"Stiffness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at some vague future date; one of the children was unwell, and until it recovered it was impossible to fix a day. Still, they would be delighted to see him again. Her letters always had a note of stiffness in them, which was purely unintentional, or rather, purely natural, reflecting the one ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... her explanations with a certain stiffness of self-defence. She and Lady Winterbourne had evolved a scheme for reviving and improving the local industry of straw-plaiting, which after years of decay seemed now on the brink of final disappearance. The village women ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... small hickory sapling it will be the most serviceable, because its natural strength and stiffness will permit us to use a small ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... the brother of Professor John Playfair, the mathematician, says, "Those persons who have ever had the pleasure to be in his company may recollect that even in his common conversation the order and method he pursued without the smallest degree of formality or stiffness were beautiful, and gave a sort of pleasure to ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... presence of the guests. Dr. Dastick, for the first and only time in my remembrance, appeared with his trousers bound with straps to the bottoms of his boots. Colonel Prowley had thrust his neck into a stock of extraordinary stiffness, which seemed to proceed from some antique coat-of-mail worn beneath the waistcoat. The collar and cuffs of Miss Prowley were wonderful in their dimensions, and fairly creaked with the starch. The clergyman, indeed, wore his dress and manners in relaxed and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the advantage of being somewhat more open and less rigid than under the shadow of the Imperial palace. Etiquette is etiquette in any part of the empire, and its forms must everywhere be observed. But after the social forms were complied, with there was less stiffness ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... might agree with his condition, 'twas concluded necessary to wear an air of discontent; that he should with a stately stiffness, like quality, often cough, and spit about the room; that his words might come the more faintly from him; that in the eye of the world he shou'd refuse to eat or drink; ever talking of riches, and sometimes, to confirm their belief, shou'd break into these words; Strange that such ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... all right in a bit," said he, "it comes hard at first. I've seen chaps go clean off their heads sniffin' land after three months of hell and weather. We'll start in a bit, there's no call to hurry, and I'll just take a walk to get the stiffness ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... citizen of unstained character although not of rank, belonging probably to one of the Latin communities of Campania, and a soldier in the first Punic war.(28) In thorough contrast to the language of Livius, that of Naevius is easy and clear, free from all stiffness and affectation, and seems even in tragedy to avoid pathos as it were on purpose; his verses, in spite of the not unfrequent -hiatus- and various other licences afterwards disallowed, have a smooth and graceful flow.(29) While the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "Canon King," with the admirable mother who kept house for him, was like a sunrise. All those notions of austerity and stiffness and gloom which had somehow clung about Tractarianism were dispelled at once by his fun and sympathy and social tact. Under his roof, undergraduates always felt happy and at home; and in his "Bethel," as he called it, a kind of disused greenhouse in his garden, he gathered ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... was all I wanted to do for a month," commented Mr. Damon. His soreness and stiffness increased each minute, and he was glad to get to bed, while the boys and Eradicate rubbed his limbs with liniment. San Pedro knew of a leaf that grew in the jungle which, when bruised, and made into poultices, had the property of drawing out soreness. The next ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... is scarcely any shadow in it; it's more shimmery, as if I'd painted the shimmering protoplasm in the leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of the shape. That seems dead to me. Only this shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a dead crust. The shimmer ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... system soon bears marks of debility and decay. The voluntary muscles lose their power, and cease to act under the control of the will; and hence, all the movements become awkward, exhibiting the appearance of stiffness in the joints. The positions of the body, also, are tottering and infirm, and the step loses its elasticity and vigor. The muscles, and especially those of the face and lips, are often affected with a convulsive twitching, which produces the involuntary winking of the eye, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the sleeve of my uniformed coat and could not even see the hole where the bullet had entered. Neither was there any sudden flow of blood. At the time there was no stiffness or discomfort in the arm and I continued to use it to ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... accompany her to the house; she complained of cramp in her limbs and stiffness of the joints. She leaned draggingly upon his arm ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... and cool as though he were welcoming back home any good friend who had been away a long time. He could now see that the lieutenant belonged to the Tenth United States Cavalry; he knew that the Tenth was a colored regiment; he understood a certain stiffness that he felt rather than saw in the courtesy that was so carefully shown him by the Southern volunteers who were about him; and he turned away to avoid meeting him. For the same reason, he fancied, Judith turned, too. The mere idea of negro soldiers ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... a crocodile. This lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd length of his back; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from the absurd breadth of his back, combined, possibly, with some growing stiffness in his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity of his I planted a human advantage for tendering my homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his honourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us his mighty Jovian back (what a field for displaying to mankind his royal scarlet!), whilst ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... perfectly upright, stood, hat in hand, at some distance. His companion's easy manners only increased his usual stiffness. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... who had known and played with him from between 20 to 30 years, as a very skilful but honourable Whist player. The evidence of Mr Lawrence, the eminent surgeon, proved that Lord de Ros had long suffered under a stiffness of the joints of the fingers that made holding a pack of cards difficult, and the performance of the imputed trick of legerdemain impossible. For the defence appeared the keeper of the house and his son; two or three gamblers who had lived by their winnings; one acknowledged ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... when the astonished girl handed the letter across the breakfast table. Even he had hardly reckoned on such extreme cordiality. He had expected a bid for acquaintanceship with the "millionaire" and his bride, but he had fancied there would be a certain stiffness in the effort. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... forehead, his pointed nose; glistened in his prominent eyes. He had a tall, lank figure, irreproachably clad in a suit of grey: frock coat, and waistcoat revealing an expanse of white shirt. His cuffs were magnificent, and the hands worthy of them. A stand-up collar, of remarkable stiffness, kept his head at the proper level ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... had at last happened, was a fruit of the reaction of artistic-minded and carelessly living people against the costly and uncomfortable social stiffness of the more formal seaside resorts of that time. It was, you must understand, the custom of the steam-railway companies to sell their carriages after they had been obsolete for a sufficient length of years, and some genius had hit upon the possibility of turning these into ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... woman must have been old and wrinkled, and half undressed for the tomb, she was enough to make any company look distinguished by her mere presence. Her manner was as simple as her dress—without a trace of the vulgarity of condescension or the least more stiffness than was becoming with persons towards whose acquaintance, the rather that she was their guest, it was but decent to advance gently, while it was also prudent to protect her line of retreat, lest it should prove desirable to draw back. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... high as the ear in Catherine's costume, you will observe—are unsightly enough to nullify whatever beauty the costume might have in other points; though in her case they only complete the expression of the costume, which is a grim, unnatural stiffness. And the reason of the unsightliness of these sleeves is, that the outline which they present is directly opposed to that of Nature. No human shoulders bulge upward into great hemispherical excrescences nine inches high; and the peculiar sexual characteristic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... calm, Clemenceau vaguely recalled the refined, winning, though dissipated visage; this was the gentleman in the Harmonista who had enlightened him unawares on the antecedents of Fraulein von Vieradlers. He did not notice her companion but his stiffness disappeared as he bowed to her. Without asking for any explanation on the affray, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... admirably well) whiles I, perceiving the waves subsiding and the wind blowing steady and fair, laid our course due south-westerly again, and lashing the helm, went forward to shake out the reefs, finding it no easy task what with the stiffness of my cramped limbs and the pitching of the boat; howbeit, 'twas done at last but, coming back, I tripped across a ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... um! W'en dat chile rize up, ef rize up he do, he'll des nat'ally be a shadder. Yer I is, gwine on eighty year, en I aint tuck none er dat ar docter truck yit, ceppin' it's dish yer flas' er poke-root w'at ole Miss Favers fix up fer de stiffness in my j'ints. Dey'll come en dey'll go, en dey'll po' in der jollup yer, en slap on der fly-plarster dar, en sprinkle der calomy yander, twel bimeby dat chile won't look like hisse'f. Dat 's w'at! En mo'n dat, hit 's mighty kuse unter me dat ole folks kin go 'long en ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... not relish severity of comedy. [Footnote: Horace, Ep. ii. 11, 53.] Mommsen regards Naevius as the first among the Romans who deserves to be ranked among the poets. He flourished about the year 550, and closely adhered to Andronicus in metres. His language is free from stiffness and affectation, and his verses have a graceful flow. Plautus was perhaps the first great poet whom the Romans produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics, as both original and fresh. He was born in Umbria, B.C. 257, and was contemporaneous with Publius and Cneius Scipio. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... pistons, L and M, are allowed to remain on the high-pressure end; but the largest piston, Z, is placed upon the low-pressure end of the rotor immediately behind the last ring of blades, and working inside of the supplementary cylinder W. Being backed up by the body of the spindle, there is ample stiffness to prevent warping. This balance piston, which may also be plainly seen in Fig. 25, receives its steam pressure from the same point as the piston M, but the steam pressure, equalized with that on the third stage of the blading, X, ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... his place on his stool in silence for a long time. The stiffness of his neck seemed to embrace all his members, even his tongue. Miss Bunker came in from her lunch, bringing the afternoon mail. Mac Tavish maintained his silence while Morrison picked out what were patently his personal letters before surrendering the others to the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... discovering that the spirit of honor and confidence was generally high among the young gentlemen, and, consequently, having promised to be friendly to Ferrers, each individual, in duty bound, did his utmost to fulfil that promise, and in a little while the stiffness attendant on the effort wore off, and Ferrers was, in appearance, in precisely the same position as before, to the great satisfaction of the doctor, who was much pleased with his ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... in not merely the adjutant, but the spread table and the ladies seated before it. He halted a moment, then advanced quickly, swept his cocked hat from a brown head that was but very slightly touched with grey, and bowed with a mixture of stiffness and courtliness to ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... Stumfold commenced her conversation with Mr Startup, Miss Baker addressed herself to Miss Mackenzie; but there was at first something of stiffness in her manner,—as became a lady whose call had ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... where I found the Hungarian waiting to see Henriette. He did not know that she would that morning receive us in the attire of her sex. The door was thrown open, and a beautiful, charming woman met us with a courtesy full of grace, which no longer reminded us of the stiffness or of the too great freedom which belong to the military costume. Her sudden appearance certainly astonished us, and we did not know what to say or what to do. She invited us to be seated, looked at ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... by an angular gesture in some expressive girlish figure in an early painting. The letter renewed that impression of strong feeling combined with an almost rigid simplicity, which Roderick's betrothed had personally given him. And its homely stiffness seemed a vivid reflection of a life concentrated, as the young girl had borrowed warrant from her companion to say, in a single devoted idea. The monotonous days of the two women seemed to Rowland's fancy to follow each other like the tick-tick of a great time-piece, marking ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... a model prelate because he has no stiffness or ceremony about him, but talks frankly to everybody, and puts all who approach him at ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... and prisoners. Chief Thompson knew me and told me all. And so you've done it—and you're master in your old house again. Clarence, old boy! Jim said you wouldn't do it—said you'd weaken on account of her! But I said 'No.' I knew you better, old Clarence, and I saw it in your face, for all your stiffness! ha! But for all that I was mighty nervous and uneasy, and I just made Jim send an excuse to the theatre and we rushed it down here! Lordy! but it looks natural to see the old house again! And she—you packed her ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... remembered for the moment is that the number of prose-writers increases. They write more abundantly than formerly; they translate old treatises; they unveil the mysteries of hunting, fishing, and heraldry; they compose chronicles; they rid the language of its stiffness. To this contributes Sir Thomas Malory, with his compilation called "Morte d'Arthur," in which he includes the whole cycle of Britain. The work was published by Caxton, the first English printer, who was also a prose-writer.[874] They even write on love; prose now retaliates ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... is also called by the commentators [Greek], or, "Above the Clouds," has a great deal of easy wit and humour in it, without the least degree of stiffness or obscurity; it is equally severe on the gods and philosophers; and paints, in the warmest colours, the glaring absurdity of the ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... level with the first tone, and allow or let the voice start spontaneously and freely. Make no effort to hold the breath. Hold from position. Sing down, moving with the voice, but do not let the body or the tone droop or relax. Neither must there be stiffness or contraction. If you find it impossible to control the voice in this way, or to prevent depression of body and of tone, then try ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... to her which I desire to conceal," he rejoined, with some stiffness, "or she would never have become my promised wife. She is a Miss Dorrance, the daughter of a widow residing in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts. I met her first at Trenton Falls, where a happy accident brought me into association ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the sufferings of the children of Austria and begged them to join her in forming a relief committee. They received this philanthropic suggestion with no apparent fervor, but it served to relieve the stiffness and tension until they retired to ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... more, on no business whatever, but merely to subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and see how he was getting on with his duties. These interviews were rather formidable, being characterized by a certain stiffness which I felt to be sufficiently irksome at the moment, though it looks laughable enough in the retrospect. It is my firm belief that these fellow-citizens, possessing a native tendency to organization, generally halted outside of the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nothing but a narrow selfishness; sentiments of fear degrading to the Deity; a bigotry that contracts the view, that freezes the heart, that shuts up the avenues to benevolent and generous feeling. This buckram stiffness does not suit me. Out upon such monastic parade! I will ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... should conjecture) the gardens of the Hesperides. But, considering that the whole group of trees, terraces, and verdure were in a manner created out of hills of sand, the place may claim some portion of merit. The walks and alleys have all the stiffness and formality our ancestors admired; but the intermediate spaces, being dotted with clumps and sprinkled with flowers, are imagined in Holland to be in the English style. An Englishman ought certainly to behold it with partial eyes, since every possible ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... and forms a charming finish to one of the finest tombs to be seen anywhere. Trefoil-headed arches are used throughout the design, but with such consummate skill that no feeling of sameness is aroused. Of straight lines there are many, but of stiffness there is none. Formerly the whole work was painted with red, green, and gold, traces of which are to be seen on the side next to the choir and underneath ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... tender word with which she tried to comfort the suffering creature. Suddenly he was startled by a loud and bitter cry from Sirona; no doubt, the poor woman's affectionate little companion was dead, and in the dim twilight of the cave she had seen its dulled eye, and felt the stiffness of death overspreading and paralyzing its slender limbs. He dared not go into the cavern, but he felt his eyes fill with tears, and he would willingly have spoken some word of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... visit to the regiment he had saved, since the days of the Rache assault two months earlier. Thanks to supremely clever surgery and to tender care, the dog was little the worse for his wounds. His hearing gradually had come back. In one shoulder he had a very slight stiffness which was not a limp, and a new-healed furrow scarred the left side of his tawny coat. Otherwise he was ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... terrible colors; but it was too late to retract. The fury of the Baron threw him off his guard—he received a mortal wound, and fell dead. The unhappy survivor stood for some seconds gazing upon the inanimate form before him; and as the features, after being convulsed for a little, settled into the iron stiffness of everlasting sleep, he uttered a deep sigh, and unconsciously moved away from the spot. At this moment Bianca, recovering from the stupor into which the terrible scene had thrown her, earnestly enjoined ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... to walk about the wood for at least an hour, to get rid of your stiffness. The longer you walk, the better. When you have tired yourself, come back here. By that time, I daresay you will be ready for another sleep. We will start about three o'clock, and shall cross the frontier before it gets quite dark. Once across, we can ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... heart is dilated, the thermal gaseous saline water of Nauheim, augmented by Schott's resistance movements, will often appear to work wonders. Chronic rheumatism, where there is much exudation round a joint or incipient stiffness of a joint, may be relieved by hot thermal treatment, especially when combined with various forms of massage and exercises. Simple thermal waters, hot sulphur springs and hot muriated waters are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... "Donkey's Skin" seemed no longer the same Donkey's Skin. I discarded one by one the little stage people who now offended me by their uncompromising doll-like stiffness; they were relegated to their card-board box, the poor little things, where they slept the sleep eternal, and without doubt they ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... into which Mrs. Herndon ushered him to await the girl's appearance—the formal look of the old-fashioned hair-cloth furniture, the prim striped paper on the walls, the green shades at the windows, the clean rag carpet on the floor. The very stiffness chilled him, left him ill at ease. To calm his spirit he walked to a window, and stood staring out into the warm sunlight. Then he heard the rustle of Naida's skirt and turned to meet her. She was ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... She pored over the little note a score of times, and wept over it, and treasured it up among her inmost treasures, and told herself that it was a thousand pities. She could talk, and did talk, to Ferdinand about the Whartons, and about old Mrs. Fletcher, and described to him the arrogance and the stiffness and the ignorance of the Herefordshire squirearchy generally; but she never spoke to him of Arthur Fletcher,—except in that one narrative of her past life, in which, girl-like, she told her lover of the one other lover who ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... also remedied a slight defect in the arrangement of the centre-board in the Maud, had added a little to the size of the jib and mainsail, and he hoped these alterations would tell in favor of the new craft, while they would not take anything from her stiffness ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... and they veil their heads, and ungird their garments, and cast stones, as ordered, behind their footsteps. The stones (who could have believed it, but that antiquity is a witness {of the thing?}) began to lay aside their hardness and their stiffness, and by degrees to become soft; and when softened, to assume a {new} form. Presently after, when they were grown larger, a milder nature, too, was conferred on them, so that some shape of man might be ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... have the coat off, and get another look at the arm; never mind apologizing." But the patient had not contemplated apology. It was the stiffness made him slow. However, he got his coat off, and drew the blue shirt off his left arm. He had a fine hand and arm, but the hand hung inanimate, and the fingers looked scorched. Dr. Vereker began feeling the arm at intervals all the way ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... recognized the same fellow that the quarter-master had politely sent me for a similar purpose some time previous. He was long-bodied and very long-limbed, and having been brought up in camp, his motion had all the stiffness of the marching step. His point, any two points being given, was to make the straight line between them in the shortest possible time, in an unbroken trot; but there was no danger of his breaking it; he was not capable ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... received sudden notice to appear before the majordomo. I found him, after his Excellency's dinner, in the hall of the clock. [1] On entering, I paid him marked respect, and he received me with the greatest stiffness. Then he asked who had installed me in the house, and by whose authority I had begun to build there, saying he marvelled much that I had been so headstrong and foolhardy. I answered that I had been ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... the stiffness of his expression was not a thing which Conscience could read like print; if the simple-minded clam-digger had not quite unintentionally ripped away the mask which he had, until now, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... And yet, unfortunately for him, that woman is consummately plausible. She was wonderfully nice last evening; she was really irresistible. Such frankness and freedom, and yet something so soft and womanly; such graceful gaiety, so much of the brightness, without any of the stiffness, of good breeding, and over it all something so picturesquely simple and southern. She is a perfect Italian. But she comes honestly by it. After the talk I have just jotted down she changed her place, and the conversation for half an hour was general. ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... same as one of ourselves, of course, Sholto. But I believe you delight in stiffness and ceremony. Will ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... a little up-state town with a tavern of exceeding age and stiffness, and alighted in search of luncheon, the landlord and landlady thought just what Marjorie wanted them to think; that all ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... boarding school all the boys slept in one large room, on cots conveniently arranged. Tommy was a heavy sleeper. One morning he awoke with a strange feeling of stiffness about his face, and no sooner did he sit up in bed than a laugh ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... great portion of what remains seems to indicate rapid decay. The whole stands indeed greatly in need of reparation. Ducarel, if I remember rightly,[108] has made, of this whole front, a sort of elevation, as if it were intended for a wooden model to work by: having all the stiffness and precision of an erection of forty-eight hours standing only. The central tower is of very stunted dimensions, and overwhelmed by a roof in the form of an extinguisher. This, in fact, was the consequence of the devastations of the Calvinists; ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the whole time on account of my leg, from which I suffered very much; and Doctor Le Brean insisted upon taking it off, but I would not suffer him; for which I have great reason to be joyful, for it is now nearly as well as ever, except a little stiffness, particularly after marching. But our distress from want of food and comfortable raiment, was nothing compared to the grumbling of some of the men, and I am sorry to say, of some of the officers. I really thought we should have ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... success in improving the taste and judgment of its contemporaries. The poems of West, indeed, had the merit of chaste and manly diction; but they were cold, and, if I may so express it, only dead-coloured; while in the best of Warton's there is a stiffness, which too often gives them the appearance of imitations from the Greek. Whatever relation, therefore, of cause or impulse Percy's collection of Ballads may bear to the most popular poems of the present day; yet in a more sustained and elevated style, of the then ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... saved them from a German prison by swooping down with his machine and carrying them off from their captors. It was with mixed feelings that they greeted him, as he came gaily forward, a smile upon his handsome bronzed face. But Dick seemed to feel a certain stiffness in their welcome ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... house next morning, drying up the damp floors, and turning to gold the scrap of yellow hair that showed through a hole in the old quilt. Presently the small girl shook the covering away from her and stood up, to yawn and stretch herself out of the stiffness from a night spent on the hard floor. She was not a pretty child, unless naturally curling fair hair, that would be fairer when it was washed, could make her so. The long, thin legs that came below her torn dress made her too tall for her age, ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... executive of the P. K. & R, system it wouldn't be exactly official and proper in me to approve your judgment in that matter of the Italians; but as a man—plain man, now, you understand,—I know grit when I see it and—" he dropped his bluff stiffness got out of his chair and came along and squeezed Parker's muscular arm, "you've got a brand of it that I admire. Yes, I do. No mistake! But that is just between you and me. That is simply my own personal opinion. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... That unaccountable sense of a discordant note with himself still stayed with him. He unconsciously, during his walk, had dwelt upon the Professor's information as to the view of the old ladies of The Chase, and then Halcyone's silence and stiffness. He felt excluded from the place which he recollected he had held in the child's regard. His memory had jumped the brief glimpse of her during her fledgling period, and had gone back with distinct vividness to the summer morning in the ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... shoulder. She had passed well into spinsterhood, as was shown by the inward sinking of her cheeks, the downward tendency of the lines about her mouth, the traces of gray in her brown hair, and a general thinness and stiffness of frame. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... it, too, which proved the rule, though I believe there are better things to save a man than liquor. But Frank has the right idea. The excitement of the chase will cause him to forget, and take some of the stiffness out ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... of it the more perplexed I became. The night was very dark and I could see nothing about me in any direction, so I concluded that the only thing to do was to remain standing just where I was until daybreak. It was a long and tedious wait and I suffered much from stiffness and cold, but at last dawn appeared and I anxiously strained my eyes, looking about in every direction. Then my head nearly burst with a feeling of joyousness, for within two hundred yards of me I discerned the outline of what appeared to be a hill ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... mother's commission to show herself inclined to accept his attentions. If she had been under contrary orders, there would have been some excitement in going as far as she durst, but the only effect on her was embarrassment, and she treated Antony with the same shy stiffness she had shown to Humfrey, during the earlier part of his residence at home. Besides, she clung more and more to her adopted father, who, now that they were away from home and he was about to part with her, treated her with a tender, chivalrous deference, most winning in itself, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... within one minute's walk of the top of Gray's Inn Lane. Gager, during his conference with his colleague Bunfit, had been dressed in plain black clothes; but in spite of his plain clothes he looked every inch a policeman. There was a stiffness about his limbs, and, at the same time, a sharpness in his eyes, which, in the conjunction with the locality in which he was placed, declared his profession beyond the possibility of mistake. Nor, in that locality, would he have desired to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... beyond a momentary giddy spell, a bit of nausea and mental stiffness. It was strange, and I have a slight headache. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... countenance, for one instant he had a glimpse of the sharpest, brightest eyes he had ever looked into. And they were hard, cruel eyes, too, with a glint of daring in them. And, as Ned glanced at his figure, he thought he detected a trace of military stiffness—none of the stoop-shouldered slouch that is always the mark of a moulder. The fellow's hands, too, though black and grimy, showed evidences of care under the dirt, and Ned was sure his ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... he is right. We find here and there pretty designs, short felicitous passages, smiling bits of nature; but obscurity, stiffness of expression, and the dragging in of Fancy by the hair continually mar the reading and take away all its charm. Even the pieces most highly lauded in advance, and which celebrate some of the most inspiring moments in the life of Napoleon,—such as his Baptism, his Horoscope cast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... needed a work on West-Point, and we have here a very clever volume, by one who has retained with great accuracy in his memory its predominant characteristics, and repeated them in a very readable form. Occasional stiffness and 'mannerism' are in it compensated for by many vivid pictures of cadet-life, and we can well imagine the interest with which every page will be perused by old graduates of the institution, and others familiar ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Grants and Crawfords was a favourable epoch. The stiffness of the meeting soon gave way before their popular manners and more diffused intimacies: little groups were formed, and everybody grew comfortable. Fanny felt the advantage; and, drawing back from the toils of civility, would have been again most happy, could she ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... child of five, came forward instantly, with his hand held out far in front of him. Jan, who loved little children, knew in a minute that he was afraid she would kiss him; so she shook hands with gentlemanly stiffness. Little Fay, on the contrary, ran forward, held up her arms "to be taken" and her adorably pretty little face to be kissed. She was startlingly like her mother at the same age, with bobbing curls of feathery ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... as well to remark here, that the Misses Dunning, although stiff, and starched, and formal, had the power of speeding nimbly from room to room, when alone and when occasion required, without in the least degree losing any of their stiffness or formality, so that we do not use the terms "rush," "rushed," or "rushing" inappropriately. Nevertheless, it may also be remarked that they never acted in a rapid or impulsive way in company, however small in numbers ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... free to move her "love way" as she will, she can slide the pathway itself a full six or more inches, up and down, stroking all the area against the penis as she moves; that, again, by its very position, being held firmly in contact by its stiffness and stoutness; the glans penis throbbing lustily against the clitoris when the two meet at the extreme of the wife's up-stroke; she, pausing an instant, just then, to more perfectly enjoy the sensation; ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... and letting the lower parts of his arms fall down, so that he went as if he carried a keg under each; his coat, though not well made, was of the best glossy broadcloth—and his long clerical boots went up about his knees like a dragoon's; there was an awkward stiffness about him, in very good keeping with a dark melancholy cast of countenance, in which, however, a man might discover an air of simplicity not to be found in the visage of his superior ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... tendency to the hard presentment of mere form trying vainly to compete with the reality of nature itself, all noble sculpture constantly struggles; each great system of sculpture resisting it in its own way, etherealising, spiritualising, relieving its stiffness, its heaviness, and death. The use of colour in sculpture is but an unskilful contrivance to effect, by borrowing from another art, what the nobler sculpture ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... he constantly kept in view. It was his plan not only to divide his discourses, but to enunciate the divisions again and again, till they were fully imprinted on the memory; and although such a method would impart a fatal stiffness to many compositions, in his manipulation it only added clearness to his meaning, and precision to his proofs. Dr. Doddridge's was not the simplicity of happy illustration. In his writings you meet few of those ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... promise to interpret them faithfully to her husband. The unconstrained and familiar tone of his correspondence affords a pleasing example of the personal intimacy to which the sovereigns, so contrary to the usual stiffness of Spanish etiquette, admitted men of learning and probity at their court, without distinction of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... at her sideways. Somehow he liked the fresh clean stiffness of her starched, skirts, and the biscuit brown of her complexion. He desired all at once that she ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... canvas was censured, the commonplace nature of the subject, the poverty of the light effects, for the light is equally diffused and everything is placed in relief without the contrast of shadow,—the stiffness of the legs of the bull, the crude coloring of the plants and animals in the background; the mediocrity of the shepherd's figure. But, for all this, Paul Potter's bull was crowned with glory as one of the noblest examples of art, and ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... stiffness prevailed, for many of the party were complete strangers to each other. But as they began to eat, when the men had had several liqueurs, and the ladies wine, such constraint gave way to mirth. They drank freely, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, of the Little Passion, on copper, are all of them noteworthy successes of more or less the same kind; and in these, too, we come upon that racy sense for narration which can enhance dramatic import by emphasising some seemingly trivial circumstance, as in the gouty stiffness of one of Christ's scourgers in the Flagellation, or the abnormal ugliness of the man who with such perfect gravity holds the basin while Pilate washes his hands: while in the Crown of Thorns and Descent into Hades ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the lady. Maggie found that in the sitting-room the gas was dimly burning. There was the usual lodging-house furniture, and on a faded red sofa near the fire old Mrs. Warlock was lying. Maggie could not see her very clearly in the half-light, but there was something about her immobility and the stiffness of her head (decorated as of old with its frilly white cap) that reminded one of a figure made out of wax. Maggie turned to find Amy Warlock standing ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... with thee, my dear sweeting, is what thine own heart will assure thee of. All is well with us here, save that Pepin hath the mange on his back, and Pommers hath scarce yet got clear of his stiffness from being four days on ship-board, and the more so because the sea was very high, and we were like to founder on account of a hole in her side, which was made by a stone cast at us by certain sea-rovers, who may the saints have in their ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... morning came! The night had seemed endless. When I tried to raise the blanket in order to sit up, it seemed of an extraordinary weight and stiffness. No wonder! It was frozen hard, and as rigid as cardboard, covered over with a foot of snow. The thermometer during the night had gone down to 24 deg.. I called my men. They were hard to wake, and they, too, were ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... praise to the ship that he had learned to love as though she were flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone: so I hastened to gratify the good fellow by eulogising—as indeed I could with the most perfect honesty—the marvellous weatherly qualities and speed of the ship, as also the stiffness with which she stood up under her big spread of canvas. Had I not done so, I verily believe that my reputation as a seaman would have shrunk very materially in my chief mate's estimation, instead of increasing, as it ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... morning the strange camp was astir, and one by one the boys painfully crawled out, to try to get some of the stiffness from their limbs by ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... thought you said," insisted Mr. Smith. He stirred, seemed to detach himself from the rail with difficulty. His long, slender figure straightened into stiffness, as if hostile to the enveloping soft peace of air and sea and sky, emitted into the night a weak murmur which Mr. Powell fancied was the word, "Abominable" repeated three times, but which passed into the faintly louder ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... they would be sent in pursuit of the fleeing enemy. Six of the regiments were composed of men born in Germany, or the sons of Germans, drawn from the great cities of the North, little used to the forests and thickets and having the stiffness of Germans on parade. They were at the first point of exposure, and they were certainly no match for the formidable foe who was creeping ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Resurrection, and not worth looking at, except for the sake of making more sure our conclusions from the first fresco). The Madonna is fixed in Byzantine stiffness, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... noon before the old sailor awoke to find a hot dinner ready and the boys patiently waiting. He was surprised to find that his stiffness had nearly all disappeared, and, except for the cuts on hands and face, he was as well ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... color and free from gray specks is considered the best. It holds the glue better than any other wood. The weight of a cubic foot of mahogany varies from thirty-five to fifty-three pounds. Its strength is between sixty-seven and ninety-six, stiffness seventy-three to ninety-three, and toughness sixty-one to ninety-nine—oak being considered as one hundred in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... of the spavined limb, the moment the heel of the foot touches the ground, something after the manner of string-halt. At times the stiffness can be observed only when the animal is pushed from one side of the stall to the other. Spavin may often be detected when riding a horse down a steep hill from the fact that he ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... ugly blisters, a certain number of hands that were bound up by the doctor, and a few orders as to their use—orders which proved to be forgotten at once—and a certain awkwardness of gait set down to the stiffness of the newly issued garments—those were all that were noticeable at the first glance round by the midshipmen, and apparently the whole crew were ready and fit to help in the efforts being made to get the sloop out of her unpleasant position in the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... to complain of any want of hospitality on the part of those to whom he delivered Mr Harwood's letters, but in several instances he was received with an air of stiffness and formality which showed that full confidence was not placed in him. Indeed, when on one or two occasions he was cross-questioned, having really no information to give, he was speedily again dismissed. He received, however, several letters in return, ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... white folks," said the old man, threatening the debaters with the scantling. "Dey's boun' to git up a 'batin'-soci'ty an' talk all de evening w'en dere was Paublo Johnson standin' up all de evenin' from stiffness he cotched from ole man Geiger's goat, an', hit's a fac', he stan' an' 'scuss de question, tryin' to make outen how de goat kicked him, all kase he's on de on side. But dat's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... for the French frontier. In the train corridors, outside the compartments, spies stood staring at us, spies pretending to read newspapers came into each compartment; police spies, betrayed by heavy boots; general staff spies, betrayed by a military stiffness; women spies; spies assorted and special. And these gentry had followed me all over Berne—for in the neutral countries of Europe as well as the belligerents are we constantly reminded of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... read. Talma comes next in his regard as "the most finished artist of his time, not below Kean in his most energetic displays, and far above him in the refinement of his taste and the extent of his research—equaling Kemble in dignity, unfettered by his stiffness and formality." He says acutely of Kean that "when under the impulse of his genius he seemed to clutch the whole idea of the man, ... but if he missed the character in his first attempt at conception he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... stuck. You might have stood him on his head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course this"—he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head—"is quite different. And the little doctor—what ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... found the last day of the voyage to Liverpool dull enough. Mr. Hethcote did not seem to feel it in the same way: on the contrary, he grew more familiar and confidential in his talk with me. He has some of the English stiffness, you see, and your American pace was a little too fast for him. On our last night on board, we had some more conversation about the Farnabys. You were not interested enough in the subject to attend to what he said ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... daylight. The pain in his face had subsided to a faintly aching stiffness and he felt fine. He knew from the surroundings that he must be in a hospital, probably at Cambridge. He groped for the call bell and found it wound around the bedpost. He pushed it. In a few moments ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... When I finally made attempt at straightening my cramped limbs it seemed as if each separate muscle had been beaten and bruised, and it required no little manipulation before I even recovered sufficient strength to stand upright and endeavor to ascertain the nature of my grewsome prison-house. My stiffness caused me to believe that I must have lain motionless for several hours in the same cramped position into which I fell, before even regaining consciousness. Another evidence of this was the blood which, having flowed copiously from a severe cut upon the back of my head, had so thoroughly ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Gone were the incredible stiffness and the incurable honesty of the race that belonged over yonder on those white chalk cliffs dimly visible along the horizon. Gone were the phlegm and stolidity of those people who manifest emotion only on the occasions when they stand up to sing ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... much more than the specific gravity is increased by using the metal. There has been, however, hitherto a great practical difficulty in the way of using iron for such a purpose, namely that of giving to these metal plates a sufficient stiffness. A sheet of tin, for example, though stronger than a board, that is, requiring a greater force to break or rapture it, is still very flexible, while the board is stiff. In other words, in the case ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... introduced, before the patient exclaimed, "the pain has entirely left me." When the third was introduced, she experienced a stiffness in the muscles of the cheek, and a creeping sensation, as if a spider's web had been drawn across the face; but no painful ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... more about the theater, but that afternoon, when he was out with the kindling, he pondered the matter deeply. It was quite cold, and sometimes he had to put the reins between his knees and shove his hands deep into his pockets to get the stiffness out of them. It really seemed as if everybody had just laid in a supply of kindling, and the shadowy little plan he had been forming was growing more shadowy all ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... noble tune now attached to it. Charles Wesley's "Hark, the herald angels sing," or—as it should be—"Hark, how all the welkin rings," is much admired by some, but to the present writer seems a mere piece of theological rhetoric. Byrom's "Christians, awake, salute the happy morn," has the stiffness and formality or its period, but it is not without a certain quaintness and dignity. One could hardly expect fine Christmas poetry of an age whose religion was on the one hand staid, rational, unimaginative, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... the same objection to starch as the more "ancient" one, is not recorded, but in any case she was not alone. Men and women alike, forswore the desired stiffness, retaining it only in their opinions. By the time that Anne Bradstreet had settled in Andover, bodily indulgence so far as adornment or the gratification of appetite went, had become a matter for courts to decide upon. Whether Simon Bradstreet gave up the curling locks which, while ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... from the South Sea Islanders how to build and manage a catamaran. This consists of two canoes or long thin boats, placed parallel and joined together by wooden strips, which also answer for a deck. This craft can be rowed or driven by a sail, placed well forward. Its great advantage is its stiffness, for it cannot be ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... hour after setting off, they struck into the portage. Even with a snow-blurred trail, the Boy's vivid remembrance of the other journey gave them the sustaining sense that they were going right. The Colonel was working off the surprising stiffness with which he had wakened, and they were both warm now; but the Colonel's footsoreness was considerable, an affliction, besides, bound to be worse ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... December they met with bad weather and lost their foretop-gallant mast, but the rough handling they got was credited with improving the sailing qualities of the ship, as it took some of the stiffness out of her upperworks. A meteor was noted on the 23rd, like a small bright cloud, emitting flames, travelling rapidly westward, and disappearing slowly with two sharp explosions. The same day an eclipse of ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only people whom men cannot pardon ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... She sprang out of bed—with no lazy London resurrection of the old buried, half sodden corpse, sleepy and ashamed, but with the new birth of the new day, refreshed and strong, like a Hercules baby. A few aching remnants of stiffness was all that was left of the old fatigue. It was a heavenly joy to think that no Caley would come knocking at her door. She glided down the long room to the sunny window, drew aside the rich old faded curtain, and peeped out. Nothing but pines and pines—Scotch firs ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... only boiling water and flour without butter, or put sugar to it, which will add to the stiffness of it, & thus likewise all pastes for Cuts and ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... have sounded hard, but with some people their very austerity bespeaks a tenderness of heart. They affect it as a shield or guard against a softness that leaves them the too easy prey of a self-seeking community, and such I adjudged Mrs. Clay. Her stiffness, like that of the echidna, was a spiky covering protecting the most gentle and estimable ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... dinner with the stiffness of men between whom much is unsaid. As the oystershells departed, however, we had found common memories. He recalled delightfully those little northern towns in the debatable region which from a critic's point of view may be considered Lombard or Venetian, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... more than an hour now, he had been sitting before that table writing incessantly, conversing, pen in hand, with his Augusta and all the family in Cassel. Better that this good man should carry off his stuff than those other domineering officers with cutting voices and insolent stiffness. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... I growled, stepping out into a pool of water on the oilcloth. Thence I stumbled up the ladder, dived overboard, and buried bad dreams, stiffness, frowsiness, and tormented nerves in the loveliest fiord of the lovely Baltic. A short and furious swim and I was back again, searching for a means of ascent up the smooth black side, which, low as it was, was slippery and unsympathetic. Davies, in a loose canvas ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... herself entirely, and the men, the chivalrous men—is it not written on the very shield of your nation, honi soit? Ah, it is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be myself. You must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this stiffness, I shall end by growing English. Do I ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... story should be easy and flowing, so that it shall be pleasant reading. Good ideas may be expressed in good language and still be afflicted with a nervousness or stiffness of style that will make the work difficult of perusal, and so lessen its power to hold the reader. One of the first requisites for this desired ease is a lightness of phrasing which is at once a matter of thought and of rhetorical construction. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... be the first arrivals. It was almost like sitting down in an arbor: for walls and ceilings were quite put out of sight by the evergreen dressing; the candlesticks and picture-frames seemed to have budded; and even the poker had laid aside its constitutional stiffness, and unbent itself in a miraculous spiral of creeping vine. Mr. Manlius looked about him with the air of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... man had ordered his decorator to provide him with a chamber wherein stiffness and formality would be impossible unless one stood erect. The decorator had spent money with a lavish hand upon Spanish leathers and silken stuffs from the near East and the Orient and he had laid these trappings over the softest of swan's down. Once you sank upon ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... advanced slightly to meet her, with a grewsome rustling of copper-colored stiffness. She did not approve of Dolly at any time, but she specially disapproved of her habit of setting time at defiance ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... get in till half-past eight, sir," Reuben said. "I walked about for a bit, after I came out from school, to try and get the stiffness out of my leg, so as to be able to come ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... ushered up the room to the soft strains of "La Mattchiche," and followed by such a companion, he was almost ridiculously out of place. If anything, she was the more noticeable of the two to the casual observer. Her hair was dazzlingly yellow, and arranged with all the stiffness of the coiffeur's art. She wore a dress of black sequins, cut perilously low, and shorn a little by wear of its pristine splendour. Her complexion was as artificial as her high-pitched voice; her very presence seemed to exude perfumes of the patchouli ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said Anne, to break the stiffness, as she spread the table with a thin old cloth, "but she is such a ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... surely. We may not be far astray." She swung off before I had awkwardly dismounted to help her. Her limbs failed—my own were clamped by stiffness—and she staggered and collapsed ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... faces. The road continued to ascend, between gently sloping hills on either side that were gradually drawing closer together. The condition of the men necessitated a halt, but the only effect of their brief repose was to increase the stiffness of their benumbed limbs, and when the order was given to march the state of affairs was worse than it had been before; the regiments made no progress, men were everywhere falling in the ranks. Jean, noticing ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola |
