"Clinched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that field, bright as the red poppies which were growing in the stubble and as still. They were in various positions. One lay on his back, with one knee raised like a man day-dreaming and looking up at the sky. Another was stretched stiff, with both hands clinched over his chest. One lay in the ditch close beside us, his head jammed into the muddy bank just as he had dived there in falling; another gripped a cup in one hand and a spoon in the other, as if, perhaps, he might have ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... convey a true idea of the manner of Hank Hazletine when he uttered these words. He nodded his head, clinched his free hand, and his ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... suffer me to stand long idly wondering and staring. The moment I brought my eyes away from the ship to the mighty desolation of the blue and gleaming ocean, a horror broke upon me, my heart turned into lead, and in the anguish of my spirits I involuntarily lifted my clinched hands to God. What was to become of me? I had no boat, no means of making anything to bear me, nothing but the life-buoy, that was no better than a trap for sharks to tear me to pieces in. I was thirsty, but there was no fresh water on ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... ago had made the columns of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE at once fascinating and instructive. It was not until he saw the heightening color, and heard the quick breathing, of his eager listener, that he felt a pang of self-reproach. "God help her and forgive me!" he muttered between his clinched teeth; "but how can I ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... with Pamela," he observed, as he resumed his place at the table. "She was thinking of the opera with a girl friend she picked up this morning. However, the idea of news, I think, clinched it. We'll be at the Oriental ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the newcomer. He was a burly, red-faced man, who had evidently been drinking heavily, yet was not greatly under the influence of liquor, dressed in a checked suit of good cut and fashion, but hardly in the best of taste. His hat, a Stetson, was pushed back on his head, and an unlighted cigar was clinched tightly between his teeth. He bore all the earmarks of a commercial traveller of a certain sort—a domineering personality, making up by sheer nerve what he might lack in brains. But for his words the miner would have given the fellow no ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... the bold bull, the jealous stag adorns; Fierce rival boars with side-long fury wield The pointed tusk, and guard with shoulder-shield; Bounds the dread tiger o'er the affrighted heath Arm'd with sharp talons, and resistless teeth; The pouncing eagle bears in clinched claws The struggling lamb, and rends with ivory jaws; 110 The tropic eel, electric in his ire, Alarms the waves with unextinguish'd fire; The fly of night illumes his airy way, And seeks with lucid lamp his sleeping prey; Fierce on his foe the poisoning serpent ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... be said in passing that this was a distinctly shrewd guess, and the Cap'n promptly found something on the seas that clinched his belief. Bobbing toward Cod Lead came an overloaded dingy. There were six men in it, and they were making what shift they could to guide it into the cove between the outer rocks. They came riding through safely on a roller, splattered across the cove with wildly waving oars, and landed ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... He says it's just that little difference though that counts. I remember he told me about one of his classmates in college who was the brightest fellow in the class. He started in all right on any line of work, but just before the job was all ready to be clinched he usually gave up. My father says that is the way it is with men. They may be all right up to the last point, but that last point is the one that counts. That's the 'final punch' ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... name of mercy, Henry Brake!" I cried, "what is the meaning of this? Don't you hear a word I say? Don't you feel me?—There!" I gripped the broker by the shoulder, and clinched both hands upon him with all my might. "Don't you feel me? God Almighty! don't ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... one, the combatants show a tendency to ignore the rules so carefully mapped out by the present Marquess of Queensberry's grandfather, and revert to the conditions of warfare under which Cribb and Spring won their battles. Kennedy and Walton, having clinched, proceeded to wrestle up and down the room, while Jimmy Silver looked on from his eminence in pained surprise at the sight of two men, who knew the rules of the ring, so ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... button, a gasping, gurgling sound broke from her. She snatched it, stared at it. Then the Gorgon head slipped through her fingers, she threw herself against the window, shook the iron bar frantically; and one desperate cry seemed to tear its way through her clinched teeth, over her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... or five miles when the decision was reached, and they straightway turned back and raced into Dry Lake again, so that Andy might write the letter that clinched matters. Then, whooping with the sheer exhilaration of living, and the exultation of being able to ride and whoop unhindered, they galloped back to camp and let the news spread as it would. In a week all Chouteau County knew that Andy ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... of the Russian's waving arms and placed his back to the moonlight. Meeting the fisherman's blind rush with a quick blow to his heavy jaw, he sidestepped and struck again. Boris blocked the fist with a sweep of his long arm and clinched. For an instant the bodies of the two men rocked in the gripping power of the embrace. Then they ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... The Mulhenen business clinched the matter. Until he mentioned it I had no notion whatever of masquerading as Clark Oliver at the Kennedys' dinner. But, as Clark so delicately put it, he had done me a good turn in that affair and the obligation had rankled ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... kneeling thus attired at her feet, brought with it a grim smile, which a deep heartache instantly chased away. Besides, she was not free, and no dream of love might inspire me to toil and hope. With clinched teeth I drove her memory from me, back into that dim past where lurked all that had been worthy in my life. Sternly I resolved that her face should henceforth abide with those others—the shadowy comrades of many ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... of death already upon his face. His lips were curled in hard lines and his teeth were clinched. His hands were bloody from where he had pressed them upon his wound. He seemed to be awaiting the moment when he should pitch headlong. He stalked like the specter of a soldier, his eyes burning with the power of a ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... yelled the last words as he started to his feet again, his eyes wild, his right hand clinched, and his left thrust into the breast, as if in search ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... that were round them, Alban could just see that she was shaking her clinched fists in the air. He made another attempt to control her. "Don't excite yourself! If she comes into the ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... for a moment the visitor hesitated, then the very innocence and gentleness of the girl strengthened her resolution, clinched it, and she saw her path of duty more clearly than ever. Deliberately, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the mad hotel keeper, having clinched with him, and now being engaged in taking away the shotgun, one barrel ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... soul that fiery flood was now lashing dreadfully close to the summit of its barriers. His face was as livid as death, and his hands were clinched till the nails cut into his palm. "Let me understand for once and for all, for I confess I cannot understand all this. You say he is to go, and that I am not to go! Is it, then, God's will and God's justice that because this man for twenty years has led a life ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... available resources wherewith to settle the account in full. He is then offered the alternative of paying 20 sacks at the next harvest or of performing some work that he is unwilling to do, so he accepts the former alternative. The bargain is then clinched with many threats on the part of the trader to the effect that the Americans will cut off his head or commit some other outrageous act should he fail ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... imagine a reason," was the passionate reply, as she paced the floor. "What reason could keep me from him? Merciful Heaven! father, have you forgotten that I was to marry him to-day? Well," she added hoarsely, standing before him with hands clinched in her effort ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... read this. He put it carefully away in the filing cabinet in his office, and wiped the sweat from his forehead and face. He stood for one moment, his hands rigid at his sides, his fists clinched. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... very earnest in his appeal, and Brilliana heard him to the end in silence, with her clinched hands pressed against her bosom. Then she turned fiercely upon him and her voice ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... at once the whole picture of the old days, when him and me was young, seemed to come up before him. He flared up like only part of him had been afire inside. He got up and walked up and down, with his hands clinched tight. ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... the story of this second apparition might be considered rather a heavy draught on the credulity of his flock, so he whipped out a convenient knife and cut off a piece of her saint-ship's veil, which clinched the narrative and struck doubters dumb. That great king and crazy relic-hunter, Philip II., saw this rag in his time with profound emotion,—this tiger heart, who could order the murder of a thousand innocent beings without ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Old Man Curry clinched this general opinion by entering into no entangling alliances with brother owners, and the bookmaker did not live who could call him friend. He attended strictly to his own business, which was training horses and ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood thrush long before. The phoebe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrelful. This is the "sulphur showers" we bear of. Even ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the emperor at that moment, the mildness of a lamb in his voice and manner, the gleam of a serpent's eye under his brows. And that right hand of his, clinched now and quivering a little, had it grasped a reaching, invisible serpent within him? Kindly? Yes, but with the kindness of a deep and subtle character who saw in forbearance the best politics and the most effective discipline. Lights were now aglow in a great candelabrum over the ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... Schofield came the Burns boat, but in that time Code Schofield had already hurried ashore in his dory and clinched his sale price with Bill Boughton, who also assured him of the bonus offered ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... in our right hands; our left hands we kept free either to grasp our opponents with, or to draw our knives if necessary. Jack carried his long knife—it might almost have been termed a short sword—in his left hand, and from the manner in which he clinched his right I saw that he meant to make use of it ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... is a mean, wicked murderer," said Harry, as he came rushing into his mother's room, his face flushed and his little fists clinched tight together: "My white rabbit lies all in a little dead heap in his house, and Mike, the gardener, says the weasel has killed him. He saw it prowling round the barn last night, and why he didn't set a trap and catch it I ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Mr. Schuyler he wouldn't never let his wife go to the light operas or vodyville, an' she hadn't any records, so how—how, I ask you, comes it that she's so familiar with the song about 'My Pearlie Girlie' that she joined in the singin' of it with me at the dinner table to-night? That's what clinched it. Mrs. Schuyler, she knew that song's well as I did, and she picked it up where I left off and hummed it straight to the end—words and music! How'd ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... death, yet with a determined look in her eyes, clinched her derringer firmly, and with close-shut teeth waited ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... in her clinched hand; She stood like a statue bronzed and grand; Wakan-dee[39] flashed in her fiery eyes; Then swift as the meteor cleaves the skies— Nay, swift as the fiery Wakinyan's[32] dart, She snatched the knife from ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... mean that you're in love with her?" asked the man at the window, without shifting his position. It seemed that utter indifference was in his question, although where the light shone on his hands, tight-clinched behind his ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... fleet could be sunk by red-hot cannon-balls; and there was no point but the high ground behind Fort l'Eguilette which dominated both the inner and the outer harbours.[246] But it may freely be granted that Bonaparte clinched the arguments in favour of this course and brought to bear on it that masterful energy which assures triumph. It was the first occasion on which he crossed the path of Pitt; and here, as always, he had the advantage of a central ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... was sore on us when Da bought her pigs, but she was five times wuss after she clinched the groceries. 'Pears like they soured on ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "the work must be done." I did not see why it had to be. She argued that I was the mistress, "had a right to be attended to—had a right to expect it." I did not see that either. I told her that her logic was false. She clinched it, as she thought, by declaring that I looked as if I needed to ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... And I never saw but one of my brothers fight at school, and he fought the meanest boy in school and punished him well. I can see him now, sitting on the prostrate form of the boy, with his hands clinched in the boy's hair and jamming his face down into the crusty snow till the blood streamed down his face. The nearest I ever came to a fight at school was when, one noontime, we were playing baseball and a boy of ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... at first astounded, then hot at the grossness of this insinuation, and his strong, brown hands clinched in the instinct to punish—to retaliate—but his anger cooled to the level of words, and he said: "This interview has more than convinced me of the justice of Lambert's distrust of you. I shall see him again and repeat the warning I have already given." And ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... second source of danger to myself!" screamed the Elector, striking with his clinched fist upon the arm of his chair. "It was not enough that my brother-in-law Gustavus Adolphus brought me into trouble and distress, and caused the Emperor's wrath to flame forth against me, so that ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... with clinched hands and blazing eyes. "You shall answer for these words, girl! if not now, years hence," he said; "the seed of your insult has been thrown on fertile soil, I promise you!" and he ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... their forty-fives; and Michael J. Murphy, plain lunatic-crazy with rage, disdaining all but Nature's weapons, tied into the amazed Captain Emil Bechtel under the rules of the Longshoremen's Union—which is to state that Michael J. Murphy clinched Emil Bechtel, lifted him, set him down hard on his plump back, crawled him, knelt on his arms, and addressed ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... him with a screech. Pulz was small but nimble, and understood rough and tumble fighting. He met Perdosa's rush with two swift blows—a short arm jab and an upper-cut. Then they clinched, and in a moment were rolling over and over just beyond ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he slapped his companion roughly on the side of the head. Half in anger, half in play the anthropoid turned upon him, his fangs bared and glistening. Long, hairy arms reached out to seize him, and, as they had done a thousand times before, the two clinched in mimic battle, rolling upon the sward, striking, growling and biting, though never closing their teeth in more than a rough pinch. It was wondrous practice for them both. The boy brought into play wrestling tricks that he had learned ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... spectacle, indeed, presented itself to his eyes. The whole market-place was crowded with people, not with threatening, violent men, rushing forward with clinched fists and flashing eyes, but with persons whose eyes were filled with tears, and who raised their arms in ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... behind them, both boats flying at a tremendous pace. It was a clear reach of the river, with Barking Level upon one side and the melancholy Plumstead Marshes upon the other. At our hail the man in the stern sprang up from the deck and shook his two clinched fists at us, cursing the while in a high, cracked voice. He was a good-sized, powerful man, and as he stood poising himself with legs astride I could see that from the thigh downwards there was but a wooden stump upon the right side. At the sound of his strident, ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his chair, his clinched fists on his knee. He was frowning with eagerness, and his eyes ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... fair of Olympia, the mart of every commerce, the focus of all intellect), join the throng, earnest and breathless, gathered round that sunburnt traveller;—now drinking in the wild account of Babylonian gardens, or of temples whose awful deity no lip may name—now, with clinched hands and glowing cheeks, tracking the march of Xerxes along exhausted rivers, and over bridges that spanned the sea—what moves, what hushes that mighty audience? It is Herodotus reading his ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... They clinched and pummeled when they could and where they could. The dog came up, circled the gyrating forms twice, then sat down upon his haunches at a safe distance, tilted his head sidewise and lifted his ears interestedly. He was a wise ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... weather'll be." "I never thought a scion of our stock Could grow the wood to make a weathercock; When I wuz younger'n you, skurce more'n a shaver, No airthly wind," sez he, "could make me waver!" (Ez he said this, he clinched his jaw an' forehead, Hitchin' his belt to bring his sword-hilt forrard.) "Jes' so it wuz with me," sez I, "I swow, When I wuz younger'n wut you see me now,— Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's bonnet, Thet I warm't full-cocked with my jedgment on it; But now I'm gittin' ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... cell, the young man could still see in the convulsively clinched fingers of Rosa the yellowish leaf from that Bible on which Cornelius de Witt had with such difficulty and pain written these few lines, which, if Van Baerle had read them, would undoubtedly have been the saving of a man and ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... inevitable. Under the direction of Mr. Gaze, who immediately sprang aloft, the captain of the main-top cut away the top gallant-yard; while Mr. Thompson, acting master, got up the end of a hawser, which he clinched around the mast-head. Thus they saved the main-topmast, and probably prevented the mainmast itself from being sprung. Mr. Gaze, who received a master's warrant a few weeks after, continued with Lord Exmouth to the last day of his ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... instinctively clinched his fist, thinking, with rage, of that package of letters which he had held in his hands, and which he might have destroyed if he ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... word was spoken, as with clinched teeth and beating hearts they dashed along. Only once Mr. Jamieson said, "Can Ethel keep up?" and she gasped ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... front of a table, placing your hands upon the table, the fists clinched and lying with the back of the hand upon the table, the thumb being doubled over the fingers. Fix your gaze upon the fist for awhile and then slowly extend the thumb, keeping your whole attention fixed upon the act, just as if it was of the greatest importance. Then slowly extend your first ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... wreck the tender relationship that had begun to grow up between father and daughter began on that evening. Tom Butterworth was furious. He muttered and clinched his fists. Clara's heart beat heavily. For some reason she felt guilty, as though she had been caught in an intrigue with the man. For a long time her father remained silent and then he, like the farm hand, made a furious and brutal attack on her. "Where have you been with that ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... had been reading that morning, she repeated them with a bitter emphasis,—"What can wringing of the hands do, that which is ordained to alter?" As she did so she tore asunder her clasped hands, to drop them clinched by her side,—the gesture of despair ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Turk lunged again. Decatur threw up his arm, and partially avoided the thrust; so that the pike pierced his breast, but inflicted only a slight wound. Grappling the weapon, Decatur tore it from the wound, wrested it from the Turk, and made a lunge at him, which he avoided. The combatants then clinched and fell to the deck, fiercely struggling for life and death. About them fought their followers, who strove to aid their respective commanders. Suddenly a Tripolitan officer, who had fought his way to a place above the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... you, but we follow every clue. You were both sportsmen; that, as you know, monsieur, is always a bond, and we had not long to wait, although it was too dark for us to be quite sure when you both passed me. It was the bolting of the door that clinched the matter for me. But for the absence of two of my men on another scent we should have disturbed you earlier. I must compliment you, monsieur, on your knowledge of chartreuse as well as your taste for good cigars; permit me to offer you another." Here he slipped his ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the skipper's right fist landed on his nose, knocking him backward over the bag, clear off his feet, and staining his red whiskers to a deeper and brighter red. But the big fellow came up to his feet again as nimbly as a cat. For a moment the two clinched and swayed in each other's straining arms, like drunken men. The awed spectators formed a line between the two and the edge of the cliff. Foxey Jack broke the hold, leaped back and struck a furious, but ill-judged blow ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... as sufficient fuel was added, we turned our attention to the woman whose head Smith was holding. Her eyes were closed, and her teeth clinched like those of a person in a fit. There was not a vestige of any color in her face, while her garments appeared as though they had experienced rough usage, and were torn in a dozen different places. In spite of the strong decoction which Smith had poured ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the wall with a dismal groan, the Hindoos fell on their knees begging piteously for mercy, Colonel Carrington seemed dazed, stupefied, Guy clinched his hands and made a desperate effort to bear up bravely, while Melton's face wore the same ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... by shrill yells and slyly administered lashings, went tearing away over the prairie. Right at the lieutenant's back, almost as he had fought his way with him, nozzle in hand, into the ruck of the rioting crowd at Bluff Siding, striking out scientifically with his clinched fists, charged young Brannan, only three days since transferred to the agency guard. Vaulting the low rail and lunging in among the devil-dreamers, came Sergeant Lutz and a squad of his fellow-troopers, and in a dozen seconds, breathless and dust-begrimed, half stifled, but practically ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... clinched. Her hot eyes were dry and hard. No light! No help! Only a fierce spirit of resistance. At length she was conscious of Elise standing before her, half terrified, but wholly determined. Her eyes moistened, then grew soft. Her outstretched arms ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... and bending under the weight of his load of books, she gave an involuntary start, and Madam Imbert, on whose arm she leaned, felt that she was trembling with excitement. Cox stood beside his wife in the door-way with his teeth clinched. His wife looked unutterable things, but neither ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... gone far before she called him. He turned to find her still standing where he had left her, her little hands clinched at her side, and her widely opened eyes staring at him. Suddenly she ran at him, and, catching the lapels of his coat in both ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... delirious, pacing up and down, uttering hoarse cries, gnawing his clinched fists, and ready to open his veins and drink ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... he who had denounced the viper, and had sought, but in vain, to crush it—it was he who fell at last a victim to its treacherous sting!" Jasher ended his peroration with a hissing sound from between his clinched teeth, and the caldron of human feelings around him began, as it were, to seethe and boil. Fanaticism stops not to weigh evidence, or to listen to reason. Joab could hardly make his voice heard amidst the roar of angry voices ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... set tight, and he rose from the heap of fish nets with the folded paper clinched like a club in his hand. He was going to get out of that boathouse if he had to butt a hole through its boards with ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... cried the old man, shaking his clinched hand in the air. "Why didn't he kill me? He has robbed me ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... myriads fled. But Mara's self, subtlest of all, fled not, But putting on a seeming yogi's form, Wasted, as if by fasts, to skin and bone, On one foot standing, rooted to the ground, The other raised against his fleshless thigh, Hands stretched aloft till joints had lost their use, And clinched so close, as if in firm resolve, The nails had grown quite through the festering palms,[5] His tattered robes, as if worn out by age, Hanging like moss from trees decayed and dead, While birds were nesting in his tangled ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... these was this twanging bow with its light shaft, better fitted for a child's plaything than for real work among men. As for him, give him a heavy spear, with the blade well set in thongs, or a heavy ax, with the head well clinched in the sinew-bound wooden haft. There was rarely miss or failure to the spear-thrust or the ax-stroke. And now, in proof of the soundness of his old-fashioned belief, he staked ruggedly his life. There were few spears left. There were only axes on either side. And there stood old ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Overthrown by the force of the shock, horses and riders rolled upon the earth. Masterless steeds dashed wildly in every direction, revolvers snapped, sword-blades clashed, the horses uttered short, harsh screams, the Frenchmen fought amid oaths and exclamations, the Germans, with clinched teeth, dealt blows around them, swords were buried in the bodies of enemies, without their owners clearly seeing what they were doing, single pairs of foes, hacking furiously at each other, were suddenly separated by a movement of their horses and brought in ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... found guilty of a falsehood from my cradle?" "Lookee, Sophy," cries he; "that's neither here nor there. I am determined upon this match, and have him you shall, d—n me if shat unt. D—n me if shat unt, though dost hang thyself the next morning." At repeating which words he clinched his fist, knit his brows, bit his lips, and thundered so loud, that the poor afflicted, terrified Sophia sunk trembling into her chair, and, had not a flood of tears come immediately to her ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... yet breathed. He drew nearer, and thought he saw, at the first glance, the unclosed eyes glare; but soon perceived that they were a mere glassy substance, mute as the tongue; the jaws were fallen, and, in some of the tangled locks, hands were clinched; nay, even the nails had entered sharpened by despair. The blood flew rapidly to his heart; it was flesh; he felt he was still a man, and the big tear paced down his iron cheeks, whose muscles had not for a long time been relaxed by such humane emotions. A moment he breathed quick, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... humorously smiling mouth. His eyes quaintly gleamed at the things we told him of our life in the strange place; but he only partly relaxed from his strenuous pose, and the hands that lay upon his knees were clinched. Afterwards, as he passed our balcony in a gondola, he lifted the brave red fez he was wearing (many people wore the fez for one caprice or another) and saluted our eagle and us: we were often on the balcony behind the shield to attest the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... significant, in this connection, that there never seems to be any male character in these pantomimes that is not committed to buffoonery. Apparently no reliance is placed on the unassisted humour of the dialogue. A funny remark must be clinched with a somersault, a repartee be driven home by a resounding smack on the face. You might have thought that on such an occasion there would be room for the figure of some gallant soldier of the masculine sex. Yet there wasn't a vestige of khaki in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... heap of dusty volumes in one corner, and in reply to a question, which I put the next instant in a trembling voice, I was informed that I might have the whole pile for fifty cents, provided I'd clear them out on the spot. The bargain was no sooner clinched than I gathered the books in my arms and staggered under their weight in the direction of Mrs. Chitling's. Even for a grown man they would have made a big armful, and when at last I toiled up to my attic, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... wrote several more letters, and once Jack White had a letter from his sister saying that Clint Bowers had come home, and it was said that the old man was tickled to death with his manners, and meant to leave him all he had. This clinched it sure enough, and Clint became tip-top among the boys, and his credit was good for all the drinks he chose to order, and I must say he was liberal enough, and nobody contradicted him. He wrote to Kirby,—he was all the time writing to him,—but this ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... he observed this scene, smiled with satisfaction. He believed some of his friends had prepared this display to assist him and to disconcert the opposition, for nothing could have clinched his arguments better than the pretty young girls covered with advertisements of well known products. Even the Eagle Eye Breakfast Food was ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... right up amongst the clouds some day, and you won't need no flyin' machine, neither! Skyrider—is—right!" Accidentally Johnny had touched Bud's self-esteem in a tender spot. "And that's no kidding, either!" he clinched his meaning. "Punch a hole in yore skelp, and I'll bet that big haid of yourn would wizzle all up like them red balloons they sell at ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... also, evidently shared that opinion. The boyish and rather theatrical movement with which he turned his back upon me, showed at once that he had been coached in the suspicions that were now so finally clinched. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... 'em when you were saying 'pitty horsey!' My first job was with a Spanish outfit. A Mexican majordomo licked me into shape when I was sweet sixteen. And," he clinched the argument mercilessly, "I was sixteen and drawing a man's pay on rodeo when you wore your pants buttoned on ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... States Supreme Court and a prominent man in the Methodist Church, was in the congregation, and the next day I called at the United States Hotel to pay my respects to him. He said to me, "My young friend I was very much interested in that story last evening; it clinched the sermon. Our ministers in Cincinnati used to introduce illustrative anecdotes, but it seems to have gone out of fashion and I am sorry for it." I replied to him, "Well Judge, I am glad to have the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of telling a story or a personal ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... loud eager singing, the student found a pair who were apparently fighting,—the peaceful goldfinch! They flew up close together, they almost clinched, then flew away to a group of trees, under, over, around, between, through, and beyond they went, never six inches apart, and he singing furiously all the time. At last, just as the looker-on expected to see them grapple, they calmly alighted on a tree eight or ten feet from ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Theodora, all unused to the turbulence of emotion, was troubled and moved and yet wildly happy. She looked away down the centre avenue, and she began to speak fast with a little catch in her breath, and Hector clinched his hands together and gazed at a beetle in the grass, or otherwise he would have taken her ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... a fight on our horses; he shot at me and I shot at him. When we got close together I took his arrows away from him, and he grabbed me by the hair of the head. I saw him reach for his dagger, and just then we clinched. My war-bonnet had worked down on my neck, and when he struck at me with his dagger it struck the war-bonnet, and I looked down and saw the handle sticking out, and grabbed it and killed the other Indian. Then we rushed the Crees into the pit again, and my father came up with ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... eyes filled with tears. They dried in anger before they reached his flushed cheek. He clinched his hands, turned, and walked hotly out of the room. In the door he paused, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... was dead, but clinched in his tiny hand OLD-man found some dirt—not much, but a little. A second time OLD-man gave the Muskrat his breath, and told him that he must go once more, and bring dirt. He said there was not quite enough in ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... exercised as advise with the gun trap. The bow should first be secured in place directly beneath and one eighth of an inch from the edge of the hole in the board, as seen at (a). Two large wire staples may be used for this purpose, being passed over the bow through holes in the board and clinched on the opposite side. The bend of the bow and length of string should now be determined, one end of the latter being attached to the tip of the bow and the other end supplied with a loop. The board should then be ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... of joy, seized the other by both feet and tugged with all his strength. His victim kicked frantically, tried to hang on, had to let go and came down all in a heap on top of his tormentor. Immediately they clinched and began to roll over and over. Bobby ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... crossed her face, her hands falling clinched. Who was it of whom it was written, that better were it for that man if he had never been born? Of Magdalene, more vile than ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... I'm not quitting on this. I've never been a quitter and I've clinched bigger propositions than this. What's wrong with me, eh? I guess I've bin taking a lot lying down of late. Last night I see it all—cut and dried. There ain't nothin' in this blood business—nothin'. If your family sprang from William the Conqueror I guess mine was ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... bowing, with Claire curtseying, having been listened to in utter dumbfoundedness by Patiomkin and Naryshkin, in childlike awe by Yarinka, and with quite inexpressible feelings by Catherine. When he is out of sight she rises with clinched fists and raises her arms and her closed eyes to Heaven. Patiomkin: rousing himself from his stupor of amazement, springs to her like a tiger, and throws himself at ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... too, was riding, but at a pace which took no heed of a horse's endurance, riding a gallant brute that stretched out its neck, nostrils flaring, hammering hoofs beating out the very staccato of urgent speed upon the flying sands. Already his revolver was tight clinched in a lifted hand. Already he had swerved a little from the distant lights of San Juan. He was taking the shortest line ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... between them. For twenty-three years he had loved her as truly as ever father loved child, and this was his reward! A miserable sense of isolation arose in his heart. Erica had been so much to him how could he live without her? The muscles of his face quivered with emotion; he clinched ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... near the end of a bridge. He fought me to the middle of it and when his speed slackened I took the offensive and with such energy that he clinched. I threw him on the planks and we went down together, he under me, in a fall so violent that it shook the bridge and knocked the breath out of him. This seemed to convince Latour that I was his master. His distress passed ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... John Storm had buttoned his long coat up to his throat and was striding home through the echoing streets, with both hands clinched and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... frame of Ransom Vane trembled, and his white hands were clinched fiercely. He well understood the vicious nature of the man before him, however, and realized that a movement of aggression on his part would lead to his ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... so astonished that she was silent and during that interval her son talked and explained with a rapidity that left her no chance for reply. "Father says so," was the final argument that clinched the matter; and she wisely refrained from further controversy, reflecting that "Father" might alter his opinion when she had met him and reported the true state of things. Then he would, of course, promptly recall his son and heir from a region so fraught ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... I clinched my fists and charged off. How grateful I was to him for having spoken to me, the outcast of the class, thus publicly, I could only show by my exertions to please him. When I drew up before him I was panting hard, but I could see that ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... head as Moriarity had done, he suddenly brought his clinched fists full against Sam's temple, putting into the blow the strength of three men. Without a groan the detective's head sank forward, his revolver dropped from his nerveless grasp, and he lay unconscious on his ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... stood in the middle of the room, and seated at it, with some kind of weapon before him, was a man who looked over his shoulder, with a ghastly face half hidden by hair and beard, and fierce black eyes as full of malignant menace as was the clinched hand holding the pistol. One instant Helen looked, the next flung to the door, bolted it and dropped into a chair, trembling in every limb. The noise did not wake Amy, and a moment's thought showed Helen the wisdom of keeping her in ignorance of this affair. She knew ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... Feeling about round it, we found the points of the staple on which the hatchway bar worked above; they were not fastened with nuts as they would have been with us, but were simply turned over and clinched. We had no means of straightening them out, but we could cut through the woodwork round them. Setting to work at that, we took it by turns till we could see the light through the wood; then we left it to finish after dark. All this time we knew we were under sail by the rippling ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... skillful motion jerked him from his horse. The man started to draw his revolver, but in an instant he and Wampus were rolling together upon the ground and the Canadian presently came uppermost and held his antagonist firmly between his knees. Then with deliberation he raised his clinched fist and thrust it forcibly against Mr. Tobey's eye, repeating the impact upon his nose, his chin and his cheek in a succession of jarring thumps that were delivered with scientific precision. Algy fairly howled, kicking and struggling to be free. None of his comrades offered to interfere and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... around blankly, until his gaze fell on the waiting figure. Brian looked at him, smiling slightly, and the eyes of the two men met and clinched. As if he had been a child caught doing wrong, the giant grinned and wiped the foam ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... though his homespun suit had seen salt water, and was far from innocent of tar and grease, for he had turned his hand to plenty of rough work during the voyage, partly out of good-nature, and partly to learn all he could get the sailors to teach him. However, his coaxing tongue clinched the bargain at last; indeed the mate seemed a good deal struck by the idea that he would find it "mighty convenient" to have a man on board who was a good scholar and could help him to keep the log. So we signed articles, and went to ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of us once of a pitched battle that he had fought on the side of a hill or ridge; that at the bottom there was a rut or canal, which had been cut out by the freshets. He said they soon clinched, and he threw his man and fell on top ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... hardened. De Lancy Scovel's black slander swept through his veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers clinched. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... belly like a Satan in Genesis, when all the time I thought he'd taken hisself off like a good boy, to run along an' mess his clothes 'pon the Quay. . . . Come 'ee forth, my cherub, an' tell your mother what they've a-been doin' to 'ee? . . . Eh? Why, what's that you've a-got clinched ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... somewhat derogatory to the dignity of the officers, the volume was seized by the master-at-arms, armed with a warrant from the Captain. A few days after, a large nail was driven straight through the two covers, and clinched on the other side, and, thus everlastingly sealed, the book was committed to the deep. The ground taken by the authorities on this occasion was, perhaps, that the book was obnoxious to a certain clause in the Articles of War, forbidding any person in the Navy to bring any other person in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... struggle more or less desperate, and Rodney's adherents would be expected to be on hand; so they followed him to the top of the tower, but halted when they got there, astonished and appalled at the scene that was presented to their gaze. The cousins were clinched and swaying about in alarming proximity to the low parapet, over which they were in imminent danger of falling to the ground; the sentry on duty was vainly endeavoring to part them by placing his musket between the ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... That remarked clinched in Lonny's mind an unpleasant, vague suspicion to the same effect. His reticence increased, and he gathered grass from the ground, chewing it pensively. The picture as a picture had been humiliatingly absent from the Senator's arguments. The painter had been held up as a grandson, pure and simple. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... were two ornaments; one, the finely moulded figure of an Egyptian in bronze, the wide Egyptian head-dress falling on the shoulders, the arms lying rigidly at the sides, with fists clinched. Generations of handling had made it almost black, but the amiable expression of the little countenance—the figure was about seven inches tall—greatly endeared it to me. Its feet were pressed close together on a small round stand; but one day somebody set it down on a hot stove, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... in the height of the discussion, a poor devil of an unfortunate was found in one of the parks of the Metropolis with an empty pistol in his clinched fist, a bullet in his head and in his pocket a copy of the thesis: Is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Katy's face when she first understood that she was not going to Silverton, their hearts would have bled for the thwarted creature who fled up the stairs to her own room, where Esther found her twenty minutes later, cold and fainting upon the bed, her face as white as ashes, and her hands clinched so tightly that the nails left marks ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... did remember having clinched a matter, and sharply too! with a species of Cossack, a ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... increasing excitement the professor listened until the very end. Then he struck the table with clinched fist—a resounding blow which set the concentrated soup dancing in the bowls and scattered the biscuits and the industrious red ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers |
