"Bracing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lay low; but Shortlands stood on rising ground, and the more bracing air did Primrose good. When she saw how happy Mrs. Ellsworthy made her sisters she forgave her for not ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... or two of anything but hospitality as generous as that of New York. Well-nourished and undimmed, however, it concealed for them admirably the fact that it was the hospitality they were after, and not the bracing climate or the desire to see the fascinating Americans of London and Paris at home. New York found them agreeable specimens of high-spirited young English people, and played with them indefinitely. Miss Forde, when she sat imperturbably on a ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... And all the clamor seemed to shine, the light Seemed to shout as a man doth; twice I laughed— I tell you, twice my heart swelled out with thirst To be into the battle; see, fair lord, I swear it seemed I might have made a knight, And yet the simple bracing of a belt Makes me cry out; this is too pitiful, This dusty half of us made up with fears.— Have you been ever quite so glad to fight As I have thought men must? ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the back," that is, slipping down in the chair, bracing the shoulders against the chair-back, tends to injure the nerves by pressure, and also to create a posterior ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... who lived in a village high up on those same downs. Many years ago he had visited her in the breezy place in which she had chosen to make her home, and if his memory served him rightly, and he had no doubt on that point, Windy Gap, as the village was called, would be bracing enough to please the doctor, and quiet enough to satisfy him. To the best of his belief there was scarcely another house within three or four miles, and even if she had possessed near neighbours Mrs. Murray would not have been likely to hold much intercourse ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... excavation. This was accomplished by temporary bridges for each track, each bridge consisting of a pair of timber trusses about 55 feet long, braced together overhead high enough to let a car pass below the bracing. These trusses were set up on crib-work supports at each end, and the track hung from the lower chords. (See photograph on page 42.) The excavation then proceeded until the trench was finished and posts could be put into place ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... is this little city. Situated high above sea level, with a climate so bracing and life-giving that the phthisis bacillus can hardly live in it, it seemed to our soldiers, after their long march across the veldt, a veritable City of Refuge. Alas! how soon it was to be turned into a ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... hopefully, "it was a good thing I said that to him. David is clever and good and dear and all that, but the trouble is he lacks ambition and push. He needs bracing up and to take things more seriously. Perhaps it will be just as well if I take ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... choir screen of the Duomo. At length he was picked up tenderly by the good Misericordia. His terrible wounds were reverently washed and his godlike body prepared for sepulture. News of his assassination had been swiftly carried out to Careggi, and Domina Lucrezia, bracing herself for the afflicting sight, hastened to lay his fair head in her lap, a very real replica of "La Pieta"—Blessed Mary and ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... peach trees were all in blossom and humming with bees, their rich, amethystine rose flung up against the gay April sky in a challenge of beauty and joy. The air was full of the promises of spring, keen, bracing, yet with an undercurrent of languorous warmth. There was a ragged fleece of bloom, sweet and alive with droning insects, over a plum thicket near the woods,—half-wild, brambly things, cousin on the one hand to the cultivated ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... tactics were resumed, and the toil over the raft went on, but there was still so much to do in the way of bracing and strengthening the rough craft so that it might withstand the fierce currents and concussions they were to expect at the lower part of the lake where the rapids began, that the hours glided by till late in the afternoon, and still ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... to the side of the canoe to help her to the bank, but she took his hand only to steady herself while rising. Stepping over the bracing-strips between the gunwales, she caught a swaying branch, and swung herself lightly ashore. Back from the water the ground rose into a low hill, covered with oak and elm and ragged hickory trees. Here, for a space, there was little undergrowth, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... definite plan of exploration. Everything was alike new to him, and it mattered little in what direction his steps led him. It was a charming morning. The sun had risen, and hill and valley were glorified by its slanting rays. The air was bracing, and Ebenezer, though neither a poet nor a sentimentalist, felt his spirits rise, as with vigorous steps he strode on, letting his eyes wander ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... reinforced imbecile, yet tyrannic governments, to appreciate the feelings of a young, well-born, gifted citizen, when suddenly checked in a liberal and progressive career, and remanded, as it were, from the bracing atmosphere of modern civilization and enlightened activity, to the passive, silent endurance of obsolete feudalism. It was the inevitable and deliberate protest against this wicked and absurd reaction which gave birth to the political organization of the Carbonari; wherein the noblest men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... we can all do just now is to eat dinner. A square meal works wonders in bracing people up. Miss Standish, do you think you can rouse the maids to an effort to get us some sort of food? If not, we can forage for ourselves, in the icebox. What ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... think, Miss Priscilla," said the doctor, "though I am sorry to do it. The fact is, the air here is altogether too bracing for your sister. She will have to go to some inland town, where the east winds ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... girl's chief emotion was one of admiration for the pony. How accurate its movements in this crisis! How unerring its judgment! For though no word had been spoken—at least the girl heard none—the pony kept the rope taut, bracing against its burden as Randerson slid ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Fig. 19 shows how the bark is placed like shingles overlapping each other so as to shed the rain. The doorway of the tent shack is made by leaning poles against forked sticks, their butts forming a semicircle in front, or rather the arc of a circle, and by bracing them against the forked stick fore and aft they add ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... shooting downward, the severed line whipping out after him. The first plunge flung him off his feet. A long swoop which he took on his back dizzied him. But as the fall continued, he was able to slow it a little by bracing arms and legs against ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... "There is always something going on outdoors worth seeing," says Charles Dudley Warner, and of no part of the world is this more true than of these apparently desolate plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Rich is the reward of the daily stroller, not only in the inspiration of its pure, bracing air, the songs of its meadow-larks, and the glory of its grand mountain view, but in its ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... round the stem and over and under the branch, reefing it, making it taut and trim so that no strain could loosen it; and all the while he was conscious of the power in his arms and hands, the volume of air in his lungs, the flow of blood in his veins, the nervous force bracing and hardening his muscles. The rope was fast now. Now he assured himself that its free length—the part from the tree to the noose—was absolutely correct as to its amount. Nothing remained to do, nothing ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... are some exotics from the North, which droop with a homesick aspect. Plants, like human beings, will pine for their native atmosphere. If it be more rigorous and less genial at the North, still there is a bracing, tonic effect, imparting life and strength, which is wanting in the low latitudes. On one side of this fine square is the government house and barracks, opposite to which is an open-air theatre, and in front is the cathedral with ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... now here is luncheon all ready." So they sat down on the verge of the slope, and ate their cold chicken and tongue, with the relish imparted by youth, a long ride, and the bracing air. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... which she was aware of not having yet quite sounded. The depths of his faith of course—there she could only scan and hesitate, but this was a brink upon which she did not often find herself, away from which, indeed, he sometimes gently guided her. The atmospheres of their talk were the more bracing ones of this world, and it was here that Hilda looked when she would make him a parallel for Lindsay, and here that she found her measure of disappointment. He warmed himself and dried his wings in the opulence of her spirit, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... climate; eudiometer^. [Preservation of health] hygiene; valetudinarian, valetudinarianism; sanitarian; sanitarium, sanitOrium. V. be salubrious &c adj.; agree with; assimilate &c 23. Adj. salubrious, salutary, salutiferous^; wholesome; healthy, healthful; sanitary, prophYlactic, benign, bracing, tonic, invigorating, good for, nutritious; hygeian^, hygienic. innoxious^, innocuous, innocent; harmless, uninjurious, uninfectious. sanative &c (remedial) 662; restorative &c (reinstate) 660; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... now, and the air was bracing and exhilarating, for all the afternoon was mild. The trees were flaming with color, and the leaves had begun to sift down. In the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... to a nose. It is a rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle. It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal qualities. I do not recommend its use as eyewater, though an old farmer assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied. Hearing, one night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... his many vicissitudes and disappointments, by his noble wife. If he was treated with harshness by his political enemies, his consolation was in the tender affection which filled his home with sunshine. Though his public life was bracing and stimulating, he felt, nevertheless, that it was cold and calculating, and neither filled the soul nor elevated the character. "Man longs for a happiness," he says in his 'Memoires,' "more complete and more tender than that which all the labours and triumphs of active ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... stories by W. H. H. Murray, in both which appears John Norton, the trapper, a character that promises to become as much of a favorite as is the hero of the Leather Stocking novels. These stories have a bracing outdoor freshness and a delightfully crisp realism: are vigorous in tone, and strong and picturesque in the relation. Taken altogether, they may be pronounced in the most artistic of Mr. Murray's excursions into the realms of fiction, and fascinating ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... had somewhat told upon his health, and he felt that a few months or years in a warmer clime would result in the recovery of lost vigor. He had purchased a ticket for Wilmington, N. C. The air there was mild, bracing and dry and made health giving and mellow by the sweet odor of the yellow pine. And then, again, a field was open for the continuance of his work while he recuperated, a certain Baptist church in the old city had called him to its pastorate. Being a man ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... up. He heard the gates rattling open for the next boat-load, and took his stand again, bracing himself for another rebuff. The usual vanguard, the usual quicksilver bunch of humanity, massing, separating, flowing this way and that, and in the midst of them a fair-haired, timid-looking young girl, walking quietly with down-cast ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the steam heaved up and burst before it could get out. And what are the black lines across, marked E E E? They are the streams of lava which have burrowed out, some covered up again in cinders, some lying bare in the open air, some still inside the cone, bracing it together, holding it up. Something like this is ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... into the earth and bury itself, it uses the fore-edge of its head, a sort of weeding-hoe with the two mandibles for points. The legs take part in this work, but far less effectually. In this way it contrives to dig itself a shallow pit. Then, bracing itself against the wall of the pit, with the aid of wriggling movements which are favoured by the short, stiff hairs bristling all over its body, the grub changes its position and plunges into the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... head in his neck as though bracing himself. "I learned of it yesterday, Martha. Pray accept my condolences. I should have called ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... successive anterooms, the lounging aids, the good-natured and easy General,—easy by habit and energetic by impulse,—all had a certain air of Southern languor, rather picturesque, but perhaps not altogether bracing. General Hunter received us, that day, with his usual kindliness; there was a good deal of pleasant chat; Miles O'Reilly was called in to read his latest verses; and then we came to the matter ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... lying, one light, upon the distant water, like a ship, I came plashing through the silent and deserted streets; I felt as if the houses were reality—the water, fever-madness. But when, in the bright, cold, bracing day, I stood upon the piazza, this morning, by Heaven the glory of the place was insupportable! And diving down from that into its wickedness and gloom—its awful prisons, deep below the water; its judgment chambers, secret doors, deadly nooks, where the torches you carry ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... which has been alleged as a proof of its uselessness, and inferentially of its falsehood, puts us on the right track. It was not meant for their deliverance, but for their heartening, and for the bracing of all generations of Christians, by showing, at the first conflict with the civil power, that the Lord was with His Church. His strengthening power is operative when no miracle is wrought. If His servants are not delivered, it is not that He lacks angels, but that it is better for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... laugh—the first since she had come home. She kept Betty gossiping for half an hour, and as the stream of the village life poured about her, in Betty's racy speech, it was as though some primitive virtue entered into her and cheered her—some bracing voice from the Earth-spirit—whose purpose ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bracing himself to face what was now soon to happen. Well, it was the beginning of the end. Oh Dear knew. Soon more would know, all would know. And in a way he was glad of it, glad that the torment of suspense would ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... fresh, and striking into a canter the two men made for the open country. The excitement and motion combined with the bracing air drove the fumes of the liquor from Cook's head, and before many miles had been passed he was comparatively free from the terrible malady ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... hearty appetites for breakfast in spite of their restless and disturbed sleep, for the bracing effects of their swim, taken before the meal, more than made up for the lack of proper rest. And after breakfast Dolly asked permission to go out in the sloop, since one of the very few rules of ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... carpenter work on "The Curlew" at Portland made a bill of a hundred and nine dollars; seamen's wages to Gloucester, with car-fare back, nineteen dollars; bracing and strengthening the schooner, sixty-seven dollars; cost of getting in fuel and water, thirty-three dollars; and other bills to the amount of forty-nine dollars: in all, two hundred and seventy-seven dollars. We had thus to pay out at the start over ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... stimulus of the bracing early morning air. A new inspiration seemed to fire him, altogether dissimilar to the glow which he was wont to feel when plunging into a dangerous phase of a professional case. He slowly drew from his pocket the typed note-paper which had nestled ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the many congenial texts to be gathered in their 'Holy Scripture.' Non-established priesthoods are but little more disposed to emancipate 'mind' and oil the wheels of political progression than those kept in state pay. The air of conventicles is not of the freest or most bracing description. The Methodist preacher, who has the foolish effrontery to tell his congregation 'the flush lusteth always contrary to the spirit, and, therefore, every person born into the world deserveth God's wrath and damnation,' may be ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... bracing morning, and the clocks were striking seven when we quitted Troutenau; a very pretty clean town, well situated, on the slope of a hill, and commanding, as I have hinted above, a noble view of the ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... just to breathe the air! Never had her step been so light, or her daily walk to the dingy office—dingy no longer—so bracing. And the out-of-doors—the sky and drifting clouds; the low hills, bleak in the winter's gloom—what changes had come over them? Was it the first blush of the coming spring that had softened their lines, or had her eyes been blind to all their beauty? ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... by the "Fougueux," by bracing up her yards, to cross under the stern of the "Weymouth." This, however, was quickly prevented by Captain Jumper, by a similar manoeuvre, as he had no intention of giving up the ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... months after we took the studio, and left me at a day's notice. The amount and kind of moral courage I had to summon up before I could go home alone the first evening after my comrade left me can only be appreciated by those who have undergone some similar torture. It was not like the bracing up a man goes through when he has to face some imminent known danger, but was of a more subtle and complex kind. "There is nothing to fear," I kept saying to myself, and yet I could not shake off a nameless dread. "You are in your right mind and have all your senses," I continually ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... letter and a parcel of yours, Paul: you had better look at them—we hope to start north in a day or two—you must get to a more bracing place." ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... political situation, both in Saxony and the rest of Germany, tended inevitably towards a catastrophe. Day by day this drew nearer, and I flattered myself into regarding my own personal fate as interwoven with this universal unrest. Now that the powers of reaction were everywhere more and more openly bracing themselves for conflict, the final decisive struggle seemed indeed close at hand. My feelings of partisanship were not sufficiently passionate to make me desire to take any active share in these conflicts. I was merely conscious of an impulse to give ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... reluctance. It was overcome, for when young Webster felt the power which was in him, he boldly employed it. At first, however, he was a failure as a public speaker. With all this, he went forward in the acquisition of knowledge and the bracing of his mind; and in his fifteenth year he once undertook to repeat five hundred lines of Virgil, if his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... first exploratory ramble in Eigg an hour before noon. The day was bracing and breezy, and a clear sun looked cheerily down on island, and strait, and blue open sea. We rowed southwards in our little boat, through the channel of Eilean Chaisteil, along the trap-rocks of the island, and landed under the two pitchstone veins of Eigg, so generally ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... There was a bracing note in that vehemence. "Well, don't ask me to do any crossing of a bridge before I come to it. I think our friend down stairs is thinking of hospitals and nurses and all kinds of quirks that would drive me crazy. Tell him I know what I'm about. ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... distinction Chopin treats the bassoon, and how he is repaid with mocking ingratitude. But enough of the orchestral rabble. The Adagio is very fine in its way, but such is its cloying sweetness that one longs for something bracing and active. This desire the composer satisfies only partially in the last movement (Rondo vivace, 2-4, E major). Nevertheless, he succeeds in putting us in good humour by his gaiety, pretty ways, and tricksy surprises (for instance, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... which fine sheet of water, in a landlocked harbor, stands the town of Gaspe, distinguished as the place where Jacques Cartier landed in 1534. It is now a great fishing-station, employing thousands of men along the coast in the cod-fishery. Here are fine scenery, clear bracing air, good sea-bathing, excellent salmon- and trout-fishing and a comfortable hotel. What more can a well-regulated mind desire? Into Gaspe Bay flow the Dartmouth, the York and the St. John—good salmon-rivers, while both they and the smaller streams abound with sea-trout ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... sleigh, drawn by spirited steed, You glide o'er the snow with lightning speed, Whilst from harness, decked with silvery bells, sweet showers the sound on the clear air swells; And the keen bracing breeze, with vigor rife, Sends quick through your veins ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... else—on account of the joyousness of his soul. There was a contagious and a godlike hilarity in his broad, open brow, his frank, laughing eyes, and his mobile lips. He seemed to carry about with him a bracing moral atmosphere. The sight of him had the same effect on the dull man of ordinary life that the Himalayan air has on an Indian invalid; and yet Jack was head-over-heels in debt. Not a tradesman would ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... clear, lovely, October morning. The air was sharp and bracing, and the leaves which had taken their autumnal tints were falling from the trees. The road which wound by Westbourne Green, gave him a full view of the hill of Hampstead with its church, its crest of houses, and its villas peeping ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... these arches by wrought-iron vertical rods, with horizontal tie-bars to resist the thrust. The suspension-bolts are enclosed within spandril pillars of cast iron, which give great stiffness to the superstructure. This system of longitudinal and vertical bracing has been much admired, for it not only accomplishes the primary object of securing rigidity in the roadway, but at the same time, by its graceful arrangement, heightens the beauty of the structure. The arches consist of four main ribs, disposed in pairs with a clear distance ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the same there was that subconscious sense of bracing air—something like the sense of climax in reaching a Northern station on a very hot day. We may be very hot, perhaps, at Carlisle or Edinburgh, but it is ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... owes it to the spirit within him not to stand or walk in such an attitude. He should brace up and keep bracing up persistently, unremittently, until he attains a ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... love a clear bracing air!" said Mrs. Rothesay, with the restlessness peculiar to all invalids—and she had been a greater invalid ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... these hopes. A few days before Christmas it became known to Hanaford that Mrs. Westmore would return for the holidays. Cicely was drooping in town air, and Bessy had persuaded Mr. Langhope that the bracing cold of Hanaford would be better for the child than the milder atmosphere of Long Island. They reappeared, and brought with them a breath of holiday cheerfulness such as Westmore had never known. It had always been the rule at the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Joseph Marie Vien (1716-1809) there came towards the end of the eighteenth century the virile, revolutionary figure of Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), who burst like a thunderstorm on the corrupt artistic atmosphere of the age, sweetening and bracing French art for half a century. Shocked by the slovenly drawing and vulgarity of the fashionable masters, and nursed on Plutarch, he applied himself to the study of the antique with a determination to rejuvenate the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... whenever it was possible. Loys was so happy it made you feel like a boy again to see her. She told me in private that it was wonderful how the air out here agreed with her, and I said it was considered mighty bracing, and never let on that they proclaimed their state of mind every time they looked at each other. I reckon old smart-Aleck Jonesy was the only party in the township who didn't understand. Kyle used to put vinegar in his coffee and things like that, and if you'd ask ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... sally forth (you will go with me in my heart) and try whether this fine bracing air will not give the vigour to the poor babe, it had, before I so inconsiderately gave way to the grief that deranged my bowels, and gave a turn ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... complaints would cease. The new abode contained five rooms for Napoleon's use, three for the Montholons, two for the Las Cases, and one for Gourgaud: it was situated on a plateau 1,730 feet above the sea: the air there was bracing, and on the farther side of the plain dotted with gum trees stretched the race-course, a mile and a half of excellent turf. The only obvious drawbacks were the occasional mists, and the barren precipitous ravines that flank the plateau on all sides. Seeing, however, that Napoleon ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... contrary, there is little of this struggle; the seasons are more equable, and the mild, soft air of the valleys tends to make the inhabitants luxurious and sensitive to hardships. It is only in exceptional mountain districts that one is here reminded of the rough, bracing air on the heights of Southern Germany. It is a curious fact that, as the air becomes gradually lighter and rarer from the North German coast toward Upper Germany, the average of suicides regularly decreases. Mecklenburg ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... gloriously clear, crisp, and frosty. The insects were inert. The air had lost its heat and murk. The sun struck upon the sides of the tepees with cheerful glow, and all was buoyant, normal, and bracing as the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... in the dismal rainy season, when all the life of the region was at the lowest ebb of the year, and when comfort was hardly to be found. The extreme bitterness of Eastern winters was wanting; but the bracing tonic effect of honest cold was also denied them. Through many months they were to suffer from an uninterrupted downpour of rain, driven before the raw sea-winds, which drenched their ardor and made work of ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... sir. It's been under my pillow all night, and the cold has stopped it. Cheerful, wholesome, bracing sort of climate to live in; isn't it, sir? Never mind! ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... Tom assured him. And this was a fact. Tom had installed a wireless apparatus on his RED CLOUD recently, and it is well known that several of the modern biplanes can send wireless messages. The crossing and bracing wires of the frame are used for sending wires, and in place of ground conductors there are trailers which hang below the aeroplane. The current is derived directly from the engine, and the remaining things needed are a small step-up ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... curiosity, turned to examine the picture, while Barraclough embraced the opportunity to slip the crook of his stick through the handle of the bag and tug hard. But the bag was heavier than he had imagined. It scarcely moved and only by bracing his foot on the seat opposite was he able to upset its balance. Just a fraction of a second too soon the man turned. Conceivably he saw murder in Barraclough's eyes or else he was unusually quick at grasping a situation. He flashed his eyes upward at the moment ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... all the seas. But the black North-easter, Through the snow-storm hurl'd, Drives our English hearts of oak Seaward round the world. Come, as came our fathers, Heralded by thee, Conquering from the eastward, Lords by land and sea. Come; and strong within us Stir the Vikings' blood, Bracing brain and sinew; ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... boarding of the sides below the floor level and place a heavy inverted pan, milk pan, between the top of each of the supporting posts and the floor beams. Care should be taken that the diagonal bracing of the underpinning or posts does not allow a rat to secure a foot hold near enough the floor ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... on the opposite shore, called New Brighton, has the same character, but enjoys a share of the open Irish sea, with its keen breezes. It must be bracing, healthy, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... perishingly cold at Chittagong, i.e., in shade in the early morning, but it is bracing, A.1. weather for doing things. Last night I had three blankets and two sleeping suits and felt cold at that. The sides and windows of our cabin being made of open lattice woodwork we fix up some newspapers and a mat or two we have over these, which ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... The bracing tone made Gillian swallow her tears, the more easily because of the familiarity of home atmosphere, confidence, and protection; and a mute caress from her mother was ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seen. Under the vast, vivid blue of the mountain skies they moved, indifferent to the splendid benevolence of the untroubled day. The pure wind swept in from the radiance in the east, flinging out multi-colored garments and scarves, rushing with its bracing chill without obstruction through even the compactest mass of wayfarers. The cedars on the hills about the little town whistled continuously and at times some extremely narrow defile with an uninterrupted draft would take voice and cry humanly. But there ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... shivering, Michael Daragh,—shivering in September! The incredible freshness of this morning, the bracing miracle of cold! I left Boston on the night boat and the stewardess rapped me firmly up at three-thirty to see the sun rise. I stayed stubbornly in my berth, at first, but presently a length of Quaker gray sky interlined with faintest rose brought me to my elbow and then ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... meal in short order and sipping hot bracing coffee, the three cadets took turns in telling Jeff of their conversations with Strong, their escape, and their near encounter with Vidac on the highway ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... ragged girl dragged a red, bawling infant along the crowded ways. He was hanging back, baby-like, bracing ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... in the country, ain't it? What a glorious thing the sun-rise is! How beautiful the dew-spangled bushes, and the pearly drops they shed, are! How sweet and cool is the morning air, and how refreshing and bracing the light breeze is to the nerves that have been relaxed in warm repose! The new-ploughed earth, the snowy-headed clover, the wild flowers, the blooming trees, and the balsamic spruce, all exhale their fragrance to invite you forth. While the birds offer up their morning hymn, as ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Mr. Holladay brought his wife to Paris to secure the services of an experienced physician, perhaps; or perhaps a nurse, or linen, or all of them. That done, they proceeded to Etretat, which they may have visited before, and knew for a quiet place, with a bracing atmosphere and good climate—just such a place as they would naturally desire. Here, the daughter was born, and here, I am convinced, we shall find the key to the mystery, though I'm very far from guessing ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... among her own family again. Mr. Hewlitt was very tired after his long spell of arduous work in Paris, and was glad to rest his brains, so they spent most of the time boating on the lake, or strolling in the woods, getting new-made-over in the fresh, bracing country air. The car they had hired was to meet them at Lancaster. They went thus far south by train, then motored to Liverpool. Loveday, ready with suit-case packed, was eagerly expecting them. From the window of her aunt's drawing-room she watched the big six-seater car arrive at the door. Giles—a ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... entirely eaten out of his head; the gristle of his nose was mostly gone; his tongue was half eaten off, and the skin and flesh of his legs torn almost literally into strings. In this tattered and torn condition the poor old veteran stood bracing up in the midst of his devourers, who had ceased hostilities for a few minutes, to enjoy a sort of parley, recovering strength to resume the attack in a few moments again. In this group, some were reclining ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... Instability of the Air. We are usually not conscious of the air around us, but sometimes we realize that the air is heavy, while at other times we feel the bracing effect of the atmosphere. We live in an ocean of air as truly as fish inhabit an ocean of water. If you have ever been at the seashore you know that the ocean is never still for a second; sometimes the waves surge ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... alive and bracing book, full of suggestions and encouragement, Professor Bailey argues the importance of contact with nature, a sympathetic attitude toward which "means greater efficiency, hopefulness, ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... timbers was such that the port hog-brace broke in two places, weakening the vessel so that her fate was apparent to all. Soldiers and sailors worked away with a frantic energy born by the fear of death, and succeeded in bracing up the timbers, so as to avoid, for a time, the breaking-up. Soon after, a heavy roll of the vessel broke the smokestack, and it was pitched overboard. Luckily it broke some three feet above the deck, so that the fires could still be kept up. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... be holding its breath in anxious suspense, but Ulrich once more laughed joyously, then bracing his bare knee against a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stretch the long ridges of rough but picturesque highlands, which embrace the central ranges of the Suliman system (the prehistoric home of the Pathan highlander), where vegetation is often alpine, and the climate clear and bracing and subject to no great extremes of temperature. The average breadth of this northern Pathan district is 150 m., but it narrows to less than 100 m. on the line of the Gomal, and expands to more than 200 m. on the line of the railway. Here all the main drainage ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... and Mel changed into swimming trunks and donned hydrolungs. They went out through the air lock, plunged into the bracing salt water, and switched on their ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... where the force of the hurricane was not so fiercely felt, and where the angry argument of the sea was deadened by distance. There was a lovely perfume everywhere,—the dash of rain on the herbs and field flowers had brought out their scent, and the freshness of the stormy atmosphere was bracing and exhilarating. He put Charlie down on the grass, and was amused to see how obediently the tiny creature trotted after him, close at his heels, in the manner of a well-trained, well-taught lady's favourite. There was no danger of wheeled or motor traffic in this peaceful little glen, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... of them swallow sand, ashes, and do their utmost to destroy their stomachs to get pale complexions. To make a fine Spanish body, what racks will they not endure of girding and bracing, till they have notches in their sides cut into the very quick, and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... precipitous mountains and savage Koords, Dr. Grant was once more the guest of Mar Shimon, who kindly received the New Testament, the Psalms, and other books from the mission press. The Doctor was himself suffering from the effects of exposure in a wet dormitory the previous night; but the bracing air of that elevated region renewed his strength, and he was glad to resume his journey towards Asheta, which he had proposed as the site of his first mountain station. On this part of the way he had the company of Mar Shimon, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... disturbed by anything. One would have supposed that, after so much hardship, they would have got up somewhat wearied. Strange to say, it was not so, for they arose quite refreshed. This Lucien attributed to the bracing influence of the light dry atmosphere; and Lucien was right, for, although an arid soil surrounded them, its climate is one of the healthiest in the world. Many a consumptive person, who has crossed the prairies with flushed cheek, uttering his hectic cough, has returned ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... she thought. She owed it to Frank. Her pretty face strengthened and hardened on the instant. Her small, white teeth set themselves in two even rows; and her father saw quite plainly that she was consciously bracing herself for an attack of some kind. He feared by this that she was guilty, and he was all the more distressed, ashamed, outraged, made wholly unhappy. He fumbled in the left-hand pocket of his coat and drew forth from ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... a way to force a door—that is, an ordinary door—and at the same time make very little noise. It is done—if the door opens inward—by seizing the knob firmly with both hands, having turned it, and then by bracing the body with one knee pressed firmly against the door directly under the knob. In this position, if it is assumed by a strong man, every effort may be centred upon one sudden impulse forward, which, while there is no visible or perceptible impact, will ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... the original, home of the Aryans was in Asia, to the eastward of the Semites, probably in the mountain district back of modern Persia. That is, they were not, like the other whites, a people of the marsh lands and river valleys. They lived in a higher, hardier, and more bracing atmosphere. Perhaps it was here that their minds took a freer bent, their spirits caught a bolder tone. Wherever they moved they came as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... already begun to feel the bracing effect upon our economic system of a restored agriculture. The hundreds of millions of additional income that farmers are receiving are finding their way into the channels of trade. The farmers' share of the national ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Barclay's, Limited. He loved the sea, the sun, and the summer. He was off that day on a projected series of short country runs, in which it was his intention strictly to combine business and pleasure. Dartmoor, for example, as everybody knows, is a most delightful and bracing tourist district; but what more amusing to a man of taste than to go a round of the Moor with its heather-clad tors, and at the same time hunt up the parish registers of the neighbourhood for the purpose of discovering, if possible, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... now—a road that ran south across the spaces, unwinding itself like a tape flung from a reel. Suddenly Cheyenne pulled to a stop. Bartley raced up, bracing himself as the big cow-horse ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the wholesome, invigorating effects and the specially refreshing properties of the Borage are supposed to be mainly due. For which reason, the plant, "when taken in sallets," as says an old herbalist, "doth exhilarate, and make the mind glad," almost in the same way as a bracing sojourn by the seaside during an autumn holiday. The flowers possess cordial virtues which are very revivifying, and have been much commended against melancholic depression of the nervous system. Burton, in his [61] Anatomy of Melancholy ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... us a particularly heavy sea, into which the frigate dived until she was all a-smother for'ard. Yet, notwithstanding this, her head continued to sweep round—slowly, it is true; still—"Mainsail haul!" bellowed the first luff through his trumpet, and round swung the after yards, the men bracing them well up and rounding in on the main-sheet. Now her head was beginning to pay off, but slowly. The first lieutenant dashes up on the poop and looks over the side—she ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... on to assume that we are a mean people in America, and making larger and more handsome arrangements for being meaner than ever, still mightier engines for bracing against each other, we will turn to all together and make in the next four years a machine together that will express our better natures as well as our present ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... of it, Nelly. The sailor is just like the sea. He's noisy—so is the sea. Liable to storms—so is the sea. Blusters and boils, and rocks and reels—so does the sea. But he's sunny too, and open and free, and healthy and bracing, and the sea ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... some time, I noticed, before she rang the bell, and she looked at herself in the glass and cleared her throat. I knew she was bracing herself. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... in the direction of the hills when, almost without warning, and with a great whistle and roar, a gale of wind swept down upon them. They stood still and looked at each other with startled faces, bracing with their feet against ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... in the open field night and day. In the winter they are fed entirely on oat-straw and turnips. Not a handful of hay or of meal is given them. The calves are allowed to suck their dams at pleasure. He is convinced that with this simple system of feeding, together with the bracing air of Aberdeenshire, he has obtained a tribe of animals of hardy and robust constitutions, of early maturity, well calculated to improve the ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... we add to this all the tarring, greasing, oiling, varnishing, painting, scraping, and scrubbing which is required in the course of a long voyage, and also remember this is all to be done in addition to watching at night, steering, reefing, furling, bracing, making and setting sail, and pulling, hauling, and climbing in every direction, one will hardly ask, "What can a sailor ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... a vast crop of a similar nature which you have in Western Ontario, for as I am informed by my honourable friend on my right, Mr. Mackenzie, the peaches are often given to the pigs. (Great laughter.) The pleasant and bracing seasons of Canada can be enjoyed in a country without its equal, for nowhere has the settler a more varied range of choice in the scenery, the locality, the soil which will finally determine him where to found a home. His fortune may be compared to that of a man entering one ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... the docksides is loud all the day, And the breezes come bringing off basin and pond And all the piled acres of lumber beyond From the Oregon ranges the tang of the pine And the breath of the Baltic as bracing as wine, In a fly-spotted window I there did behold, Among the stale odours of hot food and cold, A ship in a bottle some sailor had made In watches below, swinging South with the Trade, When the fellows were patching old dungaree suits, Or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... waves, resuming her wonted garments in the same way, after her bath. Margaret, till now, had never seen the ocean. It inspired no fear—only delight and pleasure—and she hurried into the water like a sea nymph, enjoying its bracing freshness. For many successive mornings she went down, in company with several other girls of various ages, to bathe and sport with glee in the bright waters of a little bay, sheltered on either side by high rocks from the gaze of ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... branched off downward, at a sharp angle, overhead. Ray was able to turn about and get his feet in front of him; Yetsko had to crawl on until he had passed it, and then back into it after Ray had entered. Bracing one foot on either side, Ray inched his way down the forty-degree slope, hoping that the two hundred pound weight of Doug Yetsko wouldn't start ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... that giv'st the flabby Strength, and stingo'st up the weak:- Restful as a grand old Abbey— Bracing as ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... Daisy, take Dr. Bulling down to the cabin. I declare he looks as if he needed bracing up. I shall take ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... a sun of great brilliancy was shining, and over him arched the high skies of the great west. The air was thin and cool, easy to breathe and uplifting, and in the bracing morning he did not feel the loneliness and immensity of the wilderness. Boyd had already built a little fire among the bushes, and was warming some strips of dried beef ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... eloquence, but his ideas themselves were rousing. Whatever he touched upon, he treated, as we may still perceive from his writings, with a certain freshness and decided originality which must have provoked the dullest to some reflection, and in a bracing spirit of intellectual liberty which it was strength and life for the young mind to breathe. He was not long in Glasgow, accordingly, till he was bitterly attacked by the older generation outside the walls of the College as a "new light" fraught ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... itself, the fire had rushed on to the ocean, the atmosphere had became comparatively clear and the weather cool and bracing. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... word of honour that he would welcome us as friends and allies if we went to his assistance, we had heard of his defeat and tragic end. Thus we ourselves were now on our guard night and day. It was a question of either fleeing the country or bracing ourselves for a decisive struggle. Some counselled the former alternative; the others declared their resolve to follow the advice of their dying father and to find a grave under the ruins of the keep. Any suggestion of flight or compromise they denounced as contemptible cowardice. The ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... had to wash in the laundry; weak as she was, they weakened her still further with steam and heat, and labour. Washing is hard work for those who enjoy health and vigour. To a girl, broken in heart and body, it is a slow destroyer. Heat relaxes all the fibres; Dolly's required bracing. Steam will soften wood and enable the artificer to bend it to any shape. Dolly's chest became yet more hollow; her cheek-bones prominent; she bent to the steam. This was the girl who had lingered in the lane to help the boy pick watercress, to gather ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... anywhere. The terrible glare of the summer sun beat down upon the whole length of the wooden platform at Amberley. Hot as was the dry, bracing air, it was incomparable with the blistering intensity of heat reflected from the planking, which burned through to the soles of the feet of the uniformed man who paced its ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... anxious to be present on the arrival of the herds, and again watch the "major-domo" run on the rope and fume and charge in vain. But the importance of blocking assistance was so urgent that I would gladly have ridden to Buford if necessary. In that bracing atmosphere it was a fine morning for the ride, and I was rapidly crossing the country, when a vehicle, in the dip of the plain, was sighted several miles ahead. I was following no road, but when the driver of the conveyance saw me he turned across my front ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... are looking very badly indeed for us, Christy," said the captain, bracing himself up as if for a renewed effort. "The Belle is almost up with the boat, and she will take Major Pierson and his party on board; and she is nearer to ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... a walk to the North Pole. I did not think that I could be many days' journey from it. But that did not matter. The air was so bracing that I could take any amount of exercise without fatigue, and was therefore able to walk all day, sitting down merely for convenience sake when I was enjoying my dinner off the preserved bear. I of course could not ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... yet returned. On his way home he had wandered aside, and visited the fashionable wells of Buxton, intending a three days' sojourn, to complete his bracing up for the winter. But the Pool of Siloam did not work pleasantly in the case of the robust general, who was attacked after his second dip with a smart fit of the gout in his left great-toe, where it went on charmingly, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... green, and adds to its brilliancy; it drinks in, too, the rain greedily, so that the wide common is nearly always fit for walking; and the air, unlike the heavy atmosphere of the University beneath it, is fresh and bracing. The gorse was still in bloom, in the latter end of the month of June, when Reding and Sheffield took up their abode in a small cottage at the upper end of this village—so hid with trees and girt in ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... at Lord Dreever enlightened her. That miserable creature was wearing the air of a timid child about to pull a large cracker. He seemed to be bracing himself up ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... men got the means of recruiting their strength in this manner, as the latter part of the march was a terrible teaser. We marched off from this place about twelve. Although we had found the morning pleasant enough, with a fine bracing breeze, yet in the afternoon, about half an hour after starting, the wind went down, and the sun shone out terribly; the sand in some parts was half knee deep, and although there was no breeze to blow it in our faces, yet ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth |
