for decoration. The chief types have been conveniently classed by [v.04 p.0642] Montelius in four main groups, according to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... principal symptoms of appendicitis are: pain, which is usually felt most keenly somewhere between the umbilicus and the right groin, though this is by no means invariable; tenderness in that same region upon pressure; rigidity of the muscles of the abdominal wall on the right side; ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... looked up at him questioningly, and then down again very quickly, and reached meaninglessly for the book beside her. She saw something in his face and in the rigidity of his position that made her breathe more rapidly. She had not been afraid of this from him, because she had always taken the attitude towards him of a very dear friend and of one who was older, not in years, ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... reach the count of three, I shall try to bend my arm, but it will be impossible to do so until I count to five. No matter how hard I try, it will be absolutely impossible. One ... My arm is stiff and rigid as a bar of steel. Two ... I can feel the rigidity in my arm. Three ... It is impossible for me to bend my arm until I count to five. Four ... I can feel the stiffness slowly leaving. Five ... I can now bend my arm easily and it ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... powerful hand at the neck of her blouse, jerked her to her knees, and began to drag her. Joan fought his iron grasp. The twisting and tightening of her blouse choked her utterance. He did not look down upon her, but she could see him, the rigidity of his body set in violence, the awful shade upon his face, the upstanding hair on his head. He dragged her as if she had been an empty sack. Like a beast he was seeking a dark place—a hole to hide her. She was strangling; a distorted sight made objects ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... see in all probability an attempt to copy the unique scale decoration which still exists on the tympanum under the corresponding principal arch on the north side, cut with modern tools with all the lifeless rigidity of modern work. Another mistake which has been made, is the scraping off of the plaster from the interior walls of the chamber known as St Michael's Loft, over the Lady Chapel, and the re-pointing of the stonework. Old builders invariably covered their rubble walls with plaster, but ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... principle must be held inviolate, its application must not degenerate into hide-bound rigidity. 'Strategy is founded on a system of expedients' (Moltke), and hence expediency remains always ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... values of ideals and ends—the spiritual meanings of things—while the people as naturally drift to the worship of cults and ceremonies, and thus secure the more superficial while losing the deeper satisfactions of a duty performed. So restraining is the formal rigidity of primitive cultures that the mind of man hardly moves within their enforced orbits. In complex societies the conservatism, which is at once profitably conservative and needlessly obstructing, assumes a more intricate, a more evasive, and a more engaging form. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... nowise formal. She talked of Mr. Turner's business—he was a shipbuilder—of the rapid strides Salem was making; indeed one would hardly know it for old Salem of the witch days. And people's ideas had broadened out so, softened from their rigidity, "though some of the old folks are thinking the very trade we are so proud of is going to ruin our character and morals, and fill us with pride and vanity. But I say to Mr. Turner the people did their hard work ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... stretches its monotonous length on the height; who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom to be ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity of habit, as they live on in perpetual midday, without the repose of night or the new ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... Nevertheless, to an observer enough remained of the imperishable forms of the human face which appealed to the soul, even though the eye could see no more than a lifeless head. The firm outline of the face, the shape of the brow, the solemnity of the lines, the rigidity of the nose, the form of the bony structure which wounds alone had slightly altered,—all were signs of intrepidity without calculation, faith without reserve, obedience without discussion, fidelity without compromise, love without inconstancy. In him, the Breton ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... great, and in his workmanship he was satisfied with nothing but the best. He recognised the importance of rigidity in the instruments, and, whereas these had generally been made of wood, he designed them in metal. His instruments included armillae like those which had been used in Alexandria, and other armillae designed by himself—sextants, mural quadrants, large celestial globes and various instruments ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... looked behind us, and then at each other. Margaret was now like the rest of us. She had lost her statuesque calm. All the introspective rigidity had gone from her; and she clasped her hands together till ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... muscular cramps. I tried moving speedily with the wave, also standing still and lying down, hoping that the wave would pass me by; but in each and every case it gave me the same stirring treatment. Once I stood erect and rigid as the wave came on, but it intensified suddenly the rigidity of every muscle to a seemingly rupturing extent, and I did not try that plan again. The effect of each wave on me seemed to be slightly weakened whenever I lay down ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... chapters 9 to 14 and appendix.—Translator's Note.), the favourite prey, be lacking, must the Pelopaeus therefore give up foraging? She will stock her warehouses all the same, because any Spider suits her. There you have discernment, whose elasticity makes up, in certain circumstances, for the too-great rigidity of instinct. Amid the innumerable variety of game, the huntress is able to discern between what is Spider and what is not; and, in this way, she is always prepared to supply her family, without quitting the domain of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... shadow of a man draped with unsubstantial, dusty linen. Into his waxen face beat a pale infusion of blood, as if a diluted wine had been poured into a semi-opaque goblet; his sunken lips puffed out and collapsed; his fingers, dust-colored like his garb, opened and shut with a rapid, mechanical rigidity. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Corrie's brief, simoon-hot tempers, his hasty tongue and ready hand—and swift repentances. Had an occasion come when the repentance was too late, too vain! And what repentance! To the sister who knew with life-long knowledge the ardent, passionate Corrie, his young rigidity in honor and high pride, his tenacious affections, this menaced downfall was almost as appalling as his death. She thrust the possibility from her with revolted condemnation of herself for crediting this ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... little demonstration of devotion and affection. His parents never caressed their children; he and his sister had scarcely kissed each other since their infancy. No matter how fervid their hearts might be, they had also a rigidity, as of paralyzed muscles, which forbade much expression as a shame and an affectation. Jerome had this tendency of the New England character from inheritance and training; but now, in spite of it, he fell down before Squire ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and that the same re-action takes place as in the case of Munchausen's horn, which played for half an hour of its own accord when unfrozen. To speak seriously, nothing can be more piteously ridiculous than the state of a poor Languedoc child, swathed and bandaged into all the rigidity of a mummy, and totally motionless. Our friend H. declares, that his attention was once drawn behind a door by a faint cry, and that he there discovered and took down one of these little teraphims from the hook by which it hung suspended by a loop, like a young American savage. "C'est la mode ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... curled naturally. An advocate, he passed for having great talent, and greater industry, and had already gained a certain amount of notoriety. He was an obstinate worker, cold and meditative, though devoted to his profession, and affected, with some ostentation, perhaps, a great rigidity of ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... the world. How much more secure would this position be, if the front rank of the assailants were enticed within the fortress and given strong positions upon the walls! They would soon drink into their lungs the strong air of possession, they would soon be stiffened by that electric rigidity which falls on a man when he becomes possessed of a vested interest. There was little probability that the knights admitted to the senate would continue to be in any real sense members ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... More space is allowed between the plates, which means that (a) there is more acid within reach, and (b) a slight buckling is not so dangerous, and indeed is not so likely to occur. The plates are now generally made thicker than formerly, so as to secure greater mechanical rigidity. At the same time, the manufacturers aim at getting the active materials in as porous a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... throwing it wide open. She tried to throw herself out of the opening, to the stairs that led straight downward into the barroom. But the movement was halted at its inception by Slade's arms, which went around her with the rigidity of iron hoops, quickly constricting. She got a glimpse of the room below—saw the bar and the men near it—all facing her way, watching her. Then Slade drew her back and closed ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... questioned Marsa's face, as if to read thereon a secret, to decipher a name—Menko's or his own. Her exquisite, delicate features had the rigidity of marble; her dark eyes were staring straight ahead, like two spots of light, where nothing, nothing was reflected. Zilah shuddered ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... back into that ashen face. The scarlet figure lost its rigidity, and bent forward. His lordship began to speak. In a muted voice and briefly—much more briefly than his wont on such occasions and in a manner entirely mechanical, the manner of a man whose thoughts are elsewhere while his lips are speaking—he delivered ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... should be resisted. Why you should avoid using the sable as a rule is that it will make the painting too "slick" and edgy. There is a looseness that is a quality to prize. All the hardness, flatness, and rigidity that are desirable you can get with the bristle brush. When you work too much with sables, the overworking brings a waxy and woodeny surface, which is against all the qualities of atmosphere and luminosity, and of freshness ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... were consistent, caste in a mild form and to a limited extent might be tolerated, but could not be approved. They are not, however, consistent, and caste is much more regarded by them than Gautam would have sanctioned, though it has not among them the rigidity it has among the Hindus. I was told regarding one boarding institution for young men, all ate together; but on returning to their homes they performed certain ceremonies which removed the defilement they had contracted. As to the general character of the native ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... piteous eyes upward towards the skies that seem so full of laughing loveliness; then, with a sob which is almost human in the intensity of its pathos, the tired head falls downwards, the limbs contract with spasmodic pain, then stiffen into rigidity; and one wonders, if the Eternal mocked that silent appeal from those great sad eyes, eyes that had neither part nor lot in the sin and sorrow of war, how shall a man dare look upwards for help when the bitterness of death draws nigh unto him? The grey lines above, on flank, and front, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... 4, containing the electrode chamber, is rigidly fastened with respect to the body of the transmitter by a rearwardly projecting shank held in a bridge piece 8 which is secured at its ends to the front block. The needed rigidity of the rear electrode is thus obtained and this is probably the reason for calling the instrument the solid-back. The front electrode, on the other hand, is fastened to the center of the diaphragm by means of a shank on the stud, which passes through a hole in the diaphragm ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... to the bed and distinctly saw himself stretched on his back in the same clothes he had worn on going out. In his face were the lines of death, and a rigidity in the hands that would ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... hearts of diamond not to be enchanted when such a bland smile enlivened the lips of the musketeer. Raoul, following his friend, cajoled the women who admired his beauty, pushed back the men who felt the rigidity of his muscles, and both opened, thanks to these maneuvers, the compact and muddy tide of the populace. They arrived in sight of the two gibbets, from which Raoul turned away his eyes in disgust. As for D'Artagnan, he did not even see them; ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is the "ethnographic village," designed to represent the life of the Hungarian provinces, though made rather ridiculous by the rigidity of the waxwork figures, arranged about the quaint and impossibly clean houses in their various occupations, but having the air of "tableaux morts" rather than of "tableaux vivants." The best group was al fresco, representing half-naked gipsy-like creatures with coal-black hair squatting outside ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... his existence ashore, he was amazed at the desperate immovability of everything. The world was made up of revolting rigidity and solidity. He felt almost nauseated at seeing all his possessions remain just where he left them, without the slightest fluctuation, or the least bit of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... still. She was sure he understood her by the sudden rigidity of his pose, while his eyes stopped twinkling, and his fingers ceased to travel along the line of his mustache. Her eyes fell before the scrutiny in his, but she lifted them again for one ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... was now failing fast, the old man, with much more alertness than might have been expected from the rigidity of his figure, closed the window-shutters in an instant, produced phosphorus and matches, and lighted a stable-lantern, which he placed on the corn-bin, and then addressed Fairford. 'We are private here, young man; and as some time has been wasted already, you ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... "Entombment" by Titian. Yet between others there are common elements of likeness. Raphael and Titian are distinguished by an opulence of form and a luxuriance of color which reveal supreme technical accomplishment in a fertile land under light-impregnated skies. The rigidity and restraint of Van Eyck and Memling suggest the tentative early efforts of the art of a sober northern race. To a thoughtful student of these pictures sooner or later the question comes, Whence are these likenesses ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... rooms, came into the hall, the dog shook his head and gave two loud and insinuating taps on the floor with his tail, but alas! the whistle did not sound to release him. Kolya looked sternly at the luckless dog, who relapsed again into obedient rigidity. The one thing that troubled Kolya was "the kids." He looked, of course, with the utmost scorn on Katerina's unexpected adventure, but he was very fond of the bereaved "kiddies," and had already taken them a picture-book. Nastya, the elder, a girl of eight, could read, and Kostya, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... And finally, Ah Chun was a moral paragon and an honest business man. Despite the fact that business morality was higher than on the mainland, Ah Chun outshone the business men of Honolulu in the scrupulous rigidity of his honesty. It was a saying that his word was as good as his bond. His signature was never needed to bind him. He never broke his word. Twenty years after Hotchkiss, of Hotchkiss, Morterson Company, died, they found among mislaid papers a memorandum of a loan of thirty thousand dollars to ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... contained in the human body is mineral matter. This constituent, which is also called ash or mineral salts, forms the main part of the body's framework, or skeleton. In the building and maintaining of the body, mineral salts serve three purposes—to give rigidity and permanence to the skeleton, to form an essential element of active tissue, and to provide the required alkalinity or acidity for the digestive ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... de Grost, glanced at the card which his butler had brought in to him, carelessly at first, afterwards with that curious rigidity of attention which usually denotes the setting free ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the family dressed, who threw open the house-door, felt the odor of stirring life go to his head, was the Reverend Mr. Everett himself. In the little community of Puritans, whose isolation had preserved intact the rigidity of faith which had begun to soften somewhat in other parts of New England, there was no one who openly saluted the miracle of resurrection by more than the brief remark, "Warm weather's come"; but sometimes the younger men went back and kissed their wives. It was an ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... forward to eat it bulged forth as though working on a spring, until a lurking horror that it would escape altogether began to possess him. He crept forward on his chair and balanced on the edge, trying to mitigate the conspicuous rigidity of his pose by a nonchalant coquetting with the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... a lean and high-featured matron, encased in the rigidity of her Sunday bombazine, gave a prim poke with her umbrella in the ribs of a sparrow-like little man, with a discoloured, scraggy beard, who nodded in one corner ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... this rigidity of rule used to apply to the song-poet also, although the minstrel has always been permitted more latitude than other poets. To-day, however, the poet of the popular song may write in any measure his fancy dictates, and he may make his metre ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... before, thin bones such as leg or wing bones of fowl, or rib bones of lamb should be soaked in diluted hydrochloric or nitric acid (one part acid to ten of water), to dissolve the mineral substance which gives the bone its rigidity. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... saw that something was happening—something out of the common. There would be a sudden twitch of the muscles of the face, an instant distortion, which in the next instant had passed and left no trace. These twitches gradually grew in frequency, but no muscle outside of the face lost any of its rigidity, or betrayed any interest in what was happening to Jim. I mean if something was happening to him, and I knew perfectly well that that was the case. At last a pair of tears began to swim slowly down his cheeks amongst the twitchings, but Jim sat still and let them ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... streets; all commence, as soon as he pronounces "Allah Akber!" All pretend to keep it, and if they do not, they take care that no one shall know it; but from the wry faces and pharasaical shows, the rigidity may be called in question. None of the European party kept the fast, except for a day now and then; for all travellers, after the first day, are allowed exemption, but they have to make it up at some ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... skirts. She was a dainty creature. When she reached the hedge which marked the beginning of the Bolton estate, she started, not violently, that was not her way, but anybody is more startled at the sudden glimpse of a figure at complete rest, almost rigidity, than of a figure in motion. Had the old man whom Ellen saw been walking along toward her, she would not have started at all. She might have glanced at him with passing curiosity, since he was a stranger in Brookville, then that would have been the end of it. But ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... much the lone wanderer had suffered. The hands, with their strong bronze now paled to tarnished ochre, were heavily callused by manual labour, and sharply attenuated by recent hardship. The skin was cold, but the rigidity of death was yet scarcely apparent. Evidently he had not died of thirst alone, but of mere physical exhaustion, sealed by the final collapse of hope. And it seemed so strange to hear the low voices of Rory and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the boat, was startled by the pressure of the woman's head drooping on his shoulder. He stiffened himself still more as though he had tried on the approach of a danger to conceal his life in the breathless rigidity of his body. The boat soared and descended slowly; a region of foam and reefs stretched across her course hissing like a gigantic cauldron; a strong gust of wind drove her straight at it for a moment then passed on and abandoned her to the regular balancing of ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... five years of efforts to overcome. Thus the levers require to be extremely light; this was secured by the use of an alloy of aluminium used in the construction of Zeppelins: this combines lightness with rigidity. Another difficulty almost unsuperable arises from the friction at the bearings of the fulcrum, the best watch jewels made of ruby were employed, but the supply was cut off from Germany by the war. This proved ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... and improving the inclinations of the lower orders, something beside zeal and activity is necessary, even granting (as was the case in this instance) that they are guided by right principles. There was an unfortunate degree of rigidity and austerity about Mrs. Mellicent that was less connected with her heart than her manner, unless we ascribe it to a latent conviction of her own wisdom and an inclination to govern by its acknowledged superiority rather ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... proposing or setting up a moral state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free will is drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together, mutually with stringent necessity and rigidity. But we know that the condition of the human will always remains contingent, and that only in the Absolute Being physical coexists with moral necessity. Accordingly if it is wished to depend on the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... pliable,' or 'flexible' conveying the notion of deftness and dexterity rather than that of simple strength. It is practised strength that He will give, the educated hand and arm, masters of the manipulation of the weapon. The stiffness and clumsiness of our handling, the obstinate rigidity as well as the throbbing feebleness of our arms, the dimness of our sight, may all be overcome. At His touch the raw recruit is as the disciplined veteran; the prophet who cannot speak because he is a child, gifted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... and imperiously demands the crown, he puts it upon his father's head. Neither character is drawn with the power of Strafford, but the play is largely built upon the same contrasts between personal devotion and political expediency, the untutored idealism of youth and the ruses or rigidity of age. This was a type of dramatic action which Browning imagined with peculiar power and insight, for it bodied forth a contrast between contending elements of his own nature. Towards this type all his drama tended to gravitate. In The Return of the Druses Browning's ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... was combed back and smoothed down behind his ears on both sides, and he had an eyeglass cocked knowingly in one eye. Altogether he looked very different from what he was when we last saw him. His characteristic sang froid, that peculiar rigidity of the lips, that faint furrow in the middle of the forehead between the eyebrows, and the gravity of the somewhat languid face, made the metamorphosis complete. A savant, a scholar of practical experience, a cosmopolitan physician ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... always courted the fullest investigation, taking it as the first duty of the mesmerist to show cause why he should not be put down as a charlatan. So we had tests and counter-tests, evidence and counter-evidence; there were doctors to feel the pulse and to scrutinise the rigidity of the muscles, experts to propound scientific ifs and buts, and wiseacres generally to put spokes in the wheel of progress, as is their playful way, wherever they find that wheel in motion. It was doubly ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine. "Oh! Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It had occurred to me to make a very elaborate toilet. It was most successful. Azzolati looked positively scared ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... little figure to a startling rigidity. "I ain't a-goin' to work!" he flung out. "Let him do it; he's a nigger!" And this was the ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... has been a priest is one still. What brings night upon us may leave the stars with us. Cimourdain was full of virtues, full of truths, but they shone in the midst of darkness" (i. 123). If the aristocrat had rigidity, so had the Jacobin. "Cimourdain had the blind certitude of the arrow, which only sees the mark and makes for it. In revolution, nothing so formidable as the straight line. Cimourdain strode forward with fatality in his step. He believed that in social genesis ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... and cursed deep under his breath—the reaction of a man whose accomplices and partners and tools, whose luck, whose faith in himself had failed him. He flung himself down under a tree, and after a while, when his rigidity relaxed, he probably fell asleep. Moze and Shady kept at their game. Wilson paced to and fro, sat down, and then got up to bunch the horses again, walked around the dell and back to camp. The afternoon hours were long. And they were waiting hours. The act of waiting appeared on ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... hardened and so unresponsive that he declared it incapable of movement without an antecedent general crash and breaking up. No laws, he reasoned, could be made because there were no means by which the general will could express itself, such was the rigidity of absolutism and feudalism. The splendid studies of Montesquieu, which revealed to the French the eternal truths underlying the constitutional changes in England, had enlightened and captivated the best minds of his country, but they were too serious, too cold, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to increase their pressure in proportion as resistance increased, until finally those who were destined to replace them reorganized the courts, that they might have an instrument wherewith to slaughter a whole race down to the women and children. No less drastic method would serve to temper the rigidity of the aristocratic mind. The phenomenon well ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... impotency of generals? Is it not that the helmsman acts through the medium of mechanism, while the generals act through the medium of men? A ship is not only made of rigid metal, but all her parts are fastened together with the utmost rigidity; while the parts of an army are men, who are held together by no means whatever except that which discipline gives, and the men themselves are far from rigid. In the nature of things it is impossible that an army should be directed ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... be until morning," he said—"it is a question of the rigidity of certain muscles. But you need not be alarmed, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... ribbons