"Cramped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the two legs, to the end that he might drag it to the entrance of the subterranean passage and thus clear the only outlet to the cavern. His efforts were in vain. Whether his strength was paralyzed, he being in such a cramped position, or whether the poison had already distended the body, Rutler ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the stern And pounded there; a huge wrought orb From the Manhattan pierced one wall, but dropped; Others the seas absorb. Yet stormed on all sides, narrowed in, Hampered and cramped, the bad one fought— Spat ribald curses from the port Who shutters, jammed, locked ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... Sullivan for him, too; and in another minute he was spread out on my sofa, stretching his cramped limbs with infinite gusto, a cigarette between his fingers, a yellow bumper at hand on the chest of his ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the moment of the page's entrance, in a little fitting room at the back of his cramped premises, but through the doorway the boy could see the red, bespectacled face with its fringe of bristling white beard, in which he detected all the tokens of brewing storm. He whistled softly ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... furnish the extreme example of the over-inhibited type. Their minds are cramped in a fixed emotion of fear or helplessness, their ideas confined to the one thought that for them life is impossible. So they show a condition of perfect 'abulia,' or inability to will or act. They cannot change their posture or speech or execute ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... It is among the rarest of the volumes from the press of Caxton. Every leaf of this copy exhibits proof of the skill and care of Roger Payne; for every leaf is inlaid and mounted, with four lines of red ink round each page—not perhaps in the very best taste. The copy is also cramped ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... evening wore on and finally the boy went to the mate's cabin to pick out his men for the night's work. After his own cramped quarters, Malone's room proved delightful. Three glass ports admitted light. A table in the center of the room spread over with a Mercator's projection showed that Malone dutifully pricked the Vulcan's course on the chart, although it was not required of him. A sextant and quadrant ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... cramped limbs, and turned back to wander towards Upper Woburn Place, hardly knowing, however, why he bent his steps in that direction. Instinct, not memory or reflection, guided him, and when he halted, he leaned against the railings of the house from which he had seen ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... their motions in the line of sight, for the discovery and study of nebulae, for stellar and nebular photography, the cry continually is "more light." There is no enterprising head of an observatory but must feel cramped in his designs if he can command no more than 14 or 15 inches of aperture, and he aspires to greater instrumental capacity, not merely with a view to the chances of discovery, but for the steady prosecution of some legitimate line of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... time after this to get to sleep, but all was in vain. He heard two bells strike, and then three, and then four. He turned over first one way, and then the other; his head aching, and his limbs cramped and benumbed from the confined and uncomfortable positions in which he was obliged to keep them. In fact, when Jennie on one occasion, just after four bells struck, being very restless and wakeful herself, ventured to speak to him in a ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... his slobberous head, Its filamentous chaps her ankles brushing; Her twice-five roseal toes are cramped in dread, Each ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... impetuous boy. There was no one there. But a wide white hat with a yellow rose pinned on it hung above the new oak desk in the corner, and his heart rose at the sight. His own desk had an improvised drop light hung over it; he lowered the typewriter from his cramped arm upon a mass of clippings and notes. Beyond this room was the great bare loft, where two or three oily men were still toiling in the fading light over the establishing of the old STAR press. Sashes had been taken from one of the big windows to admit ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... towards the place where a blazing tussock, serving as a torch, showed the successful eel-fisher struggling with his prize. Through the gloom I saw another weird-looking figure running silently in the same direction; for the fact was, we were all so cramped and cold, and, weary of sitting waiting for bites which never came, that we hailed with delight a break in the monotony of our watch. It did not matter now how much noise we made (within moderate limits), for ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Alas! the oldest are only aged some six months, the youngest barely a fortnight, and already there is in all these faces, these faces in embryo, a disappointed expression, a scowling, worn look, a suffering precocity visible in the numerous lines on those little bald foreheads, cramped by linen caps edged with poor, narrow hospital lace. What are they suffering? What diseases can they have? They have everything, everything that one can have: diseases of children and diseases of men. The fruit of vice and poverty, they bring into the world hideous phenomena ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... leaned back and closed his eyes, crossing his long legs which were cramped by the limited space. He had already exchanged pleasantries with the conductor, and he had chatted for twenty minutes with a farmer, who had gone back at ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... the last thing I was likely to be guilty of. I wished myself at home. The tales I had heard of the voracity and fierceness of the striped catamount were made much more terrible by the darkness. My position was so cramped and the old sleigh so hard that I had to squirm occasionally; but every time I did so, ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... was genuinely friendly. "Shucks, that's nothin'. I'm glad to be out. Bein' a flight leader sorter cramped my style anyhow. This way I can do a little free-lancin'—if ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... grew cold and cramped. Now and then they tried to move in order to make their patients more comfortable or at least to give water to the wounded men. But the wagons were so crowded that the slightest stirring ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... as "Billy" Cooper, of the town of Van Etten, was walking on the railroad track at a point not far distant from his home. In crossing the railroad bridge he made a miss-step, and, slipping, fell between the ties, but his position was so cramped that he was unable to get out of the way of danger. There, suspended in that awful manner, with the body dangling below the bridge, he heard a train thundering along in the distance, approaching every moment nearer and nearer. No one will ever know the struggles for life which the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the pipes of the great stove, Juve and Fandor, covered with plaster, wreathed with cobwebs, and freely sprinkled with dust, fell back suddenly into the middle of the cellar. The two men, heedless of the disarray of their dress and their painful cramped limbs, spoke both at ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... their charmin' gaslight, which it is wery dim hall night in the street and quite hunsatisfactory, accordingly most pleased to haccept me friend Toby's kind 'ospitality, Hi assure you. One grows quite cramped in one's legs and one's harms when one 'as to remain in one position on one's box hall night, unless one's father should tyke hit into 'is 'ead to call one hup for a bit of a lark, and one can never be sure of ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... next morning feeling cramped and sore after his journey, and carefully looked about. The building had solid walls of sod; such rude stalls as it had been fitted with had been removed, perhaps for the sake of the lumber. He could ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... reading for material do not cultivate habits of economy or parsimony. You should always have a considerable amount of good fact left over, for unless you know a good deal of the region on the outskirts of your argument you will feel cramped and uncertain within it. The effect of having something in reserve is a powerful, though an intangible, asset in an argument; and, on the other hand, the man who has emptied his magazine is ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... the Worship of God and the fifth Book of Hooker's immortal work, and above all of the Book of Common Prayer itself, must have reached another and a loftier ideal of worship than any they had known before. Men who had passed from the narrow, cramped, and often conventional theories of Christian living to which they were accustomed, to the reading of Scott's Christian Life [Footnote: I have often been told, by the late Dr. Jarvis, that Scott's Christian Life was a favorite book with our early clergy, especially with Johnson ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... had just burnt out, and, cramped with the night's watching, I rose from my low seat, and seeing that she lay in the same unaltered state, I went to the door of the hut to breathe one gasp of the fresh morning air. I was watching the first red streak that heralded the rising sun, when I was startled by the words, "Thank God," ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... sound of their voices had died away, then he stretched his cramped, benumbed limbs, heaved a deep sigh of relief, and rose to ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... was probably narrow. After five years of country life the younger Milton at all events thought seriously of taking refuge in an Inn of Court, "wherever there is a pleasant and shady walk," and tells Diodati, "Where I am now I live obscurely and in a cramped manner." He had only just made the acquaintance of his distinguished neighbour, Sir Henry Wotton, Provost of Eton, by the beginning of 1638, though it appears that he was previously acquainted with ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... over to smile at her daughter when she heard the door open, and Julia would be sent to the delicatessen store for the component parts of a substantial meal. Julia loved the cramped, clean, odorous shop that smelled of wet wood and mixed mustard pickles and smoked fish. A little cream bottle would be filled from an immense can at her request, the shopkeeper's wife wiping it with a damp rag ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... that you are even a bigger simpleton than I took you to be," answered Emlyn angrily, as she rose and stretched herself, for her limbs were cramped. "The oath, pshaw! By now he is absolved from it as given under fear. Did you not hear me whisper to you to put an arrow through his heart, instead of playing ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... cramped temporary quarters in a hot little "shack," for it deserved no better name, back of the Civil Hospital. Here under almost impossible conditions there were performed a large volume of routine biological and chemical work, and a considerable ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... my bedroom fire, thinking, and, I am afraid, conjuring up all sorts of terrible reasons for my dear husband's silence, until I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke chilly and cramped from the uncomfortable posture I had slept in. The fire was out, and the house silent as the grave; not even a carriage passing to take up some late guest. I looked at the clock, half-past three, and then ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... obstinacy, and the thick crust of self-contemplation, which stifles all true progress,—these assimilated qualities made himself, what he felt he was, not an attractive object to himself more than to anybody else. All his perceptions pointed inward, and cramped and narrowed his existence. He felt very, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the announcement of two plays: "The Forty Thieves" (author unstated) and Cruikshank's "The Bottle." The orchestra, after terrific concussions, fell silent, and then a troupe of players in costume, cramped on the narrow trestle boards, performed a sample scene from "The Forty Thieves," just to give the crowd in front an idea of the wonders of this powerful work. And four thieves passed and repassed behind the screen hiding the doors, and reappeared nine times as four ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... stands off by itself in the open plain. Its branches spread wide. It is a complete tree, better than the cramped tree in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... instant I believed he meant to send a shot into the hole. Then he seemed to think better of wasting his ammunition and led the way down-stream. They stopped on a level bank over the cataract, and in a little while I caught the odor of smoke and later of cooking trout. My cramped position grew intolerable, and finally I crept out into the pool to reconnoitre. The light of their fire showed both figures stretched on the ground. They ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... drawing in the Louvre is a design for this second David, but the drawing of an arm on the same sheet is so like the right arm of the first David that it is more probably an early idea for the first David, in which we see that Michael Angelo's design needed more room than the cramped block of marble allowed; it makes us wonder the more at the marvellous freedom of action that he managed to get out of the cramped stone. The bronze David was intended for the French statesman, Pierre de Rohan, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... handwriting was cramped and awkward, as if the person who wrote it was not accustomed to handle ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... show ye, too, ye remember," he said. They walked together down the bluff, to where another little cavern, low and shallow, hid itself behind huckleberry-bushes. "I kep' the money here," Proudfoot said, kneeling in the cramped entrance and delving among the rocks. He drew out a roll of ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... of your small opportunity to shine before others, or of a want of appreciation of your service and gifts and powers by those who should know you? Oh, remember the Babe, and the long years of His condescension to men of low estate, to the cramped surroundings of the carpenter's shed, and the sleepy Jewish village. Are you tried sometimes because you have to suffer the hatred or jealousy, secret or open, of those for whom you feel nothing but goodwill, and who perhaps once thought themselves happy in your friendship? Well, ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... chosen their own little plots here rather than in the big garden at the back of the house; and many were the times they had all begun anew to dig and to rake. But if Laura's energy did not fizzle out as quickly as usual—she was the model for the rest—Mother was sure to discover that it was too cramped and dark for them in there, and send Sarah ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... noticed that Chief Master-at-Arms Rogers, who was rather an old man, and been in the Navy for years, was on a raft, and I sent a boat to take him from the raft, but he objected considerably to this, stating that he was quite all right, although as a matter of fact he was very cold and cramped from his long hours on ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... day as that on which the immortal Pickwick "bent over the balustrades of Rochester Bridge contemplating nature and waiting for breakfast," the club (in June, 1903) had journeyed to Rochester to do homage to the fame of their master. The mediaeval, cramped High Street, "full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces," seems to bask and grow sleepier than ever in the glaring sunlight. It is all practically just as Dickens saw it for the last time ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... have been hard to find. Don Quixote was present at the entrance of the Judge with the young lady, and as soon as he saw him he said, "Your worship may with confidence enter and take your ease in this castle; for though the accommodation be scanty and poor, there are no quarters so cramped or inconvenient that they cannot make room for arms and letters; above all if arms and letters have beauty for a guide and leader, as letters represented by your worship have in this fair maiden, to whom ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "I am cramped for space," returned the ci-devant millionaire; "and I do not deny the fact that sometimes it rains on my pallet. It is a trifling inconvenience. And on fine nights I can see the moon, symbol and confidant of men's loves. For the moon, Madame, since the world began, has been apostrophized ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the hours dragged! I hadn't had anything to eat since lunch, and it got darker and darker in there, and hot and close and cramped. I put in the time, much as I could, thinking of Tom. The very first thing I'd do after cashing in, would be to get up to Sing Sing to see him. I'm crazy to see him. I'd tell him the news and see if he couldn't bribe a guard, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... you can't want anything bigger!" said Washington, his eyes blazing. "Oh, I wish I could go into either of those speculations—I only wish I had money—I wish I wasn't cramped and kept down and fettered with poverty, and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight! Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don't throw away those things —they are so splendid and I can see how sure they are. Don't throw them away for something ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... a long iron bar, and with a few lusty efforts sprung the stocks. A dozen hands lifted the cramped Rosendo out and stood him upon his feet. Carmen squirmed through the crowd and threw herself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... The cramped position in which Gustavus was held by Lubeck made it of great importance that he should be on amicable terms with other powers. So early as 1523, he had sent ambassadors to Russia to ratify the treaty made by Sture. They had returned, however, with announcement ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... people began to appear, singly and in twos and threes, and then go out again, and go on up the stairs which led crookedly to and from the corner the office was cramped into. Some of them went up stairs after merely glancing into the office, others found letters there, and staid chatting awhile. They looked at Cornelia with merely an identifying eye, at first, as if they perceived that she was a new girl, but as if new ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... compel the Parthian monarch to an engagement, and, if possible, to dictate peace to him at his capital. He had not, however, in his second campaign, the same freedom with regard to his movements that he had enjoyed the year previous. The occupation of Western Mesopotamia cramped his choice. It had, in fact, compelled him before quitting Syria to decline, definitely and decidedly, the overtures of Artavasdes, who strongly urged on him to advance by way of Armenia, and promised him in that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... aged man with a face thickly furrowed with wrinkles. He had but one eye, small and gray and very shrewd in expression, which he turned contemptuously upon the crowd surrounding him. Numb and trembling from his cramped position upon the horse and the terrible jouncing he had endured, the fiddler could scarcely stand at first and shook as with a palsy; but he made a brave effort to control his weakness and turned smilingly at the murmur of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... the fact is that the blood on his face, as I guess I told you before, came from a man who was killed by a shell, right in front of Iggy. And that numb feeling of his legs was because they were both 'asleep'. You know, when you lie too long on your arm, or keep your leg in a cramped position. He got all over that after he'd been in ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... passed, the event of which was the uncovering of Sprudell's fine field boots in a drift outside. That night he did not close his eyes. His nervousness became panic, and his panic like unto hysteria. He ached with cold and his cramped position, and he was now getting in earnest the gnawing pangs of hunger. What was a Chinaman's life compared to his? There were millions like him left—and there was only one Sprudell! In the faint, gray light of the fourth day, Griswold ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... say, to hear them, the rascals, that they were speaking like honest merchants whose affairs were momentarily cramped by a commercial crisis? Who would believe that, instead of sacks of coffee or casks of sugar, they were talking of human beings to export like merchandise? These traders have no other idea of right or wrong. The moral sense is entirely lacking in them, and if they had any, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... taking a sip of his soda water. He had dealt two cards, when his hands were suddenly grasped as in two vices, and cramped to the table. Barton had bent over from behind and caught ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... ladder and entered his cramped office out of breath. Avis Page looked up from her desk and wrinkled her freckled snub nose at him. "You ought to take a shower, but there isn't time," she said. "Here, use my antistinker." She threw him a spray cartridge ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... humming into the dark town of Havre in a four-seat motor-car about ten in the evening of the 29th December: a raw bleak night, she, it was clear, poor thing, bitterly cramped with cold. I had some recollection of the place, for I had been there, and drove to the quays, near which I stopped at the Maire's large house, a palatial place overlooking the sea, in which she slept, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... shore, all the difference, perhaps, between losin' the ship and savin' of her. Then, about the tumble-home, I don't see the use o' it. True, it do help to keep the sea from comin' over side in heavy weather, and keeps the decks dry. But then it do make the deck space terrible cramped up, so that wi' guns, and boats, and spare spars and what not, the crew haven't got room to move. But you'll see presently, when you goes aboard, that this here Nonsuch have got decks so roomy as a ship o' double her size. And I do hold that ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... in consequence there is greater opportunity for the patient's family or friends to interfere with the management of the case, which never benefits a patient, and is sometimes a serious handicap. Then again, the cramped apartments, so common in these days, are poorly adapted to the treatment of sickness of any sort and should induce many obstetrical patients to choose the hospital. There are, besides, other features which favor this course, such as economy, convenience, and safety. From my own experience, which ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... know that. An' as for my bed," said Mr. Pike finally, "whensomever I ain't here by bed-time, you welcome to put any transion person in it, an' also an' likewise, when transion custom is pressin', and you cramped for beddin', I'm willin' to give it up for the time bein'; an' rather'n you should be cramped too bad, I'll take my chances somewhars else, even if I has to take a pallet at the head o' ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Claudius also appeared on deck, looking haggard and pale. He did not see Barker, for he turned, seaman-like, to the weatherside, and the try-sail hid his friend from his sight. Presently he too thought he would go aloft, for he felt cramped and weary, and fancied a climb would stretch his limbs. He went right up to the crosstrees before he espied Barker, a few feet below him on the other side. He stopped a moment in astonishment, for this sort ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... conclusion to a life with so much of open-air adventure, sunshine, gaiety, and charm in it? The sweat streamed upon his face as he strove vainly to hang by one of his arms and search the cope of the crumbling wall for a surer hold with the other; he stretched his toes till his muscles cramped, his eyes in the darkness filled with a red cloud, his breath choked him, a vision of his body thrashing through space overcame him, and his slipping fingers would be loose from the mortar ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... his name twice. It was rather hard work, for he screwed up his mouth and cramped his fingers. Still, Hoffman was not wholly satisfied with ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... of a perfect June morning invited to the great outdoors. Exquisite perfume from myriad blossoms tempted lovers of nature to get away from cramped, man-made buildings, out under the blue roof of heaven, and revel in the lavish ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... something short is handy for this kind of work. In such cramped quarters—a ditch six feet deep and from two to three feet broad—the rifle is an awkward length to permit of prompt and skilful use of ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... track happened to be at all passable, I used to get out and walk, to relieve them a little, as well as to stretch my cramped limbs, it being almost impossible, when there is any luggage in a small Indian canoe, to attain a ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... the delicious freedom of it all, as contrasted with the cramped, artificial life in the city! Everything in the country tends to set the boy thinking, to call out his dormant powers and develop his latent forces. And what health there is in it all! How hearty and natural he is in comparison with the city boy, who is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... her a coquettish look to dress entirely in green, a colour which contrasted horribly with her red hair. The buckle of her belt was large and her collar cramped her neck. This lack of elegance had, no doubt, contributed to the coldness which Frederick at first displayed towards her. She watched him from where she sat, some distance away from him, with curious glances; and Arnoux, close to her side, in vain lavished his gallantries—he could not get ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... public games easily carried out in a park or athletic field, might both fill the mind with the imaginative material constantly supplied by the theater, and also afford the activity which the cramped muscles of the town dweller so sorely need. Even the unquestioned ability which the theater possesses to bring men together into a common mood and to afford them a mutual topic of conversation, is better accomplished ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... men-at-arms under Sir Robert Keith, the marischal of Scotland. The line of the defenders was unusually dense; Edward, in forming up on an equal front with greatly superior numbers, found his army almost hopelessly cramped. The attacking army was formed in an unwieldy mass of ten "battles," each consisting of horse and foot, and the whole formed in three lines each of three "battles," with the tenth "battle" as a reserve in rear. In this order the English moved down into the valley for a direct ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Beaufort on January 20th, and had quarters given them in the new barracks. Here they received every attention from the officers of His Majesty's Independent Company and the gentlemen of the neighborhood, and refreshed themselves after the fatigues and discomforts of their long voyage and cramped accommodations. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued! One of the bars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath. For a moment I hung by one hand, and after that experience I did not dare to rest again. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... demoralisation was well advanced when they moved from the apartment. After four years of "expansion" there, they had begun to feel cramped; and a year after Marian inherited the house Howard had progressed to the mental, the moral, the financial state where it seemed natural, logical, practically necessary that they should set up a ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... was silence, only broken by the louder roar of the incoming tide, and the faint rustling of the leaves. Suddenly it was broken by a human voice, and a human figure slowly arose from a cramped posture behind a ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was met by Bangs and Green, who relieved him from duty when they got the "spot" on Maroney. They found Roch pretty well exhausted, as he had not slept on the journey, and had been obliged to sit in a very cramped position. ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... first of all to draw the Out-line of the Subject which he intended to write upon, and afterwards conform the Description to the Figure of his Subject. The Poetry was to contract or dilate itself according to the Mould in which it was cast. In a word, the Verses were to be cramped or extended to the Dimensions of the Frame that was prepared for them; and to undergo the Fate of those Persons whom the Tyrant Procrustes used to lodge in his Iron Bed; if they were too short, he stretched them on a Rack, and if they were too long, chopped off ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... mother of endeavour, and never was this lesson clearer than in the case of Huxley. Working amidst a host of difficulties, in want of room, in want of light, seeking to unravel the intricacies of minute structure with a microscope lashed to secure steadiness, cramped within a tiny cabin, jostled by the tumult of a crowded ship's life, with the scantiest supply of books of reference, with no one at hand of whom he could take counsel on the problems opening up before him, he gathered for himself during these four years a large mass of accurate, important, and in ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... hard clots of blood as she rose, cramped and chilled to the bone. The night air had blown coldly upon her through the open lattice; but she would not summon her maid to her assistance. Without undressing she threw herself upon a couch, and utterly worn out by the agitation she had undergone, slept ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he bade Jemima good-night, gave her explicit directions to call him, should his uncle awake (her own room opened out of St. George's) spread his blanket in the cramped hall outside the sick man's door—he had not roughed it on shipboard and in the wilderness all these years without knowing something of the soft side of a plank—and throwing his heavy ship's coat over ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "These narrow, cramped streets torture me! I must get out of this place or I shall go mad. The country, with its rolling fields and great stretches of calm sky helps a little, but nothing except the ocean will satisfy my spirit. Five years have ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... many weeks had passed, I discovered that it was not wise to allow the fleeting dissipations of the moment, however alluring, to monopolize time which should be given to the serious affairs of life. I found that a cramped position in a boat in the hot sun brought on nervous headaches, and that too much time in the garden when the dew was falling was conducive to lumbago. Furthermore I had been invited by a neighboring university to deliver my celebrated lecture on the protagonism of Plato, and several ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... common consent an occasion for holiday; and although, according to theory, a bush holiday is invariably spent in kangaroo-hunting, yet the fact is that men who are in the saddle from daylight to dark, from week-end to week-end, generally spend a holiday resting legs that are cramped from the saddle, and arms that ache from lifting sheep over hurdles or swinging the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... some books, including Lombroso's "Degenerate Man" and "Criminal Woman." Kennedy glanced at them, then at a crumpled manuscript that was stuck into a pigeonhole. It was written in a trembling, cramped, foreign hand, evidently part of a book, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... with a number of cans of beans, bully beef and jam, were to keep us supplied with food until we reached Langres, in eastern France, which was our destination. We had previously learned—on our trip overseas—to conserve food, and none of this supply was wasted. We stored it away in our cramped quarters and saw that it got ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... from the waggon with the crowd of jaded conscripts and mingled with that common and cosmopolitan crowd which now defiles the city of the Caesars. The fatigue of his body, and the cramped pain of his aching spine, added to the moral and the mental suffering which was upon him as he moved a stranger and alone along the new, unfamiliar streets where, alone here and there, some giant ruin, some stately arch, some marble form of god or prophet, recalled to him the ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... kitchen stove had been set up on the bare floors. On a pine table in the cramped kitchen were a few dishes, tins and pails, a loaf of bread, a ham, some coffee and sugar. Mrs. Lively sat down in the kitchen on a wooden chair with a feeling of utter desolation in her heart. Napoleon looked longingly at the loaf of bread. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... had been making extensive preparations to meet the invader. He commanded half a million men, but he followed Alexander too hastily and had to fight in a narrow defile on the Syrian coast between the mountains and the sea. In such cramped quarters numbers did not count. The battle became a massacre, and only the approach of night stayed the swords of the victorious Macedonians. A great quantity of booty, including the mother, wife, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... would prefer the High Church, and almost Puseyite, tendencies of the English women to the narrow and gloomy views of her Scotch neighbours; but her independent turn of mind, her eager love of inquiry and her thirst for truth, were as much cramped by the one ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... criminals. But Stephen could not join them, for Jasper would not spare him for an instant, and he himself, though at first sorely missing employment and exercise, was growing drowsy and heavy limbed in his cramped life and the evil atmosphere, even the sick longings for liberty were gradually passing away from him, so that sometimes he felt as if he had lived here for ages and known no other life, though no sooner did he lie down to rest, and shut his eyes, than the trees and green glades of the New Forest ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... levels below the surface. I will not follow the reader with that kind guide who will cheer his wanderings through those sunless corridors of death, where many of the sleepers still lie sealed within their tombs on either hand, and show him by the smoky taper's light the frescos which adorn the cramped chapels. I prefer to stand at the top of the entrance and ask him if he noticed how the artist sometimes seemed not to know whether he was pagan or Christian, and did not mind, for instance, putting a Mercury at the heads ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... gave my present before[47] a month ago, and I've been presenting myself with all sorts of things ever since; and now it's not half gone. I'm very thankful for this, however, just now, for St. George, who is cramped in his career, and I'll accept it if you like for him. Meantime I've sent it to the bank, and hold him your debtor. I've had the most delicious gift besides, I ever had in my life,—the Patriarch of Venice's blessing written with his own hand, ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... spacious hall after another; none seemed too roomy for the manoeuvres of this young genius. The largest studio in the Burrow, Gowan's own, cramped him—most of all on the days when Mrs. Gowan came down, set forth the tea-pot, lit up her candles and gave her moving little imitation of the handsomer functions that took place through the upper tiers of the Temple of Art. Prochnow had ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... The wood-work was white-enameled; the walls covered with gray Japanese paper. There were no portieres between living-room and dining-room and small hall, so that the three rooms, with their light-reflecting walls, gave an effect of spaciousness to rather a cramped and old-fashioned apartment. There were not many pictures and no bric-a-brac, yet the rooms were not bare, but clean and trim and distinguished, with the large davenport and the wing-chair, chintz-cushioned brown willow chairs, and Ruth's upright piano, excellent mahogany, and a few good rugs. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... dormitory with its bare wall-spaces splotched with dampness? What had become of the row of white beds, with Dearwyn's rosy face on the next pillow? And she herself—why was she lying on the outside of the covers, with all her clothes on, a cramped aching heap? Rising on her elbow, she gazed wonderingly at the frowzy woman stretched near her on a pallet. It was not until the woman turned over, puffing out her fat cheeks in a long breath, that the girl on the bed recognized her and knew what room this was and ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... cramped hand of almost microscopic fineness supposed to be Charlotte Bronte, and occupying but very little more space ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... occurred to Babcock that, so far as he could remember, he had never seen Mr. Thomas Grogan, his stevedore. He knew Grogan's name, of course, and would have recognized his signature affixed to the little cramped notes with which his orders were always acknowledged, but the man himself might have passed unnoticed within three feet of him. This is not unusual where the work of a contractor lies in scattered places, and he must often depend on strangers ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was not wholly in the right place as an instructor of youth. With all his sympathy for what was weak and immature, he was yet impatient of dullness, of stupidity, of caution; much that he said was too mature, too exalted for the cramped and limited minds of boyhood. He was sensitive to the charm of eager, high-spirited, and affectionate natures, but he had also the equable, just, paternal interest in boys which is an essential quality in a wise schoolmaster. Yet he was apt to make ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... leisure, putting on a suit complete, with striped shirt, socks, and cowhide boots purchased from a waterside trader across the river and paid for with the last of his moneys earned in the wilderness. The boots, though a world too wide, cramped him painfully; and he walked up and down the bank for a minute or two, to get accustomed to them, before strolling down to meet ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it's like," Susan moaned. "You don't know. When you get sick and hollow and cramped, and stagger about in your bare room—and call out to yourself to ask what made you and where is it. And the wind's like ice—and ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... now persuade his parents to let him spend at least a portion of his time upon those African estates which from little careless remarks dropped at home he knew his father possessed. That would be something, better at least than a lifetime of the cramped and cloying ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and periods of tedium that beggar language. In the life of the artist there need be no hour without its pleasure. I take the author, with whose career I am best acquainted; and it is true he works in a rebellious material, and that the act of writing is cramped and trying both to the eyes and the temper; but remark him in his study, when matter crowds upon him and words are not wanting - in what a continual series of small successes time flows by; with what a sense of power as of one moving mountains, he marshals his petty ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... limestone dappled orange, fawn colour, and silver grey, rises 250 feet above the river, the lower portion is in terraces, very narrow, on which are the houses clinging to the rock, cramped between the Dordogne and the cliff which rises 140 to 160 feet above. The old houses are echeloned along the face of the rock, superposed the one on the other, calcined by the sun as they face south, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... 'low or high dice,' that is, with only certain numbers on them, high or low,—a pair of which every sharper always had in his possession, changing them with great dexterity. They also used 'cramped' boxes, by which they 'cogged' or fastened the dice in the box as they dropped them IN, and so could drop them OUT with ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... There had been a polo game the day before and I had lent a pony, which is always a bad thing to do. And she had wrenched her shoulder, besides helping to lose the game. There was no one in town: the temperature was ninety and climbing, and my left hand persistently cramped ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
