"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of yours has given me the cramp, standing here on the cold pavement. We'll have a little warm posset,—very small and thin, as they say in Tom ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... much as I could do to crawl to this room. I have walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked with rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in an emigrant vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had tried their luck on the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, like me, and were coming home to their native workhouses. You don't know what some of your emigrant ships are, perhaps. People talk about ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... not! But—oh! Don't you see? It's madness to think of swimming across with the tide against you! You could never do it. You might get cramp—Oh! Anything ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... for, but we had an enemy against which it was hard to contend; that was the cholera. Officers and men were quickly struck down by it. The Guards alone lost nearly a hundred men. It was sad to hear the poor fellows' cries as the terrible cramp seized them. All the troops suffered more or less from sickness— the French more than all. We were thankful when the order came for us to embark once more for the spot where we hoped to meet the enemy. Yet many a strong man was ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... clearly of opinion, and in this he was entirely in accordance with Lord Grey, that nothing but a large and comprehensive measure would be of any real use, and that "to nibble at disfranchisement and cramp reform by pedantic adherence to existing rights would be to deceive expectation, to whet appetite, and to bring about that revolution which it was our object to {129} avert." Russell drew up a sketch of his proposed Reform Bill, which he submitted to Lord Durham, and on the draft of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... kiddy from Cuba—"Somebody's orphan," the Spaniards of the mine called him, with a likely hit at the truth—little Toro had been to the Lago Frio with Jim, to see that he didn't drown of cramp or get eaten by one of the mammoth trout, and had hinted at dark doings to be wrought that very day, at closing time ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... tyll Friday last, which was Saint Margaret's day, and brought her xijd. for candles: she went by water; Mistres Lee went with her, and Robyn Jackesbite. Jane this night was sore trubbled with a collick and cramp in her belly; she vomyted this Monday more, and every night grew stiff in the sole likewise. A meridie hor. 3 cam Sir George Peckham to me to know the tytle for Norombega in respect of Spayn and Portugall parting the whole world's distilleryes. He promysed me ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... of keen remorse, From rankling horror cleanse his inmost part: Four are the pauses of the nightly course; Them, without rest, fill up with kindly art. And first his head upon cool pillow lay, Then bathe ye him in dew from Lethe's stream; His limbs, cramp-stiffen'd, will more freely play, If sleep-refreshed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... stars—"which I owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs which brought us here after—after we had found that we had not as much money as we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material facts of board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know the fulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to the spirit of America—the spirit of youth and accomplishment. Instead of dreaming of past cities, I set out to make ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... swimming ashore. Just as they were about to give up the search, a noise was heard that seemed to come from a bureau in the ladies' cabin. Search was made, and there, coiled up in a narrow bureau-drawer, lay the leader of the band. He had been there two hours, and was helpless from cramp and exhaustion. He was placed in a cell at Fort Lafayette; but later, having been given the privilege of walking about the fort, managed to escape by making floats of empty tomato-cans, and with their aid swimming almost two miles. He was afterwards recaptured, and remained a prisoner ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... don't get cramp," said Avis. "That must be dreadful. Once when we spent our holidays at Whitby we had such an adventure. We were walking along the shore, and we saw a young lady swimming a little distance out. Suddenly ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Terre of Bouguer, a passage, which shows that this astronomer, whose opinions are of such weight, considered also 36 degrees as the inclination of a slope quite inaccessible, if the nature of the ground did not admit of forming steps with the foot.) We felt the want of cramp-irons, or sticks shod with iron. Short grass covered the rocks of gneiss, and it was equally impossible to hold by the grass, or to form steps as we might have done in softer ground. This ascent, which was attended with more fatigue than danger, discouraged ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... paid devotions to St. Hubert for the recovery of his son, who was cured by this means. The son also performed the necessary rites at the shrine, and was cured not only of the hydrophobia "but of the worser phrensy with which his father had instilled him." Cramp-rings were also used; and eelskins to this day are tied round the legs as a preventive of this spasmodic affection; and by laying sticks across the floor, on going to bed, cramp has ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... close to the girls who aren't so much used to it, in case they should get cramp, or turn giddy," explained Lettice. "Beatrice Marsden and Ivy Ridgeway are only beginning, so I expect she'll paddle about with them in four feet of water. Janie Henderson never ventures ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... pries him open. No wolf cud kill a bear th' way Willum J. Long iv Stamford has described. A bear has th' sthrongest throat iv anny crather in th' wurruld, barrin' Bryan. Why, I wud hate to have to sthrangle a bear. I did wanst, but I had writer's cramp f'r ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... singlestick, wrestling, and the like, and with an improved system of physical education. It sounds little better than a mockery to speak of deeds of valour and personal prowess, whilst we submit to confine our limbs in garments that cramp the frame and resist every healthy movement of the body. We must not go farther into the question in these pages, but we may ask—were there as many narrow-shouldered, weak-chested, delicate men, in the days when every gentleman knew how ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... creatures whom it was more wasteful to send forth with the bridle thrown up, and to set to steeple-hunting instead of running on highways! But it is the lot of many such, in this dislocated time,—Heaven mend it! In a better time there will be other "professions" than those three extremely cramp, confused and indeed almost obsolete ones: professions, if possible, that are true, and do not require you at the threshold to constitute yourself an impostor. Human association,—which will mean discipline, vigorous wise subordination and co-ordination,—is so unspeakably ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... sunrise, and crawled wearily up the steps of the hotel to our rooms, tired with the cramp of dooly and saddle for so many days, and longing for the luxury of the bath, the civilised meal, and the arm-chair. Of course I did not suppose Isaacs would go to bed. He expected that the Westonhaughs would have returned by this time, and he ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... shortly, "I guess we've done our duty. We've taken a prisoner. I owe a duty to my backbone, which is sore from these rocks; and my right leg, which has been tied in a knot with cramp for three hours." ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is quiet and I am alone at night, if I don't go to sleep at once—it is terrible! Do you think I should be afraid of death? If I have got to go through life with this terrible ache in my heart, in my whole body —for when I cry my very fingers cramp—I'd a thousand times rather go to Cuba and have done ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Stewart's DIRLETON'S DOUBTS AND QUESTIONS ON THE LAW OF SCOTLAND RESOLVED AND ANSWERED,' are works of authority in Scottish jurisprudence. As is generally the case, the doubts are held more in respect than the solution.] until the cramp speech [Till of late years, every advocate who catered at the Scottish bar made a Latin address to the Court, faculty, and audience, in set terms, and said a few words upon a text of the civil law, to show his Latinity and jurisprudence. He also wore his hat for a minute, in order to vindicate his ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... silk canopy over her head, to know that breakfast would be served when she rang for it, and that her mail and newspapers would be brought—these were unbelievable things. She had a feeling that if she told Uncle Rod he would shake his head over it. He had a theory that luxury tended to cramp the soul. ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... the muscles generally of the extremities, accompanied with great pain. The muscles of the legs and feet are the most commonly affected with cramp, especially after great exertion. The best treatment is immediately to stand upright, and to well rub the part with the hand. The application of strong stimulants, as spirits of ammonia, or of anodines, as opiate liniments, has been ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... fwhere we shtopped afther a long run, an' I got down to take the cramp out av me joints, an' take a taste av dhrink. I over-shtayed somehow, an', whin I got to the train, begob, it was on the move. There was a first-class carr'ge door opin right forninst me, an' into that the gyard crams me holus-bolus. There ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... drops of Kayu Puteh oil, extracted from a Borneon wood and called cajeput oil in England, a very strong aromatic medicine. This mixture proved itself very useful. If the patients applied in good time it invariably gave relief to the cramp and pain in the stomach; if the disease had gone on to sickness it was more difficult to administer. Sometimes we followed it up with laudanum ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... it is true, but pregnant with meaning, against all that is most specially recognised as conservative and national. [37] He strives to pour new wine into old bottles; but in this case the bottles are too strong for him to burst. The Atticism which had guided and comprehended, now began to cramp development. To make a world-wide out of a Hellenic form of thought, it is necessary to go outside the charmed soil of Greece. Only on the banks of the Nile will the new culture find a shrine, whose remote and mysterious authority frees it from the spell of Hellenism, now ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... spent in the bitter frost, thick sea fog or flying spume, in waters infested with mines and hostile submarines, certain senses became dulled, though the brain remained alert and the limbs as active as cramp and cold would allow. But the little incidents of those long hours are lost in blurred memories of cries from the look-out, hulls towering out of the blackness, the flashing of Morse lamps, the ceaseless and violent pitching and rolling ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... contemporaries. In an age when old forms of government had grown rigid and obsolete, when the stiffened crust of society was beginning to heave with new throes, when ancient faiths had left mere husks of dead formulae to cramp the minds of men, when even superficial observers were startled by vague omens of a coming crash, or expected some melodramatic regeneration of the world, it was perhaps not strange that two men, tottering on the verge of madness, should ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... iteration and of the practice of adjusting knowledge to the needs of the feeble-minded by perpetual explanation of what is already simple ad nauseam for the mature intelligence of the teacher. It produces a sort of pedagogical cramp in the soul, for which there is no remedy like a philosophical view of the world, unless, perhaps, it be the study of the greatest poets, ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... one of the boys told his mother, "with a lady, and he stopped and talked to us, and he asked for a bit of honeysuckle off the porch, and gave it the lady. I couldn't see if she was pretty; she had her veil down. She was riding one of Cramp's horses, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cameron could not have gained entrance to Briarwood; without the attested examination papers of Miss Cramp, teacher of the district school, who had prepared Ruth for entering Cheslow High School before it was supposed that she could go to Briarwood, the girl from the Red Mill would not have been starting ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... dollars each to learn those. And the only one she never forgets is, 'When in doubt, lead your highest check.' But don't ever accuse her of gambling. Poor girl, if she keeps on playing bridge she'll have writer's cramp; that's all I'm afraid of. I see there's a new rapid-fire check-book on the market, and an improved fountain pen that doesn't slobber. I'll have to get ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... hands and spared them all further trouble on that score, distributing camp and garrison equipage for long leagues away to the east. Two miles back, trooper Carey, who had been complaining of severe cramp and pain in the stomach, begged to be allowed to fall out and rest awhile. He was a reliable old soldier when whisky was not winning the upper hand, and this time whisky was not at fault. A dose of ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... will feed them,' said Scott; 'thrice a day we will feed them'; and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible cramp. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... will do: I may have overlooked a bird or two. Where are the biscuits? Are you getting cramp Down by the water there—it must ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... Street, you— Jew". In a day the prelate counted seven hundred and thirteen telegrams from the Terni Cannon foundry, many a diamond dealer, polisher, cutter, the Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin, the Clydebank, Cramp of Philadelphia, the Russian Finance Minister, San Francisco, Lloyd's, metal brokers, the Neva, and one night, the eve of a dash to Amsterdam, he, with O'Hara, Loveday, and five clerks, sat swotting till morning broke, sustained by gin and soda-water. The priest ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... much as if they had been subjected to the bastinado! Nothing could be worse, and whilst the heat was intense for the first part of the journey, the latter part was bitterly cold, yet it was impossible to move one's arm in order to draw on a wrap. Cold, heat, cramp, and dejection are the portion of those who trust themselves to the accursed Messageries ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... limbs of a growing body should be entirely free. Nothing should cramp their movements or their growth; nothing should fit too closely or bind the body; there should be no ligatures whatever. The present French dress cramps and disables even a man, and is especially ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... civilization is now terminated; but Christianity also had its middle age, and this, perhaps, is not yet fully terminated. There is still a remainder of the old spell, even the spell of human authority, and by which a certain cramp or confinement has been laid on the genius of Christianity. We cannot doubt that the time of its complete emancipation is coming, when it shall break loose from the imprisonment in which it is held; but meanwhile ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... my arms about and warm myself, but I found strength time and again to chafe her hands and feet to restore the circulation. And still she pleaded with me not to cast off the masts. About three in the morning she was caught by a cold cramp, and after I had rubbed her out of that she became quite numb. I was frightened. I got out the oars and made her row, though she was so weak I thought she would ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... to speak; He fail'd indeed—but still his Friend confess'd The best have fail'd, and he had done his best: The first of swimmers, when at first he swims, Has little use or freedom in his limbs; Nay, when at length he strikes with manly force, The cramp may seize him, and impede his course. Encouraged thus, our Clerk again essay'd The daring act, though daunted and afraid: Succeeding now, though partial his success, And pertness mark'd his manner and address, Yet such improvement issued from his books, That all ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... Grandparents (who had not yet fallen poor), under her exclusive care. With self-sacrificing love and careful fidelity, she nursed her little Boy; whose tender body had to suffer not only from the common ailments of children, but was heavily visited with fits of cramp. In a beautiful region, on the bosom of a tender Mother, and in these first years far from the oversight of a rigorous Father, the Child grew up, and unfolded himself under ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... more difficulty in the undertaking than you are aware of. There is a peculiar rhythmus in many of our airs, and a necessity of adapting syllables to the emphasis, or what I would call the feature-notes of the tune, that cramp the poet, and lay him under almost insuperable difficulties. For instance, in the air, "My wife's a wanton wee thing," if a few lines smooth and pretty can be adapted to it, it is all you can expect. The following were made extempore to it; and though on further study I might give ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... from half to one hour. Faintness, nausea, incessant vomiting, epigastric pain, headache, diarrhoea, tightness and heat of throat and fauces, thirst, catching in the breath, restlessness, debility, cramp in the legs, and convulsive twitchings. The skin becomes cold and clammy. In some cases the symptoms are those of collapse, with but little pain, vomiting, or diarrhoea. In others the patient falls into a deep sleep, while in the fourth class the symptoms resemble closely ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... gods kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They swathed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... think I moved the mark maybe ... here now is the part he was reading to me himself ... "the remedies for diseases belonging to the skins next the brain: headache, vertigo, cramp, convulsions, palsy, incubus, ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... after a moment's thought, "I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... developed to participate in their full benefits; and below the capacity of the superior ranks, who, though fitted for the right use and enjoyment of more liberal and higher social adaptations, are nevertheless obliged to cramp their natures and dwarf their activities to the measure of the capacities of the more ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... He had left Vernon without any breakfast, seized every now and then with hopeless despair and raging pangs which had driven him to munch the leaves of the hedges as he tramped along. A prey to cramp and fright, his body bent, his sight dimmed, and his feet sore, he had continued his weary march, ever drawn onwards in a semi-unconscious state by a vision of Paris, which, far, far away, beyond the horizon, seemed to be summoning him ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... nearly so shifty in Biskra when she had engaged him. But she attached no importance to the thought, and dismissed it as much less interesting than the great difference displayed in their respective modes of riding. The Arab's exaggeratedly short stirrup would have given her agonies of cramp. She pointed the difference with a laugh of amusement and drew the man on to speak of his horses. The one Diana was riding was an unusually fine beast, and had been one of the greatest points in ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... banquet in a great house is an admirable thing, provided always its getting up did not cost the entertainer an inward conflict, nor its recollection a twinge of economical regret, nor its bills a cramp of anxiety. A simple evening party in the smallest village is just as admirable in its degree, when the parlor is cheerfully lighted, and the board prettily spread, and the guests are made to feel comfortable without being ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... not free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future like a tide. He broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; She chooses ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... long swim in the Arm would spend the night with his father. One evening his love for home saved him from drowning. Running out from town and down to the water below the house, he plunged in as usual, but, when a little distance out from shore, was seized with cramp. The remedies in such a case—to kick vigorously or throw oneself on one's back and float—are just the remedies a man feels utterly unable at the time to try. He was alone and drowning when, his eye being turned ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... and I have forgotten many things of these later years, but I'll never forget Marjie as I first saw her. She was stiff from long sitting in the big covered wagon, and she stretched her pudgy little legs to get the cramp out of them, as she took in the scene. Her pink sun-bonnet had fallen back and she was holding it by both strings in one hand. Her rough brown hair was all in little blowsy ringlets round her face and the two braids hanging in front of her shoulders ended each in a ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... to be angry, Troilus felt the cramp of death seize on his heart, "and down he fell all suddenly in swoon." Pandarus "into bed him cast," and called on his niece to pull out the thorn that stuck in his heart, by promising that she would "all forgive." She whispered in his ear the assurance ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... to ride. My soul Smooth'd itself out, a long-cramp'd scroll Freshening and fluttering in the wind. Past hopes already lay behind. What need to strive with a life awry? Had I said that, had I done this, So might I gain, so might I miss. Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... sentence of death passed on a criminal by a judge:—he has just undergone the cramp word; sentence has just ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... not? Surely Professor Hardwigg did not intend the old woman and myself to become martyrs to his obstinate will. Were we to be starved to death? A frightful recollection came to my mind. Once we had fed on bits and scraps for a week while he sorted some curiosities. It gave me the cramp even to think ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... press," said I, "Who are ye?" At that sound their necks they bent, And when their looks were lifted up to me, Straightway their eyes, before all moist within, Distill'd upon their lips, and the frost bound The tears betwixt those orbs and held them there. Plank unto plank hath never cramp clos'd up So stoutly. Whence like two enraged goats They clash'd together; them such fury seiz'd. And one, from whom the cold both ears had reft, Exclaim'd, still looking downward: "Why on us Dost speculate so ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... diminishes rapidly in width under the volute. They must therefore be cut more or less wedge like, according to the modelling or proportion of the parts, so that when placed on, the screwing of the cramp will be direct. When this is done to satisfaction, the usual process advised for the glueing may be proceeded with, and being carefully seen to be in proper order, the cramp with pads against the outside ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... he, "I pray thee, free these limbs from the hateful thongs that eat into the flesh, and so cramp his benumbed members, and Wauchee will fly like a deer to his own people, and also bear away with him the sweet Wild-rose of the Oneidas, to bloom afresh in the gardens of the Mohawks. Will Monega free the bondsman? and will she fly with him to be the bride of his heart, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... weeks of pregnancy patients are apt to have cramp-like pains in the lower part of the abdomen. These are often mistaken for labor pains. True labor pains are characterized by starting in the back, extending around the abdomen and toward the pubes and down the thighs; they come at more or less regular intervals of half to three-quarters of an ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... The nihilists accept no principle or creed they reject government and religion and all institutions which cramp the ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... always enough to make them take to their legs in terror. For how was it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... said, "you've mentioned more names in the last ten minutes than you've mentioned in all the weeks I've been here? You give me a mental cramp. Why, I thought you and I had these hills to ourselves; instead we're threatened on every side, and yet I haven't seen a soul on my tramps. Where do they keep themselves? What has this Burke Lawson ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... "I say it is weak. It is weak of you not to comprehend what your life is to be, and what you need for your happiness. It is a shame for you to make no use of the glorious gifts that are yours, and to cramp and hinder all your own progress. I want you to have room to show ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... (in cramp doggerel, done into speech): "To thee, O Lord, we poor folk make moan; the Devil has sown his seeds in this land! Law thy hand created for protection of thy children: but where now is Law? Widows and orphans weep that the Princes do not unite ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... and simplify her complex tastes and adult interests back into the narrow limits of a child's toy-house. Could it be that she felt something of the same displeasure when she set herself fully to conceive what it would be to cramp herself and her complex interests and adult affections back to . ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... voice be well formed, when it will be easy to increase the volume of sound. Constant shouting causes the muscles of the larynx to lose their contractile power, and a condition is brought about which is analogous to writer's cramp. Sometimes no voice can be produced, while at others it is given forth in a series of uncontrollable jerks. Singers deficient in resonance, and who have not acquired the best use and control of the various parts ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... down and across the lake, the spoon revolving behind at the end of from ten to fifteen yards of line. All that the angler had to do was to sit tight on his tiny seat in the stern of the cockle-shell, holding the line in his hand, and dodging the inevitable cramp as best he could by uneasily shifting his ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... on a cramp, and he would have been drowned had not some of his people plunged into the water, and pulled him out. As it was, his imprudence brought on a serious illness, and for a short time Alexander's life was ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... of the deceased herself, in the paroxysm of a rush of blood to the brain; and he fortified his wise position by the instance of a late statesman, who, he averred, cut his throat with a pen-knife, to relieve himself of pressure on the temples: while another surgeon—Stephen Cramp, he was farrier as well, and had been, until lately, time out of mind, the village AEsculapius, who looked with scorn on his pert rival, and opposed him tooth and nail on all occasions—insisted that it was not only physically impossible for ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... early in the summer of 1665. He seems to have gone ashore to see the French authorities. Perhaps he drank too strong a punch of rum and sugar—a drink very prejudicial in such a climate to one not used to it. Perhaps he took the yellow fever, or the coast cramp; the fact cannot now be known. At any rate he sickened, and died there, "before he could accomplish his desires"—"all things hereby remaining in suspense." One account, based on the hearsay of a sea-captain, says that Mansvelt was taken by the Spaniards, and brought ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... eventful day came at last, and nearly the whole school mustered at Cramp Corner to see the sport. For the half-mile race, which was to come off first, there were only two fellows competing. Our man was Barlow—of paper-chase celebrity—while the sixth were very confident ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... laughter at our attempts to catch these two devilish goats, which to our cost we found were not so feeble, after all; for getting one up in a corner, she raises herself up on her hind legs and brings her skull down with such a smack on my knee that I truly thought she had broke my cramp-bone, whilst t'other, taking Dawson in the ankles with her horns, as he was reaching forward to lay hold of her, lay him sprawling in our little stream of water. Nor do I think we should ever have captured them, but that, giving over our endeavours ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... his forehead, and was very near-sighted. He seemed to have been born old, so that when he came to London to call on Rosebud amid all the school-girls he used to say he felt like a bear with the cramp. Grewgious, however, under his oddity had a very tender heart, particularly for Rosebud, whose mother he had been secretly in love with before she married. But he had grown up a dry old bachelor, living in gloomy rooms in London, and no one would ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... inscription, of which not a single letter has been seen for many ages; but this habile observateur, perceiving a great number of irregular holes upon the frontal and frize of this edifice, concluded that they were the cramp-holes which had formerly held an inscription, and which, according to the practice of the Romans, were often composed of single letters of bronze. Mons. Seguier therefore erected scaffolding, and took off on paper the distances and ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... some variety of opinion among medical men. A few hold that they cramp the feet, and prevent children from learning to walk as early as they otherwise would. If it were best for children that they should learn to walk as early as possible, the last objection might have weight. But it ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... a piece of chalk and write quite a nice long piece on me. Then he would rub it out and write it all over again, but more fully. He kept this up at intervals of every other day until he had writer's cramp. After that he used pins. He would pin the seams together, uttering little soothing, clucking sounds in German whenever a pin went through the goods and into me. The German cluck is not so soothing as the cluck of the English-speaking ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... and the soggy condition of my clothes kept me awake for some time last night, and the exceptional exercise gives bad attacks of cramp. Our lips are getting raw and blistered. The eyes of the party are improving, I am glad to say. We are just starting our march with no very hopeful outlook. (T. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... one of the family, it was believed, would surely die before the end of the year. There are many other superstitions attached to the day, such as the preserving of eggs laid on Good Friday, which were supposed to have power to extinguish fire; the making of cramp-rings out of the handles of coffins, which rings were blessed by the King of England as he crept on his knees to the cross, and were supposed to be preservatives ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... which they carry on their backs. Men with portable stoves too, who always have a cup of tea ready for you for a small coin worth about the twentieth part of a penny. Tiny-footed women toddling awkwardly along, with children—also cramp-footed—toddling awkwardly after them, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, and with their poor little arms stuck out at right angles with their bodies, to help them to keep their balance. Even the blind beggars, who go along striking on a bell to let people know that they ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to give you a cramp!" finished up Tom, who had come up. "Beautiful weather for drying clothes or taking pictures," he went on. "By the way, I haven't used my new camera yet. I must get it out as soon ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... 14. Cramp is effectually prevented by placing the shoes with the toes just peeping from beneath the coverlet; the same is also prevented by tying the garter round the left leg ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... is filled through and through with intensely painful emotion about himself. He is threatened, he is guilty, he is doomed, he is annihilated, he is lost. His mind is fixed as if in a cramp on these feelings of his own situation, and in all the books on insanity you may read that the usual varied flow of his thoughts has ceased. His associative processes, to use the technical phrase, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... dreadfully short allowance of sleep;—so that now first, when fairly down to rest, all aches and bruises begin to be fairly sensible; and my clearest feeling at this present is the uncomfortable one, "that I am not Caliban, but a Cramp": terribly cramped indeed, if I could tell ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that of the Notary. The peculiar flourish before the Notary's name is what is called the Tabellionato, a fanciful distinctive monogram which each Notary adopted. Marco's Will is unfortunately written in a very cramp hand with many contractions. The other two Wills (of Marco the Elder and Maffeo) are in beautiful and clear ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the brows with a migraine; he collareth them by the neck with a quinsy; he bolteth them by the arms with a palsy, so that they cannot lift their hands to their head; he manacleth their hands with the gout in their fingers; he wringeth them by the legs with the cramp in their shins; he bindeth them to the bed with the crick in the back; and he layeth one there at full length, as unable to rise as though he lay fast by ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... she called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret floor and set down his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon, brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to command the mouth ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... shall once again pursue by passing over all those points of theory which are so dear to Dr. Pym. I know how they are made. Perjury is a variety of aphasia, leading a man to say one thing instead of another. Forgery is a kind of writer's cramp, forcing a man to write his uncle's name instead of his own. Piracy on the high seas is probably a form of sea-sickness. But it is unnecessary for us to inquire into the causes of a fact which we deny. Innocent Smith never did commit burglary ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... lit by neither sun, nor moon, was called a sleeping-room. Alcove-like cells were hewn into the rock; here, on a couch of damp, half-rotten straw, covered with a sackcloth, the unfortunate sufferers were to repose from the day's work. Over each cell a cramp-iron was fixed, wherewith to lock-up the prisoners like ferocious dogs. No ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp his mind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is much misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly joyously, puppies play, kittens ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... rods under water the other day," said Charlie. "I shouldn't want to risk myself so long out of sight. Suppose the cramp should seize you, Nat, I guess you'd like ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... walked in days that seem to man long, long ago. How brief and strange the little lives of men, and so beset with customs framed to cramp the heart and curse the soul before its time! To me,—here since Time began to build that bridge of sighs and tears that link the two eternities—it seems but yesternight that, hand in hand they wandered here, so wrapt in happiness ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... respect to alligators; while those who rejected both had private prejudices as to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent fever, the first assistant rheumatism, and the second assistant congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion, and swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within bullet-range of any hospitalities on the other shore. But I knew the folly of most alarms about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination peoples the water with many things which do not belong there, or prefer to keep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the boys met Steve at the small airport, both Rick and Scotty had writer's cramp, and the notebook was nearly used up. They had recorded over half a ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... had been eating of new chestnuts, and got the cramp. So the forring nuss, as wasn't worth her salt, comes screaming after me to come and do something for the baby. Of course I went and did what was right and proper for the poor little suffering creetur; and when I had put him to sleep, ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... but who could say, if, in the rescue, youth and poetry had not perished? Poetry and youth are of a volatile mood,—they are butterflies. Shut them up in a cage, and they will dash their delicate wings to pieces against its bars. Endeavor to direct them as they soar, and you cramp their flight, you deprive them of their audacity,—two qualities which are often to be met with in inexperience, and the loss of which—am I wrong in saying so?—is not always compensated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... cramp at night place your shoes by the bedside in the form of a T. One end pointed to, and the end of the other shoe pointed from the bed, ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... mostly coronary sclerosis, fatty degeneration of the heart muscle, adherent pericarditis and perhaps some nerve degenerations. Various explanations of the heart pang have been suggested, such as a spasm or cramp of the heart muscle, sudden interference with the heart's action, as adherent pericarditis, a sudden dilatation of the heart, an interference with the usual stimuli from auricle to ventricle and therefore a very ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... I chide you, dame, to amend you. You are too fine to be a Millers daughter; for if you should but stoop to take up the tole dish, you will have the cramp in your finger at ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... dog? A mosquito? A bullfrog? A woodtick? A garden snail? And, Leo, what is your own personality when you sleep and dream? When you are seasick? When you are in love? When you have colic? When you have a cramp in the leg? When you are smitten abruptly with the fear of death? When you are angry? When you are exalted with the sense of the beauty of the world and think you think ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... reaches out both his hands. His face is deathly pale. His eyes gleam with fever. The boys laugh. . . . Their loud calls press themselves to his ears. . . . Another moment and the hands of his mother reach around him as in a cramp. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... that doth uplift the thought of men Above the mold, and bring to human ken The joys of radiance, air and clear bird-songs; So that the brow, o'er moist with sullen toil, May catch a breeze from far-off Paradise; So that the soul may, for a moment, rise Up from the stoop and cramp of daily moil— May own his gift Divine! as sure may trace Its Source, as that of waters kind hands hold To thirsty lips; nor need he mourn (since grace Of his hath such refreshment wrought) if gold Be scant; to him hath richer boon ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... his cab window, and when the lightning flashed, saw that the cut was clear of rock and released the brakes slightly to allow the long train to slip through the reverse curve at the bridge. Curves cramp a train, and a smooth runner likes ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... clasp small cramp bring moan grasp stall stamp cling coast flask fall grand sling toast graft wall stand swing roast craft squall lamp thing roach book boon stork wad pod good spoon horse was rob took bloom snort wash rock foot broom short wast soft hook stool ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... the company swim over and fetch it, rather than walk several miles on foot, it being very hot weather; but none of the party could swim but himself; and so he plunged in, and, as he was swimming over, was taken with the cramp a few roods from the shore ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Tortugas; he exposed the pusillanimity of the minister, and the futility of his negotiations; he moved for such resolutions as would evince the resentment of an injured nation, and the vigour of a British parliament. These were warmly combated by sir Robert Walpole, who affirmed, that they would cramp the ministers in their endeavours to compromise these differences; that they would frustrate their negotiations, intrench upon the king's prerogative, and precipitate the nation into an unnecessary and expensive war. Answers produced replies, and a general debate ensued. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... an attack of cramp, for he believed this fable, which Coctier had invented to protect his own life. But when he recovered consciousness, he continued ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... colder and more numb, every minute. He looked to see if the men were coming; the road was bare as far as he could see. Then the cold began creeping, creeping, up his arm; first his wrist, then his arm to the elbow, then his arm to the shoulder; how cold it was! And soon it began to ache. Ugly little cramp-pains streamed up his finger, up his palm, up his arm, till they reached into his shoulder, and down the back of his neck. It seemed hours since the little brother went away. He felt very lonely, and the hurt in his arm grew and grew. He watched the road with ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... physique yet so nicely balanced of proportion that one felt more conscious of delicate litheness than of size. As her breath came fast with excitement the fine arch of her heaving bosom was that of a Diana. Belted about a waist that had never known the cramp of stays, she wore a pair of trousers thrust into her boot tops and no man there ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... expose, I make corrupted men my foes. 20 What then? I hate the paltry tribe; Be virtue mine; be theirs the bribe. I no man's property invade; Corruption's yet no lawful trade. Nor would it mighty ills produce, Could I shame bribery out of use, I know 'twould cramp most politicians, Were they tied down to these conditions. 