"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horizontal and vertical fissures, and arranged transversely to the surface of the body like a loosely-built stone wall. After birth these fissures may extend down into the corium, and on movement produce much pain. The skin is so stiff and contracted that the eyes cannot be completely opened or shut, the lips are too stiff to permit of sucking, and are often inverted; the nose and ears are atrophied, the toes are contracted and cramped, and, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... giving the name of a well-known French regiment commanded by Bougainville; and then he added in a low voice, "Ne faites pas de bruit; ce sont les vivres"—for a convoy with provisions was expected by the French. The Highlanders were at the forefront in the stiff climb up the heights which proved to be Wolfe's master stroke. Malcolm Fraser has left his own account of that morning's work. The troops, he says, had been in the boats since nine o'clock on the previous night. At about twelve they had set out with a falling tide and ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... If the Swellings become large, stiff, and painful, Dr. Lind recommends that the Legs should be frequently bathed and fomented; or, what he has found preferable, to be exposed to their Steams, after being well covered with Blankets. After this Operation, he advises the Limb to ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... Before he could open his lips, he had to satisfy himself that your lover deserved to be taken into his confidence, on the delicate subject of Eunice's sentiments. He arrived at a favorable conclusion. I can repeat Philip's questions and the Governor's answers after putting the young man through a stiff examination just as they passed: 'May I inquire, sir, if she has spoken to you about me?' 'She has often spoken about you.' 'Did she seem to be angry with me?' 'She is too good and too sweet to be angry with you.' 'Do you think she will forgive me?' 'She ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... stiff and stubborn since I could recollect, And had an awful temper, and never would reflect; And always into trouble—I remember once at school The teacher tried to flog me, and I ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... time I enjoyed perfect health, but in 1911 I began to get very stiff in the legs, especially about the hips. Thinking it was rheumatism, I went to the Innot hot springs, near Herberton. These baths gave me no relief, so I went to Sydney to consult Sir Alexander McCormack, who prescribed electrical treatment and hot air. This I tried for four months ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... of twelve villagers brought back three stiff and mangled corpses on loose cattle hurdles into the village of Pontresina. Two of them were the bodies of two local Swiss guides, and the third, with its delicate face unscathed by the fall, and turned calmly upwards to the clear moonlight, was the body of Harry ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... as far as was possible, the severity of their work. On the northern coasts in particular, the intense cold of the furious winter gales rendered it no easy task to keep the assigned stations; the ropes were turned into stiff and brittle bars, the hulls were coated with ice, and many, both of men and officers, were frost-bitten and crippled. But no stress of weather could long keep the stubborn and hardy British from their posts. With ceaseless vigilance they traversed continually the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... opening my eyes, I found myself lying on a bed in a middle-sized chamber, lighted by a candle, which stood on a table; an elderly man stood near me, and a yet more elderly female was holding a phial of very pungent salts to my olfactory organ. I attempted to move, but felt very stiff—my right arm appeared nearly paralyzed, and there was a strange dull sensation in my head. 'You had better remain still, young man,' said the elderly individual, 'the surgeon will be here presently; I have sent a message for him ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... shelves of a library preserve in a like manner the errors of the past and expositions concerning them. Like those creatures, they too were full of life in their time and made a great deal of noise; but now they are stiff and fossilised, and only of interest ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... will be the hindrance and assuaging of the perfect love betwixt us, except this wound be salved and clearly made whole.... I hear daily that you of the Clergy preach one against another, without charity or discretion; some be too stiff in their old Mumpsimus, others be too busy and curious in their new Sumpsimus. Thus all men almost be in variety and discord, and few or none preach truly and sincerely the Word of God.... Yet the Temporalty be not clear ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... to be especially an apt scholar in the restricted sense for original versification in the classical languages, or for turning English into Greek or Latin, yet he seemed to seize the precise meaning of the authors and to give the sense. "His composition was stiff," but yet, says a classmate, "when there were thrilling passages of Virgil or Homer, or difficult passages in 'Scriptores Graeci' to translate, he or Lord Arthur Hervey was generally called up to edify the class with ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... days past; and even that pittance could not be come at above six or seven days longer. We anchored in Tolaga Bay on the 9th, in latitude 38 deg. 21' S., longitude 178 deg. 31' east. It affords good riding with the wind westerly, and regular soundings from eleven to five fathoms, stiff muddy ground across the bay for about two miles. It is open from N.N.E. to E.S.E. It is to be observed, easterly winds seldom blow hard on this shore; but when they do, they throw in a great sea, so that if it were not for a great undertow, together with a large river ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... the harmonious developing of all, since in all, save exceptional cases, it will be found, upon beginning this treatment, that more than half the muscles of the body are unused, while the other, and overworked half, move in stiff and angular fashion. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... widely from the typical first lieutenant of fiction, a being as stiff as a ramrod, and as dangerous to approach as a polar bear. He was, indeed, a bright, cheery fellow, and although he was obliged to surround himself with a certain amount of official stiffness, he was a great favorite among ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... emphasised, among the painter-critics, though quite as much discrimination, ardour of discovery, and acumen may be found among the writings of the men whose names rank high in professional criticism. And this hedge, we humbly submit, is a rather stiff one to vault for the adherents of criticism written by artists only. Nevertheless, every day of his humble career must the critic pen his ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... not, as the reader will hear, thoroughly uncover my prick tip without pain, till I was sixteen years old nor well then when quite stiff unless it went up a cunt. My nursemaid I expect thought this curious, and tried to remedy the error in my make, and hurt me. My mother, by her extremely delicate feeling, shut herself off from much knowledge of the world, which was the reason why she ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... interesting personality. Tall, stout, and somewhat awkward in his gait, his double chin was lost between the exaggerated points of the stiff white collar so characteristic of our American statesmen at that time. His kindly smile and natural charm of voice and manner, however, soon attracted and held those who at first found him unengaging. With all his attainments he had preserved unspoiled a certain ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... me, Paramore, if I say that I no longer feel any confidence in your opinion as a medical man. (Paramore's eye flashes: he straightens himself and listens.) I paid you a pretty stiff fee for that consultation when you condemned me; and I can't say I think you ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... the Saxon eye about Farmhill. The first object which comes in sight is a police barrack, with a high wall surrounding a sort of "compound," the whole being obviously constructed with a view to resisting a possible attack. This stiff staring assertion of the power of the law stands out gaunt and grim in the midst of a landscape of great beauty. Autumn hues gild the trees, the wide pastures are of brilliant green, and on the rough land ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... corner, opened a plush album which lay there and turned the pages till she came to a certain photograph. This she gazed at for fully five minutes, the dog standing patiently at her side. Then she took a postal card which had been laid between the two stiff cardboard leaves. This also she gazed at though it contained but few words. It bore a date of more than two years before. The printing, with its blank spaces filled, stated that the War Department regretted to inform her that her son Joseph Haskell had been killed in action on some date or other ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... The stiff hats so extensively worn by men produce more or less injury. Premature baldness most frequently first attacks that part of the head where pressure is made by the hat. It is, indeed, a pity that custom has so rigidly decreed that men and women must not appear out of doors with heads uncovered. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... writers on dogs than any other of the species. How well do I recollect in my early youth seeing the slow, heavy, solemn-looking, and thick-shouldered Spanish pointer, tired with two or three hours' work in turnips, and so stiff after it the next day, as to be little capable of resuming his labours. And yet this dog, fifty years ago, was to be met with all through England. How different is the breed at the present time! By crossing with the fox-hound, they have acquired wonderful speed, and a ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... You shall have the window taken right out if you want it." The girl rolled up the green paper blind, pushed back the stiff lace curtains, and opened the window from the top. It was a perfect October day, and Miss Arabella felt the gentle breeze, and saw the sumach at her gate, a patch of vivid scarlet against the deep blue of the sky. At a corner of the window the boughs ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Mountains. It was a difficult task to drive the Turks out of these fastnesses, and while they held on to them it was almost impossible to outflank some of the places like Et Tineh, a railway station and camp of some importance on the line to Beersheba. They had already had some stiff fighting at Tel el Safi, the limestone hill which was the White Guard of the Crusaders. The Division suffered severely from want of water, particularly the 5th Mounted Brigade, and it was necessary to transfer to it the 7th Mounted Brigade and the 2nd Australian Light Horse Brigade. ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... tell you that a dog's claws are quite different from the claws of a feline, even from those of an ordinary cat. The cat's claws are of course retractile, as I have just described to you. But a dog's claws are rigid; that is, they are stiff and thrust out all the time. Why? Because the dog does not use its claws. It seizes its food with its mouth, not with its claws. It even defends itself with its mouth, that ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... are past, and now Come gray hairs, and yet somehow I can't think those years have fled— Still those roadways know my tread, Still I climb that old pine stair, Sit upon the stiff-backed chair, Stealing glances toward my left Till her eyes repay the theft; Death's a dream and Time's a liar— Tildy still is in ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... and was given to this article of foppery from a fancied resemblance of its stiffened plaits to the bristled points of these weapons. Blount thinks, and apparently with justice, that Picadilly took its name frown the sale of the 'small stiff collars so called,' which was first set on foot in a house near the western [eastern] extremity of the present street by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... seems something in this ivory business. Our chance ought to be as good as anybody's. But there are one or two stiff hurdles. In the first place, the story is common property. Every one knows it—Arabs—Swahili—Greeks—Germans—English. To be suspected of looking for it would spell failure, for the simple reason that every adventurer on the coast would trail ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... to pieces that way, Bascomb!" entreated Rupert. "You've got to keep a stiff backbone. Come, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... brother, from one dying sinner to another, absolving the penitent, and ministering to the parched lips of many a sufferer. His own long brown garment was stiff at the extremities with gore, but ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... must be very awful," said Vincent, "when it dawns upon a man that his mind is getting stiff and his faculty uncertain, and that he is not doing good work any more. What ought people ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to show that laws prescribing or magistrates exercising a very stiff and often inapplicable rule, or a blind and rash discretion, never can provide the just proportions between earning and salary, on the one hand, and nutriment on the other: whereas interest, habit, and the tacit convention that arise from a thousand nameless circumstances produce a tact that regulates ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of resisting its fate when it came at the hands of Waldo Kean. There was a certain rough strength not only in the muscular frame, but in the face itself, with its rude features, its determined outlines, its heavy under-lip; and in the stiff black hair roughly clipped on the ample skull, growing in a bushy thatch above the keen dark eyes. It seemed but natural that just that type of boy should feel himself drawn to the study of ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... to enable him to carry the quantity of fluid that he poured down his throat during the twenty-four hours. As for intoxicating him, that appeared to be impossible: from long habit, he seemed to be like a stiff ship that careened to her bearings, and would sooner part company with her masts than heel ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the Virgin.—Stiff and stupid. Can't like Raphael. Dear, pious, simple, old Fra Angelico ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... he hath done, Of the spoils which he hath won, Let his grateful children sing. When the deadly fight was fought, When the great revenge was wrought, When on the slaughtered victims lay The minion stiff and cold as they, Doomed to exile, sealed with flame, From the west the wanderer came. Six score years and six he strayed A hunter through the forest shade. The lion's shaggy jaws he tore, To earth he smote the foaming boar, He crushed the dragon's fiery crest, And ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... solemn nightingale Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays: Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed Their downy breasts; the swan with arched neck Between her white wings, mantling proudly, rows Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower The mid aerial sky: others on ground Walked firm; the crested cock, whose clarion sounds The silent hours; and the other, whose gay train Adorns him, colored with the florid hue Of rainbows ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... scores of initials have been scratched roughly on the surface of his armour or her mantle; but there is a certainty of line, a sharpness, and at the same time a suavity of angle, a way of disposing the head and hands and body, all within the stiff convention of rigid tomb carving, that to any lover of sculpture reveals the sure hand of a master, whether he were a nameless stonemason, working in a secluded village, or a ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... choler adust, they are bold and impudent, and of a more harebrain disposition, apt to quarrel, and think of such things, battles, combats, and their manhood, furious; impatient in discourse, stiff, irrefragable and prodigious in their tenets; and if they be moved, most violent, outrageous, [2570]ready to disgrace, provoke any, to kill themselves and others; Arnoldus adds, stark mad by fits, [2571]"they sleep little, their urine is subtle and fiery." ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the fury of the populace, and confirmed the fatal tidings. The emperor called Daru.[145] "Moscow deserted!" he exclaimed: "what an improbable story! We must know the truth of it. Go and bring me the boyars."[146] He imagined that those men, stiff with pride or paralyzed by terror, remained motionless in their houses; and he, who had hitherto been always met by the submission of the vanquished, would encourage their confidence and anticipate ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... hall door when another claimant for admission presented himself in the person of a huge, tattered fellow, with red, stiff hair standing up like reeds through the broken crown of his hat, which he took off on entering. This candidate for Protestantism had neither shoe nor stocking on him, but stalked in, leaving the prints of his colossal feet ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... with a stud in it, which by a complicated series of strings the owner contrived to fasten round his neck so as to conceal effectually the flannel shirt-front underneath. Once more he dived, and this time the magic box yielded up what seemed to Horace's uninitiated eyes to be a broad strip of stiff cardboard, but which turned out to be a collar of fearful and wonderful proportions, which, when once adjusted, fully explained the wisdom displayed by the wearer in not deferring the brushing of his trousers and the donning of his "pats" to a later stage of the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... were then led out, in the severe depth of winter, which there at certain seasons would be severe to any, to the Indians is most severe and almost intolerable,—they were led out before break of day, and, stiff and sore as they were with the bruises and wounds of the night, were plunged into water; and whilst their jaws clung together with the cold, and their bodies were rendered infinitely more sensible, the blows and stripes were renewed upon their backs; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Uzbekistan in the late 19th century. Stiff resistance to the Red Army after World War I was eventually suppressed and a socialist republic set up in 1924. During the Soviet era, intensive production of "white gold" (cotton) and grain led to overuse of agrochemicals and the depletion ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... his coat as near to the throat as the torn lapel would allow. "That's what I mean to do. I ain't going to be lagged. It's a lifer this time, and that would take the stiff'ning out of a man." ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... went to the tall, peculiar looking woman sitting so straight and stiff upon the bench, and laying her soft white hands on her knee, looked curiously and fearlessly into her face, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... up," he said. "If that doesn't work, I'll see if I can force her down. It will be hard work, though. The wind is too stiff." ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... been greater than at this moment. In going up the rigging it seemed absolutely to pin us down to the shrouds; and on the yard there was no such thing as turning a face to windward. Yet there was no driving sleet and darkness and wet and cold as off Cape Horn; and instead of stiff oilcloth suits, southwester caps, and thick boots, we had on hats, round jackets, duck trousers, light shoes, and everything light and easy. These things make a great difference to a sailor. When we got on deck the man at the wheel struck eight bells ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Duke of Albany. Punch is not infallible. The most serious slip he ever made in the 'cock-sure' line was a cartoon appearing on February 7th, 1885, representing the lamented General Gordon shaking hands with General Sir Henry Stewart (who himself lay stiff and cold after glorious action) inside the fated city of Khartoum. When the number appeared (although at the moment unconfirmed), Gordon himself had been butchered by the Mahdi's fanatics; and another whole week had to elapse before it could be corrected by a cartoon of baffled Britannia, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... I grew—just ill, somehow; Grew stiff of limb, and weak, and dim of sight. It was but sickness. I am better now, Oh, vastly better, ever since ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sent to prepare for the ministry among the Dissenters. He, however, changed his mind, became a medical student, and finally, though much disliked for his manners, gained reputation as a physician in London. He is stated to have been excessively stiff and formal, and a frigid stiffness marks the Pleasures of Imagination (1744), a remarkable work considering the writer's age, since it is without the faults of youth. The poem is founded on Addison's Essays on the subject in the Spectator, and the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... same care are put together. In my garden I use both annuals and perennials but am limited in choice to those plants that are perfectly hardy, that will stand infinite neglect, drought, much wind, a stiff soil, that do not require especial protection in the winter, that will be in bloom all summer long and be beautiful. This, as I have found, is a ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... its excellency a share in the type, be sure, that for it, we shall never be sharers in the antitype itself. "Understand therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it, for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ceased, the doors were flung open, and a magnificent Princess swept into the room. Never was such a beauty seen before. Her golden hair fell almost to the floor and was bound about with jewels. Her robes were stiff with embroidery and gems. The other Princesses paled before her as stars ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... the dreadful idea was scaring me stiff," she went on. "You remember the story, don't you? how the president—our Mr. Galbraith here—was held up at the point of a pistol and marched to the paying teller's window, and how the robber escaped on a river steamboat ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... itself is as tedious as any other palace: the Pompeian room follows the Louis Quinze, and is in turn followed by the Chinese, till, for our comfort, we emerged into one large square hall, whose stiff mosaics of archers killing stags, peacocks feeding at the foot of willow-pattern trees, date from the time of Roger. Another wearisome series of rooms succeeded, which we were bound to traverse in search of a bronze ram of old Greek ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... And it gave me one, too. All that money would make me nervous if Mr. Carter hadn't made Doctor John its guardian, though I sometimes feel that the responsibility of me makes him treat me as if he were my step-grandfather-in-law. But all in all, though stiff in its knees with aristocracy, Hillsboro is lovely and loving; and couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection with a kind of squint ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... women were already turning away their heads, for this was to be a battle, not a game; but the vast majority of New York merely watched and waited and smiled a slow, stiff-lipped smile. All the surroundings were changed, the flaring electric lights, the vast roof, the clothes of the multitude, but the throng of white faces was the same as that pale host which looked down from the sides of the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... your remark, father, and rest assured that I will do my duty," he answered, with a twirl of his moustache and a stiff bow of the head. "The child is heir, you tell me, to a good property in this far-off island of Shetland, of which till now I never heard; he may well be content with that; indeed it is clear that he would be ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... though I was afraid, in consequence of our long chase, the intended journey might be delayed another day. Donald complimented me on my horsemanship; indeed, I had not been five minutes in the saddle before I found myself perfectly at home. I was somewhat stiff, I must confess; but the horses were not much the worse for their unexpected gallop. We therefore prepared to ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... and my gold turned to earthenware, and my pictures turned to splotches. In my hand everything I touch feels awkward. A pen—a pen—to talk of that? If one could use it while in the land of the Singing Mouse—then it might do. I think the pens there are not of wood and iron, stiff things of torture to reader and writer. I have a notion—though I have not examined the pens there—that they are made from plumes of an angel's wing; and that if they chose they could talk, and say things which would make you and me ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... it deviates laterally and the medial malleolus is abnormally prominent. When the eversion is more pronounced, the sole looks laterally and the tendons of the peronei stand out in relief. The anterior part of the foot is displaced laterally. Flat-foot is frequently associated with stiff great toe; the patient having lost the power of dorsiflexing the toe, the first phalanx and first metatarsal are in a straight line, instead of forming an ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... o' this now. Quick, out with ye." Archie could have fainted, and, as it was, he almost fell out of the car, propelled by the brakeman's boot. For awhile he stood dazed beside the track, and finally moved on. "I'll keep a 'stiff upper lip,'" he said, "whatever happens." But this was by far ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... back volumes of THE SUPPLEMENT can likewise be supplied. Two volumes are issued yearly. Price of each volume, $2.50 stitched in paper, or $3.50 bound in stiff covers. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... night became a thing of half-conscious past, a dream to the hunters, manifesting its reality only by the stark, stiff bodies of wolves, white in the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... deeper than the mind which genius only can reach, what matter if it be not done to music? Of his minor poems we need say little. Verse was always more or less mechanical with him, and his epigrams are almost all stiff, as if they were bad translations from the Latin. Many of them are shockingly coarse, and in liveliness are on a level with those of our Elizabethan period. Herr Stahr, of course, cannot bear to give them up, even though Gervinus be willing. The prettiest ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the good fortune of starting in life as a graduate," explained Tzu-tsing as he smiled, "and yet are not aware of the saying uttered by some one of old: that a centipede even when dead does not lie stiff. (These families) may, according to your version, not be up to the prosperity of former years, but, compared with the family of an ordinary official, their condition anyhow presents a difference. Of late the number ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Holy Church!' the King muttered amusedly into the stiff hair of his chin and lips. The Archbishop was driven into one of his fits of ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... than Eleanor had ever seen her; and more queenly. Her whole frame seemed to be stiff with indignation ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... number of fair-sized chub of about 1 lb. or 1-1/2 lbs. It struck me that they felt themselves absolutely safe there, and that if in any way I could get a bait over them they might take it. The entry under which I find this chronicled is August 24th. Next morning when the sun was hot I got a stiff rod and caught a few grasshoppers. Overnight I had cut out a bough or two at the back of the willow bush, and there was just a chance that I might be able to poke my rod in and drop the grasshopper on the water. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... for the Professor's hat was not so new as it had been once, one of his well-polished boots had a smile in its upper leather just where the little toe pressed outwards, there was a suggestion about his very stiff shirt-collar of the growth of saw-like teeth that might be very unpleasant if they came in contact with his ears, while his tightly buttoned-up frock-coat, which looked very nice in front, had grown ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... old Brotteaux arrived in the Rue de la Loi bringing a gross of dancing-dolls for the citoyen Caillou, the toy-merchant, the latter, a soft-spoken, polite man as a rule, stood there stiff and stern among his dolls and punch-and-judies and gave him a far ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... hijious thing—a very hijious thing if, when I come a-gatherin' watercress in the marnin', I should find you a-danglin' on t' stapil, cold and stiff—like t' other, or lyin' a corp wi' your throat cut; 'twould be a hijious—hijious thing, Peter, but oh! 'twould mak' a fine story ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... room, but I should like to know how many talents your trade amounted to in the course of the past year. Well then, farewell till we meet again on my boat; it is called the Euphrosyne, and lies out there, exactly opposite the two statues of the old king—who can remember these stiff barbarian names? In three hours we start. I have a good cook on board, who is not too particular as to the regulations regarding food by which my countrymen in Palestine live, and you will find a few new books and some capital wine ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... scattered about in groups, slept little, but whispered to each other, and fixed their eyes upon the torches that burned so steadily in the royal pavilion. There was stretched, cold and stiff, the victor of the day, his noble features rigid in death, while his barons knelt weeping around the bier, and the Archbishop of Mayence recited prayers for his soul. The night wore away, and when the morning broke out cheerfully as though no care were in the world, Gilbert de Hers still knelt beside ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... an idea," she said hastily. "Captain Dalton cut deep into the flesh of my ankle and cauterised the wound; after that he injected something above my heart. I believe he was not satisfied with my pulse, for he brought me a stiff brandy-peg to drink. My hands were stone cold; he chafed them in his. In the meantime my leg swelled and looked all colours. It was most alarming yet he would not let me think of it. He, who is usually so silent, talked all the time of a thousand things that had nothing to do with snakes ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... the babies stacked on Patience's bed, or penned behind chairs, sprawled and pranced in unsteady mimicry of their elders. Ungainly farmers, stiff with labor, recalled their early days and tramped briskly as they swung their wives about with a kindly pressure of the hard hands that had worked so long together. Little pairs toddled gravely through the figures, or frisked promiscuously in a grand conglomeration of ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... "There was a stiff breeze, and the vessel making near ten knots an hour. My fear was that before the boats could be lowered we should be too far off; but I was mistaken. The grateful dog plunged down when he saw his mistress sink, and rose with her clothes firmly grasped in his teeth. Then he commenced swimming ...
— The Lost Kitty • Harriette Newell Woods Baker (AKA Aunt Hattie)
... the knee to him with a strange and Eastern grace, while Wulf bowed his head, and Godwin, since his neck was too stiff to stir, held up his hand in greeting. The old man looked at him, and there was ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... and stained inside and out by time. The pews are irregular, some curiously carved, and all stiff and uncomfortable. I walked around and read the inscriptions on the walls, and all the time the young girl played and the old gentleman beat time, and neither noticed my presence. One brass tablet I saw was to a woman "who for long ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... die! There was one man live here by himself—he die, they say, 'with his boots on.' He, I think, mus' be that man belong to this money. What an old stiff want with two hondre' thirteen dolla'? That money goin' into a live man's clothes." Bonny slapped his ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... most ambitious syndicates of promoters in the north, gave his attention to the menu. But Tisdale, having spoken, turned his face to the open balcony door. His parka was thrown back, showing an incongruous breadth of stiff white bosom, yet he was the only man present who wore the garment with grace. In that moment the column of throat rising from the purple folds, the upward, listening pose of the fine head, in relief against the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... died. Hammond and I found it cold and stiff one morning in the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to inspire. We hastened to bury it in the garden. It was a strange funeral, the dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp hole. The cast of its form I gave to Doctor ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... days stay. He was never in the community again, nor was any other representative of the Beaufort's so far as anybody knows. The land was bought in Wayne Township—about 200 acres, about five miles out from Smithfield. It is quite rolling, of stiff clay character. There are fine farms all about it and coal fields not far away. It was bought of Thomas Mansfield whose son, a prominent lawyer in Steubenville, still owns land contiguous to the Beaufort tract, and owns now a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... "As soon as I sniffed the salt air of the sea my strength seemed to return to me. My wound is well-nigh healed; but the joint has stiffened, and my leg will be stiff for the rest of my life. But that matters little. And now tell me all your adventures. We have heard from the messenger you sent how shrewdly you hunted ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... their tails. Hester watched their every movement. She was no longer afraid of cows. Presently, as if with one consent, they all made up their minds to relieve the tedium of the contemplative life by an exhibition of humor, and, scrambling out of the water, proceeded to canter along the bank with stiff raised tails, with an artificial noose sustained with difficulty just ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... of the dance the Princess Malio, stiff, thin, and sour, and the old Duchess Scorpa, stolid, ugly, and squat, sat together in a corner of the ballroom—that is to say, the picture gallery—of ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... an unfavourable impression because some, not all of them, are stiff and regular. The others make an unfavourable impression because they are so laxly executed. For what conceivable purpose did the forger here resort to the aid of compasses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind? Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... slave of uncertainty: the slave of fear: the worst of all slaveries. How would you like it if every laborer you met in the road were to make love to you? No. Give me the blessed protection of a good stiff conventionality among thoroughly well-brought ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... groping my way, with her assistance, down the companion ladder and into the cabin. She guided me to one of the sofa-lockers, upon which I mechanically seated myself; and then I saw her go to the swinging rack and pour out a good stiff modicum of brandy, which she brought and held to my lips. I swallowed the draught, and after a few seconds my senses returned to me, almost as though I were recovering from a swoon, Miss Onslow assisting my recovery by seating ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... a low cheer from a group of soldiers, Malcolm directed them to tow the boat up at once to the place where the troops were formed ready for crossing, while he and the sergeant, who were both chilled to the bone, for their clothes had frozen stiff upon them, hurried to the spot where the regiment was bivouacked. Here by the side of a blazing fire they stripped, and were rubbed with cloths by their comrades till a glow of warmth again began to be felt, the external ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... rattle of the anchor-chain caused him to waken sharply, stiff with cold. The motor was silent. The launch rocked lazily. Through a rift in the fog he saw a rocky beach only a stone's throw away. They were anchored close ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty, Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as a seagull, now looked like a clumsy dish—shaped Dutch dogger. Her long slender wands of masts, which used to swig about, as if there were neither shrouds nor stays to support them, were now as taut and stiff as church steeples, with four heavy shrouds of a side, and stays and back—stays, and the Devil knows ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... (for which no charge was ever made) from a butt yet charier than that which he had pierced for the former stoup. The knight paced slowly to horse, partook of his courtesy, and thanked him with the stiff condescension of the court of Elizabeth; then mounted and followed the northern path, which was pointed out as the nearest to Edinburgh, and which, though very unlike a modern highway, bore yet so distinct a resemblance to a ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... everybody in the house would know that the story was laid in Southern France. When the late James A. Herne brought out a play in which husband and wife took opposite sides on the slavery question, the curiously stiff and old-fashioned furniture used in the first act seemed to strike the key-note of the drama; the spectators could not but feel that those who lived amid such surroundings were precisely the persons who would behave ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... man he is approaching, is not a stranger, but his master; and let it be observed how completely and instantaneously his whole bearing is reversed. Instead of walking upright, the body sinks downwards or even crouches, and is thrown into flexuous movements; his tail, instead of being held stiff and upright, is lowered and wagged from side to side; his hair instantly becomes smooth; his ears are depressed and drawn backwards, but not closely to the head; and his lips hang loosely. From the drawing back of the ears, the eyelids ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... was to be provided with a certificate before entering the house; "but near one hundred honourable gentlemen can get no certificate—none provided for them—and without certificate there is no admittance. Soldiers stand ranked at the door; no man enters without his certificate!" The stiff republicans, and known turbalent persons, are excluded. From this Parliament Cromwell accepts again the title of Protector, and is installed with great state; things take a more legal aspect; the major-generals are suppressed; a House of Lords is instituted; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the smoke of endless cigars, will discuss the terminology of the absolute, and burst into tears over a verse of poetry or a strain of music. Similarly the Englishman cannot divine what is meant by the Englishman of the French stage, with his long whiskers, his stiff pepper-and-salt clothes, walking arm-in-arm with a raw-boned wife, short-skirted and long-toothed, with a bevy of short-skirted ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Pssst, pssst! Stiff little kitten, spitting at a dog. Pssst, pssst! Hair standing up on her humped-up back. Pssst, pssst! Sharp white teeth, sharp, sharp, claws. Pssst, pssst! Ready to jump and to bite ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... general distrust; he has no friend on whom he can rely. Poles and Cossacks, by their insolent licentiousness, injure him in the popular opinion. Even that which is creditable to him—his popular manners, simplicity, and contempt of stiff ceremonial, occasions dissatisfaction. Occasionally he offends, through inadvertency, the usages of the country. He persecutes the monks because he suffered severely under them. Moreover, he is not exempt from despotic caprices in the moments of offended pride. Odowalsky knows how ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of Arabic may take this letter as a model even in the present day; somewhat stiff and old-fashioned, but ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Above is a large hollow hood-mould exactly similar to those which enclose the side windows. The two lights of these windows are separated by short coupled shafts whose capitals, derived from the Corinthian or Composite, have stiff leaves covering the change from the round to the square, and between them broad tendrils which end in very carefully cut volutes at the angles. The heads themselves are markedly horseshoe in shape, which at first sight suggests some Moorish influence, but in everything ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... with experiment, to natural philosophy. The former rejected, with the most positive disdain, the system of Copernicus: the latter fortified it with new proofs, derived both from reason and the senses. Bacon's style is stiff and rigid: his wit, though often brilliant, is also often unnatural and far-fetched; and he seems to be the original of those pointed similes and long-spun allegories which so much distinguish the English authors: Galilaeo is a lively and agreeable, though somewhat a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... formal; Miss Drane left her work to meet the visitor, but having been loftily set aside by that lady during a stiff conversation with her mother about old residents in the neighborhood in which they had lived, she excused herself, after a time, and went back to her table ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... to see," he added later in the conversation, "is old Judge Straight. He's getting somewhat stiff in the joints, but he knows more law, and more about the McSwayne estate, than any other two lawyers in town. If anybody can collect your claim, Judge Straight can. I'll send my boy Dave over to his office. Dave," he called to his attendant, ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the northwest, out of which a stiff wind was blowing. She thrust a hand up each jacket-sleeve, folding her arms, but she let the fierce wind smite her full in the face without blenching. She had a sort of delight in facing a wind like that, and her quick young blood kept her from being chilled. The sidewalk was ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... we may have daily forgiveness for our daily sins and trespasses, mercy and goodness must follow us; or as Moses has it, 'And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord! let my Lord, I pray thee, go amongst us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance' (Exo 34:9). Join to this that prayer of his, which you find in Numbers: 'Now I beseech thee let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, The Lord is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seven they arrived in front of the Maillot gate. Frederick and his seconds were there, the entire group being dressed all in black. Regimbart, instead of a cravat, wore a stiff horsehair collar, like a trooper; and he carried a long violin-case adapted for adventures of this kind. They exchanged frigid bows. Then they all plunged into the Bois de Boulogne, taking the Madrid road, in order ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... off the spirit of slumber and slothfulness, and be stirred up to the attending and fulfilling more diligently their calling, and not suffered any longer to sleep and snore in their office; the stragglers and wanderers may be reduced to the way; the untoward and stiff-necked, which scarce, or very hardly, suffer the yoke of discipline, as also unquiet persons, who devise new and hurtful things, may be reduced to order: finally, whatsoever doth hinder the more quick and efficacious course of the gospel may ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... from Boston, and Dodge, with that infernally suggestive way of his, was cackling about Roger's "jumping over the broomstick" with a "handsome gypsy" and letting his relatives believe the thing was serious in order to tease his stiff-necked family. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... bull rose, and shook himself with an astonished air, as if he would like to know "how that was done?" The hunter was on the great brute's back, who, perhaps, took the affair as a good practical joke; but he was soon pitched to the ground, as the buffalo commenced to jump "stiff-legged," and the latter, giving the hunter one lingering look, which he long remembered, with remarkable good nature ran off to join his companions. Had the bull been wounded, the rider would have been killed, as the then enraged animal ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... and Italian marchionesses. And the poor young girl married to "Vatacio the heretic," by a father in need of political alliances had lived long years in the Orient as a basilisa or empress, arrayed in garments of stiff embroidery representing scenes from the holy books, shod with buskins laced with purple which bore on their soles eagles of gold,—the highest symbol of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that I owe my presence here. He was my fellow-prisoner, and but for his quick wit and stout arm I should be stiff by now. Anon, sir, you shall hear the story of it, and I dare swear it will divert you. This gentleman is Sir Crispin Galliard, lately a captain of horse with whom I served in ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the second line in front of Loos, "X" and "Y" Brigades separated, "Y" surrounding the village with two battalions, while the rest captured the village and cleaned it up. It was stiff street fighting, the Germans being hidden away in all sorts of corners with plenty of machine guns. The Scots made a quick job of it, not stopping for trifles. It is related that a sergeant, to whom two Germans had surrendered, pulled a few pieces of string from his pocket, tied their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... great composer Gluck, whose genius was destined to have such a profound influence on French music, came to Paris with his "Iphigenie en Aulide," by invitation of the Dauphiness Marie Antoinette, who had formerly been his musical pupil. The stiff and stilted works of Sully and Rameau had thus far ruled the French stage without any competition, except from the Italian operettas performed by the company of Les Bouffons, and the new school of French operatic comedy developed ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... lifted it, and let it fall again; it fell back just in the position from which he had lifted it. Then he straightened himself up, looking a trifle green perhaps, but reassured, and called out to Mike, in a penetrating whisper, "He's a stiff un all right!" ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... that he seem'd to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... and feet are red when old, yellow when young. Fresh killed, the feet are pliable, but they get stiff when the birds are kept too long. Geese are called green when they are only two or ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the brig," he paused, not mentioning the spoon that Loring had used or how he had gotten it. "They forced me to take them to Tara. I managed to get the gravity turned off and gave them a lesson in free-fall fighting. They're still frozen stiff up ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... 'em may be limpin' 'round this same mornin', and feelin' rayther stiff in the legs," Felix took occasion to remark, as they sat at table, and Andy was again in danger of being foundered by the multitude of good things which the farmer's wife spread thereon, bacon and eggs, fried potatoes, scrapple, puffy biscuits, apple sauce, ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... improvements that I was making in an instrument for measuring radiant heat came to a deadlock about two years ago. I would not use silk, and I could not find anything else that would do. Spun glass, even, was far too coarse for my purpose, it was a thousand times too stiff. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... penetrate your culture deeply, but at least we are willing to learn. Some of my compatriots have adopted too much of your customs and too much of your etiquette, in the delusion that the acquisition of stiff collars and tall silk hats comprised the attainment of your civilisation. Pathetic and deplorable as such affectations are, they evince our willingness to approach the West on our knees. Unfortunately the Western attitude is unfavourable to the understanding of the ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... proposals concerning the occupation of the war office, with which he (Lord Aberdeen) did not think it his duty to comply; that he, and the government of which he was the head, would resist Mr. Roebuck's motion, which he considered a vote of censure upon the ministry. The premier's address was cold, stiff, haughty, and quietly defiant, but did not appear to make the least impression upon the peers, who were, like the rest of the public, burning with impatience to know the terms and result of Lord John's explanation in the commons. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in the midst of a Consort, All the Company must leave off, because of some Eminent String slipping. A 6th. is, that sometimes ye shall have such a Rap upon the Knuckles, by a sharp-edg'd Peg, and a stiff strong String, that the very Skin will be taken off. And 7thly. It is oftentimes an occasion of the Thrusting off the Treble-Peg-Nut, and sometime of the Upper Long Head; And I have seen the Neck of an Old Viol, thrust ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... joined the little party at that moment. But those two tumbled, broken-winded, and, indeed, broken-hearted old men had been, as an old author says, so emptied from vessel to vessel—they had had a life of such sloughs and stiff climbs—they had been in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness so often—that it was no wonder that their dandiacal companion walked on a little ahead of them. 'Gentlemen,' his fine clothes and his cane and his head in the ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... foot to London in prodigious numbers from Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Fen country, often 1,000 to 3,000 in a drove, starting in August when harvest was nearly over, so that the geese might feed on the stubble by the way; 'and thus they hold on to the end of October, when the roads begin to be too stiff and deep for their broad feet and short legs to march on.' There was, however, a more rapid method of getting poultry to the great market, by means of carts of four stages or stories, one above another, to carry the birds in, drawn by two horses, which by means of relays travelled night and ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... not lie awake (as when I planned my pilgrimage I had promised myself I would do), looking at the sky through the branches of trees, but I slept at once without dreaming, and woke up to find it was broad daylight, and the sun ready to rise. Then, stiff and but little rested by two hours of exhaustion, I took up my staff and my sack ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... however, ignorant of our orgies, was still bothering his brains to bring about matrimony between his daughter and the veteran—who, though no younger than Methusalem, as stiff as the Monument, and as withered as Belzoni's Piccadilly mummy, had yet the needful, sir—had abundance of the wherewithal—crops of yellow shiners—lots of the real—sported a gig, and kept on board wages a young shaver ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... early, and in so exhausted a condition, Bennington de Laney could not sleep. He had taken a slight fever, and the wound in his shoulder was stiff and painful. For hours on end he lay flat on his back, staring at the dim illuminations of the windows and listening to the faint out-of-door noises or the sharper borings of insects in the logs of the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... the foreman answered. "Anyway, I never did. It's a little animal all covered with sharp things. It's just as if your kitty's fur was about three or four times as long as it is, and every hair was stiff and sharp. There's a great rattling as they walk, I'm told. The Indians used to sew the quills—the sharp things—on their soft leather slippers, because they ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... embodiment only in a family offering the necessary conditions. Hence to some extent it is natural that the child should be like its parents. But the soul seeking rebirth is not completely fixed in form and stiff: it is hampered and limited by the results of its previous life, but in many respects it may be flexible and free, ready to vary in ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... was depressed. No one else saw it; eyes and tongues were heavy at bedtime on the ranch. Sadie, dragging up the stairs to be awake tomorrow at sunrise, might have been depressed but she wasn't. And the farmer and his wife, creaking about in their stuffy room over the kitchen, their old bones stiff with fatigue, were elated. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... tribe that I wished to have a council with them. The Indians all met me in council, as I had desired, and I then told them that the men who had taken part in shooting the woman would have to be delivered up for punishment. They were very stiff with me at the interview, and with all that talent for circumlocution and diplomacy with which the Indian is lifted, endeavored to evade my demands and delay any conclusion. But I was very positive, would hear of no ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and sailing west when we could not sail north, we found ourselves on the 2nd of August, in the latitude of the southern extremity of Spitzbergen, though divided from the land by about fifty miles of ice. All this while the weather had been pretty good, foggy and cold enough, but with a fine stiff breeze that rattled us along at a good rate whenever we did get a chance of making any Northing. But lately it had come on to blow very hard, the cold became quite piercing, and what was worse—in every ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... a piece of a French shell," the latter replied. "Fortunately it did not come straight at me, but scraped along my ribs, laying them pretty well bare. As it was a month ago, it is quite healed up; but I am very stiff still, and am obliged to be very careful in my movements. If I forget all about it, and give a turn suddenly, I regularly yell; for it feels as if a red-hot iron had been stuck against me. However, I have learned to be careful and, as long as I simply ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... to his side. With an effort he lifted his glance to her questioning, startled eyes. He tried to make his voice easy and natural, but it was heavy and stiff. ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... mistress, the roan pony is easy to guide, if you happen to be going the way he likes, and that is, ever from the park to the stable, from the stable to the park; otherwise, like the Israelites of old, he is a stiff-necked beast, whom I would rather eschew than commune with. And the wolf-hound, my lady, behaves so rudely to little Crisp, holding him by the throat in an unseemly fashion, and occasionally despoiling him of a fragment ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... comforts of civilisation, a scene of hard-working activity. On the Canadian shore I see a village of poor cottages, surrounded with apple orchards, like a village in Normandy, in front of which the red sentry marches up and down, as stiff as an automaton. The inhabitants of the said village, French both in feature and appearance, hurried up in delight when they heard us speaking the language of their forefathers. "It's the only tongue we know. We don't want ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... where; now he had suddenly made his appearance along with the General Staff.) Everybody knew that no one could compare with him in playing that instrument, either in skill, taste, or talent. They begged him to play and offered him the dulcimer; the Jew refused, saying that his hands had grown stiff, that he was out of practice, that he did not dare to, that he was embarrassed by the men of high station; with many a bow he was stealing away. When Zosia saw this, she ran up, and with one white hand proffered him the hammers with ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... old fellow," replied Coleman. "Thanks to Fairlegh in the first instance, and a stiff glass of brandy-and-water in the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the lines in it held tight, relaxed to tears and she fell to rocking herself softly to and fro, her stiff silk shushing as ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... the Wolfmark, which we had been traversing ever since we descended out of the steep Weiss Thor of the city of Thorn, had now begun to break into ridges and mounded hills of stiff red clay. And I, who had often kept my watch on the highest pinnacle of the Red Tower, looked with astonishment back upon the city I had left behind. Seen from the plain, Thorn had ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... was not in his favor. He was short and high-shouldered, his shoulder-blades stuck out awry, his feet were large and flat, and his red hands, marked by swollen veins, had hard, stiff fingers, tipped with nails of a pale blue color. His face was covered with wrinkles, his cheeks were hollow, and he had pursed-up lips which he was always moving with a kind of chewing action—one which, joined with his habitual ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... bowl, pour on the warm water, stir until they are dissolved. Add the flour gradually until it forms a thin batter, then add the yeast; beat vigorously for at least five minutes. Add more flour until the dough is stiff enough to knead. Turn out on the board and knead for half hour. Cover and let rise until double its bulk. Form into separate loaves, put into the pans, cover, and let rise again till double its bulk. Bake in a hot oven about an hour. ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... found Coralie stretched out straight and stiff on a pallet-bed; Berenice, with many tears, had wrapped her in a coarse linen sheet, and put lighted candles at the four corners of the bed. Coralie's face had taken that strange, delicate beauty of death which so vividly ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... certain cottage he pedaled faster than ever, and with his head bent nearly to the handle-bars, flew by without a glance, or pause. Yet, without looking, he had discerned Rachel standing on the new square porch, exceptionally trim and stiff in a light muslin, while the children swarmed about her admiringly. He could also hear Mrs. Hemphill, from indoors somewhere, screaming her commands to the scattered family in a high key, though no one ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... scarcely correct, sir," said one of the young men who came in with me. "I happen to have passed through Cambridge, and have taken the degree you mention. I found it stiff enough." ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... a clean breast of it, first as last," said Hoskins. "I thought perhaps Mrs. Elmore might refuse, she's so stiff about some things,"—here he gave that chuckle of his,—"and so I came prepared for contingencies. It occurred to me that it mightn't be quite the thing, and so I went round to the Spanish consul and asked him how he thought it would do for me to matronize a young lady if I could get one, and he ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... piece of trail when it suddenly stopped, and she heard an ejaculation from behind her. She saw Jim step down and examine something black in the snow. She gave a little cry as he caught the black object and pulled it up—it was a dead man, frozen as stiff ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... large cities; land degradation and water pollution caused by improper mining activities note: President CARDOSO in September 1999 signed into force an environmental crime bill which for the first time defines pollution and deforestation as crimes punishable by stiff ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Wait until you hear me say 'Good morning, Francoise,' and I touch your arm before you give it to her." No sooner had we arrived in my aunt's dark hall than we saw in the gloom, beneath the frills of a snowy cap as stiff and fragile as if it had been made of spun sugar, the concentric waves of a smile of anticipatory gratitude. It was Francoise, motionless and erect, framed in the small doorway of the corridor ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... general kitchen with the light or special diet prepared for the sicker men, there was all the difference between having placed before them 'the cold mutton chop with its opaque fat, the beef with its caked gravy, the arrowroot stiff and glazed, all untouched, as might be seen by the bed-sides in the afternoons, while the patients were lying back, sinking for want of support,' and seeing 'the quick and quiet nurses enter as the clock struck, with their ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... fluid was placed upon her boot. In half a minute her leg was paralyzed — rooted to the floor — perfectly immovable at the joints, and visited, apparently, with pain so intense that the girl writhed in agony. "The muscles of the leg were found," says the report, "as rigid and stiff as if they had been carved in wood. When the sovereign was removed, the pain left her in a quarter of a minute. On a subsequent day, a mesmerised sovereign was placed in her left hand as it hung at her side, with the palm turned slightly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... shall not long enjoy your triumph. I have but one cartridge, but perchance it will be enough for you. [Pulls trigger, but finds action rather stiff. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... as sharp and clearly cut as though it were the work of the nineteenth century; possibly some of its excellence is due to the preservative effect of the whitewash with which it was once covered, and which has been cleaned off with water and a stiff bristled brush. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward ways I took to raise this paste; what odd, misshapen, ugly things I made; how many of them fell in and how many fell out, the clay not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many fell in pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were dried; and, in a word, how, after having laboured ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... unapproachable. All that notion of a paternal close friendship—how idiotic it was! He wanted her, at every moment, to share every thought with her, to claim every thought of hers, to see her, to clasp her close; and then at the same moment came the terrible disillusionment; how was he, a sober, elderly, stiff-minded professional person, to recommend himself? What was there in him that any girl could find even remotely attractive—his middle-aged habits, his decorous and conventional mind, his clumsy dress, his grizzled hair? He felt of himself ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stable. Nevertheless, difficult problems still remain, including a stubbornly high unemployment rate, a growing trade deficit and uneven regional development. The state retains a large role in the economy, as privatization efforts often meet stiff public and political resistance. While macroeconomic stabilization has largely been achieved, structural reforms lag because of deep resistance on the part of the public and lack of strong support from politicians. The EU accession process ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... at the aster bed. It was quite the biggest of the smaller beds.—She didn't see what people wanted to plant so many asters for; she had never cared much for asters, she felt she should care even less about them in the future. Tiresome, stiff affairs! ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs |
