"Tussle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a select audience. Soon, I don't know where the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is, but after a bloody tangle and tussle in the trodden grass, feeling very queer about the head, I awake, and augur justly that the victory is not mine. I am taken home in a sad plight, to have beef-steaks put to my eyes, and am rubbed with ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... as missionaries, he exerted all his influence in our favor. His influence was not slight, for the Pope had conceived a great friendship for him, and heaped all sorts of honors on him. Well, he had a regular tussle with his Holiness about us and our cause, and when the Holy Father repeated some things said of me—against me, of course—he replied: 'Your Holiness, I should not be at all surprised if some fine day you yourself would have to canonize one of these Yankee fellows.' ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... questions of animal life is that which concerns their plays. Most animals are given to play. Indeed that they indulge in a remarkable variety of sports is well known even to the novice in the study of their habits. Beginning when very young, they gambol, tussle, leap, and run together, chase one another, play with inanimate objects, as the kitten with the ball, join in the games of children and adults, as the dog which plays hide and seek with his little master, and all with a knowingness and zest which makes them the best of ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... boxing, fisticuffs, the manly art of self-defense; spar, mill, set-to, round, bout, event, prize fighting; quarterstaff, single stick; gladiatorship^, gymnastics; jiujitsu, jujutsu, kooshti^, sumo; athletics, athletic sports; games of skill &c 840. shindy^; fracas &c (discord) 713; clash of arms; tussle, scuffle, broil, fray; affray, affrayment^; velitation^; colluctation^, luctation^; brabble^, brigue^, scramble, melee, scrimmage, stramash^, bushfighting^. free fight, stand up fight, hand to hand, running ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... momentary confusion from this cause the Tom seized an opportunity of pouring in her boarders, while the Bona redoubled her fire, both of great guns and musketry, to cover their attack. After a fierce tussle the Americans were driven back to their own ship; but this success was won by the loss of four of Captain Cock's best hands, who received disabling wounds in the fight. Thereupon both privateers resumed the cannonade, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... in Mafeking were disposed to grumble at the small part they seemed to be playing in the great tussle in which England was engaged, the authorities were satisfied that for so small a town to have kept occupied during the first critical month of the war 10,000—and at later stages never less than 2,000—Boers, was in itself no small achievement. We women always had lots ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... child was scarcely hurt! It had got squeezed and scratched a little in the final tussle; that ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... far away in Kansas, were hurried by rail through Denver to Cheyenne, marched thence to the Black Hills to cut the trails from the great reservations of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail to the disputed ground of the Northwest; and here we had our own little personal tussle with the Cheyennes, and induced them to postpone their further progress towards Sitting Bull and to lead us back to the reservation. It was here, too, we heard how Crazy Horse had pounced on Crook's columns on the bluffs of the Rosebud that sultry morning of the 17th of June and showed the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... we must bear in mind," said Clif, who had been doing some quick thinking. "I'd like nothing better than to give them a lively tussle. But here are these important dispatches. They must not fall into Spanish hands. The New York will soon be due. If we delay ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... said he, preparing for a tussle, "what is the matter, my dear maestro?" but Ercole had expended most of ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Hellenic horse were drawn up like an ordinary phalanx four deep, the barbarians presenting a narrow front of twelve or thereabouts, and a very disproportionate depth. There was a moment's pause, and then the barbarians, taking the initiative, charged. There was a hand-to-hand tussle, in which any Hellene who succeeded in striking his man shivered his lance with the blow, while the Persian troopers, armed with cornel-wood javelins, speedily despatched a dozen men and a couple of horses. (11) At this point the ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... tussle, but she did want him at the top. She had not told Madame Beattie about the manuscript growing and growing on Jeff's table every night. It was his secret, his and hers, she reasoned; she hugged the knowledge ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... all the generations of Osborne; rallying instantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with another so indicative of resolution and defiance that the elder man quailed in his turn, and looked away. He felt that the tussle was coming. "Mrs. Haggistoun, let me take you down to dinner," he said. "Give your arm to Miss Swartz, George," and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so," agreed Hiram. "Well, the Dawsons are worse than pirates. They won't give up that airship without a tussle, I ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... settlers took care to be well armed, for they met with savage wild boars, with which they often had a tussle. They also, during this season, made fierce war against the jaguars. Gideon Spilett had vowed a special hatred against them, and his pupil Herbert seconded him well. Armed as they were, they no longer feared to meet ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the fust tussle, Al," he said. "I shan't desert now, not till the next break-out, anyhow. I cal'late it'll get me harder than ever then. Harder than ever—yes, yes. And you won't be here to help ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... her little peace in that struggle, a struggle that came to the edge of physical conflict. There were moments when it seemed to her that nothing remained but that good old-fashioned connubial institution, the tussle for the upper hand, when with a feminine horror she felt violence shouldering her shoulder or contracting ready to grip her wrist. Against violence she doubted her strength, was filled with a desolating sense of yielding nerve and domitable muscle. But just short of violence ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... voyage. Many a time on charging a large ice-floe the stem of the ship glided upwards until the bows were raised two or three feet, then the weight of the ship acting downwards would crack the floe beneath, the bow would drop, and gradually the ship would forge ahead to tussle against the [Page 23] next obstruction. Nothing but a wooden structure has the elasticity and strength to thrust its way without injury ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Huysman snorted again, even as a war-horse that snuffs the fray. This time Franklin Marmion seemed to recognise the implied challenge, for he looked round the crowded theatre with a curious smile, which seemed to say: "Yes, gentlemen, I see that some of you are getting ready for a tussle. I am in hopes of being able to ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... his tussle with the tangled underbrush, his old clothes had some fresh tears, and his hands ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... run into the danger of giving the Nipe enough time to complete his work on his communicator." He looked at Stanton and chuckled, but there was no humor in his short laugh. "We would not wish our friend, the Nipe, to bring his relatives into this little tussle, ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... past twenty years, whenever the great political parties have lined-up for their regular once-in-four-years' tussle, there would be found Henry H. Rogers, calm as a race-track gambler, "sizing-up" the entries, their weights and handicaps. Every twist and turn in the pedigrees and records of Republicans and Democrats are as familiar to him as the "dope-sheets" ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... grasped the end of the linen dust-robe was closed in an almost convulsive grip. When he met Christopher's gaze he glanced angrily away without speaking, and then finding himself face to face with his grandfather's scowl he jerked impatiently in the opposite direction. It was clear that the tussle of wills had as yet wrung only an enforced submission ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... two cougars in the grass, and we could not make out what it meant. Finally one made a spring, and it seemed to us that he jumped at least twenty feet, and he landed on a deer, and for a minute or two there was a tussle. While this was going on Jonnie and I were getting closer to them, and when they had the deer killed we were within gunshot of them, and they didn't eat much before we killed them both. We skinned ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... either of these letters till the 13th of September, when he writes from Dalkeith House, where he has gone for the home-coming of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh. After expressing his mind in the plainest terms about the bishop with whom Hume had the tussle—"He is a brute and a beast," says Smith—he goes on to bespeak Hume's favour for a young cousin of his who happened to be living in the same house with Hume in London, Captain David Skene, afterwards of Pitlour, who was in 1787 made inspector of ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... perfectly well what a funny picture she must make, with the wrapper that was so much too large for her, only kept in place by the big puff sleeves: and with the puppies pulling away for dear life, it the train. When she reached the screen door, she had a tussle with them, one by one, taking a sort of reef in the trailing skirt as each puppy was successfully disposed of, until all of it was clear of the sharp little teeth, and she could bang the ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... her to leeward. There's not much climbing in getting on board of a gun-boat; indeed, we were at it before we were out of the boat, for the Frenchmen had pikes as long as the spanker-boom; but we soon got inside of their points, and came to close work. They stood a good tussle, I will say that, and so they always do. We may laugh at 'em, and call 'em Johnny Crapows, but they are a right brave nation, if they aren't good seamen; but that I reckon's the fault of their lingo, for it's too noisy to carry ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... testimony of all who remember him, a "powerful twister," "square built and strong as an ox," "the best-made man that ever lived;" and everybody knew the contest would be close. Lincoln did not like to "tussle and scuffle," he objected to "woolling and pulling;" but Offutt had gone so far that it became necessary to yield. The match was held on the ground near the grocery. Clary's Grove and New Salem ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... said the policeman, not caring to have a single-handed tussle with the human savage, whose strength and desperate character ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... last of the ladies rose to go. Abner was just about to throw open the stable door, preparatory to giving his hobbies an airing, when a latch-key was heard operating in the front door of the house itself. Then came a man's quick step, a tussle with a heavy winter overcoat, and Whyland ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... such specialized words as 'harpoon,' 'belligerent,' 'pocket-money,' and combinations like 'battailous grip'; while throughout the entire translation are scattered modern colloquialisms like 'boss' (master), 'tussle,' 'war-tug.' ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... next room. Through the door he heard the irritated tones of Madame Desvarennes, to which Micheline answered softly and slowly. The mother threatened and stormed. Coldly and quietly the daughter received the attack. The tussle lasted about an hour, when the door reopened and Madame Desvarennes appeared, pale and still trembling, but calmed. Micheline, wiping her beautiful eyes, still wet with tears, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... theaw craddinly carl!" cried Ashbead, doubling his horny fists. "Odds flesh! whey didna yo ha' a tussle wi' him? Mey honts are itchen for a bowt wi' t' heretic robbers. Walladey! walladey! that we should live to see t' oly feythers driven loike hummobees owt o' t' owd neest. Whey they sayn ot King Harry hon decreet ot we're to ha' naw more monks or ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a little shrewder as readers of human character, or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they would have kept quiet; but it was not long before they began to push again, and at last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place. The preacher was in the ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... sir," cried Tom, with a bit of a shake, and a torrent of remarkably good French not to be disregarded; then he burst into a laugh. And the urchin laughed too, thinking this much better fun to tussle with the tall lad, than to hang around a parcel of girls. And presently a woman came and took little blue pinafore off, and then the rest of the girls unclasped their hands, and the ring melted away, and the game ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... are like a lot of young animals," Frank observed. "They must have a certain amount of tussle and wrestle in order to develop their muscle. They'll need a lot of it ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... together down a twenty-foot slope of bald rock. They landed in a crevice full of roots, with a violence that half-stunned them and threw them apart. As they picked themselves up, it was plain that the exile had had the best of the tussle. His rich black fur, to be sure, was somewhat torn and bloody, but he showed no other signs of battle; while his antagonist breathed heavily and held one paw clear of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be good fur you ter snap that pistol at me, Andy. I jest heard you say't mebbe you had killed her, meanin' Iris. Now what hev you ben up to?—let's hear right down quick, or thar'll be a tussle right hyar ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... pitch into somebody was so strong you couldn't resist. You are a sort of Berserker, Dan, and something to tussle with is as necessary to you as music is to Nat," said Mr. Bhaer, who knew all about the conversation between the boy and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... of all the blows aimed at them by their opponents, and drove it back again into the middle of the ground. Then on they flew to drive it back still farther. Both parties met in the centre. There was a fierce tussle. The hockey-sticks kept striking each other, but none struck the ball. Blackall had gone farther back to catch the ball, should it be driven past the front rank of his party. Ernest had retired behind his friends for the same ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... talking to Jean-Christophe, and standing as near to him as she could, and on the click of the door they had darted apart as quickly as possible, covered with confusion. Frau von Kerich had pretended to see nothing. Minna was almost sorry. She would have liked a tussle with her mother; it would ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... by the most terrible part in which mortality can be grappled. Insane with pain, Israel dashed his adversary's skull against the sharp iron. The officer's hold relaxed, but himself stiffened. Israel made for the helmsman, who as yet knew not the issue of the late tussle. He caught him round the loins, bedding his fingers like grisly claws into his flesh, and hugging him to his heart. The man's ghost, caught like a broken cork in a gurgling bottle's neck, gasped with the embrace. Loosening him suddenly, Israel hurled him from him against the bulwarks. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... a villain as that!" thought Pike. "It would have been better if one of the shots fired by that burglar fellow they call the 'Whitechapel, Devil' had taken effect; six times he fired, and then we had a good ten minutes' tussle before I ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... when Charles was thus prudently gathering strength for the final tussle, the people of Liege also indulged in repose, counting on Sunday being a day of rest, that is, the major part of the burgher folk did within city limits. But another plan was on foot among some of the inhabitants of an outlying region. An attack ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... In a tussle between one big boy and four small ones, the odds are usually in favour of the former, but Dangle on the present occasion did not find his task quite as easy as he expected. The juniors defended themselves with great tenacity, and although the senior's blows came home pretty ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... held honor, and often, more than fair ability. The preponderance of ministers in every generation may, also, still gladden the heart of the argumentative ancestor whose dearest pleasure was a protracted tussle with the five points, and their infinitely ramifying branches, aided and encouraged by the good wine and generous cheer he set, with special relish, before all who could meet ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... we began; and long before we were through with the tussle, peculiar shrilling cries caught our attention, and, turning to face down stream, we saw a dense cloud approaching—skimming along and above the river: a shrilling, moving cloud, keeping all the while to the river, but reaching ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... bargained to race you against no patrol-wagons," said Gallegher to his animal; "but if they want a race, we'll give them a tough tussle for it, ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the first time in the game a cry began to arise for a touchdown, that only students hungry for a touchdown can emit. Louder and more insistent it grew in volume as the players began to settle back again for a renewal of the desperate tussle. Even many Marshall fellows took part in the demand, for, as they loudly proclaimed, it would make the game much more interesting if their team had a handicap in the start to fight against, since they always did their best work when forced to exert ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... wife and child while he pursued remorselessly against us his war of surprises and massacres, I cannot tell. The alliance, however, was a fact. Defeated in his attempt to check our advance from the sea, he retreated with his usual swiftness, and preparing for another hard and hazardous tussle, began by sending his wife with the little girl across the Pequena range of mountains, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... were made. It was accounted a first-class port by Canute and proved a place of contention between Alfred and the Danes. At one time eight churches stood within the walls and a castle erected by the Conqueror overawed the inhabitants until the tussle between John and the Barons led to its destruction. The churches that remain are three in number, and two are of much interest. St. Martin's, on a high bank at the northern entrance to the town, is a restored Saxon ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... see that she is prettier and prettier every day and doesn't he know that there's many a boy that would be glad to call her "wife;" and isn't he sure there'll be bloody times if any of them attempt to take her from him! And as the sleep gets a faint mastery over him, and he dreams of a tussle with Mike Dugan—all on Nannie's account—the brawny arms strike outward, and the doubled fists come with such force against the innocent plastering, as to bring Mrs. Bates's nightcap to the bedroom door to see if thieves are ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... know, on the canal path that beastly afternoon," he began. "I was jolly well ashamed of myself for having made love to Beatrice, and all the rest of it, and you were mad with rage. We had a sort of tussle and you threw me into the canal. It was a nasty dark spot just underneath the bridge. I expect I was stunned for a moment, but it was only for a moment. I came to long before I choked, and when I remembered your grip upon my throat, I decided I was safer ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... father's finger, as if he felt that justice was tempered with mercy, and had gone to sleep a sadder and wiser baby. So held, John had waited with a womanly patience till the little hand relaxed its hold, and while waiting had fallen asleep, more tired by that tussle with his son than with ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... pass. Just as we came up, two of these copper-coloured Dons had squeezed themselves through, without their muskets, but with their short sabres in their hands. They are active dangerous fellows those Spaniards in a hand-to-hand tussle. One of them sprang at me, and if it had not been for my hunting-knife, I was done for, for I had no room to swing my axe; but as he came on I hit him a blow with my fist, which knocked him down, and then ran my knife ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... that Dante carried himself valiantly; not, indeed, that I saw him at all till the tussle was over and such of our enemies as were left taking to their heels as nimbly as might be. But I had it on the word of Messer Guido, who could see as well as do, and who told me the tale, that our friend ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a toothless old woman, and Utgard-Loki told her to wrestle with Asu-Thor. The story is not a long one. The harder Thor tightened his hold, the firmer the old woman stood. Then she began to exert herself, Thor tottered, and at last, after a violent tussle, he fell on one knee. On this Utgard-Loki told them to stop, adding that Thor could not desire any one else to wrestle with him in the hall, and the night had closed in. He showed Thor and his companions to seats, and they passed the night, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... must they be boys to be instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may wrangle and agree on equal terms. We must reach some solution, some shadow of consent; for without that, eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not wish to reach it cheaply, or quickly, or without the tussle and effort wherein ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the fight that followed put a bullet in his leg," replied the sheriff. "It was in the tussle that Jan got his ankle sprained, but your guide landed his man. Sometimes Jan may seem slow, but in a rumpus he's a terror for speed, decision, and grit. We were heading up the White Trail, hoping to head you off, when we ran ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... Full o' Moon," and played the Fool while the Wise Man died. The nurses and doctors had listened with open-eyed wonder and secret enjoyment; she had allowed them to peep into a new world too full of charm and lure to be denied; and then of a sudden she had settled down to a silent, grim tussle with the "Gray Brother." ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... back a little as the beautiful bay reefed and plunged forward, enjoying the speed as much as his rider. Jim was a length or so behind on Monarch, whose one ambition at that moment was, in Murty's words, "to get away on him." It was plain that the boy was exulting in the tussle. The sunlight gleamed on the black horse's splendid side as they dashed ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the tourneys round about. He had done some pretty tricks at archery, but was strongest at wrestling and the quarter-staff. For three years he had cast all comers to the earth in wrestling until the famous Eric o' Lincoln broke a rib for him in a mighty tussle. Howsoever, at quarter-staff he had never yet met his match; so that there was never a squire in Nottinghamshire dare ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... and close with one another, like tigers springing on their prey, or dragons playing with a ball. Each is bent on throwing the other by twisting or by lifting him. It is no mere trial of brute strength; it is a tussle of skill against skill. Each of the forty-eight throws is tried in turn. From left to right, and from right to left, the umpire hovers about, watching for the victory to declare itself. Some of the spectators back the east, others back the west. The ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... a hound on the scent. "Baila!" and, a stick being handed him, he performs the gymnastics of his country, a sort of war-dance without accompaniment. "El can!" and, giving him a broom, they loose the dog upon him. A curious tussle then ensues,—the dog attacking furiously, and the blind man, guided by his barking, defending himself lustily. The Chino laughs, the master laughs, but the visitor feels more inclined to cry, having been bred in those Northern habits which respect infirmity. A real dismisses the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... no means a feeble member of the force. Recovering from his astonishment in a moment, he sprang up and grappled with Ned Frog in such a manner as to convince that worthy he had "his work cut out for him." The tussle that ensued was tremendous, and Mrs Frog retired into a doorway to enjoy it in safety. But it was brief. Before either wrestler could claim the victory, a brother constable came up, and Ned was secured and borne away to a not unfamiliar cell before he could enjoy ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... told her the whole story,—how Gilmore had seen the men, and had come up to him; how he had gone out and had a tussle with one man, whom he had, as he thought, hurt; and how he had then caught ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... she could resent nothing Hallam ever did save that morbid talk of his. She had been fighting with this spirit ever since she could remember, and their brief "tussle" over, she crept closer to him along the old stone wall ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... his rival, as if he would eat his way into his wind-pipe. Heavier than Tom Tortoiseshell is the Red Rover by a good many pounds;—but what is weight to elasticity—what is body to soul? In the long tussle, the hero ever vanquishes the ruffian—as the Cock ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... hog big as an alarm clock. The fight was over, I feel with bruin I wakened five days later in a lath and plastered room with my son and both partners working over me. I was much surprised when they told me I had enjoyed the tussle five days before. I could not talk my tongue was fastened up so it might heal, I was all bandages and plaster paris I layed here seven weeks, then the boys carried me back to camp where I gave orders and gradually recuperated. I never recovered from the blow on my ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... by the Peloponnesians, and one they captured with all her crew. The rest were saved by the valour of the Messenian soldiers, who had followed the movements of Phormio's vessels along the shore, and now did good service by boarding the stranded triremes, and hauling them to land, after a sharp tussle ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... look into the sweaters' hells as much as it looks into the factories, and into the stores, and establishments of men who do not mean to be cruel or more cruel than you are, and I should be, but who, in the tussle and competition of life, are led to take part in a system which is sweating and destroying life which is as brave and worthy as any of theirs. I wish to create a public opinion which shall make these exigencies of toil impossible in our modern life. You and I must do something not only to lift ...
— Silver Links • Various
... and wild and lonesome." On the right hand, scrub firs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with the gulf winds, grew thickly. On the left were the steep red sandstone cliffs, so near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than the sorrel might have tried the nerves of the people ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... looks, captain," replied the youth quickly—"especially the looks of a man who has just had a hand to hand tussle with a savage. But, to tell the plain truth, Captain Gascoyne, I would indeed rather have had to thank your worthy man, John Bumpus, than yourself for coming to my aid, for although I owe you no grudge, and do not count you an enemy, I had rather ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... a tussle; you see I'd bruised and sprained myself so badly; but I got out after a bit, and—and—made an old man who was passing down the main road with a horse and cart hear me. The rest was ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... and then getting astride of his chest, he applied the turnkeys and pulled away for dear life. Unfortunately, he had got hold of the wrong tooth, and the poor man screamed as loud as he could; but it was to no purpose, for Sam had him fast, and after a pretty severe tussle out came the sound grinder. The young doctor now saw his mistake, but consoled himself with the thought that as the wrong tooth was out of the way, there was more room to get ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... and that worthy seaman, after a short tussle with his nerves, shuffled after him. The skipper, brushing aside the mate, who sought to detain him, descended first, and entering the cabin stood hesitating, with Bill ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... ourselves good watch-dogs. And here," continued the old man, exultingly, "are a couple of sovs. for yourself. 'Give them to that tall young fellow,' says Squire, 'as you posted by the Decoy Pond, for he knows how to use his fists.' Why, that 'ere chap as you had the tussle ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the mate. He saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max that he would harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as if rejoiced at their giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max, sorely scratched, bit, pinched, and every way aggravated, though of course without a serious bruise, cried out "enough!" and the assailants were ordered to quit him; but though the three O'Briens ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... came to meet him; not touching the earth with its feet, but keeping about a foot above it—the shroud fluttering after it. When it had come up with the sportsman, it made a rush at him; but the dog seized hold of it by its bare calves, and began a tussle with it. When the moujik saw his dog and the corpse grappling with each other, he was delighted that things had turned out so well for himself, and he set off running home with all his might. The dog kept up the struggle until cock-crow, when the corpse fell motionless to the ground. ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... him. He next turned his arms against a valiant freebooter, Adam Gordon, who lurked with his band of outlaws in the dense beech woods of the Chilterns. With the capture of Adam Gordon, after a hand-to-hand tussle with Edward in which the king's son narrowly escaped with his life, the resistance in the south ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... for a moment on the porch, looking in through the lighted window. A romping game was in full progress. This time it was "Drop the Handkerchief" and a plump and pretty girl was having a tussle with her captor. Everybody was shouting, clapping. Everybody? On an old settle by the fire sat a slim girl in a white gown. Peggy lay in the curve of her arm, and she was ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... tussle between a cowboy and an exquisitely dressed Eastern youth, in which comedy bit the so-called dude disarmed the Westerner and drove him into a corner till his sweetheart bursts in to protect him from the "wild Easterner," ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... fine scenery in man and his destiny, and would have seen something ludicrous, it may be suspected, in the spectacle of a grown man running to hide his head in the apron of the Mighty Mother whenever he had an ache in his finger or got a bruise in the tussle for existence. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... your life he does his best to queer you once in a while, too!" said the clothing man. "I know I had a tough tussle with one not a great while ago down in Pittsburgh. Last season I placed a small bunch of stuff in a big store there. I had been late in getting around but the merchant liked my samples and told me that if the goods delivered ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... on," Andrew replied in a confidential tone; "he is not much good with the bow, and his lady mother does not like it if he goes home with a crack across the face, and I don't think he likes it himself; he is but a poor creature when it comes to a tussle." ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... of all but the bare necessaries of life, but even they for a family of ten are considerable, and it was a mighty tussle to get both ends within cover of meeting. We felt the full force of the heavy hand of poverty—the most stinging kind of poverty too, that which still holds up its head and keeps an outside appearance. Far more grinding is this than the poverty inherited ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... our "quarters" showed an array of rather slender, lean-checked chaps. But then I made no doubt, that, in a sea-tussle, these lantern-jawed varlets would have approved themselves as slender Damascus blades, nimble and flexible; whereas these Britons would have been, perhaps, as sturdy broadswords. Yet every one remembers that story of Saladin and Richard trying their respective blades; ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... them forward, and, finding that, as he had expected, the Frenchmen had boarded the Aurora with all their available strength, leaving only some five-and-twenty men on board the brig to handle her, he, after a short, sharp tussle, drove these men below and secured complete possession of ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the calibre of these combatants, there occurs a phenomenon very like that which takes place among the lower classes, during the terrible tussle called "the savante," which is fought with the feet, as the name implies. Victory depends on a false movement, on some error of the calculation, rapid as lightning, which must be made and followed almost instinctively. ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... have seen my tussle with the "Edinburgh." I saw the chance last Friday week, as I was going down to read the "Carol" in St. Martin's Hall. Instantly turned to, then and there, and wrote half the article. Flew out of bed early next morning, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... at her good friend; but her lips closed tightly together. Ellen knew all that Vera did; but the nurse loved her still! The child was to have many a tussle with the hard mistress whose chains she had worn all her short life, but Truth had spoken, and she had heard; and Love was coming to help in setting ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... at him. He had to get at close quarters, for he could not tell when Miller would change his mind and elect to fight with a gun. The man had chosen a hand-to-hand tussle, Dave knew, because he was sure he could beat so stringy an opponent as himself. Once he got the grip on him that he wanted the big gambler would crush him by sheer strength. So, though the youngster had to get close, he dared not ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... fairly well; but Bertram did much the best. He got the prizes, whereas his cousin did but nearly get them. He went up from class to class above the other, and when the last tussle for pride of place came on at the close of their boyish career, Bertram was the victor. He stood forth to spout out Latin hexameters, and to receive the golden medal, while Wilkinson had no other privilege but to sit still ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... went on, "I could buy favor for you at the school, by telling the story of your bravery—a sort of honor for you; but, G. W., I want you to win your own position there, just as you always have, so far. It will be a tussle, but I think you'd ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock
... excitement. But the chief and Allerdyke, Fullaway and Appleyard, Miss Slade and Rayner stood in a little group on the grass and looked at each other. Eventually, all looks except Rayner's centred on Miss Slade, who, somewhat out of breath from her tussle, was settling her hat and otherwise composing herself. And it was Miss Slade who spoke first when the party, as a party, ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... but my knife; I hed let go o' my rifle when I slid from the mar's back, an' it hed gone to the bottom long since. I wan't in any condition to stand a tussle with the painter nohow; so I 'wur determined to let him alone as long's ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... realized, though, that there was some one else around. And just as I'd unearthed the bag, which had been mysteriously returned to its hiding-place, you appeared out of somewhere, young man, fell on me like a thousand of bricks, and we had a grand old tussle. I'll give you credit for being some wrestler, but I was getting the best of it, when along came you others with that terrible beast and did the business ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... spectral-like, uprose before his mental vision, and he spent a bad quarter of an hour trying to adjust himself to his surroundings; his previous sunny philosophy having a tough tussle with the sudden realities of things as they were. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... sir. I never saw the people in better spirit," answered the second lieutenant. "They are like a bull-dog with a captured bone. They are not inclined to yield it without a desperate tussle." ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... about my own goodness, I guess," Burton went on quietly. "That's why I got it in the neck this way. But it took the sand right out of me. It seemed that all the years of tussle were in vain and I wasn't worth a little yaller dog's respect, and here the school was looking to me to do big things. It took it right out of me, Harrie. Do you know what was the trouble with the first two ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... your stratagem, you young schemer," said Larry. "What do you think, Jack? Are you equal to a good tussle with ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... under her very nose; and there it cut a splashy groove, missing her off hindfoot by an inch, and scattering black mud over her. It frightened me much more than Winnie; of that I am quite certain: because though I am firm enough, when it comes to a real tussle, and the heart of a fellow warms up and tells him that he must go through with it; yet I never did approve of making a cold ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Antaeus! Get up this minute, and take your pine-tree walking stick in your hand. Here comes another Giant to have a tussle with you." ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I pay only ten cents a plug for my smoking tobacco, and other things accordingly. Somebody has said something about the good Lord sitting up in Heaven and laughing at the jokes He plays on men. Well, I'm sitting back and laughing now and then at the tussle between men and money over all creation. There's a whole lot of humour in the way men and women fight and die for money, if you only take time to stand out on the side and look on. There's nothing big or dramatic about it. I may be a heathen, but to my mind the funniest of all things ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the ebb," said the man, as he put the bond in his pocket. "I shall stay on board; we have a moonlight night, and if we had not, I could find my way out in a yellow fog. Please to get your boats all ready, manned and armed, for there may be a sharp tussle." ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... just then. She did not faint as she had done once before that day, but she looked as if she should die. One sharp cry, instantly suppressed, for Afy did retain some presence of mind, and remembered that she was in the public road—one sharp tussle for liberty, over as soon, and she resigned herself, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I saw the bundle of bank-notes in his hands, the sweep! I would have let him kill me sooner.... Oh, we had a sharp tussle, I give ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... everybody out I can. But enough people have been exposed to it already to spread the disease all over the city. Three more cases to-night. Mrs. Smelts' symptoms are very suspicious. Dr. Adair is coming himself at nine o'clock to give instructions. It's going to be a tussle all right!" ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... you? Got to keep us all straight, and develop all our characters. Poor girl, you'll have a hard tussle!" ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... had hands of steel and velvet, and fear was an unknown quantity to him. Ann watched the ensuing tussle between man and beast with unequivocal admiration. The mare, a big raking bay, with black points and a white blaze, sulkily obeyed her rider's curbing hands upon the bridle whilst they rode through the lanes, but when they emerged upon the wide, swelling sweep of the downs, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... mesmerise the animal by looking him full in the eyes. But the ferocious look on the bear's face, a pair of fierce twinkling eyes, an open mouth with its rows of sharp teeth, and a long red tongue dripping with saliva, warned him that mere mesmerism would be useless if he were to avoid a tussle. There was only one other exit besides the door, so without further ado he sprang for ... the open scuttle. He wormed his way successfully through the small orifice with some loss of dignity and greatly to the detriment of his Sunday trousers, flopped ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... but I wasn't going off on those terms. I damned him to his face and he tried to shut the door on me. We were talking at the front door all this while, I may mention. I got my foot in the way, and as I was always a bit stronger than Simon, I had that door open after a tussle and then I followed him ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... between the two leaders, who fired forth balls at each other at close distance, every one going to its mark, and one leaving an indelible impress upon Speug's ingenuous forehead. They then came to close grip, and there was a tussle, for which both had been waiting for many a day. From fists, which were not quite ineffectual, they fell upon wrestling, and here it seemed that Redhead must have the advantage, for he was taller in stature and more sinuous in ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... beg your pardon, Sam," said Rob. "I really admire your hydroplane very much, and I think it will give us a tussle for the trophy, all right; but I don't think she'd be much good in any kind of ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... then another, and at last he came back, wet and dripping from his tussle with the river, and cursing ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... girls who were finally picked for the deciding tussle, five wore the dark green uniforms that had identified them the previous year as the official freshman team. They were Judith, Jane, Adrienne, Christine Ellis and Marian Seaton. Among the other five contestants, Barbara Temple and Olive Hurst, both of last year's practice team, ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... his word; but the polite major got up a little ceremonious tussle with Toole in the hall. However, it was no more than a matter of half-a-dozen bows and waves of the hand, and 'after you, Sir;' and Toole entered, and after a general salutation in the style of Doctor Pell, he established himself ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... affords. He even needlessly puts on fetters now and again, that he may find sharper zest in his effort. This ravenous appetite for technic leads many an artist to go outside his own art in search of unforeseen but fascinating difficulties. The painter is tempted to stretch his muscles by a tussle with the unknown obstacles of the sculptor; and the sculptor in his turn contends with the limitations of the painter. Michelangelo called himself a sculptor and pretended to be no more; but in time he took up the craft of the architect, of the painter and of the poet. And this ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... fell to me to have a tussle with Honest Tom when he was Minister for Defence in the Federal Government. About ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... the hands of the Russians;" and Green gave an account of what had happened, adding, "Had it not been for an old friend of mine, who warned us of the approach of the troops, we should ourselves have been over powered, or at all events have had a pretty hard tussle for it." ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... this he endured, though he was in a horrible fright. Then one, the black-haired girl with a bold, proud face, came and stood closely before him and looked him full into his eyes. He gave her look for look. She put a hand on each shoulder and kissed him. After that there was a tussle among them, for each must do what her sister had done. They took a kiss apiece, or maybe more; then, circling round him, they swept him forward on the wind, past Silent Water, over the Edge, out on the fells, on and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... primitives was less strong than is ordinarily supposed, but which in early boyhood reaches forth its hands, industriously, if not always wisely, after concrete, tactual knowledge and proprietorship. So also with the impulse to tussle and to revel in the excitement of a contest; inhibited, it explodes; neglected, it degenerates; but directed it goes far toward the making of a man. Evidence of this intensity, zest, and pressure of young life is never wanting. ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... was a trout—a big and somewhat lazy fellow, who allowed me to bring him to the top of the water, and to wait (with him well in hand, however) to see what his next movement would be. As he appeared to be reticent about troubling me with an orthodox tussle, I gave him no further grace, but winched him in and netted him out. His colours faded at once, and the dirty grey mottlings which broke out upon his sides proclaimed him a degenerate. One other big ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... him in Neptune—the college fountain. There was a tussle, and his hand was cut by a bit of broken piping. You perhaps don't know that he made a speech last week, attacking several of us in a very offensive way. The men in college got hold of it last night. A man who does that kind of thing ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
