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More "Stiffening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grace, but the glory of the House of Talbot-Lowry demanded a full and rustling pew of female domestics, while the coachman, and a footman or a groom, were generally to be relied on to give a masculine stiffening to the party. With Lady Isabel's regime had come a slackening of moral fibre, a culpable setting of attainments, or of convenience, above creed, in the administration of the household. Once had Lady Isabel been actually overheard by Evans, offering to a friend, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... from the veranda at the front of the house; of masculine voices raised in anger; and then she heard the sound of a blow, followed instantly by a heavy fall. Almost at the same instant, the sharp crack of a pistol smote upon the air, for an instant stiffening her with horror. She started to her feet in terror, her face gone white, her eyes dilated with apprehension. Then, she somehow stumbled to her feet, and stood there, trembling in every nerve, until she could gather ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... at length returned, it was accompanied by a sensation of almost unendurable agony from my numerous smarting, inflamed, and stiffening wounds; and to this was added the ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... painful walk, for the excitement was now gone, and my companions' wounds were stiffening, and giving them as much pain as my chest did me; but no one murmured, and we kept on till we were at the mouth of the Gap, high up above where four boats were lying, while half a mile away we could see the lights and dimly make out the ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... matter to do this, and presently they had deposited the already stiffening body of the sheep-destroying dog in the bed of the wagon, where it certainly presented a very gruesome appearance, with its four feet sticking up ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... for already the boats were drifting rapidly away. The water was icy cold, but it was a case of life or death. Without the boats they were lost men. "All we possessed was on board," says Nansen, "so I exerted myself to the utmost. I redoubled my exertions though I felt my limbs gradually stiffening; at last I was able to stretch out my hand to the edge of the kayak. I tried to pull myself up, but the whole of my body was stiff with cold. After a time I managed to swing one leg up on to the edge ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... he had doubtless thought to find Prince Victor alone, stopped short, betraying disconcertion in the way he instinctively assumed the stand of a soldier at attention, bringing his heels together with an undeniable click, straightening his shoulders, stiffening both arms to rigidity at his sides. And for a bare thought his eyes rolled almost wildly in their deep sockets. Then he bowed twice, from the hips, with mechanical precision, profoundly to Victor, with deep ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... and at some pains keeping step with his companion. Behind them trailed the Wilbur twin, resolving, as was his weekly rule, to keep himself neat through church and Sunday-school—yet knowing in his heart it could not be done. Already he could feel his hair stiffening as the coating of soap dried upon it. Pretty soon the shining surface would crack and disorder ensue. What was the use? As he walked carefully now he inhaled rich scent from the group—Winona's perfume combining but somehow not blending with a pungent, almost vivid, aroma ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... impossible to study this portion of Confucius' career without feeling that a great change had come over his conduct. There was no longer that lofty love of truth and of virtue which had distinguished the commencement of his official life. Adversity, instead of stiffening his back, had made him pliable. He who had formerly refused to receive money he had not earned, was now willing to take pay in return for no other services than the presentation of courtier-like advice on occasions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... a man interested in all phenomena. In other circumstances he would have observed keenly that which now occurred, when the hair of his head underwent a curious involuntary stiffening and bristling process that in popular but sufficiently accurate terms, might be described as "standing on end." But at the moment he was in no state for ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... on the wide ledge of the window, thinking. The night seemed unusually warm despite the stiffening breeze which blew off the Gulf; he opened the collar of his blouse.... Where was Malabanan—what was he doing? He saw a man's form outlined against the bright Club window and answered the arm waved at him: it looked like Lindsey, he thought.... "Give 'em plenty of rope and if they make a break—Smash ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the wheeling days Until the cord goes slack, Until the very heartstring frays, Until the stiffening back Can ply no more; keep then the door, And, thankful in the sun, Watch you the same unending war Ontaken ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... pavement of it; whose sweet voice once, once long ago, once only to me—yet I shall see her again." He became silent as he said this, and no man cared to break in upon his thoughts, seeing the choking movement in his throat, the fierce clenching of hand and foot, the stiffening of the muscles all over him; but soon, with an upward jerk of his head, he threw back the long elf locks that had fallen over his eyes while his head was bent down, and went on ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... six weeks I was permitted to visit Cromarty, and pass a Sabbath there; but as my master usually accompanied me, and as the way proved sufficiently long and weary to press upon his failing strength and stiffening limbs, we had to restrict ourselves to the beaten road, and saw but little. On, however, one occasion this season, I journeyed alone, and spent so happy a day in finding my homeward road along blind paths—that ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... compliments perfumed with ambrosia, sparkling with poetry, and glittering with indifference. Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, that little bit of a fellow, the fly of the political and literary coach, went first to one and then to another, his eye-glass incrusted in his eyebrow, stiffening his wee form as long as he could make it, rattling his high-heeled boots as loudly as he could contrive, stretching out his round, dogmatic face, puffing and blowing to give himself importance, dying to be the Coryphaeus ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in Buck—a change to be sensed rather than definitely noted with the eye. It was a stiffening of his body—an alertness of which he was at pains to make no show. For almost immediately he began to whistle softly, idly, his eyes roving carelessly across the wall while he tilted back in his chair. Dan ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... she jeered, right in the face of the enraged manager and stiffening clerks. "Seven hundred francs—indeed! Last year's model—a hideous colour, and "—picking it up, running it through her fingers and tossing ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... the cabin in which he slept, and he was now plying Father Orin with questions. There was a cry of alarmed amazement when the priest told of finding Ruth at Anvil Rock. Only William Pressley said nothing, and sat perfectly still, with a sudden stiffening of his bearing. It was not easy for the priest to make the whole story clear, for he did not understand it quite clearly himself. But he told as much as he knew of the night's events. And when he was done, the judge's voice stilled the clamor of ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... had caused the sudden stiffening of the Three. Sitsumi, busily engaged at something else nearby, ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... coldly, stiffening a little. 'I can't see that they were even playing at killing. I suppose one boy said to the other, "You look down the barrel while I pull the trigger, and see what happens." It seems to me the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... above this an apron to protect the dress from the frequent discharges from the stomach. Then a shawl, of flannel or any other warm material, is to be provided, to throw over the shoulders if the weather be cold. Socks, and pieces of old soft linen, free from stiffening, for napkins or ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... so emphatic," Jack answered. His voice was still pleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemed to stiffen with the stiffening of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... counting, and truly enough, upon the chivalry of the mob toward her burden, for obtaining an immediate seat. At West Fifty-third Street she alighted into a day gone two shades darker. A stiffening breeze blew in from the river, whipping up the odor of garbage from curbs. A group of dirty children were building a bonfire of some of these slops and bits of flying paper, lending a certain vicious redness ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... eve the dreaming one By the base of that icy steep, When over his stiffening limbs begun The deadly slumber of frost to creep, And they cherished the pale and breathless form, Till the stagnant blood ran free ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... sunnier lands. No; the guiding hands directed its course to the left, down the brae, and along the over-familiar road to the station. The old Clarence must have recognised with a sigh that its roaming days were definitely over, and that henceforth, as long as its creaking axles and stiffening springs held together, it could only look forward to an uneventful life of monotonous routine in a cold, grey Northern land; and, between ourselves, these feelings are not confined to ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... movement of the country and the times. The whole system was, however, pervaded by the monastic spirit, which had originally preserved all learning from annihilation, but which now kept it wrapped in the ancient cerecloths, and stiffening in the stony sarcophagus of a bygone age. The university of Louvain was the chief literary institution in the provinces. It had been established in 1423 by Duke John IV. of Brabant. Its government consisted of a President and Senate, forming a close corporation, which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... my note?" he inquired, stiffening up, yet determined to ignore her touch of sarcasm, ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... know,' says Ellabelle through her teeth and stiffening in her chair. Young Angus just set there with ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... her gently to himself to kiss her; but thinking that he felt a slight resistance in the suddenly stiffening arms of his step-daughter, he contented himself with kissing her wrist just above her glove. Then affecting to look at her with a polite admiration, which, however, was ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... with her occupation of cutting bread and butter for the children with no sign of annoyance save that slight, scarcely perceptible stiffening of the neck which only ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the flood tide we hove anchor and the Happy Despatch stood out to sea and, as she heeled to the freshening wind, Job's stiffening body lurched and swayed and twisted from the main yard. And thus it was I saw the last ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... stiffening with indignation and amazement, moistened the fingers of one hand at his lips, softly described a circle with them in the palm of the other hand, and continued with a menacing grin to screw himself in the direction of his wife; gasping some remark as he advanced, of which, in his choking ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... He was an American critic who was busily engaged in discovering the talents of unrecognized geniuses of the European provinces. When reproached with his migratory enthusiasm, he would reply, with that quick, stiffening military click with which he always delivered ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... I gave up my position at school in order to live in a poky little hole at eighteen pounds a year? What do you think I can do with myself all day in Trafalgar-road? Why, nothing. There's no room even for a piano, and so my fingers are stiffening every day. It's not life at all. Naturally, it's a great privilege," she pursued, with a vicious inflection that reminded him perfectly of Susan, "for a girl like me to live with an old man like you, all alone, with one servant and no sitting-room. But some privileges ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... trembled, as he braced himself to the effort; the veins of his neck throbbed hard; but the muscles of his arms and chest held firm as the crowbar they guided, and slowly, reluctantly, sullenly, the rock went over on its side. He dropped the crowbar from his stiffening grasp and drew himself up, flinging his shoulders back ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... for a kick, and now down he came, and Joel found a chill creeping over him as he remembered the player's wide reputation. He was the finest full-back, so report had it, of the year. And of a sudden Joel found his breath growing labored, and his long legs began to ache and seemed stiffening at the thighs and knees. But he only ran the faster and prepared for the threatened tackle. Harwell hearts sank, for the crimson-clad runner appeared to waver, to be slowing down. Suddenly, when only his own length separated him from his prey, the Yates ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... except where their extravagance makes us laugh heartily—as when on Salisbury Plain he meets returning from Botany Bay the long lost son of his old London Bridge apple-woman. The devices are unnecessary and remain as stiffening stains upon a book that is otherwise full of nature ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... approaches, was most unconscious of what was approaching her. Everybody else now saw quite clearly what Gerald's intentions were. Althea was dazed; she did not know what the bright object that had come so overpoweringly into her life wanted of her. She had feared—sickeningly—with a stiffening of her whole nature to resistance, that he wanted to flirt with her as well as with Lady Pickering. Then she had seen that he wasn't going to flirt, that he was going to be her friend, and then—this in the two or three days that followed ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... dog uttered a fierce howl of pain, leaped high into the air, and fell back among the bushes. But even as he fell Tom saw that he was stiffening into death, and he exclaimed to ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hushed and trembling kiss, The mother weeping at her beauty's side, And Death's last look and stiffening clutch—is this, Is this the outcome of a nation's pride? There lie the clammy corpses far and wide, And locks bedabbled and the princely cheek, Son, father, brother, husband, side by side— Oh, such a tale of horror who can ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... three heart-beats I saw them there, framed in the luminous mist, and then it rolled over them, swiftly, silently, and wiped them out, and I stumbled from the rock-seat and ran back across the beach, a great lump stiffening my throat and a hard, frightened jealousy nearly stifling me, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... with the evil slyness of some monkish carving, half human and half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. Mr Dombey, recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotion in his sense of having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening again, and looking at the parrot as she swung to and fro, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew that the end was very near. Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand, and the Mahdi was standing at his left. Israel looked at the girl with a world of tenderness, though the hard grip of death was fast stiffening his noble face. More than once he glanced at the Mahdi also as if he wished to say something, and yet could not do so, because the power of life was low; but at last his ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... cut off from home and friends, and dying among strangers. An almost imperceptible glance indicated that he wished me to take up his Bible. The fast-stiffening lips whispered, "Read." I read to him the Fourteenth Chapter of St. John, stopping frequently to note if the faint breathing yet continued. Each time he would move the cold fingers in a way that evidently meant "go on." After I had finished the reading, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... feels the lines stiffening in his hands; and the harness soon becomes so dry and brittle that it cracks and perhaps breaks if ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... better article of leather. When dressed in the Indian fashion—that is to say, soaked in a lather composed of the brains and fat of the animal itself, and then washed, dried, scraped, and smoked—it becomes as soft and pliable as a kid-glove, and will wash and dry without stiffening like chamois leather. That is a great advantage which it has, in the eyes of the Indians, over the skins of other species of deer, as the moose and caribou—for the leather made from these, after a wetting, becomes harsh ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... their lovers are mixed with a soil that is barren of them. The restless, bustling crowds that jostled laughingly in Rag Fair are at rest in the "House of Life;" the pageant of their strenuous generation is vanished as a dream. They died with the declaration of God's unity on their stiffening lips, and the certainty of resurrection in their pulseless hearts, and a faded Hebrew inscription on a tomb, or an unread entry on a synagogue brass is their only record. And yet, perhaps, their generation is not all dust. Perchance, here and there, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... are those who say much religion hath turned thy brain, good Tlacopa," retorted Aztotl, holding his temper fairly well under control, yet with blazing eyes and stiffening sinews. "Are thy ears alone to receive such important ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... Billy's back was not particularly straight this sudden question introduced a stiffening into it which made it more upright than ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... knowing what he did, (So goes the tale,) beneath the altar there In the high church the stiffening corpse he hid, And then, to 'scape that suffocating air, 460 Like a scared ghoul out of the porch he slid; But his strained eyes saw blood-spots everywhere, And ghastly faces thrust themselves between His soul and hopes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... glance had travelled beyond Lawrence and her features were stiffening into a mask of fear. "Oh, the dog, the dog!" she pointed past him. "Billy, Billy, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... was delivered almost at the rifles' muzzles, and the long sword-bayonets clashed together. Without yielding ground, for a few terrible seconds they thrust and parried with the clanging steel, while on either side the dead were stiffening beneath their feet, and the wounded, with shrieks of agony, were clutching at their limbs. Harold and the young Southron met; their swords clashed together once in the smoke and dust, and but once, when each drew back and lowered his weapon, while all around ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... been poring over their lessons, or stiffening under the eye of their preceptors, they are frequently consigned immediately to the ready footman; they cluster round him for their hats, their gloves, their little boots and whips, and all the well known signals of pleasure. The hall door bursts open, and they sally forth under the interregnum ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... to let loose that fury, that is so terrible, when our nests are attacked? I feel my angry sting is stiffening, that sharp sting, with which we punish our enemies. Come, children, cast your cloaks to the winds, run, shout, tell Cleon what is happening, that he may march against this foe to our city, who deserves death, since he proposes to prevent the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... nothing to forgive," Angelo replied, stiffening. "She is an angel. And now, enough of my affairs. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the contrary grieved him greatly. It was laden, and then its weakness was evident, so that they had to change their tune to that very governor. It was said that it would be made all right by putting in some stiffening—namely, three planks on each side, very thick and heavy—whereby it seemed that the vessel would be strengthened. Accordingly, the people embarked, a thing that ought not to have been done. On Thursday, at dawn, we were about to set ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... headgear, has been officially adopted as part of the uniform for officers, soldiers and other uniformed members of the A.E.F. For the latter two classes, the cap will be of 20 ounce olive drab cloth, or perhaps a little heavier. There will be no show of coloring on the cap, and the stiffening of the flap will be the same color as the cap itself. When the cap is issued to a man, he will be expected to turn in his service ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... it had been midnight. He passed his hand over his face, as if to feel if it were stiffening ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... her eyes. "I like mamma's company best," she said in the stony way which she had when stiffening herself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... out his great hearty laugh as he spoke, and his companion's involuntary stiffening went unnoticed. But on Mahony voicing his attitude with: "And his immortal soul, sir? Isn't it the church's duty to hope for a miracle? ... just as it is ours to keep the vital spark going," he made haste to take the edge off his words. "Now, now, doctor, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... to return. A sure sign, Mrs. Hungerford thought, that she was feeling better; and she watched in secret amusement the sudden stiffening of the angular figure and the compression of the thin lips as the "instructress" looked fixedly out of the carriage window and vouchsafed no ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... this window. I'll hold the fort yonder." He pointed across the space to the reference room in the opposite L. "Nine times out of ten a mob don't really—" He stopped abruptly, his face stiffening with surprise, and some other emotion, which Hal for the moment failed to interpret. Following the direction of his glance, the two other men turned. Dr. Surtaine, suave and smiling, was advancing across ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the two lay thus, and then a sudden convulsion of the giant carcass at the man's side, a tremor, and a stiffening brought Tarzan to his knees beside the crocodile. To his utter amazement he found that the beast was dead. The slim knife had found a vulnerable ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... longing to speak, whilst the tongue still moved, perchance, asking mercy or pardon from Heaven. Too late, too late! There was no longer any power of utterance there. Once or twice there was a twitching of the eyelids over the stiffening staring eyes, till at last they closed painfully in the dream ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... interior, putting dust-sheets well over the edges of exposed goods; the other assistants had just left. The bull-terrier had wandered into the shop as he almost invariably did at closing time—for he slept there, an efficient guard—and had lain down by the dying stove; though not venerable, he was stiffening into age. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... to ride is that the first day's experience is painfully stiffening. This applies to almost any unusual exercise. But to withdraw on account of that you may as well resign yourself to taking exercise no more severe than that afforded by a rocking chair. It does not pay to stop ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... watched them bolt down the slope from the right and cross in front of him, wishing he had the rifle, and when the last white tail vanished in the gray-brown woods he drove the spike of the ice-staff into the stiffening ground and took both hands to shift the weight of the pack. If he'd had the rifle, he could have shot only one of them. As it was, they were unfrightened, and he knew where to ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... Stephenson continued to hold that the elliptical tube was the right idea, and that sufficient justice had not been done to it. A year or two before his death Mr. Stephenson remarked to the author, that had the same arrangement for stiffening been adopted to which the oblong rectangular tubes owe a great part of their strength, a very different ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... allowed to get on to the top of the club. The head is still motionless. The left hip is allowed to move forward very slightly while the club is coming down. The weight of the body is gradually transferred from the right leg to the left, the right toe pivoting after the impact, and the left leg stiffening. The right shoulder must be prevented from dropping too much. After the impact the arms should be allowed to follow the ball and the body to go forward, the latter movement being timed very carefully. The head may now be raised. Finish ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... the Scripture, wot he done for that young man as the last breath had gone out of him, an' him lyin' stiffening fast. 'Young man, arise,' he says. 'The Lord Almighty calls. You've got a young wife an' three children to take care of. Take up your bed an' walk.' Not as he wanted him to carry his bed anywheres, but ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shoulder Adelaide noted her father's expression, a stiffening of the mouth and a brightening ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... had returned to oust the hopes and emotions which had usurped her office. My rush for freedom had ended, as such sallies often do, in exhaustion, capture and despair; upon the thrill and thunder of the charge followed the silence of the dungeon and the anguish of stiffening wounds. The truth, so simply written that a child might have spelled it, lay clear before me: I had left reformation till too late. I was too old ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... subject to the dominion of a brother. And it is because on the servants and on the handmaidens has been poured out, in these days, God's Spirit and they prophesy, that all domination of classes or individuals, and all stiffening of the free life of God's Church by man-made creeds, are contrary to the very basis of its existence, and an attack on the dignity of each individual member of the Church. 'Ye have an unction from the Holy One' is said to all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Joanna was stiffening with grief. She had not expected to have this battle with Ellen; she had been prepared for abuse and upbraiding, but not for argument—it had not struck her that her sister would demand the rehabilitation ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... friendly fashion, then resumed his slow pace. Sixty steps. He stood for a moment on the corner, then came back. "Not long now," he said, and smiled. Then he passed in the other direction. Eighty steps that way. Zaidos counted. Again the man returned. Zaidos could feel his muscles stiffening, as if about to spring. He cautiously shifted to a position still nearer the partly open door and measured the opening. He felt heavy and awkward. He studied the dark opening. It did indeed look very narrow. He had squirmed through it without much trouble, but that was in the densest darkness, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... shifts his place: his colour comes and goes: A dropping sweat creeps cold on every part; Against his bosom beats his quivering heart; Terror and death in his wild eye-balls stare; With chattering teeth he stands, and stiffening hair, And looks a bloodless image of despair! Not so the brave—still dauntless, still the same, Unchanged his colour, and unmoved his frame: Composed his thought, determined is his eye, And fix'd his soul, to conquer or to die: If aught disturb ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... instructions, and I've sent for you to show, once and for all, what it has cost. Stand aside there!" he said sternly to the men, whom some instinct of pity had prompted to gather between them and the stiffening forms of the dead. "There are your hunters,—two of my best men, Mr. Davies, and who but you ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... at the piano began to play, and stopped several times, that she might wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes and get her breath. At last, with a squaring of her shoulders and a stiffening of backbone that seemed queerly familiar to Morgan, watching outside, she half drawled, half sang, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... she kisses The clay-cold stiffening hand; And, reading pleading efforts To make her understand, Answers, with solemn promise, In clear but trembling tone, To Dora's life henceforward She ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... rapidly on our twisting buttocks. Mary evidently meant to pay out her mistress as hard as she could now she was at her mercy, making her fairly gasp as the stinging thuds whacked on that glorious bottom, making it writhe and flinch at each blow, causing the maternal cunt to quiver and grip my stiffening member more ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... over him, and with hers she touched his lips, already stiffening in death. She laid her warm, glowing cheek to his cold and marble-pale face; that full, fresh life pressed that which was cold and expiring to her bosom in an ardent ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... hands were soiled (I shuddered, for it might be with life-blood), and he would go and cleanse them; but some bitter jest turned his purpose, and he left the room with the other two—left it by the gallery door. Left me alone in the dark with the stiffening corpse! ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... had also occurred in the season. The sun had hid its warmth behind an impenetrable mass of vapor, and hundreds of human forms, which had blackened beneath the fierce heats of August, were stiffening in their deformity before the blasts of a premature November. The curling and spotless mists, which had been seen sailing above the hills toward the north, were now returning in an interminable dusky ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Only his stiffening fingers, crooked and contorted, worked nervously for a few minutes, scratching at the rough boards. Then all was quite still in the ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... one might almost term it—he seemed to be taking out of the atmosphere every element of discomfort, all the passionate excitement, the hot throbs of indignation, the cold tremors of fear. Dale felt his muscles recovering tone, his legs stiffening themselves, his ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... prejudices, useful in practice, but still narrownesses of the mind. The absolute in detail is absurd and contradictory. All political, religious, aesthetic, or literary parties are protuberances, misgrowths of thought. Every special belief represents a stiffening and thickening of thought; a stiffening, however, which is necessary in its time and place. Our monad, in its thinking capacity, overleaps the boundaries of time and space and of its own historical surroundings; but in its individual capacity, and for purposes ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the elderly woman. "Your last bit of land—and to think it should go like that. I never dreamed I should have to say those words to my son." Then stiffening and turning to Collins. "But I did not come to complain, I came to see if justice cannot be done. This is robbery. That terrible man with the German name has robbed Arthur. It is quite plain. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of the trail the deputy checked his galloping mount with a jerk and scrutinized the three riderless horses that stood huddled together. His face paled perceptibly. "Oh, Lord!" he gasped between stiffening lips: "It's Tex, an' Jack Purdy, an' they've fit over ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... whispered Ellen, slowly stiffening. "Yes. He's mine," replied Isbel. With that he turned to whistle. Spades threw up his head, snorted, and started forward at a trot. He came faster the closer he got, and if ever Ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a beloved ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... church vestments, veils for covering lecterns, cathedral flags, and in the 16th century for the lining of velvet gowns. The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... false calves and stays, a pair of which the Frenchman hairdresser is lacing for one of his customers. Another of the party, who has completed the upper part of his toilet, is so hampered with the voluminous folds and stiffening of his cravat that he cannot wriggle into his unmentionables. The caricaturists take us into the garrets of these fellows, abodes of squalor and wretchedness, and show us that beneath their exterior ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... been more keenly analytical than those of Mrs. Marshall-Smith. She saw perfectly the new attribute, and realized perfectly what a resolute stiffening of the will it signified. She had never admired and loved Sylvia more, and being a person adept in self-expression, she saturated her next speech with her admiration and affection. "Of course, you know, my dear, that I'm not one of the herd. I know entirely that your feeling ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... been held captive by the Adil Shahs, and he proclaimed the eldest as king of the Dakhan.[252] This abortive attempt to subvert the rule of the five kings who had established themselves on the ruins of the single Dakhan sovereignty naturally fell flat, and only resulted in stiffening the hostility which these sovereigns felt towards ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... better do now is saddle a horse and ride in to town and tell the coroner—and the sheriff. If you don't," he added, when he caught a stiffening of opposition in the attitude of Luis, "if you don't, you will find yourself in all kinds of trouble. It will look bad. You have to notify the coroner, anyway, you know. That's the law. And the coroner will see right away that Estan was shot. So the sheriff ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... many thoughts. A physiognomist would have been interested to trace the progress of those thoughts on the eloquent young face. There was surprise written there, and obvious gratification, and a demure, very feminine content; later on came pride, and a general stiffening of determination. The spoiled child of liberty and the High School-Mistress of the future had fought a heated battle, and the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... indicated, there was nothing to show. He was dead; and yet I could hardly believe that it was so. He had been so much alive; so full of schemes and enterprises. Nothing now was left but that crushed and haggard figure, stiffening on the bed; nothing, at least, that mortal senses could take cognizance of. ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... some drunkard, who had probably stolen it last year from some old soldier. He readily sold it, and I took it back with me; and the others being gone, an old woman and I cut the patch off it and put "No. 4"'s stiffening arms into the sleeves. Word was sent to us during the day to say that the city would bury him in the poorhouse grounds. But we told them that arrangements had been made; that he would have a soldier's burial. And ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... thro' visions, ghastly clear, Bearing a blast of wrath from realms below, And stiffening each rising hair with dread, Came out of dream-land Fear, And, loud and awful, bade The shriek ring out at midnight's witching hour, And brooded, stern with woe, Above the inner house, the woman's bower. And seers inspired did read the dream on oaths, Chanting ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... The djins, stiffening their muscular legs, hold back with all their might the heavily loaded little cars which would run down by themselves if let alone, and that so rapidly that they would rush into empty space with my most valuable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... obese body from the emotion of his master's return. Jolyon could feel the muzzle, where a few whitish bristles grew, cooling already against his lips. He stayed for some minutes kneeling; with his hand beneath the stiffening head. The body was very heavy when he bore it to the top of the field; leaves had drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of them; there was no wind, and they would keep him from curious eyes until the afternoon. 'I'll bury him myself,' he thought. Eighteen years had gone since ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... meaning of the words. There was nothing for them beyond their daily life, which was wholly animal. Of spirituality there was none. Of future there was none. Their leisure was given over to their pastimes, while ahead the future lay always threatening. Stiffening muscles, disease, age. The king of them all in his youth, in age would be abandoned and driven forth, weary in body, aching in limbs, a derelict in the ranks ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... against. And now—" It was all she could say: she just clasped the little child to her bosom, fell back on my arm, and in a few moments all was over. At first, Richard and I could not believe that she was dead; and it was very long before the orphan would loose her hold of the stiffening fingers; but when the neighbors came in to prepare for the wake, we contrived to flatter ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... from touching the inanimate figure, her face very pale in the dim light, yet it required the combined efforts of both to force the stiffening body through the port hole, and then lower it slowly to the surging water below. The cord cut our hands cruelly, but it held, and the dead man sank beneath the surface, and was swept swiftly astern, into the black depths. We could distinguish footsteps on the deck above, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Christ suffered, that He might reconcile us to God, and make us friends again with our heavenly Father, and renew our broken love. Whatever be our faith and works, and however correct be our creed and conduct, if we are giving place to anger, if we are stiffening ourselves in strife and disdain, we are none of His, who was meek and lowly of heart. We may come to the Sanctuary with lips full of praises and eyes full of prayers, with devotion in our hearts and gifts in our hand, but God ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... not know what I have seen. Charge him with the murder of the Dane. Tell him," said Fanny, her lips stiffening, "that if he dares to come again—if he does not go away—he shall be arrested for murder. I will ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... she demands; she asks, he gives; she calls, he comes; she threatens, he fears; Nequissimum hunc servum puto, I account this man a very drudge." And as he follows it, [5423]"Is this no small servitude for an enamourite to be every hour combing his head, stiffening his beard, perfuming his hair, washing his face with sweet water, painting, curling, and not to come abroad but sprucely crowned, decked, and apparelled?" Yet these are but toys in respect, to go to the barber, baths, theatres, &c., he must attend upon her wherever she goes, run along the streets ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... A stiffening raced over Mrs. Kantor, so that she sat rigid on her chair-edge, lips compressed, eye ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... a half-frightened glance toward Keith, and the man, following the direction of her eyes, perceived the presence of the other. His right leg went backward, his hand dropping to the belt, his form stiffening erect. Keith's voice, low but clear in the silence, seemed to ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... his mother's return. Standing beside the crib, and gazing down at the rosy cheeks and curling locks, nestled against the pillow, Beulah's thoughts winged along the tear-stained past, to the hour when Lilly had been placed in her arms, by emaciated hands stiffening in death. For six years she had held, and hushed, and caressed her dying father's last charge, and now strange, ruthless fingers had torn the clinging heart-strings from the idol. There were no sobs, nor groans, to voice the anguish of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... both of elasticity and tenacity. Phosphate of ammonia alone has none of these inconveniences. It may be mixed with a certain quantity of sal-ammoniac, and then introduced into the starch prepared for stiffening the linen; or else it may be dissolved in 20 parts of water, in weight, to one of phosphate, and the stuff steeped into the solution, then allowed to dry, and ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... chill creeping over him as he remembered the player's wide reputation. He was the finest full-back, so report had it, of the year. And of a sudden Joel found his breath growing labored, and his long legs began to ache and seemed stiffening at the thighs and knees. But he only ran the faster and prepared for the threatened tackle. Harwell hearts sank, for the crimson-clad runner appeared to waver, to be slowing down. Suddenly, when only his own length ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... with perfect confidence, that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40 deg.-50 deg. Centigrade, which has been called "heat-stiffening," though Kuehne's beautiful researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard
... muscles stiffening unconsciously. Yes, for both their sakes he must try and play the master with Kitty, ridiculous ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Stiffening his muscles with a desperate effort, he overpowered the baron and clutched him by the throat victorious ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... astonish'd at the sight, My trembling sister strove to urge her flight; And first the pardon of the nymphs implored, And those offended sylvan powers adored: But when she backward would have fled, she found Her stiffening feet were rooted in the ground: 40 In vain to free her fasten'd feet she strove, And as she struggles only moves above; She feels th' encroaching bark around her grow By quick degrees, and cover all ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Breen broke in, and sat up, stiffening, as if half inclined to be offended, even with this very ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... heart of the pioneer sickened as he recognized the clustering curls of Genevra. In a moment his rifle was at his shoulder, and with a sharp "ping" Muck- a-Muck leaped into the air a corpse. To knock out the brains of the remaining savages, tear the tresses from the stiffening hand of Muck- a-Muck, and dash rapidly forward to the cottage of Judge Tompkins, was the work of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... cases these oo-o-ah exercises are insufficient because the throatiness of tone is partly brought about by a stiffening of the throat in general. The oo-o-ah must then be preceded by staccato exercises upon the syllable Koo, which have the effect not only of throwing the tone forward, but also of making the throat supple. Make the experiment before a mirror and ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... efforts, raised himself by a number of yards, slipped, recovered the lost ground, clutched a bunch of roots that came loose in his hand, slipped once more and was abandoning the game in despair when, suddenly, stiffening himself and contracting his whole frame, his muscles and his will, he stopped still: a sound of voices seemed to issue from the very ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the precipitation of moisture upon it. This condition, combined with unconsciousness and paralysis of all the voluntary muscles, may very closely simulate death. The only absolute evidence of death is given by such changes as loss of body heat, rigor mortis or stiffening of the muscles, coagulation of the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... perceived the convulsive clutch of his hand on the skirt of his coat. It was as if accidentally I had looked inside the man—upon the strength of his illusions, on his desire, on his passion. Now he will fly at me, I thought, with a tremendously convincing certitude. Now———All my muscles, stiffening, answered the appeal of that ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for covering lecterns, cathedral flags, and in the 16th century for the lining of velvet gowns. The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... thought Goethe perfectly splendid. He often tried, in odd half-hours of conversation to infuse into Newman a little of his own spiritual starch, but Newman's personal texture was too loose to admit of stiffening. His mind could no more hold principles than a sieve can hold water. He admired principles extremely, and thought Babcock a mighty fine little fellow for having so many. He accepted all that his high-strung companion offered him, and put them away in what he supposed to ...
— The American • Henry James
... its face turned heavenwards, and its mouth gaping open, as if longing to speak, whilst the tongue still moved, perchance, asking mercy or pardon from Heaven. Too late, too late! There was no longer any power of utterance there. Once or twice there was a twitching of the eyelids over the stiffening staring eyes, till at last they closed painfully in the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?—I say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among us like ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and now stiffening wrist, makes writing an operation so slow and painful to me, that I should not so soon have troubled you with an acknowledgment of your favor of the 8th, but for the request it contained of my consent to the publication of my letter of June the 26th. No, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... no more attention than if he had not heard, but the slight stiffening of his face and raising of his eyebrows as he turned to Sir Samuel, made him look supremely proud and distinguished, incomparably more a gentleman in his dusty leather livery, than Bertie ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... banners in the distance, turned to the left along Wedgwood Street and past the front of Clayhanger's shop. Theoretically shops were closed, but one shutter of Clayhanger's was down, and in its place stood Edwin Clayhanger. Hilda felt her features stiffening into a sort of wilful and insincere hostility as she shook hands. Within the darkness of the shop she saw the figure of two dowdy women—doubtless the sisters of whom Janet had told her; they disappeared ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... face, and the sting of a deep cut somewhere upon it. He saw that Cain was straightening over a mangled form; that Kriijorl had overcome odds of two to one. The breeder at his own feet had died swiftly of a deftly broken neck, a reddened dirk still clutched in his stiffening fingers. ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... tide we hove anchor and the Happy Despatch stood out to sea and, as she heeled to the freshening wind, Job's stiffening body lurched and swayed and twisted from the main yard. And thus it was I saw the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... grin, though the blood about his mouth did its meaning some injustice. And with this there happened that which dismayed many and puzzled all. Wesley's fists went up, but hung, as it were impotent for the moment, while his eyes glanced aside from his adversary's and rested, with a stiffening of surprise, on the corner of the ring where the old gentleman stood. A cry went up from the King's Scholars—a groan and a warning. At the sound he flung back his head instinctively—as Randall's left shot out, caught him on the apple of the throat, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers," "blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... earlier part of the Russian offensive. This was due to the fact that the armies of the Central Powers had received strong reenforcements and had apparently succeeded in strengthening their new positions and in stiffening their resistance. Powerful counterattacks were launched ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... be found in that room. With trembling hands I started to put the things back in the bag. Those slips of paper, I reflected as I worked, at least rent the veil of mystery enveloping the corpse that lay stiffening in the next room. This, at any rate, was certain: German or American or hyphenate, Henry Semlin, manufacturer and spy, had voyaged from America to England not for the purposes of trade but to get hold of that mutilated ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... poetry, and glittering with indifference. Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, that little bit of a fellow, the fly of the political and literary coach, went first to one and then to another, his eye-glass incrusted in his eyebrow, stiffening his wee form as long as he could make it, rattling his high-heeled boots as loudly as he could contrive, stretching out his round, dogmatic face, puffing and blowing to give himself importance, dying to be the Coryphaeus of the company, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and charm. It is like a fire that flares up brilliantly for a while and then leaves everything blacker and bleaker than before. After every important war in South-East Europe in recent times there has been a shrinking of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of frontier lines, an intrusion of civilised monotony. And imagine what may happen at the conclusion of this war if the Turk should really be driven ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... light a boat. I sent him the order and he turned out what is pretty well known in Brown's Tract as the "Nessmuk canoe." She weighed just 17 pounds 13 3/4 ounces and was thought to be the lightest working canoe in existence. Her builder gave me some advice about stiffening her with braces, etc., if I found her too frail, "and he never expected ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... heard the last words. She felt herself stiffening slowly, while the living room almost faded from her sight. Perhaps, in that instant, some additional new circuit had closed in her mind, or some additional new channel had opened, for TT's purpose in tricking her into contact with the reckless, mocking ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... of her deed, the girl rose to her knees, still clinging to Circuit's stiffening fingers, and sobbingly murmured, in a voice so low the awed group had to bend to ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... carried through the rapids muscle-loose, as an inanimate object would be carried, without an attempt to help himself in any way. It was a desperate chance, but it was the only chance. The slightest stiffening of the muscles, the least struggle would have thrown him out of the water's natural channel against the bowlders; and then a rigidly held body would have offered only too good a resistance to the shock. By a miracle of fortune he had been carried through, bruised and ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... quarter—mixture should finish browning and stiffening and shrink slightly from the sides of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... said Bobby, stiffening; "but I might consider a proposition to buy your eight acres." He offered this suggestion with reluctance, for he had no mind to enter transactions of any sort with Silas Trimmer. Still, he recalled to himself with a sudden yielding ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... almost overtaken him; but hope and strength failed me at the same time. What clothing I had on me, notwithstanding the extreme coldness of the weather, was drenched with sweat. It was not long after I turned toward home that I felt it stiffening about me. My leggings were of cloth, and were torn in pieces in running through the bush. I was conscious I was somewhat frozen before I arrived at the place where I had left our lodge standing in the morning, and it was now midnight. I knew ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... He ascended softly to examine the nature of this outlet; but, to his further alarm, he found it guarded outside with iron bars. This was a direct confirmation of his surmises. A cold shudder crept over him. He felt almost stiffening with horror as he looked down upon his thoughtful companion, doomed, he doubted not, as well as himself, to fall a prey to the assassin. He gazed wildly round the apartment, as if with some desperate hope of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... emotion save amusement. Miss Guile was watching through half-closed eyes. There was a noticeable stiffening of the ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... light!' He said it scarce above his breath, but she heard it, and looked at me. I shook my head. She saw how it was, and caught the stiffening ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... a horse feels the lines stiffening in his hands; and the harness soon becomes so dry and brittle that it cracks and perhaps breaks if the ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... joke We all do know and always loved so well, And of cool breezes and sweet girls that lay In shady nooks, and pleasant windy coves Anon Will in that self-same room, with tattered quilt Wrapped round him, and blue stiffening hands, All shivering, fireless, pinched by winter's blasts, Will hale us forth upon the rounds once more, So that we may expect it not in vain, The joke of how with curses deep and coarse Papa puts up the pipe of parlor stove. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... off them, my dear," said Mrs. Mordan, a starched dowager, stiffening to the naked eye as she spoke. "When they laugh like that, they are always ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... humbled; he must fall—by judgment, or by penitence—before the sword of excision, or into the arms of mercy. Happy for us if external visitations produce internal prostration of spirit; if, instead of stiffening ourselves into resistance, we bend to the inflictions of parental chastisement; and if present and temporary sufferings excite a feeling which will supersede the necessity of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... to be no doubt of it," replied the Chief, calmly, and yet with a stiffening of his figure, as though conscious of having already discovered a most promising clue, that could not but reflect credit on his astuteness as an ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... a tincture of Calvinism for stiffening a line of battle,' said Saxon. 'Look at the Swede when he is at home. What more honest, simple-hearted fellow could you find, with no single soldierly virtue, save that he could put away more spruce beer than you would care to pay for. Yet if you do but cram him with a few strong, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reconstructed was not likely to be overflowed more than a foot by the next high tide, a month later, an excavation was made wherein to build the steamer that she might certainly come afloat at the desired time. Sixty holes had to be made in the iron plates so that the four stiffening timbers could be attached to the bottom to prevent the craft from breaking in two under the extra-heavy boiler. Inside, cross timbers were also added to resist the strain. On, December 17th, two steamers appeared from the fort, in command, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... for the use of Anne Boleyn in the time of her prosperity, bokeram frequently appears for "lyning and taynting" (?) gowns, lining sleeves, cloaks, a bed, etc., but it can scarcely have been for mere stiffening, as the colour of the buckram is generally specified as the same as ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... course, equal to three battalions. The men are shortish, very thick, burned brown in the sun, with never a smile among them—have I not said that they are going down to a grim sector?—but with faces of granite. There was a time when we talked of stiffening the French army. I am prepared to believe that our first expeditionary force was capable of stiffening any conscript army, for I do not think that a finer force ever went down to battle. But to talk about stiffening these people now ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the piano began to play, and stopped several times, that she might wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes and get her breath. At last, with a squaring of her shoulders and a stiffening of backbone that seemed queerly familiar to Morgan, watching outside, she half drawled, half sang, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... green; Ere chill October shakes the latest down, They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown; On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, You stretch to pluck it—'tis a butterfly; The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark, They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark; The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud, Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood; So by long living on a single lie, Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye; Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's hue,— Except when squabbling turns them black ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... unconscious of what was approaching her. Everybody else now saw quite clearly what Gerald's intentions were. Althea was dazed; she did not know what the bright object that had come so overpoweringly into her life wanted of her. She had feared—sickeningly—with a stiffening of her whole nature to resistance, that he wanted to flirt with her as well as with Lady Pickering. Then she had seen that he wasn't going to flirt, that he was going to be her friend, and then—this in the two or three days that followed Gerald's talk with Helen—that he was going to be a dear one. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... lovers are mixed with a soil that is barren of them. The restless, bustling crowds that jostled laughingly in Rag Fair are at rest in the "House of Life;" the pageant of their strenuous generation is vanished as a dream. They died with the declaration of God's unity on their stiffening lips, and the certainty of resurrection in their pulseless hearts, and a faded Hebrew inscription on a tomb, or an unread entry on a synagogue brass is their only record. And yet, perhaps, their generation is not all dust. Perchance, here and there, some ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... chivalry. Then came the ages which, when they have taken their due place in the depths of the past, will be, by a wise and clear-sighted futurity, perhaps well comprehended under a common name, as the ages of Starch; periods of general stiffening and bluish-whitening, with a prevailing washerwoman's taste in everything; involving a change of steel armour into cambric; of natural hair into peruke; of natural walking into that which will disarrange no wristbands; of plain language into ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... the brown eyes and a quick stiffening of the supple body under the red curls expressed the girl's resentment at the slur implied ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... night, when deepest sleep Falls upon men, fear seiz'd me, all my bones Trembled, and every stiffening hair rose up. A spirit pass'd before me, but I saw No form thereof. I knew that there it stood, Even though my straining eyes discern'd it not. Then from its moveless lips a voice burst forth, "Is man more just than God? ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... there was a significant silence. They were waiting for Ambrose to speak. Stiffening himself he told his story as manfully as he could. Conscious of its weakness he wore a hang-dog air which contrasted unfavorably with ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... free play for the involuntary action of the delicate vocal muscles connected with the larynx, which determine all the finer variations of voice. Whatever kind of vocal effort is made, the student should constantly guard himself against the least throat stiffening or contraction, against what vocalists call a "throat grip." He is very likely to make some effort with the throat, or vocal muscles, when putting the voice to any unusual test—when prolonging tone, raising or lowering ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... are more or less frequent. They are always serious, and often result in anchylosis (stiffening) of the joint or the death of the animal. The joints mostly punctured are the hock, fetlock, or knee, though other joints may, of course, suffer this injury. As the symptoms and treatment are much the same for ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and her glowing, gipsy beauty against the sober blacks and grays and faded cheeks of the gathering, looking like a Kentucky cardinal alighted in a henyard, felt her smile stiffening. Sudden and inexplicable panic and rebellion descended upon her; it seemed certain that if she heard Mrs. Wetherby say "proud of this dear girl of ours" once again she would scream. She disengaged her arm and declined tea ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... for me too,' Helena exclaimed, stiffening herself up from her father's protecting embrace. 'I can help you, I have the eyes of a lynx—I must do something. I must! Let me go, papa!' She turned ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... right! You are so emphatic," Jack answered. His voice was still pleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemed to stiffen with the stiffening of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... pawnbroker who had got it from some drunkard, who had probably stolen it last year from some old soldier. He readily sold it, and I took it back with me; and the others being gone, an old woman and I cut the patch off it and put "No. 4"'s stiffening arms into the sleeves. Word was sent to us during the day to say that the city would bury him in the poorhouse grounds. But we told them that arrangements had been made; that he would have a soldier's burial. And ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... said. "Oh! what a boy," and she kissed me, saying, "let me go now—your mamma is coming." It came into my mind that I had had my hand up her clothes, and had felt hair between her legs. My prick stiffening in thinking of a women. I clutched her hard, put one hand on to her and did something I know not what. She said: "You are rude, Wattie." Then I pinched her and said: "Oh! what a big bosom you have." "Hish! hish!" said she. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... I like to register impressions while they are fresh. Once a day at least I endeavor to define my own mental position. It is a useful piece of self-analysis, and has, I fancy, a steadying effect upon the character. Frankly, I must confess that my own needs what stiffening I can give it. I fear that, after all, much of my neurotic temperament survives, and that I am far from that cool, calm precision which characterizes Murdoch or Pratt-Haldane. Otherwise, why should the tomfoolery which I have witnessed this evening have set ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and drooping her head, as if it ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... greatly less romantic than those which first lifted him above the flood. He came during a moment of national expansiveness. Patriotism and jingoism, altruism and imperialism, passion and sentimentalism shook the temper which had been slowly stiffening since the Civil War. Now, with a rush of unaccustomed emotions, the national imagination sought out its own past, luxuriating in it, not to say wallowing ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... razor across Bowman's throat. The latter extended himself in the chair and Doret slowly, thoroughly, covered his lower face with lather, through which the blade drew with a clean smooth rip. A fever burned in the standing man's brain, he fought constantly against a stiffening of his employed fingers—a swift turn, a cutting twist. Subconsciously he called noiselessly upon the God that had sustained him and, divided between apprehension and the increasing lust to kill, his lips held the form in which they ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... autumnal walks, as we gained the top of the hill by a broken road which skirts the heath and leads to the old bridge, the wind suddenly began to blow furiously. My darling, overwhelmed by it, caught hold of my leg and sheltered himself in the skirt of my coat. My dog, for his part, stiffening his four legs, with his tail between the hind ones and his ears waving in the wind, looked up at me too. I turned, the horizon was as gloomy as the interior of a church. Huge black clouds were sweeping toward us, and the trees ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... killed? Is he killed?" she thought, as she bent over each knot of motionless bodies, where, here and there, some faint, stifled breath, or some moan of agony, told that life still lingered beneath the huddled, stiffening heap. And a tightness came at her heart, an aching fear made her shrink, as she raised each hidden face, that she had never known before. "What if he be?" she said fiercely to herself. "It is nothing to me. I hate him, the cold aristocrat! ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... well back in the hills before the predicted stiffening came to such an extent that they decided it was wise ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... the roundhouse, the superintendent, and the master-mechanic were getting the news the Special engine steamed slowly into sight through the whirling snow and stopped at the semaphore. So a liner shaken in the teeth of a winter storm, battered by heading seas, and swept by stiffening spray, rides at last, ice-bound, staggering, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... hair are fixed. They vary with the ages of female children, and there is a slight difference between the coiffure of the married and unmarried. The two partings on the top of the head and the chignon never vary. The amount of stiffening used is necessary, as the head is never covered out of doors. This arrangement will last in good order for a week or more—thanks to the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... unabated fury until late in the afternoon; men had sunk down beside their gallant leader until there was but a handful left, only a dozen, bleeding from many wounds and hot carbines in their stiffening hands.—The day is almost done, when look! Heaven now defend him! The charm of his life is broken, for Custer has fallen; a bullet cleaves a pathway through his side, and as he falters another strikes his ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... at the moment when they were grouping themselves round the ram for a last effort, each one holding his breath and stiffening his muscles in order to communicate all his force to the decisive blow, a howl more frightful still than that which had burst forth and expired beneath the beam, rose among them. Those who did not cry out, those who were still alive, looked. Two streams of melted lead were falling ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... anyway, Jane," said Gabriella, sticking the point of her scissors into a strip of buckram, for she was stiffening the bottom of the skirt after the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... constitution anyone must have to endure such friendship! I have often seen the temperature in the Siberian steppes fall to more than forty degrees below freezing point! I have felt, notwithstanding my reindeer coat, my heart growing chill, my limbs stiffening, my feet freezing in triple woolen socks; I have seen my sleigh horses covered with a coating of ice, their breath congealed at their nostrils. I have seen the brandy in my flask change into hard stone, on which not even my knife could make an impression. But my sleigh flew like the wind. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... particular the rise of the Garrisonian agitation and the quickly ensuing Nat Turner's revolt occasioned together a wave of reactionary legislation the whole South over, prohibiting the literary instruction of negroes, stiffening the patrol system, restricting manumissions, and diminishing the already limited liberties of free negroes. The temper of administration, however, was not appreciably affected, for this clearly appears to have grown milder ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... new identity, Flames and ether making a rush for my veins, Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself, On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, Depriving me of my best as for a purpose, Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, Deluding ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... officers—Lieutenants Furness, Brown, Middleditch, and Pearce. In active warfare discipline while stricter in some ways is more lax in others, and there were many small points that required furbishing. Close order drill on foot is always a great help in stiffening up the men, and such essentials as instruction in driving and in fitting harness required much attention. In the American army much less responsibility is given to the sergeants and corporals than in the British, but even so the spirit and efficiency ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... he done for that young man as the last breath had gone out of him, an' him lyin' stiffening fast. 'Young man, arise,' he says. 'The Lord Almighty calls. You've got a young wife an' three children to take care of. Take up your bed an' walk.' Not as he wanted him to carry his bed anywheres, but it was a manner ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... here long," he rejoined, his lips stiffening with the effort to say just so much ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... not look at Pelliter, but he could feel the quick, tense stiffening of the other's body. There was a moment's silence. Then Pelliter spoke in a ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... army, and the new class of 1914. A large number of the men wounded in the earlier engagements of the war have been able to return to the front. They have been incorporated in the new drafts, providing these with a useful stiffening of war-tried men. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... his legs stiffen and turn to marble. And when he went on to relate the affair of the horse in the same manner, he became visibly stone up to the waist, stiffening miserably—a thing which at another time he would have paid in ready money, but which now his heart wept at. At last, when he came to the affair of the dragon, he stood like a statue in the middle of the hall, stone from ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... it glowing all the time. The mail-bags were not demanded on this occasion. Stingaree had no time to waste on them. He was still collecting purse and watch, when Oswald's young blood froze in the stiffening ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... chance with Bruno alone. I should have had Jack along, too. With more than one dog, a man won't stand against 'em. He'll take to a tree." He shook off the depression that descended as he glanced down at the stiffening body of the beast. There was a forced cheerfulness in his tones when he continued: "But how did you get into the swamp? I take you to be ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... of his breed, Without a single speck or hair Of white upon his shaggy hide; They snort—they foam—neigh—swerve aside, And backward to the forest fly, By instinct, from a human eye. They left me there to my despair, Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch, 710 Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch, Relieved from that unwonted weight, From whence I could not extricate Nor him nor me—and there we lay, The dying on the dead! I little deemed another day Would see ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... will ever know just what took place in that darkened sitting-room, for the story as afterwards related was significantly lacking in details. The light had been extinguished and the doors silently closed by the slayer. The stiffening body of Edward Crown out in the snow was not more silent than the interior of the old farmhouse, apart from the room in which David Windom pleaded with his ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... but a shudder ran through the child's frame, and an expression of such misery crept into her face that Helene forbore to print a second kiss upon her brow. She still kept hold of her, but neither of them uttered a word. Jeanne's sobbing fell to a whisper, a nervous revolt stiffening her limbs the while. Helene's first thought was that much notice ought not to be paid to a child's whims; but to her heart there stole a feeling of secret shame, and the weight of her daughter's body on her shoulder brought a blush ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... with a sullen noise to the ground. The rain had quenched the fire, and the house was not all consumed. Wild with terror, Kenneth rushed forward; his feet slipped on the bloody threshhold, and he fell on the mangled bodies of his father and his children. The demoniac laceration of the stiffening victims told too plainly who had been their murderers. How that night of horror passed Kenneth knew not. The morning sun was shining bright—when the bereaved and broken-hearted man was roused from the stupor of despair ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... when we don't. As it happens, however, a good many of us are putting a contract through, and the boys want to get that beam fixed before the fast freight comes along. If they don't, it's quite likely she'll shake it loose or pitch some of them off the bridge. It has stood a few years, and wants stiffening." ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... profoundly than his teachers. But at the same time, as soon as his passion was spent, reason resumed her sway; he felt his faults, he acknowledged them, and sometimes with such chagrin that his rage was rekindled. A mind lively, alert, penetrating, stiffening itself against obstacles, excelling literally in every thing. The prodigy is, that in a very short time piety and grace made of him a different being, and transformed faults so numerous and so ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... clearly, or am I dreaming? Behold, in characters of blood, "Francis, forsake not my Amelia." And on the other side, "Amelia, all-powerful death has released thee from thy oath." Now do you see—do you see? With hand stiffening in death he wrote it, with his warm life's blood he wrote it—wrote it on the solemn brink of eternity. His spirit lingered in his flight to unite Francis ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... other hours the one-car special inched its way cautiously toward the goal, with Ford scanning every mile of the hazardous way as it swung into the beam of the headlight arc, with Hector's left hand stiffening on the brake-cock, and with a weary fireman dropping from his gangway at every curve ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... sought not alone in the Monroe doctrine, the tariff and bank issues, and the spread of internal improvements,—political events which commonly eclipse the intellectual aspects of nationality; but also in the Unitarian revolt of 1815, led by Channing, which loosed New England from the stiffening bonds of Calvinism, the Quaker schism in the Middle States, and the birth of the Campbellites in the West. The goodness of man was beginning to attract more attention than the total depravity of man. The North American ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... love scene as ever the old moon above has witnessed. There they clung, those two, in the actual shadow of death experiencing the fullest and acutest joy that our life has to offer. Nay, death was present with them, for, beneath their very feet, half-hidden by the water, lay the stiffening corpse of the Zulu. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... corners of the back. Covers, consisting of two sheets of colored paper folded in front like the pages, are placed at front and back, but not covering the back edge, or there is an outer sheet of colored paper with inside lining paper and a leaf of heavy paper between for stiffening. Silk cord is sewn through the holes and neatly tied, and the book is done—light in the hand and lying open well, inexpensive and capable with proper ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... have taken the announcement as a personal insult the girls could not understand, but that she did receive it in such, a spirit was proved by the sudden stiffening which passed over her features even as she spoke. She seated herself on the edge of the chair to which Nan escorted her, sternly refused an offer of tea, and vouchsafed only monosyllabic replies when spoken to. It was ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... her who lay under the pavement of it; whose sweet voice once, once long ago, once only to me—yet I shall see her again." He became silent as he said this, and no man cared to break in upon his thoughts, seeing the choking movement in his throat, the fierce clenching of hand and foot, the stiffening of the muscles all over him; but soon, with an upward jerk of his head, he threw back the long elf locks that had fallen over his eyes while his head was bent down, and went on ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... gasp of shock from a spinster-appearing female sunning herself hard by and angularly in the sand in a swimming suit monstrously unbeautiful, Lee Barton was aware of an involuntary and almost perceptible stiffening on the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... years of the eighteenth century there was a sudden awakening among the bishops to the growing abuse of non-residence and pluralities on the part of the clergy. One prelate of distinction devoted his triennial charge to the subject, and a general "stiffening" of episcopal good nature set in all round. The Bishop of Lincoln addressed Crabbe, with others of his delinquent clergy, and intimated to him very distinctly the duty of returning to those few sheep ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... clasp, the hushed and trembling kiss, The mother weeping at her beauty's side, And Death's last look and stiffening clutch—is this, Is this the outcome of a nation's pride? There lie the clammy corpses far and wide, And locks bedabbled and the princely cheek, Son, father, brother, husband, side by side— Oh, such a tale of horror who can speak! ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... away, yelling shrill warning, go warrior and chief; away, down stream, past the stiffening form of the brave fellow they killed; away past the station where the loop-holes blaze with rifle-shots and ring with exultant cheers; away across the road and down the winding valley, and so far to the north and the sheltering arms of the reservation,—and one more ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... becomes a smooth black canal between two steep white banks; and the glassy water seems momentarily stiffening into the solider blackness of ice. Here and there thin films are already formed over it, and are being constantly broken apart by the treacherous current; a flake a foot square is jerked away and goes sliding beneath the slight transparent surface till ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... but choked it off when he noted the angry stiffening of mademoiselle's figure. Somehow, her veiled countenance was impressive of lingering, bitter emotions. She was a Basque, and that was a primitive race. She was probably bold enough and hardy enough to fulfill her mission. She had plenty of courage ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... of rank, whose shoulder-emblem I could not distinguish, riding upon a limping field-horse. Four men held him to his seat, and a fifth led the animal. The officer was evidently wounded, though he did not seem to be bleeding, and the dust of battle had settled upon his blanched, stiffening face, like grave-mould upon a corpse. He was swaying in the saddle, and his hair—for he was bare-headed—shook across his white eyeballs. He reminded me of the famous Cid, whose body was sent ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of her terror in the night, her danger of the early morning, the men fighting and the man dead; in spite of the excitement and risks of the afternoon, shaking the heart in relief only less than in encounter, and in spite of aching head and limbs, stiffening to cramp while she still sat and the man still slept, Amaryllis knew herself happier than ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... opponent while Mr. Jameson was a sincere suffragist. The prospects were good for Mr. Jameson's election when President Wilson issued an appeal for the election of a Democratic Congress, which had the effect of stiffening the Republican ranks and Mr. Moses was elected by a small majority. After his election the National Association sent a representative to interview him. He told her that he was not interested in the question but that if the Legislature ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... way. At last F—— put me up by sheer strength. I found myself so deadly sick and faint when I was fairly in the saddle that it was some time before I could allow Helen to move; and never shall I forget the torture of her first step, for my shoulder was now stiffening in a most unpleasant way. F—— said it would be easier to canter; so we set off at full speed, and the cold air against my face kept me from fainting as we went along, though I fully expected to fall off every moment; if Helen had shied, or stumbled, or even capered a little, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... learning to ride is that the first day's experience is painfully stiffening. This applies to almost any unusual exercise. But to withdraw on account of that you may as well resign yourself to taking exercise no more severe than that afforded by a rocking chair. It does not pay to stop when you are stiff. Sticking to it is the only way that will train those hitherto ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... frustrate the plan; Eric and Electra were cordially received, and at dusk Willis and the baggage arrived punctually. The schooner was lying some distance from the wharf, all sails down, and apparently contemplating no movement. With darkness came a brisk, stiffening wind, and clouds shutting out even dim starlight. At ten o'clock, all things being in readiness, the captain went on deck; very soon after the glimmering lights of the city, then the frowning walls of Moro, were left behind, and the Dixie took her way silently ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... visible as he gazed upon the corpse. "Turn it over," he said huskily, after he had gazed for awhile upon the glazed eyes and the parted lips. "Let me see if he be really dead." His request was complied with; and as he became convinced that life had indeed departed from the already stiffening form, he exclaimed joyfully: "It is well—I have not failed—my task is accomplished. Had it been otherwise I could yet have ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... box, a heavy gray fog was rising and enveloping everything in its deadening blanket. The fog penetrated into the doctor's lungs and an intolerable pain, as though hot irons were searing the tissues, tore him. He tried to cough, but the sound could not force its way through his stiffening lips. Darkness closed in on him and he swayed. He was dimly conscious that the Russians were swarming about Feodrovna, knives and clubs in their hands. Then through the night came an ear-splitting crack and a ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... the tremendous neckties, cauliflower frills, and top-boots of the period, false calves and stays, a pair of which the Frenchman hairdresser is lacing for one of his customers. Another of the party, who has completed the upper part of his toilet, is so hampered with the voluminous folds and stiffening of his cravat that he cannot wriggle into his unmentionables. The caricaturists take us into the garrets of these fellows, abodes of squalor and wretchedness, and show us that beneath their exterior magnificence ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... older men, some of whom had already begun to feel their joints stiffening with rheumatism, she said: "Fishing's a hard game, boys, for the best of us. And it doesn't get any easier as we get older. There's a lot of you who will have to go into dry-dock before long and get patched up. And there's some that can't afford to lay up. You've been ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... faced and fought each other. When the lesson was well learned our generals began to win battles, and our soldiers to fight with a confidence altogether new to them. In vain do we look for any other explanation of the sudden stiffening up of the backbone of the Revolutionary army, or of the equally sudden restoration of an apparently dead and buried cause after even its most devoted followers had given up all as lost. As with expiring breath that little band of hunted fugitives, miserable remnant ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... don't expect too much," Lewson pointed out. "There's an American stove in the deck-house, and while we can't find anything meant to burn in it there's an ax down forward, and we could cut out cabin floorings, or a beam or two, without taking too much stiffening ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... trifling hundred thou.," they wrote, "To ease the joints and stiffening sockets." The public acted like a goat, They kept the cash inside ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... leaving it clear, though sad with the habitual sadness which had scored its many lines. "You have surprised me, indeed. But——" He stopped abruptly, and apparently for the first time noticed the young man standing near. Stiffening slightly, Colonel DeLisle looked keenly at Max, his eyes trying to solve the new puzzle. "But—my daughter, you ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... trenches did not wait. The sight of the tips of the glittering bayonets was too much for their courage. Their fire ceased; they turned and scurried over the parados, followed by bullets from the Haussas and met by bullets from their German task-masters, who had taken the precaution of stiffening their native levies with a lead ration should they ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
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