"Bracing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and stumbling through the roots of the heather. Roddy gazed at them with his fixed and mournful eyes. He couldn't share your excitement. He drew back his shoulders, bracing himself to bear it; his lips tightened in a hard, bleak grin. He grinned at the absurdity of your supposing that he could be interested in anything ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... overdress, to over-decorate, to overdo almost everything. Indeed the day was demonstrative; if the now celebrated climate had not yet been elaborately advertised, no doubt there was something hi it singularly bracing. The elixir of it got into the blood and the brain, and perhaps the bones as well. The old felt younger than they did when they left "the States,"—the territory from the Rockies to the Atlantic Ocean was commonly known as "the States." The middle-aged renewed their youth, and youth was wild with ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... 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 find to do ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... within a day's march, was in sight from the loopings of the eastern approach. Lidgerwood, scanning the grades as the service-car swung from tangent to curve and curve to tangent up the steep inclines, was beginning to think of breakfast. The morning air was crisp and bracing, and he had been getting the full benefit of it for an hour or more, sitting under the umbrella roof at the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... of myself, mon petit Asticot," she laughed, bracing her strong arms. "And suppose I wanted to go off with him? They are amusing sometimes, people like that. There is ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... now "free of bottom," as it is called, with her anchor catted and fished, and her position maintained in the basin where she lay, by the counter-bracing of her yards, and the counteracting force of the wind on her sails. It only remained to "fill away," by bracing her head-yards sharp up, when the vast mass overcame its inertia, and began to move through the water. As this was ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... conceive. Methodical, of course, he was; no long work of prose fiction was ever brought into existence save by methodical labour; but we know that there was no measuring of so many words to the hour. The picture of him at work which is seen in his own letters is one of the most bracing and inspiring in the history of literature. It has had, and will always have, a great part in maintaining Dickens' place in the love and reverence of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... time to be frightened, no time even to think, as they shot through the fine bracing air like a ball from a cannon. Before they knew it, they were landed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... hatred of wrongdoing; with our just tolerance of men and opinions a righteous abhorrence of sin. All the more for the sweet humanities and Christian liberalism which, in drawing men nearer to each other, are increasing the sum of social influences for good or evil, we need the bracing atmosphere, healthful, if austere, of the old moralities. Individual and social duties are quite as imperative now as when they were minutely specified in statute-books and enforced by penalties no longer admissible. It ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that we could find no place to fasten the lasso for the next descent; so I determined to try the climb with only as little aid as possible. Tying it round my breast again, I gave the other end into Cotter's hands, and he, bracing his back against the cliff, found for himself as firm a foothold as he could, and promised to give me all the help in his power. I made up my mind to bear no weight unless it was absolutely necessary; and for the first ten feet I found cracks and protuberances ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... reader will find there a caput mortuum of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him a bracing, writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost my gratitude ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... themselves to. Lastly, I would have you consider especially the moral atmosphere in which they have habitually breathed: according to the nature of this the mental health varies as certainly as the physical strength varies in a bracing or relaxing air. A strong bodily constitution may resist longer, and finally be less affected by a deleterious atmosphere than a weak or diseased frame; and so it is with the mental constitution. Minds insensibly imbibe the tone of the atmosphere in which ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... countless thousands, the bison covered the westward prairies, and there were officers who forbade their senseless slaughter to make food only for the worthless, prowling coyotes. No wonder the trooper hated to leave the foothills of the mountains, with the cold, clear trout streams and the bracing air, to take to long days' marching over dull waste and treeless prairie, covered only by sage brush, rent and torn by dry ravines, shadeless, springless, almost waterless, save where in unwholesome hollows dull pools of stagnant water still ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... by which I was to diverge from the main road, I bade farewell to my last remaining Poor Traveller, and pursued my way alone. And now the mists began to rise in the most beautiful manner, and the sun to shine; and as I went on through the bracing air, seeing the hoarfrost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all Nature shared in the joy of ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... positively that Great Britain was declining, that Parliament was ruining itself, and that the colonies threatened a catastrophe. Catherine of Russia thought that nothing would restore its ancient vigour to the realm, short of the bracing and heroic remedy of a war. Even at home, such shrewd and experienced onlookers as Horace Walpole suspected that the state of the country was more serious than it had been since the Great Rebellion, and declared it to be approaching by fast strides to some sharp crisis. Men who remembered ...
