"Cramped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the vessel, every one on board was cramped for room, and my father's accommodation seems to have been small enough: "I have just room to turn round," he writes to Henslow, "and that is all." Admiral Sir James Sulivan writes to me: "The narrow space at the end of the chart-table was his only ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... squeeze. The colonel said Hubbard and I had better occupy it. He preferred to sleep in the gun-pit, and already had gathered up a few armfuls of grasses and heather to lie upon. Manning and the cook had discovered a hole of their own, and the two clerks and the orderlies had cramped themselves into a ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... where they might learn better things. At home, the intolerable, stupid classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession, the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down, and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove them away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and attainable by us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and sent them rambling after artificial grace, without the proper means ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... begun in cramped temporary quarters in a hot little "shack," for it deserved no better name, back of the Civil Hospital. Here under almost impossible conditions there were performed a large volume of routine biological and chemical work, and a considerable amount ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... objectionable students whom they had ever had. I have never been really able to decide whether I was right or wrong. At liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts, neither I nor the professors would ever have discovered a flaw in my industry. At the closely cramped, orthodox, hide-bound, mathematical Princeton, every weakness in me seemed to be developed. Thirty years later I read in the Nassau Monthly, which I had once edited, that if Boker and I and a few others had become known in literature, we had done so in ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sanctuary of borrowed beliefs, beyond which all the rest was common and unclean. Imagination, reason, and religion circled round the same symbol; and in all their symbols there was serious meaning, if we could but find it out. They did not devise fictions in the same vapid spirit in which we, cramped by conventionalities, read them. In endeavoring to interpret creations of fancy, fancy as well as reason must guide: and much of modern controversy arises out of heavy misapprehensions ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... small village of Bower Chalke. Westwards, up the main valley, we pass through Fifield Bavant, where the church is one of the many that claim to be the smallest in England. Ebbesborne Wake, the next hamlet, lies cramped in a narrow gully between Barrow Hill and Prescombe Down. The restored church is not of great interest, but an unnamed tomb within bears these ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... he stood up, just for a few moments, and held his arms out in greeting, blessing and prayer. Three times during the day did he thus stretch his cramped limbs, and pray with his face to the East. At such times those who stood near shared in his prayers, and went ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... 140 pages of the score of my "Elizabeth" are written out complete (in my own little cramped scrawl). But the final chorus—about 40 pages—and the piano-arrangement have still to be done. By the middle of August I ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... then to put an idea that strikes me from German or Italian into English; but think of my painful groping with a dictionary, before the cramped and crippled idea can reach my mind! I am the translator most in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... in the canoe, where all the party would have stayed, had not their positions been so cramped as to render sleeping difficult. Their blankets were spread on the ground, where they reclined, talking in low tones, watching, listening, and speculating as to the cause of Fred Ashman's ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... idea of all this 'distracted' stuff, Amory?" asked Alec one day, and then as Amory pretended to be cramped over his book in a daze: "Oh, don't try to act ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to be in a strong room, with solid walls of ice, in place of the cramped tent flapping violently in the wind. Inside, the silence was profound; the blizzard was banished. Aladdin's Cave it was dubbed—a truly magical world of glassy facets ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Donatello in the courtyard, those marble medallions copied from eight antique gems, and the little chapel on the second floor, almost an afterthought you might think, since in a place full of splendidly proportioned rooms, it is so cramped and cornered under the staircase, where Benozzo Gozzoli has painted in fresco quite round the walls, the Journey of the Three Kings, in which Cosimo himself, Piero his son, and Lorenzo his grandson, then a golden-haired youth, ride among the rest, in a procession that ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... not find all the Chinese customs in Cochin-China: for you would see the women walking about at liberty, and with large feet, that is, with feet of the natural size, and not cramped up like the "golden lilies" of China. Neither would you see the people treated as strictly in Cochin-China as in China. Beatings are not nearly as common there, and behavior is not nearly as good ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... you mean," he went on, after a pause. "But to me, do you know, there is an enormous fascination in celibacy. You forget that I know the reverse of the medal. I know how the mind can be cramped, the nerves harassed, the ambitions spoiled and rotted, the whole existence darkened and belittled, by—by the other thing. I have never talked to you before about ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Valley of Olwen, the snake would stir in his retreat beneath the leaves, the bee would crawl to and fro in her hidden nest, the flower would feel the stir of rising sap, the squirrel would venture forth to stretch cramped limbs by a visit to some particular storehouse—the existence of which, as one among many filled with nuts and acorns, he happened to remember—and the vole would creep to the entrance of his burrow, and sit in the welcome warmth till the sun declined and ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... medicine later on. Medicine for me signified the nauseous powders of Dr. Gregory, so I pretended to be asleep every time anyone came into the room, in order to escape my destiny, until at last some one stood by my bedside so long that I became cramped and had to pretend to wake up. Then I was given the medicine, and found to my surprise that it was delicious and tasted of oranges. I felt that there had been a mistake somewhere, but my head sat a little heavily on my shoulders, and I would not trouble ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... so had come to the lowest possible condition of a once rich doll. Biddy held it out, and looked straight before her for a moment, at nothing in particular, in a kind of stupefied delight; for a doll, even such a doll as this, had never been in her little cramped, purple hands before. Then suddenly she tucked it in her breast, drew her dingy sacque around it tight, caught up her rag bag, and with a scared glance at the windows of Lily's fine home, she ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I was not born to very splendid chances. Few men have been more cramped than I have been," said Fred, with some sense of surprise at his own virtue, considering how hardly he was dealt with. "It really seems a little too bad to have to ride a broken-winded hunter, and see men, who, are not half such good judges as yourself, able to throw away any amount ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the long, hurried journey he and his father and their old soldier servant, Lazarus, had made during the last few days—the journey from Russia. Cramped in a close third-class railway carriage, they had dashed across the Continent as if something important or terrible were driving them, and here they were, settled in London as if they were going to live forever at No. 7 Philibert Place. He knew, however, that though they ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the sixth day, John and James Ellison went away on the wagon, with clear consciences and light hearts, and with Mrs. Ellison waving a farewell to them from the door of the shed. It was cramped quarters for them all in the wagon, with the camping equipment, jolting along the country roads; and they walked most of the hills. But the journey was a jubilant one, and they welcomed the first gleaming of Whitecap pond with ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... itself was a legal farce. The prisoner promptly pleaded guilty to the charge of betraying mankind to an alien race, but he didn't allow them to question him. When one lawyer persisted in face of his pleasant refusals, he died suddenly in a cramped ball of screaming agony. ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... people, by many ascribed to that intense congenital hatred for goodness which distinguishes human nature from that of the brute, but perhaps as readily accounted for by considering it as the yawning and stretching of a young soul cramped too long in one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... means large blooms. If a plant is ripening seed, some strength goes to that; if bursting into many blooms, some goes to each of them; if it is trying to hold up against blustering winds, or to thrive on exhausted ground, or to straighten out cramped and clogged roots, these struggles also demand strength. Moral: Plant carefully, support your tall plants, keep all your plants in easy circumstances, don't put them to the trouble of ripening seed (unless you specially want it). To this end cut off fading flowers, and also cut off ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... could not help. Some stroke of ill-health; some untoward worldly [Transcriber's Note: original says "wordly"] circumstances, or something in domestic conditions will often disqualify a man for service; and yet he is blamed for idleness, for having possessions when the finances are cramped, for temper when the nerves have given out, for misanthropy when he has had enough to disgust him for ever with the human race. After we have exhausted the vocabulary of our abuse, such men die, and there is no reparation we can make. In ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... tired nor cramped; he served the Republic in comfort and ease, and had slept soundly on his paillasse in the little garret allotted to ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... admiring the singular good fortune of philosophy, which, as it requires entire liberty above all other privileges, and chiefly flourishes from the free opposition of sentiments and argumentation, received its first birth in an age and country of freedom and toleration, and was never cramped, even in its most extravagant principles, by any creeds, concessions, or penal statutes. For, except the banishment of Protagoras, and the death of Socrates, which last event proceeded partly from other motives, there are scarcely any instances ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... inferred from these premises, that in the small body of Mr Tappertit there was locked up an ambitious and aspiring soul. As certain liquors, confined in casks too cramped in their dimensions, will ferment, and fret, and chafe in their imprisonment, so the spiritual essence or soul of Mr Tappertit would sometimes fume within that precious cask, his body, until, with great foam and froth and splutter, it would ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the music stuttered and mocked and confused a tragic need. Or it was like a momentary release from deadly confinement, a respite that, by its rare intoxication, drove the participants into forms of incredulous cramped abandon. Positively, he thought, they were grasping at light, at color, at the commonplace sounds of a few instruments, as though they were incalculable treasures. Alice, when she danced, held her head back with eyes half closed; and suddenly, with her mouth a little parted, she, too, had a look ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... form she gave it soft-boned and angle-headed, more like overgrown embryo than child of the boasted Australian land. Even the milk it drew from her unwieldy breasts was tainted with city smoke and impure food and unhealthy housing. Its playground was the cramped kitchen floor and the kerb and the gutter. Its food for a year had been the food that feeds alike the old and the young who are poor. All around conspired against it, yet for two years and more ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... goods at the back of the tilted wagon, sometimes packed away in straw to keep warm. In this way, a whole family, placed under the necessity of moving to a distant part, a comparatively rare occurrence though, have had to remain doubled up in a cramped position day and night, while the slow-going wagon creaked along its ponderous way, till the younger members of the family party peeped out of their hole and caught sight of the splendours of "the lights of London," in the long rows of oil lamps which ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... laid all dates aside; especially as I found myself a little cramped by them, in re-introducing among these "Other Girls" the girls whom we have before, and rather lately, known. Lest, possibly, in anything which they have here grown to, or experienced, or accomplished, the sharply exact reader should ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Reicht stopped, and pouted, and looked like a little basilisk at the inspired model who caused her woe. He retorted with unshaken admiration. The situation was at last dissolved by the artist's wrist becoming cramped from disuse; this was not, however, until she had made a rough but noble sketch. "I can work no more at present," ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... (there are traps and pitfalls here, for those who are not so well escorted as ourselves) into the housetop; where the bare beams and rafters meet overhead, and calm night looks down through the crevices in the roof. Open the door of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes. Pah! They have a charcoal fire within; there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close they gather round the brazier; and vapours issue forth that blind and suffocate. From every corner, as you glance about you in these dark retreats, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... said, and was furious from the pain of his burned feet. But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan's shoulders and fore paws were cramped for want of room, as a man's would be if he tried ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... She frequently struck the water with her wings. Showers of spray came flying over my head, which prevented me from seeing how near I was to it. At last I began to fear that I should be unable to hold on long enough. My arms ached, and my hands felt cramped, still the love of life induced me not to ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... system with intoxicating speed, until at last, dazed and almost unconscious, I regained this earthly shore. Then I sank into a stupor. When I awoke the fire had burnt down to the last cinder, all was dark and cold, and I shivered as I tried to stretch my half-cramped limbs. Was it all a dream? Who can say? Whether in the spirit or the flesh I know not, said Saint Paul, and I am compelled to echo his words. Sceptics may shrug their shoulders, smile, or laugh; but "there are more things ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... hold of; there is scarcely a child in the Cheslow High School who could compete with her for a month in any study she had a mind to take hold of. But," and the doctor shook his head again, "her mind's warped and cramped because of ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... awakening minds with all his heart, he was not wholly in the right place as an instructor of youth. With all his sympathy for what was weak and immature, he was yet impatient of dullness, of stupidity, of caution; much that he said was too mature, too exalted for the cramped and limited minds of boyhood. He was sensitive to the charm of eager, high-spirited, and affectionate natures, but he had also the equable, just, paternal interest in boys which is an essential quality in a wise schoolmaster. Yet he was apt to make favourites; ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... hard work, because the strain is never wholly relaxed. All day long, and a German day is very long, the children must be watched and guarded, sheltered from changes in the weather and prevented from over-tiring themselves. Many of them come from poor cramped homes, and to spend the whole summer in the forest more at play than at work makes them most happy. I met Germans who did not approve of the Waldschule who considered it a fantastic extravagant experiment, too ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... I will," drawled Mr. Grigsby, good-naturedly. "It may be the last chance to stretch our legs for some days. I'm not used to cramped quarters, after having had half a continent to ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... paddle. It was the warmest night since the big freeze, but he was not very sleepy and after finishing his supper he went somewhat farther than usual into the woods, not looking for anything in particular, but partly to exercise his legs which had become somewhat cramped by his long day in the canoe. But he became very much alive when he heard a crash which he knew to be that of a falling tree. He leaped instantly to the shelter of a great trunk and his hand sprang to his gunlock, but no other sound followed, and he wondered. At first, he had thought it indicated ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... robbing the castle of brick and stone, as La Turbie was built of the Trophy. The castle itself grew out of the rock, so that it was difficult to see where nature's work ended or men's began; and the old, old houses crowding up to and huddled against its foundations had cramped themselves into ledges and boulders like men making their last stand in a mountain battle. The streets were tunnels, with vistas of long, dark stone stairways running up and down into mystery. Here and there above secretive ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... frequently through the lines. What else might be expected? At the time when these rhymes were in process of being created the conditions under which the American Negro lived and labored were not calculated to inspire him with a desire for the highest artistic expression. Restricted, cramped, bound in unwilling servitude, he looked about him in his miserable little world to see whatever of the beautiful or happy he might find; that which he discovered is pathetically slight, but, such as it is, it served to keep alive ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... August 13th when he reached San Francisco and wrote in his note-book, "Home again. No—not home again—in prison again, and all the wild sense of freedom gone. City seems so cramped and so dreary with toil and care and business anxieties. God help me, I wish I were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... barrel half full of flour into the nearest wagon and straightened a body cramped from ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... think that's important. This room will look like a big private library more than anything else. One won't be reminded every second, by everything he sees, that he's living in a strictly synthetic environment. He won't feel cramped. If all the rooms were small, a man would feel as if he were in prison. At least this way he can pretend that ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... the hares got white, and the men, playin' a losin' game for centuries, got dull in their heads and stunted in their legs—always cramped up in a kaiak like those fellas at St. Michael's. And, why, it's clear as crystal—they're survivals! The Esquimaux are the oldest race ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... take the reins when your arms are cramped," this passenger was saying at that precise moment, "but I do not know the road, and I cannot drive so well ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... ever, but with increased velocity. Presently, with a thrill of new intensity, I saw the boat was gradually heading in that direction. Now, to a sportsman who gets excited over a gray squirrel, and forgets that he has a gun on the sudden appearance of a fox, this was a severe trial. I suddenly felt cramped for room, and trimming the boat was out of the question. It seemed that I must make some noise in spite of myself. "Light the jack," said a soft whisper behind me. I fumbled nervously for a match, and dropped the first one. Another was drawn briskly across my knee and broke. A third ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... remembering he was keeping one of his fellow creatures away from them. He wondered at his own presumption in denying any living thing participation in the universe. And all the while there were before him visions of the boy who sat in the cramped cell with the volume of a favourite poet before him, trying to think how it would seem to ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... same of whom I have {before} made mention, agreed, at a fixed price, to write a panegyric for a certain Pugilist,[36] who had been victorious: {accordingly} he sought retirement. As the meagreness of his subject cramped his imagination, he used, according to general custom, the license of the Poet, and introduced the twin stars of Leda,[37] citing them as an example of similar honours. He finished the Poem according to contract, but received {only} a third part ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... that cramped prison called the earth, and out upon the waste of waters. Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling, all night long. Hither come the sounding voices from the caverns on the coast of that small island, sleeping, a thousand miles away, so quietly in the midst of angry waves; and hither, to meet them, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... a baby girl, I guess. He was a kind man, and I think he really loved me, but he just didn't know what to do with me. So when the tests showed that I was ... brighter ... than the average, he put me in a special school in Italy. Said he didn't want my mind cramped by being forced to conform to the mental norm. Maybe ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... we can match Goethe's assertion with another of his own: "A talent forms itself in solitude, a character in the stream of the world." Isolation tends almost inevitably to narrowness, to an abnormal and cramped outlook, to willfulness or Pharisaism, and usually to loneliness and depression. The only pervasively happy life for man is the life of cooperation and loyalty. We may well "withdraw into the silence," take our daily communion with God in our closets, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... morning, when I had started to school and she had given me all the meat that we had in the house, how it worried me that she should have nothing left for herself but bread. Worrying over our cramped condition, I resolved that what she did for me should not be thrown away. I longed for the time when I could repay her for all she had done ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... consumption of his own family, and the liquidation of his debts. He has no longer a stimulus to labour; he calculates that the time and toil are wasted which are spent in raising an article for which he has no vent; his industrious disposition is consequently cramped; his present exertions are without hope of reward; and his prospects are divested of the supporting promise of future comfort or competence. Such a system as this evidently and rapidly tends to ruin; these symptoms are the obvious marks of a diseased economy; ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... with their hair braided into little strings, their beards spirally twisted, their oblique eyes, angular attitudes, cramped and stiff gestures, seemed to own a sort of factitious life, due to the rays of the setting sun, and the ruddy hue which time lends to marble in warm climates. The inscriptions in antique characters, graven beside them after ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... I didn't. As a rule, I undress and put my head on the pillow, and then somebody bangs at the door, and says it is half-past eight: but, to-night, everything seemed against me; the novelty of it all, the hardness of the boat, the cramped position (I was lying with my feet under one seat, and my head on another), the sound of the lapping water round the boat, and the wind among the branches, kept me restless ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... up from Budapest to Tarnopol, crossed the frontier at the little village of Kolodno, and thence driven the "forty" along the valleys into Volynien, a long, weary, dispiriting run, on and on, until the monotony of the scenery maddened me. Cramped and cold I was, notwithstanding the big Russian fur shuba I wore, the fur cap with flaps, fur gloves, and fur rug. The country inns in which I had spent the past two nights had been filthy places, where the stoves had been surrounded ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... Copper pans, if used at all, should be reserved for operations that are performed with rapidity; as, by long contact with copper, food may become dangerously contaminated. The kettle in which a joint is dressed should be large enough to allow room for a good supply of water; if the meat be cramped and be surrounded with but little water, it will be stewed, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Everything that could be saved was brought up on deck, and a kind of cabin or platform which could be fortified was rigged on the highest part of the ships. And so no doubt for some days, although their food was almost finished, the wretched and exhausted voyagers could stretch their cramped limbs, and rest in the warm sun, and listen, from their safe haven on the firm sands, to the hated voice of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... weight upon his cramped arm, this guilty wretch hardly can suppress a groan. There is limit to conscious endurance. At this point Pierre looks toward the ceiling. Such upward glance slightly relaxes his tense strain. The ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... cramped, stiff, soaked to its marrow, and agitated now and then by an icy shiver, threw out its boughs in a sort of feverish panic as if to shake the water from them, and roared the wild note of a creature in torture. At times a damp snow ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... doing," came to the sufferer from a boy who was stretched out on the ground with his legs cramped close to his chest and his ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... country, and travellers found in every castle an open gate, good beds, and abundant table, with a cordial welcome from the master of the house. But the accommodations in the villages were quite different. The servants with their horses were provided with straw, and the family themselves were cramped into a low, small room, with floor of earth, and lighted by a miserable candle, while their fare was coarse bread and cheese. The little sledge going ahead closed every castle against Idalia and her party, by spreading ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... The Dop Doctor, with her expansive style, always seems cramped in any story of under a couple of hundred thousand words or so. Perhaps the best things in her new book of short stories, Earth to Earth (HEINEMANN), concern The Macwaugh, a shocking bad artist with an immense thirst and the heftiest of Scotch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... pulled himself up slowly from the chair by the open window in which he had fallen asleep. He was cramped and stiff from his uncomfortable position. Anxiety and strain had deepened the lines on his face, and his eyes were dull and sunken. He looked less hard, less alert, and altogether more ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... sided with him unanimously. Indeed, were we likely to encounter the narwhale in such a cramped strait? Many of our sailors swore that the monster couldn't negotiate this passageway simply because "he's too big ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... narrow planks laced together with cords of sinnate—had in many places fallen off, and lay decaying upon the ground. Still, there were ample accommodations left for sleeping; and in we sprang—the doctor into the bow, and I into the stern. I soon fell asleep; but waking suddenly, cramped in every joint from my constrained posture, I thought, for an instant, that I must have been prematurely screwed ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the ark, after "the waters were abated." They threw their limbs about, whenever the cars stopped for the great "iron horse" to lay in some wood for his supper, as if they were determined to make up for the time they had been cramped on ship-board. ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... Those innumerable articles of taste and elegance—fabrics and wines—for which all Europe parted with their specie; not war, not conquest, not mines. Why till recently was Germany so poor? Because it had so little to sell to other nations; because industry was cramped by standing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... the post brought side by side with a letter from lord Gartley, one in a strange-looking cramped ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... upon them, his face to the wall. Presently, in spite of the cramped position necessitated by his bound arms, he yielded to weariness and fell asleep. Sebastian lay down in a corner of the room and also slept. He and Pablo would have to relieve each other as watchmen so long as they ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... ample room for any number of immigrants. The trade of the Phoenicians with the countries bordering the Eastern Mediterranean must be regarded as established long previously to the time when they began to feel cramped for space; and thus, when that time arrived, they had no difficulty in finding fresh localities to occupy, except such as might arise from a too abundant amplitude of choice. Right in front of them lay, at the distance of not more than seventy miles, visible from Casius in clear weather,[51] the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... writing, without committing himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow signing away vague and enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds under protest, and by dint of the Doctor's coercion, and insisted on pausing to look at them before writing (the cramped hand, to say nothing of the phraseology, being so much Chinese to him), and also on turning them round to see whether there was anything fraudulent underneath; and how, having signed his name, he became ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... his glasses and stood for a moment or two rubbing his cramped arm absently. His face was thoughtful, with a glint of excitement in his eyes. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... began to ache at the unwonted exercise which she had set herself. The room seemed most enormously large, and she was sure it was abnormally dirty. The school children's boots must have been caked with mud. She began to have a wholesome respect for Mrs. Cass. She grew stiff and cramped with kneeling, and was obliged to stand up occasionally and ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... wonder some of his old club friends regarded him as a scapegrace and a ne'er-do-well. He had thrown away position, power, friends and home as carelessly as he might have tossed away the end of a cigar. And all—for this! He looked about his cramped quarters, a half sneer on his lips. He had tied himself to this! To his ears there came faintly the thunder of galloping hoofs. Sergeant Moody was training his rookies to ride. The sneer left his lips, and was ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... word. What if the dust did swirl up in blinding sheets from the south? Before them lay the Roman battle, horse and foot—such an army as the city had never sent forth. What if its masses were somewhat cramped? its front narrow? its general an amateur? They were to fight at last, and how should a mongrel horde of barbarians, but half their number, stand firm against the impetus of such a shock. A moment's hush; then measured voices rose in calm cadence—the voices of the tribunes administering the military ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... all was! Enormous in conception, enormous in distance, scope, stretch! Yet so tiny, intimate, sweet! And this vast splendor was to report itself by one of the insignificant little channels by which men, locked in cramped physical bodies, interpret the giant universe—a trivial sense-impression! That so terrible a communication could reach the soul via the quivering of a wee material nerve was on a par with that ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... strip off his clothes. The man was inclined to resist, but a sharp prick of Frank's knife told him that his captor was in no mind to stand any nonsense and he lay quiet. It was hard work because the man was heavy and the quarters were cramped. The coat had to be cut off in places because Frank did not dare to untie his prisoner's hands. But at last the clothes were off, and Frank slipped ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... crowded inhabitants of small islands often have the run of the coco plantations and fishing grounds of an entire archipelago. The smaller, less desirable islands are retained as fish and coco-palm preserves to be visited only periodically. Of a low, cramped, monotonous coral group, often only the largest and most productive is inhabited,[942] but that contains a population surprising in view of the small base, restricted resources and low cultural status of its inhabitants. The population of the wide-strewn Paumota atolls was ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... league with his too fortunate friend is told in the third book of Herodotus. Amasis is the king, and Polycrates the confederate. Dorothy may have read the story in one of the French translations, either that of Pierre Saliat, a cramped duodecimo published in 1580, or that of P. du Ryer, a magnificent folio ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... a perfectly shaped foot. This is the natural shape, and if the boy is allowed to go barefooted or wear sandals, his foot will assume this shape. Figure 2 shows the distorted shape brought about by cramped shoes. The best thing to wear is thick moccasins ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... hear of your wrist and to see your writing look cramped. I arrived here on Thursday after a splendid passage and was very comfortable on board. I found M. Olagnier waiting for me, and Omar, of course, and am installe at Ross's till my boat gets done which I am told will be in ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... last that Denton and his Elizabeth, against all hope, returned unseparated from the labour servitude to which they had fallen. Elizabeth came out from her cramped subterranean den of metal-beaters and all the sordid circumstances of blue canvas, as one comes out of a nightmare. Back towards the sunlight their fortune took them; once the bequest was known to them, the bare thought of another day's hammering became intolerable. They went up long lifts and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... "but, you see, to get it I must read and write, and that's what I never could tackle. I have tried pothooks and hangers, but my fingers get all cramped up, and the pen splits open, and I have to let it drop, and make a great big splash of ink on the paper; and as for reading, I've tried that too. I know all the letters when I see them, but I can't manage to put them together in the right fashion, and never could get beyond a, b, ab, ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... and then they suspend the odd-looking burden to their backs. By this contrivance, they lessen the weight of the child considerably, and are able to walk many miles without showing signs of fatigue. It is also much more pleasant and healthy for the child than to be uncomfortably cramped up in its mother's arms, and shifted about from side to side, as first one arm ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... done,—they pulled away, and got close into shore in less than no time, and run the boat up in a little creek, and a beautiful creek it was, with a lovely white sthrand,—an illegant place for ladies to bathe in the summer; and out I got,—and it's stiff enough in the limbs I was, afther bein' cramped up in the boat, and perished with the cowld and hunger, but I conthrived to scramble on, one way or t' other, tow'rds a little bit iv a wood that was close to the shore, and the smoke curlin' out iv it, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... quite dark by the time we landed, cramped and cold from our long day on the river. I, however, was the best off, as I had the width of the canoe to myself, and was not afraid to move about a little, while Mrs. F—— had to share her seat with the maid and the baby. We floundered helplessly up the wet path, sinking over our ankles in ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... mother's heart! I have pottered about cottages and taught at schools in the dilettante way of the young lady who thinks it her duty to be charitable; and I am told that it is my duty, and that I may be satisfied. Satisfied, when I see children cramped in soul, destroyed in body, that fine ladies may wear lace trimmings! Satisfied with the blight of the most promising buds! Satisfied, when I know that every alley and lane of town or country reeks ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... epistle was written was cramped and evidently disguised, to create the impression of earnestness and secrecy. It was a long time before Larry could spell through it. When he had made it out, he rose to a question of order and privilege, and sent the missive to the secretary's ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... which had been the hard ones, the good-natured boy had carried the baby around with the tenderness of a nurse and had played with the young torments of the water front with that snarling squirming brat in his arms, who would bite and scratch when anything did not suit him. At night, in the cramped "stateroom" of the tavern-boat, "Tonet" would stretch out full length in the most comfortable place, letting his fat brother curl up in a corner where he might, provided he did not disturb the little devil, who in spite of ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of character, Pavel Andreitch," she said. "You are well-bred and educated, but what a... Scythian you are in reality! That's because you lead a cramped life full of hatred, see no one, and read nothing but your engineering books. And, you know, there are good people, good books! Yes... but I am exhausted and it wearies me to talk. I ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and then, feeling that something was tearing its way up through the floor, they left for the interior of Africa with one accord. Ikun gave chase as soon as he got free, but what with being half-stifled and a bit cramped in the legs, and much encumbered with his vegetable decorations, the ladies got clear away and no arrests were made—but Society was saved. Scepticism became in the twinkling of an eye a thing of the past; and, although no names were taken, the men observed that ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... conversation to continue and took Johannes around through stables and granary, as long as it was light. He asked for advice and got it, but Johannes would praise nothing. Of the calves he said that they ought to be looked to, for they had lice; and of the sheep that they were too cramped for room, that they would squeeze each other and the lambs would be ruined. For the rest, the inspection was made in silence. On the way back they found Uli standing gloomily in the front shed and took him in with them; but he remained down-cast the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... and they were taking them at once to the brook. It was a happy day for all the flock. The Gander and the Mother Goose were glad because their children were safely out of the shell, and because they would no longer have to sit with cramped legs on the nest. Ganders are good fathers, for they cover the eggs half of the time, while the Mother Goose is resting. The other Geese were not only proud of the Goslings, but they were glad to have the Gander and the Mother Goose free to go around with them ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... to the moment of difficulty, of tragedy, in a career which so far, in spite of all drawbacks of physical health and cramped activities, had been one of singular happiness and success. Ever since he had discovered his own gifts as a lecturer to working men, content, cheerfulness, nay, a passionate interest in every hour, had ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Cowan's Bridge was foggy, unwholesome, damp. The scholars underfed, cramped, neglected. Their strange indolence and heaviness grew stronger and stronger with the spring. All at once forty-five out of the eighty girls lay sick of typhus-fever. Many were sent home only to die, some died at Cowan's Bridge. All ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... he held the letter unopened. The lean fingers felt the bulk of the envelope, while feverish eyes surveyed, and read over and over the address in the familiar small, cramped handwriting. The impulse of the moment was to tear open the letter forthwith, to snatch at the tidings he felt it to contain. But something deterred. Something left him doubting, hesitating. It ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... hence; that we know not whence we come, nor whither we go; were not consulted as to our coming, and shall not be as to our going; but that it is all good; all for "the glory of God;" though we must use this phrase in a larger sense than the cramped interpretation of the theologian. All the teeming life of the globe, the millions on millions in the microscopic world, and the millions on millions of creatures that can be seen by the naked eye—those who have been swept away, those here now, those who will come after—all appearing in their ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... at hand when he would be tried by tests that few men might endure. Treading close on the heels of his guide, he emerged from a cramped arch into a spacious parade-ground. A regiment of bersaglieri was assembling for drill during the comparatively cool interval before sunset, and, on the seaward side of the plain, a squat fort pointed its guns at town ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... of Judgment," said one of them, "but the judges have not yet come. It is a great room and bare. There is nothing in it against which you can hurt yourself. Therefore, if it pleases you after being cramped so long in that narrow cell, you may walk to and fro, keeping your hands in front of you so that you will know when you touch the further wall ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... test? Why this: that 'the large hand seen through a diminishing glass, ought to be reduced into the current hand; and the current hand, magnified, ought to swell into a large hand.' Whereas, on the contrary, 'the large hands reduced appear very stiff and cramped; and the magnified running hand'—'appears little better than a scrawl.' Now to us the result appears in a different light. It is true that the large hands reduced do not appear good running hands according to the standard derived from the actual practice of the world: but why? Simply because ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... dozen voices, and the tired model stretched his cramped limbs. Clifford rose, dropped a piece of charcoal down on his neighbor's neck, and stepping across Thaxton's easel, walked over ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... law, though it cramped the trade of the colonies, yet it has been attended with many beneficial consequences to Britain: and while she maintained the supreme power of legislation throughout the empire, and wisely regulated the trade and commerce of her foreign settlements, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... so cramped in their private Affairs, who may not be charitable after this manner, without any Disadvantage to themselves, or Prejudice to their Families. It is but sometimes sacrificing a Diversion or Convenience to the Poor, and turning the usual ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... he had been able to free his cramped body from the saddle, came swarming the people, with loud cries of welcome and rejoicing. Powerfully the automatics he and Beatrice had used in the Battle of the Walls had impressed their simple minds with ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... you look at it that way," I replied. "Why, we're already getting cramped, Maude, and now you're going to have a governess I don't know where ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... carries nothing, except perhaps his gun, or his rod, or his photographic camera; and so for him the portage is only a pleasant opportunity to stretch his legs, cramped by sitting in the canoe, and to renew his acquaintance with the pretty things that are ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... wife and my son John. Sae, for quite a spell, I lived at Tooting. It was comfortable there. It wasna great hoose in size, but it was well arranged. There was some ground aboot it, and mair air than one can find, as a rule, in London. I wasna quite sae cramped for room and space to breathe as if I'd lived in the West End —in a flat, maybe, like so many of my friends of the stage. But I always missed the glen, and I was always dreaming of going back to Scotland, when the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... tells us, he excited the pity of his guards, who gave him a bed and coverlet, and as much bread as he chose to eat; and, wonderful as it may seem, his health did not suffer from all these horrors. As soon as he got a little accustomed to his cramped position, he began to use the knife he had left, and to cut through his chains. He next burst the iron band, and after a long time severed his leg fetters, but in such a way that he could put them on again and no one be any the wiser. Nothing is more common ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... having made out his cheque for the amount, and having signed his name to it in a cramped little quaint handwriting, which reminded one of his person, was duly presented with a receipt and dismissed to his counting-house. There he entertained the other clerks by a glowing description of the magnanimity ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... saying: "Good mornin', boss. How're you going to have your lost souls this mornin'—fried on one side or turned over?" Sunday was three weeks long, and longer than that if it rained. About all a fellow could do after he'd come back from Sunday school was to sit round with his feet cramped into the shoes and stockings which he never wore on week days and with the rest of him incased in starchy, uncomfortable dress-up clothes—just sit round and sit round and itch. You couldn't scratch hard either. It was sinful to scratch audibly and with good, broad, free strokes, which is the only ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... frantic squallings of craft in the harbor, frenzied howls of alarm, hoarse hootings of protests and warnings, he was suddenly and pointedy anxious to have his elevation to the pilot-house of the Montana deferred. Better the smoky, cramped office of the little hotel where he had been chafing in dismal waiting. He was perfectly willing to sit there and study over again the advertising chromos on the walls and gaze out on the everlasting procession of rumbling drays. But at eight ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... fine morning. The air was so still and calm, that a sigh from the sycamores seemed like the deep-drawn breath of the just awakening tree, and the faint rustle of its boughs as the outstretching of cramped and reviving limbs. Far away the Sierras stood out against a sky so remote as to be of no positive color,—so remote, that even the sun despaired of ever reaching it, and so expended its strength recklessly ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... what it has tried, nor take anything without trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and good, is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its delights are too penetrating,—too living,—for any whitewashed object or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it loves so hard that it crushes ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... Finally I slipped back over the brink of the ravine, moved three yards to the left, and crawled up through the tall dripping grass to a new position behind a little bush. Cautiously raising my head, I found I could see plainly the sable's head and part of his shoulders. My position was cramped and out of balance for offhand shooting; but I did my best, and heard the loud plunk of the hit. The sable made off at a fast though rather awkward gallop, wheeled for an instant a hundred yards farther on, received ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... stiff and cramped from being held so long in one position, Georgina waked suddenly and looked around her in bewilderment. Uncle Darcy was in the room, saying something about her riding home in the machine. He didn't want to hurry her off, but Mr. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was stained with hard clots of blood as she rose, cramped and chilled to the bone. The night air had blown coldly upon her through the open lattice; but she would not summon her maid to her assistance. Without undressing she threw herself upon a couch, and utterly worn out by the agitation she had undergone, slept far into ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... may have passed when he awakened, feeling rather cramped from lying on one side so long. Before turning over, he remembered his intention to take occasional peeps up at the meat that had been swung aloft; and raising the flap of the loose curtain he cast his eyes in ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... lowered. "Slip the loop around the lady," was the order from above. The man on the anchor tried to obey. He moved as if cautiously and slowly. "Hurry, my man!" But there was no haste. Limbs and fingers made stiff by long exposure and cramped position, clinging desperately to prevent himself and his burden from falling into the sea, were not now likely to be nimble; but in a few minutes, which, however, seemed a long time, some words were spoken ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... which he intended to write upon, and afterwards conform the description to the figure of his subject. The poetry was to contract or dilate itself according to the mould in which it was cast. In a word, the verses were to be cramped or extended to the dimensions of the frame that was prepared for them; and to undergo the fate of those persons whom the tyrant Procrustes used to lodge in his iron bed: if they were too short, he stretched them on a rack; ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... for her; well, she appeared pleased to have met with this unexpected companion; and she was very cheerful and talkative as they went down to the quay, these two together. And whether it was that she was glad to be relieved from the cramped position of the carriage, or whether it was that his being taller than she gave countenance to her height, or whether it was merely that she rejoiced in the sweet air and the exhilaration of the sunlight, she seemed to walk with even ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... up the dirt like so many mad men; and away we started for Princetown, looking back as we ran, every minute, to see if our ceroebrus, with his bloody jaws, was not at our heels. At every step we took from the hateful prison, our enlarged souls expanded our lately cramped bodies. At length we attained a rising ground; and O, how our hearts did swell within us at the sight of the OCEAN! that ocean that washed the shores of our dear America, as well as those of England! After ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... exerting pressure on the KP is now difficult of execution, because his pieces are very cramped and hinder one another in a restricted area. The KB in particular cannot be brought into action without great difficulty, for instance by: R- K1, B-KB1, P-KKt3, and B-Kt2. It is therefore advisable for White to develop his QB at Kt2 instead of at Kt5, ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... white-enameled; the walls covered with gray Japanese paper. There were no portieres between living-room and dining-room and small hall, so that the three rooms, with their light-reflecting walls, gave an effect of spaciousness to rather a cramped and old-fashioned apartment. There were not many pictures and no bric-a-brac, yet the rooms were not bare, but clean and trim and distinguished, with the large davenport and the wing-chair, chintz-cushioned brown willow chairs, and Ruth's upright piano, excellent mahogany, and a few ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... morning, but before I got up, a woman who comes here every day to work brought me some small ordinary shoes which I had purchased as curiosities, and took the opportunity of showing me her feet. It really made me shudder to look at them, so deformed and cramped up were they, and, as far as I could make out, she must have suffered greatly in the process of reducing them to their present diminutive size. She took off her own shoes and tottered about the room in those ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... to do: To run or play hard just before or after eating; to strain our muscles by lifting too heavy weights; to exercise so violently as to get out of breath; to lie, sit, stand, or walk in a cramped position, or awkward manner; to wear the clothing so tight as to press hard ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... in plunging with his cramped limbs into the water and regaining the other side. Here he quickly half dried himself with some sun-warmed leaves and baked mosses, hurried on his clothes, and hastened off in the opposite direction to the path taken by them, yet with such circuitous skill and speed that he reached the great ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... raised himself and straightened his cramped shoulders and tired arms. With a look of great concern on his face, he approached the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... awkward at first and cramped, pinched and galled his feet. His mother made him a suit of clothes of "blue drilling" and next Sabbath the whole family got into the wagon and drove off eight miles to Bear ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... building up the entrance. We had not proceeded far, however, before we found that our cave was too small, and that as we should have to remain in it for hours, we must find it very cramped. Therefore, instead of using any more of the peats already pulled out, we finished building up the wall with others fresh drawn from the inside. When at length we had, to the best of our ability, completed our immuring, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... of the past has especially been cramped up, bound around, and blindfolded by her special form of belief, by her tradition, by her social customs, by her education, by her whole environment; and the effect will remain stamped more or less upon her individuality long after the predisposing ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... usefulness of steam, being perfectly well acquainted with its expansive qualities. But let us be off. Close your port-hole, and screw it in tightly and permanently for the trip. Then let down your bunk and prepare for a night of awkward, cramped positions. We shall be more uncomfortable to-night than any other of the trip. You see, when we start, this thing will stand up on its rear end, and that end will continue to be the bottom until we begin to ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the shunned Julia's fate might have its compensations. There were others, worse endings that the village knew of, mean, miserable, unconfessed; other lives that went on drearily, without visible change, in the same cramped setting of hypocrisy. But these were not the reasons that held her back. Since the day before, she had known exactly what she would feel if Harney should take her in his arms: the melting of palm into palm and mouth on mouth, and the long flame burning her from head to foot. But mixed ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... still, her mouth resting on her white wrist, and when she lifted her head the marks of her teeth showed on the skin. Then the other hand, clutching the arm of her chair, fell to her side cramped and quivering; she stood up, looked at the fire, pressed both palms across her eyes, turned and began to pace ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... by deciding to follow his two friends, and had secured fairly spacious rooms facing the Cathedral; and then he, who had always lived cramped in tiny apartments, at last understood the provincial comfort of vast spaces and books ranged against the walls, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... flight of his thoughts. And he wondered, with secret dismay, whether she was still the same strong, brave-hearted girl whom he had once accounted almost bold; whether the life in this narrow valley, amid a hundred petty and depressing cares, had not cramped her spiritual growth, and narrowed the sphere of her thought. Or was she still the same, and was it only he who had changed? At last he gave utterance to his wonder, and she answered him in those grave, earnest ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... over the wheel, took a bag of mail from the boot and dragged it into the cabin. The girl rose, stretched herself, and said: "This stagin' is slow business. I'm cramped. I'm going ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... could be granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in thought with those Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to enter with them, jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that sixth of January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that were so old that they would ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... French when he found some one able to answer him in his own language. He had nothing to give them but water; but that he carried tirelessly many times a day. His little store of bandages and ointment had gone long ago, but he bathed wounds, helped cramped men to change their position, and did the best he could to make the evil straw into the semblance of a comfortable bed. To the helpless men on the floor of the church his coming meant something ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... pulling. For three, for four days—a week—for ten days—they tugged at the oars, except when a favouring breeze came. The water was reduced to a few pints, the food to a few days' half-rations. Their limbs were cramped so that they could not move from their places in the boat, their bodies were becoming covered with sores; and the wind had now died away entirely, the sea was without a ripple, and for ever shone above ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... length along, it soon broadens out as if glad to escape from its cramped quarters, and glides under the wide spreading branches of a California buckeye, which stands kneedeep in the beautiful clarkia, with its rose-pink petals, and wand-like stalks of the narrow-leaved milkweed, with silken ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... let me tell you that if I have brought any happiness into your life, you have brought far, far more into mine. My soul seemed to come into full being upon the day when I loved you. It was so small, and cramped, and selfish, before—and life was so hard, and stupid, and purposeless. To live, to sleep, to eat, for some years, and then to die—it was so trivial and so material. But now the narrow walls seem in an instant to have fallen, and a boundless horizon stretches around me. And everything ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... Turkey carpet; and a mahogany table, big enough to accommodate a large chart, stood in the middle of the apartment. This was where I was to sleep, and to spend in privacy as much of my waking time as I chose. "Truly," thought I, "this is an agreeable change from my cramped quarters ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... the life of the artist there need be no hour without its pleasure. I take the author, with whose career I am best acquainted; and it is true he works in a rebellious material, and that the act of writing is cramped and trying both to the eyes and the temper; but remark him in his study when matter crowds upon him and words are not wanting—in what a continual series of small successes time flows by; with what ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