only because they are certain to spring straight again. But the same is true of every tough curve of the tree-trunk, of every strong-backed bend of the bough; there is hardly any such thing in Nature as a mere droop of weakness. Rigidity yielding a little, like justice swayed by mercy, is the whole beauty of the earth. The cosmos is a diagram just bent beautifully out of shape. Everything tries to be straight; ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... held Mackenzie said nothing, but walked behind him, rather shoved him ahead, hands twisted in painful rigidity behind his back, pushing him along as if his weight amounted to no more than a child's. At the wagon Hall fell in beside Mackenzie, the barrel of a gun again at ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... from silken cylinders to the different types of derbies and fedoras, there was now the glisten of every shape of panama, tuscan, and chip head-gear, with a prevalence of the low, flat-topped hard-brimmed things that mocked with the rigidity of sheet-iron the conception of straw as a light and yielding material. Men with as yet only one foot in the grave can easily remember when the American picked himself out in the London crowd by his summer hat, but now, in his belated conformity to an extinct ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... full height, in a fierce rigidity of self-contempt. What was she still listening for—still hungering for? What seemed to have gone suddenly out of heaven and earth, with the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... voice Carrie started violently, and looked up at Max, staring with eyes full of wonder and something very like delight. The rigidity with which she had held herself, the automatic manner, the hard, off-hand tone, all disappeared at once; and it was a new, a transformed Carrie, the fascinating, wayward, irresistible girl he had remembered, who gave him a smile and a nod, as she said, in a voice full of the ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... or theoretical in character. It seems as if the intermittence of his inspiration filled the poet with a wistful curiosity as to his nature in moments of soaring. By continual introspection he is seeking the charm, so to speak, that will render his afflatus permanent. The rigidity in much of such verse surely betrays, not the white heat of genius, but a self-conscious attitude of readiness for the falling ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the hands quickly stopped, and was not mortal. The true cause of death was the unnatural position of the body, which brought on a frightful disturbance of the circulation, terrible pains of the head and heart, and, at length, rigidity of the limbs. Those who had a strong constitution only died of hunger.[2] The idea which suggested this cruel punishment was not directly to kill the condemned by positive injuries, but to expose the slave nailed by the hand of which he had not known how to make good use, and to let him ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... garb than Bacon's Essays. Yet they did not learn their cunning from Shakespeare, nor did Shakespeare learn his cunning from them. The language was then just ripe for the uses of such minds; it had the wealth of much learning incorporated with it, yet had not been cast into rigidity nor dressed into primness by a technical and bookish legislation; it had gone on for centuries gathering in and assimilating stores from Nature and from Religion; it was rich with the life of a nation of brave, free, honest, full-souled, and frank-hearted men; it was at once copious, limber, and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... prime of life, Walter in the flush and strength of early manhood, Alexander in the bloom of youth. They all met their fate undauntedly; for if Murdoch's heart in any measure failed him, he was afraid to give way in presence of the proud bold Walter, who maintained an iron rigidity of demeanour with the wild fortitude of a Red Indian at the stake, and in like manner could by no means comprehend that King James acted from any motive save malice, for having been so long kept out of his kingdom. 'It was his turn now,' said poor Murdoch, even when most desirous of bringing himself ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the savage enmity of the morally diseased Burlingame might do. He had made up his mind that so intense a scrupulousness as Crozier had shown since coming to Askatoon had behind it not only character, but the rigidity of a set purpose; and that view was supported by the stern economy of Crozier's daily life, broken only by sudden bursts of generosity ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... plate-racks, etc., are simply compound brackets. The shelf is the essential piece, the sides take the place of the supports, and the back is often reduced to strips merely wide enough to give rigidity. ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... electrical connection is made. The frame is slit at the inner horizontal edges, and then folded in such a way as to make individual clamping-jaws for each end-flange. The clamping-in is done at great pressure, and the resultant plate has great rigidity and strength. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... chief of the staff, "was at this time the bane of the service. In many there was neither an intelligent comprehension of their duties nor zeal in their performance. Appointed by the votes of their neighbours and friends, they would neither exercise that rigidity in governing, nor that detailed care in providing for the wants of their men, which are necessary to keep soldiers efficient. The duties of the drill and the sentry-post were often negligently performed; and the most profuse waste of ammunition and other ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... rigidity of ceremonial in these books is to be read along with the stern decrees of Ezra as to separation from family and friendly relations with non-Jewish neighbors. It was, in a word, a Puritan reformation. There was just the same combination ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... political gatherings of making some allusion to Mr. Fox. His father had sat in the House of Commons when Fox was there, and had sternly opposed the French war. I don't suppose that anybody not actually IN IT—no Londoner certainly—can understand the rigidity of the bonds which restricted county society when I was young, and for aught I know may restrict it now. There was with us one huge and dark exception to the general uniformity. The earl had broken loose, had ruined his estate, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... awake him at once. No sooner had I done this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell back upon his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... M. G. de Torcy has introduced a mesmerized woman into the lion's cage, where she unconsciously puts her head in the lion's mouth: then, in a state of cataleptic rigidity, head and feet resting on two stools, the lion is made to jump over the rigid body, then with paws resting on her body, to pull a string by his teeth and thus fire a pistol. Of course this draws enthusiastic audiences. Medical Freedom. The attempts ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... disappeared with alacrity, and Farrell crossed the hall to the drawing-room. He turned on the light as he opened the door, and was at once aware of Nelly's slight form on the sofa. She did not move, and something in her attitude—some rigidity that he fancied—alarmed him. He took a few steps, and then saw that there was no cause for alarm. She was only asleep, poor child, profoundly, pathetically asleep. Her utter unconsciousness, the delicate hand and arm lying over the edge of ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the transepts Gabriel found the proof of the immense progress made during the two centuries in which the Cathedral had been rising from the ground. The Puerta del Reloj[1], called also de la Feria[2], with its rude sculptures of archaic rigidity, and the tympanum, covered with small scenes from the creation, was a great contrast to the doorway at the opposite end of the crossway, that of Los Leones[3], or by its other name, de la Alegria[4], built ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... slowly with his daughter through the crowd, felt her hand tighten round his, and saw her features stiffen into sudden rigidity; but the change was only for an instant. Ere he could speak, she caught him by the arm, and drew him forward with convulsive energy. Then, in accents hardly articulate, low, breathless, unlike her wonted voice, he heard her exclaim, as she struggled ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... closed with a snap, but Tredgold and Chalk made no move. Glued to their seats, they stared blankly at the door, until the rigidity of their pose and the strangeness of their gaze began to affect ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... perversions of this dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that the man's malady (whatever it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor's stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... lends itself willingly to the consideration of minor episodes, and for that reason is almost as well fitted to be in touch with modern life as the novel itself. Such a treatment saves a picture from looking prepared and cold, just as light and atmosphere save it from rigidity and crudeness. ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... manifold resistances opposed to it by its watery medium. Gradually, however, its energies became exhausted, till at last, completely overwhelmed, it stopped, an immovable projection stagnated to death-like rigidity. Thus for hours, perhaps, it remained stationary, one of many such rays of some of the many kinds of protoplasmic stars. By degrees, then, or perhaps quite suddenly, HELP WOULD COME TO IT FROM FOREIGN ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... reveal their personality in dress. They have allowed themselves to be committed for life to a costume of ruthless utilitarianism, which takes no count of physical beauty, or of its just display. Comfort, convenience, and sanitation have conspired to establish a rigidity of rule never seen before, to which men yield a docile and lamblike obedience. Robert Burton's axiom, "Nothing sooner dejects a man than clothes out of fashion," is as true now as it was three hundred years ago. Fashion sways the shape of a collar, and the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... and the man did not hesitate to hold the plow, as the example of Cincinnatus will show us. Time was precious, and thrift and economy were necessary to success. The father was the autocrat in the household, and exercised his power with stern rigidity. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the hall would have made a capital cellar. And the couples slowly advanced, their chins raised, their eyes blinking, between the gigantic stone figures, the black marble gods, dumb in their hieratic rigidity, and the monstrous beasts, half cats and half women, with death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... cultivation and use were prohibited on account of its supposed pernicious properties; as it was thought to induce rigidity of the limbs, and to otherwise ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... there much under the influence of the priest, especially the women, and, indeed, among the upper classes the confessional and other priestly operations are attended with as much rigidity as in past centuries, although the male sex has very greatly emancipated itself therefrom, and receives any allusions to the priest with a shrug of the shoulders, or, at times, with coldness or open hostility towards that worthy. The Church ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... sledge, while Kane and Godfrey travelled by dog-team. He had been led by his resolute spirit to overestimate the physical strength of his men and himself, and the party broke down before it had even approached the Humboldt Glacier. Their enthusiastic leader was stricken with fainting spells and rigidity of limbs, but Kane would not admit his illness to be more than temporary, and bidding the men strap him on the sledge, proceeded onward. His diminished physical powers now became evident through the freezing of his rigid and swollen limbs. Delirious ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... on his back. His flaming red hair framed a greenish grey face ghostly in its rigidity. A few minutes before Captain Marschner had seen the man still running—the same face still full of vitality—from heat and excitement. His knees gave way. The sight of that change, so incomprehensible in its suddenness, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... century that the harder statement took shape. Something in the preciseness of that age, its exaltation of law, its cold passion for a stable and measured universe, its cold denial, its cold affirmation of the power of God, a God of ice, is the occasion of that rigidity of religious thought about the living world which Darwin by accident challenged, or rather by one of those movements of genius which, Goethe ("No productiveness of the highest kind... is in the power of anyone."—"Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret". ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... but this time it was a silence charged with ominous significance. Maurice's face was very white, and a peculiar rigidity showed itself in the lines of his features. He was very much disappointed, and he also felt that he had some right to ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... in small quantity. The cereals and grasses form an exception to this rule, for in them it is an abundant and important element. It is not, however, uniformly distributed through them, but is accumulated to a large extent in the stem, to the strength and rigidity of which it greatly contributes. The hard shining layer which coats the exterior of straw, and which is still more remarkably seen on the surface of the bamboo, consists chiefly of silica; and in the latter plant ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... proper to compliment the chief, Mohamedoo, by a formal announcement of our arrival, the caravan made ready for reception by copious, but needed, ablutions of flesh and raiment. The women, especially, were careful in adorning and heightening their charms. Wool was combed to its utmost rigidity; skins were greased till they shone like polished ebony; ankles and arms were restrung with beads; and loins were girded with snowy waist-cloths. Ali-Ninpha knew the pride of his old Mandingo companions, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... bloody, terrible, fatal, awful, is not apparently felt by the poet as monotonous. Four or five persons, each representing a purpose or a passion, occupy the scene, and obviously contribute by every word and deed to the advancement of the tragic action; and this narrowness and rigidity of intent would be intolerable, if the tragedies were not so brief: I do not think any of them is much longer than a single act of one of Shakespeare's plays. They are in all other ways equally unlike Shakespeare's ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... ensues. It is an awful moment, in which nobody seems even to breathe. The two Misses Blake turn into a rigidity that might mean stone; the young man pauses irresolutely, yet with a sternness about his lips that bespeaks a settled purpose not to be laid aside for any reason, and that adds some ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... no very Apollo-like form or face: short, squat, with its shoulders drawn up to its ears, and its hands delved into its breeches'-pockets. The hue of its face is a mixture of brick-dust and saffron; and the texture seems that of the skin of a dead frog. There is a rigidity and tension in the features, too, which would make you fancy, if you did not see that that were not the fact, that some one from behind was pinching it with a pair of hot tongs, and that it were either afraid or ashamed to tell. Eyes are usually denominated the windows of the soul; but here ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "Haunted Palace", sailors in the same ship, sleepers in the same house. All of these men were struggling at the same time, the painters I mean, the same hour it might be said, in the midst of conventions of a severer type of rigidity than now, to preserve themselves from commonplace utterance. They were not affected by fashions. They had the one idea in mind, to express themselves in terms of themselves, and they were singularly successful in this despite the various difficulties of circumstance ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaptation of the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the mark, and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigidity the Pont du Gard is an admirable example. It ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... was so tired that she could scarcely drag herself about; her eyes kept closing as she moved. Tenney was still expectantly eager for an awakening of her leniency. At eight o'clock he brought out the Bible and stiffened himself into the rigidity that was the mail for his spiritual combats. He was always referring to himself, at these times of religious observance, as a servant of the Cross, and Tira used wearily to wonder whether he felt obliged to arrange himself for combats that, so far ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... stiffened into rigidity; she dashed the tears from her eyes. "No," she said quickly. Then after a moment she added, with a faint laugh, "You see we haven't seen each other for so long—it's all ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... the attempted substitution of some inflexible law for a personal God with a living will, it is not strange that some phase of the same idea should creep into even the purest theology, and that in Mr. Robertson's theory of prayer we should find traces of the rigidity characterizing 'ultra predestinarian' as well as 'development' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... visibly thinner and really ugly; her eyes looked weary, her features coarsened, her manner was shy and awkward; she acquired that air of cold and melancholy rigidity for which the ultra-pious are so often blamed. Her skin took on a grayish tone; she dragged herself languidly about during this first year of married life, ordinarily so brilliant for a young wife. She tried to divert her mind by reading, profiting by the liberty of married women to read ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... which he holds in his right hand, to make clearly distinct his mode of marking the commencement, the interior division, and the close of each bar. The bow, employed by some violinist conductors (leaders), is less suitable than the stick. It is somewhat flexible, and this want of rigidity, together with the slight resistance it offers to the air, on account of its appendage of hair, renders its indications ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... into a witches' sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and old. There was the light o' love who went into the desert to tempt the holy man; but he died as he yielded, and the arms stiffening by some miracle to iron-like rigidity, she was unable to free herself, and died of starvation, as her bondage loosened in decay. And I had increased my difficulties by adopting as part of my task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, and in many cases extravagantly composed metres, and I had begun to feel that I was working ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... yet if a gift of humour be added to these graces, you have a combination that is absolutely irresistible, because you have a perfect sense of proportion that never allows emotion to degenerate into gush, or virtue into rigidity; and thus I say that humour is a kind of divine and crowning grace in a character, because it means an artistic sense of proportion, a true and vital tolerance, a ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... can you give us of France, England, or Russia?" continued Servadac, perfectly unconscious of the stolid rigidity with which his advances were received. "We are anxious to hear anything you can tell us. Have you had communications with ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... The rigidity of my raging prick was almost painful; my previously exhausted forces requiring a long time to quite come to the spending point; but each flood of joy gushing from my mother added to my lustful sensations, till ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... of the railroad right-of-way rose before her feet, a discordant note of rigidity and order in the confused prodigality of desert growth. Io turned away from it, but followed its line until she reached the station. No sign of life greeted her. The door was locked, and the portable house unresponsive to her knocking. Presently, however, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... attention wandering, happened to turn his head suddenly and look at the rest of the congregation. It seemed to him that at least a quarter of the heads in that congregation were turned in his direction. Now, meeting his gaze, they swung back, to stare with noticeable rigidity at the minister. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... are several species, and most of them, like the present, natives of the Cape, has been named in honour of DAVID DE GORTER, author of the Flora Zutphanica and Ingrica; the trivial name of rigens is given to this species from the rigidity of its leaves, a term which it is sometimes apt to exchange for the more common botanic name of ringens; an instance of such mistake occurs in the 6th edition of MILLER's ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 3 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... is so. Everything in the world costs its price. Rigidity is the price we pay for efficiency. In order to be efficient, we must make habitual the necessary movements. After they are habituated, they resist change. But habit makes for regularity and order. We could not live in society unless there were regularity, order, ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... one of contempt, and so she got up, and coming round the table, she knelt down beside him and put her arms tightly about him. Still he did not move, except that his hands, which had been hanging at his sides, now gripped the edges of the chair with the rigidity of iron, and he said in a voice which sounded even in his own ears like that ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... straight, a very large one darted at the fly, and swallowed it. The rod bent into a beautiful oval as Mr Russ made a futile attempt to whip the fish over his head, according to custom, and the line straightened with fearful rigidity as the fish began to pull for its life. The fisher became energetic, and the fish impatient, but there was no prospect of its ever being landed; till at last, having got his rod inextricably entangled among the neighbouring bushes, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... save me further anxiety carefully concealed it from me; but it was his wont to go to some acacia trees in the bed of the creek to swing on their branches, as he told me to exercise his muscles, in the hope of relaxing their rigidity. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... grosser errors by which they are contaminated. We thus obtain results which are not indeed mathematically accurate, but are nevertheless close approximations to those which would be obtained by a perfect observer using an ideal instrument of geometrical accuracy, standing on an earth of absolute rigidity, and viewing the heavens without the intervention ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... himself. Strong in him as the reasoning faculty, so to speak, it administered the reasoning faculty in him a son grbut he was unaware of it, that power d'autant plus fourbe qu'elle ne l'est pas toujours. Hidden under the apparent rigidity of his favourite studies, imagination, even in them, played a large part. Physics, mathematics were with him largely matters of intuition, anticipation, [89] precocious discovery, short cuts, superb guessing. It was ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... leaves upon the mind no single impression. Felix Holt's radicalism, the pretended motive of the story, is utterly choked amidst a mass of subordinate interests. No representation is attempted of the growth of his opinions, or of their action upon his character: he is marked by the same singular rigidity of outline and fixedness of posture which characterized Adam Bede,—except, perhaps, that there is a certain inclination towards poetry in Holt's attitude. But if the general outline is timid and undecided in "Felix Holt," the different parts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... his cleverness. You have listened to his conversation and noted the inflexions of his voice, the attitudes he has assumed, so as to judge of his spirit, self-abandonment or gayety, his energy or his rigidity. You consider his writings, works of art, financial and political schemes, with a view to measure the reach and limits of his intelligence, his creative power and self-command, to ascertain the usual order, kind, and force of his conceptions, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... That was the epoch when her calamity came to her, when the hair was worn in that fashion. A woman seldom alters her coiffure after a calamity of a certain nature happens to her. The figure had taken a compact rigidity, an unfaltering inflexibility, all the world away from the elasticity of matronhood; and her eyes were clear and fixed like her figure, neither falling, nor rising, nor puzzling under other eyes. Her lips, her hands, her slim feet, were conspicuously single, too, in their intent, ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... with as much rigidity in New Netherland as in New England, but strict rules and laws were made for enforcing quiet during service-time. Fishing, gathering berries or nuts, playing in the streets, working, going on pleasure trips, all ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... of him the dead but imperishable bodies of the long-buried brothers of the convent sat erect in their lidless coffins, their cold, starry eyes glaring at him with lifeless rigidity, their withered fingers locked together on their breasts, their stiffened limbs motionless and still. It was a sight to petrify the stoutest heart; and the monk's quailed before it, though he was a philosopher, and a sceptic to boot. At the upper end of the vault, ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... in those days. In truth, when the first novelty and stir of spirit had subsided,—when the new settlement, between the forest-border and the sea, had become actually a little town,—its daily life must have trudged onward with hardly anything to diversify and enliven it, while also its rigidity could not fail to cause miserable distortions of the moral nature. Such a life was sinister to the intellect, and sinister to the heart; especially when one generation had bequeathed its religious gloom, and the counterfeit of its religious ardor, to the next; for these characteristics, ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... out of breath, pale, and dripping with sweat. Withers sat leaning forward with an expression of intense interest. Nas Ta Bega's easy, graceful pose had succeeded to one of strained rigidity. He seemed a statue of bronze. Could a few intelligible words, Shefford wondered, have created that strange, ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... sufficient authority lodged in those who exercise oversight to enable them to lead the Christian forces and administer their resources. But we dare not curtail the freedom of conscience, or impede liberty of prophesying, or turn flexibility of organization into rigidity, lest we hamper the Spirit, who divideth to every man severally even as He will. We do not want "metallic beliefs and regimental devotions," but the personal convictions of thinking sons and daughters of the living God, the spontaneous and congenial fellowship ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... in appearance, though vastly different in composition, which I made into a film, extremely thin and highly sensitive to vibrations. Running through this film were slender wires made of various metals, about one inch apart, which served not only to give rigidity to the film, but also to conduct a current of electricity through it, engendering a high state of atomic agitation. The current was controlled by a small switch placed in a heavy box-like frame, which bounded the film on its four sides and contained the batteries, ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... how else shall I calm myself save by forgetting all that nightmare of religions and races, save by holding out my hands with prayer and music toward the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God! The Past I cannot mend—its evil outlines are stamped in immortal rigidity. Take away the hope that I can mend the Future, and you ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... and greater industry, and had already gained a certain amount of notoriety. He was an obstinate worker, cold and meditative, though devoted to his profession, and affected, with some ostentation, perhaps, a great rigidity of ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... stern rigidity of the figure which stood between him and the moonlight, but clasped it warmly to his heart.—"Now I've got you, Ducky!" cried he, pressing all too affectionate kisses upon the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... injurious consequences; nor can anything else secure its endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free will is drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together, mutually with stringent necessity and rigidity. But we know that the condition of the human will always remains contingent, and that only in the Absolute Being physical coexists with moral necessity. Accordingly if it is wished to depend on the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Flavia, horror-stricken as she felt the feeble body stiffening against her with the approaching rigidity ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... compounds. The conclusions arrived at are entirely negative. In reference to the second assumption that the cuticular tissues of cereal straws, of esparto, of the bamboo, owe their special properties to siliceous components, it has been shown by direct experiment upon the former that their rigidity and resistance to water are in no way affected by cultivation in a silica-free medium. In other words, the structural peculiarities of the gramineae in these respects are due to the physical characteristics chiefly of the (lignified) cells of the hypodermal ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... room, his glance fell upon his rifle with the fixed bayonet. And then the swine-dog ran amok. Boudru stood with his back to the door: the blood froze in his veins, and his little body stiffened into absolute rigidity. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... exactnesses in a man who was nothing less than exact himself, made him extremely impracticable as an inmate, though most instructive as a companion, and useful as a friend. Mr. Thrale too could sometimes overrule his rigidity, by saying coldly, 'There, there, now we have had enough for one lecture, Dr. Johnson, we will not be upon education any more till after dinner, if you please,'—or some such speech; but when there was nobody to restrain his dislikes, it was extremely difficult ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... observations either the sextant or a theodolite was used. The theodolite employed was a light 3 Vernier instrument by Carey Porter, intended for sledging work. This instrument was fairly satisfactory, although possibly rigidity had been sacrificed to lightness to rather too great an extent. Another point which appears worth mentioning is the following: The foot-screws were of brass, the tribrach, into which they fitted, was made of aluminium for the sake of lightness. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... suggestion of life in those still and vacant streets. Even the crows were silent. But everywhere on the ground lay sleeping natives-hundreds and hundreds. They lay stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, beads and all. Their attitude and their rigidity counterfeited death. The plague was not in Bombay then, but it is devastating the city now. The shops are deserted, now, half of the people have fled, and of the remainder the smitten perish by shoals ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Earl's mirth as if she had seen primroses in December. Yet such blossoms are sometimes tempted forth; and affection was breathing something like a second spring on the life so long unnaturally chilled and blighted. If his shoulders were bowed, his figure had lost much of its rigidity; and though his locks were thinned and whitened, and his countenance slightly aged, yet the softened look and the more frequent smile had smoothed away the sternness, and given gentleness ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pride gave her features a certain rigidity which scared her admirers away. The thought of marriage had never occurred to her. The young men were not fully qualified, and those to whose social position there was no objection, were too old. If she, the daughter of a general, had married a captain, then a major's wife ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... twisted round their own axes; {7} but this occurs so much more generally and strongly with twining-plants than with other plants, that there must be some connexion between the capacity for twining and axial twisting. The stem probably gains rigidity by being twisted (on the same principle that a much twisted rope is stiffer than a slackly twisted one), and is thus indirectly benefited so as to be enabled to pass over inequalities in its spiral ascent, and to carry its own weight when allowed to ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... the Little Nugget gave tongue, I had just struck one, and I stood, startled into rigidity, holding it in the air as if I had decided to constitute myself a sort of limelight man to ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... very large one darted at the fly, and swallowed it. The rod bent into a beautiful oval as Mr Russ made a futile attempt to whip the fish over his head, according to custom, and the line straightened with fearful rigidity as the fish began to pull for its life. The fisher became energetic, and the fish impatient, but there was no prospect of its ever being landed; till at last, having got his rod inextricably entangled among the neighbouring ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... sooner had I done this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell back upon his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out the region of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was a tall, pompous-looking man, whose age appeared to verge close upon fifty. He was sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair, and looked as if it would be quite impossible to deviate from his position of unbending rigidity. ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... been shut another thing," he said and he endeavoured to say it with his usual detached rigidity of calm, but did not wholly succeed. "It is the outcome of the generations and the centuries at present diminishing in value and dignity. The past having had its will of me and the present and future having gripped me—if I had ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... itself, by a sort of aspiration, the greater part of the living forces which animate the latter. One sees, then, by a singular inversion, life withdrawn from the body, which then exhibits a cadaverous rigidity, and transfers itself entirely to the phantom, which acquires consistency—sometimes even to the point of struggling with persons before whom it materializes. It is but exceptionally that it shows itself in connection with a living person. But as soon as death has snapped the bonds which ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... three maid-servants, and a man came in every day to clean the knives and boots. Service with her was well requited, and much labour was never exacted. But it was not every young woman who could live with her. A rigidity as to hours, as to religious exercises, and as to dress, was exacted, under which many poor girls altogether broke down; but they who could stand this rigidity came to know that their places were very ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... exchange smiles, and she was employed observing the make of our clothes. My hands, I found, had first led her to discover that I was the lady. I had, of course, my quantum of reverences; for the politeness of the north seems to partake of the coldness of the climate and the rigidity of its iron-sinewed rocks. Amongst the peasantry there is, however, so much of the simplicity of the golden age in this land of flint—so much overflowing of heart and fellow-feeling, that only benevolence and the honest sympathy of nature diffused ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... which there would be no carrying away of material, and a queer flame it would be, for it would be rigid! With such high frequencies the inertia of the particles would come into play. As the brush, or flame, would gain rigidity in virtue of the inertia of the particles, the exchange of the latter would be prevented. This would necessarily occur, for, the number of the impulses being augmented, the potential energy of each would diminish, so that finally only atomic ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... when the end came; a euthanasia so mild and gradual (for the sands are fringed with mud) that the disaster was on us before I was aware of it. There was just the tiniest premonitory shuddering as our keel clove the buttery medium, a cascade of ripples from either beam, and the wheel jammed to rigidity in my hands, as the tug nestled ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... as the gauge marked one, two, three, or four, as its gradient on the scale, the rider pressed a button on the handle-bar with his left hand once, twice, thrice, or four times, so that the gearing adapted itself without an effort to the rise in the surface. Besides, there were devices for rigidity and compensation. Altogether, it was a most apt and ingenious piece of mechanism. I did not wonder he was ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... sinks into an insensibility profound as death, in which he has visions of heaven and the angels. Another lies, in half-waking trance, rapt in celestial contemplation and beatitude; others are suddenly fixed in cataleptic rigidity; others, again, are dashed upon the ground in convulsions. The impressive effect of these seizures is heightened by their supervention in the midst of religious exercises, and by the contagious and sympathetic influence through which their spread is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... the rigidity of the university student's scheme of study, and the vagaries and whims of the scholarly emotion. Contemplate the forcing of that most delicate of human attributes, i.e., interest, to bounce forth at the clang of a gong. To illustrate: the ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... strict letter of military codes as pertained in camps, garrisons, and strongholds." It was amusing to witness the poor fellow's pompous precision of movement as he stood behind his master's chair or helped the guest to his humble meal; the rigidity of his inactive moments, or the ridiculous jerkiness with which he passed a platter as 'twere to the time of a drill-sergeant's baton. More amusing still to one able, like Count Victor, to enter into the humour of the experience, was it to have his garrulity get the better of him in spite of ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... than Mr. Pyecroft. His first look of astonishment gave way to an empurpled confusion, from which a single short Silenus-like chuckle escaped, but this quickly changed again into a dull coppery indignation, and, as Pyecroft's laugh continued, faded out into a sallow rigidity in which his murky eyes alone seemed to keep what was left of his previous high color. But what was more singular, in spite of his enforced calm, something of his habitual old-fashioned loftiness and oratorical exaltation appeared ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... drag herself about; her eyes kept closing as she moved. Tenney was still expectantly eager for an awakening of her leniency. At eight o'clock he brought out the Bible and stiffened himself into the rigidity that was the mail for his spiritual combats. He was always referring to himself, at these times of religious observance, as a servant of the Cross, and Tira used wearily to wonder whether he felt obliged to arrange himself for combats that, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... nothing else, he agreed with Creighton. His correspondence with the latter throws his principles into the strongest light, and forms the best material for a judgment. For it must, we think, be admitted that he applied these doctrines with a rigidity which human affairs will not admit, and assumed a knowledge beyond our capacity. To declare that no one could be in a state of grace who praised S. Carlo Borromeo, because the latter followed the evil principle of his day in the matter of persecution, is not merely to make the historian ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... exclamation now showed that everybody recognised the mate, whose figure, stature, dress, and even features, were by this time all tolerably distinct. The fixed attitude, however, the immovable statue-like rigidity of the form, and all the other known circumstances of Harry's case, united to produce a common and simultaneous impression among the superstitious mariners, that what they saw was but the ghostly shadow of one lately departed to the world of spirits. Even Spike was not free from this illusion, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge. They would take neither the glow of passion nor the tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead corpses, and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. "What have you to do with us?" that expression seemed to say. "The little power you might have once possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! You have bartered it for a pittance ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well that this is so. Everything in the world costs its price. Rigidity is the price we pay for efficiency. In order to be efficient, we must make habitual the necessary movements. After they are habituated, they resist change. But habit makes for regularity and order. We could not live in society ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... but we speedily came to a second fissure, where it was necessary to step from a projecting end of ice to a mass of soft snow which overhung the opposite side. Simond could reach this snow with his long-handled ax; he beat it down to give it rigidity, but it was exceedingly tender, and as he worked at it he continued to express his fears that it would not bear us. I was the lightest of the party, and therefore tested the passage first; being partially lifted by Simond on the end of his ax, I crossed the fissure, obtained some anchorage ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... the stove at last, but the water was long in boiling, and the little figure in the man's arms seemed to be undergoing a subtle but inevitable change. His lips were still parted, but no faintest stir of breath emanated from them, and the rigidity had taken on a ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... a musician is equally sound within its category. And similarly, if instead of the man-object we contemplate the world-object physical causation becomes but the phenomenal aspect of psychical causation; the invariability of its sequence becomes but the expression of intentional order; the iron rigidity of natural law becomes the sensuous manifestation of an unalterable consistency as belonging ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... Antiquity. Painting lends itself willingly to the consideration of minor episodes, and for that reason is almost as well fitted to be in touch with modern life as the novel itself. Such a treatment saves a picture from looking prepared and cold, just as light and atmosphere save it from rigidity and crudeness. ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... the dead but imperishable bodies of the long-buried brothers of the convent sat erect in their lidless coffins, their cold, starry eyes glaring at him with lifeless rigidity, their withered fingers locked together on their breasts, their stiffened limbs motionless and still. It was a sight to petrify the stoutest heart; and the monk's quailed before it, though he was a philosopher, and a sceptic to boot. At the upper end of the vault, at a ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... cheering word from one of his own race, regards it as his duty to hold on in the face of such dangers. We read of the soldier, found after the lapse of ages among the ruins of Herculaneum, who stood firm at his post amid the fiery rain destroying all around him, thus manifesting the rigidity of the discipline among those armies of Ancient Rome which conquered the World. Mr. Paton was subjected to no such iron law. He might with honor, when offered to him, have sought a temporary asylum in Auckland, where ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... cunning from Shakespeare, nor did Shakespeare learn his cunning from them. The language was then just ripe for the uses of such minds; it had the wealth of much learning incorporated with it, yet had not been cast into rigidity nor dressed into primness by a technical and bookish legislation; it had gone on for centuries gathering in and assimilating stores from Nature and from Religion; it was rich with the life of a nation of brave, free, honest, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... its cultivation and use were prohibited on account of its supposed pernicious properties; as it was thought to induce rigidity of the limbs, and to otherwise injuriously affect ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... such matters in an—automobile is to treat them very unbecomingly. It is not," she continued, and all her unbending rigidity of demeanor was behind her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... in a hard and dry, but not unkind voice. In fact, the rigidity of her aspect, the hardness of her voice, and the singular blackness of her costume, seemed to be too monotonously uniform and resolute not to indicate something willful or unhealthy in the woman's condition, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... of such punctilious rigidity, it is no wonder that his master could not accept Mrs. Marston's simple excuse for Uncle Simon's dereliction, "that the old man needed rest." For the time being, the good lady might have her way, as all good ladies should, but as for him, he chose to watch ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... head of the steps, the priest inquires my rank in society. For at Kitzuki hierarchy and hierarchical forms are maintained with a rigidity as precise as in the period of the gods; and there are special forms and regulations for the reception of visitors of every social grade. I do not know what flattering statements Akira may have made about me to the good priest; but the result is that I can rank only as a common person—which ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... encroachment on one another is neglected. In a matter so obscure, we cannot strive too hard for clearness. It will always be easy afterwards to soften the outlines and to correct what is too geometrical in the drawing—in short, to replace the rigidity of a diagram ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... make an organized raid on the kitchen. Around and above the stove hung oddments like wolf-skin mitts, finnesko, socks, stockings and helmets, which had passed from icy rigidity through sodden limpness to a state of parchment dryness. The problem was to recover one's own property and at the same time to avoid the cook scraping the porridge saucepan and the messman ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... sorrowfully upon him a long time, but even when she moved several paces nearer he retained the same motionless rigidity which had seized upon him and even communicated itself to the dog. The animal knew the regent, and did not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... almost continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, and their perception of smell less so than in the dog tribe. Their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... they had no reason to be startled by her coming now, but for their subsequent amazement at her appearance and demeanor, they had every reason in the world. Her face was pale and grave, with an air of rigidity about it, which was not common to her, for, in general, she possessed a very mobile countenance. Without speaking a word, she advanced towards Lawrence, and extended her hand to him. He was so much surprised that while he took her hand ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... eyes on a bright object so placed as to produce a strain upon the eyes and eyelids, and to maintain a steady fixed stare, there comes on in a few seconds a very singular condition, characterized by muscular rigidity and inability to move, with a strange exaltation of most of the senses, and generally a closure of the eyelids,—this condition being followed ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... falling leaves, broken sighs from the tree-tops, and the languid stretching of wakened and unclasping boughs. Madison Wayne had not, alas! taken into account this subtle conspiracy of Night and Nature, and as he climbed higher, his steps began to falter with new and strange sensations. The rigidity of purpose which had guided the hard religious convictions that always sustained him, began to relax. A tender sympathy stole over him; a loving mercy to himself as well as others stole into his heart. He thought of HER as she had nestled ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... unguided and overindulged, had gone astray in his conduct, Mr. Edwards was not the man to know his mistake and take the blame. He had in him a rigidity of moral judgment, a dryness of mind which made it certain that if Jim did do what he disapproved, he would visit upon him a punishment at once severe and unsympathetic. The man's air of cold strength excited in the ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... from all around, then bows and gestures and murmurs of disavowal. I alone remained irresponsive, for at that very moment every fibre of my being was strained to nervous rigidity. My senses were preternaturally at work. The marble column against which I was leaning with seeming carelessness, vibrated under my hand. Within its circular depths I could see Abdul descending stealthily and slowly, his one free arm pressing a silken bundle to his breast. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... We thus obtain results which are not indeed mathematically accurate, but are nevertheless close approximations to those which would be obtained by a perfect observer using an ideal instrument of geometrical accuracy, standing on an earth of absolute rigidity, and viewing the heavens without the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... little fool! Do as I tell you. It isn't a lie—only a piece of conventional humbug which everybody understands. There, please!" His tone of entreaty was more disagreeable to her than his roughness. All the pride and rigidity of her Puritan temperament was up in arms against the indefinable something which it had long ago ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... in his Life of Emerson: "The object of this fine essay quaintly entitled Circles is to reconcile this rigidity of unalterable law with the fact of human progress. Compensation illustrates one property of a circle, which always returns to the point where it began, but it is no less true that around every circle another can be drawn.... Emerson followed his own counsel; he always ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... present use and past history of words as accurately as he could ascertain them, and, by showing Englishmen what their heritage was and whence they had received it, to make them proud of its past and jealous of its future. The pedant wishes to apply a code of Median rigidity to correct the barbarous freedom of a language to which scholarship has never applied itself. Johnson gave our savages laws and made them citizens of a constitutional state: but, however venerable the laws and however little to be {210} changed without grave reason, ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... finest beryl steel, the ship loomed in the screen. A mighty ship, braced into absolute rigidity by monster cross beams of shining steel. Glowing under the blazing lamps that lighted the scene, it towered into the shadows of the factory, dwarfing the scurrying workmen ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... what shall be said of its effect on Robert Hardy? For a moment it seemed to him more than he could bear. He started to his feet and put his hands before his face. Then calming himself by a great effort, he sat down and his face became almost like a stone in its rigidity. When his wife finally succeeded in getting the woman into the rear room, his face relaxed and he breathed more easily; but as soon as possible he arose and went out and stood silent there until the body was brought out and placed in the hearse. Then he ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... fell upon him I knew the truth. Cadaveric rigidity had supervened, and he had long been beyond hope of human aid. His furrowed face was as white as ivory, and his lower jaw had dropped in that manner that unmistakably betrays ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... closely connected with the last, and tending in the same direction, is that such a calendar as this implies rigidity and routine in religious duties. A well-ordered city life under a strong government must, of course, be subject to routine; law, religious or civil, written or unwritten, forces the individual into certain stereotyped ways of life, subjects him to a certain amount of wholesome discipline. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... inflammation involving the skin of the whole penis, retention having followed painful micturition, and the swelling of the penis following the retention; the prepuce was enormously distended, and the penis seemed in a state of erection as far as dimension and rigidity were concerned. The man, a steam-boat cook, informed us that it was fully twice as large as when rigidly erect in health. All efforts to reduce the swelling were unavailing; neither punctures, leeches, nor scarifications were ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... we can hardly give a length of more than from twenty-four to twenty-seven feet to beams that were called upon to support a thick covering of beaten earth as well as their own weight.[222] Perhaps, however, the skill of their carpenters was equal to increasing the span and rigidity of the beams used by a few simple contrivances. One of these is shown in our Fig. 60, a diagram composed by M. Chipiez to give an idea of the different methods of construction used by, or, at least, at the command of, the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... increase in rigidity of ceremonial in these books is to be read along with the stern decrees of Ezra as to separation from family and friendly relations with non-Jewish neighbors. It was, in a word, a Puritan reformation. There was just the same combination of heightened moral conviction with ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... body of a very large man lying flat upon his face, his head buried among the roots of a good-sized tree. The arms were stiffly pressed against his side, and his legs projected at full stretch, exhibiting an appearance of motionless rigidity, as though a well-dressed corpse had been rolled over on its face. I at once recognised it as the body of the major, whom I supposed to have fallen dead ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only accentuated the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to hate the curate's trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity of mind. His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I made to think out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. He was as lacking in restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and I verily believe ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... Tacitus,[173] to the effect that the patronage and approval of Nero led Seneca to write verse more frequently than his wont. Direct evidence there is none, but the general crudity of the work, coupled with the pedantic hardness and rigidity of the Stoicism which pervades the plays, points strongly to an early date, considerably earlier than the exile in Corsica. There is no trace of the mature experience and feeling for humanity that characterize the later philosophical works. On the contrary, these plays are just what might be expected ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... and her reserve with as much rigidity as on the former occasion. Unconvinced by this experience, our imaginations still ran riot. They shadowed forth every possible beauty and horror which such a giant chest might contain. The story even of "The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... freshening which prepared the way for future development. It must be confessed, however, that certain influences darkened the style even before it had reached maturity; chief among these was a gloomy hierarchical splendour, and a ritual rigidity, which to-day we yet refer to, quite properly, as Byzantinism. Choisy sees a distinction in the constructive types of Roman and Byzantine architecture, in that the former covered spaces by concreted ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... his voice, though uttering words so indifferent, seemed to dissolve the charm which kept his mother motionless. She sighed deeply, relaxed the rigidity of her posture, and sunk back on the cushions from which she had started up. Middlemas turned a look towards her at the sound of the sigh, and the rustling of her drapery. The General hastened ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... the colour crept back into that ashen face. The scarlet figure lost its rigidity, and bent forward. His lordship began to speak. In a muted voice and briefly—much more briefly than his wont on such occasions and in a manner entirely mechanical, the manner of a man whose thoughts ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... partially illuminated, may say is permissible, not what is recognised as allowable by the common maxims of the world round about us, but Christ's approval. How different the hard, stern, and often unwelcome prescriptions of law and rigidity of some standards of right become when they are changed into that which pleases the Divine Lord and Lover! Surely it is something blessed that the hard, cold, and to such a large extent powerless conceptions of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... lower limit of temperature that man can endure depends on many things, but no one can survive a temperature of 45 deg. C. (113 deg. F.) or above for very long. Mammalian muscle becomes rigid with heat rigor at about 50 deg. C., and obviously should this temperature be reached the sudden rigidity of the whole body would render life impossible. H.M. Vernon has recently done work on the death temperature and paralysis temperature (temperature of heat rigor) of various animals. He found that animals of the same class of the animal kingdom showed very similar temperature values, those ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... appeared the consummation which fate had decreed for my labours, and I became haggard and spectre-like, through anxiety and watching. At length his eyes unclosed faintly, yet with a look of returning life; he became pale and weak; but the rigidity of his features was softened by approaching convalescence. He knew me. What a brimful cup of joyful agony it was, when his face first gleamed with the glance of recognition—when he pressed my hand, now ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... centre; those of the under layer are disposed in the reverse direction, so that their ribs diverge from the periphery, crossing those of the upper layer at an acute angle. This arrangement gives great rigidity to the whole structure. The two layers are stitched together by threads carried round the hat in concentric circles at intervals of about one inch. The peripheral edges are sewn to a slender strip of rattan bent to form a circle, the two ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... to insist that the men accustom themselves to it. As a rule, it is so exaggerated that it not only becomes ridiculous, but positively harmful. The men must be taught to assume a natural and graceful position, one from which all rigidity is eliminated and from which action is possible without first relaxing muscles that have been constrained in an effort to maintain the position of attention. In other words, cooerdination rather than strength should be ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... energetic officers," writes Jackson's chief of the staff, "was at this time the bane of the service. In many there was neither an intelligent comprehension of their duties nor zeal in their performance. Appointed by the votes of their neighbours and friends, they would neither exercise that rigidity in governing, nor that detailed care in providing for the wants of their men, which are necessary to keep soldiers efficient. The duties of the drill and the sentry-post were often negligently performed; and the most profuse waste of ammunition and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... that second that I swear those about us were not immediately aware of what had happened. Then Fortini gasped and coughed slightly. The rigidity of his pose slackened. The hilt and hand against my breast wavered, then the arm drooped to his side till the rapier point rested on the lawn. By this time Pasquini and de Goncourt had sprung to him and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... missing two of its most useful qualities. It could no longer act as a spring or buffer to the body, nor could it adapt its sole to the various kinds of surfaces on which we have to tread or stand. Nature, with her usual ingenuity, has succeeded in combining those opposing qualities—rigidity, suppleness, and elasticity or springiness—by resorting to her favorite device, the use of muscular engines. The arch is necessarily constructed of a number of bones which can move on each other to a certain extent, so that the foot may adapt itself ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... them to the further end, I almost started from my sleep on beholding, not taking part in the dance with the others, nor seemingly endued with life like them, but standing in marble coldness and rigidity upon a black pedestal in the extreme left corner—my lady of the cave; the marble beauty who sprang from her tomb or her cradle at the call of my songs. While I gazed in speechless astonishment and admiration, a dark shadow, descending ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... approval of grape-growers on the Pacific slope without being a prime favorite for either home use or commerce. The grapes are not high enough in quality for a home vineyard, and, while they ship well, are hard to handle because of the large size and rigidity of the bunches. Another fault is that the vines are subject to root-knot. The chief asset of the variety is handsome appearance of fruit. This variety is remarkable for the number of second-crop bunches which it produces on the laterals. The ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... improper for weak stomachs, though they will often crave them. Boiled meat is generally preferable to roast meat, for nourishment and digestion. Boiling extracts more of the rank strong juices, and renders it lighter and more diluted. Roasting leaves it fuller of gravy, but it adds to the rigidity of the fibres. The flesh of young animals is best roasted. Fried and broiled meats are difficult to be digested, though they are very nourishing: weak stomachs had better avoid them. Meat pies and puddings cannot be recommended, but strong stomachs may ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... species or variety, whichever it may be; little seems to be known of its origin, but that it is distinct and beautiful is beyond doubt. It shines most as a rock plant; its long and bending stems, which are somewhat procumbent, have as much rigidity about them as to prevent their having a weak appearance; the tips, moreover, are erect, showing off to advantage the handsome imbricate bracts, bespangled as they are with numerous rosy-purple blossoms. The long and elegant panicles of bracteae, together with the pleasing arrangement thereof, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... of some inflexible law for a personal God with a living will, it is not strange that some phase of the same idea should creep into even the purest theology, and that in Mr. Robertson's theory of prayer we should find traces of the rigidity characterizing 'ultra predestinarian' as well as ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... least, we can explain that rigidity, which Mr. Ruskin tells us, "is a special element of Gothic architecture. Greek and Egyptian buildings," he says—and I should have added, Roman building also, in proportion to their age, i.e. to the amount of the Roman elements in them—"stand ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... according to system, order, and not with a view of placing in the best lights and shadows the beautiful things to be sold. He saw that Mr. Ludolph was annoyed by the same defect. One bright day, when everything stood out with glaring distinctness, he seemed provoked beyond measure by this inartistic rigidity, and stormed through the store at ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... as if to read thereon a secret, to decipher a name—Menko's or his own. Her exquisite, delicate features had the rigidity of marble; her dark eyes were staring straight ahead, like two spots of light, where nothing, nothing was reflected. Zilah shuddered again; ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... but stood motionless while the rifle was taken out and replaced. Ashton picked up the reins from the ground and threw them over the horse's head. The beast did not swing around, but his ewe neck straightened and his entire body stiffened to a peculiar rigidity. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... and unexcited leaf [page 261] are moderately rigid and elastic; if bent by a needle, the upper end yields more easily than the basal and thicker part, which alone is capable of becoming inflected. The rigidity of this basal part seems due to the tension of the outer surface balancing a state of active and persistent contraction of the cells of the inner surface. I believe that this is the case, because, when ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... He was conscious of a certain rigidity of action, a certain precision of motion, ascribing them to the stern determination which he had that when he should at last discover the whiskey-happiness in his soul, he would ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... as a matter of fact this ultramarine joke of yours is about east. It was blue on the Mercy G.—mighty blue, too. And it needed the inspiring hope of the gold I was soon to pick up in nuggets to stiffen my back-bone to a respectable degree of rigidity. I was about ready to wilt. But I discovered two Englishmen on board, and now I get along all right. We have formed a little temperance society—just we three, you know—to see if we cannot, by a course of sampling and severe study, discover which of the captain's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... active muscular exertion. There have been cases of instantaneous death in battle where the body has remained in the position it held at the moment of death, this being due to the instantaneous onset of muscular rigidity. The blood remains fluid for a time after death and settles in the more dependent parts of the body, producing bluish red mottled discolorations. Later the blood coagulates in the vessels. The body loses moisture by evaporation. ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... details of the cut-off are shown in Fig. 2; the valve, G, which covers the cut-off, F, acts like a four way cock. The spindle of the cut-off, F, is connected with the lever, I, and is moved by the rudder, as already described. By enlarging or gradually narrowing the ends of the steam ports great rigidity or elasticity may be given to the hold of this engine, according to the ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... time he could not bring himself to speak of his decision. Every look of her eyes, every movement of her body, seemed pleading with him to keep silence. But in Miltoun's character there was an element of rigidity, which never suffered him to diverge from an ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... seemed to be praying, her face hidden. Then his gaze, sinking instinctively, fell on a low bed between him and the woman; and there rested on a white sheet, and on the solemn outlines—so certain in their rigidity, so unmistakable by human eyes—of a body laid out ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Scholarship involved residence in London. She ought to have begun to live in fear, for Cyril had a most disturbing habit of making a mere momentary reference to matters which he deemed very important and which occupied a large share of his attention. He was secretive by nature, and the rigidity of his father's rule had developed this trait in his character. But really he had spoken of the competition with such an extreme casualness that with little effort she had dismissed it from her ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... place—a philosophy of fatalism, sometimes an utter boredom with the way in which death plays the fool with men, threatening but failing to kill; in most cases a strange extinction of all emotions and sensations, so that men who have been long under shell-fire have a peculiar rigidity of the nervous system, as if something has been killed inside them, though outwardly they are ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... conical shoe; these longitudinal bars are wound spirally with a -in. rod wire tied to the bars at every intersection. This spiral rod has a pitch of only a few inches, but to bind it in place and give rigidity to the skeleton it is wound by a second spiral with a reverse twist and a pitch of 4 or 5 ft. As thus constructed, the reinforcing frame is sufficiently rigid to bear handling as a unit. The piles used at Bristol were 14 to 15 ins. in diameter and 52 ft. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... perplexed Hercules himself, but nothing could appal the bo's'n. The slings were affixed, the order to hoist was given by the mate, who had descended from the poop, and stood near the gangway. Up went the monster with a grunt, and a peculiar rigidity of body, which evidently betokened ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... himself had a theory about Crozier; and he had a fear of what the savage enmity of the morally diseased Burlingame might do. He had made up his mind that so intense a scrupulousness as Crozier had shown since coming to Askatoon had behind it not only character, but the rigidity of a set purpose; and that view was supported by the stern economy of Crozier's daily life, broken only by sudden bursts of generosity for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lines of such a covering, not so flowing, indeed, as those of a veil, would yet be not inelegant; and they would afford sufficient contrast to the features of the face, while they would be far superior to the unmeaning rigidity of the bonnet. Hoods, such as those, are even now worn by some ladies for carriage purposes, or while going to evening parties; and they would look just as well in the bright light of the sun, as by the pale rays of the moon. Consider for a moment the comfort and the utility of such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... a slight tinkle of a spoon against the coffee-cup. Looking at his father he saw a nervous flutter in his cheeks, his lips hard set, his brow drawn down; and the rigidity of the profile was such that Jack was struck by the shiver of a thought that it must have been like his own as others said it was when he had gripped Pedro Nogales's arm. But this passed quickly, leaving, however, in its trail an expression of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... it will be until morning," he said—"it is a question of the rigidity of certain muscles. But you need not be alarmed, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... restricted to the nearest chords of the key. The essential point in which the construction of the lute differed from that of the guitar, was in the back, which in the latter is flat, so that ribs are indispensable for preserving the rigidity of the body against the pull of the strings. The lute body is very solid, from the mode of its construction involving an application of the principle of the arch. The standard appearance of ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... intermittence of his inspiration filled the poet with a wistful curiosity as to his nature in moments of soaring. By continual introspection he is seeking the charm, so to speak, that will render his afflatus permanent. The rigidity in much of such verse surely betrays, not the white heat of genius, but a self-conscious attitude of readiness for the falling of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... greater rigidity. I pass over the preliminary examination of this important witness and proceed at once to the point when the coroner, holding out the two or three lines of writing which Mr. Jeffrey had declared to have been left him by ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... passing through the rubber connections to the fall tubes, but I have not found this to be the case in practice. There is, of course, no difficulty in eliminating the rubber connections between the fall tubes and the mercury supply from the air trap, but it impresses a greater rigidity on the structure and, as I say, is not in general necessary. It must not be forgotten that the mercury always exercises considerable pressure on the rubber joints, and so there is little tendency for gas to ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... had undertaken to write little tales, this baleful substantive, with its attendant adjective, could hardly have been more frequent in their pages than in those of their fanciful descendant. Hawthorne had moreover in his composition contemplator and dreamer as he was, an element of simplicity and rigidity, a something plain and masculine and sensible, which might have kept his black-browed grandsires on better terms with him than he admits to be possible. However little they might have appreciated ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... mountains. The consequence was that these rude children of William Tell, put up to auction by the nations, and carried away from the humble, hardy life of a mountain people into cities of wealth and pleasure, had lost, not their ancient courage, but that rigidity of principle for which they had been distinguished before their intercourse with other nations. From being models of honour and good faith they had become a kind of marketable ware, always ready for sale to the highest bidder. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a stony rigidity spread, her eyelids drooped, her head rolled from side to side, a pitiful, moaning cry came from her pinched lips, and then, at last, drawing a ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... held that of Gyges was cold, soft, and small; nevertheless those slender fingers clasped it with a bruising force, as the fingers of some statue of brass animated by a prodigy would have done. The rigidity of an inflexible will betrayed itself in that ever-equal pressure as of a vice—a pressure which no hesitation of head or heart came to vary. Gyges, conquered, subjugated, crushed, yielded to that imperious traction, as though he were borne along by the mighty ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... bit of a bully can scarcely be denied. It is difficult to combine the offices of Gabbai and Town Councillor without a self-satisfaction that may easily degenerate into dissatisfaction with others. Least endurable was S. Cohn in his religious rigidity, and he could never understand that pietistic exercises in which he found pleasure did not inevitably produce ecstasy in his son and heir. And when Simon was discovered reading 'The Pirates of Pechili,' dexterously concealed in his prayer-book, the boy received a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... alacrity, and Farrell crossed the hall to the drawing-room. He turned on the light as he opened the door, and was at once aware of Nelly's slight form on the sofa. She did not move, and something in her attitude—some rigidity that he fancied—alarmed him. He took a few steps, and then saw that there was no cause for alarm. She was only asleep, poor child, profoundly, pathetically asleep. Her utter unconsciousness, the delicate hand and arm lying over the edge of the sofa, and the gleam ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... constitution which pledged defiance to The Roman and guaranteed protection on the gerund and gerundive was exceedingly popular. The signals were agreed upon. Absolute rigidity on Stover's part denounced the gerund, while a slight wriggling of his sensitive ears betrayed the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... will most probably be found in the trench. Pipes having plain turned and bored joints are liable to be displaced if exposed to the action of the waves, but if such joints are also flanged, as Fig. 24, or provided with lugs, as Fig. 23, great rigidity is obtained when they are bolted up; in addition to which the joints are easily made watertight. When a flange is formed all round the joint, it is necessary, in order that its thickness may be kept within reasonable limits, to provide bolts at frequent intervals. A gusset piece to ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... first complain of an intense headache with frequent vomiting and very high fever. Great prostration is seen, the pulse is weak, the respirations are irregular, the child may have convulsions, or it may have chills and fever, and rigidity of the body may be present. The position of the child is very characteristic. It does not want to lie on its back but usually rests on one side, with the spine more or less arched. It is a very serious disease and demands the early ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... petals. Their perfume was the potent spell that now melted her to tears, and the tension of her overtaxed nerves gave way in a passionate burst of sobs. When she rose a few moments later, the storm had passed; the face regained its stony rigidity, and henceforth she fronted fate with an ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and exclusively. The One and All, first in the order of being and of knowing, logically necessary itself, and uniting all lesser things in the bonds of mutual necessity, how could it allow of any mitigation of its inner rigidity? The slightest suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of independence of any one of its parts from the control of the totality, would ruin it. Absolute unity brooks no degrees—as well might you claim absolute purity for a glass of water because ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... tire of the subject of Cashel and Lydia. She began to tire of Lucian's rigidity. She began to tire exceedingly of the vigilance she had to maintain constantly over her own manners and principles. Somehow, this vigilance defeated itself; for she one evening overheard a lady of rank speak of her as a stuck-up country girl. The remark gave her ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... to have convinced him of the need of speedily making peace while Austria held out the olive branch from across the Rhine. But Metternich's gloomy forecast was only too true. During his sojourn at Paris he had tested the rigidity ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... great toe is large and apart from the others, where the strap of the sandal came; while the others gradually diminish and sweep round to the outside of the foot, with the greatest regularity of curve; the nails are short, and the toes broad at the points, indicative of pressure on the ground." Rigidity he considers to have been the character of the first epochs, changing ultimately as in the Elgin marbles, "from the hard characteristics of stone to the vivified character of flesh." He thinks Reynolds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... great rapidity, and during which the vocal bands increase to double their previous length in males, that, though the pitch of the voice, owing to increased length of the bands, suddenly lowers, yet not until full maturity is reached, do the laryngeal cartilages attain that rigidity, or the vocal bands that ready elasticity essential to the production of pure, resonant voice. Yet, during these years, while the voice is developing, the vocal bands remain unchanged in length. Even in those cases ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... half of Mr. Lipkind's face seemed to lock, as it were, into a kind of rigidity which shot out his lower jaw. "I'll see Eddie Leonard burning like brimstone before I let ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... his heavy face convulsed with rage. "A cheap killer, who must strike from behind! Faugh! It's creatures like you——" With an animal screech Hughes jumped for him. Before we could seize the infuriated man Ward's arm was thrust across his chest and with the rigidity of a bar of iron stopped the assault. Before Hughes could pull knife or ax from his belt we hustled him into the background. His three friends scowled ferociously but offered no interference. It was obvious ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... 'cobalt,' 'which,' remarks Webster, 'is said to be the German Kobold, a goblin, the demon of the mines; so called by miners, because cobalt was troublesome to miners, and at first its value was not known.' Ah! but these terms were created before Science, in its rigidity, had taught us the truth in regard to these matters. Yes! and fortunate is it for us that we still have words, and ideas clustering around these words, that have not yet been chilled and exanimated by the frigid touch of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... effects of the rays of radio-activity and ultra-violet light. One finds a great geologist in collaboration with his distinguished colleague in physics, and from the latter comes a contribution on the rigidity of the earth. Astronomy answers nowadays to the name of astrophysics, and progressive observatories recognize in the laboratory a tool as essential as the telescope. In a word, the professional student of science not only finds that the subject matter of physics has many fundamental points ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... huge fist and cursed deep under his breath—the reaction of a man whose accomplices and partners and tools, whose luck, whose faith in himself had failed him. He flung himself down under a tree, and after a while, when his rigidity relaxed, he probably fell asleep. Moze and Shady kept at their game. Wilson paced to and fro, sat down, and then got up to bunch the horses again, walked around the dell and back to camp. The afternoon hours were long. And they were waiting hours. The act of ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... glistening, and tried to bite. But the Indian's moccasined foot shot up under the stallion's ear and pressed him back. Then the roan hugged Silvermane so close that half the time the Navajo virtually rode two horses. But for the rigidity of his arms, and the play and sudden tension of his leg-muscles, the Indian's work would have appeared commonplace, so dexterous was he, so perfectly at home in his dangerous seat. Suddenly he whooped and August Naab hauled back the gate, and the two horses, neck ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive smoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a London fog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene, the main impression about the fire would still be its ranked upstanding rigidity and a sort of roaring stillness. It was literally a wall ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... then the rigidity of fixed attention, broken in another moment, however, by an impulsive movement and the ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... ideas, accepting them from every quarter whence they blow to him if only they will fill his sails and propel his bark; but he will never understand what mischief he could work to his enemies by opposing a programme of advanced democratic reform to the imperial programme whose fixity resembles the rigidity of death. But what liberty can he invoke—he who has disavowed and injured all liberties? Not personal liberty—abused and trampled on constantly by his menials; not commercial liberty, sold for thirty pieces of silver after the Germanic Zollverein had brought great ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
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