— Burke • John Morley
... done without doubt or wavering. It must be so done or result in a three-storied drop, but when he turned and looked back, bracing himself to catch Alexander, he saw her turn again into the room, out of his range of vision. He could see Brent and Bud vociferously arguing with her and then she reappeared and lifted her pack and rifle over the sill. As she played out the improvised ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... make," said Harold; "namely that you all accompany us to the Oaks for a short call on Uncle Horace and the rest—and their Christmas tree of course—before going over to Ion. The air is delightfully bracing, the roads are good, and if we find there is time, perhaps we might as well extend our ride to the Laurels, and give Aunt Rose a call, in case we reach there before the family have left home for Ion. What do you say captain? and ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... as Wynchcote, and there stopped abruptly. Past the bungalow lay the open wold with miles of heather, gorse, and bracken, and a road edged with low, grassy fern-covered banks instead of walls. The air blew freshly up here, and was far more bracing and healthy than down in the hollow of Grovebury. The residents of the new suburb affected seaside fashions, and went their moorland walks without ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... gentleness, and endowed with sensibilities originally too exquisite for such a warfare. But at nine or ten the masculine energies of the character are beginning to develop themselves; or, if not, no discipline will better aid in their development than the bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish are there forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of generosity, and the effeminate in conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools, and I think with gratitude of the benefits which ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... to the old Phrygian who blabbed to mortals the secrets of the celestial banquets. Autumn is the season in which to indulge in a promenade through Quincy Market, after the leaf has been nipped by the frost and crimson-tinted, when the morning air is cool and bracing. Then the stalls and precincts of the chief Boston market are a goodly spectacle. Athenaeus himself, the classic historian of classic gluttons and classic bills of fare, could not but feel a glow at the sight of the good things here displayed, if he were alive. Quincy Market culminates ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... absence from the quarantine camp, as I was 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 Outlet • Andy Adams
... with a perceptible decline of baser appetites, so long his torment and his hindrance. His age was now seven and thirty; at forty he might hope to have utterly trodden under foot the instincts at war with mental calm. He saw before him long years of congenial fellowship, of bracing travel, of well-directed studiousness. Let problems of sex and society go hang! He had found a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... away for other tasks of similar sort. One who watches Brother Pope, must do it on the run. One of the fairest spots on the Cumberland Plateau is Grand View. Here the American Missionary Association holds a strategic position. The wild, magnificent scenery and the cool, bracing air, tingling with ozone, make it an ideal spot for a great religious and educational centre. Already eyes are turning upward from the surrounding valleys to this mountain school. The first words I heard on landing ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... type, but realising the inherent dangers accruing from the employment of metal for the framework, its constructors have used wood, reinforced and strengthened where necessary by metallic angle-iron, plates, and bracing; this utilisation of metal is, however, carried out very sparingly. The first vessel of this class was a huge failure, while subsequent craft have not proved much ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... the ample opportunity he enjoyed for forming definite conclusions, Gerrard remained balanced between two contradictory opinions, and he was still much tumbled up and down in his mind when he landed and fell into the eminently bracing company of Charteris. British troops and siege-guns—not now to be spared from Granthistan—had come and were still coming up from Bombay, and the lines which had been fortified by the Darwanis and Habshiabad force ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... also soon began to feel the effects of the climate. He was still far from robust, and traded continually on his will and nerve. The native fever sapped his energy, and he was sent to recuperate, to Kashmir. He was enthusiastic about the scenery here, and his tramping and shooting trips in the bracing climate soon gave back his ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... increased as in the bearing of pain. The general impression seems to be that one should brace up to a pain; and very great strength of will is often shown in the effort made and the success achieved in bearing severe pain by means of this bracing process. But alas, the reaction after the pain is over—that alone would show the very sad misuse which had been made of a strong will. Not that there need be no reaction; but it follows naturally ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... largest class, each enjoying in abundance most of the elements of future greatness. Its soil is of the most productive character, yet our northern latitude saves us from malaria and death, which in other climes are so often attendant on a liberal soil. Our people, under the healthful and bracing influences of this northern climate, will never sink into littleness, but continue to possess the vigor and the energy to make the most of their ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground, that broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that stirred the flag by the barracks away to the left; hope smiled in the wide prospect over which the thrilling, bracing air ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... and since he could skirt the beach and the wind came strongly off the land, the worst of his difficulties seemed to be past. Still, it would be a long tow to Santa Brigida, and bracing himself for the work, he ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... greatest number of articles on the least evidence; nor is that doctrine really the most productive of happiness which encourages us to cherish the greatest number of groundless hopes. The system which is really most calculated to make men happy is that which forces them to live in a bracing atmosphere; which fits them to look facts in the face and to suppress vain repinings by strenuous action ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... native on the ground making final spasmatic muscular movements in his death throes, and not more than three feet from him, coolly, David Moroka sat, bracing his elbows on his knees and aiming, two-handed, as his gun ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... long lash seemed alive; a thousand bits of foam had dried upon his vest and stained it; the rowels of his spurs were caked and enmeshed with horsehair; dust covered his face and sweat furrowed it, and a keen scent of horse-sweat passed from him through the room. For a moment he stood at the door, bracing himself with legs spread wide apart, and stared wildly about—then he reeled drunkenly across the room and fell into a chair, sprawling ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... Hallett and placed him beside Emily, where, by bracing themselves against the wall of the state-room, they might prevent their being dashed about by the rolling of the vessel. Emily welcomed him with an affectionate smile, and taking his hand, which now sometimes answered the clasp ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... proverbially synonymous with robust health? Why is it that a superior vitality, and a singular exemption from disease, notoriously distinguish dwellers in the open air, by land or sea? Without disparaging the virtues of exercise or of bracing temperature, indispensable as these are for the recuperation of enfeebled constitutions, we must admit that among the native and settled inhabitants of the open air high health is the rule in warm climates as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... was a glorious morning, and we have seldom since been so young in feeling as never we are sure in years, as when we walked forth into its bracing air. And Aunt Rachel—she enjoyed it; the broad icy fields, the difficult ascent of the steep slippery hills and the "duckies" down them, and the crackling of the icicles as we thrust our way through the bristling under-brush of those diamond-cressed ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... a time busy in keeping his team upon the trail, but soon they settled down into a steady, shuffling trot, to which they held for mile after mile over the hard prairie road. The day was bright and clear, the air sweet and bracing. An hour's drive from the town, and the traveller seemed in a virgin world. A curious coyote sat on a hill, regarding intently the spectacle of a man travelling with wheels beneath him, instead of the legs of a horse. A band of antelope lined up on the crest ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... She thrived under its more bracing air. She loved the bustle, the stir. We were now in the midst of the presidential campaign, and Mammy and Jenny saw political enthusiasm in a new phase. Marching men passed through the street. There were shouts, torches, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... speculated too heavily to accept defeat now! Bracing himself for the effort, Goujaud besought the lady's help with such a flood of blandishment during the drive that more than once she seemed at the point of yielding. Only one difficult detail had he ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... mess pork up to twenty dollars and nailed it there, some one saw him drinking a small bottle just before he went on 'Change, and told it round among the brokers on the floor. The bears thought Jim must have had bad news, to be bracing up at that time in the morning, so they perked up and everlastingly sold the mess pork market down through the bottom of the pit to solid earth. There wasn't even a grease spot left of that corner when they got through. As it ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... from the brown cup-board, found appropriate glasses and, in the ice-chest, club-soda and ginger ale. He poured himself a drink reminiscent of Paris—not that he felt he needed it for the reaction from bracing himself to die like a Pythias had left him elvishly grotesque in mind—gathered the bottles tenderly in his arms like small glass babies and ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... rushed for the table. Rick reached out and grabbed an ankle. Bracing his legs, he gave a mighty heave. Striped shirt went over backward in front of Barby, who stamped with both bare feet on his stomach. The breath went out of ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... Atlanta with the statement that the German consul there is Dr. E. Zoepffel. I doubt it—but let us pass over that. It describes Atlanta as "a prosperous commercial and industrial city and an important railroad center, well situated, 1030-1175 feet above the sea, enjoying a healthy and bracing climate." That is true. Atlanta is, if I mistake not, the highest important city east of Denver, and I believe her climate is in part responsible for her energy, as it is also for the fact that her vegetation is more ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Started at ten, and drove fourteen miles to Omaha Ranch; then to St. Louis Ranch, six miles, Roland's Ranch, five miles, and Bailey's, five miles, on the North Fork of the South Fork of the Platte. The weather was fine, and the air beautifully clear and bracing. The road wound among the mountains, up a rocky ravine, down a wooded canon, then through little parks, surrounded by high hills and set with magnificent sugar pines, and carpeted with fresh grass and abundant flowers. In the ravines and on the mountain-sides the road was narrow, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... And when (bracing myself at last) I asked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from me, and he answered "No," I might have been relieved, but I wasn't. Though I did not know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I began to feel that she ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... more blows, both of them upon the body, and then at last they had the poor boy down, with his face upon the ground and his arms pinned to his sides, and Blunt, bracing himself for the stroke, with a grin of rage raised a heavy clog for one terrible blow that ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... Come, and strong within us Stir the seaman's blood, Bracing brain and sinew; Come, ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... thirst seemed to grow upon him every minute. Then he grew desperate, and bracing himself, tried with all of his strength to burst the hollow tree asunder. But the ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... and as good as bread," says Mr. Howells. "Read 'Eben Holden'" is the advice of Margaret Sangster. "It is a forest-scented, fresh-aired, bracing and wholly American story of country and town life. * * * If in the far future our successors wish to know what were the real life and atmosphere in which the country folk that saved this nation grew, loved, wrought and had their being, they must go back to ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... a lady to come and live with them. But she'll never go, John! Neither do any of these single gentlemen who want an airy bedroom, with the occasional use of a parlour, ever appear to come to terms with these other people who live in a rural situation remarkable for its bracing atmosphere, within five minutes' walk of the Royal Exchange. Even those letters of the alphabet who are always running away from their friends and being entreated at the tops of columns to come back, never DO come back, if we may judge from the number of times they ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... seemed to be bracing herself for that last effort. Now they could see the bare rocky outline of the summit of the hill. A few steps more, and they would pass through the gate. And then the sound came, the sound which somehow they had dreaded. Sharp and crisp through the twilight air came the report of ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she had made upon it,—paid her bill, and bag in hand sallied forth to meet the storm. Before she had plowed her way to the nearest corner, she decided that a blizzard in New York was no joke. While she waited there in the teeth of the wind, bracing herself against it as it blew her hair in her eyes, whipped her skirt about her ankles, and swept the snow, sharp and cutting as needle-points, pitilessly against her cheeks, she was more than half minded to give up seeing Mr. ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... Whether it was the bracing effect of the fresh sea air, or the sight of his men's most obvious improvement, I know not, but from that day his strength increased with ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... was the morning of June twenty-eighth. The atmosphere was bracing and delightful, the azure of the sky above us shaded to the most delicate tints of blue at the horizon, and, here and there, bits of clouds, like bunches of cotton, flecked the sky. The sun broke grandly over the rugged hills, and the ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... wish to clear things up, to force her life, the lives of those few she cared for, out of mystery into a clear light. She had a desire to chastise thought by strong, bracing action. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... panels bearing the arms of Llewellyn the Great, the red dragon of Cadwalader, the symbolical leek and the motto, Anorchfygol Ddraig Cymru ("The dragon of Wales is invincible"). The air is very cool and bracing on this hill. But the greatest crowd is on the sands and on the rocks of the cliff immediately backing the beach. It is difficult for one who is familiar only with the beach at Long Branch or Cape May to comprehend such a scene as this which I am trying to picture. In the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... inspirited by perceiving any door of escape. Any vivid sensation was welcome in the irksome vacancy that pursued her in the absence of immediate excitement. Devoid of the interest of opposition, and of the bracing changes to the Holt, her intercourse with the Charterises had become a weariness and vexation of spirit. Idle foreign life deteriorated them, and her principle and delicacy suffered frequent offences; but like all living wilfully in temptation, she seemed under ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... normal enough, though it might present difficulty later if persisted in. But the morning that they headed up through Sequam Pass between the spouting reefs of Sequam and Amlia Islands, she came on deck and went forward to the bows, taking in deep breaths of the bracing air and gazing north to the free expanse of Bering Strait. Rainey left her alone, but Lund welcomed her as she came ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... fog rose from the river, obscuring all objects, when the bordermen rolled out of their snug bed of leaves. The air was cool and bracing, faintly fragrant with dying foliage and the damp, dewy luxuriance of the ripened season. Wetzel pulled from under the protecting ledge a bundle of bark and sticks he had put there to keep dry, and built a fire, while Jonathan ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... and for an hour or two we were hard at work, making the booms well fast; unreeving the studding-sail and royal and skysail gear; getting rolling-ropes on the yards; setting up the weather breast-backstays; and making other preparations for a storm. It was a fine night for a gale; just cool and bracing enough for quick work, without being cold, and as bright as day. It was sport to have a gale in such weather as this. Yet it blew like a hurricane. The wind seemed to come with a spite, an edge to it, which threatened to scrape us off the yards. The ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... heart caused him for the first hour to be silent; but after that, the constant change of scene and the pure bracing air had the effect of restoring his spirits, and he felt a powerful inclination to sing. Just, however, as he was about to commence for his own amusement, the coach stopped to change horses. In less than two minutes they started again, and Valentine, who then felt ready ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... 