'Twould stint their power, their riches bound, And make their parts seem less profound. 30 Were they denied their proper tools, How could they lead their knaves and fools? Were this the case, let's ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the expansive force of water; equally useless is it to attempt any check on the expansive force of mind,—it will ooze out! We ought long ago to have been convinced that the only power allowed to us is the power of direction. If one-half the amount of effort expanded to useless endeavours to cramp and check, had been turned towards this channel, how different would be the results! It is true that it is easier to check than to guide,—to fetter than to restrain; and that to attempt to remove evil by the first-occurring remedy ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... of a growing child should be free to move easily in his clothing; nothing should cramp their growth or movement; there should be nothing tight, nothing fitting closely to the body, no belts of any kind. The French style of dress, uncomfortable and unhealthy for a man, is especially bad for children. The stagnant humours, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... our day, the family, the State, our moral codes, sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality a deadly enemy; therefore every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... think," she burst out at last, indignantly, "of all the hours I've spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my stiff old joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten you both with a watery grave to bring you ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... a number of cases, there is an excessive amount of pain, preventing sleep; where this is due to cramp-like contractions of the muscles and movements of the fragments, it is relieved by more accurate fixation, as by strips of plaster; otherwise a hypodermic injection of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... where the soap was. Now and then, in fact, in a sort of bravado I deliberately lost it, so as to be able to catch it again and put it back in full view on the tray. You can also rest your feet on the tray when you are washing them, and so avoid cramp. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... Junius.—Mr. Cramp, in his late publication, Junius and his Works, conjectures that the printer having bound a copy of Junius for and under the direction of the writer of the letters, followed the pattern in the binding of other copies; and this, he says, "will account for similar ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... to eat my berry," he said, with a laugh, and proceeded to pluck and eat it, as Twinkle had done. He yelled once or twice at the cramp the fruit gave him, but as soon as the pain ceased he began to grow and change in the same way his ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... gasping and covered with blood! while Joanne struggled vainly to free herself, and scream after scream rang from her lips. And John Aldous knew that at last the end had come. For there was no longer strength in his arms, and there was something that was like a strange cramp in his fingers, while the clutch at his own throat was turning the world black. His grip relaxed. His hands fell limp. The last that he realized was that Quade was over him, and ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... ground which was not picked up at the very instant it was perceived, meant terrible ill-luck to Mrs. Twitt,—if a cat sneezed, it was a sign that there was going to be sickness in the village,—and she always carried in her pocket "a bit of coffin" to keep away the cramp. She also had a limitless faith in the power of cursing, and she believed most implicitly in the fiendish abilities of a certain person, (whether male or female, she did not explain) whose address ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... individuals, but because its effect in the house of commons was that it acted as a check on those places which were popularly represented. He further argued, that if a house of commons were once elected on the principles of this bill, it would cramp the crown in the exercise of its prerogatives, and create a body in that house so irresistible as to make their lordships' decisions on all public questions a dead letter. The house of commons would become too much the image of the people. The dangers, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... dear boy, at the change for the worse in my handwriting. I am suffering for my devotion to the studious habits of a lifetime: my right hand is attacked by the malady called Writer's Cramp. The doctor here can do nothing. He tells me of some foreign woman, mentioned in his newspaper, who cures nervous derangements of all kinds by hand-rubbing, and who is coming to London. When you next hear from me, I may be in London too."—There ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... pencil on the table and leaned back with a sigh. My fingers were so stiff with writers' cramp that I felt as though I should never be able to open my hand again. But I, at least, had had a night's sleep. As for the poor Doctor, he was so weary that he had hardly put the tank back upon the table and dropped into a chair, when his eyes closed ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... hopelessness. For no man who had appeared before the pure angel-child, lovely Angela, in the way the Chevalier had done, could dream of hope. He attempted to speak, but his tongue seemed to be numbed by cramp. At last, controlling himself with an effort, he stammered with trembling voice, 'Signor Vertua, listen to me. I have not won anything from you—nothing at all. There is my strong box; it is yours,—nay, I must pay you ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... from pains in the head during slumber, and any excessive amount of sleep deranges his stomach. While he was in full vigour, he generally went to bed with his clothes on, even to the tall boots, which he has always worn, because of a chronic tendency to cramp, as well as for other reasons. At certain seasons he has kept these boots on for such a length of time, that when he drew them off the skin came away together with the leather, like that of a sloughing snake. He was never stingy of cash, nor did he accumulate ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... time, for a cramp seized him with such violence that he was obliged to sit down and rest ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... given, because it is not only the earliest, but perhaps the most characteristic of the whole. Despite the apparently unsuitable forms, it is evident that the writer is striving, without knowing it, at what we call journalism. But fashion and the absence of models cramp and distort his work. Its main features are to be found in the personal and satirical pieces, in the vivid and direct humanity of some touches in the euphuist tract-romances, in the delightful snatches of verse which intersperse and relieve the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... supersedes, in many cases, all kinds of medicines. It is particularly useful in confined habit of body, as also diarrhoea, bowel complaints, affections of the kidneys and bladder, such as stone or gravel; inflammatory irritation and cramp of the urethra, cramp of the kidneys and bladder, strictures, and hemorrhoids. This really invaluable remedy is employed with the most satisfactory result, not only in bronchial and pulmonary complaints, where irritation and pain are to be removed, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... go on to Philadelphia at once on some private business for the Chief. You know he is a very heavy stockholder in the Cramp Shipbuilding Company. I will not be back for ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... more pleasant than the previous, but the sour apples, and a draught of cold water, had produced anything but a favourable effect; indeed, I suffered most of the day with severe symptoms of cramp. The day passed away again without any further incident, and as I set out at nightfall, I felt quite satisfied that I could not pass another twenty-four hours without nourishment. I made but little ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... hurried out of the room, but the door once closed, her manner changed. One might have supposed a sudden cramp had seized her, from her distorted face, and twitching and panting, and beating the air with her clinched fists, and her quivering lips uttering ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... with damnatory crosses like criminals of old time. That ended his school days. He introduced us to an officer, whose business it was to search for spies, a restless man who was always feeling under the seats with his feet. Perhaps it was only cramp! The four Englishmen, cheered at the thought that their long journey was nearing its end, burst into song. The Serbs stood round listening to the melodies that were so different to their own plaintive wailings, and presently asked us ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... you cannot see the dial-plate. How profound a fit of meditation! Or, supposing him asleep, how infantile a quietude of conscience, and what wholesome order in the gastric region, are betokened by slumber so entirely undisturbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dreamtalk, trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ, or any slightest irregularity of breath! You must hold your own breath, to satisfy yourself whether he breathes at all. It is quite inaudible. You hear the ticking of his watch; his breath you do not ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reverence was as genial, jolly, and joky as the cheeriest, smilingest, comfortingest, most latitudinarian Methodist preacher you ever had at your bedside to help you look your latter end in the face, through the dubious issues of a surprise attack of cramp colic, or an overwhelming onslaught of cholera morbus. Indeed, it not unfrequently happens that the human heart is better than the human creed, and the Rev. Burlman Reynolds was wont to square his life by the dictates of his inward ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... almost unaltered since the Aryan genius culminated in the Ramayana and Mahabharata—and yet each artisan in India is a true artist."[41] In art, unfortunately, "the letter killeth;" and true artists as they are, the ancient traditions bind and cramp them, while the ancient materials, the dyes, and the absolute command of time are failing: so that the beauty of Indian embroideries and other decorations is gradually reducing itself to mannerism, which is more dangerous to art than ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... agree with MR. CRAMP (Vol. vii., p. 569.) that "the undecided question of the authorship of Junius requires that every statement should be carefully examined, and (as far as possible) only well-authenticated facts be admitted as evidence." I take leave, therefore, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... their firmly and equally grasping both flexor and extensor muscles alike, they are steadied, and rendered much less likely to be affected with spasmodic action or cramp. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... still struck out with my feet, I saw the savages on the margin of the water, fiercely threatening me with their daggers, but not daring to swim off in pursuit. My mind was greatly relieved; but there was the risk of cramp, or giving way from fatigue, as also the still greater danger of being snapped up by a huge shark. My friends, however, knew this as well as I did, and continuing to exert themselves as at first, at length came up with me. The ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... P. and A. say I work like a tiger, and I s'pose I do without knowing it. I am so glad you had a pleasant Sunday. No doubt you had more bodily strength with which to enjoy spiritual things. A weak body hinders prayer and praise when the heart would sing, if it were not in fetters that cramp and exhaust it. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... down, we find abnormal conditions. Some men cramp and constrict themselves. The chest is allowed to collapse and the whole body tends to be drawn together. Grief or any negative emotion of feeling or condition destructive to health tends to ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... mental faculty becomes atrophied if it is unused. Bad company is that which produces this atrophy of the finer powers; and it is strange to see how soon the deadly process of shrinkage sets in. The awful thing to think of is that the cramp may insensibly be set in action by a company which, as I have said, is composed of rather estimable people. Who can forget Lydgate in "Middlemarch"? There is a type drawn by a woman of transcendent ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... beginning to feel that I'm not dreaming," confided Eph, almost in a whisper. "Whee! but it's fine to be out on a craft so big that you don't get a cramp in your leg from walking! Say, do you know, Jack," he whispered, "I am almost crazy to see one of this ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... of all other arts; and being, in mine opinion, one of the most sound and healthful writings that I have read. Not sick of business, as those are who lose themselves in their order, nor of convulsions, as those which cramp in matters impertinent; not savoring of perfumes and paintings as those do, who seek to please the reader more than nature beareth, and chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof, being agreeable to truth, and apt for ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... vigorous strokes swam towards the land. He had proceeded but a short way when, either in consequence of becoming benumbed by the coldness of the water after being chilled by exposure to the wind, or from being seized by cramp, or from what other cause, the unfortunate man suddenly turning his face towards Armstrong, and uttering a cry of alarm, sank and disappeared from sight. Once more only was anything seen of him, when brought near the surface, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams |
