"Stroke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the youth, and tried to hold the horse back. Then, as he saw the animal could not save himself, he leaped for the ground. The horse managed to scramble to a place of safety, but Dick, in trying to avoid a dangerous hoof stroke from the beast, lost his balance and went crashing down into the bushes overhanging ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... call it theirs? Is it an outward grace, which can live but so long as the other outward graces are its companions, to perish when the first gray hair streaks the dark locks? Is it a glass, shivered by the first shock of care as a mirror by a sword-stroke? Is it a painted mask, washed colourless by the first rain of autumn tears? Is it a flower, so tender that it must perish miserably in the frosty rime of earliest winter? Is love the accident of youth, the complement of a fresh complexion, the corollary of a light step, the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... behind time, when he reached the field. Without waiting to learn what was the reason for the delay, the overseer sprang upon him with his bull whip, which was about seven feet long, lashing him with all his strength, every stroke leaving its mark upon the poor man's body, and finally the knot at the end of the whip buried itself in the fleshy part of the arm, and there came around it a festering sore. He suffered greatly with it, until one night his ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... in getting Mr. Hoopdriver's breakfast, so that after all he was not free to start out of Guildford until just upon the stroke of nine. He wheeled his machine from the High Street in some perplexity. He did not know whether this young lady, who had seized hold of his imagination so strongly, and her unfriendly and possibly menacing brother, were ahead of him or even now breakfasting somewhere ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... necessarily limited to a few days, as he proceeds from this to visit Lord Anglesey; and, therefore, would humbly suggest as early a meeting as may suit Colonel K.'s convenience.' What think you now? Is this a master-stroke ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... carry on with success their perfidious scheme. Congress by this time must have heard of their taking St Eustatia, filled with riches, a great part of which they say is American property. And now they pretend by this stroke to have cut off the great resource of America for continuing the war, and to ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Just as the last stroke quivered out onto the new hour, he came. He sat down beside her and putting aside the guitar, drew her ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... was, for this occasion, that if Old Mississip' was falling, Elijah Rasba might never get ashore, not in all the rest of his born days, unless he stirred his boots. So catching up his sweep handles he began to push a long stroke toward the west bank, and his boat began to move on the river surface. Under the two corners of his square bow appeared little swirls and tiny ripples as he approached the bank and drifted down in the edge of the current looking for ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... infer that he showed his teeth, to-day. What was the matter? Did you try to stroke his head, and accidentally ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... I felt all the savage passions of my nature rising within me; there were moments when I felt as if I could gladly see my brother and Helen stretched dead at my feet. Day by day these vindictive thoughts increased within me. It wanted but the finishing stroke to make me completely mad—it came. Though I had long dreaded to make the trial, on which all my happiness for this world rested, I at length determined to put ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... tumble down from the glaciers or snow-clad peaks, and resemble so many drifts of snow amid the green foliage that grows on the lowest slopes. The Fraser River valley, writes an observer, "is one so singularly formed, that it would seem that some superhuman sword had at a single stroke cut through a labyrinth of mountains for three hundred miles, down deep into the bowels of the land." [4] Further along the Fraser the Cascade Mountains lift their rugged heads, and the river "flows ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... the first public intimation of a measure which had for a considerable period occupied much of Napoleon's thoughts, and which, regarded at the time (almost universally) as the very master-stroke of his policy, proved in the issue no mean element ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... difficulty, amounting almost to an impossibility, of supplying the wing of the army most distant from the railroad, and the probability that Johnston's army was stretched into a line even thinner than his own, it will not seem strange that he concluded it was time to try whether a bold stroke would not break through the Confederate defences and rout his adversary. I am saying this from the standpoint of our own experience in the wooded and sparsely settled region we were operating in. From a European point of view, an aggressive ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... veil for love of him; to you, Monsieur de Barbanchois, who fortified against him the dwelling of your lady love; to you, Monsieur de la Ferte, who lost to him one evening your Castle of Senneterre; to you, Monsieur de Vauguyon, whose shoulder should still remember the stroke of his sword." ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent pur, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... given her a finishing-stroke, and very likely have stove in our bottom and followed her," he answered. "I like to hear you ask such questions; they show that you think. The event you have spoken of occurs very frequently, I suspect. Numbers of vessels leave ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... would do you any good, prob'ly it wouldn't," said Druse shyly, shifting the glass from one hand to the other, "but I used to stroke Ma's head lots, when she had a chance to set ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... in assent. Her simple words made him feel that he was indeed far from his own land and surrounded by a thousand perils. The woman did not speak again and they moved on with an even stroke down the canal which had an uniform width of about thirty feet. They were still passing houses of stone and others of adobe, but before they had gone a mile they were halted by a sharp command from the shore. An officer ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sometimes not in the least amusing. All these and other sought-for knots are lost in the admirable smoothness of this reed, which waves in the winds of time with unwitherable greenness, and slips through the hand, as you stroke it, with a coaxing tickle. To praise its detail would again be idle—nobody ought to read such praise who can read itself; and if anybody, having read its first page, fails to see that it is, and how it is, praiseworthy, he never will or would be converted if all the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... told him, "in which I never do a stroke of work—sacred to the frivolities alone. I shall send Morton in to see what you will have to drink, while I change my habit. You must have something after that walk. I ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... returned Aper, at that stroke of raillery. It is not enough for Messala, that the oratory of ancient times engrosses all his admiration; he must have his fling at the moderns. Our talents and our studies are sure to feel the sallies of his pleasantry [a]. I have often heard you, my friend ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... caught hold of Abe's axe, and struck the first blow. To my surprise and delight the tree sounded hollow. I repeated the stroke. The sharp axe went crashing inwards. The tree was hollow to the ground; on the side where I had commenced chopping, it was ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... knowing look. She was at once elegant and rakish; the gamin in her was obviously the touch of caviare to season the woman of fashion. The mixture made an extraordinarily attractive ensemble. As she jumped to the ground, throwing her reins to a groom, her jump was a master-stroke; it landed her squarely on her feet; even as she struck the ground her hands were thrust deeply into her pockets. The man seated beside her, who now leaped out after her, seemed timid and awkward by contrast with her alert precision. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and their distinctions are affairs of experience, conjunctions that are experienced must be at least as real as anything else. They will be 'absolutely' real conjunctions, if we have no transphenomenal absolute ready, to derealize the whole experienced world by, at a stroke. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... from being the monument of Drusus, was only one of the arches built by Caracalla in a more ornamental way than the rest, as was commonly done when an aqueduct crossed a public road. This theory does away at one fell stroke with the idea so long fondly cherished that St. Paul must have passed under this very arch on his way to Rome, and that his eye must have rested on these very stones upon which we gaze now. It is hard to ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... were dismayed forthwith, and began to fly. The Count's people stood firm a little longer, gathering round their Lord; but my Cid was in search of him, and when he saw where he was, he made up to him, clearing the way as he went, and gave him such a stroke with his lance that he felled him down to the ground. When the Frenchmen saw their Lord in this plight they fled away and left him; and the pursuit lasted three leagues, and would have been continued farther if the conquerors had not had tired horses. So they turned back and collected ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... mighty one, under whose shade I, and the queens of my race before me, have dreamed for centuries. Thou art fallen beneath the stroke of Heaven, and great was thy fall, and I am fallen with thee. Save me from the Red Death, O Spirit of my tree, that in the land of ghosts I still may sleep beneath ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... Vere sat silently listening as the song grew louder and louder, till the boat was almost in the shadow of the islet, and the boy, with a strong stroke of the left oar turned its prow towards the pool over ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... it is certainly true, that with great powers of mind, wit and humour were his shining talents.' Mrs. Piozzi confirms this. 'Mr. Murphy,' she writes (Anec. p. 205), 'always said he was incomparable at buffoonery.' She adds (p. 298):—'He would laugh at a stroke of genuine humour, or sudden sally of odd absurdity, as heartily and freely as I ever yet saw any man; and though the jest was often such as few felt besides himself, yet his laugh was irresistible, and was observed immediately to produce that of the company, not merely from the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... like the letter Alif, a straight perpendicular stroke. In the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the origin of every alphabet (not syllabarium) known to man, one form was a flag or leaf of water-plant standing upright. Hence probably the Arabic Alif-shape; while other nations preferred other modifications of the letter ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... bold enough to kill or separate those terrible animals?" Seeing that not one of them stepped forward, and that the proposal alone made them shudder: "Well," added he, "'tis I then who will perform the feat." He accordingly descended from his place, drew his sword, killed the lion, at another stroke cut off the head of the bull, and then looking fiercely at the railers: "Know," said he to them, "that stature adds nothing to courage, and that I shall find means to bring to the ground the proud persons who shall dare to despise me, as little David laid low the great ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... dear capricious sky In every infinitely varied mood— Yet under her maternal wings can lie The smallest chick among her countless brood! Praise! that I hear the strong winds wildly race Their chariots on the sea, But feel them lift my hair and stroke ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... now growing clear even to herself that Charles being dead, she had not determination sufficient within her to break tidings which, had he been alive, would have imperatively announced themselves. And thus with the stroke of midnight came the turning of the scale; her story should remain untold. It was not that upon the whole she thought it best not to attempt to tell it; but that she could not undertake so explosive a matter. To stop the wedding now would cause a convulsion in ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... caused representations to be made in that royal Council, that this royal Audiencia should refrain from making appointments in which the children and relatives of the auditors occupy the best offices of war, without ever having fired an arquebus in their lives. These men become captains at one stroke, to the grievance of the old soldiers who have served, just as if your Majesty had not provided for this by making such men incapable of offices—in which intention, I consider, enter the offices of justice ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Gilbert A. Pierce, of the Territory of Dakota. The Legislature, composed of residents, the previous year passed a bill conferring Full Suffrage on women, which was vetoed by the Governor, an outsider appointed a short time before by President Chester A. Arthur. With a stroke of the pen he prevented the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... caught these words: "Sweet Jesus, receive my spirit; sweet Jesus, be merciful unto me; sweet Jesus"—he seemed to be going on, when the sentence was broken and the voice for ever hushed, the executioner severing his Lordship's head from his body, which he did at one stroke. Then the executioner took up the head, and at the several quarters of the scaffold elevated it with both his hands, crying with a loud voice, "Behold the head of a traitor! God save King George!" When he had ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... The cannon's stroke throws customs down The black and bottomless abyss, And quaking are the gilded crown And palsied feet of prejudice. The guns have killed, but it is true They bring to life things good and new. God grant they ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... better place a few yards further on," said Big Otter, who pulled the stroke oar. "I know every foot of the country here. It is ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... bands. The female one was easily distinguished by her smaller size, and her beard was considerably less than that of the male. The beards seemed to be objects of special attention with both—especially the male, as every now and then he was observed to stroke it down with his hand, just as a dandy may be seen doing with his moustache ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... them: fierce Spaniards with slender blades as red as the crimson borders of their white coats; wild Numidian riders that always fell upon the rear of Rome's battle; serried phalanges of Africans, veterans of fifty wars; naked Gauls with swords that lopped off a limb at every stroke; Balearic slingers whose bullets spattered one's brains over the ground; Cretans whose arrows could dent an aes at a hundred yards; and above all, over all, the great mind, the unswerving, unrelenting purpose that had blended all these elements ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... With a fierce curse Abner bade her stop his disturbance, and again the poor mother had hands and heart full to silence the still recurring sobs of the child. At last, after the midnight cocks had ceased to send their challenges from farm to farm, after some remote church-clocks had clanged one stroke on the damp wind, they began to pass through a large village; no lights burned in the windows, but white fences gleamed through the darkness, and sharp gable ends loomed up against the dull sky, one after another, and the horse's hoofs flashed sparks from the paved street before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... am supported in this feeling by the unanimous practice, if not the confessed opinion, of all artists. The painter of portrait is unhappy without his conventional white stroke under the sleeve, or beside the arm-chair; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird, unless he can throw a window open, or set the door ajar; the landscapist dares not lose himself in forest without a gleam of light under its farthest branches, nor ventures out in rain, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... full of lamentation, Near that cross she wept her passion, Whereon hung her child and Lord. Through her spirit worn and wailing, Tortured by the stroke and failing, Passed and pierced the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... eyes as her father, although they were not so pale and watery as his, and the same coloured hair, for his must also have had a reddish tinge before it became grey. And that was why Mrs. Tiralla so often turned away when the child had wanted to get on her lap and, with clumsy little fingers, stroke her cheek. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... elephant division, began to wander over the field, crushing those beasts around him like Indra himself crushing the mountains. And we beheld elephants slain in that battle by Bhimasena, each with only one stroke (of his mace), like hills riven by thunder. And many elephants, huge as hills, were slain there, having their tusks broken or temples, or bones, or backs, or frontal globes. And others, O king, deprived of life, lay there with foaming mouths. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... very Words keep solemn Pace with the Herse which incloses her once animated, now lifeless, Form. Step by Step we still attend her; turn with the Horses as they take the Bye-road to Harlow-place; start with the wretched, guilty Family, at the first Stroke of the mournful tolling Bell; are fixed in Amazement with the lumbering heavy Noise of the Herse up the paved inner Court-yard: But when the Servant comes in to acquaint the Family with its Arrival, and we read this Line, He spoke ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... alleys, where opium was opening the gates to bliss and perdition; but, with a step that was agile and graceful, he went on, his arteries tingling in anticipation of the senses' gratification. Once a mongrel slunk out of a lane, and he called to it. It crawled up to him, and he stooped down to stroke its head, when, with a yelp of terror, it leaped out of his reach and ran back into the lane. As if it was the best of jests, he laughed aloud, and picking up a stone, sent it hurtling after the cur. Then he was suddenly ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... priests to defend, and practise, and perpetuate, this corrupt and damnable worship in this realm. The ink wherewith the signification of royal assent was given to that iniquitous measure was hardly dry when the fatal rot commenced its work of destruction; and as the stroke was unheeded, and there was no repentant effort to retrace the daring step of the first iniquity, but rather a disposition to multiply transgression, we are now visited with a second and a severer ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... begin their flight. It is pleasant to travel as we do in a family party, not like the chaffinches and strutting cocks. Among their species the males fly by themselves, and the females by themselves: that, to say the least of it, is not at all seemly. What a miserable sound the stroke of the swans' ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... grandiloquence, that bore away her soberness in moments of elation; though even the most captious must presently have smiled at the humor of her descriptive touches, her dexterous exposure of folly and pretension, the swift stroke of her bright wit, her shrewd discernment, promptitude, and presence of mind. The reverential, too, might have been pained at the sternness wherewith popular men, measures, and established customs, were tried and found guilty, at her tribunal; but even while blaming her aspirations ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... up because she could no longer sit still. His pain was almost more than she could bear. At the moment she would have given life just to be allowed to lay her hand soothingly on his shoulder or to stroke his bowed head. As it was, she could barely give herself the privilege of taking one step toward him, and even in doing this she was compelled to keep behind him, lest she should ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... great pomp on the Lord's Day, a mass being said at the castle by the Bishop of Blois, who was a great friend of the lord of Montcontour; in short, the feasting, the dancing, and the festivities of all sorts lasted till the morning. But on the stroke of midnight the bridesmaids went to put the bride to bed, according to the custom of Touraine; and during this time they kept quarrelling with the innocent husband, to prevent him going to this innocent wife, who sided with them from ignorance. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... few of his contemporaries can boast. We wish to emphasize to those readers who are familiar with The Conservative's editorial policy, that the lines appear practically without revision; every bold conception and stroke of genius being Mr. Cole's own. Two couplets in particular delight the ear and the imagination, proving the author's claim to distinction as a poet of the purest ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of Mahadeva must fill his mouth with air and then, shutting his lips, strike his cheeks, letting the air gently out at each stroke, and helping it with air from the lungs for keeping the current steady. By doing this a kind of noise is made like Bom, Bom, Babam, Bom. Mahadeva is himself fond of this music and is represented as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... knew very well, had been all too common in the old slavery days, and not a few of them had been projected into the new era. Sins, like snakes, die hard. The habits and customs of a people were not to be changed in a day, nor by the stroke of a pen. As family physician, and father confessor by brevet, Dr. Price had looked upon more than one hidden skeleton; and no one in town had had better opportunities than old Jane for learning the undercurrents in the lives ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... away shortly after that frightful explosion, but, on reaching the arbour, I found the thirty-two rats, toes up, killed by the one and same stroke of lightning. No doubt the iron wires of their cage had attracted the electric fluid ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... sweat, his hands clammy. He slackened his speed. Why was he walking so fast? He would get there too soon: how embarrassing to be the first arrival! Then he saw by the next baker's shop it was on the stroke of ten, and terror lent him wings. How much more embarrassing to arrive ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... came not with senselessness of the majesty of God when he came to pray, as the Pharisee did, and as sinners commonly do. For this standing back, or afar off, declares that the majesty of God had an awful stroke upon his spirit: He saw whither, to whom, and for what, he was now approaching the temple. It is said in that 20th of Exodus, That when the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, and all these ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lifting the canoe with every stroke of the paddles, and she threw the water from her bows like a little steamer. We were soon up with the caribou, and I pulled my hat down over my eyes while the deed was done. We were so close that George thought he would try to kill him with his pistol. When I looked ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... in the West had got the better of them, and were slowly increasing our lead, before Italy, by joining us, increased the Allies' advantage at a stroke by over three-quarters of a million fully mobilised men, and much more than ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... a wrinkle or two about "rough-and-tumbles" in the years I traded to Yokohama, and though my heart was in my mouth and it was plain to me that this was the crisis of the night, when a single unlucky stroke or misspoken word might undo all that chance had done for us, I nevertheless kept my wits about me, and letting the man turn me round as he willed I presently caught his arm between both of mine and almost broke the bone of it. Upon which he lifted up a cry you might have heard at the sword-fish ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... (fig. 10).—Knots should be avoided in white work. To fasten on, in hemming, turn the needle backwards with the point up, take one stitch, and stroke and work the end of the thread in, underneath the turning. To fasten on, in back-stitching or running, make one stitch with the new thread, then take both ends and lay them down together to the left, and work over them, so that they wind in, and out ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... We drew our swords, hallooed, and leapt out; and the knaves never stayed to see how many of us there were, but made off like the dastards they were, but not till one had dealt poor Stewart this parting stroke. He hath been bleeding like a sheep all the way home, and hath scarce spoken but a thanksgiving for our having come in time, as he called it, and to ask for Dr. Bennet ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extra strain on your heart. If you add to this physical exercise, especially exercise that you are not accustomed to—such as shovelling snow, pushing an automobile, or even walking fast or far—you are risking a heart attack, a stroke, or other damage to your body. In winter weather, and especially in winter storms, be aware of this danger, and ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense
... afraid of the very sleep of the lion; you fear that you will never be easy before having pared his nails and cut his mane. Well, then, after you have placed him in this predicament, what will be the consequence? Have the allied sovereigns reflected? You think only of repairing, by a single stroke, the calamities of twenty years; and, carried away by this idea, you never perceive the changes which time has made around you, and that for Austria to gain now, at the expense of France, is to lose. Tell your sovereign to take that into consideration, Count ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... he found out, he went to the owners of the estate and made them a bid for it. The consequence was that they shortened my option and gave me very little chance indeed to find the money. When your sister offered it, it certainly seemed a wonderful stroke of fortune. I could give her eight or ten per cent, whereas she would only get four anywhere else, and I should make a profit for myself of over ten thousand pounds, which I cannot do unless I find the ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... troubling himself to answer, gave the malicious creature one single stroke with his paw, and he did not move again. The girls had run away, but the bear called after them, "Snow-white and Rose-red, do not be frightened; wait, I will go with you. Recognising the voice of their old friend, they stood still, and when the bear came up to them his skin suddenly fell off; and ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... tearing asunder your heart's dearest chords, to deliver your country from the parricidal stroke of fierce rebellion. Brave woman! concealing with Spartan fortitude the sorrow in your heart, that your gallant husband may be strengthened in his noble aim—shall these things be done and suffered in vain? No, no; believe it not. The clouds may gather, reverses ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to his senses later and wanted to change the stipulations; but experienced melon growers dissuaded him from it in time: "Drop it. They'll kill you," they told him simply and firmly. And so, through this very stroke of good luck every member of the gang was now earning up to four roubles a day. They all worked with unusual ardour, even with some sort of vehemence; and if it had been possible to measure with some apparatus the labour of each one of them, then, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... gentleman," proceeded Pledge, "had two dear friends, called Richardson and Heathcote, to whom he confided his stroke of business, and who joined him in concealing or disposing of the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... of departure had been fixed for ten o'clock. At the first stroke, the commander, Mr. Marsilas, had the anchor hoisted, and rang the bell to warn all visitors to leave ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... beat the Rice out of the husk; which they do with an Ebeny Pestle before mentioned. They lay the Rice on the ground, and then beat it, one blow with one hand, and then tossing the Pestle into the other, to strike with that. And at the same time they keep stroke with their feet (as if they were dancing) to keep up the Corn together in one heap. This being done, they beat it again in a wooden Morter to whiten it, as was said before. This work tho it be very hard, belongeth only to the women: as also to fetch both wood and water. The wood they bring ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... will pull through this attack," he said briskly. "It's a leaky valve. There is only one rule that I have to lay upon you. It is absolutely vital that he shall not be excited. A blow with an ax would be no more fatal than another such stroke." ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... In the evenings a few old friends, persons employed at the ministry who owed their places to Bridau, came for a game of cards with the two widows. Madame Descoings still cherished her trey, which she declared was obstinate about turning up. She expected, by one grand stroke, to repay the enforced loan she had made upon her niece. She was fonder of the little Bridaus than she was of her grandson Bixiou,—partly from a sense of the wrong she had done them, partly because she felt the kindness of her niece, who, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... made for the special business in hand. The British Empire doubtless, like Topsy, "growed"! It is more an exhibition of race luck than genius. The way in which we occasionally drop the right man in the right place is not an act of Government so much as a stroke of chance. We make awful bloomers in these matters sometimes, but in this case our luck stood by us to some purpose. More than once, when the timidity of the "Politicals" had almost destroyed Russian faith ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... stroke; And hardly stirred: She never spoke A single word: And not a sound or murmur broke The quiet, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... of conjecture. Will the fellow continue on the same course? Has he seen our periscope in the second it was exposed, and is he running away from us? Or, on the contrary, having seen us, will he put on full steam and try to run us down with a fatal death stroke from his prow? ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... it, is it?" said the magician; and out flashed a steel dagger. At it they went, striking their weapons against each other with might and main. At every stroke Gaspar's wooden dagger became sharper and sharper, and when he left off fighting he found it was changed into good steel; but it was useless to hope for victory from such a combatant, who might have pierced him through and through at any moment, as Gaspar very soon ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... from a desire to put the finishing stroke to a busy day, or simply that a window with the inscription "Telegraph!" on it catches his eye, he goes to the window and expresses a desire to send off a telegram. Taking up a pen, he thinks for a moment, and writes on a blue form: "Urgent. Traffic Manager. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... banners, of the which sir Christopher Valdenare, that time Castelaine of Rhodes, gate one: the other was in the hands of Sir Iohn Bourgh Turcoplier of England, chiefe captaine of the succours of the sayd posterne of England, a valiant man and hardy: and in holding of it he was slaine with the stroke of a hand-gunne, which was great damage. The sayd banner was recouered by one of our men. And after long fighting on both sides, the enemies seeing that they got nothing but stripes, returned into their trenches. At the sayd fray the lord prior of S. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... hoe in the manner seen in Fig. 26, where the graves of his ancestors occupy a part of the land. Angleworms were extremely numerous, as large around as an ordinary lead pencil and, when not extended, two-thirds as long, decidedly greenish in color. Nearly every stroke of the spade exposed two to five of these worms but so far as we observed, and we watched the man closely, pulverizing the soil, he neither injured nor left uncovered a single worm. While he seemed to make no effort to avoid ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... do not call them by their names but by certain numbers, each man of them having a number allotted to him in accordance with his place in the boat, and the first man they call stroke, but the last man bow; and when they have done this for about fifty miles they come home again, and the rate they travel at is about twenty- five miles an hour; and let no one think that this is too great a rate, for I could say many other wonderful things in addition concerning ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... is dangerous to be in the way of bullets even as an amateur; for, as I stood gazing down, I felt a sudden stroke like a shock of electricity. I staggered, and was on the point of rolling over the cliff, when Grapnel darted towards me. I just felt myself grasped by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... that of Zain; the name of Samech is possibly the origin of Sigma, while the form of Samech is that of X which has not taken over a Phoenician name. lt is probable that the form @ is an abbreviation in writing from right to left of the earlier @, and @ of the four stroke @. That the confusion of the sibilants was not coufined to the Greeks only, but that pronunciation varied within a small area even among the Semitic stock, is shown by the difficulty which the Ephraimites found in pronouncing "shibboleth'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fracture are more or less damaged according to the weight and shape of the impinging body. Fracture of both bones of the leg from the passage of a wheel over the limb, fracture of the shaft of the ulna in warding off a stroke aimed at the head, and fracture of a rib from a kick, are illustrative examples ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... such perfect blows you are half satisfied. Feeling conqueror, my wrath was soothed; I bent to have a look at my ruffian, and ask him what cause of complaint gipsies camping on Durstan could find against Riversley. A sharp stroke on the side of my neck sent me across his body. He bit viciously. In pain and desperation I flew at another of the tawny devils. They multiplied. I took to my heels; but this was the vainest of stratagems, they beat me in nimbleness. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... anywhere. Julia's looks were an evidence of the fact that made it indisputable; and after the first starts and exclamations, not a word was spoken for half a minute: each with an altered countenance was looking at some other, and almost each was feeling it a stroke the most unwelcome, most ill-timed, most appalling! Mr. Yates might consider it only as a vexatious interruption for the evening, and Mr. Rushworth might imagine it a blessing; but every other heart was sinking under some degree of self-condemnation ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "The enemy had basely quitted the first entrenchment and set all on fire, as they did all the rest, without striking a stroke." The President of Panama also writes that the garrisons up the river, on receiving news of the fall of Chagre, were in a panic, the commanders forsaking their posts and retiring in all haste to Venta Cruz. ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... bending to it. A big fellow, named Rory McKinnon, was setting the stroke. There was a kick and a heave to every stroke, and the men encouraging each other. "Now—now—give it to her," was all that I could hear coming out of him. All this time we in the dory were coming on behind, Clancy and I having ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... and fell about a month ago in her room. She was lame for some days; and I can see she isn't quite the same. Mother thinks it was a stroke. She is old, you know, and if she should be laid up! She clings to me so. You see, she misses Nora, who was running in and out, and the young girls who came here, and—oh, Ben, I am ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... some instances, seemed to have been cut from their foundation, and thrown ten feet distant. The large stone fountain in the Plaza was thrown many yards. The cotton factory, which was built on the edge of a ravine, was by one stroke reduced to fragments. Such was the force of the concussion, the looms smashed each other, the carding-machines were thrown on their sides, and the roof, with part of the machinery, was found in the river below. The proprietor was killed. Throughout ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest began. By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder was broken; he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human binders he could get. That first day in the fields blistered her hands, burnt her face and neck, made every nerve ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with the sublunary details of pounds, shillings, and pence. They speed on the wings of the post to the house of mourning, with the benevolent purpose of comforting the afflicted household. They are the first, after the stroke of calamity has fallen, to mingle the business of life with its regrets; and to cover the woes of the past with the allowable vanities of the present. Step by step, they lead their melancholy patrons ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... information that Richard Cockin, of Doncaster, a Friend universally known and respected in the Society, had been physically disabled by a stroke of paralysis. R. C. himself wrote at the same time to John and Martha Yeardley, describing his affliction, which he received with childlike resignation as a message of love from ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... 21st, 1795,[63] after speaking of the discussions in the papers concerning the treaty, and alluding to the efforts made to give it effect as the boldest act of Hamilton and Jay to undermine the government, he says, "a bolder party stroke was never struck. For it certainly is an attempt by a party who find they have lost their majority in one branch of the legislature, to make a law by the aid of the other branch and of the executive, under colour of a treaty, which shall bind up the hands of the adverse branch from ever ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... absolute, which leads ever to the same intoxication, but the same disasters. Always mad for the war between nations, for the war of classes, for universal peace. It seems as if when humanity stuck its nose out of the boiling mud of the Creation, it had a sun-stroke from which it has never recovered, and which, at intervals, subjects it ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... March 19, 1799, and made a profound impression. The composer at once began work on a second oratorio, founded on Thompson's "Seasons." The desire for work was strong within, but his health was failing. "'The Seasons' gave me my finishing stroke," he often ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... and wonder at such odds 'Twixt things that were the same by birth; We look on kings as giants of the earth, These giants are but pigmies to the gods. The humblest bush and proudest oak Are but of equal proof against the thunder-stroke. Beauty and strength, and wit, and wealth, and power Have their short flourishing hour, And love to see themselves, and smile, And joy in their pre-eminence a while; Even so in the same land, Poor weeds, rich corn, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... began to lash the crowd and ride over them, while the people covered their faces with their arms, and run away, afraid of the whips, which cut and wound and kill, as each lash has little lead bullets fastened to them and a stroke of the whip is like being shot with buck shot or kicked ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... harbor as the barge was urged over the water, the current seething and buzzing under her bows, and bubbling into her wake as she flew on toward the town. In a mahogany box at the stern sat a bushy-whiskered coxswain, whose body swayed to the stroke of the oars, while his hand grasped the brass tiller as he steered amid the shipping. The commodore had settled himself down under the boat's awning on the snow-white covered cushions in the stern-sheets, and, with one foot resting on ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... appointed to the lifeboat—he was therefore installed, with much rejoicing, in his old position as a rescuer of human lives. Joe Slag, naturally and pleasantly, also fell into his old post at the bow. Nellie found that Aunt Betty had had what the villagers called "a stroke" during her absence; which crushing blow had the effect of opening her eyes to many things regarding herself and others, to which she had been particularly blind before. It also had the effect—indirectly—of subduing much of the evil in her character and bringing out much of the good. ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... wrought-iron plate is not quite flat: it sticks up a little, here towards the left—'cockles,' as we say. How shall we flatten it? Obviously, you reply, by hitting down on the part that is prominent. Well, here is a hammer, and I give the plate a blow as you advise. Harder, you say. Still no effect. Another stroke? Well, there is one, and another, and another. The prominence remains, you see: the evil is as great as ever—greater, indeed. But that is not all. Look at the warp which the plate has got near the opposite ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in exactly on the stroke of three; after he came up in the elevator he had waited in the corridor, humbly obedient to Mern's directions ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... for so many years; and of all of us, his nephews and nieces grown up around him, your mother alone. The modest, lovable qualities of the youngest sister he did not seem able to see. It was I who felt most profoundly this unexpected stroke of death falling upon the family less than a year after I had become its head. It was terribly unexpected. Driving home one wintry afternoon to keep me company in our empty house, where I had to remain permanently administering the estate and at tending to the complicated ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... have blunted the heart, or the world's numerous interests have multiplied its resources. Men's minds have been turned when they have not well sifted the cause themselves, and their fortunes marred, by one stroke on the affections of their youth. So at least have I read, Madeline, and so marked in others. For myself, I knew nothing of love in its reality till I knew you. But who can know you, and not sympathise with ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... humble cots. This scarce I lead, who left on yonder rock Two tender kids, the hopes of all the flock. Had we not been perverse and careless grown, This dire event by omens was foreshown; Our trees were blasted by the thunder stroke, ) And left-hand crows, from an old hollow oak, ) Foretold the coming evil by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... "A master-stroke," he said, pressing Banneker's hand with his soft palm. "We're glad to have you with us. Won't you call me up and ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... no need to despair. Assurances reached Tone every day that the defeat and humiliation of England was a settled resolve of the French Government, one which they would never abandon. And for a time everything seemed to favour the notion that a direct stroke at the heart of England was intended. In the latter part of 1797 the Directory ordered the formation of "The Army of England," the command of which was given to General Buonaparte. Tone's heart again beat ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... stroke of good fortune that for some reason the pursuit was no longer apparent. The dim woods behind seemed to have swallowed up sight and sound of the broken men, who, at fault, were following up their quarry to the castle of Mac-Cailen Mor instead of to that of Baron Lamond. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... our lugger, we zigzagged on our course, the men pulling with regular stroke, and though they row sturdily the boat is merely held, and drops down rather than advances. If salmon are not in the humour harling presents the elements of monotony, and the wise plan seems to me not to think of the rods, nor look at them, nor wonder which will be first in ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... time he called at his aunt's he had remarked something strange, something disturbing, in Rachel's candid demeanour towards himself. He had made an impression on her! He had given her the lightning-stroke! No shadow of a doubt as to his own worthiness ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... was abashed, but he had come to find hiaqua and he went on digging. At every thirteenth stroke the leader of the otters tapped the stone elk with his tail, and the eleven followers tapped the snow with their tails. Once they all gathered closer and whacked the digger good and hard with their tails, but, though astonished and badly bruised, he went on ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... Next, at the close of the month of November, came the news that the British Government had bought the shares in the Suez Canal, previously owned by the Khedive of Egypt, for the sum of L4,500,000[94]. The transaction is now acknowledged by every thinking man to have been a master-stroke of policy, justified on all grounds, financial and Imperial. In those days it met with sharp censure from Disraeli's opponents. In a sense this was natural; for it seemed to be part of a scheme for securing British influence in the Levant and riding roughshod over the susceptibilities of the French ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the world to spare Mel the ordeal before her, but that was impossible. He put more power into his stroke and ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the others of the older generation plunged into the water without ado and struck out for the other shore, using a fast double-overarm stroke. Swimming in a wide circle they came out upon the apparatus and went through a series of methodical dives and gymnastic performances. It was evident that they swam, as Orlon had intimated, for exercise. To them, exercise was a necessary form of labor—labor ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... settlers roared with laughter at the joke, They recognized a gentlemanly fellow pulling stroke: 'Twas ROBINSON—a convict, in an unbecoming frock! Condemned to seven years ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... her grandfather's side to endeavour to compose him after the shock of gladness. But it had been too much for his enfeebled powers. Another stroke came on before the day was over, and in two or three days more old Martin Fulford was laid to rest, and his son's ducats were expended on masses for his ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... slipper and lives with another man's wife; he talks of nothing else; at last he goes to sleep with his own wife (he has not slept with her for the last eight years), he is agitated and the whole time talks about Z. Finally he has a stroke, his arm and leg are paralyzed—and all this from agitation about Z. The doctor comes. With him too N. talks about Z. The doctor says that he knows Z., that Z. now wears two boots, his leg being well, and that ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov |
