"Loosened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woodwork with quick, clever fingers. A section loosened and fell outward with a bang. The red-and-black beetles fled in all directions. And now, judge Ackroyd ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... slenderness, Keith possessed unusual strength, yet no exertion on his part served to start the loosened plank sufficiently for their purpose. Ripping a strip from the bench he managed to pry the hole somewhat larger, arranging the bench itself so as to afford the necessary leverage, but even then his entire weight failed to either start the spikes, or crack the plank. Some altercation ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... The soldiers loosened his chains, and he was led out and up the stairs. The blazing, blinding sun dazzled his eyes after the dimness of the dungeon. The pavement of the courtyard seemed burning to his cold, bare feet. Soldiers looked curiously at him as he passed, but of course ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... came from another room, whose door was left ajar; it (the light) fell like a bar of golden sheen across my path. As I approached the door opened and my sister Lucy, who had been watching for me, came out. She was already in a white cashmere wrapper, over which her loosened hair hung darkly and heavily, like tangles of silk. "Rosa, love," she whispered, "Minnie and I can't bear the idea of your sleeping out there, all alone, in that solitary room—the very room too Nurse Sherrard used to talk about! So, as you know Minnie has given up her ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... him quick, Spurred the black mare with a bayonet prick. Watched her gallop with plunge and with kick Away o'er the desert careering. Then he turned with a softened face, And loosened the strap of his cartridge-case, While his thoughts flew back to the dear old place In the sunny ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... kicked aside his dog, which was in the way, and loosened the poor man's stiff military stock. While thus charitably engaged, the moon broke out, and the light fell full on the pale, careworn face of the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appeared dead, but he cannot really be quite dead, for I had no sooner loosened the running noose that tightened his throat than, giving a sigh, he muttered in a faint voice: ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... that it could not. There was evidently a lining to the desk, and the paper had doubtless slipped down between this and the finished panels forming the back of the desk. To reach it, the colonel procured a screw driver, and turning the desk around, loosened, with some difficulty, the screws that fastened the proper panel, and soon recovered the paper. With it, however, he found a couple of yellow, time-stained envelopes, addressed on the ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... and at sunrise found herself too near the tabooed cliffs. She lifted her ears suspiciously, wrinkled her nose fearfully, and wheeled to run away to a more desirable locality. But in that quick turn she loosened the shale at the base of a steep descent. The treacherous rock slid and threw her down. Before she could get up and away the great mass rumbled down and covered her, but she finally managed to work ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... supporting her, and Godfrey, with frantic fingers, was loosening her robe at the throat. My terrified eyes, staring at that throat, half-expected to find a cruel mark there, but its smoothness was unsullied. The robe loosened, Godfrey snatched his cap from his head and began to fan the ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... you are not to tell him. Upon your obedience to me I charge you not to tell him. Upon your love for me I command you—never to tell him! Kiss me, and dry these dear eyes. Put up your hair; a coil is loosened. He is waiting ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and he removed the nails which fastened the end of the bar. They looked secure enough, and were nails an inch long driven into the mortar; but they had been successfully loosened, and only wanted a little pull to bring them out. In one minute Wildney had unfastened and pushed down one end of the bar. He then got through the broken pane, and dropped down outside. Eric followed with some little difficulty, for the aperture would only just admit his passage; and Duncan, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... finest Spanish dancing is at once killed or degraded by the presence of an indifferent or unsympathetic public, and that is probably why it cannot be transplanted, but remains local." Fortunately the Spaniards in the first-night audience gave the cue, unlocked the lips and loosened the hands of us cold Americans. For my part, I was soon yelling Ole! ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... desert. On a sudden the stillness is broken by a terrible rushing sound, and a burning breath like fire strikes on the snowy pinnacles and glaciers. All nature is soon in an uproar. Mighty banks of snow, loosened from their winter resting-place, roar and rumble down the mountain-side in avalanches, bearing huge rocks and giant trees in their arms. The whole winter architecture of the mountains crumbles to ruins before ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... boomed, "has loosened the bandages of Set which fettered my mouth. I have taken my place in the great ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... health to that man upon whom God has let loose his own conscience. Cain will now cry, "My punishment is greater than I can bear;" Judas will hang himself; and both Belshazzar and Felix will feel the joints of their loins to be loosened, and their knees to smite one against another, when ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... and jagged crust of the earth on which rests the carpet of soil. In the mountains where the slopes are steep the rocks stick up through the soil. The outer parts of this solid rock are, however, always crumbling. Little particles, as soon as they become loosened, either fall by their own weight or are washed away. Some of the rock fragments collect upon the gentler slopes and finally turn to soil. This soil is not rich and it dries out quickly, because it is shallow. The soil in the valleys, as we have already learned from the muddy rivulet, ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... athlete pondered for a moment. Then he lifted the engineer bodily, chair and all, and moved him over nearer the instrument. Next he loosened one of Reblong's hands, just enough to permit him to reach certain of the levers. He also did some more tying of knots and shifting of buckles, roped the chair to a stanchion, and made sure that Reblong ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... said, with a sullen resentment; and he crossed the room to Nell, and began to talk to her. As a rule, he talked very little; but the wine had loosened his tongue, and he launched out into a cynical and amusing diatribe against society and all ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... very strange and very mournful," murmured Mrs. Chester, deeply moved. But she checked herself, and drawing the child toward her, began to untie her dress. A faint exclamation of surprise and pity broke from her lips as she loosened the garment and observed that it was the only one which the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... workmen engaged in its erection, must have been a very costly undertaking. After a considerable period the foundation and steps began to give way, either through some error of the builders or owing to the damp caused by long-continued rains which loosened the stones. About that time I, Johann Scherban Kantakosino Beserab Voivode, in the name of God, was entrusted with the government of my ancestors. As soon as I became acquainted with the dilapidation of the monastery, I at once resolved to restore the building ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left the next morning. The landlord wouldn't speak to us for two days, but when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... smile which carried a hint of sadness. His eyes half closed, dreamily. The smoke from his cigarette curled upward in a thin spiral in the still air of the altitudes. His horse, with reins dangling and saddle cinch loosened, cropped the grass which carpeted ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... into the water together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptised by the Spirit—After this I rejoiced greatly, and gave thanks to God. And on the 12th of May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first. Ques. Do you not find yourself mistaken ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... strike, then I saw his eyes fix in a frightful stare, his face turned livid, and with a strangled cry, he fell back and down. Together we lifted him to the low window-seat, pursuers and pursued alike, loosened his collar, chafed his hands, bathed his temples, did everything we could think of doing; but he lay there staring at the ceiling with clenched teeth. At last Royce bent and laid his ear against his breast. Then he arose and ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... Ananias, until, after a few attempts, they decided that aggressive truth was not their vocation, and confined themselves thenceforward to silent honesty, except on rare occasions, when either an extreme outrage, or a happier inspiration, loosened their tongue. But a soul is now and then incarnated, whom indulgent nature has not afflicted with any cramp or frost, but who can speak the right word at the right moment, qualify the selfish and hypocritical act with its real name, and, without any ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in some way passed the chains, and with a cheer of triumph raised his banner in the interior of the line. A second and a third followed in his track. The gap between the camels and the guard widened. Dozens, hundreds rushed to join their daring leader. The camels were loosened and dispersed; the negroes, attacked front and rear, perished or fled; the living wall that guarded the emperor was gone, and his sacred person was ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... and tossed the sprinkled grain, straightway the son of Nestor, gallant Thrasymedes, stood by and struck the blow; and the axe severed the tendons of the neck and loosened the might of the heifer; and the women raised their cry, the daughters and the sons' wives and the wife revered of Nestor, Eurydice, eldest of the daughters of Clymenus. And now they lifted the victim's head from the wide-wayed earth, and held it so, while Peisistratus, leader ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... interesting things as he goes about his work. He one day saw a white swallow, which is of rare occurrence. He saw a bird, a sparrow he thinks, fly against the side of a horse and fill his beak with hair from the loosened coat of the animal. He saw a shrike pursue a chickadee, when the latter escaped by taking refuge in a small hole in a tree. One day in early spring he saw two hen-hawks that were circling and screaming high in air, approach each ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... coming upon Jerrold's or Eliot's name. Every morning Adeline gazed at Anne across the table with the same look of strained and agonised enquiry. Every morning Anne's heart tightened and dragged, then loosened and lifted, as they were let off for ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... not so well by the variable flower - for it is a niggardly bloomer - as by the thick leaf that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having loosened the membrane, they are able to inflate it like a paper bag. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, the flower clusters never fail to attract many insects to their feast, which is accessible even to those of short tongues. Each blossom is perfect in itself, i.e., it contains both ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... he has been a-waiting." The Virginian was throwing his saddle off as I loosened the cinches of mine. "And the Judge don't look ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... Holy Virgin. Seized with a superstitious terror, Mrs. Tiralla loosened the child's arms from about her neck. What did Rosa see? What did she hear? Did she really see something? If only Rosa could find out something which could be of use ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... my sympathy, but I thought Major Stone aged visibly that summer. Maybe you have noticed how it is with men who have gone along, hale and stanch, until they reach a certain age. When they do start to break they break fast. He lost some of his flesh and most of his rosiness. The skin on his face loosened a little and became a tallowy yellowish-red, somewhat like a ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... himself amenable to encouragement in this respect. But after the last dish bad been removed the steward thought that good manners demanded that he should honor his entertainer by his illustrious presence, and at the same time the prefect's good wine loosened the tongue of the man, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lantern until his eyes rested on one partly loosened rail. "And that is as far as you have got?" he said. "Take up your hammer and drive the wood key in. Get hold of their rifles, Charley. I guess they are ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... quantity of it, he became drunk immediately, and the fumes getting up into his head, he began to sing after his manner, and to dance with his breech upon my shoulders. His jolting made him vomit, and he loosened his legs from about me by degrees. Finding that he did not press me as before, I threw him upon the ground, where he lay without motion; I then took up a great stone, and crushed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Willey family in August, 1826. The house occupied by the family was on the slope of a mountain, and after a long drought there was a terrible tempest which not only raised the river to a great height but loosened the surface of the mountain so that a great landslide took place. The house was in the track of the slide, and the family rushed out of doors. Had they remained within they would have been safe, for a ledge above the house parted the ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... again the head projected itself from the window, but now the face was turned towards me, and in these features I seemed to read a very lively apprehension, nay, as I drew nearer, I saw above the bushy, scowling brows the gleam of sweat; but on I came with loosened rein, heedless of the gentleman's threatening look and wondering at his very evident perturbation; and now I saw that he grasped something half-hidden in the fold of his coat that bulked remarkably like a pistol. But all at once, as he peered at me through the rolling smother of dust, his apprehensive ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... to further strife. In that moment's pause I gained my lost vantage. Quick as thought I freed my other hand, and, holding still his murderous grip from my throat, I caught him by the neck, and pushing his head upward, I gave him such a thrust that his hold on me loosened a bit. A bit only, but that was enough, for when he tightened it again, I was on my feet and the strife was renewed—renewed with the fierceness of maddened brutes, lashed into fury. Life for one of us meant death for the other, and I lost every humane instinct in that terrible struggle ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... old man drove up, he observed that both the shafts of his gig were broken, and that they were held together by withes, formed from the bark of a hickory sapling. Our traveler observed further that he was plainly clad, that his knee buckles were loosened, and that something like negligence pervaded his dress. Conceiving him to be one of the honest yeomanry of our land, the courtesies of strangers passed between them, and they entered the tavern. It was about the same time, that an addition of three or four young gentlemen was made to their number; ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... he arrived. I was shocked to see him. His ruddy face had yellowed and the firm flesh had loosened and sagged. I had never noticed that his stubbly hair was so grey. He could scarcely sit still on the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... night was dark, for the moon was only a narrow band in the sky. They had made no fire, for fear their enemies might see it. Scarcely had Aseelkwa begun to speak when a slight noise was heard. It sounded like some loosened stones falling down the mountain side. At once every warrior was on his feet and ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... place. I ordered the parts to be frequently bathed with warm water. The heat and tenderness to a considerable degree subsided, and the pitch-plaster was carefully applied. At the expiration of a week the plaster began to be loosened. A second one was applied, and when a fortnight longer had passed, a slight ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... prisoner's hand roughly, and bound a new gag under the chin and tightly over the head; he then loosened the mouth gag and turned away, without any interest in the sequel, to pick at a driblet of grease running down the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... discrepancies of nature and the hiatuses of theory. After the machine is finished, and the steam turned on, the next is to drive it; and experience and an exquisite sympathy must teach him where a weight should be applied or a nut loosened. With the civil engineer, more properly so called (if anything can be proper with this awkward coinage), the obligation starts with the beginning. He is always the practical man. The rains, the winds and the waves, the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feet and stood erect. As she did so, one of the great strands of her hair which had become loosened during their flight, fell in a soft curling mass of blue jet down her back to within a few inches of her ankles. Captain Forest did not know then that it was a ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Isay, with a shrewd glance at Mukhorty, and with a practised hand he tightened the loosened knot high in the horse's ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... gets into the sack, taking firm hold of the loosened ends of the doubled rope and that part of the sack close to it. The assistant then takes hold of the ends of the rope and ties them around the sack. The knots must be made on the other side of the sack from that on which ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... be empty. Her lading of "wine, sugar, and sweetmeats, skins and soap" (or hides and tallow) was still in the hold, but the Spaniards had deserted her, after they had set her on fire, "made a hole in her, and loosened [perhaps cut adrift] her foresail." The pirates quenched the fire, stopped the leak, and placed their wounded men aboard her, "and thus constituted her for the time being our hospital." They lay at anchor, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... is preoccupied with one's own happy schemes and merry visions; the bird sings shrill within its cage, and claps its golden wings. But on such soft and languorous days as these days of early spring, when the body is unstrung, and the bonds and ties that fasten the soul to its prison are loosened and unbound, the spirit, striving to be glad, draws in through the passages of sense these swift impressions of beauty, as a thirsty child drains a cup of spring-water on a sun-scorched day, lingering ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... He was touched by the lively interest displayed by his physician, who never failed to visit him at nine o'clock every morning. He seemed pleased with the attention paid him, and ended by placing entire confidence in M. Desault. Gratitude loosened his tongue; brutality and insult had failed to extort a murmur, but kind treatment restored his speech he had no words for anger, but he found them to express his thanks. M. Desault prolonged his visits as ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... rest. He watched her nimbly climb the ladder. Rage and spite choked him. He longed to destroy the pillory; and had the lightning of his eye had power to blast, the gypsy girl would have been reduced to ashes long before she reached the platform. Without a word she approached the sufferer, loosened a gourd from her girdle, and raised it gently to the parched lips of the miserable man. Then from his eye a great tear trickled, and rolled slowly down the misshapen face, so long ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was so firm and his tone so full of assurance, as he uttered this oath that Cambyses ordered his chains to be loosened, and, after a few moments' thought, said: "I should like to believe you, for I cannot bear to imagine you the worst and most abandoned of men. To-morrow we will summon the astrologers, soothsayers and priests. Perhaps they may be able to discover the truth. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 'Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen Elizabeth', or as he later called it, '1601'. The 'conversation' recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all the outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when fireside sociabilities were limited only to the loosened fancy, vocabulary, and physical performance, and not ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... Lord Farquhart still sat quite unmoved, seemingly as indifferent as ever to the world, apparently unmindful of his champion. Ashley's face was black with rage, and he stood all alone in the midst of the crowd. Lady Barbara had flung aside her mask; her loosened cloak and its hood had fallen from her, but her white face was hidden behind her white hands. Jack Grimsby, Treadway, all of Farquhart's friends, were watching eagerly, intently, the door through which the woman had disappeared, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... for fresh hunting-grounds or pasture. He would trace the course of that westward push which, starting from somewhere in Asia, brought its impact to bear on the northern provinces of the Roman Empire and eventually loosened its whole fabric. He would show how Europe, as we know it, was welded into unity by the attacks of migratory warriors on three flanks—the Huns and the Tartars, a host of horsemen riding light over the steppes of Russia and Hungary: the Arabs, bearing ...
— Progress and History • Various
... tale, with a woman's name for title and contents. What a retrospect! His past life resembled a dream whose details blended indistinctly with one another, leaving only a confused recollection of sighs, kisses, and tears, melting eyes, half-parted lips, and loosened tresses, a memory as deliciously soft as a warm, perfumed bath, in whose caressing waters, in a chamber lit by a rose-hued lamp, one almost dissolves, and yields with thoughts half merging ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... not seeking to penetrate what is to me, indeed, no secret; neither do I form the unavailing wish that our expired intercourse should revive. C'en est fait. A knot which has been loosened or untied may be formed again, but this knot has been cut. Accordingly, I neither address you by your name nor subscribe my own. My hand-writing, though not disguised, is, like yourself, much changed; and, though this were not the case, you could not, after the lapse of so much ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... so little beloved, the Countess would appear at no disadvantage. It was the work of minutes. Von Rosen had the captain's eye in matters of the toilette; she was none of those who hang in Fabian helplessness among their finery and, after hours, come forth upon the world as dowdies. A glance, a loosened curl, a studied and admired disorder in the hair, a bit of lace, a touch of colour, a yellow rose in the bosom; and the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then, not peace and an awakening to new things, but a wretched and dissociated clutching after the old? A wrench which only loosened but did not ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hobbles, as the action would be observed, and suspicion would be instantly aroused. He then leaps on the best horse he can find, and uttering a terrific war-whoop darts away into the plains, driving the loosened horses before him. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... moment Law was master of himself. "Give it to me, Madam, if you please," he said, quietly, and took the knife from fingers which loosened under his grasp. There was no further word spoken. He tossed the knife into a crack of the bunk beyond him. He lay with his right arm doubled under his head, looking up steadily into the low ceiling, upon which ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Bank, looking out through slender bars—exactly as the Penniman lion did—upon a world that wanted money, but couldn't have it without some good reason. He had not been present when the Whipple money was so thoughtlessly loosened, and he would be just the man to make a fuss about it now. He would want to take it back and put it behind those bars in the bank where no one could get it. But he couldn't ever have it back, because it was spent. Still, he might do something ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... element of change mitigates the sense of disaster); but the affair was not otherwise a holiday. Suspense and anxiety were in the air, and it never is pleasant to be reminded of the helplessness of man. In the presence of a loosened river, with its ravaging, unconquerable volume, this impression is as strong as possible; and as I looked at the deluge which threatened to make an island of the Papal palace I perceived that the scourge of water is greater than ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... wattled cote; Then with his rod and many a rustic word He rules their going: or 'tis sweet to note The delver, when his toothed rake hath stirred The stubborn clod, his hoe the glebe hath smote; Barefoot the country girl, with loosened zone, Spins, while she keeps her ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... shouldn't have stirred if he hadn't spoken. I should have awaited orders; but the others were moving before we stopped, and Mrs. Senter fell down and bumped her knee. That made her hair come partly undone, and, to my horror, a bunch of the dearest little curls, which I always thought lived there, were loosened. There was a great wind blowing, and in a second more the curls would have been on the horizon, if I hadn't seized them just as they were about to take flight. If they'd gone, they must have passed almost in front of Sir Lionel's nose, on their ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... quite covered over with earth; so that the elephants, deceived by its appearance, thought themselves upon firm ground. From this first raft they proceeded to a second, which was built in the same form, but only a hundred feet long, and fastened to the former by chains that were easily loosened. The female elephants were put upon the first raft, and the males followed after; and when they were got upon the second raft, it was loosened from the first, and, by the help of small boats, towed to the opposite shore. After this, it was sent back to fetch those which were behind. Some fell into ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... fatal noose; and, laying the old man's body in the arms of Lord Glenvarloch, she ran for water, for spirits, for essences, in the vain hope that life might be only suspended. That hope proved indeed vain. She chafed his temples, raised his head, loosened his nightgown, (for it seemed as if he had arisen from bed upon hearing the entrance of the villains,) and, finally, opened, with difficulty, his fixed and closely-clenched hands, from one of which dropped ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... bit of margin left so no other leaves can be loosened by this removal. The marking out of the run-over has been neatly ruled, done so recently that the ink is not yet black—done with that ink in the stand. It was blotted with this." She lifted a hand-blotter to show me the print of a line of ink. There were other markings on the face ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Colonel Templer had already sent off a hundred and forty men to St Johns, while calling for volunteers to follow. The seigneurial class came forward at once. But all attempts to turn out the militia en masse proved utterly futile. Fourteen years of kindly British rule had loosened the old French bonds of government and the habitants were no longer united as part of one people with the seigneurs and the clergy. The rebels had been busy spreading insidious perversions of the belated Quebec Act, poisoning the minds of the habitants against the British government, ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... Evadne was bending over a man who had been badly crippled in a saw mill. His left arm was gone and all the fingers from his right hand. With the morbidness of those who delight in concentrating attention upon their own sufferings, he had pulled off the loosened bandage with his teeth and held up the stump for inspection, and Evadne had laid her cool, soft hands on either side of the unsightly mass of red and angry flesh and was holding ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... She flinched, she appeared about to plunge, but Pan's gentle hand, his soothing voice kept her still. The brand on her flank was old. Pan had no way to guess how long she had been free, but he concluded not a great while, because she was not wild. He loosened the noose of his lasso on her neck. It required more patience and ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... up from her forehead, and a little pointed cap of black velvet, edged with gold, was set upon it, and contrasted well with the bright locks, from which a curl, either by accident or design, had been loosened, and rippled over ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... pick geese and ducks, have a tub of boiling water; dip each one in, turning it over to let every part be well scalded, and as each one is scalded, wrap it up in a cloth, and when they are nearly cold, pick them. In this way the pen feathers are loosened, and they can be picked much cleaner. Wetting the feathers does not hurt them if they are well dried. They should be put in bags, and frequently sunned. Baking them in the oven after the bread comes out, cures them more thoroughly ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... a cupful of sugar for each quart of pulp. Return to the fire, boil twenty minutes until the skins are tender, and can; or, if preferred, the whole grapes may be heated, and when well scalded so that the seeds are loosened, pressed through a colander, thus rejecting both seeds and skins, boiled, then ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... States-General to the conclusion of a twelve years' truce was their firm belief that the unstable political condition of the United Provinces must lead to civil discord, as soon as the relaxing of the pressure of war loosened the bonds which had, since Leicester's departure, held together a number of separate authorities and discordant interests. They were right in their supposition. In order, therefore, to understand the course of events in the republic, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... and unsteady steps they came into the open air, which tended yet more to stimulate that glowing fever of the grape. As if to make up for the silence with which the guests had hitherto listened to Zicci, every tongue was now loosened; every man talked, no man listened. In the serene beauty of the night and scene there was something wild and fearful in the contrast of the hubbub and Babel of these disorderly roysterers. One of the Frenchmen in especial, the young Due de ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Bug, some to the Borer, and to leaf disease, while others blamed the heaviness of the tropical rains, which washed away the valuable surface soil, the flight of which towards the western sea was much expedited by weeding with the mamoty (a digging hoe), which loosened the soil, and so prepared the way for its more rapid disappearance. And these causes no doubt hastened the end, but they were mainly results arising from one great cause—the neglect to supply shade for the coffee, and this again arose from ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... conflict between his will and hers. Whilst enjoying their holiday they naturally went everywhere together, and were scarce an hour out of each other's presence, day or night. In quiet spots by the seashore, when they sat in solitude, Widdowson's tongue was loosened, and he poured forth his philosophy of life with the happy assurance that Monica would listen passively. His devotion to her proved itself in a thousand ways; week after week he grew, if anything, more kind, more tender; yet in his view of their relations he was ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... go to help the men who are raising the wheels of the truck on to the line again with jacks. It has been a queer accident altogether. The train was running down in the early hours of this morning when a huge boulder, which had been loosened by the vibration of its passing, fell with terrific force against this particular car, and knocked it off the rails; the coupling-pin connecting it with the next one in front broke, and the engine and first few trucks ran on a little. Luckily ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... being penned closer and closer by their antagonists. Presently a dangerous scrimmage was formed just in front of their goal. For some minutes the ball was invisible, then by an apparently preconcerted movement the forwards of the Fifteen loosened and let it dart back into the open behind them, where lurked Tempest ready to receive it. He did not wait to pick it up, but ran to meet it with a flying kick. For a moment it seemed doubtful whether it would ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... So they loosened the dog, Laura holding him in leash, and slipped away to the woods when none of the other members of the party were watching. Laura knew that the scent would not lie very strong after the pelting rain; but they could follow the trail by sight ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... the descent, Hans wound his way down the cone by a spiral path. Our route lay amidst eruptive rocks, some of which, shaken out of their loosened beds, rushed bounding down the abyss, and in their fall awoke echoes remarkable for their loud and ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Stope. Her eyes were opened to their widest extent, but they had the peculiar blank fixity of the eyes of the blind. Above them her hair slipped and slid in a loosened knot. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Prince Milan loosened from his neck the little gold cross his mother had given him, and as soon as Hyacinthia grasped it, she had changed herself into a church, Milan into a monk, and the horse into a belfry. They had hardly done this when the magician and his servants ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... as a stone torn from the mountain's top by the wind or rain torrents, or loosened by age, falls massive with mighty force, bounds here and there, in its course sweeps from the earth with it woods, herds, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... well," said Arthur; "I could, to be sure, find the corner where Lord Harry has loosened the stones, and get in by the pages' window, ere old Master Michael is awake in the morn; but I think such doings are more like those of a fox than of a brave boy, and though I should be well punished, I will walk in at the door, and hold ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... [1758] entirely at the command of Lord Bute, whose nod made him break every engagement—for it was not given above an hour or two before dinner—yet, as he was sometimes at liberty when the noble lord was to dine abroad, like a horse loosened from his stake, he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Da Souza lamented, but found herself powerless to prevent, and her husband took the vacant place. Dinner was served, and with the opening of the champagne, which was not long delayed, tongues were loosened. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... children growing up without religious training. And this very day I have formed a new resolution. Johnny and Flora are to go with me every morning to early Mass. This is a subject which must be no longer neglected;" and here Mr. Temple, having loosened his necktie, and donned dressing-gown and slippers, took up the fan that Althea had dropped upon his entrance, and seated himself ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... head, stood and listened to the bells, and Will, taking leave of Mr. Blee, hastened to wish his mother all happiness in the year now newly dawned. He walked once or twice up and down the little garden beside her, and with a tongue loosened by liquor came near to telling her of his approaching action, but did not do so. Meantime Mr. Blee steered himself with all caution over ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... a tremendous thud. Tant Sannie loosened the white handkerchief about her neck and wiped her eyes, and the coloured girl, seeing her do so, sniffled. The did not understand the discourse, which made ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... attendants loosened the whole terrible herd, and as they bounded off toward the grim, black shaft I did not need to ask to know their mission. Had there not been those within the cruel city of Kadabra who needed succor far worse ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Spaniards. These pipes are of glazed earthenware, taper at one end, and each fitting into the large end of the next. The cement is a mixture of lime, fat, and hair, which gets hard and firm when cold, but can be loosened by a very slight application of heat. A thousand years has made no alteration in the way of making these pipes. Here, however, the ground is so level that one great characteristic of Moorish waterworks is not to be seen. I mean the water-columns which are such a feature in the country ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... him, and dared not obey the next impulse, which was to thump him off, for the same reason, I therefore became civil from necessity, and from that moment Jack and I entered into an alliance. He gradually loosened his hold, looked at my face, examined my hands and rings with the most minute attention, and soon found the biscuit which lay by my side. When I liked him well enough to profit by his friendship, he became ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... inches ahead. For a solid hour that paw was not once lifted from the ground except when the other was pushed forward to replace it. He moved ahead an inch at a time, the edging forepaws feeling through the dust for the least sign of loosened earth beneath. He knew that the crushing jaws of a trap yawned beneath the surface somewhere near the meat. His eyes swept every inch of ground for a sign that differed from the rest and his nose quested for a spot which held the taint of man. A faint trace of it ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... ancestors. For thousands and thousands of years this organization has kept men together, even though there was no authority whatever to impose it. It has deeply impressed all subsequent development of mankind; and when the bonds of common descent had been loosened by migrations on a grand scale, while the development of the separated family within the clan itself had destroyed the old unity of the clan, a new form of union, territorial in its principle—the village community—was called into ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... and as she drew away the restraint he had put upon himself loosened. When she disappeared his feeling burst all bounds. Dragging the dogs inside, he closed the door. Then, like one broken and spent, he fell face against the wall, with the hoarsely ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... loosened and hung in tangled masses nearly to Rhoda's knees, Marie's delight in its loveliness knew no expression. She fetched a queer battered old comb which she washed and then proceeded with true feminine rapture to comb the wonderful waving locks. In the midst of this Kut-le entered. He ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... but could only turn and look. The hinder hoofs lost hold on the rocky edge as the horse made its first slip backward, and even as the loosened stones rattled down, and it lurched with one leg hanging over the gulf, Erpwald leapt forward and tore Elfrida from the saddle, and half threw her toward me. I do not remember when I dismounted, but I was there and grasped her hand and dragged her back ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... forbidding. Potent, powerful, effective. Host, one from whom another receives food, lodging, or entertainment. Peremptory, commanding, decisive. Availed, was of use, had effect. Ally, a confederate, one who unites with another in some purpose. Tense, strained to stiffness, rigid. Relaxed, loosened. Chiding, scolding, rebuking. Crochet, a perverse fancy, a whim. Instanced, mentioned as ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... lay awake on the bed and he heard the legs of the bed talking, so he lay still and listened: and they said that the Raja was in danger and that they must try to save him. So one leg loosened itself from the bed and went away outside and it found a tiger which had come to eat the Raja, and it beat the tiger to death, and then came back and fixed itself into its place again. Soon a second leg said that it would go outside; so it went and that leg met a leopard and a ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... out, of a trampled tenderness. She stood and looked after him for a moment with startled eyes and her hand, in a familiar gesture of her profession, upon her heart. Then she went to her room, and deliberately loosened her garments and lay down upon her bed, first to sob like that little child she remembered, and afterwards to think, until the world came and knocked at her door and bade her come out of ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... from its sack and saw that the contents of the bulging envelope had sprung one end of the flap loose. Before he went to bed Pierre had set a pail of water on the coals. A cloud of steam was rising from it. Those two things—the steam and the loosened flap—sent a thrill through Philip. What was in the letter? What had Josephine McCloud written to ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... loosened his perspiring left hand, not daring to withdraw it. The act seemed to communicate an extra strain to every part of his body. Of all the fateful moments of his life, this seemed to be the most tense. Then, in an impulse of desperation, he drew his ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... describes the effect of tobacco upon himself. "He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry—as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... minutes during which the horses plunged and kicked again, until Sally stood boldly erect a moment while the waggon rocked to and fro, a tall, straight figure with a tress of loosened hair streaming out beneath her fur cap, as she swung the stinging whip. Then it seemed that the team had had enough, for as she dropped lightly back into the seat they broke into a gallop, and in another ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... than the usual time of his visits, and no one was expecting him; all the stablemen were in the fields, but that signified little to Mr Gibson; he walked his horse about for five minutes or so before taking him into the stable, and loosened his girths, examining him with perhaps unnecessary exactitude. He went into the house by a private door, and made his way into the drawing-room, half expecting, however, that Molly would be in the garden. She had been there, but it was too hot and dazzling now for ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... common sense, however respectable, could have originated, or conducted to a successful conclusion, that profound contemplation into which Newton fell in the garden of Woolsthorpe, when he saw the loosened apple drop from the tree, and succeeded in demonstrating that the planets are retained in their orbits by the same law which impels a falling pebble towards the ground. So little obvious, indeed, was the Newtonian scheme, that most of the contemporary generation ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... deep in the woods that winter, and toward spring there came a sudden, prolonged, and heavy thaw. The ice broke rapidly and every loosened brook became a torrent. Past the door of the camp, which was set in a valley, the Gornish River went boiling and roaring like a mill-race, all-forgetful of its wonted ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... wreckage might be loosened if we climbed over it, and we might fall and be pinned down. I've read of divers being caught that way. We ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... deponent's face, but turned back to his feet, and took hold of them, and drew up his body into a heap, and lay upon him about an hour and a half or two hours, in all which time this deponent could not stir nor speak; but, feeling himself beginning to be loosened or lightened, and he beginning to strive, he put out his hand among the clothes, and took hold of her hand, and brought it up to his mouth, and bit three of the fingers (as he judges) to the breaking of the bones; which done, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... could resist, Mrs. Burgoyne had put up her deft hands, and in a moment, with a pull here, and the alteration of a hairpin there, she had loosened the girl's black and silky hair, till it showed the beautiful waves above the ear in which it did indeed resemble the marble head with ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that it was but a little respite, and yet, carelessly as we talk of its value, every hour of existence now seemed an inestimable thing. Never have I known such a thrill of sensuous joy as came with that freshet of life. The weight fell away from my lungs, the band loosened from my brow, a sweet feeling of peace and gentle, languid comfort stole over me. I lay watching Summerlee revive under the same remedy, and finally Lord John took his turn. He sprang to his feet and gave me a hand ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... materials of his science, unintelligibly cloaked till then. The abrupt configuration of the bluffs and mounds is now for the first time clearly revealed—mounds whereon, doubtless, spears and shields have frequently lain while their owners loosened their sandals and yawned and stretched their arms in the sun. For the first time, too, a glimpse is obtainable of the true entrance used by its occupants of ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... successful, and the skilful angler had the satisfaction of drawing the hat toward her, and finally rescuing it from its perilous position. Not all of it, however; the flower, the yellow rose, once Peggy's pride and joy, had become loosened during the various unaccustomed motions of its parent hat, and now lay, lonely and lovely, a golden spot on the bright green grass. Peggy fished again, but this time in vain; and finally she was obliged to give it up, and go off flowerless in search ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... it. And the spirit of the younger, his fierce indignation, his angry sorrow, his disregard for self, his truth, his strong manhood, appealed to the weary man as an echoing of his own passionate youth. Then they loosened hands and without a word Geisner commenced to walk slowly backwards and forwards, his hands behind ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... stone,' said he, 'over which I had fallen three times within the last month: could it be by fair means he broke that to pieces at the first blow? Just to make up my mind on that point I tried his own hammer against a stone in the gate; it nearly broke both my arms, and loosened half the teeth in ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... here by the window." The window was some distance from the fire, but as she sat down Margaret Elizabeth loosened her furs as if ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... proper position, a broad layer of the moss is bound round the fractured limb. In drying, the slime causes it to adhere to the skin, and thus it forms a fast bandage, which cannot be ruffled or shifted. After the lapse of a few weeks, when the bones have become firmly united, the bandage is loosened by being bathed with tepid water, and it is then easily removed. The Indians of Chiloe were acquainted, long before the French surgeons, with the use of ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... eight hours without a pause and without a balk, the Jap girl allowed her deer to stop. She loosened the draw strap and, turning the animal about, tied him by a long line to the sled, that he might paw moss from beneath the ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell |
