"Posture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see it, undoubtedly," said Mr. George. "It is one of the most celebrated statues in the world. It is called the Dying Gladiator. I presume the sculptor of it made it from his recollections of the posture and expression of face which were witnessed in the case of real gladiators in the arena, when they had been mortally wounded, and were sinking down ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... and declination of princes, changes of government and lawes ... Then again in the subjects case, the state of favour, disfavour, prosperitie, adversity ... and all other moodes of private fortunes or misfortunes, in which traverses, I know, his purpose was to limn out such exact pictures of every posture in the minde, that any man might see how to set a good countenance upon all the discountenances of adversitie."[201] When Greville wrote thus, Sidney was dead, and in his retrospect of his friend's life he was with perfect good faith discovering high, not to say holy motives, for ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... could not be, for now Seth, apparently sure that the coast was clear, emerged from his hiding place and ran in a stooping posture until he reached another clump further off and nearer the end of the cove. He remained there an instant and then ran, still crouching, until he disappeared behind a high dune at the rear of the bungalow. And there he stayed; ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... her hands behind her head, which was a favourite posture of hers. She stood looking down at her mother with a curious expression on her face. Mrs. Lessing could make nothing of it; she merely thought Hilda "queer"; she had travelled farther than she ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... a sitting posture was interesting enough—like a T upside down, with a globe for a head and a cross-bar for arms. The hands had three fingers each, but there were only two ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... nothing; nothing except a rather large hole at the far end—some three feet from the casing. With some difficulty he squeezed himself through the open panel, and took a half-kneeling, half-sitting posture within. There he struck a match, and it was a most unfortunate thing that in striking, the box being half open, he set fire to all the matches, and was half smothered in the atrocious stink of phosphorus which resulted. One match burned clear on the floor of the cavity, and, rubbing his eyes, ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... mysterious names;(652) his back is the corpse-god; his elbows are Makati; the nape of his neck, Horus Thoth; his lips Mehur; his phallus is Tonen;(653) ...(654) the goddess of Cher; ...(655) the two hidden gods; his sitting posture the two goddesses; his legs, he who traverses the hidden places; his shin-bones are uraeus. His members are gods, he is throughout a god, no one of his members is without a god, the gods are of his substance. The royal Osiris is an intelligent essence, his members guide him, his flesh ...
— Egyptian Literature
... in this contest for the presidency, was one of great delicacy and difficulty. He was precisely in that critical posture, that, whatever course he might pursue, he would be subject to misrepresentation and censure, and could not but raise up a host of enemies. Originally one of the four candidates for the presidency, he failed, by five electoral votes, in having a sufficient ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... found such occurrences as seven, eight, and ten persons in one cottage, I cannot say for one day, but for whole days, without a morsel of food. They have remained on their beds of straw for two successive days, under the impression that in a recumbent posture the pangs of hunger were less felt."—Lord Brougham's Speech, 11th July, 1842. A volume of frightful scenes might be quoted to corroborate the inferences to be necessarily drawn from the facts here stated. I will not add more, but pass on to the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... themselves of their routine, which was to tumble and scurry among its cogs and levers. They are done with life, with buying and selling and with the perpetual errand. And they have become a swarm of little ornaments. Men and women denuded of the city. Their outlines posture quaintly in the mist. Their little faces say, "The clock is gone. There is nothing any more to make us alive. So we have become ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Florence and Susan Nipper presented themselves at Mrs MacStinger's door, that worthy but redoubtable female was in the act of conveying Alexander MacStinger, aged two years and three months, along the passage, for forcible deposition in a sitting posture on the street pavement: Alexander being black in the face with holding his breath after punishment, and a cool paving-stone being usually found to act as a powerful restorative in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... cried Hawbury, starting up from an easy posture which he had secured for himself after fifteen minutes shifting and changing. "A girl! You, Dacres, spooney! A fellow like you, and a girl! ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... Dean, the spot had to be disturbed for the coffin of Sir Robert Wilson, and the Dean sent his son Frank, now so well known as an agreeable writer on Natural History, to see whether he could observe anything to confirm, or otherwise, the tradition about Jonson being buried in a standing posture. The workmen, he tells us, 'found a coffin very much decayed, which from the appearance of the remains must have originally been placed in the upright position. The skull found among these remains, Spice, the gravedigger, gave me as ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... I have some merit in effecting it; but you shall hear. After the ceremonies of our nuptials were over, I went in my military dress, and with my sword by my side, to the apartment of Hooseinee. She was sitting in a most dignified posture to receive me, and her looks were anything but inviting. As I entered the room, a beautiful cat, evidently a great favourite, came purring up to me. I deliberately drew my sword, struck its head off, and taking that in one hand and the body in the other, threw them out of the window. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... stole noiselessly forth upon the loggia, accompanying the noble improvisatrice with lute and rhythmic posture; the night deepened and the stars came out, and still her hearers listened breathlessly, as in moments of emotion the chant leaped wildly to meet the urgency of her thought, or deepened in melting tenderness to its pathos; for ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... May, 1884, which happened to be my birthday, the statue of John Marshall, formerly Chief Justice of the United States, was dedicated. This is a bronze statue in a sitting posture, erected by the bar of Philadelphia and the Congress of the United States. A fund had been collected shortly after the death of Marshall, but it was insufficient to erect a suitable monument, and it was placed in the hands of trustees and invested as "The Marshall Memorial Fund." On the death ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... lights were turned on again, and the room was full of brilliancy. Betty jumped up from her posture on the floor. The girls flocked ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... from the sounding notes; but Bruce heard as though he heard them not; they sooth his mood without his perceiving what it was that calmed, yet deepened, the saddening thoughts which possessed him. His posture remained the same; and sigh after sigh gave the only response to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... his inert posture in the deep cushions of a divan, "when the time is ripe, I shall strike a decisive blow for ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... rabies in the dog are occasionally very obscure. In the greater number of cases, these are sullenness, fidgetiness, and continual shifting of posture. Where I have had opportunity, I have generally found these circumstances in regular succession. For several consecutive hours perhaps he retreats to his basket or his bed. He shows no disposition to bite, and he answers the call upon him laggardly. He is curled up and his face is buried between ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... poise and posture, not to mention proclivities, and, taking to the better foot-hold on the clumps of grass along the bank, a little farther from the bridge, she managed to scamper after both her tormentors. Mary was also in the race, and on reaching the road ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... sat down. He sat awkwardly, his big body, in a kind of squat posture, the broad Mongolian face emerging, as in a sort of deformity, from the collar of his evening coat. Then he began to speak, with that conscious effect of bringing his words through various ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... forbear inserting here a pleasant story that passes for an uncontested truth amongst the inhabitants of this place; which is, that the ship which brought the first colonies does often appear amongst them, under sail, in a gallant posture, which they call Sir Walter Raleigh's ship. And the truth of this has been affirmed to me by men of the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Devil and his innumerable Legions to the edge of the Bottomless-pit, it remains, before I bring them to action, that some enquiry should be made into the posture of their affairs immediately after their precipitate Fall, and into the place of their immediate Residence; for this will appear to be very necessary to Satan's History, and indeed, so as that without it, all the farther account we have ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... his limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining weapon raised on high, in the faint hope that one well-directed thrust (for he knew that he should have time but for one) might penetrate through the eye to the brain ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... volumes, wherein all the postures are exactly delineated. I must confess I am shy of letting people see me at this exercise, because of my flannel waistcoat, and my spectacles, which I am forced to fix on, the better to observe the posture ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... powerful, he had already prostrated a few, but, a host of men bore him down, and appeared to be trampling on him; at the same moment I was myself seized by eight men, who forced me back into the hut, and down on the log, where they held me in a sitting posture, pressing me against the wall; here I spent a few moments of agony, as I heard my friend's stifled cries grow fainter and fainter. I struggled but little, and that only at first, for at least five-and-twenty men crowded round and laid their hands ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... auditors, stretches his jaws so wide, that instead of instructing youth, it rather frightens them: likewise in reading prayers, he has such a careless loll, that people are justly offended at his irreverent posture; besides the extraordinary charge they are put to in sending their children to dance, to bring them off of those ill gestures. Another evil faculty he has, in making the bowling-green his daily residence, instead ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... behind the clergy, the row of kneeling heirs, who instead of praying were looking at him with eyes that were brighter than the tapers, he could not restrain a smile. The abbe turned round, saw them, and continued to say the prayers slowly. The post master was the first to abandon the kneeling posture; his wife followed him. Massin, fearing that Zelie and her husband might lay hands on some ornament, joined them in the salon, where all the heirs were presently ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... as the words may be translated—was a term used to designate a man of unsullied integrity. Hence one of their most eminent metaphysicians[112] has said that "he who valiantly sustains the shocks of adverse fortune, demeaning himself uprightly, is truly good and of a square posture, without reproof; and he who would assume such a square posture should often subject himself to the perfectly square ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... in the square iron bed looked startlingly like Bob, too, but, unlike her sister, her eyes were dark. She lay quietly, her cheeks scarlet and her hands nervously picking at the counterpane. When she saw Betty she struggled to a sitting posture and tried to talk. It was pitiable to watch her efforts for her voice was quite gone. Only when Betty put her ear close down to the trembling lips ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... sitting very straight with his thin chest up, and he managed to maintain this posture as the trail turned down over the rim. Then he grasped the pommel in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... say the Chinee— you have freed from the fear of invasion, Should he presently seem in a posture to be which is open to Moral Persuasion,— How you take him in hand, a philanthropist band! how you toil to improve his condition, With a noble disdain of the trouble and pain of a ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... by a very narrow staircase, pretty Mistress Margaret's apartment, where she, the cynosure of the eyes of every bold young bachelor in Fleet Street, sat in a posture which hovered between the discontented and the disconsolate. For her pretty back and shoulders were rounded into a curve, her round and dimpled chin reposed in the hollow of her little palm, while the fingers were folded over ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... foliage, and walked across one end of the open space where the duel had taken place, casting curious and astonished glances in our direction. They had not yet disappeared, when De Berg, whom we had raised into a sitting posture, caught sight of them. He started, and uttered an exclamation of vexation, then looked at Oakley, who had left his ground and stood ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... saluted him with the grace which had been before remarked; and Lothair, who was by nature courteous, and even inclined a little to ceremony in his manners, especially with those with whom he was not intimate, immediately rose, as he would not receive such a salutation in a reclining posture. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not the dangerous and expensive War we are engaged in, together with the present Posture of Affairs, a sufficient Reason for this, tho' the Play-Houses were less mischievous to the Nation than ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... flickering of the candle-flames, and the shadows they sent waving huge over all, like the flaunting of a black flag. Through the flicker and the shadow the laird was still peering at him, when suddenly, without opening his eyes, the old man raised himself to a sitting posture—all of a piece, like a figure of wood lifted from behind. The laird then saw his face, and upon it the expression as of one suffering from some horrible nightmare—so terrified was it, so wrathful, so disgusted, all in one—and rose in haste to rouse him from a drunken dream. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... him they should be better advised in their business. Which they did incontinently, and found him very willing and fully resolved to assist them, and therefore was of opinion that they should send some one of his company to scout along and discover the country, to learn in what condition and posture the enemy was, that they might take counsel, and proceed according to the present occasion. Gymnast offered himself to go. Whereupon it was concluded, that for his safety and the better expedition, he should have with him someone that knew the ways, avenues, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... month was early June, the weather perfect, the solitude of my own choosing, and my posture comfortable enough to invite drowsiness. I had bathed and, stretched supine in the shade of a high sand-bank, was smoking the day's first cigarette. Behind me lay Ambleteuse; before me, the sea. On the edge of it, their shrill ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... founder of the temple having been Rameses II, that the sculpture refers to the circumcision of two of his children. The knife appears to be a stone implement, and the operator kneels in front of the child, who is standing, while a matron supports him in a kneeling posture, and she holds his hands from behind him.[2] In this bas-relief we can see the great difference that existed between the two forms of the operation, that of the Hebrews being performed, as a rule, on the eighth day after birth, while in the bas-relief they are ten ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Jarvis's reposeful posture had become an active one, and he took care that neither peach-coloured skirts nor white ones fluttered against anything on the outside of the car that might ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... wife and three children had been sold from him, determined to seek his freedom, even if he died in the effort. Weighing nearly two hundred pounds, he was encased in a box two feet long, twenty-three inches wide, and three feet high, in a sitting posture. He was provided with a few crackers, and a bladder filled with water. With a small gimlet he bored holes in the box to let in fresh air, and fanned himself with his hat, to keep the air in motion. The box was ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... general belief, however, there was but one land of shades for all alike. The spirits, in form and feature as they had been in life, wended their way through dark forests to the villages of the dead, subsisting on bark and rotten wood. On arriving, they sat all day in the crouching posture of the sick, and, when night came, hunted the shades of animals, with the shades of bows and arrows, among the shades of trees and rocks: for all things, animate and inanimate, were alike immortal, and all passed together to the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... of that dreadful day, and until two o'clock the ensuing night, the royal family remained, almost without a change of posture, in the narrow seat which had served them for an asylum. Who can measure the amount of their endurance during these fifteen hours of woe? An act was passed, during this time, in obedience to the demands of the mob, dethroning the king. The hour of midnight had now come and ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... stood guard at the hall door of 'The Turret,' the house of his uncle, John Balfour, at Leven. Two of them were life-size with their hands discreetly folded in prayer, two of them were smaller and made in a kneeling posture, and, as something rattled if you shook them, it was our juvenile belief that treasure was concealed inside their bodies. This idea Mr R. L. Stevenson eagerly fostered in the slightly younger generation, and, with the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... courtyard of the prison, where, before the jailer's lodge, Marcellina is performing her household duties—ironing the linen, to be specific. Jaquino, who has been watching for an opportunity to speak to her alone (no doubt alarmed at the new posture which his love affair is assuming), resolves to ask her to marry him. The duet, quite in the Mozartian vein, breathes simplicity throughout; plain people, with plain manners, these, who express simple thoughts in simple language. Jaquino ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... find her submissive to my caresses and my inquisitiveness, but she surprised me greatly when, as I placed myself in readiness for the consummation of the act, and was already in the proper posture between the two columns, she moved in such a way as to hinder my advance. I thought at first that it was only one of those devices intended to make the final victory more sweet by putting difficulties in the way; but, finding that her resistance was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... looking round to the bed she brightened, for she saw that Jude was apparently sleeping, though he was not in the usual half-elevated posture necessitated by his cough. He had slipped down, and lay flat. A second glance caused her to start, and she went to the bed. His face was quite white, and gradually becoming rigid. She touched his fingers; they were cold, though his body ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... fingers, she started to peer under the bed to ascertain if there was any dust there, when, hearing a noise, supposing that the minister had come, she turned and closed the closet door, and reseated herself, wiping her mouth with her apron as she did so. This change of posture brought her into full view of the stairs leading to the loft above, which humble place, under the roof, the clergyman used for a study when he wished to be very much retired. On the stairs, descending with solemn step and slow, was Bub, with the minister's old hat on, which he kept ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... remained a whole day in immovable meditation, his eyes and countenance directed to one spot, as if in the stillness of death. LA FONTAINE, when writing his comic tales, has been observed early in the morning and late in the evening in the same recumbent posture under the same tree. This quiescent state is a sort of enthusiasm, and renders everything that surrounds us as distant as if an immense interval separated us from the scene. Poggius has told us of DANTE, that he ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Luxembourg gallery at Paris, The Decadence of the Romans, which made the fame and fortune of Couture, the painter. It represents an orgie in the court of a temple, during the last days of Rome. A swarm of revellers occupy the middle of the picture, wreathed in elaborate intricacy of luxurious posture, men and women intermingled; their faces, in which the old Roman fire scarcely flickers, brutalized with excess of every kind; their heads of dishevelled hair bound with coronals of leaves, while, from goblets ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... he thought, spinning round and surveying with composure the warlike posture of Lieut. Feraud, with a ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Antananarivo. The nine condemned Christians were taken past Mr. Griffiths' house. "Ramonisa," he says, "looked at me and smiled; others also looked at me, and their faces shone like those of angels in the posture of prayer and wrestling with God. They were too weak to walk, having been without rice or water for a long time. The people on the wall and in the yard before our house were cleared off by the swords and spears of those leading ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... being one of those unimaginative and tactless folk who rush headlong into the mysteries of children's doings, she passed them at first in silence. It was only when she found them still in the same silent and expectant posture half an hour later that she said tentatively: "I wonder whether you would tell me what you are doing here?" After some hesitation, one of them said, in a shy voice: "We're waitin' for the barrer." It then transpired that, once a week, a vegetable-and-flower-cart ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... keeping his eyes on the figure which now stood within the shade of the trees in an attitude which might suggest listening, or perhaps merely a posture of alert repose. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... steamers, and held the lake wholly at command. It was the same day, I think, that one of the boats was seen to be getting up steam, and shortly afterward she paddled out from the island, and came directly toward Virgin Bay. Things were quickly put in posture for a fight. The neutral residents, who had returned from San Juan, again set out over the Transit road. The squad of infantry which had just come in from Rivas was placed at the extreme end of the wooden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... man was the taller of the two; as he lay on the bank beneath the hedge, he might even in that posture have been seen to own a figure of great strength and beauty. His face, bold of outline, with well curved, wide jaw and strong cheek bones, was shaded by the tangled mat of his wig, tousled in his sleep. His hands, long and graceful, lay idly at his side, though ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... were just facing the buildings of the General Electric Company, when our attention was attracted by a photographer who seemed to be very desirous of taking a photo of the yacht and her passengers; for he aspired to gain the most favorable posture, apparently quite a task under the circumstances. How well he succeeded in his endeavors, the readers can judge for themselves by glancing at the ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Great-Britain. Every Man about him has, perhaps, a News-Paper in his Hand; but none can pretend to guess what Step will be taken in any one Court of Europe, 'till Mr. Beaver has thrown down his Pipe, and declares what Measures the Allies must enter into upon this new Posture of Affairs. Our Coffee-house is near one of the Inns of Court, and Beaver has the Audience and Admiration of his Neighbours from Six 'till within a Quarter of Eight, at which time he is interrupted by the Students of the House; some of whom are ready ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... self, and the lovely simplicity of her manner came as a revelation to those of her admirers who had longed to know more of her private character. For several minutes they applauded while she smilingly bowed, but at last the clapping died away, and each auditor shrugged himself into an easy posture in his chair, waiting for the great star to ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... his posture—a stark stillness which arrested his eye. He stepped quickly to his side and bent ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Mr. Dinsmore, stepping out upon the veranda, where Harold stood leaning against a vine-wreathed pillar, his blue eyes fixed with a sort of wistful, longing look upon Elsie's graceful figure and fair face, as she sat in a half-reclining posture on a low couch but a few ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... well-grounded hope, and who are about to engage with their inferiors, let us place our spears at our feet, and arm our right hands only with our swords. I would not even wish that any should push forward beyond the line; but that, standing firm, you receive the enemy's charge in a steady posture. When they shall have discharged their ineffective missives, and, breaking their ranks, they shall rush on you as you stand firm, then let your swords glitter, and let each man recollect, that there are gods who aid the Roman; those gods, who ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... chapter we come to quite a different theme. Like a fever-tossed patient, Ecclesiastes has turned from side to side for relief and rest; but each new change of posture has only brought him face to face with some other evil "under the sun" that has again and again pressed from him the bitter groan of "Vanity." But now, for a moment, he takes his eyes from the disappointments, ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... humanity, or beguiling the players to act like solemn automata. For children are usually quicker than grown-ups to see these droll resemblances. I came by degrees to like the game's variety, its tense excitement, its beauty of posture and curve. And before long I vaguely felt what I later learned consciously: that tennis is a sure revealer of character. Three sets with a man suffice to give one a working knowledge of his moral equipment; ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... of very little use. What passes by the name of "Etiquette" is often of the essence of unpoliteness and untruthfulness. It consists in a great measure of posture-making, and is easily seen through. Even at best, etiquette is but a substitute for good manners, though it is often but their ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antick of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... straightened himself from his stooping posture, turned and made Lady Ostermore a bow, his whole manner changed again to that which was habitual to him. "And no less decidedly, my lady," said he with a tight-lipped smile, "may I congratulate your ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... his posture, straining forward there on his seat, became suddenly painful and absurd. He tried to relax, but the effort was more than it was worth, and he sat forward ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the wall, returned to the other cell, took from the hiding-place the needle and thread, flung off his rags, that they might feel only naked flesh beneath the coarse canvas, and getting inside the sack, placed himself in the posture in which the dead body had been laid, and sewed up the mouth of the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tub-shaped clay dish. On the dish there was frequently an ornamental design, but beyond this, there was no attempt at decoration. The body was frequently pressed together in order to be brought within the compass of the dish. Sometimes, the knees were pulled up or the body placed in a semi-sitting posture, and there are indications that the bodies were often divided into two or three parts prior to burial. On the stele of vultures,[1261] representing the triumph of Eannatum over his enemies, attendants are seen building a mound over ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... if they durst. They were agan summoned for their arms, and cautioned to lower their demand for tithes. To this they sent an exasperating response of defiance, and a challenge, after which they seriously went about fortifying their dwelling, and putting it into the best posture of defence against the assault which they were very certain would be made on ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... forward, brandishing his crook and shaking his fists with great vehemence, gestures which I soon learned were, in that country, signs of amity and good-will. But before knowing that fact I had risen to my feet and thrown myself into a posture of defense, and as he approached I led for his head with my left, following with a stiff right upon his solar plexus, which sent him rolling on the grass in great pain. After learning something of the social customs ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... was the short reply of the soldier; and with clenched hands and set teeth, he took a stiffer posture on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... changing any part of a typical ordinance, 483 How the Holy Supper was administered in Rome in the second century, 484 The posture of the communicants—sitting and standing, 485 The bread not unleavened, ib. Wine mixed with water, ib. Bread not put into the mouth by the minister, 486 Infant communion, ib. How often the Lord's Supper celebrated, ib. The words Sacrament and Transubstantiation, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... brought into his Majestie's affairs, from his ability and activity had wrought himselfe much into his Majestie's confidence; and about the year 1632 was appointed by the King to be Lord Deputy of Ireland, where the state of affairs was in no very good posture, the revenue of the crown not defraying the standing army there, nor the ordinary expences; and the deportment of the Romanists being there also very insolent, and the Scots plantations in the northern ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... of thee? Whither canst thou fly for refuge against the unjust prince who persecutes thee? Was it not enough to be afflicted by the death of so dear a father? Must fortune needs add new misfortunes to just complaints?" He continued a long time in this posture, but at last rose up, and leaning his head upon his father's tombstone, his sorrows returned more violently than before; so that he sighed and mourned, till, overcome with heaviness, he sunk upon the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... made to touch them, and they immediately sprang to their feet. Samuel Parris had his minions well trained. On any special action of her body, shaking of her head, or the turning of her eyes, they imitated her posture and seemed under ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... right arm raised upward, the left crossed behind the back. Lean far back, then bend forward and touch the floor with the right hand, without bending the knees, as far in front of the body as possible. Raise the body to original posture, reverse position of arms, and repeat the exercise. Inhale while leaning backward and changing position of arms, exhale while ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... cruise in the Mediterranean, she happened to sail out of Port Mahon in what was then supposed to be very bad trim for the sea. Her bows were rooting in the water, and her stern kicking up its heels in the air. But, wonderful to tell, it was soon discovered that in this comical posture she sailed like a shooting-star; she outstripped every vessel on the station. Thenceforward all her Captains, on all cruises, trimmed her by the head; and the Neversink gained ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... her strength and rose to a sitting posture, in order to bow graciously to Monsieur Bianchon, and beg him to accept something else than money for the good news he gave her. She said a few words in her mother's ear, and Madame Sauviat immediately led away the doctors; then Veronique requested the archbishop to postpone ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... beasts of prey, and safely sleeps under the same canopy with the wolf and bear. His vengeance is concealed, and sends the tidings in the fatal blow. The first settlers were obliged to stand in a continual posture of defence; and as they could not be supposed to understand the political methods of managing their barbarous neighbors, they must have been subjected to all the hardships arising from their ignorance ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... with surprise that for a short period he was hardly sensible to their further proceedings. When able to reflect, he found himself pinioned, and in a sitting posture. A damp chill was on his forehead. He had been dragged downwards, and, from the motion, steps were the medium of descent. A door or two had been raised or opened, a narrow passage previously traversed, and a short time only elapsed from the cool freshness of the evening air to the damp and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... even discover the stage. He observed that every person in the theatre carried a long black glass, which he kept perpetually fixed to his eye. To sit in a huge room hotter than a glass-house, in a posture emulating the most sanctified Faquir, with a throbbing head-ache, a breaking back, and twisted legs, with a heavy tube held over one eye, and the other covered with the unemployed hand, is in Vraibleusia ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... punishment of death for having disobeyed my commands; and if you ever dare to open your lips on the subject, depend upon it, you shall not escape!" And with these words he strode away, leaving the astonished informer on his knees, in which posture he remained for some time afterwards, not daring to raise his head until the Decurio's steps had ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... myself at an experiment attempted by Dr. Luys. Ah, it was inspiring! At the charity hospital there was a poor girl paralyzed in both legs. She was put to sleep and commanded to rise. She struggled in vain. Then two interns held her up in a standing posture, but her lifeless legs bent useless under her weight. Need I tell you that she could not walk, and that after they had held her up and pushed her along a few steps, they put her to bed again, having ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the top, there was a sort of undignified scuffle, and in the end I found myself standing above a ghastly white gentleman who, from a sitting posture, was gasping out, "I'll commit you!... I swear I'll commit you!..." I helped him to his feet rather apologetically, while the admiral behind me was asking insistently who the deuce I was. The man I had picked up retreated a little, and then turned back to look at me. The ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... a hostile nation, and it was only after repeated and positive assurances of the amicable intentions of the strangers that he was induced to lower his fighting tone. He said something to his warriors explanatory of this singular posture of affairs, and in vindication, perhaps, of the pacific temper of his son-in-law. They all gave a shrug and an Indian grunt of acquiescence, and went off sulkily to their village, to lay aside their ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... ago," replied Oldham. His spare figure in the gray business suit did not stir from its lazy posture, nor did the expression of his thin sardonic face change, but somehow, after swallowing his drink, Bob decided to revise his first intention ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... feeling for Nature is, however, only the background of his work. He is no idyllic posture-monger. The march of events as they drive forward the primitive earth-born men and women of Wessex, thrills one with the same weight of accumulated fatality, as—the comparison is tedious and pedantic—the fortunes of the ill-starred houses of Argos and Thebes. One peculiarity of Mr. Hardy's method ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... his eyes, and rested his head on his hand in a somewhat studied "pose." But as he wished not to be interrupted, it may not have been altogether unpardonable to pretend sleep. However, the sleeping posture had exactly the opposite effect to that ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... when they suddenly found themselves face to face with the bushrangers. A fight followed as a matter of course, and every one of the four was killed. When the corpses were discovered, one of them was found in a kneeling posture, as though he had died in the act of begging for mercy. A ten-pound bank note was found sticking in a wound in his breast, and evidently the bushrangers put it there, to show that in this instance, at least, their object ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Pul or Buddha in the centre, two brass candlesticks by his side, and a small incense burner at his feet. "Joss sticks" are constantly burned before him and fill the temple with scent and haze. Buddha, as found in Corea, has generally a sitting and cross-legged posture; the feet are twisted with the soles upwards, and, while the right arm hangs down, the left is folded, the forearm projecting, and the hand holding a bronze ball. By his side, generally on the left, is a small tablet in a frame of elaborate wood-carving. At the foot of ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit the direst offences against the peace and purity of womanhood; but that true and hearty, though simple and unostentatious, reverence for the sex, that teaches men to regard ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in the boards upon the window. To my dismay the room looked even smaller and dingier than when I had examined it by the light of my match some hours before. The young Marquis lay unconscious in his corner just as I had last seen him, but with the widening light I discovered that his curious posture was due more to extraneous circumstances than to his own weakness, for I could see that he was fastened to the wall by a ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... exquisitely fine even on the first night, and every repetition disclosed augmented excellence. In the second scene of the second act, where Bertrand prostrates himself before Eugenia, Mr. M'Kenzie presented in his posture of supplication, such a natural yet terrible, picture of the humiliating effects of guilt and consequent remorse, as could not fail to make an awful impression on the most hardened and unfeeling ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... a picture in the tomb of Shopsisuri. Four registrars of the funerary temple of Usirniri advance in a crawling posture towards the master, the fifth has just risen and holds himself in a stooping attitude, while an usher introduces him and transmits to him an order to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to see it resolve itself into a board, and laughed tumultuously to note how it righted itself up in a mysterious manner, and stood in an easy reclining posture till the curtain fell. ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... you will be less likely to be sick if you get some good place where you can take a reclining posture, and so remain pretty ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... At the word Go, place your prisoner on the bench in a sitting posture; and take your seats right and ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... sound startled the girl into a straighter posture. It rang out so merrily that she laughed too after making up her mind that he was ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... of thanks, implied, that they should express their satisfaction at the present situation of affairs both at home and abroad. The motion was carried, notwithstanding the opposition of those who observed, that the nation had very little reason to be pleased with the present posture of affairs; that the French were employed in fortifying and restoring the harbour of Dunkirk, contrary to the faith of the most solemn treaties; that the British merchants had received no redress for the depredations committed by the Spaniards; that the commerce of England daily decreased; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of Vesta, she is generally represented upon ancient coins in a sitting posture, with a lighted torch in one hand, and a sphere or drum in the other. As Cyb{)e}le, she makes a more magnificent appearance, being seated in a lofty chariot drawn by lions, crowned with towers, and bearing in her hand a key. Being goddess, not of cities only, but of all things ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... rose and opened it. His dog came in carrying her bone, and putting it down by the bed divided her attention between it and her master's legs, revealed by the nightshirt which, in deference to the great Disraeli, he had never abandoned in favour of pyjamas. Having achieved so erect a posture Mr. Lavender, whose heated imagination had now carried him to the convalescent stage of his indisposition, felt that a change of air would do him good, and going to the window, leaned out above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... faith, and baptised the dreary solitude Cross Island. But these pilgrims, as they now approached the spot, found no worshippers there, while, as if in horrible mockery of their piety, two enormous white bears had reared themselves in an erect posture, in order the better to survey their visitors, directly at the foot of the cross. The party which had just landed were unarmed, and were for making off as fast as possible to their boats. But Skipper Heemskerk, feeling that this would be death to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to a sitting posture and looked out. To his astonishment, he found himself and boat upon the deck ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... required, in addition, regular fees for the discovery of a witch. Besides pricking the body to find the witch-mark, he compelled the wretched and decrepit victims of his cruel practices to sit in a painful posture, on an elevated stool, with their limbs crossed; and, if they persevered in refusing to confess, he would prolong their torture, in some cases, to more than twenty-four hours. He would prevent their going to sleep, and drag them about barefoot over ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... I was reading these fables of my millions, there lay on the desk before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs—a memorandum made by myself for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as I mastered it. On the face of the figures the balance against me was appalling. My chief asset, indeed my only asset that measured ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... by instinct, advancing his foot mechanically, to save himself from falling, when he was pushed gently forwards. When standing, he could not seat himself—and when sitting, he could not get up without help. In whatever posture he was placed, there he remained. Altogether insensible to question and remark, he looked wildly round upon us, and smiled, and winked with both eyes. These were his sole remaining capabilities—to wink, and to look agreeable. He had been recommended as an object worthy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... one-legged man must sit down for work, while for his part he stood, but he had not realized that Ike considered any more restful posture essential. "A blind man sees more'n most folk" is a common claim of Emile's. It is tedious pegging away when fish are scarce, yet fishing is a trade where "'tis dogged as does it." He suspected that Ike took it easy in the stern while he worked in the bow; and his ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Sprouse had noiselessly removed his coat, a proceeding that puzzled Barnes. Something light fell to the ground. It was Sprouse who stooped and searched for it in the grass. When he resumed an upright posture, he put his lips close to ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... was in lodgings. I am now in chambers, No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see you any evening. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with you. I have two sitting-rooms: I call them so par excellence, for you may stand, or loll, or lean, or try any posture in them; but they are best for sitting; not squatting down Japanese fashion, but the more decorous use of the post——s which European usage has consecrated. I have two of these rooms on the third floor, and five sleeping, cooking, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... its way into the great constructive arcades, but not into any of the smaller arches. But the taste of those who designed its capitals must have been singular. Any kind of man, beast, or bird, it has been said, can put himself into such a posture as to make an Ionic volute. When the volutes are made by the heads of eagles, well and good; but it is certainly strange to make them out of the heads of cranes, who are holding down their long necks to peck each one at a human skull which he firmly holds down with one of his feet. ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... St John Nepomucene is a single figure, standing in melancholy weeping posture on the balustrade of the bridge, without any of that ponderous strength of wide-spread stone which belongs to the other groups. This St John is always pictured to us as a thin, melancholy, half-starved ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... cries, and all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it;—to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel animal grunt with savage ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... body and that of any brute is marked along the whole line, from the solid basis of the feet, enabling him to stand erect, look upward and behold the stars; along the line of the stiff backbone, maintaining the dignified posture; to the hands, on which treatises have been written, displaying their wonderful superiority over those of all other creatures, and enabling man to do what no other animal has done, to fill the world with ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... was not dreaming.... She knew she had lost consciousness and was coming back to life.... She asked herself could she possibly be alive? Fantomas had threatened her with death, and yet she lived.... Where was she?... Bobinette felt so weak and giddy that she remained in a sitting posture.... What exactly had happened?... Ah!—yes!—when Fantomas had announced she was to die, she had fallen down on the road: her skirt was still wet and muddy, her testing fingers told her that! She was cold! ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... of the sand from the upper part or ceiling of the passage causes it to be nearly filled up. In some places there is not more than the vacancy of a foot left, which you must contrive to pass through in a creeping posture, like a snail, on pointed and keen stones, that cut like glass. After getting through these passages, some of them two or three hundred yards long, you generally find a more commodious place, perhaps high enough to sit. But what a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... from her desk, putting her hand to her forehead, as if to soften a shock of headache that her change of posture had sent there. "I will leave the letter with you, and you can send it or not as you think best. It's merely a formality, my writing to your mother. Perhaps you'll see it differently in the morning. Effie!" she called to the ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... mendicants and mountebanks who infest the great roads of India and the streets of its cities, and who impudently claim the title "Yogi." The Western student is scarcely to be blamed for thinking of the typical Yogi as an emaciated, fanatical, dirty, ignorant Hindu, who either sits in a fixed posture until his body becomes ossified, or else holds his arm up in the air until it becomes stiff and withered and forever after remains in that position, or perhaps clenches his fist and holds it tight until his fingernails ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... would be a great deal worse. She wanted to write from his dictation, but he would not consent, thinking that his mother might not consider it proper, and he began vigorously; but though long used to writing in a recumbent posture, he found himself less capable now than he had expected, and went on soliloquizing thus: 'What a pen you've given me, Charlotte. There goes a blot! Here, another dip, will you! and take up that with the blotting paper before it ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mr. Polly remembered afterwards with pride and amazement that he felt neither faint nor rigid. He glanced round him, seized a bottle of beer by the neck as an improvised club, and went out by the garden door. Uncle Jim stopped amazed. His brain did not instantly rise to the new posture of things. "You!" he cried, and stopped for a ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... his knees from the side of his bed. It was his custom to pray in this posture both morning and night; in the morning to thank his Lord for having brought him safely through the night and to offer Him all his prayers and works and sufferings of the day. At night to implore pardon for his shortcomings of the day and to commend ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... man were, servility to his superiors, and tyranny towards his inferiors: the poor detested this race of beings. In speaking to them, however, they always used the most abject language, and the most humble tone and posture—"Please your honour; and please your honour's honour" they knew must be repeated as a charm at the beginning and end of every equivocating, exculpatory, or supplicatory sentence; and they were much more alert in doffing their caps to these new men, than to those of what ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... I assembled the companies at Bethlehem, the chief establishment of those people. I was surprised to find it in so good a posture of defense; the destruction of Gnadenhut had made them apprehend danger. The principal buildings were defended by a stockade; they had purchased a quantity of arms and ammunition from New York, and had even plac'd quantities of small paving stones ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... leaned against the safe in the same posture of seeming ease, but he expected Barney to strike at any moment, and held himself in readiness for a flashing fist. Barney had been hard to hold in leash in the old days; now that all ties of partnership ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... with my father Plutus, and therefore called by Homer the Golden Goddess? Beside, she imitates me in being always a laughing, if either we believe the poets, or their near kinsmen the painters, the first mentioning, the other drawing her constantly in that posture. Add farther, to what deity did the Romans pay a more ceremonial respect than to Flora, that bawd of obscenity? And if any one search the poets for an historical account of the gods, he shall find them all famous for lewd pranks and debaucheries. It is needless ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Ravenswood was borne to the grave; but by the introduction of the Lord Keeper and of the village crones into that funeral scene he opened the whole subject, indicated all the essential antecedents of the story, and placed his characters in a posture of lively action. That the tone is sombre must be conceded, and people who think that the chief end of man is to grin might condemn the piece for that reason; but Ravenswood is a tragedy and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... harassed by the Civil War. This was especially the case in the county of Oxford. Still you may see avenues of venerable trees that lead to no house. The old mansion or manor-house has vanished. Many of them were put in a posture of defence. Earthworks and moats, if they did not exist before, were hastily constructed, and some of these houses were bravely defended by a competent and brave garrison, and were thorns in the sides of the Parliamentary army. Upon the triumph of the latter, revenge ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... taught him to do, while Archer, tremulous and unstrung, stood awkwardly by, watching. He knelt down over the lifeless form of the old man and straightened the prostrate figure so that it lay becomingly and decently upon the hard floor. He bent the one arm and laid it across the breast in the usual posture of dignity and peace. He took the threadbare covering from the old melodeon and placed it over the face. So that the last service for old Pierre Leteur was performed by an American boy; and at least the ashes of the home fire were left in order by a scout from ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... about in his bed and kicking the slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and regarded his environment with ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... where he was governor, and threatened to put him to death unless he renounced the faith he had newly embraced. The prince, in order to prevent the execution of his father's menaces, began to put himself into a posture of defence; and many of the orthodox persuasion in Spain declared for him. The king, exasperated at this act of rebellion, began to punish all the orthodox christians who could be seized by his ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... moment I should not have been surprised if she had suddenly taken shape before my eyes, in the old seat, the slim, girlish woman in her white dress, her hands folded in her lap, her quiet eyes gazing dreamily into the red fire, a subtile air of distinction in her whole posture.... She would be old now, I suppose. Would she? Ah no, she was not one of the women who grow old.... I caught up the thread of my host's discourse just as he was pointing it with a sharp rap upon one ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... out of sight, the women pressed in again, and each first let down her hair, and seized her nearest neighbour, and they all flung themselves on the ground and knocked their heads against it, and then, rising to a sitting posture, they held on to one another, swaying backwards and forwards and chanting in time to the swaying, in chorus and antiphone. All this, even to the hair-tearing and head-knocking, was copied by the children who ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the charitable. At night a flickering tallow dip sheds a dismal glare around. The man's head is tied up in a piece of white muslin, his eyes are closed, and his face and posture are expressive of the most intense misery. He turns the crank slowly, and the organ groans and moans in the most ludicrously mournful manner. At one side of the queer instrument sits a woman with a babe at her breast, on the other side sits a little boy, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... vase modeled to represent a grotesque human figure. It is painted with designs in red and white, the ground color being a reddish yellow. The figure has a kneeling posture. The hands are upraised against the shoulders, with palms turned forward. Height, 10-1/2 inches; width of shoulders, 8 ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... recumbent posture, she approached the water at the entrance of the cave till the spray mingled with her long, white locks, and the light falling upon her brow, revealed a sharp beautiful outline of face scarcely touched by ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... at Hampton Court is a beautiful little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of A Startling Introduction. This belonged to Charles I., for his cypher is branded on the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the Commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a Dutch lady by Bott." The painter's monogram H.P. appears on the large chimney piece before which the "soldier" ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... once ugly and beautiful—than like anything else; only that they were a thousand and a million times as big. And with all this there was something partly human about them, too. Luckily for Perseus, their faces were completely hidden from him by the posture in which they lay, for had he but looked one instant at them, he would have fallen heavily out of the air, ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... thy bounty perfect. Drop My hand. That posture which dishonours thee, Quit!—for 'tis shame on shame to show respect Where we do feel disdain. Throw ope thy gate And let me pass, and never seek with me, By look, or speech, or aught, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... Phil Turner, bound hand and foot, and cruelly cramped in every limb, hitched himself to a sitting posture and began to calculate how long he ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and raised her to a sitting posture, so that she leaned against him. Holding her so, he gently rubbed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... with the other drawn over us, were lying down and trying to doze a little, when about ten o'clock we heard a horseman coming at full speed from the direction of Bolivar. We thereupon rose to a sitting posture, and awaited developments. The horseman, on nearing our post and being challenged, responded, "Friend, without the countersign!" and in a peremptory manner told the sentinel on duty that he wanted to ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the pretty girl under the arms and elevated her to a standing posture. She recovered her breath and her self-possession promptly and glowed upon him with the brightest of smiles. He ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... bury their deceased in the earth; they dig a four- foot, square, deep pit under the cabin, or couch which the deceased laid on in his house, lining the grave with cypress bark, when they place the corpse in a sitting posture, as if it were alive, depositing with him his gun, tomahawk, pipe, and such other matters as he had the greatest value for in his lifetime. His eldest wife, or the queen dowager, has the second choice of his possessions, and the remaining effects are divided ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... must not be seen sitting. Rise!—and stand in humble posture while they pass. You are a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Vogelstein no better foil could be imagined than Brush. If they recalled the tusked monsters that charged in the van of Asiatic armies, his analogue was the desert horse. Small, spare, sensitive, shy, his every posture suggested race, training, spirit, and docility. His flair for classical art had become proverbial. By mere touch he detected those remarkable counterfeits of Syracusan coins. It was he who segregated the ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... concerned about him or his feelings when Steingall touched an electric switch and revealed a bound and gagged man fastened to a leg of the bed. At first, owing to the extraordinary posture of the body, it was feared that another tragedy had been enacted. The victim of an uncanny outrage was lying on his side, and his arms and legs were roughly but skillfully tied with a stout rope in such wise that he resembled a fowl trussed for the oven. After securing ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... many breasts, is in a sitting posture. Near her stands a little child, lifting her garment off her shoulders. On the other side stands Truth, holding a mirror before her, wherein she views herself down to the middle, and is seemingly surprised at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... But these must have time to perform their operation, and must be used for a considerable time, or you will reap but little benefit from them. The act of coition being over, let the woman repose herself on her right side, with her head lying low, and her body declining, that by sleeping in that posture, the cani, on the right side of the matrix, may prove the place of conception; for therein is the greatest generative heat, which is the chief procuring cause of male children, and rarely fails the expectations of those that experience it, especially if they do but keep warm, without ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... deep, and, then facing about, presented the point of an espontoon or kind of spear, which he had carried in his hand. The bear arrived at the water's edge, within twenty feet of him; but, as soon as the captain put himself in this posture of defence, the animal seemed frightened, and, wheeling about, retreated with as much precipitation as ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... above the suicide; the tide that rose and stretched itself abroad in the sunshine, carrying hither and thither the burden with which it knew not what to do; the arrest, as by some ghastly caprice of fate, of the dead girl, in that upright posture, in which she should meet the quest for her, as it ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... as he gained an erect posture, and turned a threatening look upon his assailant, the onlookers, who all knew him, and all hated and feared him, saw a sudden and surprising transformation. The red all died out of his face, the eyes seemed starting from their sockets, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... half in his stocking-feet—offered a preliminary obstacle to this attack. But here, in the first skirmish of the battle, intellect already began to triumph over matter. By means of a pair of library steps, the injured householder gained a posture of advantage; and, with great swipes of the coal-axe, proceeded to decapitate ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... although much dilapidated, is still very beautiful. The exterior is full with fine reliefs, especially on one side, where a figure, in the form of an angel, is represented holding two garlands of fruit together over its head. On the lid of the sarcophagus are two figures in a reclining posture. The heads are wanting; but all the other parts, the bodies, their position, and the draping of the garments, are executed in a ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... coach in which he snored, overcome by Hungarian wine, lastly his train of lackeys. Then he saw his Serene Highness thrown on his mother-in-law's dirty bed, booted and spurred; for his gentlemen, as they passed the inn, had thought it best to give his slumbers a more comfortable posture. Here, surrounded by valets, pages, and negroes, he had snored on all night, while the indomitable widow cooked her meals and chopped her wood in the very room as usual. And here, in a sooty public-house, with broken windows, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... by Claverhouse, when attending on public worship, they completely routed him and his troops, rescued Mr. John King, and a number of other prisoners, whom Claverhouse had seized that morning, from their hands. Afterward they declared the grounds and causes of their present defensive posture, in that short manifesto, or declaration, published at Glasgow, June 6th, 1679. But when their numbers multiplied, their divisions increased, and lawful means for honestly defending the cause were by the majority refused. Mr. Welsh and that Erastian party ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... evening your parents and I entrained for Benares. We took a horse cart the following day, and then had to walk through narrow lanes to my guru's secluded home. Entering his little parlor, we bowed before the master, enlocked in his habitual lotus posture. He blinked his piercing eyes and leveled them on ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... urged to activity and perseverance by a desire to gratify numerous artificial wants; but the necessities of the Indian are few, and provided for by nature almost spontaneously. He detests labor, and will sometimes sit for whole days together without uttering a word or changing his posture. Neither the hope of reward nor the prospect of future want can ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... that occasion, proved how gladly they came to her when she could no longer, with ease, be conveyed to them. The enfeebled state of her bodily frame seemed to have left the powers of her mind unshackled, and she took, though in a sitting posture, almost her usual part in repeatedly addressing the meeting. She urged, with increased pathos and affection, the objects of philanthropy and Christian benevolence with which her life had been identified. After the meeting, and at her own desire, several members of the committee, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... le 17 Fevrier, 1673, a l'age de 51 ans." At the corner of the same street, where a small passage way branches off, is a fine monument to the memory of the great poet and the noblest comic writer of France. The statue is of bronze, in a sitting posture; on each side are figures,—one humorous, the other serious,—both looking at the statue. At the foot of the monument is a basin to receive water, which flows from three lions' heads. This work was put up in 1844, with public services, on which occasion the first men of France took a part. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... for just at the bottom of the hill, when he was going like a greyhound, Sable stopped short, lowered his head, flung up his heels, and, without the slightest protest or delay, Bert went flying from the saddle, and landed in the middle of the dusty road in a sitting posture with his legs stretched out before him. The saucy pony paused just long enough to make sure that his rider was disposed of beyond a doubt, and then galloped ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... able to get hold of his collar. In this position he managed to hold Bobby's head above water, but found it perilous to move or attempt to pull him up on the ice. His right arm grew numb with the weight and his left hand, cramped and twisted by his sprawling posture, pained him severely. He knew that help would come soon, but an eternity seemed to pass before he heard Mr. Grey's encouraging call, "Hold on Peri, just a minute longer." Periwinkle did hang on desperately until Mr. Grey, ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz |