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 which ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... 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 a liberal politician, one well fitted to ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... sat down, passive now, his hand grasping the arms of his chair like one bracing himself for ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... the boundary-line between the last days of vigor and the first of old age, they put forward the time of old age by many years. One sees their men rapidly sink into the softness and incapacity of senility, when a more bracing life would have kept them good for half-a-dozen years longer. But women do not care for this. They like men to be their own companions more than they care for any manly comradeship among each other; and most women—but not all—would rather have their husbands manly in a womanly ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... continued Dr. May, who felt it was the moment for bracing severity. "It is rendering you unmanly. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... rivers and streams flow down, and thoroughly irrigate the greater part of this lovely island: indeed, it may well be looked on as the Paradise of the East; for though, in the low country, the climate is relaxing and enervating to European constitutions, in the higher regions the air is bracing and exhilarating in ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and bracing of which hemicycle or arch, worthie of admiration, of a rare and subtile deuise, and exquisite polyture, did thus obiect and present it ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... MacAdamized road extending across the rolling plains and gently sloping hill sides, covered with waving cane, and interspersed with provision grounds, contributed with the fresh bracing air of the morning to make the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the vat, and cut off a corner of it, the white streak already spoken of will appear more or less thick, until the tanning is completed; it has been generally supposed, that the tan in the tanpits had no other effect upon the leather than that of hardening and bracing the fibres of the skin, which has been relaxed by the preliminary of tanning. Mr. S——, however, examined the operation more closely, and discovered that there existed in the tan a principle which was soluble in water, by which the tanning was ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... we live fast here," said a general officer to me one day on the Missouri; "And we die fast too," echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity of the surrounding prairies, its hotels—and they are many—are crowded with the broken wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... being addressed to his mother and other friends. I have several other letters concerned with Borrow's Bible Society work in Russia, but they are not inspiring. Borrow's correspondence with Hasfeld, of which Knapp gives us glimpses, is more bracing, and the two or three letters from that admirable Dane that are in my collection I am glad to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... woman at this stage by twisting an ordinary bed sheet and putting it around one of the posts or bars of the foot of the bed. The patient may then pull on the ends during the pain; she may also find much comfort and aid by bracing her feet on the foot of the bed while pulling. It is desirable to instruct the nurse to press on the small of the back during these pains. Some women appreciate a hot water bottle in this region. If the pains are hard the patient may perspire freely; it is always refreshing occasionally ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... encouraged, amidst 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 ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... once but busied himself with his ponderous fur coat, which he buttoned, as if bracing himself for the start. Beneath her lashes she looked sideways at the deliberate hands and the lean strong face, burnt to a red-brown by sun and snow, half hidden in the fur collar of his ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... Musardu, the chief city of the Western Mandingoes, was at length reached, just on the edge of the primeval forest. Beyond lies a vast plateau covered with tall grass, showing here and there a solitary palm, and stretching away to the head waters of the Niger. The climate is wholesome, the air bracing, and the soil fertile. ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... confiding in Lord Selsey was at once soothing and bracing. He was a widower with no children, and Cecil was by way of being his heir. Since the death of his wife he lived in a kind of cultured retirement in a large old house standing a little by itself in Cambridge Gate. He used to ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... better than he knew." She needed no bracing; and she was, and is, a staunch, seaworthy little model. I fell in love with her from the start. I had at last found the canoe that I could ride in rough water, sleep in afloat, and carry with ease for miles. I paddled her early and late, mainly on the Fulton Chain; but I also ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... after the arrival of Mrs. Belgrade, Arch took her down to the beach to bathe. The beach was alive with the gorgeous grotesque figures of the bathers. The air was bracing, the surf splendid. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. . . . . . Come; and strong within us Stir the Viking's blood; Bracing brain and sinew: ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... of the last letter it was impossible to say no. Darsie was not sure that she wanted to say no; on the other hand, she was aggravatingly uncertain if she wanted to say yes. At college and at home alike the atmosphere was at once austere and bracing; it would be agreeable to live for a time in the lap of luxury—to be regarded as a miracle of cleverness and beauty; which treatment was invariably bestowed upon her during her visits to The Manor. She would enjoy staying with the Percivals, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... souls in quiet freedom. It is a small class, especially distinguished by the charm of its women. Everard had not adapted himself without difficulty to this new atmosphere; from the first he recognized its soothing and bracing quality, but his experiences had accustomed him to an air more rudely vigorous; it was only after those weeks spent abroad in frequent intercourse with the Brissendens that he came to understand the ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... stand off and admire himself. Ludlow Street Jail is a good deal like it in many ways, and I can see how in time the canker of unrest and the bitter memories of those who did us wrong but who are basking in the bright and bracing air, while we, to meet their obligations, sacrifice our money, our health and at last our minds, would ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... Carrie, "that's what I like! You're bracing up; I knew you would! However, I must go back. Breakfast ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... she was being packed were ridiculously histrionic. As soon as the saddle was cinched, she spread her legs apart, bracing them firmly as though about to receive the weight of an iron safe. Then as each article of the pack was thrown across her back, she flinched and uttered the most heart-rending groans. We used sometimes to amuse ourselves by adding merely an empty sack, or other article quite without ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... air is mountain-air, minus the aroma and stimulus of evergreen forests, and plus the miasma of miles of marsh and peat-land and the foulnesses of the city exhalations. It is the thin air of a high elevation, pleasantly bracing to persons so fortunate as to possess nerves of iron and lungs of leather, but extremely irritating to sensitive brains and delicate chests, and too exhausting, after a time, in its demands upon the most abundant vitality. It is the boast of certain physicians in Munich that consumption ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... one way of securing permanent tenure, or stimulating the industry and sustaining the thrift of the farmer. But the nature of the different tenures, and the effect of each in bracing up or relaxing the nerves of industry, will be the object of deliberation with the Government and the legislature. It is said that, in the hands of small farmers, proprietorship leads to endless subdivision; that long leases generally ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... at least," I said. "In the morning when she found that the crime had been not only fruitless, but that she had searched the wrong berth and killed the wrong man; when she saw me emerge, unhurt, just as she was bracing herself for the discovery of my dead body, then she went into hysterics. You remember, I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... institution might well seem to deserve a more tolerant and impartial investigation than it has yet received at the hands of our sociologists. A survival so picturesque could hardly be expected to outlive the bracing air of the nineteenth century. The north wind blew and by 1840 the cicisbeatura was a ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... fellow, and made a good soldier. I well remember our high spirits on this journey home. We were young, glowing with health and overflowing with liveliness and animation. There was a heavy snow on the ground, but the sky was clear, and the air was keen and bracing. Occasionally, when we would strike a stretch of level road, we would loose all the buttons of our overcoats save the top one, put the gad to our steeds, and waving our caps, with our long coat tails streaming in the wind, would yell like Comanches, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... disturb their clients by calling out the names of stations. When New Brunswick is reached many think that they have arrived at West Philadelphia, or (worse still) have been carried on to Wilmington. They rush desperately to the bracing chill of the platform to learn where they are. There is a mood of mystery about this Owl of ours. The trainmen take a quaint delight in keeping the actual whereabouts of the caravan ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... recitation being from Shakespeare, and the reading from the Spectator. There were no children's books, properly so called, except the ballads, chap-books brought round by pedlers, often far from edifying, and the plunge from the horn-book into general literature was, to say the least of it, bracing. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day in November, when the sun seemed making a last effort to prevail against coming winter. The wind was fresh and bracing, and nature appeared bright and cheerful, on that ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... in listless incuriosity till he saw her straighten and stand away from the rail as if bracing herself ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... natural 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 ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... holding firmly to the side of his berth with one hand, and bracing himself between his berth and the side of his wash stand cupboard with his knees, as the ship lurched to and fro, he contrived to dress himself, though he was a long time in accomplishing the feat. He then told Jennie ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... brought the masts to their upright position. He then inserted the iron keys which kept them in their place, and hoisted the sails. By this time the boat had drifted to the lower extremity of the island; so, bracing her sharp up, he stood away across the river. Tacking before he reached the swift channel, which flowed close in shore, he laid the boat's course up the stream. The wind was blowing fresh, and, notwithstanding ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... intricately winding through mangroves and brambles, we entered the main body of the river in time to see the sun setting behind a glorious sky, directly before us. We were evidently near the sea, because the water was perfectly salt, and we scented also the cool and bracing sea breeze, with feelings of satisfaction and rapture. However, the wind became too stormy for our fragile canoe; the waves leaped into it over the bow, and several times we were in danger of being swamped. Our companion was far before us, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... of bracing or stringing the bow was as follows: Grasping it with his right hand at its center, with the belly toward him, and the lower end on his right thigh, he held the upper end with his left hand while the loop of the string rested between his ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... the room, and bracing for a second against the wall, he ran forward and threw himself at the boards. They gave way more easily than he had supposed, and a rapid effort landed him squarely on the leader, who had turned ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... quagmires from night showers, and I am cold-footed and moisture-abhorring as a cat; nevertheless I yesterday tramped to Waltham Cross; perhaps the poor bit of exertion necessary to scribble this was owing to that unusual bracing. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... went up on the fourth act—that in which Fogg was going to do something. He had in the meantime been bracing up. When he made his entry and spoke, his manner of speech was somewhat thick, but his acting was more energetic. Fogg never could take anything stimulating without its going to his head, and as his brain exercised a peculiar influence over other members of his body, they all contributed ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... a brilliant day, with a glorious blue sky overhead and a bracing breeze out of the east. Just beyond Long Island a low stratum of miasmic gray was the only shred of the usual fog to be seen on the whole horizon. In the little roadstead the vessels, black-hulled or white, rode eagerly and gracefully at their ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... his shoulders, unconsciously 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 ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... places near the mountains, and the country well wooded and watered. The grass, consisting of several varieties of the grama, is of a superior quality, and grows luxuriantly. The climate is salubrious, and the almost constant cool and bracing breezes of the summer months, with the entire absence of anything like marshes or stagnant water, remove all sources of noxious malaria, with its attendant evils of autumnal fevers.—Marcy's Exploration of ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Landiani Station in the province of Naivasha. Here we started in earnest on our big game expedition, which I am glad to say proved to be a most delightful and interesting one in every way. The country was lovely, and the climate cool and bracing. We all got a fair amount of sport, our bag including rhino, hippo, waterbuck, reedbuck, hartebeeste, wildebeeste, ostrich, impala, oryx, roan antelope, etc.; but for the present I must confine myself to a short account of how I was lucky enough ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... the rest! Bill, dear—when I am such a tired, cross apology for a wife!" Susan found nothing in life so bracing as the arm that was now tight about her. She had a full minute's respite before the ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... best joints, and though this is a little dearer than London, the meat is probably more wholesome from being in such good air as we enjoy. In wintertime the journey to town, half-an-hour by train, has a most bracing effect on those capable of bearing severe cold. For the rest, the incapables are a real blessing to those who sell mustard-plasters and extra-sized pocket-handkerchiefs. Our society is so select and refined that I verily believe Belgravia ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... out glances of protest. The elder man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before bracing himself to reply. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... daybreak, I went on deck, and saw the shores of England. Only a few days before, we had left America behind us, brown and leafless, just emerging from the long gloom of winter; and now the slopes of another world arose green and inviting in the flush of spring. There was a bracing breeze; the dingy waters of the Mersey rolled up in wreaths of beauty; the fleets of ships, steamers, sloops, lighters, pilot-boats, bounding over the waves, meeting, tacking, plunging, swaying gracefully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... displeasures and their griefs so great, so continual, and so many. It maketh me think on a good worshipful man who, when he divers times beheld what pain his wife took in tightly binding up her hair to make her a fair large forehead, and with tightly bracing in her body to make her middle small (both twain to her great pain) for the pride of a little foolish praise, he said unto her, "Forsooth, madam, if God give you not hell, he shall do you a great wrong. For it must needs be your own very right, for you ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... lady may have seen something about the strong, wholesome, well-groomed Englishman that pleased her, perhaps she was simply glad to be alive upon that glorious morning, with the bracing breeze blowing fresh from the lake, and the sun sending his welcome rays down upon the mountainside. At all events, her lips parted in the merest shadow of a smile as she walked along the gravelled path with the veriest air ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous |
