"Straining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw Herbert beside them. Van Diemen was in the rear, panting, and straining his neck to catch sight of the boat now pulling fast across a tumbled sea to where Tinman himself was perceived, beckoning them wildly, half out ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... or little nosegays of exquisite flowers that they were carrying as presents to each other. Verena, who, when Olive was not with her, indulged in a good deal of desultory contemplation at the window, saw them pass the house in Charles Street, always apparently straining a little, as if they might be too late for something. At almost any time, for she envied their preoccupation, she would have taken the chance with them. Very often, when she described them to her mother, Mrs. Tarrant didn't know who they were; there were even ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... hand, so that before I could think, I found myself in the vestibule. Then she entered, swiftlier than the blinding lightning, and had but to shut the door. When the damsel saw me in the vestibule, she came up to me and straining me to her bosom, threw me to the floor, then knelt upon my breast and kneaded my belly with her hands, till I lost my senses. Then she took me by the hand and led me unable to resist, for the violence of her pressure, through seven vestibules, whilst the old woman went before us with the lighted ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... second the patrol leader sought the lowest limb, and drew himself up. He could feel the trunk of the bending tree straining as it was twisted by the violence of each terrible blast; but undaunted by this impending calamity Paul's only desire was to reach the side of poor Nuthin before worse things happened to him than being carried ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... from the morbid conditions of the animal or vegetable so induced; for we see every day the theoretic faculty entirely destroyed in those who are interested in particular animals, by their delight in the results of their own teaching, and by the vain straining of curiosity for new forms such as nature never intended, as the disgusting types for instance, which we see earnestly sought for by the fanciers of rabbits and pigeons, and constantly in horses, substituting for the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the government to shelve the IMF program, stop most debt payments, and suspend rescheduling negotiations. Aid from Gulf Arab states, worker remittances, and trade contracted; and refugees flooded the country, producing serious balance-of-payments problems, stunting GDP growth, and straining government resources. The economy rebounded in 1992, largely due to the influx of capital repatriated by workers returning from the Gulf, but recovery was uneven in 1994-97. The government is implementing the reform program adopted in 1992 and continues ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... ingwa, or innen,—meaning karma as inevitable retribution, —comes naturally to every lip as an interpretation, as a consolation, or as a reproach. The peasant toiling up some steep road, and feeling the weight of his handcart straining every muscle, murmurs patiently: "Since this is ingwa, it must be suffered." Servants disputing, ask each other, "By reason of what ingwa must I now dwell with such a one as you?" The incapable or vicious man ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... there then straining his eyes abstractedly in the direction of the rock until it disappeared behind them in the gathering twilight. He had been inspirited for the whole voyage; and the first thing he should do when they arrived ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the wall of ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... more enduring than my own presence, and had not they overwhelmed me by their regard, I should have felt afraid. As it was I pushed upward through their immovable host in some such catching of the breath as men have when they walk at night straining for a sound, and I felt myself to be ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... be placed in their summer quarters directly after potting. Stand them in rows in a sunny situation, the pots clear of one another, sufficient room being allowed between the rows for the cultivator to move freely among them. The main stakes are tied to rough trellis made by straining wire in two rows about 2 ft. apart between upright poles driven into the ground. Coarse coal ashes or coke breeze are the best materials to stand the pots on, there being little risk of worms working through into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... laughed to see Donald's awkward position—to see him hanging over the water, red-faced and straining. Donald laughed, too. At once he lost his balance and ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... IN ON THE GALLOP Always the guns must follow closely in the wake of the infantry to break up German counter attacks and hold the ground gained. Here a detachment of the Royal Horse Artillery storms through a deserted Flanders village, straining every nerve to save those few seconds that may mean the saving or the loss of the new ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... his officers. To the astonishment, if not of the men of his own day, at least to the unexhausted astonishment of times following, a charge was suddenly reported from the Committee to the Commons against the Lord Chancellor, not of straining the prerogative, or of conniving at his servants' misdoings, but of being himself a corrupt and venal judge. Two suitors charged him with receiving bribes. Bacon was beginning to feel worried and anxious, and he wrote thus to Buckingham. At length he had begun to see the meaning ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... traitorous Papist and the crafty vagrant fox trapped at last; but between them, looking over their shoulders, was a woman's face in which Anthony saw the most intense struggle of emotions. The face was quite white, the lips parted, the eyes straining, and sorrow and compassion were in every line, as she watched the cheerful priest among his warders; and yet there rested on it, too, a strange light as of triumph. It was the face of one who sees ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... fog were stealing out through the trees, changing shape every instant, but always advancing: now presenting the appearance of an aligned regiment of huge, shadowy men, now nothing but a wall of semi-solid vapor. And still, with eyeballs straining in their sockets, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Straining every nerve they stepped out gallantly and covered mile after mile till they reached the Shenandoah, forded it, and crossed the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap. But lack of training and march discipline told increasingly ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... his horse on a lava-crusted ridge, straining bloodshot eyes into the mesa that stretched dimly before him, when dawn came streaking the sky with blood orange and purple and crimson. The stars were quenched in that flood of light; and Pink, looking now with clearer vision, saw that there was no living thing in ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... you follow as soon as you can." Leaving her in the care of her maid, he hastened out of the room, and was soon at the door of his mother's chamber. He stood for a moment in the doorway, and his straining ears caught the gentle tones of his mother's voice, speaking in a low but cheerful tone. His knees trembled beneath him with joyful excitement. Fearful of trusting himself in her presence till he had become calmer, he noiselessly sank on the nearest chair, with beating heart and straining ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... you so vpon me? I am but sorry, not affear'd: delaid, But nothing altred: What I was, I am: More straining on, for plucking backe; ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... with sudden malignity; and the terror of Thunder Mountain held her in its cold grip. But desperation called up her courage. She walked Tuesday in an ever-widening circle around the spot where she had lost the trail, with her heart almost still, and her eyes straining at every tree as it came within her vision. Where? Where? Would there be no more blazes, no more broken limbs, no more prints of hoofs on the mossy earth? Had she left the trail farther back than she had thought? And would she wander over all the vast bosom of the mountain ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... and catching sight of what was taking place at the drawbridge, fell back in a swoon on the carpet of the hall. The shepherd boy raised her in his arms and fled for the hills. Along the road was the wild stampede of the people, all straining for the hills, pouring in a mad rush from the valley and the town. Behind them were the still madder, swifter, more terrible waters, coming in sudden thuds, in furious drives, eddying and sculping and rearing in an orgy or remorseless and heartrending destruction. Down before that roaring avalanche ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... physical channels in a manner suitable to its own requirements, instead of trying to manipulate the mind by the unnatural forcing of its mechanical instrument. In all our studies on these lines we must remember that development is always by perfectly natural growth and is not brought about by unduly straining any portion ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... was sitting at work last night I heard a dog on the deck howling fearfully. I sprang up, and found it was one of the puppies that had touched an iron bolt with its tongue and was frozen fast to it. There the poor beast was, straining to get free, with its tongue stretched out so far that it looked like a thin rope proceeding out of its throat; and it was howling piteously. Bentzen, whose watch it was, had come up, but scarcely knew what to do. He took ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... the eastern fringe of the vast region which then went by the name of Louisiana. All the stalwart freemen who had made their rude clearings, and built their rude towns, on the hither side of the mighty Mississippi, were straining with eager desire against the forces which withheld them from seizing with strong hand the coveted province. They did not themselves know, and far less did the public men of the day realize, the full import ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... paint so much still life?—baskets of fruit, a hunter's game-bag, a divided melon, etc. I frankly own that they would thrill me more if I knew their market price, so that I might be imagining what delightful meals I could offer my family without straining the household purse, which is my excuse for the intimate details concerning food and ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith Seem'd it unto me turn'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the very babel of conflict; horses and mules neighing and screaming and straining at their ropes, dogs barking, men yelling, the clash of swords, the rattle and crash of musketry, the screams of the wounded and the groans of the dying. Was ever such a pandemonium? The Guides in small knots, though hard stricken, fought with determined courage; but they were ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... be done! This was the more difficult as it was by no means clear what had already been done. Even while I supported her drooping figure I was straining my eyes across her shoulder for succor of some kind. Suddenly the figure of a rapid rider appeared upon the road. It seemed familiar. I looked again—it was the blessed Enriquez! A sense of deep relief came over me. I loved Consuelo; but never before had ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... how will they manage to get clear away without the proper drovers finding which way they have gone?" asked Rupert, who had been straining his ears to discover the route taken by the men who had just ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... superficial confidence in the idea of progress is reliance upon social palliatives instead of radical cures for our public maladies. We are so predisposed to think that the world inherently wants to be better, is inwardly straining to be better, that we are easily fooled into supposing that some slight easement of external circumstance will at once release the progressive forces of mankind and save the race. When, for example, one compares the immense amount of optimistic expectancy about a warless ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... to roll gently in response to the ever-increasing swell. As the White Ensign fluttered happily from the stern, most of us took advantage of the still comparatively calm sea by parading along the deck in company with a British commodore, confidently straining our eyes to catch a first glimpse of the approaching escort; and it was, unfortunately, obvious that every one on board did not share our good spirits. As the disconcerting movements of the ship increased, the Anglo-German element, pale-faced and dejected, assembled amidships, and forming a small, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... straining for the sound of the knocker on the front door. Miss Nippett lay so that her weakening eyes could watch the door of the bedroom. Now and again, Mavis addressed one or two remarks to her, but the old woman ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... aft below hatches. We were soon engaged in the agreeable discussion of grog and small talk. Nothing interrupted our conversation. The heavy lashing and rush of the weltering sea on the quarters—the groaning and straining of the vessel—the regular strokes of the engines which boomed indistinctly yet surely on the ear, were alike unattended to. Impelled by that mighty power, we almost bid defiance to wind and weather. As the glass circulated, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... one who meets a staggering blow, The stout old ship doth reel, And waters vast go seething past— But will it last, this fearful blast, On straining shroud and groaning mast, O sailor ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... brought for a debt of which there was no written evidence, the plaintiff, when asked what he had to show for it, always answered "good suit," and tendered his witnesses, who were sometimes examined by the court. /3/ I think it is not straining the evidence to infer that the "good suit" of the later reports was the descendant of the Saxon transaction witnesses, as it has been shown that ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... had stopped he could hear the far-off growling of guns; deep-voiced monsters which his imagination pictured straining on their leashes while snarling at each other across the space of miles—truly dogs of war! He drew farther back in the seat, dreading to get out; but the moment had come, the fellows and nurses were moving to the door, the great ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... stood so long? The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real life. A great statesman, full of years and honors, led forth to the Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness. The few detractors who ventured to murmur were silenced by the indignant clamors of a nation which remembered only the lofty ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the speakers now fell, and Cuthbert was straining his ear to listen, when he heard footsteps approaching the tent, and he glided away ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... it to his lips; then snatching off his bonnet, hid it there, and bent among the shrubbery and was gone, as swiftly and silently as a wolf. Frances flew to the house and up the stairs to her room. There she threw up the window and sat panting in it, straining, listening, for sounds ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... is, it is, hie hence be gone away: It is the Larke that sings so out of tune, Straining harsh Discords, and vnpleasing Sharpes. Some say the Larke makes sweete Diuision; This doth not so: for she diuideth vs. Some say, the Larke and loathed Toad change eyes, O now I would they had chang'd voyces ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the officers in the room below became louder, and by straining his ears the lad could make out what ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... for her. She would go down with her dying world, proud and cold and with no place in the new one. She kissed me and I tasted blood, her thin fettered body straining wildly against me, shaken with tearing, convulsive sobs. Then she turned and fled back into the shadow of the great ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... then that you expect?" said Allan; and straining his eyes until they almost started from their sockets, he fell with a convulsive shudder into the arms of Donald and his brother, who, knowing the nature of his fits, had come near to prevent his fall. They seated him upon a bench, and supported ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... can you suffer hell so to prevail? My breast I 'll burst with straining of my courage, And from my shoulders crack my arms asunder, But I will ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... day in New York City, after four years. The streets are crowded. Here are men and women, but I see only the horses,—you know, sir, how I love them. They go by with heavy truck and cab, steaming, straining', slipping in the deep snow. You hear the song of lashes, the whack of whips, and, now and then, the shout of some bedevilled voice. Horses fall, and struggle, and lie helpless, and their drivers—well, if I were to watch them long, I should ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... I crouched there, straining my ears for a repetition of this unearthly sound that was like nothing I had ever heard before,—a quick, light, tapping chink, now in rhythm, now out, now ceasing, now recommencing, so that I almost doubted but that this wood must be ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... From various psychic premonitions he knew quite well that the night would not pass without adventure; but he did not wish to force its arrival; and he wished to remain normal, and let the animals remain normal, so that, when it came, it would be unattended by excitement or by any straining of the attention. Many experiments had made him wise. And, for the rest, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... gaze. The sails were now filling well, and there was an exhilarating sound of straining cordage in the air while the vessel glided on. The young journalist was not an impressionable man, but he felt all these things. The sense of open freedom, the gentle rise and fall of the vessel, the whirring breeze, and the distant line of ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... man, and his wrath had been long demanding expression. They closed with a jar that rocked the electric lamp on the desk. There was a second of straining and uncertainty. Then with a jerk Gard lifted his adversary clear off his feet, and shook him, shook him with the fury of a bulldog, and as relentlessly. Then, as if the temptation to murder was more than he could longer resist, he flung him ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... awoke, I saw Amante, half raised, resting on one hand, and eagerly gazing, with straining eyes, into the kitchen below. I looked too, and both heard and saw the miller and two of his men eagerly and loudly talking about the old woman, who had not appeared as usual to make the fire in the stove, and prepare her master's breakfast, and who now, late on in the morning, had been found ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... the wisdom and reasonableness of our course. My son is even straining his sense of military duty to escort us to a place of safety, where you will ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... still, with every sense on the alert, straining their ears intently for the faintest murmur. In the far distance it seemed to them that they could certainly catch the unmistakable rush of a stream flowing swiftly over a rough, stony bed. Guided by the sound, they stumbled on, till at length, after climbing over a number of rocks, they reached ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... to ponder, and is a subtle link of connection with what is to be written in the next volume, when the aspect of the Ascension as an end is subordinate, and its aspect as a beginning is prominent. So regarded, it filled the disciples with joy. Thus you see, I think, that without any illegitimate straining of the expressions of the text, we do come to the point of view from which, to begin with, this great event must be looked at. We have to take the same view, and to regard that Ascension not only ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was cut in small pieces thicker and bigger than a domino, and steeped in fresh lime-juice for half a day. The sauce was made by pouring a cup of seawater over grated cocoanuts and after several hours' straining through the fiber of young cocoanut shoots. It was thick, like ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... have ever been applied to a man whose death had so stirred up the hearts of his contemporaries, if it had not been felt that something different from that nature which each man carried in his own breast was in his case requisite; and that a certain straining of mind was inseparable from the subject. Accordingly, an epitaph is adopted in which the Writer had turned from the genuine affections and their self-forgetting inspirations, to the end that his understanding, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr. Dorset, however, his wife's attitude was a subject of such evident concern that, when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or scooping the moist bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he sat straining his thin neck for a glimpse of her ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... let me tell you," said Tubby, straining his neck in an endeavor to watch the evolutions of the far-distant object sailing on the border of the cloud, and which looked so much like a great bird with ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... dress the part with such a strict regard for detail; but a strong disinclination urged her against it, and yet at the time she had wondered why such a small thing should be so against the grain when others so much more important were unconsidered. It was very like the proverbial "straining at a gnat to swallow a camel." Be this as it might, she had replaced the ring where she found it and ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... for a little time longer, then put away the letter, looked at the clock, and thence returned to the windows, straining her eyes over the landscape without, as she murmured, 'I wish Charlotte was ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory. There is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its last look of a familiar scene as it might do the ever-to-be-averted ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... found the chalice, and brought it where the laird lay straining his ears, and waiting for it as a man at the point of death might await the ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... sunlight. In seven minutes or perhaps less, as the Transcontinental would be straining to make up lost time, the train would enter Rock Cut three miles and more west, and he would recapture the powerful throbbing of the locomotive as she emerged on the farther side, having conquered the worst of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... We listened with straining ears. He was right. The low, ominous murmur changed to a distant roar, grew louder yet, and yet louder, and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... placed it before the smaller temple of lust; then, by a gentle uniform pressure, I gradually and almost imperceptibly glided in to the utmost extent. She pushed her bottom out, and, I could feel, was straining as if to void something, which is the real method to accelerate the entrance of a prick in that enchanting channel with the least difficulty and pain. We then commenced a slow movement—she wanted me to stoop forward ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... liberty. He would not believe that a man altogether innocent could be in danger of the gallows on a false accusation. It had seemed to him that the police had kept their hold on him with a rabid ferocity, straining every point with the view of showing that it was possible that he should have been the murderer. Every policeman who had been near him, carrying him backward and forward from his prison, or giving evidence as to the circumstances of the locality and of his walk home ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... common-sense. All who wish to see it developed by a man of genius should read that golden little work, Bagehot's Physics and Politics, in which (it seems to me) the complete sense of the way in which concrete things grow and change is as livingly present as the straining after a pseudo-philosophy of evolution is livingly absent. But there are never wanting minds to whom such views seem personal and contracted, and allied to an anthropomorphism long exploded in other fields ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Then, with straining ears, dilated pupils, every sense tense with this effort to hear, the need to breathe, the impossibility of seeing, he advanced slowly, a pistol in one hand, touching the wall with the other to guide himself. He walked thus for fifteen minutes. A ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the bird in ecstasy. She felt an infinite longing for happiness, for some sudden demonstration of tenderness, for the revelation of super-human poetry, and she felt such a softening at her heart, and relaxation of her nerves, that she began to cry, without knowing why, and now the young man was straining her close to him, and she did not remove his arm; she did not think of it. Suddenly the nightingale stopped, and a voice called out in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... pen slip at last from his tired fingers. The light had failed. He had been writing with straining eyes, almost in the darkness. But there was something else. Had it been fancy or ... This time there could be no mistake. He had not heard the lift stop, but some one was knocking softly at the door, softly but persistently. He turned his head. The room seemed filled with shadows. He had written ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were beside the brown horse, standing saddled and bridled, and already quivering and straining to be off. Delmonte lifted Rita in his arms,—no time now for courtly mounting,—then sprang to the saddle before her. He spoke to the horse, who stood trembling, but ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... mouth—caring more for the sword than the plough—good Catholics, though by nature barbarous—and placing their hopes of deliverance from English rule on foreign intervention. For this they were constantly straining their eyes towards France or Spain, and, no matter whence the ally came, were ever ready to rise in revolt. One virtue, however—intensest love of country—more or less redeemed these vices, for so they deserve to be called; but to establish anything like strict military discipline ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... up their feet very high behind, and drawing their hands along the soles. As they approached, they frequently eyed each other from head to foot, in a contemptuous manner, casting several arch looks at the spectators, straining their muscles, and using a variety of affected gestures. Being advanced within reach of each other, they stood with both arms held out straight before their faces, at which part all their blows were aimed. They ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... formation, and in his left the remnants of an apple, with which he occasionally relieved the duty of the before-mentioned cigar. He was standing, lost in the contemplation of a Hessian, who lay breathless before him. At a little distance were three or four of the guides, leaning on their muskets, and straining their eyes in the direction of the combatants, and at his elbow stood a man who, from the implements in his hand, seemed ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... quite steep; but the horse was fresh as yet, and clambered upward with good heart; and the rider was used to rough places, and felt no discomfort from her position. The fear of being followed had succeeded to the fear of being lost, for the time being; and instead of straining her ears on the track behind she was straining her eyes to the wilderness before. The growth of sage-brush was dense now, and ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... been given, because it ought to have been given, et alia talia. The States supposed, that, by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They were not lessoned yet by Cohen's case, nor aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sunset, when the adventurers returned. I looked down over the ship's high side as if looking down over the curb of a well, and dimly saw the damp boat, deep in the sea with some unwonted weight. Ropes were dropt over, and presently three huge antediluvian-looking tortoises, after much straining, were landed on deck. They seemed hardly of the seed of earth. We had been broad upon the waters for five long months, a period amply sufficient to make all things of the land wear a fabulous hue to the dreamy mind. Had three Spanish ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... ambition, had no influence on his uncorrupted mind. It is said, that when he first engaged in the study of the law, his father exhorted him with great earnestness to shun the practice, too common in that profession, of straining every point in favor of prerogative, and perverting so useful a science to the oppression of liberty; and in the midst of these rational and virtuous counsels, which he reiterated, he was suddenly seized with an apoplexy, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... should feel that the colon has been evacuated thoroughly. Many who have regular bowel movements do not have this satisfying sensation afterwards. When the movement is satisfactory in every way little or no straining is necessary. The colon simply empties itself thoroughly, and the evacuation is then complete. However, few have movements of the bowels that are satisfactory to this extent. There should be at least one bowel movement of this kind each day. Two movements of this character would be better, ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... himself up beside Slavin who, in a few tense whispers, acquainted his superior with all details of the situation. Full well, both men realized what a perilous spot it was, for all concerned, on the eastern front of the shack. Straining their eyes in the gray, ghostly gloom they could just discern an open casement. Apparently it was from this well-sheltered embrasure that Gully had previously attempted to pick off Slavin. With the coming of daylight their position would be absolutely untenable in the ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... first of those who gathered round the well. He and others lowered Isaac with ropes into its icy depths, and drew him up again, while the snow beat upon them all—the straining men—the two dripping shapes emerging from the earth. A murmur of horror greeted the first sight of that marred face on Isaac's arm, as the lanterns fell upon it. For there was a gash above the eye, caused by a projection in the ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she saw Goritz rise smiling, straining with his arms, hauling Renwick over the sill. Death! Hers, too, then! With a cry of despair she reached them, clinging with her arms around ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist falling; and the trees in that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the train halted, I listened for the roar; and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on towards them; every moment expecting to behold the spray. Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw two great white clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... learned that there was official dignity among us, and addressed the unworthy bearer of public honors as Eccellenza, and, at parting bequeathed his advantage to the conductor, commending us all in set terms to his courtesy. He hovered caressingly about us as long as we remained, straining politeness to do us some last little service; and when the diligence rolled away, he did all that one man could to give us a round ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... pushing forward Zeppelin design and straining every nerve in the improvement of rigid dirigible construction, until L.33 was evolved; she was generally known as a super-Zeppelin, and on September 24th, 1916, six weeks after her launching, she was damaged by gun-fire in a raid over London, being ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... With a bound like that of an angry tiger, he flung himself upon the ex-gardener, clinging to him with legs and arms in such a manner that Thomas felt as if a snake had hold of him. In vain he tried to shake the boy off. Julien gripped on him with all his might, straining every nerve to throw Thomas down. Hampered by the struggles of Estelle, the man could scarcely keep his feet; he could not ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... zest! It seems to be extinct nowadays; it is a charm that I have not discovered in any living Englishman. What a healthy outlook! Not a trace of straining anywhere. He took life with both hands. How he threw himself into his work, his amusements, his clothes and women and politics and food and theatres and pictures. Warm heart, cool head. So childlike, and yet so wise. There's only one thing that ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... all his reserves into the wrong spot, and that the 53rd Division's stout resistance against superior numbers had pinned them down to the wrong end of the line. There was nothing, therefore, for the Turk to do but to try to hold another position, and he was straining every nerve to reach it. The East Anglian Division went up west of Gaza and held from Sheikh Redwan to the sea by seven o'clock, two squadrons of the Corps' cavalry rode along the seashore and had patrols on the wadi Hesi a little ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... seeing little green men flitting through the trees.... Of course, this world is unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an overloaded cable, the tension of a toy balloon overfull with air. I have a constant feeling of dreadful expectancy, of imminent disaster, mixed with a sense of pain and a lively—almost childlike—curiosity. To say that this ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... conjunction; his hands he kept passing round her body, and employed in toying with her enchanting breasts. As soon too as she felt him at home as he could reach, she lifted her head a little from the pillow, and turning her neck, without much straining, but her cheeks glowing with the deepest scarlet, and a smile of the tenderest satisfaction, met the kiss he pressed forward to give her as they were thus close joined together: when leaving him to pursue ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... F. Rhodes and the Hon. Hubert Howard. No doubt it may be said that the latter represents the New York Herald to which he is nominally accredited. We are, however, well aware that his dispatches are forwarded directly to the Times Office where it is not over-straining the question to say that they are there read and used. Under the rules, all telegraphic messages must be delivered in sections of 200 words, each correspondent being only permitted to send in rotation that number ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... used to this sort of tailoring, he had made rather too close a fit of it, and now that it was dried up at the edges and slightly shrunk, he found difficulty in removing it. Seeing, upon further effort, that he could not get it off without risk of straining the lamb's anatomy, he laid the problem across his knees again and searched his pockets for his knife. He had felt for it, not very thoroughly, before. The knife seemed ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... two of its rivals in sea power. While it has not quite succeeded in this, the United States and Germany pushing it closely, it is well in the lead as compared with any single Power, and to keep this lead it is straining every nerve and fiber ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... decoration first appeared. La Chinoiserie it was called, and it has daintiness and a curious fascination about it, but many inappropriate things were done in its name. The furniture of the time was firmly placed upon the ground, the arm-chairs had strong straining-rails, square or curved backs, scroll arms carved and partly upholstered and stuffed seats and backs. The legs of chairs were usually tapering in form and ornamented with gilding, or marquetry, or richly carved, and later the feet ended in a carved leaf design. Some of ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... would have been unsafe in the event of an extensive inundation taking place I judged it necessary at all events to reach a somewhat elevated outlying hill of sandstone which was distant about two miles. This point we succeeded at last in gaining, although not without severely injuring and straining some of the ponies in effecting it. This rising ground was however well situated for our camp under present circumstances: it was composed of porous sandstone, which in these climates dries almost immediately after rain. There was plenty ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... ran his fingers through his long wild hair. He panted softly like a hound straining at a leash. Then, with an obvious effort to throw off the magic of Minook, he turned suddenly about, and "Poor old Kaviak!" says he, looking round and speaking in quite an ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... fish Frozen fish Methods of cooking Recipes: Baked fish Broiled fish Meat soup Preparation of stock Selection of material for stock Quantity of materials needed Uses of scraps Extracting the juice Temperature of the water to be used Correct proportion of water Time required for cooking Straining the stock To remove the fat Simple Stock or broth Compound stock or double broth To clarify soup stock Recipes: Asparagus soup Barley rice sago or tapioca soup Caramel for coloring soup brown Julienne soup Tomato soup White soup Vermicelli ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... patient and careful census gives me nearly six hundred. And all this comes out of a purse no larger than a pea. By what miracle is there room for such a family? How do those thousands of legs manage to grow without straining themselves? ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... of their talk dried up again. They could make no headway in clearing up their dilemma. To Jim each passing moment was making things harder; with each passing moment their friendship was straining under the pressure. Suddenly a thought flashed through his brain. It was a light of hope, where, before, all had ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... evil intent, but it also was doomed to failure. There was a quick step from the deeper shadows and a figure loomed suddenly in front of Thad who, with uplifted crutch, was still glaring at Bill. Only two words were spoken, a "You, huh?" from the larger chap; then a quick tackle, a short straining scuffle, and Thad was thrown so violently sidewise and hurtled against the bench from which Bill had just risen, that it and Thad went over on the ground together. The bench and the lad seemed to lie there equally helpless. Gus picked up the crutch ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... Brownley, I know. Can you really feel what you write as you make us do? Your characters appeal to me so that I live with them, every nerve alert to the straining point (but with pleasure). You are certianly the idol of the American people. I've heard you discussed by rich poor, monopolist antimonopolist during the publication of "Frenzied Finance" the ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... very uneasy. She tried reading, but her thoughts came between her and the page. Writing was no more helpful. She went to the piano. Music at least, if it did not soothe her, would prevent her straining her ears in listening for ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... retreat. What—this was his thought—what if this was the mouth of a well? Or a mediaeval trap for fools? He had seen such things in French castles. In the pitch darkness he could not guess whether he hung above an abyss or had the ground within an inch of his straining toes. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... with a sick heart and a parched little throat, selling her flowers and straining her eyes through the tumult ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... have added a word of advice regarding the manner of reading this work, which is, that I should wish the reader at first to go over the whole of it, as he would a romance, without greatly straining his attention, or tarrying at the difficulties he may perhaps meet with in it, with the view simply of knowing in general the matters of which I treat; and that afterwards, if they seem to him to merit a more ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... our shores are starred with light, Burning across the briny floods through the black mirk of night, Forth-gleaming like the eyes of Hope, or like the fires of Home, Upon the eager eyes of men far-straining o'er the foam. Good! But how greatly less than good to fear, to think, to know That inland England's less alert against a whelming foe Than when bonfire and beacon flared mere flame of wood and pitch, From Surrey hills to Skiddaw! Science-dowered, serenely rich, Safe in its snugly sheltered ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... respectfully to his side, greeted him as Illustrious, inquired how his Magnificence had passed the latter part of the night. Whilst replying, as ever courteously—for in the look and bearing of Maximus there was that senatorius decor which Pliny noted in a great Roman of another time—his straining eyes seemed to descry a sail in the quarter he continually watched. Was it only a fishing boat? Raised upon the couch, he gazed long and fixedly. Impossible as yet to be sure whether he saw the expected bark; but the sail seemed to draw ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... however, the most inconvenient form we could choose, as respects the fitting of the valves of the doorway; for the arch-shaped head of the valves not only requires considerable nicety in fitting to the arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door,—a double disadvantage, straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the eye, that a door valve with a pointed head is always a disagreeable object. It becomes, therefore, a matter of true necessity ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... No! There is a Nessus' Shirt on this Hercules; he must storm and burn there, without rest, till he be consumed. Human strength, never so Herculean, has its measure. Herald shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau; heralds of the pale repose. While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for him the issue of it will ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... is a tour-de-force of symbolism, under which are veiled the symptoms of senile decay followed by death. It is very likely that some of the symbols may be lost; but it is not difficult to see, without straining, a possible interpretation for each; and some of them have passed into traditional use. The poetic beauty ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... crept along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a white fog crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the dim oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my ears were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the rumble of wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of Harley, even upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very respectable over yonder, but there is nothing of the feminine about them. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... taking up new positions, the engineers at work remaking the roads, building new bridges over the Somme, laying down new railways and repairing old ones—the hundred and one different organisations that were working and straining every muscle and nerve for the common cause. Only the favoured few have the remotest idea of the enormous amount of work to be done ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Demosthenes, and would have died as Cato. But his inglorious and obscure destiny confined him, against his will, in speculative inaction,—he had wings to spread, and no surrounding air to bear them up. He died young, straining his gaze into the future, and ardently surveying the space over which ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... there never was a time in the history of the breed when this particular feature needed more thoughtful, systematic and scientific attention devoted to it than now. For the past few years breeders have been straining every nerve, and leaving no stone unturned, to produce small stock, toys, in fact, and everyone realizes, who has given the question thoughtful consideration, that this line of breeding has been at the expense of the vigor, and indirectly largely of a beautiful disposition, of the dog, to say ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... there's such a gulf between story books and real life. The story books that I used to read in my youth, always turned out just as a man of good will and good heart and kindly spirit would wish them to do; but you'd be straining civility to Providence and telling a lie if you pretended real life does. Therefore I say, hope it may happen; but don't bet ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... be true, the very objection is itself one of the highest merits of the advice thus criticized. For the only grave danger before capable young Americans, and, indeed, before our Nation, is that of hastening too much, of sweeping on too rapidly, of straining every nerve too tensely, of living our lives with an ardor all too fierce and hot. Don't hurry—the world will last several ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge |
