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More "Stiffen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Quin cheerfully. "You see, you can't stiffen a fellow's backbone, as you call it, for one thing and not another. When he found out he could stop drinking, he decided he could do other things as well. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... laid hand on two of the rifles near by and began surreptitiously to fill their magazines. The Nigger shook his knife free of the scabbard and sat with it in his left hand, concealed by his body. I could feel Thrackles's muscles stiffen. Another fifty paces and it would be no longer necessary ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... her stiffen in the saddle and lift herself a little from her seat as he drew near, his companions stopping a little distance back. Her eyes were stern and reproachful; a little frown troubled ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... visibly to stiffen. Instead of beseeching looks I got threatening ones. Three minutes before I had been dictator; now I was a prisoner, and if I could read signs one in a ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... possibly at him that they would make Odette laugh. "What a fetid form of humour!" he exclaimed, twisting his mouth into an expression of disgust so violent that he could feel the muscles of his throat stiffen against his collar. "How, in God's name, can a creature made in His image find anything to laugh at in those nauseating witticisms? The least sensitive nose must be driven away in horror from such stale exhalations. It is really impossible to believe that ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... 'e from fust to last!" burst out Billy. "If a angel from heaven comed down-long and tawld 'e the truth 'bout un, you wouldn't b'lieve. God stiffen it! You make me mad! You'd stand 'pon your head an' waggle your auld legs in the air for un ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... get on." The boys from the stable grinned. John set his teeth. "Don't stiffen yourself. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... feeling of emotion."[2] The behavior of animals exhibits the external features of sympathetic action very clearly. "Two dogs begin to growl or fight, and at once all the dogs within sound and sight stiffen themselves, and show every symptom of anger. Or one beast in a herd stands arrested, gazing in curiosity on some unfamiliar object, and presently his fellows also, to whom the object may be invisible, display curiosity and come up to join in the examination ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... for life. One elects to stand on one foot until it becomes impossible for him ever to put the other to the ground. Another determines to raise his arms to heaven, never taking them down. In a short time, after excruciating pain, the joints stiffen so as to render any change impossible, and the arms shrivel until little but bone is left. Some let their nails grow into their flesh and through their hands. The forms of these penances are innumerable, and those who undergo them are regarded as holy men and are worshipped and supported by their ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... form of Mrs. Julian Jones stiffen, although she kept her gaze fixed balefully upon two mud-hens that were prowling along the lagoon shallows below us. "The hussy!" she hissed, once and implacably. Jones had stopped at the sound, but went ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... dogs, and sled may be used to complete the scene, or they can be cut from newspapers or old magazines. Stiffen by pasting them on cardboard; then cut out the men, dogs, and sled more carefully in detail. Bend one leg forward and one backward to make the men stand alone, and bend two legs outward and two inward to enable the dogs to stand. Paste ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... when Mrs. Laden started bringing in the dinner. Mrs. Laden is a widow; she has been with us since my mother died, the year after I was born. She is violently anti-liquor. Reluctantly, she condones Dad taking a snort now and then, but as soon as she saw Bish Ware, her face started to stiffen. ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... me from my kind, And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with sighs a passing wind: . . . . . "Regret is dead, but love is more Than in the summers that are flown, For I myself with these have grown To something greater ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... creeds were of purely pagan origin. Given similar conditions to-day, our easy tolerance of opinion would disappear. If Islam, for instance, were to-day a serious menace to the Faith, Christians would automatically stiffen their attitude towards monophysite doctrines. Toleration of the false Christology would, under those circumstances, be treason to the true. The Church of the fifth century was menaced from many sides. Monophysitism ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... his shoulders a bit and called his orderly, who again impressed Johnny with his military preciseness when he stood at attention and saluted. Captain Riley's whole manner seemed to stiffen to that military preciseness, though Johnny had ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... plug and she's a lady born, and as good as engaged to Burgess besides. I had that straight from Dennie Saxon, and you know Dennie's no gossip. They were far gone before they came West—the Wream-Burgess folk were—stiffen up, Burleigh. You look ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Colorado.... In the day-time they have the sun which makes their brains boil, scorches the ground, dries up the springs, and brings forth endless numbers of mosquitoes to sting their bodies and try their patience. The Promised Land!... At night they have the terrible cold to make their eyes smart, to stiffen their joints and ruin their lungs. The ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... indulges one's self in expectations, in tolerances, and these rather increase with the lapse of time. We should say that your theory of the stiffening tastes is applicable to the earlier rather than the later middle life. We should say that the tastes if they stiffen at the one period limber at the other; their forbidding rigidity is succeeded by an acquiescent suppleness. One is aware of an involuntary hospitality toward a good many authors whom one would once have turned destitute from the door, or with a dole of Organized ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... one that was creased open, and handed it to Steve. It was an announcement of Barbara Allison's engagement to the Hon. Archibald Wickersham—that column to which Fat Joe had folded the sheet—a many-days-old announcement, now. But the smile did not even stiffen upon Steve's lips. The picture which accompanied it was a poor one, heavy-shadowed and smeared and lacking in detail, yet Barbara's face was unmistakable. The room became quiet. In that hush Garry realized ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... 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 stiffen the flange should be formed between each hole and the next, and the bolt holes should be arranged so that when the pipes are laid there will not be a hole at the bottom on the vertical axis of the pipe, as when the pipes ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... English was a foreign tongue to him seems to have intensified this quality; as though the hardness and steepness of its challenge forced the latent scholarship in him to stiffen its ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... first, and in the matter of a minute struggled feebly to his feet where he stood swaying and dizzy; and thus Bashti, his eye to the crack, saw the miracle of life flow back through the channels of the inert body and stiffen the legs to upstanding, and saw consciousness, the mystery of mysteries, flood back inside the head of bone that was covered with hair, smoulder and glow in the opening eyes, and direct the lips to writhe away from the teeth and the throat to ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... existence, he has a singular tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent visit, looking more critically at the irregular circle ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hours' tracking in the interminable large grasses. An enormous snake, with fearful mouth and fangs, was speared by the men. In the evening I wounded a buck nsamma, which, after tracking till dark, was left to stiffen ere the following morning; and just after this on the way home, we heard the rogue elephant crunching the branches not far off from the track; but as no one would dare follow me against the monster at this late hour, he was reluctantly ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... middle of an Election goes over to France to fight a duel, can hardly expect to win; he has all the morality of an English borough opposed to him,' she said; and seeing the young lady stiffen: 'Oh! the duel is positive,' she dropped her voice. 'With the husband. Who else could it be? And returns invalided. That is evidence. My nephew Palmet has it from Vivian Ducie, and he is acquainted with her tolerably intimately, and the story is, she was overtaken in her flight in the night, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stiffen your backbone. It's your backbone that matters. You shouldn't want to abandon yourself. You shouldn't want to fling yourself all loose into a woman's lap. You should stand by yourself and learn to be by yourself. Why don't ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... girl's waist, and drew her towards him. He felt her yield, and heard her draw a fluttering breath. Her head drooped so that he could not see her face; she was slipping into his arms, and then, in the moment of surrender, he felt her body stiffen. She put her hands on his shoulder and pushed him back; the canoe lurched and he had some trouble to prevent a capsize. The water splashed against the rocking craft, and Sadie, drawing away, fixed her eyes on him. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... recognition of any judgment or impression, any thought or feeling, which did not justify itself from his own point of view. The barrier would melt under the influence of a sympathetic mood, as it would stiffen in the atmosphere of disagreement. It would yield, as did in his case so many other things, to continued indirect pressure, whether from his love of justice, the strength of his attachments, or his power of imaginative ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... up with none o' the fellers. I knowed fellers try to kiss her; but her style was to stiffen them with a clip under the ear, an' they sort o' took the hint, an' never come back. But by-'n'-by a man from the Queensland border, he bought the place next ours but one; an' our two fam'lies got acquainted. Wonderful clever ole feller he was, in regard o' findin' out new gases, an' smells, an' ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... spend the night in the forest at a spot not far distant from the road. The negroes by themselves would never have consented to this plan, so great was their dread of bugaboos, but they derived courage from the companionship of white men, and, to stiffen their resolution, I told them how, when wearing the crown piece about my neck, I had escaped by night with nine companions from a place with stone walls ten feet thick. This impressed them greatly—Noah in particular; and in the evening, when we halted for our bivouac in the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the meal. Bill got his horses up beside the fire, loading on the packs. Hazel sat on the trunk of a winter-broken fir, waiting his readiness to start. She heard no sound behind her. But she did see Roaring Bill stiffen and his face blanch under its tan. Twenty feet away his rifle leaned against a tree; his belt and six-shooter hung on a limb above it. He was tucking a keen-edged hatchet under the pack lashing. And, swinging this up, he jumped—it seemed—straight ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... for hour after hour; the horses know they are on the way home, and trot without asking. My bare hands stiffen about the reins. As we neared a cottage a little way from the road, Fruen knocked on the carriage window to say it was dinner-time. She gets out, and her face was pale with ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... appeared there no more. Then, one evening when it was almost dark, James Moore, going the round of the outbuildings, felt Owd Bob stiffen ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... tale, so fill'd with bloody circumstance, Of this damn'd deed, that stiffen'd me with horror. Vardanes seem'd to blame the hasty act, As rash, and unadvis'd, by passion urg'd, Which never yields to cool reflection's place. But, being done, resolv'd it secret, lest The multitude should take it in their wise Authority ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... them, for their habitual state of dependence teaches them to trust in others. When they become voters, if they ever do, it may be feared that the pews will lose what the ward-rooms gain. Relax a woman's hold on man, and her knee-joints will soon begin to stiffen. Self-assertion brings out many fine qualities, but it does not ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... came out into the busy mart. The old mahout congratulated himself upon the docility of his find. It would stiffen the bidding to announce that she was gentle. He even went so far as to pat her on the shoulder. The steel film did not cover all her nerves, so it would seem; the patted shoulder was vulnerable. She winced, for she read clearly enough what was in the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... back, feeling my hair rise and stiffen. The sound echoed and reverberated through the silent night, and then died away; but before it had done so I had sprung to the great beam and closed the upper gate. As I did so I caught sight of the old man trembling and shaking at the door of the cottage. I called to him to go ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... below the knee, lay the boy on his back and put a pillow or a bag stuffed with grass lengthwise under it. Then put a board or a hewed sapling on the under side of the pillow to stiffen it, and bandage the pillow and the board or sapling firmly to the leg. If the boy has to be ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... right, Son, and we're proud as Punch of you, that you want to be not only in America's 'First Hundred Thousand,' but in her 'First Ten Thousand.' We know it will stiffen your spine considerably to hear that your family are behind you. Well, we are—just ranks and rows of us, with our heads up and the colours waving. Even Grandfather and Grandmother are as gallant as veterans ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... wouldn't suit yous. Your dart is ter be King of the Push, an' knock about the streets with a lot of mudlarks as can't look a p'liceman straight in the face. You an' yer pals are seein' life now all right; but wait till yer bones begin ter stiffen, an' yer can't run faster than the cop. Then it'll be jail or worse, an' yous might 'ave bin a good workman, with a wife an' family, only ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... with stiff legs and erect hackles, alert in every hair of his body—but no supper. The supper, very slightly masticated and swallowed with furious haste, was already beginning its task of helping to stiffen Jan's fibers and give fierceness to the lift of his ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... use determination all the time; so it will be sufficient if your muscles are taught to be quickly responsive to determination of mind on any occasion. (You know it helps you to carry out a resolution if you stiffen your body at the moment you make up your mind to do a thing, but continued stiffness of the body in determination would be a strain likely to weaken your power of action unless backed by a tremendous, stored-up reserve strength of muscles.) Begin your ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... thought, my ancient ancestors came to this land with his'n; who knows? An' I might 'a' been switched off on some female line, an' so lost the name an' estates. At any rate, be brave! With such thoughts as these I tried to stiffen my legs, figgeratively speakin'. We went through two or three rooms (I hadn't time to count 'em) an' then I was showed into the lofty presence of the earl. He was standin' by the fire-place, an' the minnit my eyes lit upon him I knowed ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... better of them by efforts of will, she all at once experienced such extraordinary lassitude that she yielded vanquished. Then, having become a woman again, even a little girl, no longer feeling the strength to stiffen herself, to stand feverishly erect before her terror, she plunged into pity, into tears and regret, in the hope of finding some relief. She sought to reap advantage from her weakness of body and mind. Perhaps the drowned man, who had not given way to her irritation, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... he felt himself to be, instinct told him that he could act now as it would be impossible to do later, when his wounds began to stiffen and his muscles to refuse to obey his will. No bones were broken. He could still keep his feet and use his arms; and when the faithful servant brought up a horse and helped his master to mount, Paul felt that giddy and weak and suffering as he was, he could yet make shift to ride as far as it would ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... thickened by the slight pushing together of the ends, so that they taper from the lump to the unchanged wall. Upon blowing this joint, these thickened walls blow out with the lump, but as they are thinnest next the unchanged tube, they stiffen there first. Then as the thicker parts are still hot, these blow out more, and with the lump make a more or less uniform wall. By this first operation most of the lump will have been removed, provided ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... She had no longer any power of restraint. And as the word hissed upon the air the man's whole body seemed to suddenly stiffen. His arms tightened, and she felt her ribs bend under their ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... were numb, dead. He lay supported by his elbows, his eyes gazing blankly at the unlit fire. Five minutes passed; he did not rise. He seemed dazed, stupid, terror-stricken. Five more minutes passed. He did not move. He seemed to stiffen, to grow rigid, and the darkness ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... half of trepidation, half of exultance, Phillips crushed his cap upon his head. "I—I've a notion to. I can ALMOST say it; anyhow, I can say enough so she'll understand. Gad! I will! I just needed you to stiffen me up." Fiercely he wrung the woodsman's hand, and, forgetful of all else but his new determination, moved toward the door. "Thanks for all you've done for me, old man, and all you've offered ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... from head to foot. He lifted his hands, as if he must cry aloud in anguish. Then suddenly his face and figure seemed to congeal and stiffen with some awful inward coldness—the frost of the last circle of the Inferno—it spread upon him till he stood like a soul imprisoned ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... day will come when fate's decree And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee; Phœbus and Paris shall avenge my fate, And stretch thee here before the Scæan Gate." He ceased. The Fates suppress'd his laboring breath, And his eyes stiffen'd ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... replied. "I haven't anything worse than a bruise. If I keep too quiet the injury will stiffen all the more. I must move my hip a bit, or I may be in ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... will not slacken, On the plain be overtaken; In the wave he will not sink, Nor pause at the brook's side to drink; In the race he will not pant, In the combat he'll not faint; On the stones he will not stumble, 560 Time nor toil shall make him humble; In the stall he will not stiffen, But be winged as a Griffin, Only flying with his feet: And will not such a voyage be sweet? Merrily! merrily! never unsound, Shall our bonny black horses skim over the ground! From the Alps to the Caucasus, ride we, or fly! For we'll leave them behind in the glance of an eye. [They mount their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... insisted Merley. "Why, I can hardly move now," and he seemed to stiffen all over, though there was no visible sign ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... without making a resistance of some sort? He knew he would be shot down instantly if he did, and they would be glad of an excuse, but that would be only cutting short the agony. The veins swelled on his forehead, and he felt his limbs stiffen. He made a sudden movement, but the big breed caught his arm and whispered in his ear. It was an Indian saying which meant that until the Great Spirit Himself called, it was folly to listen to those who tempted. It was not so much the hope these few words ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... this sad procession,' said she, and mounted to a turret, whence through an open window she looked upon the funeral. Scarce had her eyes rested upon the form of Iphis stretched on the bier, when they began to stiffen, and the warm blood in her body to become cold. Endeavoring to step back, she found she could not move her feet; trying to turn away her face, she tried in vain; and by degrees all her limbs became ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the slouching team slouched a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered youth, the white down just beginning to stiffen into bristles on his long upper lip. His pale eyes and pale hair looked yet paler by contrast with his thin, red, wind-roughened face. In his hand he carried a long-handled ox-whip, with a short goad in ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... accident. Cosme called himself a sentimentalist. Spurred by this reaction against his more romantic tendencies, he leaned forward. He too was going to ask the barmaid for a good-night or a greeting or a good-bye. His hand was out, when he saw her face stiffen, her lips open to an "Oh!" of warning or of fear. He wheeled and flung up his arm against ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... not the only people in the world who are clever," Pamela declared, with an unnatural little laugh. "The first man who took note of Sandy Graham's silly words as he rushed into Henry's was Baron Sunyea. I saw him stiffen as he listened. He even uttered a word of remonstrance. Japan in London heard. Japan in your sitting-room here, in ten days' time, knew everything there ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... huge fellow who handled the sheep so brutally. Every time he dragged one and threw it into the pit he yelled: "Ho! Ho!" Carley was impelled to look at his face, and she was amazed to meet the rawest and boldest stare from evil eyes that had ever been her misfortune to incite. She felt herself stiffen with a shock that was unfamiliar. This man was scarcely many years older than Glenn, yet he had grizzled hair, a seamed and scarred visage, coarse, thick lips, and beetling brows, from under which peered gleaming light ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the jelly through it until clear, then pour it into moulds and put them in a cool place to set. One calf's foot and one cow heel will be more economical than two calfs feet. If fruit is desired to be in the jelly, it must be put in when the jelly begins to stiffen in the mould. ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... humbly to choose. I declare, she reminds me of a Jack-o'-lantern, though if you look at the back of her, or see her in meetin' with a thick veil on, she's about the best appearin' woman in Edgewood.... I never see anybody stiffen up as Anthony has. He had me make him three white shirts and three gingham ones, with collars and cuffs on all of 'em. It seems as if six shirts at one time must mean something ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as to the necessity of Counterbracing, there are various opinions. The object of it is to stiffen the truss and check vibrations. If a load be placed over any panel point, it causes that portion of the truss to sink, and produces an elevation of the corresponding panel point at the other end of the truss—thus producing a distortion, which change ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and the timid again betook themselves to their dreams, leaving the corse of their chief to stiffen on the floor of his ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... pale. She smiled nervously, and instinctively her hand crept out and touched Merriton's sleeve. She could feel him stiffen suddenly, and saw how proudly he threw ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... unyielding grip. The other claws, if the direction of the twig is convenient, assist in supporting it; otherwise the claws of the two fore legs will suffice. There follows a moment of repose, while the supporting limbs stiffen in an unbreakable hold. Then the thorax splits along the back, and through the fissure the insect slowly emerges. The whole process lasts ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Ah, do not fear— I see a peril nigh and all its blitheness. Order your limbs—stretch out your length of beauty, Let down your hands and close those deepening eyes, Or you can never stiffen as you should. A murdered man should have a murdered wife When all his fate is treasured in her mouth. This wifely ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... fact, for now the fight was over the men began to stiffen, and several unexpectedly turned faint, it proving that though not a single man was seriously wounded, nearly every one of those who had followed Joe Cross in his gallant achievement of boarding the schooner, and in beating down the slaver's ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more than ever. A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride made the acknowledgment of possible professional lapses for the benefit of his employer not to be thought of. He therefore assumed the same attitude as had Mr. Flint, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The lovely starling dead and gone! Pity mourns in plaintive tone The lovely starling dead and gone. Weep, ye Loves! and Venus! weep 5 The lovely starling fall'n asleep! Venus sees with tearful eyes— In her lap the starling lies! While the Loves all in a ring Softly stroke the stiffen'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... soldiers in heavy cowhide knapsacks, leather gaiters, and blue great-coats buttoned back at the skirts; and I heard the militia at the quarters calling across the stable-yard that these grimy battalions were some of Washington's veterans, hurried north from West Point by his Excellency to stiffen the backbone of Lincoln's militia, who prowled, growling and snarling, around ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... voice was masterful, the voice of the thoroughbred, when he gets in earnest. Brenton longed to stiffen himself against the mastery, but he could not. His ineffectual effort lent an edge of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... bosom thrill! I freeze! I freeze! just Heaven regards my fault, Numbs my cold limbs, and hardens into salt!— Not yet, not yet, your dying Love resign!— This last, last kiss receive!—no longer thine!"— 265 She said, and ceased,—her stiffen'd form He press'd, And strain'd the briny column to his breast; Printed with quivering lips the lifeless snow, And wept, and gazed the monument of woe.— So when Aeneas through the flames of Troy ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... should it fall to her?—unless indeed Sarratt were killed in action. If he survived the war he would make her the best of guides and husbands; she would have children; and her sweetness, her sensitiveness would stiffen under the impact of life to a serviceable toughness. But meanwhile what could she do—poor little Ariadne!—but 'live and be lovely'—sew and knit, and gather sphagnum moss—dreaming half her time, and no doubt crying half ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... should prompt with the Pudneys. I knew at last what I meant—I had ceased to wince at my responsibility. I gave this supreme impression of Saltram time to fade if it would; but it didn't fade, and, individually, it hasn't faded even now. During the month that I thus invited myself to stiffen again, Adelaide Mulville, perplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why I WAS so stiff. At that season of the year I was usually oftener "with" them. She also wrote that she feared a real estrangement had set in between Mr. Gravener and ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... coffin," said Strelitski drily. "Ceremonial religion is so apt to stiffen in a rigor mortis. It is too dangerous an element; it creates hypocrites and Pharisees. All cast-iron laws and dogmas do. Not that I share the Christian sneer at Jewish legalism. Add the Statute Book to the New ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the door of the chartroom, and retreated with instinctive good taste. She stopped crying after a time, and I knew the exact instant when she realized my touch. I felt her stiffen; without looking up, she drew away from my hand; and I stepped back, hurt and angry—the hurt for her, the anger that I could not remember that ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... though, if the utmost damage an air raid is likely to inflict upon England would count materially in the exhaustion process, and the moral effect of these raids has been, and will be, to stiffen the British resolution to fight this war through to the conclusive ending of any ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... for live steam is opened and closed by the movement of a metallic diaphragm in the valve which is opened by spring pressure on one side and closed by steam pressure on the other side. To regulate this pressure, stiffen the spring to carry more, weaken it to carry less by turning the handle connected to this spring either ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... ladies stiffen in their chairs, but never a word say they; they are too much overcome for ordinary rebuke. Kit, however, to whom any excitement is welcome, betrays an open admiration for the bold Terence and waits hopefully for what ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next task—how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Through springing waters, and prevents their tides; Seizes the rolling waves, and, as a god, Charms their swift race, and stops the refluent flood; The opening valves, which fill the venal road, Then scarcely urge along the sanguine flood; The labouring pulse a slower motion rules, The tendons stiffen, and the spirit cools; Each asks the aid of Nature's sister, Art, To cheer the senses, and to warm the heart. The gentle fair on nervous tea relies, Whilst gay good-nature sparkles in her eyes; An inoffensive scandal fluttering round, Too rough to tickle, and too light to wound; Champagne ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... nothing t' call with when I've done wi' ye. I'm goin' t' jab ye on th' beak t' begin with, then I'll 'ook my left t' your kidneys an' swing my right to your p'int an' crumple ye up with a jolt on your perishin' solar plexus as 'll stiffen you till th' ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... in early and continued late; which in the end was a good thing for the year's cut. The season was capricious, hanging for days at a time at the brink of a thaw, only to stiffen again into severe weather. This was trying on the nerves. For at each of these false alarms the six camps fell into a feverish haste to get the job finished before the break-up. It was really quite extraordinary how much was accomplished ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... time the boys sat in silence, hoping every moment for the return of their friends. It was growing dusk and Jack was becoming anxious. Just as he was about to speak, Rowdy seemed to stiffen as if pointing something. The hair on his shoulders rose on end, while a scarcely audible growl escaped from ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... you best," growled McCulloch. "Did you stiffen him with the half brick, then, that you were able to hunt ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... shattered, and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam? And who commanded—and the silence came— Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?[167] ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... mother, from her breast, Lays the hushed babe apart to rest, And shades its eyes, and waits to see How sweet its waking smile will be. The tempest now may smite, the sleet All night on the drowned furrow beat, And winds that from the cloudy hold Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, Stiffen to stone the yellow-mould, Yet safe shall lie the wheat; Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, Shall walk again the genial year, To wake with warmth, and nurse with dew, The germs we lay to slumber here. O blessed harvest yet to be! ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the flame in the Mormon's gaze. For an instant his face worked spasmodically, only to stiffen into a stony mask. It was the old conflict once more, the never-ending war between flesh and spirit. And now the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... this (August 22) Edwin's jaws began to stiffen. For nine or ten days there was suspense, so hard to bear. Some symptoms were not so bad, it did not assume so acute a form. I thought he ought to be carried through it. He was older, about twenty-one, six feet high, a strong handsome young man, the pride of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the mold inside with this liquid jelly, decorate it in patterns or unconventional designs, using green and red pepper, the hard boiled white of egg and peas. Allow the remaining jelly to cool, but not stiffen. After you finish the decorations, baste them carefully with, cold gelatin and stand the mold on ice. Then put in a little more cold jelly, until you have a good base upon which to rest the "galantine." Put it in, breast side down, ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer
... almost making him cheerful. But the words were not out of his mouth when other shots whizzed through the air. In spite of himself, his body twitched backward and his head sank lower between his shoulders. That made him stiffen his muscles and grind his teeth in rage. It was not the violence with which the scream flew toward him that made him twitch. It was the strange precision with which the circle of the thing's flight (exactly like a diagram at a lecture on artillery) ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... Betty, whose latch-string is always out to friends," answered Sam. And I felt his arm stiffen under my fingers in a way for which ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... will keep up the fire. My veins would stiffen without it. It has carried me so far, and it must to the end. ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... for the night; to see the bald eagle catch a big fish and call his mate to help him eat it; to watch the lesser tern hover with yellow bill pointed downward and sharp eye fixed on the water, and at length stiffen his wings and dive head first into it, bringing out his prey, and filling the air with cries in a complaining, squealing tone that always reminds one of a young pig; to gaze fascinated at the bewitching flight of the ring-plover, sweeping low over the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... soon grew almost intolerable. The game certainly ceased to be amusing after an uneventful fifteen minutes had passed. He was just about to give up, to step forth into the trail and resume his journey to the cabin, when he caught a strange sound, which made him stiffen back at once into ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... literally held its breath as the girl paused before replying. Her hands shut hard at her sides, her body seemed to stiffen and rise, then she turned formidably with the fires of slumbering vengeance burning in her wonderful eyes—vengeance for her mother, for her lover, for her rescuer, for herself—she turned slowly toward the ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... extremity of the eyebrows drooped a little, giving a singularly soft and gentle expression to her elderly visage. But seeing that he only colored, turning his head aside, and fumbling with his beard, her expression changed into one of constraint, which appeared to stiffen on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... pard,' says Dan Boggs, breakin' loose all at once, like he's so honest he can't restrain himse'f, an' jest as Texas heads out for the Red Light; 'you're a heap onknown to me, but I takes a chance an' stands your friend. Now yere's what you do. You stiffen yourse'f up with a Colt's '44, an' lay for this Texas Thompson. He's a rustler an' a hoss-thief, an' a murderer who, as he says, has planted forty-two, not countin' Injuns, Mexicans an' mavericks. He oughter be massacred; an' as ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... keep up the fire. My veins would stiffen without it. It has carried me so far, and it must to the ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... first time Lacy's eyes wavered, their defiance gone, as he glanced aside at Enright, who had collapsed in his chair, a mere heavily breathing, shapeless thing. The sight of the coward seemed to stiffen him to ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... boys sat in silence, hoping every moment for the return of their friends. It was growing dusk and Jack was becoming anxious. Just as he was about to speak, Rowdy seemed to stiffen as if pointing something. The hair on his shoulders rose on end, while a scarcely audible growl escaped from ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... it was dark, and we were to follow and take up our position behind the Infantry. Good news indeed! The G.O.C. in C. had done a wise thing in bringing two Brigades of the 29th Division round from Helles to stiffen Kitchener's Army. Our Royal Fusiliers were in reserve all the time, and although they never fired a shot were in such a position that they were badly exposed to shell fire, and were within view of snipers, and lost ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... solemnly assured by human persons in whom they had the utmost confidence, that but one sequence of events was permissible or even thinkable in the presence of game. The Dog at first intimation by scent must convey the fact to the Man, must proceed cautiously to locate exactly, must then stiffen to a point which he must hold staunchly, no matter how distracting events might turn out, or how long an interval might elapse. The Man must next walk up the birds; shoot at them, perhaps kill one, then command the Dog ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... unknown to Jane. If you were in a temper, you were in a temper. That was flat. And she rather wanted to rouse Nevil's. Heated opposition would stiffen ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... was suddenly eager. Margaret glanced across at her father. Sir Timothy seemed almost imperceptibly to stiffen a little. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an' takes the owel an' the fox an' the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter supper. Mill'cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an' ye need suthin' hearty an' hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these." Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the winding ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... in which to exhibit its powers. It appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and represent it to themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in sacramental symbols; and these things which in their proper nature are but illustrations, stiffen into essential fact, and become part of the reality. So arises in era after era an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life; and at once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... sad procession,' said she, and mounted to a turret, whence through an open window she looked upon the funeral. Scarce had her eyes rested upon the form of Iphis stretched on the bier, when they began to stiffen, and the warm blood in her body to become cold. Endeavoring to step back, she found she could not move her feet; trying to turn away her face, she tried in vain; and by degrees all her limbs became stony like her heart. That ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of July, Waiting thy ripened golden shower; Whereof there cometh, with sandals fleet, The North-west flying viewlessly, With a sword to sheer, and untameable feet, And the gorgon-head of the Winter shown To stiffen the gazing ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... observed the halberdier from Haarlem under his breath, "a man would most willingly stiffen ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... feels so hard that you cannot find an easy spot to lie on. You are always worse before storms. After sitting a little while you stiffen up, feeling much better after moving about. The tendons of your legs have a drawing sensation, and feel as if too short. There is more or less of numbness and paralysis, and a wooden sort of feeling of the leg when walking. You also have lightning-like shocks ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... dead silence, the clatter of a pebble struck on the girl's raw nerves and made her wince. She saw the muscles of Lynch's back stiffen and the barrel of his Colt flash up to cover the narrow entrance to the ledge. For an instant she hesitated, choked by the beating of her heart. Should she cry out? Was it the man really coming? Her dry lips ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... perched. This great gleaming owl, five times greater than any earthly owl, was making that chacking noise, as though it would soon spread its wings, to swoop on some such wretched mouse as myself. I could see its eyes roll. I thought I saw the feathers stiffen on its breast. Then, as the sweat rolled down my face, both the horrible things vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. They were gone for more than a minute, then they appeared again, only to disappear a second time. They were exactly alike at each appearance. Soon my horror left me, for ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... in their new land produced tasty dishes that have been handed down from mother to daughter for generations. Their cooking was truly a folk art requiring much intuitive knowledge, for recipes contained measurements such as "flour to stiffen," "butter the size of a walnut," and "large as an apple." Many of the recipes have been made more exact and standardized providing us with a regional ...
— Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking • Unknown
... dotted figures in the village streets. Below the flying-men the packed thousands are crouched still to earth. At the sound of the engine's drone, at sight of the wheeling shape, square miles of country stiffen to immobility, men scurry under cover of wall or bush, the long, moving lines in the trenches halt and sink down and hang their heads (next to movement the light dots of upturned, staring faces are the quickest and surest betrayal of the earth-men to the air-men), the open ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... time. But why should it fall to her?—unless indeed Sarratt were killed in action. If he survived the war he would make her the best of guides and husbands; she would have children; and her sweetness, her sensitiveness would stiffen under the impact of life to a serviceable toughness. But meanwhile what could she do—poor little Ariadne!—but 'live and be lovely'—sew and knit, and gather sphagnum moss—dreaming half her time, and no doubt crying half the night. What dark circles already ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stiff sort that wouldn't feel at home with me," observed Mrs. Belloc. "New York usually stiffens people up. It's had the opposite effect on me. Though I must say, I have learned to stiffen with people I don't like—and I'll have to admit that I like fewer and fewer. People don't wear well, do they? What IS the matter with them? Why can't they be natural and not make themselves into rubbishy, old scrap-bags full of fakes ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... female glutton who steals jam in the pantry ought not to get poisoned. She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have to be gouged out of her ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... pulling the trigger!... the gun went off: and slowly, without a groan, the colonel sank out of his saddle. His affrighted horse, with expanded nostrils and streaming mane, smelt at his rider, in whose hands the reins that had so lately guided him began to stiffen: and the steed of Ammalat stopped abruptly before the corpse, setting his legs straight before him. Ammalat leaped from his horse, and, resting his arms on his yet smoking gun, looked for several moments steadfastly in the face of the murdered man; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... dismal sounds Stun my scared ears, and pierce hell's utmost bounds. No more my heart the dismal din sustains, And my cold blood hangs shivering in my veins; Lest Gorgon, rising from the infernal lakes, With horrors arm'd, and curls of hissing snakes, Should fix me stiffen'd at the monstrous sight, A stony image, in eternal night! Straight from the direful coast to purer air I speed my flight, and to my mates repair. My mates ascend the ship; they strike their oars; The mountains lessen, and retreat the shores; ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the only people in the world who are clever," Pamela declared, with an unnatural little laugh. "The first man who took note of Sandy Graham's silly words as he rushed into Henry's was Baron Sunyea. I saw him stiffen as he listened. He even uttered a word of remonstrance. Japan in London heard. Japan in your sitting-room here, in ten days' time, knew everything there was to ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was rather pale. She smiled nervously, and instinctively her hand crept out and touched Merriton's sleeve. She could feel him stiffen suddenly, and saw how proudly he threw ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... yellowish-red in colour, and do not stiffen the cloth. The iron may be dissolved by placing the stain in a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid, when, on adding ferrocyanide of potassium, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... cloudless majesty in the heavens. It was a cold, clear December night, and the wet clothes of the fugitives were frozen stiff, like a harness, upon them. Trenck felt neither cold nor stiff; he carried his friend upon his shoulders, and that kept him warm; he walked so rapidly, his limbs could not stiffen. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... to the floor. Nothing could be more pitiable, when watched for a considerable time and when the impression forced itself upon the observer that at no single moment would that tremor ever grow still until the spoiler had completed his work, and the limbs should stiffen and straighten in the last ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... postures that cripple them for life. One elects to stand on one foot until it becomes impossible for him ever to put the other to the ground. Another determines to raise his arms to heaven, never taking them down. In a short time, after excruciating pain, the joints stiffen so as to render any change impossible, and the arms shrivel until little but bone is left. Some let their nails grow into their flesh and through their hands. The forms of these penances are innumerable, and those who undergo them are regarded as holy men and are worshipped ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... wealthier class comes to exert a retarding influence upon social development far in excess of that which the simple numerical strength of the class would assign it. Its prescriptive example acts to greatly stiffen the resistance of all other classes against any innovation, and to fix men's affections upon the good institutions handed down from an earlier generation. There is a second way in which the influence of the leisure ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Lays the hushed babe apart to rest, And shades its eyes, and waits to see How sweet its waking smile will be. The tempest now may smite, the sleet All night on the drowned furrow beat, And winds that, from the cloudy hold, Of winter breathe the bitter cold, Stiffen to stone the yellow mould, Yet safe shall lie the wheat; Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue Shall walk again the genial year, To wake with warmth and nurse with dew The germs we lay to ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... apart. Ruff felt his nerves stiffen—felt himself constrained to hold even his breath as he widened a little the crack in the curtains. This was no stealthy entrance. The door had been flung open. Von Hern, his dress in wild disorder, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... A tale, so fill'd with bloody circumstance, Of this damn'd deed, that stiffen'd me with horror. Vardanes seem'd to blame the hasty act, As rash, and unadvis'd, by passion urg'd, Which never yields to cool reflection's place. But, being done, resolv'd it secret, lest The multitude ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... warm suds with Ivory or Castile soap and add to it a handful of salt to set the color. Wash each piece through this, and rinse through two clear waters to which just enough vinegar to taste has been added, the latter to brighten the color, then stiffen in cool starch and hang in the shade. When washing delicate colored fabrics a tablespoon of ox gall may be substituted ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... dusty wheat or barley field adjacent, the crop, not the product of the rains of heaven, but of the muddy overflow of "Irrigating Ditch No.2." Then comes a road made up of many converging wagon tracks, which stiffen into a wide straggling street, in which glaring frame houses and a few shops stand opposite to each other. A two-storey house, one of the whitest and most glaring, and without a veranda like all the others, is the "St. Vrain Hotel," called after the St. Vrain ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... surely not for the value of the service itself, that He calls for it so long and so repeatedly, till at last the iron sinew gives way: no, but for the sake of bending the iron sinew itself, and when it is bent in one direction, I conclude He does not mean to stiffen it there, but would have it bend perhaps back to the very same position as at first it was so hard to bend it from, with this one wide difference, that in the first case it was so in its own will, but now in His will. Perhaps thou thinkest I am darkening counsel: ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... up, briskly scramble up a leg and make their way to the top. It is a splendidly nimble and spirited performance. Besides, once seated, they have to keep a firm balance in the mass; they have to stretch and stiffen their little limbs in order to hang on to their neighbours. As a matter of fact, there is no absolute rest for them. Now physiology teaches us that not a fibre works without some expenditure of energy. The animal, which can be likened, in no small measure, to our industrial ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... bedizen yourselves like she-devils? Light bonfires, I say, in the public streets, and cast therein and burn your damnable head-gear,—pads and rolls, erections of leather and whalebone, wherewith ye stiffen out the front of ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... Not only must he fight with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great deal of happiness ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... five days after this (August 22) Edwin's jaws began to stiffen. For nine or ten days there was suspense, so hard to bear. Some symptoms were not so bad, it did not assume so acute a form. I thought he ought to be carried through it. He was older, about twenty-one, six feet high, a strong handsome young man, the pride of Norfolk Island, the destined ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it is undoubtedly and profoundly true that you no sooner have an institution, whether in society, in politics, or in religion, than you are threatened with the danger that the institution may first exaggerate itself and then harden and stiffen into a machine; and that in the realm of religion, preeminently, those whose office it should be to quicken and infuse it with new life should themselves come at last to "worship the net and the drag." And just here ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... "Yes, stiffen your backbone and stick out your chin, and square your elbows, and really amount to something. Why do you simply flop about and do nothing and leave everything to what you call 'the family'? Why do you have to be helped all the time? Why don't you help yourself? Why do you have to have ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... an instant taken aback by these bold words, and by the high and strenuous voice in which they were uttered. But the sterner sacrist came as ever to stiffen his will. He held up the old parchment ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... must be a "bon front." I am afraid things looked vastly different after the Hun attempt to smash through the 55th division here in the following April. It was with the probability of this attack in view that the 42nd division began to stiffen the defences, and as well as holding the line we interested ourselves in digging, concreting ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... strain through a colander, and then through a flannel jelly-bag, keeping as hot as possible, for if not allowed to cool before putting again on the stove the jelly conies much stiffer; a few quince seeds boiled with the berries the first time tend to stiffen it; measure the juice, allowing a pound of sugar to every pint of juice, and boil fast for at least half an hour. Try a little, and if it seems done, remove and ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... not shut me from my kind; And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with sighs ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... what I tell you to do nothing can happen but what's on our program. Just let me stiffen you up by running the thing over ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the case, the President withdraws, commences the business of consideration, comparison, and assessment, and then emerges with a decision." From such a decision it is difficult to shake him and continued opposition serves merely to stiffen his resolution. Wherever the responsibility is his, he insists upon the finality of his judgment. Those who have worked with him have remarked upon his eagerness, once he has decided a course of action, to carry it into practical effect. The President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, Thomas ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... come when fate's decree And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee; Phœbus and Paris shall avenge my fate, And stretch thee here before the Scæan Gate." He ceased. The Fates suppress'd his laboring breath, And his eyes stiffen'd at the hand ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... when fortunately, as it seemed to Hale, the character of the storm changed. The snow no longer fell in such large flakes, nor as heavily. A bitter wind succeeded; the soft snow began to stiffen and crackle under the horses' hoofs; they were no longer weighted and encumbered by the drifts upon their bodies; the smaller flakes now rustled and rasped against them like sand, or bounded from them like hail. They seemed to be moving more easily and ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... absorbed into the transport, or become machine-gunners. The sedentary take post as cooks, or tailors, or officers' servants. The waster hews wood and draws water and empties swill-tubs. The great, mediocre, undistinguished majority merely go to stiffen the rank and file, and right nobly they do it. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... the striking-muscles of his arms and shoulders seemed to stiffen and grow tense. His wife fluttered apprehensively into ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... wait. I had but one more shot, and wished to hold it till he should be close; but my torn hand was weak, and the bruised tendons had already begun to stiffen. Into that deep place, where bank and trees overhung, the sun did not come, and I felt the cold striking into my raw flesh. More than that, my weight upon my shoulder began to cut off the blood from my arm. I felt pricking in my flesh, my ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Paul best of all, myself," said Laurence. "You see, Padre, my father and I have needed a dose of Paul more than once—to stiffen our backbones. So I'm going to turn the fighting old saint loose on John Flint. 'By, Padre;—I'll look in to-morrow—I left poor old Elijah up in a cave with no water, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... be awkward enough when he chooses. You can never tell how far he'll let things go on. But when his back once gets up he'll stiffen ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... laughing at them, laughing with him, her laughter almost a part of his. Now he felt that it was possibly at him that they would make Odette laugh. "What a fetid form of humour!" he exclaimed, twisting his mouth into an expression of disgust so violent that he could feel the muscles of his throat stiffen against his collar. "How, in God's name, can a creature made in His image find anything to laugh at in those nauseating witticisms? The least sensitive nose must be driven away in horror from such stale exhalations. It is really impossible to believe that any human being is incapable ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... moments with his back to the smouldering fire, and, being quite alone, he perhaps forgot to stiffen his neck; for his head drooped, his lips were unsteady. He was a very ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... could neither believe what he had seen nor deny the evidence of his vision. He kept watch, with the glasses ready to fix upon the woman if she emerged again. But she did not reappear. The cold began to chill his body, to stiffen his limbs. He rose at last and made his way along the cliff, keeping always a close watch on the house below until he came abreast of his own quarters and turned reluctantly into the hollow where the cedars ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... slept just long enough to lose the lovely entrance of Dublin Bay, stiffen her limbs, and confuse her brains, and she stood still as the stream of passengers began to rush trampling by her, feeling bewildered and forlorn. Her cousin's voice was welcome, though over-loud and somewhat piteous. 'Where are you, stewardess? where's the young lady? Oh! Cilly, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... strange and most unpleasant adventure. The old gipsy in the meantime set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straighting the arms by its side. 'Best to do this,' she muttered, 'ere he stiffen.' She placed on the dead man's breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set one candle at the head and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both. Then she resumed her song, and awaited the approach of those whose voices ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... took on an absent, far-away look, his arms and legs seemed to stiffen, and a tremor ran through his limbs. Chris watched ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... doctrines which seemed subversive of the orthodoxy of the day. But they have simply become the orthodoxy of the morrow, under the protection of the same Brahman caste. The assailants are turned into champions, and in time the bold reformers stiffen into antiquated saints. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... into a chair. Her arms lay nerveless on the table. Her face was hidden in them. But now, overhearing us, or stung by some fresh thought, she sprang to her feet in anguish. Her face twitched, her form seemed to stiffen as she drew herself up like one in physical pain. "Oh, I cannot bear it!" she cried to us in dreadful tones. "Oh, will no one do anything? I will go to him! I will tell him I will give him up! I will do whatever he wishes if he ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... draggled swans most eagerly eat The green weeds trailing in the moat; Inside the rotting leaky boat You see a slain man's stiffen'd feet. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... noticeable, for these causes; viz.—broken ribs, and a crushed right hand, have proved to him experimentally how little pain is felt at the moment of a wound; which will explain the unconscious heroism of common soldiers in battle; very little but weakness through loss of blood is ever felt until wounds stiffen: further, a blow on the head not only dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes away all memory of a past "bad quarter of an hour." At least I remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure happened; and only know that I crawled home half stunned by moonlight ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... lay a second one. One glance at the title caused Tony to stiffen. Then he picked up the typewritten script and carried it across the big room of his laboratory, as far away from the desk as he could get. He put the girl's photograph in his pocket. Then he took heaps and armfuls of ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... change came over her face, and her figure seemed to stiffen; every lineament, every curve expressed scorn and contempt. Prescott had never before seen such a remarkable transformation, and for the moment felt as if he were the guilty ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... who had been among a group of people half-way across the room, turn his head to look when the cries and the applause ceased so suddenly, and he saw the man's face stiffen by swift degrees, all the joyous, buoyant life gone out of it, until it was yellow and rigid like a dead man's face; and Ste. Marie, out of his knowledge of the relations between these two people, nodded, en connaisseur, for he knew that the ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... may be boxed, Fig. 285, D, that is, portions of the sides may be affixed to the top. These extra pieces are a help to stiffen the top and to keep it from warping. A boxed top may have the top board flush with the sides, Fig. 285, E. The disadvantage of this is that the top may shrink and part from the sides and give a bad appearance. The overlapping top, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... love with Mr. W.J. LOCKE'S incurable romanticism or who have a taste for heroines that "stiffen in a sudden stroke of passion looking for the instant electrically beautiful," let me commend The Red Planet (LANE). As a matter of fact Betty, the heroine, is quite a dear, and the narrator, Major Meredyth, a maimed hero ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... green tops malignant planets scowl, Where hell hounds ravage, and the furies howl; Though chang'd, deform'd, still, still ye meet my view, Ye still are left to hear my last adieu! My friends, my children, gor'd with many a wound, Whose mangled bodies strew the ensanguin'd ground, To parch and stiffen in the blaze of day, Consign'd to vultures, and to wolves a prey, Your toils are past; no more ye wake to feel Lust's savage gripe, or rapine's reeking steel! And Thou, to whom my wedded faith was given, On earth my solace, and my hope ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... and of making plain to ourselves, what we are. 'To humble thee,' that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us to say: 'I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak rag of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be able to resist or to do.' That is one main lesson that life is meant to teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering and shocks of time, by reason of sorrows and failures, by reason of joys, too, and fruition,—'Lord, I come to Thee as depending ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Therefore he flies to the crowded haunts of men, and the porter touching his hat to him for a prospective twopence at the railway station, is the welcome confessor of his disallowed divinity. It is, alas! the most common and humbling feature of human nature that we all stiffen our backs with pride when the knee of some fellow-creature is crooked in homage to us, although that homage may be bought for twopence! No wonder that the man in whose character vanity is the chief essence cannot long endure contact ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... Whether an historian understands his career or no is a very test of whether that historian understands the nature of Europe. For St. Gregory VII. imposed nothing upon Europe. He made nothing new. What he did was to stiffen the ideal with reality. He provoked a resurrection of the flesh. He made corporate the centralized ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... thereby overtaxing the delicate physical system. While feeling tired and jaded, all reeking in perspiration, they rinse and wring the clothes out of cold water and hang them upon the line with arms bare, when the atmosphere is so freezing that the garments stiffen before they finish this part of the task. Is it any wonder that acute suppressions occur ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... changes, he may have reconciled himself to them easily enough, and also to the transmission of the Protectorship from Oliver to Richard. The one insuperable stumbling-block, I believe, had been and was Cromwell's Established Church. Even in his blindness he could theorize on that, and stiffen himself more and more in his intense Religious Voluntaryism, Conscious of his irreconcileable dissent from Cromwell's policy in this great matter, and knowing that Cromwell was aware of the fact, it may have been a satisfaction ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... men, dogs, and sled may be used to complete the scene, or they can be cut from newspapers or old magazines. Stiffen by pasting them on cardboard; then cut out the men, dogs, and sled more carefully in detail. Bend one leg forward and one backward to make the men stand alone, and bend two legs outward and two inward to enable the dogs to stand. Paste narrow strips of ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... is broken below the knee, lay the boy on his back and put a pillow or a bag stuffed with grass lengthwise under it. Then put a board or a hewed sapling on the under side of the pillow to stiffen it, and bandage the pillow and the board or sapling firmly to the leg. If the boy has to be moved, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... knots which bound my hands open with my teeth, and exposed my breast to the genial influences of the refreshing sea-breeze, which at sunrise, as this was, is indescribably pleasant. But what a gloomy prospect was now before me!! I was growing weaker every minute; my limbs were beginning to stiffen and the muscles to contract, and I thought there was no help probably nearer than Ain Tarad; what was to be done? I could not travel the distance, and I must perish miserably by slow degrees, from starvation and exhaustion, in the dreary desert; far better, thought I, had ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... him and growled his terriblest. For some unexplainable reason it did not work. Cash sat stiff as though he had turned to some insensate metal. From where he sat watching—curious to see what Cash would do—Bud saw him flinch and stiffen as a man does under pain. And because Bud had a sore spot in his own heart, Bud felt a quick stab of understanding and sympathy. Cash Markham's past could not have been a blank; more likely it held too much of sorrow for the salve of speech to lighten its hurt. There might have ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... thick enough in the brain of Bill Gregg to make him obey automatically. He stumbled into his clothes and then shambled dizzily to the door and opened it. As the light from the room struck down the hall Ronicky saw his friend stiffen to his full height and strike a hand ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... up and tried to make her distinguish between the public and the private virtues. But the word "responsibility" slipped from him and he felt her stiffen. This was preaching, and she hated preaching even more than history. Her attention strayed again and he rallied his forces in a last appeal. But he knew it was a lost battle: every argument broke against the close front of her indifference. He was talking a language ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... bird' are a low set of ascetics, who live on voluntary alms, the result of their affectation of extreme penance. The [U]rdhvab[a]hus, 'Up-arms,' raise their arms till they are unable to lower them again. The [A]k[a]camukhas, 'Sky-facers,' hold their faces toward the sky till the muscles stiffen, and they live thus always. The Nakhls, 'Nail' ascetics, allow their nails to grow through their clenched hands, which unfits them for work (but they are all too religiously lazy to work), and makes it necessary for the credulous faithful to support them. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... the Susquehanna. Tired as I was I could not forbear a smile when this Mohican saluted the noble river by its Algonquin name in the presence of those haughty Iroquois who owned it. And it seemed to me as though I could hear the feathered crests stiffen on the two Oneida heads; for this was Oneida country, and they had been maliciously reminded that the Lenape had once named for them their river under circumstances in which no Iroquois took any pride. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... singular tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and then, suddenly, he seemed to stiffen, his hand, which was conveying a match to his cigarette, remained motionless, the flame of the match flared up and then went out in a gust of wind. "Look, Bob, look," he said, in a low voice. "What do ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... need not be said that any attempt to apply this stigma in practice would be extremely difficult to carry out, would involve all kinds of difficulties and complications in trade and in finance, and that the threat of it is more likely than anything else to stiffen the resistance of the Germans and to force them to rely on their militarist leaders as their only hope of salvation. However, the Committee points out that recent legislation shows a desire to ascertain ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... every three seconds the head would be jerked towards me, showing the bright yellow colour of the open mouth. The reeling would last about three minutes, then the bird would unbend or unstiffen and take a few hops about the bush, then stiffen and begin again. While thus gazing and listening I, by chance, met with an experience of that rare kind which invariably strikes the observer of birds as strange and almost incredible—an example of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... silence so profound that we could hear the horses in the distant stable-yard rattling their harness—one of the younger "Excelsior" boys burst into a hysteric laugh, but the fierce eye of Yuba Bill was down upon him, and seemed to instantly stiffen him into a silent, grinning mask. The young girl, however, took no note of it; following out, with lover-like diffusiveness, the reminiscences thus ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Madame Duvarney seemed to stiffen in her chair, for what did this mean but that I was a spy? and the young lady behind them now put her handkerchief to her mouth as if to stop a word. To make light of the charges against myself was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... war bag and brought out a roll of stout wire. "Run this from the top of the front pole on out, ten or twelve feet, and stretch it over a couple of shear poles. See? That'll stiffen the tent, and yet you can build a fire right under the wire, and ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... just because of their natural offensiveness. They are like the sight of human blood. Experienced soldiers tell us that at first, men are sickened by the smell and newness of blood, almost to death and fainting; but that as soon as they harden their hearts and stiffen their minds, as soon as they will bear it, then comes an appetite for slaughter, a tendency to gloat on carnage, to love blood (at least for the moment) with a deep, eager love. It is a principle that if we put down a healthy instinctive ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... between the two Belgian corps. That of the Meuse fell back in great disorder upon Liege; that of the Scheldt was also forced to beat a rapid retreat. Leopold, whose reign was not yet a fortnight old, joined the western corps and did all that man could do to organise and stiffen resistance. At Louvain (August 12) he made a last effort to save the capital and repeatedly exposed his life, but the Belgians were completely routed and Brussels lay at the victor's mercy. It was a terrible humiliation for the new Belgian ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... where it is too coarse and clumsy, but where it is nearly smooth and perfect, and gives the best idea of the tree; nor should too thin a piece be taken, as when it gets dry it may wrinkle up and crumble to pieces. It may be well to take off with the bark a thin layer of the wood to stiffen it and keep it smooth. A piece of bark about three inches long and two wide would ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... we all got down to work, and presently had a regular production line under way; stapling the wood splints, then wetting them with a resin solution and shaping them over a mandrel to stiffen, cutting the plastic film around a pattern, assembling and hanging the finished kites from an overhead beam until the cement had set. Pete Cope had located a big roll of red plastic film from somewhere, and it made a wonderful-looking kite. Happily, ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... the air was becoming sharper every minute, it was not yet cold enough to suit Jimmy Rabbit. What he wanted was freezing weather. And at last he was satisfied. When the sun hid itself behind a bank of clouds the ground began to stiffen with frost, which covered all the puddles and pools with a ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... herself grow reticent and chilly as she made reply. The girl's eyes of scornful enquiry made her stiffen instinctively. She was prepared to bow and pass on, but for some reason ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... in the same manner. This time, we distinctly think of marionettes. Invisible threads seem to us to be joining arms to arms, legs to legs, each muscle in one face to its fellow-muscle in the other: by reason of the absolute uniformity which prevails, the very litheness of the bodies seems to stiffen as we gaze, and the actors themselves seem transformed into automata. Such, at least, appears to be the artifice underlying this somewhat obvious form of amusement. I daresay the performers have never read Pascal, but what they ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... English rivals in competition as to a special kind of hat which sold well on the Continent. There are, or ought to be, three aims in the process of proofing and stiffening, all the three being of equal importance. These are: first, to waterproof the hat-forms; second, to stiffen them at the same time and by the same process; and the third, the one the importance of which I think English hat manufacturers have frequently overlooked, at least in the past, is to so proof and stiffen the hat-forms as to leave them in a suitable condition for the subsequent dyeing ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... excuses, and is above all practical, so he just whipped the soul of a lawyer out of his side-pocket, tied a knot in it to stiffen it, and shoved it ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... prematurely, at fifty or thirty, repair does not equal waste, and degeneration of tissue results. More cells are destroyed by wear and tear than are made up from nutriment. The friction of the machine rubs the stuff of life away faster than it can be replaced. The muscles stiffen, the hair turns white, the joints crack, the arteries ossify, the nerve-centres harden or soften: all sorts of degeneration creep on till death appears,—Mors janua vitae. There the curves unite, and men ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... to his own exploits, he was ingeniously silent; but she knew them already. A military expedition against two revolted and slave-raiding emirs, holding strong positions on the great river; a few officers borrowed from home to stiffen a local militia; hot fighting against great odds; half a million of men released from a reign of hell; tyranny broken, and the British pax extended over regions a third as large as India—smiling prosperity within its pale, bestial devastation and cruelty without—these things she knew, or had ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... now. Your father, Oliver, wishes me to go out on the pond, and bring home the sled we left there, the other night, in the storm. The wind has come out in the north-west, and there is every prospect of a bitter cold night. It has begun to stiffen already, and, before morning, the sled may be locked up ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... tremble, but immediately go out and repair it accurately, slowly, no skimped work, repeating the performance again and again. There is in our spirit some reserve force which on occasion the will uses to stiffen resolution—the second ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... being! Live, the tyrant of injustice; But shall hearts be scorch'd much longer By thy flames,—consume before them? If amongst the evil spirits Thou art one,—good! I'm another. Thou a greybeard art—so I am; Land and men we make to stiffen. Thou art Mars! And I Saturnus,— Both are evil-working planets, When united, horror-fraught. Thou dost kill the soul, thou freezes E'en the atmosphere; still colder Is my breath than thine was ever. Thy ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... resumed, to all appearance, his first imperturbability. He had at first tried, in a quiet way and without much outward movement, to break his bonds. His eye had been seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members to concentrate their force, and the straps to stretch. The effort was powerful, prodigious, desperate; but the provost's seasoned bonds resisted. They cracked, and that was all. Quasimodo fell back exhausted. Amazement ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of the river sirens keened along the air, Olive fastened the last safety-pin in little Arthur's rompers and looked up. Merlin saw her start, stiffen slowly like hardening stucco, and then give a little gasp ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... (the "Breath of Life"—Ha-i-an-pi-nan-ne—and soul are synonymous in Zuni Mythology), derived from their hearts, and breathed upon their prey, whether near or far, never fail to overcome them, piercing their hearts and causing their limbs to stiffen, and the animals themselves to lose their strength. Moreover, the roar or cry of a beast of prey is accounted its Sa-wa-ni-k'ia, or magic medicine of destruction, which, heard by the game animals, is fatal to them, because it charms their senses, as does the breath their hearts. Since the mountain ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... her he would have seen the Leopard Woman's frame stiffen at the mention of this name. For a ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... her own cry a terrible convulsion shook her. He could feel her whole body strain and stiffen with the effort to control ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... surprise of the little Clerk to end. He was glad to see the figure beside him presently straighten itself, as though to be braced for a task of difficulty. Indignation and resentment were good things to stiffen a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... smile stiffen as he wondered what could be going wrong. Surely, they could not doubt his loyalty! A hasty glance at Colonel Korman revealed no expression on the military facade affected by ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... 4. Figure of the 23. Scheme; and by the 2. Figure of the 26. Scheme; the one is a quilly or finny substance, consisting of several long, slender and variously bended quills or wires, something resembling the veins of leaves; these are, as 'twere, the finns or quills which stiffen the whole Area, and keep the other part distended, which is a very thin transparent skin or membrane variously folded, and platted, but not very regularly, and is besides exceeding thickly bestuck ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... with a cold, quick precision, that he could not tell that she did not love him. And apparently he could not. He let her go after a minute, and flung himself down by her in just the attitude that the knock on the door, fifteen months ago, had interrupted. And Marjorie tried not to stiffen herself, and not to wonder if anybody was coming in, and not to feel that a perfect stranger was doing something he ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... interest by the vast crowd of spectators. There were many who pretended to be able to gauge the capacity and fielding power of a club in this stage, but experienced onlookers knew the fallacy of such a premature decision. Often the very fellows who displayed carelessness in practice would stiffen up like magic when the game was actually started, and never make a sloppy play from that time on, their throwing being like clock-work and their stopping of hard hit bounders ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... hard to talk when the thermometer registers more than twenty degrees of frost, for the lips stiffen and contract into wrinkles like the lips of a very old woman. Perhaps neither of the watchers was in the humour to begin ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... beside lower ten. He had reached in and was knocking valiantly. But his efforts met with no response. He winked at me over his shoulder; then he unfastened the curtains and bent forward. Behind him, I saw him stiffen, heard his muttered exclamation, saw the bluish pallor that spread over his face and neck. As he retreated a step the interior of lower ten lay open ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... relates to improvements in the construction and application of shaft tug lugs for harness, and consists in forming the said lugs with broad and long plates, properly curved to suit the curve of the pad, and connecting the latter to the under sides of the skirts and to the pads in a way to stiffen the skirt and to hold the stud securely from breaking loose, the said lugs being made solid with a screw nut at the end to confine the bearing straps, or hollow, with female screw threads near the base, and ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the utmost damage an air raid is likely to inflict upon England would count materially in the exhaustion process, and the moral effect of these raids has been, and will be, to stiffen the British resolution to fight this war through to the conclusive ending ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... to stiffen Teutonic courage. The Deutscher Kurier told its readers in a telegram from New York (?) that Americans fully expected Japan to attack Russia in the back and Japanese ministers were holding conferences all day and night. According to the Weser Zeitung, August 1st, Japan was arming for war, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... you alone again," he whispered passionately, but to his horror he felt her stiffen and fall to the ground ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... an ounce of butter into a stew-pan; when it is melted, stir in as much flour as will stiffen it; pour the gravy to it by degrees, stir together till it boils; strain it through a fine sieve or tamis into a stew-pan, put in the carrots and turnips to get warm, and let it simmer gently while you dish up the meat; lay the chops round a dish; ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... emissaries of a woman scorned, even if one could have pictured poor Alice charging such spirits to avenge her. That set me thinking, and I began to wonder if they would let up on me if I abandoned Gilbert. The temptation was insidious, and I had to stiffen myself against it; but really, dear boy! he was too charming to be sacrificed to such demons. And so, after all, I never found out what ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... heart, The burning shaft remove of keen remorse, From rankling horror cleanse his inmost part: Four are the pauses of the nightly course; Them, without rest, fill up with kindly art. And first his head upon cool pillow lay, Then bathe ye him in dew from Lethe's stream; His limbs, cramp-stiffen'd, will more freely play, If sleep-refreshed he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... neck doesn't stiffen up," the editor wished solicitously: "What do you say we all go out and have a drink on it—not the neck, of course, but the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... every little new-born nose as it sniffed at the recession of the maternal fount. One little precocious even went so far as to attempt to set his wee fore paddies against Rose Mary's knee and to stiffen a tiny plume of a tail, with a plain instinct to point the direction of the shifting base of supplies. Rose Mary gave a cry of delight and hugged the whole talented family to her breast, while Stonie and Tobe yelled and danced as Uncle ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... taking possession by an embodied force that had broken loose and was not to be controlled any longer. As his great voice had done a moment before, his great strength, too, seemed able to fill all space in its enveloping and undeniable authority. Every time she tried instinctively to stiffen herself against its might, it reacted, affirming its fierce will, its uplifting power. Several times she lost the feeling of the ground and had a sensation of helplessness without fear, of triumph without exultation. The inevitable had come ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... are insipid as compared with the lively originals; but the difficulty was to get them of any truthful sort whatsoever, for the babies regarded the photographer—the kindest and mildest of men—with the gravest suspicion: and the moment he appeared, little faces, all animation before, would stiffen into shyness, and the light would slip out of them, and the naturalness, so that all the camera saw, and therefore all it could show, was a succession ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... TO STIFFEN NEW NEEDLEWORK.—In the chapter on Irish lace, page 441, we said that new needlework of that kind had to be ironed; this should be done in the following manner: when the lace has been taken off its foundation, lay it, face downwards, on ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... Dick replied. "I haven't anything worse than a bruise. If I keep too quiet the injury will stiffen all the more. I must move my hip a bit, or I may be ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... John a Cleeve, glancing swiftly at Bateese, saw his body stiffen suddenly with his hand on the tiller; saw his eyes travel forward, seeking his brother's; saw his face whiten. Dominique stood erect, gazing back, challenging. Beyond him John caught a glimpse of Father Launoy looking up from his breviary; ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... first 'tunk!' the bucks stiffen to their feet and cast off the blankets. Feathers, paint, an' bells! they blaze an' tinkle in the moonlight with a subdooed but savage elegance. They skates out onto the grass, stilt-laig, an' each buck for himse'f. They go skootin' about, an' weave an' turn an' twist like these yere ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... hobbled up the pulpit stair. He announced his text: "Launch out into the deep and let down your nets." Captain Pott felt Elizabeth, who was sitting beside him, stiffen. Miss Pipkin leaned forward in her eagerness to catch every word, and as the minister proceeded her expression changed from perplexity and doubt to one of deep respect. There were others who followed the thought of the sermon with keen interest. Elder ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... conclude that from the form of the neck, many objects are indicated, and the material of which it is composed would give reason to turn all its powers of thought, to ask why it is so formed, as to twist, bend, straighten, stiffen and relax at will, to suit so many purposes? A very tough skin—a sheathe—surrounds the neck with blood vessels, nerves, muscles, bones, ligaments, fascia, glands great and small, throat and trachea. In bones we find a great ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... see Allyn stiffen as a peculiar sick look crossed Chase's dry face. And suddenly I heard all the ugly little nicknames—Subspace Chase, Gutless Gus, Cautious Charley—and the dozen others. For Chase was afraid. It was so obvious that not even the gray mask of his ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... the light pressure of Sir Reginald Elphinstone's hand upon his arm, and turning, he saw the baronet raise his hand and point. He looked in the direction indicated, and in a moment his frame seemed to stiffen with eagerness as he gazed. For there, standing knee-deep in a pool, some two hundred yards away, and quite alone, was an animal not unlike a giraffe, but very much smaller, and with a neck that, although not so long in proportion to its body ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Ere her limbs, frigidly, Stiffen too rigidly, Decently, kindly! Smooth and compose them; And her eyes, close them, Staring so blindly! Dreadfully staring Through muddy impurity, As when with the daring Last look of despairing Fixed ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of this kind Manlia felt rather than heard or saw a change in Brinnaria next her, felt her stiffen and grow silent, rigid and tense. Manlia glanced at her, followed her gaze and became interested in the fight Brinnaria was watching. Before them, not immediately below them, but some distance out in the arena, fought a conspicuous pair of gladiators. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... other was of that mild, blue-eyed, tow-haired type from the Baltic provinces, with the thin, white skin which does not tan but burns. He was frailer than the other and he was tired! He would lag and then stiffen back his shoulders and draw in his chin and force a trifle more ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... above our wont, and brought close together in it. It dawned on me 'this Presence among us is the same that once walked in Jerusalem and Galilee.' At that moment there appeared at the door a newcomer of dark hue. A frost fell on the company; they seemed to stiffen and close their ranks; the host's face turned in trouble and uncertainty from the newcomer to the guest of honor. The Guest arose and spoke to the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... to a froth and stir in the onion chopped fine. Put the eggs into an omelet pan over a slow fire. Mix the flour and butter to a soft paste with a little cream, and stir in with the oysters, adding salt and pepper to taste. When the eggs begin to stiffen pour the oysters over and turn the omelet together. Serve on hot plate with a ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... Pirolo to drop between us and the sun, and at the same time to loop-circuit the prisoners, who were a trifle unsteady. We saw them stiffen to the current where they stood. The woman's voice went on, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... stands by most of those obstacles to give them strength," answered the Queen, her hands tightening a little. "The King would be pliant in my hands were this man not beside him to stiffen him. Is there any other man in the world who would have dared to put me to the test he did? I ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... day-time they have the sun which makes their brains boil, scorches the ground, dries up the springs, and brings forth endless numbers of mosquitoes to sting their bodies and try their patience. The Promised Land!... At night they have the terrible cold to make their eyes smart, to stiffen their joints and ruin their lungs. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy. Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came), Here let the billows stiffen, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... the Monk arose, With toil his stiffen'd limbs he rear'd; A hundred years had flung their snows On his thin locks ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... now suddenly overspread the whole of the old man's face, and seemed to quickly stiffen the rugged and wrinkled fingers that had at first trembled in drawing a pair of shears from a ragged pocket, appeared to satisfy Paul's curiosity for the present. But after a few moments' silent snipping, during which he could detect in the mirror some traces of agitation still twitching ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... Sanderson she had unclasped her hands, and now she clasped them again, twining the fingers with a quick, nervous motion. Again her eyes grew wide with fright, and Sanderson saw her looking at the other girl—he saw the other girl stiffen and stand straight, her lips curving scornfully as she returned Miss ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... understanding as we; the same recognition that it is GOD and not the Devil who rules the World; the same power of discrimination between different kinds of truth.... Had our LORD come later, He would have come to mankind already beginning to stiffen into the fixedness of maturity.... The truth of His Divine Nature would not have been recognized." (pp. 24-5.)—Is this meant for bitter satire on the age we live in; or for disparagement of the Incarnate WORD?... But in the face of such anticipations, the keenest satire of all is contained ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... was doing this that the deer suddenly stopped feeding, and, with his head still close to the ground, seemed gradually to stiffen until his whole ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... servants after her, ashiver to be left alone in the dim passage. Round the fire they huddled, none speaking except in whispers, as though they feared the great unseen Presence; and as they sat in that eerie silence there came the hollow clop-clop of sea-boots in the passage, and I saw the serving maids stiffen and straighten as they sat, and a look of terrible fear ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his customary comfort; the tobacco seemed to be as bitter as his ponderings; he was trying to stiffen his resolution to go away ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... looked positively dumbfounded. "Good Heavens, no!" he cried. "I was speaking to the chauffeur." (Jackson's back seemed to stiffen a little.) "I've told him a thousand times to be careful about running up on people like that. Now this is the last time I'll warn you, Jackson. The next time you go. Understand? Just because you happen ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... informed, was a being to hold in fear, not in respect. He was to be avoided, not to be made friends with. The result was that, as did all boys, I came to regard the policeman on our beat as a distinct enemy. His presence meant that we should "stiffen up"; his disappearance was the signal for ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... air, As when the mother, from her breast, Lays the hushed babe apart to rest, And shades its eyes, and waits to see How sweet its waking smile will be. The tempest now may smite, the sleet All night on the drowned furrow beat, And winds that, from the cloudy hold, Of winter breathe the bitter cold, Stiffen to stone the yellow mould, Yet safe shall lie the wheat; Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue Shall walk again the genial year, To wake with warmth and nurse with dew The germs we ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... when fate's decree And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee; Phœbus and Paris shall avenge my fate, And stretch thee here before the Scæan Gate." He ceased. The Fates suppress'd his laboring breath, And his eyes stiffen'd at the hand ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... Smith's men, who notices a very fine skin an Indian is wearing, lifts it to show it to Smith. The Indian resents this act, and there seems to be resentment and fear among all the red men. The Englishmen stiffen to attention, but Smith, who feared neither man nor devil, goes among the Indians carrying a copper kettle and a gorgeous blanket. He held out his blanket persuasively and added several strings of beads. Then he draped the blanket on himself. The Indian at ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... of form; but it appears to have some physical influence over us. In looking at a fine drawing, say of a strong man, we seem to identify ourselves with it and feel a thrill of its strength in our own bodies, prompting us to set our teeth, stiffen our frame, and exclaim "That's fine." Or, when looking at the drawing of a beautiful woman, we are softened by its charm and feel in ourselves something of its sweetness as we exclaim, "How beautiful." The measure of the feeling in either case will be the extent to which the artist has identified ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... any as yet encountered, when once more he broke out of his stride to circle its bottom. As he did so, of his own volition he checked himself. Dead ahead he saw horses scattered about, and beyond the horses, rising limply in the noon haze, a thin column of smoke. Also, he felt both his riders stiffen. Then on the midday hush rose the crack of firearms from the direction of ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... genial influences of the refreshing sea-breeze, which at sunrise, as this was, is indescribably pleasant. But what a gloomy prospect was now before me!! I was growing weaker every minute; my limbs were beginning to stiffen and the muscles to contract, and I thought there was no help probably nearer than Ain Tarad; what was to be done? I could not travel the distance, and I must perish miserably by slow degrees, from starvation and ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... lead. So that, by virtue of its high position as the avatar of good form, the wealthier class comes to exert a retarding influence upon social development far in excess of that which the simple numerical strength of the class would assign it. Its prescriptive example acts to greatly stiffen the resistance of all other classes against any innovation, and to fix men's affections upon the good institutions handed down from an earlier generation. There is a second way in which the influence of the leisure class acts in the same direction, so far as concerns hindrance to the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... all appearance, his first imperturbability. He had at first tried, in a quiet way and without much outward movement, to break his bonds. His eye had been seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members to concentrate their force, and the straps to stretch. The effort was powerful, prodigious, desperate; but the provost's seasoned bonds resisted. They cracked, and that was all. Quasimodo fell back exhausted. Amazement gave way, on his features, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the man who has iron in his blood and is determined that he will succeed. When he is confronted by barriers he leaps over them, tunnels through them, or makes a way around them. Obstacles only serve to stiffen his backbone, increase his determination, sharpen his wits and develop his innate resources. The record of human achievement is full of the truth. "There is no difficulty to him ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... firing with the full choke barrel at about fifty yards two or three pellets almost always hit even the smallest birds. A very good method of preserving them is to inject formol into the bodies which at once stiffen out and become rigid in any position they are placed. Birds can thus be set with the wings extended in a flying position or as if roosting, the effect being much prettier than any which can be obtained by stuffing. If is however, necessary to arrange them and inject very soon ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... flung herself into a chair. Her arms lay nerveless on the table. Her face was hidden in them. But now, overhearing us, or stung by some fresh thought, she sprang to her feet in anguish. Her face twitched, her form seemed to stiffen as she drew herself up like one in physical pain. "Oh, I cannot bear it!" she cried to us in dreadful tones. "Oh, will no one do anything? I will go to him! I will tell him I will give him up! I will do whatever he wishes if he ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness, and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... said; and steps came along through the hall; she opened the door as he came up. Mr. Buxton stopped abruptly, and the two men drew themselves up and seemed to stiffen, ever so slightly. A shade of aggressive contempt came on Hubert's keen brown face that towered up so near the low oak ceiling; while Mr. Buxton's eyelids just drooped, and his features seemed to sharpen. There was an ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... in a few minutes, let us say ten, since that number has been used, the body has not had time to cool, nor have the blood-vessels had sufficient opportunity to stiffen so as to prevent the free effusion ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... I am afraid things looked vastly different after the Hun attempt to smash through the 55th division here in the following April. It was with the probability of this attack in view that the 42nd division began to stiffen the defences, and as well as holding the line we interested ourselves in digging, concreting ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... for dinner that night I took Jones to task, and tried to stiffen him up. I guess I must have mismanaged it somehow, for he said he'd thank me to keep my paws out of his affairs, and then went into the bath-room, where he shaved and growled for ten whole minutes. I itched to throw a bootjack at him, but compromised on doing a little growling myself. Afterward ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly, appalled, the colour left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... recent crushing defeat that the British fleet had met with in attempting to pass the American batteries at Charleston. Thrice welcome after the disasters of the unlucky Canada campaign, this success tended greatly to stiffen the backbone of the army, in the face of the steady and ominous accumulation of the British land and naval forces in the lower bay. Then again, the Declaration of Independence, read to every brigade in the army (July 9), was received with much enthusiasm. Now, for the first time since hostilities ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... stood watching the fire, which was rapidly going down now for want of something to burn; but as they stood near, their faces scorched, while the cold wind drawn by the rising heat cut by their ears and threatened to stiffen their backs. The reeds and young trees which had been burning were now smoking feebly, and the only place which made any show was the peat-stack, which glowed warmly and kept crumbling down in cream-coloured ash. But when a fire begins to sink it ceases to be exciting, and as the two lads ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... powers. It appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and represent it to themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in sacramental symbols; and these things which in their proper nature are but illustrations, stiffen into essential fact, and become part of the reality. So arises in era after era an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life; and at once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh and the spirit, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... on my account certainly." She emphasized the my so distinctly that I was sure she suspected. That dreadful thought caused me to stiffen my manner, and as hers had been strangely stiff all the afternoon, we were awfully polite to each other during supper. Each of us insisted upon paying the bill and feeing the waiter. It was terrible. I couldn't ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... forty-eight degrees. Anyway, it was the coldest night of the winter, but I was not to suffer then. I remember how about five in the morning, when I neared the northern correction line, my lips began to stiffen; hard, frozen patches formed on my cheeks, and I had to allow the horses to rub their noses on fence posts or trees every now and then, to knock the big icicles off and to prevent them from freezing up altogether—but. my feet and my hands and my ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... cool enough now," said Washington, his wet clothes already beginning to stiffen on his back in the wintry blast. "I shall not despair so long as I remember that one faithful saint is praying for me," referring to the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... hesitated. She hated the idea of asking Aunt Sarah, and seeing her mouth stiffen into that hard line which was so disagreeable; but it was almost as bad to face Delia, standing there, bolt upright, with her dark eyes fixed so ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... of whalebone or ivory, formerly worn by women, to stiffen the forepart of their stays: hence the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... never consist of more than three sections, and the angler should look well to his joints after a wetting, as they are apt to swell and stiffen ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... the Meuse fell back in great disorder upon Liege; that of the Scheldt was also forced to beat a rapid retreat. Leopold, whose reign was not yet a fortnight old, joined the western corps and did all that man could do to organise and stiffen resistance. At Louvain (August 12) he made a last effort to save the capital and repeatedly exposed his life, but the Belgians were completely routed and Brussels lay at the victor's mercy. It was a terrible ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... her start for a moment as she recognized him, and her eyes swept him over with a half incredulous, half startled expression. She drew a little breath. And then Andrew saw her suddenly and instinctively stiffen. She looked him in the face and bowed very slightly, without the ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Dionysos not to slake the thirst, but to colour, with an intoxication now soft, now strong, the most diverse emotions: the sadness of memories, the tendernesses of friendship, the transports of love, the warmth of the quiet house, when without the furious storm and the bitter cold stiffen the universe ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... it may seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more than ever. A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride made the acknowledgment of possible professional lapses for the benefit of his employer not to be thought of. He therefore assumed the same attitude as had Mr. Flint, and forced ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... necessity of Counterbracing, there are various opinions. The object of it is to stiffen the truss and check vibrations. If a load be placed over any panel point, it causes that portion of the truss to sink, and produces an elevation of the corresponding panel point at the other end of the truss—thus producing ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... keepers of the estates over which he formerly shot. It has been his ambition to make Europe one vast Kaiserdom estate. But the sands are running out, and each "bag," whether by Zeppelin or submarine, serves but to stiffen the backs of the Allies and horrify neutral nations. Some day the accumulated horrors of the Kaiser's ideas of sportsmanship will have taught the latter the lesson that Kaiserdom with Europe as a Kaiser estate means ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... quartz, granite, adamant; bone, cartilage; hardware; heart of oak, block, board, deal board; iron, steel; cast iron, decarbonized iron, wrought iron; nail; brick, concrete; cement. V. render hard &c adj.; harden, stiffen, indurate, petrify, temper, ossify, vitrify; accrust^. Adj. hard, rigid, stubborn, stiff, firm; starch, starched; stark, unbending, unlimber, unyielding; inflexible, tense; indurate, indurated; gritty, proof. adamant, adamantine, adamantean^; concrete, stony, granitic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... groans and dismal sounds Stun my scared ears, and pierce hell's utmost bounds. No more my heart the dismal din sustains, And my cold blood hangs shivering in my veins; Lest Gorgon, rising from the infernal lakes, With horrors arm'd, and curls of hissing snakes, Should fix me stiffen'd at the monstrous sight, A stony image, in eternal night! Straight from the direful coast to purer air I speed my flight, and to my mates repair. My mates ascend the ship; they strike their oars; The mountains lessen, and retreat the shores; Swift ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... through what mechanism it happens that exactly these movements result from these feelings, that just these organs are affected by these passions? Might I not just as well want to know why a certain wounding of the ligament should stiffen the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... it fall to her?—unless indeed Sarratt were killed in action. If he survived the war he would make her the best of guides and husbands; she would have children; and her sweetness, her sensitiveness would stiffen under the impact of life to a serviceable toughness. But meanwhile what could she do—poor little Ariadne!—but 'live and be lovely'—sew and knit, and gather sphagnum moss—dreaming half her time, ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my fanciful conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a little sharp grating, if they are not well put. In fact, this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized in the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry, as she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee, a sort of domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in artistic values and artistic weights and measures, to study all the arts and sciences of the beautiful, and then she is charming. Most useful, most needful, these little women: they ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was about to make his declaration, he felt his tongue stiffen at the recollection of the dead man, just put away in his grave, and a doubt seized him as to what lengths his father's benevolence might have gone. Flore, who was quite unable even to suspect his simplicity of mind, looked at her future master and waited for a time, expecting Jean-Jacques to ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the recent improvements about the castle, Mr. Pless," said I with so much directness that I felt Mrs. Billy Smith's arm stiffen and suspected a general tension of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... to trust in others. When they become voters, if they ever do, it may be feared that the pews will lose what the ward-rooms gain. Relax a woman's hold on man, and her knee-joints will soon begin to stiffen. Self-assertion brings out many fine qualities, but it does ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had been among a group of people half-way across the room, turn his head to look when the cries and the applause ceased so suddenly, and he saw the man's face stiffen by swift degrees, all the joyous, buoyant life gone out of it, until it was yellow and rigid like a dead man's face; and Ste. Marie, out of his knowledge of the relations between these two people, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... polished table nervously arranging the flowers. Evidently she had something to say, but for once had not the courage to say it. At last, with one of those determined gestures with which irresolute people strive to stiffen their wavering wills, she pushed the flowers on one side, and came and sat directly ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... I could see Allyn stiffen as a peculiar sick look crossed Chase's dry face. And suddenly I heard all the ugly little nicknames—Subspace Chase, Gutless Gus, Cautious Charley—and the dozen others. For Chase was afraid. It was so obvious that not even the gray mask of his ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... a heavy crop in Manitoba, Dakota and Minnesota, and I suppose some folks have an idea they'll get in first before the other people swamp the Eastern markets. I think they're foolish. It's a temporary scare. Prices will stiffen by and by." ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... stockings and shoes, and went forward. Dick declared that his cut gave him little or no pain, but Chippy still looked uneasy. He knew that the time for trouble was ahead, when the cut would stiffen. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... its breath as the girl paused before replying. Her hands shut hard at her sides, her body seemed to stiffen and rise, then she turned formidably with the fires of slumbering vengeance burning in her wonderful eyes—vengeance for her mother, for her lover, for her rescuer, for herself—she turned slowly toward the cowering nobleman and said distinctly: "I accuse ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... appear at the dull places and save his credit? Oh, I don't object at all; it is quite a legitimate division of labour. I shall get into it in time: but I am so stupid about coming into a room alone, and instead of looking about to see what people I really do know, I just stiffen into a sort of shell. I should never have known you if you had not ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... night, startled many a wakeful warrior and timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and the timid again betook themselves to their dreams, leaving the corse of their chief to stiffen on the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... eager looks they seek the way Of old temptation at the lowly gate; To feast on feathers, and on vain array, And painted cheeks, and the rich glistering state Of jewel-sprinkled locks,—But where are they, The graceless haughty ones that used to wait With lofty neck, and nods, and stiffen'd eye?— None challenge the old ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... we met," he resumed, "in the Wabash Avenue place. I noticed her when the bidding on a rocking chair started. A pretty girl. And as is often the case among women who attend auctions—a bug, a fan, a fish. You know, the kind that stiffen up when they get excited. The kind that hang on your words and breathe hard while you cut loose with the patter, and lose their heads when you swing into ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... and perfect, and gives the best idea of the tree; nor should too thin a piece be taken, as when it gets dry it may wrinkle up and crumble to pieces. It may be well to take off with the bark a thin layer of the wood to stiffen it and keep it smooth. A piece of bark about three inches long and two wide would be ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of Love gave him wings. He was over the fence, she was in his arms, and he was straining the warm, pliant body close to his bursting breast. His lips were on hers. He felt her stiffen and then relax in swift surrender. Her heart, stilled at first, began to beat tumultuously against his breast; her free arm stole about his neck and tightened as the urge of a sweet, overwhelming ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... fourth week these lessons in lapping became real meals, and the milk so consumed was always fortified with a thickening of some cereal rich in phosphates, besides minute doses of precipitated phosphate of lime, intended to stiffen the gristly leg-bones of these heavy pups, and increase bone development. The foster-mothers had been taking this, and communicating it in their milk, all along. This was the period in which the maternal feelings of the foster-mothers ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... affrighted; lofty-necked, With clean-cut head, short belly, and stout back; His sprightly breast exuberant with brawn. Chestnut and grey are good; the worst-hued white And sorrel. Then lo! if arms are clashed afar, Bide still he cannot: ears stiffen and limbs quake; His nostrils snort and roll out wreaths of fire. Dense is his mane, that when uplifted falls On his right shoulder; betwixt either loin The spine runs double; his earth-dinting hoof Rings with the ponderous beat of solid horn. Even such a horse was Cyllarus, reined and tamed ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... suds with Ivory or Castile soap and add to it a handful of salt to set the color. Wash each piece through this, and rinse through two clear waters to which just enough vinegar to taste has been added, the latter to brighten the color, then stiffen in cool starch and hang in the shade. When washing delicate colored fabrics a tablespoon of ox gall may be ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... adding of ize or en: as legal, legalize; immortal, immortalize; civil, civilize; human, humanize; familiar, familiarize; particular, particularize; deaf, deafen; stiff, stiffen; rough, roughen; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... his own smile stiffen as he wondered what could be going wrong. Surely, they could not doubt his loyalty! A hasty glance at Colonel Korman revealed no expression on the military facade ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... my dear. It has to be done; and the braver you are, the sooner it will be over. You are bound to suffer the first few times, but it would be ten times worse to allow the joint to stiffen. Now be brave, and try to take just two steps with me! I will support you on one side, and—" Nurse looked round questioningly—"Mr Harold will take the other. You can lean all your weight on us. ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that was round me stiffen, and there was silence for a moment, then my lord swore a great oath, and let his clenched fist fall so heavily on the table, that the red French wine which stood before him splashed right out of the beaker, a foot or ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... glutton who steals jam in the pantry ought not to get poisoned. She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have to be gouged out of her ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... withdraws, commences the business of consideration, comparison, and assessment, and then emerges with a decision." From such a decision it is difficult to shake him and continued opposition serves merely to stiffen his resolution. Wherever the responsibility is his, he insists upon the finality of his judgment. Those who have worked with him have remarked upon his eagerness, once he has decided a course of action, to carry it into practical effect. The President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, Thomas G. ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... subtile process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,—or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly,—thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... meeting all too late; Yet this may Argentine, As boon from ancient comrade, crave— A Christian's Mass, a soldier's grave." Bruce pressed his dying hand—its grasp Kindly replied; but, in his clasp It stiffen'd and grew cold— And, "O farewell!" the victor cried, Of chivalry the flower and pride, The arm in battle bold, The courteous mien, the noble race, The stainless faith, the manly face! Bid Ninian's convent light their ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... had ceased to wince at my responsibility. I gave this supreme impression of Saltram time to fade if it would; but it didn't fade, and, individually, it hasn't faded even now. During the month that I thus invited myself to stiffen again, Adelaide Mulville, perplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why I WAS so stiff. At that season of the year I was usually oftener "with" them. She also wrote that she feared a real estrangement had set in between Mr. Gravener and her sweet young friend—a state of things but half satisfactory ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... viz.—broken ribs, and a crushed right hand, have proved to him experimentally how little pain is felt at the moment of a wound; which will explain the unconscious heroism of common soldiers in battle; very little but weakness through loss of blood is ever felt until wounds stiffen: further, a blow on the head not only dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes away all memory of a past "bad quarter of an hour." At least I remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure happened; and only know that I crawled home ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... came over her face, and her figure seemed to stiffen; every lineament, every curve expressed scorn and contempt. Prescott had never before seen such a remarkable transformation, and for the moment felt as if he were the guilty one and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... mountain range, And stretch'd the sky above, so that the air Impregnate chang'd to water. Fell the rain, And to the fosses came all that the land Contain'd not; and, as mightiest streams are wont, To the great river with such headlong sweep Rush'd, that nought stay'd its course. My stiffen'd frame Laid at his mouth the fell Archiano found, And dash'd it into Arno, from my breast Loos'ning the cross, that of myself I made When overcome with pain. He hurl'd me on, Along the banks and bottom of his course; Then in his muddy spoils ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... we had better walk for the present," suggested Tad. "We shall stiffen up if we ride ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... improvements in the construction and application of shaft tug lugs for harness, and consists in forming the said lugs with broad and long plates, properly curved to suit the curve of the pad, and connecting the latter to the under sides of the skirts and to the pads in a way to stiffen the skirt and to hold the stud securely from breaking loose, the said lugs being made solid with a screw nut at the end to confine the bearing straps, or hollow, with female screw threads near the base, and bolts screwing into the said female threads to secure the bearing straps ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... carefully to from 1,800 to 2,000 deg.F. and forge thoroughly and uniformly. If the forging operation is prolonged do not continue forging the tool when the steel begins to stiffen under the hammer. Do not forge below 1,700 deg.F. (a dark lemon or orange color). Reheat frequently rather than prolong the hammering ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... not fear— I see a peril nigh and all its blitheness. Order your limbs—stretch out your length of beauty, Let down your hands and close those deepening eyes, Or you can never stiffen as you should. A murdered man should have a murdered wife When all his fate is treasured in her mouth. This wifely hairpin will ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... caught the quick drop of her eyes from their brief excursion round my library, and I felt something within me stiffen a little. It did not need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position without—let us say—splitting certain differences; the looseness of the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of compromises. You doubtless know my name, whichever ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... reached him at Dresden in the month of June helped to stiffen his resolve once more. Davoust and Vandamme had succeeded in dispersing the raw levies of North Germany and in restoring Napoleon's authority at the mouths of the Elbe and Weser; and in this they now had the help of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... his face. His hands were numb, dead. He lay supported by his elbows, his eyes gazing blankly at the unlit fire. Five minutes passed; he did not rise. He seemed dazed, stupid, terror-stricken. Five more minutes passed. He did not move. He seemed to stiffen, to grow rigid, and the darkness gathered ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... could only advance a few steps at a time. He was straining every nerve to protect and assist Edith. He saw no one he recognized near them, so he slipped his arm across her back to help support her. He felt her stiffen against him and catch her breath. At the same instant, the clearest, sweetest male voice he ever had heard called: "Be ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... up tenderly; Lift her with care; Fashion'd so slenderly, Young, and so fair! Ere her limbs frigidly Stiffen too rigidly, Decently,—kindly,— Smooth and compose them; And her eyes, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... during the conclusion of the formalities, which ended by the horrible sentence of the traitor being pronounced on the whole two hundred and seventy-eight. Poor little Jasper woke for an interval from the sense of present discomfort to hear it, he seemed to stiffen all over with the shock of horror, and then hung a dead weight on Stephen's arm. It would have dragged him down, but there was no room to fall, and the wretchedness of the lad against whom he staggered found vent in a surly imprecation, which was lost among the cries and the entreaties ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Stiffen your upper lip. You know Who are your friends and who your foes now; We pay for knowledge as we go; And though you get some sturdy blows now, You've a fair field—no favors crave— The storm once passed will find you braver— ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... long as we are here, should mean continuous unfoldment, advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to growth and unfoldment. They ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both mentally and physically. For him or her who yearns to stay young, the coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of happiness or of activity. It means comparative vigour combined with ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... form of the neck, many objects are indicated, and the material of which it is composed would give reason to turn all its powers of thought, to ask why it is so formed, as to twist, bend, straighten, stiffen and relax at will, to suit so many purposes? A very tough skin—a sheathe—surrounds the neck with blood vessels, nerves, muscles, bones, ligaments, fascia, glands great and small, throat and trachea. ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... troops had been intended for an offensive campaign in Mesopotamia. It is probable, therefore, that this advance, indirectly, yet substantially, contributed to the defence of Mesopotamia, for the Turkish offensive in that area never materialized. Two or three German Divisions came down to stiffen up the Turks, and from this time forward the resistance which we had to face became unmistakeably hardened. The days of campaigning de luxe had gone for ever. Before our "archies" could get forward, the Hun aeroplanes had very much their own way, and, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... a last stand and a sacrifice are more inspiring than a great victory is one of the hidden things; but the truth stands: for thinking of them our spirits re-kindle, our courage re-awakens, and we stiffen our backs ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... Inglis had been working to get the Serbian division to which her Unit was attached out of Russia. They were in an unenviable position. The disorganization of the Russian Army made the authorities anxious to keep the Serbian division there "to stiffen the Russians." The Serb Command realized, on the other hand, that no effective stand at that time would be made by the Russians, and that to send the Serbs into action would be to expose them to another disaster ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... I don't believe I need to hand you any advice. Just stiffen up, that's all. Anything you ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... you ever beheld,' said I. 'She looked as if she was only asleep; she didn't stiffen at all, but was as limber as ever you see. Her hair fell over her neck and shoulders in beautiful curls just like yourn; and she had on her fingers the splendid diamond rings I gave her; she was too fatigued to take 'em off when she retired the night afore. I felt proud of her even ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... enough to keep the warmth of life in his body. To add to his trouble, his foot, which had been broken in Tennessee previous to his capture, was now giving him great pain, and threatened to cripple him wholly; indeed, it would stiffen and disable the best of limbs to compass the journey he had made in darkness over strange, uneven, and hard-frozen ground, and through rivers, creeks, and bogs, and this without ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... avoid saying anything which could hurt wounded souls. I know how much grief, how much suppressed tenderness, are hidden, in thousands of women, beneath the armour of a dogged enthusiasm. They stiffen their sinews for fear of falling. They walk, they talk, they laugh, with an open wound in the side through which the heart's blood is gushing. No prophetic faculty is needed to foresee that the time is at hand ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... argued that any attempt at classification of material so freely and variously used as the Mother Goose rhymes is sure to stiffen the work of the class and render it less enjoyable. Spontaneity is more vital here than at any other stage ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... toe, like you did me. (Here Zack pulled Mat unceremoniously out of his chair.) Come along, Blyth! Get opposite to him—give him hold of your hand—stand on the toe part of his right foot—don't wriggle about—stiffen your hand and aim, and—there!—what do you say to his muscular development now?" concluded Zack, with an air of supreme triumph, as Mat slowly lifted from the ground the foot on which Mr. Blyth was ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... self-denying ordinance, if not an act of political suicide, as well as a blow at George III. Privileged bodies do not reform themselves; proposals by Burke and by Pitt and by others were rejected one after another; and then the French Revolution came to stiffen the wavering ranks of reaction. Not till the Industrial Revolution had changed the face of England did the old political forces acknowledge their defeat and surrender their claim to govern the ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... eagerly eat The green weeds trailing in the moat; Inside the rotting leaky boat You see a slain man's stiffen'd feet. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... a moment's pause of complete silence. Mrs. Boyce's face might have been seen by a close observer to quiver and then stiffen as she stood in the light of the window, a tall and queenly figure in her sweeping black. But she said not a word, and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the flower sweet, and it drops off into withered leaves. And her eyes looked askance at M'sieu Ralph, yet she hath a husband. Come, eat of thy bird and bread, and to-morrow maybe thou wilt run about lest thy limbs stiffen ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Molly, with the air of one who had experience; "just stiffen yourself out and fall over. But I don't believe you could ever ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... with your face downward, and palms of hands flat upon the floor by your sides. (2) Inhale complete breath and retain. (3) Stiffen the body and raise yourself up by the strength of your arms until you rest on your hands and toes. (4) Then lower yourself to original position. Repeat several times. (5) Exhale vigorously through the mouth. ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... the porcupine made his resolute way through the woods, the manner of his going differed from that of all the other kindreds of the wild. He went not furtively. He had no particular objection to making a noise. He did not consider it necessary to stop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument of immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming, and he did not greatly care who came. Behind ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... you'd know. 'Sterilized,' is what they do to the milk in hot weather to save the slum kids. That's us, Lily. 'Deodorized,' is taking the bad smell out of things. 'Vulcanized,' is something they do to stiffen things. I guess it's what ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... things that would prop me up. P'r'aps, I thought, my ancient ancestors came to this land with his'n; who knows? An' I might 'a' been switched off on some female line, an' so lost the name an' estates. At any rate, be brave! With such thoughts as these I tried to stiffen my legs, figgeratively speakin'. We went through two or three rooms (I hadn't time to count 'em) an' then I was showed into the lofty presence of the earl. He was standin' by the fire-place, an' the minnit my eyes lit upon him I knowed ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... is the more interesting and genuine it is. It is this freedom which gives to the talk of the child its surprises and often its startling power to set one thinking. Holding talk to some severe standard of consistency, dignity, or subject is sure to stiffen and hamper it. There could have been nothing very free or joyful about talking according to a program as the ladies of the eighteenth-century salons were more or less inclined. Good conversation runs like water; nothing is ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... him break into a goose-step. The other was of that mild, blue-eyed, tow-haired type from the Baltic provinces, with the thin, white skin which does not tan but burns. He was frailer than the other and he was tired! He would lag and then stiffen back his shoulders and draw in his chin and force a trifle more energy ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... structurally as the other form, owing to the lack of the truss formation which is the strong point with the superposed frame. A truss is a form of construction where braces can be used from one member to the next, so as to brace and stiffen the whole. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... is visible in the 4. Figure of the 23. Scheme; and by the 2. Figure of the 26. Scheme; the one is a quilly or finny substance, consisting of several long, slender and variously bended quills or wires, something resembling the veins of leaves; these are, as 'twere, the finns or quills which stiffen the whole Area, and keep the other part distended, which is a very thin transparent skin or membrane variously folded, and platted, but not very regularly, and is besides exceeding thickly bestuck with innumerable small bristles, which are onely perceptible by the bigger magnifying Microscope, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the fog of new thoughts that were confusing his daughter's mind and she could feel his body stiffen. A thrill ran through her own body and she forgot McGregor. With all the strength of her spirit she was absorbed in what David was saying. In the challenge that was coming from the lips of her father she began to feel there would be born in her own ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... misty-moisty nobody; nothin' to her. Her gown was a cloud and she wa'n't no more 'n a shadder, herself, until she could git somebody to listen to her. When she did git somebody to listen to her, she'd begin to stiffen up and git some backbone and git awful sassy; so she crep' around whisperin' to folks that Love was no good, and 'lowin' that she—that mis'able creetur—was the ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... sounding axe so falls the vine, Whose tender branches round the poplar twine. 440 She chose her ruin, and resign'd her life, In death undaunted as an Indian wife: A rare example! but some souls we see Grow hard, and stiffen with adversity: Yet these by fortune's favours are undone; Resolved into a baser form they run, And bore the wind, but cannot bear the sun. Let this be nature's frailty, or her fate, Or Isgrim's[106] counsel, her new-chosen mate; Still ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... their absence, sorted out one that was creased open, and handed it to Steve. It was an announcement of Barbara Allison's engagement to the Hon. Archibald Wickersham—that column to which Fat Joe had folded the sheet—a many-days-old announcement, now. But the smile did not even stiffen upon Steve's lips. The picture which accompanied it was a poor one, heavy-shadowed and smeared and lacking in detail, yet Barbara's face was unmistakable. The room became quiet. In that hush Garry realized that Joe's mistaken translation of the title ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... and the suffering of thousands of men and millions of animals. But the profits are great. Fashion has decreed that My Lady shall be swathed in fur—therefore, men go mad and die in the barrens, and the quivering red bodies of small animals bleed, and curl up, and stiffen upon the hard crust of the snow! No, the North is ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... folly of impatience and the necessity of repose. By thus long continuance in one posture, my sinews began to stiffen, and my reluctance to make new exertions to increase. My brows were heavy, and I felt an irresistible propensity to sleep. I concluded to seek some shelter, and resign myself, my painful recollections, and my mournful presages, to sweet forgetfulness. For this end, I once ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... great Roman Catholic missionary, the Apostle of the East, was lying on his dying bed among the barbarous people whom he loved, his passing spirit was busy about his work, and, even in the article of death, while the glazing eye saw no more clearly and the ashen lips had begun to stiffen into eternal silence, visions of further conquests flashed before him, and his last word was 'Amplius'—Onward! It ought to be the motto of the missionary work of us, who boast a purer faith, to carry to the heathen and to fire our own souls. If ever we are tempted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the maternal perambulator, they briskly pick themselves up, briskly scramble up a leg and make their way to the top. It is a splendidly nimble and spirited performance. Besides, once seated, they have to keep a firm balance in the mass; they have to stretch and stiffen their little limbs in order to hang on to their neighbours. As a matter of fact, there is no absolute rest for them. Now physiology teaches us that not a fibre works without some expenditure of energy. The animal, which can be likened, in no small ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... through it until clear, then pour it into moulds and put them in a cool place to set. One calf's foot and one cow heel will be more economical than two calfs feet. If fruit is desired to be in the jelly, it must be put in when the jelly begins to stiffen in the mould. ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... most of those obstacles to give them strength," answered the Queen, her hands tightening a little. "The King would be pliant in my hands were this man not beside him to stiffen him. Is there any other man in the world who would have dared to put me to the test he ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... of hat which sold well on the Continent. There are, or ought to be, three aims in the process of proofing and stiffening, all the three being of equal importance. These are: first, to waterproof the hat-forms; second, to stiffen them at the same time and by the same process; and the third, the one the importance of which I think English hat manufacturers have frequently overlooked, at least in the past, is to so proof and stiffen the hat-forms as to leave them in a suitable condition for the subsequent dyeing process. ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... the service itself, that He calls for it so long and so repeatedly, till at last the iron sinew gives way: no, but for the sake of bending the iron sinew itself, and when it is bent in one direction, I conclude He does not mean to stiffen it there, but would have it bend perhaps back to the very same position as at first it was so hard to bend it from, with this one wide difference, that in the first case it was so in its own will, but now in His will. Perhaps thou thinkest I am darkening ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... stiff jaw and tongue are the greatest hindrances to the emission of good tone. Muscles of chin and tongue must be trained to become relaxed and flexible. Do not stiffen the jaw or protrude the chin, else your appearance will be painful and your ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... passed over you, and had given me so much pain!—my little Alma, who loved so dearly to give, and who has lately been so hard and cold that the very idea of an appeal from a poor family seemed to close her heart and stiffen her face into determined opposition. You cannot be a princess, dear, and do some great thing. I am afraid there was more pride than holy love in your plan. You should not think of yourself when you want to ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... and certain parts of the entrails; these are taken out while fresh, cut open, washed, and exposed to the air a short time to stiffen; the outside skin is then taken off, and the remaining part formed into rolls, fastened together with pegs, and hung up to dry. The isinglass is then separated into threads of different sizes, or formed into flakes. Immense quantities are annually ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... question. England's honour had suffered a stain that must at all costs be removed. No king with an atom of spirit would let the dawn of his reign be clouded by such an admission of failure. Wolsey was there to stiffen his temper in case of need; with him it was almost a matter of life and death to retrieve the disaster. His credit was pledged in the war. In their moments of anger under the Spanish sun, the English commanders had loudly ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... one of the spiritual advantages of feasting is that it expands you beyond your common sense. One excess induces another, and a finer one. This acceptance of the ridiculous is good for you. It is particularly good for an Anglo-Saxon, who is so self-contained and self-controlled that his soul might stiffen as the unused limb of an Indian fakir stiffens, were it not for periodical excitements like that of the Christmas feast. Everybody has experienced the self-conscious reluctance which precedes the ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... out. She had no longer any power of restraint. And as the word hissed upon the air the man's whole body seemed to suddenly stiffen. His arms tightened, and she felt her ribs bend under ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... enough to strike him to the floor, assuredly his years would not have saved him! And yet Mrs. Maldon gazed at him with submissive and apologetic gentleness! Foolish saint! Fancy her (thought Rachel) hardening her heart to Julian! Rachel longed to stiffen her with some backing of her own harsh common sense. And her affection for Mrs. Maldon grew passionate and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Middle Border to his later life in Chicago and all the regions which he visited, brings into play his higher gifts and excludes his lower. Under slight obligation to imagine, he runs slight risk of succumbing to those conventionalisms which often stiffen his work when he trusts to his imagination. Avowedly dealing with his own opinions and experiences, he is not tempted to project them, as in the novels he does somewhat too frequently, into the careers of his heroes. Dealing chiefly with action not with thought, he does not tend ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... limp as a glove out of which the hand has been drawn, yet seeming to wait and watch. One hoof touches a twig; like lightning it spreads and drops, after running for the smallest fraction of a second along the obstacle to know whether to relax or stiffen, or rise or fall to meet it. Just before she strikes the ground on the down plunge, see the wonderful hind hoofs sweep themselves forward, surveying the ground by touch, and bracing themselves, in a fraction of time so small that the eye cannot follow, for ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
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