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Bolstered   Listen
adjective
Bolstered  adj.  
1.
Supported; upheld.
2.
Swelled out.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bolstered" Quotes from Famous Books



... That promise of green bolstered their weary spirits for a last exhausting effort. Once again they were faced with a series of islet leaps, and now they carried with them brush culled from the bigger tussocks to aid in times ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... Death had begun the decomposition of the sick man's body even before it was a corpse. At the door of the chamber Hugo caught the sound of hoarse, stertorous breathing. He entered, and saw on the mahogany bed an almost unrecognizable form bolstered up on a mass of cushions. Balzac's unshaven face was of blackish-violet hue; his grey hair had been cut short; his open eyes were glazed; the profile resembled that of the first Napoleon. It was useless to speak to him unconscious of any ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... and it was not until the 17th century that any serious resistance was made. During almost the whole of that century an acute controversy raged about the meaning and the scope of the Sovereignty of the Seas. The English case was bolstered up by doubtful documents, such as an alleged Ordinance of King John, said to have been issued at Hastings in 1200, but now acknowledged to be ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... my slippers, and was walking down stairs on tiptoe, holding up my linsey-woolsey frock, when I saw the door of my great-grandfather's room ajar. I pushed it open, went in, and saw a very old man, his head bound with a red-silk handkerchief, bolstered in bed. His wife, grandmother-in-law, sat by the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... what he was doing at that moment—it was shady and deliciously cool. The green of the cedar and spruce and balsam was close about him, inset with the silver and gold of the thickly-leaved birch. He discovered that he was bolstered up partly against the trunk of this birch and partly against a spruce sapling. Between these two, where his head rested, was a pile of soft moss freshly torn from the earth. And within reach of him was his own kit pail ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... indulge this strong wish; might, indeed, be dangerous to oppose it. Ruth bolstered up the weak old frame with pillows, and lit two candles to give the letter its best chance to be read. She found her mother's spectacles, though in doubt whether they could enable her to read the dim writing, written with ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... head still more dubiously, till I got down and bolstered up his courage with a small piece of gold. They're all alike; their courage ebbs and flows on a golden tide, if you'll let me indulge in a bit of unnecessary hyperbole. He worked the scow around end on to the bank, so that we could drive on. The team wasn't a bit stuck ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... me in New York again, alone this time and installed in a comfortable two-room suite instead of an attic. A reassuring bank account bolstered up my courage while the work was getting ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing

... or other prejudice. At these times it is otherwise, at least in Great Britain and America; and the sentence to be passed on the piece or the player, in common with most other popular decisions, too often turns on the great master hinge of party spirit or personal prejudice. Imbecility is bolstered up, and merit blasted by the clamours of an ignorant and corrupt few, who, with roar and ruffian impudence spread their perverted opinions, and at last pass them through the ignorant multitude with the current stamp of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... was a more or less safe anchorage for light draft craft. There was a pier. At least it was called a pier by the more reckless. It was propped and bolstered in every conceivable way to keep it from sinking out of sight in its muddy bed, and became a source of political discord on the subject of its outrageous cost ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... the first place, Lowell is not open as a manufacturing town to the capitalists even of New England at large. Stock may, I presume, be bought in the corporations, but no interloper can establish a mill there. It is a close manufacturing community, bolstered up on all sides, and has none of that capacity for providing employment for a thickly growing population which belongs to such places as Manchester and Leeds. That it should under its present system ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... thousand miles from the lights of the restaurants in Piccadilly, the men religiously observe the English ritual of dressing for dinner, for when the mercury climbs to 110, though the temptation is to go about in pajamas, one's drenched body and drooping spirits need to be bolstered up with a stiff shirt and a white mess jacket. That the stiffest shirt-front is wilted in an hour makes no difference: it reminds them that they are still Englishmen. Nor, in view of the appalling loneliness of the life, is it to be wondered at that the Chinese ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... of the tumor is clearly developed, I generally attempt its removal, and, when most prominent by the side of the larynx, I proceed in the following manner:—Having cast the beast, turned the occiput toward the ground, and bolstered it up with bundles of straw, I proceed to make an incision through it, if the skin is free, parallel with, and over, and between the trachea and sterno-maxillaris, extending it sufficiently forward into the inter-maxillary spaces. If I find it ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... after Minnie's cousin Ida had come to reside with them, the little girl was taken suddenly ill. When she was partially recovered, it was curious to see her sitting bolstered up in bed, with so many ...
— Minnie's Pet Dog • Madeline Leslie

... me bread when you had left me to starve.' It came to her as pitiful that her cousin, swaggering and unconscious, at a great distance, should be undone because these men quarrelled near her. He moved stiffly round again—he was so bolstered over with clothes against ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... wonder what she means." Then placing her hands on Elfreda's shoulders she raised her to a sitting position on the couch and dropping down beside her put one arm over her shoulder. Miriam promptly sat down on the other side, and being thus supported and bolstered by their sympathetic arms, Elfreda gulped, gurgled, sighed and then said with quivering lips, "I wish I had taken your ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... said she had had the blues and she wanted to be gay. So I mixed some cocktails and she took two, and she certainly was gay. I didn't know Penelope drank cocktails, but of course it was all right—lots of women do. Then she wanted to sit on the divan and she bolstered me up with pillows. She said she liked divans. I hate to tell you ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... the midst of these delicacies when, to the sound of music, Trimalchio himself was carried in and bolstered up in a nest of small cushions, which forced a snicker from the less wary. A shaven poll protruded from a scarlet mantle, and around his neck, already muffled with heavy clothing, he had tucked a napkin having a broad purple stripe and a fringe that hung down all around. On ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... overlooked the bay, the windows open and the awnings down. He saw a young woman seated before a small table covered with tea things, and a tall young man standing near by. Mr. Locke stood just inside the door, but what warmed Jarrow's heart and bolstered his courage was a picture of Dinshaw's island which lay on a divan. There was the proof that the old captain had talked ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... of Berlin (1878) adjusted once more the disorganized affairs of the Sublime Porte, and bolstered as well as was possible the "sick man." But he lost a good part of his estate. Out of those provinces of his dominions in Europe in which the Christian population was most numerous, there was created a ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... had just then occurred to her. "But, thank goodness, out here there aren't any conventions. Every one lives as every one sees fit. It isn't the best thing for some people," she added drearily. "Some people have to be bolstered up by conventions, or they can't help miring in their own weaknesses. But we don't; and as long as we understand—" She looked to ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... of one of the biggest wrecking companies of the coast hurried to Razee and flocked around the maimed steamer—Samaritans of the sea. Gigantic equipment embraced her; great pumps gulped the water from her; bolstered and supported, as a stricken man limps with his arms across the shoulders of his friends, the steamer came off Razee Reef with the first spring tide in July, and toiled off across the sea in the wake of puffing tugs, and was shored up and safe at last in a dry ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... commenced to curve in such a manner that his lungs were seriously affected. It was only a question of months before the slight thread, by which his life hung, would be snapped. Mavis knew of many cases in which enfeebled lungs had been bolstered up for quite a long time by a change to suitable climates; she was eager to know if the same held good in her ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... sister-in-law opened the door for me, and exclaimed, 'Oh! I am so glad you have come; John is dying. The doctors say he cannot possibly live above two hours, and probably not one.' When I went up to his room, he sat bolstered up in a chair, and appeared to have fallen into a doze. I sat down, about five feet from him, and when, in about two minutes, he opened his eyes and saw me, he started up, with agony pictured on his face and in the tones of his voice, exclaimed, 'O! Mr. P——, ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... cover up the loss of the money, which he had conveyed from the house in the little saw-mill. Since the arrival of the yacht, it had even been conjectured that she was the property of Levi, who had paid for her with the ill-gotten gold. This theory, explained and bolstered up with specious argument and sophistical evidence by the constable, rather staggered many people who believed in Levi. If the young man's character had been doubtful, the theory would have been plausible; for, after ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... twice she saw inwardly the will-o'-the-wisp lights of her soul. But resolutely she smothered the sparks and bolstered up ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... shoulder crushed by a terrific blow, together with minor bruises from head to heels—and yet none to be considered serious. They had carried me up the shattered stairs to her room, and I lay there bolstered up by soft pillows, and between clean sheets, my eyes, feverish and wide-awake, seeking out the many little things belonging to her scattered about, ever reminded of what had occurred, and why I was there, by my own ragged, stained uniform left lying upon ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... later, and Tom had grown too weak to be dressed. Part of the time he lay bolstered up in bed, but even this taxed his strength too heavily. He had become very much wasted, and was little more than a skeleton. All hope of his recovery had been given up, and it was now simply a question of how long he could be kept alive. Bob and Herbert brought him choice fruits, and drew liberally ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey

... was blurred, but it was easy still to read the abbreviation of the State's name,—Kentucky. It had come by way of New York and the sea. The sick man reached out for it with avidity from the large bed in which he sat bolstered up. He tore it open with unsteady fingers, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... which Mesdames Stone, Flight, and Darling were the guiding stars. Old Pegleg seldom left his piazza now except to go to bed or dinner, and did not much care what was said or done around him so long as he was left in peace. The post surgeon had bolstered him up again, after a few days in bed, so that he could sign papers, and while he retained the nominal command of the garrison, Leonard was its virtual and actual head, for when July came only one detachment of the Fortieth remained with the ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... Miantonomoh, and his Narragansetts, with the result of the overthrow and death of Miantonomoh. In the subsequent years war broke out several times, but by the intervention of the federal commissioners, who bolstered up Uncas, ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... crowded; every berth had been sold; the train was loaded with holiday travelers, and the ever interesting bridal couple had the drawing-room. The aisle was cluttered with valises and suitcases; the porter was feverishly making down a berth; while bolstered on a pile of pillows, surrounded by a number of anxious faces, lay the sick woman, the source of the commotion and the anxiety. Sobs followed groans, and exclamations followed sobs— apparently only an intense effort of self-control kept her from screaming. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... this, and he immediately directed his companions to lend their assistance. Atwood and the vicar bolstered the old man up, and the admiral put the writing materials before him, substituting a large quarto bible for a desk. Sir Wycherly, after several abortive attempts, finally got the pen in his hand, and with great difficulty traced six or seven nearly illegible words, running the line diagonally ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... never a wish to be in them. Nothing seemed to interest her so much, as the new experience and dignity that had fallen upon Beatrice; and for hours they would chat together of the new plans, and tender little fancies, which Bea had not the courage to confess to others, and Ernestine, bolstered up with pillows, would listen, and now and then, do a little of the pretty work that was going on to ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... his great chair, and Joyeuse was half lying on the foot of the bed in which the king was bolstered up, when ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... 'Tis now proved in the face of all the world that a Walpole illegitimate is better than a German Royalty; for he might have married where he would. No doubt but Horry Walpole always thought so, yet 'tis not always we see our family pride so bolstered. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... ill, and obliged to keep her bed for several days. One morning she lay bolstered up with pillows, Fidelle keeping her position close under the arm of her mistress, when a particular friend of Mrs. Lee called, and was ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie

... is my brother, and yours too, Carl Schummel, for that matter," answered Peter, looking into Carl's eye. "We cannot say what we might have become under other circumstances. WE have been bolstered up from evil, since the hour we were born. A happy home and good parents might have made that man a fine fellow instead of what he is. God grant that the law may cure ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... that Mrs. Sutton had bolstered the Aylett will and stoicism into stanchness at this closing scene. In a fit of despondency, she had that morning imparted to Mabel the fact that she had written to Frederic, ten days before, and had no answer, although she had ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... in the service of his country of course adheres to his party. That Cicero was wrong in supposing that the Republic, which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be admitted; that in trusting to Pompey as a politician he leaned on a frail reed I admit; but I will not admit that in praising the man he was hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. In our own political contests, when a subordinate member ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... deep affection for the boy restrained my anger at his silence. The love and sympathy which bolstered up my faith in him were reinforced by his gentle breeding and high mental quality; but circumstances forced me reluctantly to admit that the story he told when he first came was not true. Page Hanaford was not only under a shadow, but also was undoubtedly ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... with scarce ten minutes' warning, Huldah could hardly believe her eyes and ears. She jumped from her couch of anguish and remorse like an excited kitten, darted out of the house unmindful of the lightning, drove the Jersey calf under cover, chased the chickens into the coop, bolstered up the tomatoes so that the wind and rain would not blow the fruit from the heavily laden plants, opened the blinds ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Northern State passed personal liberty laws which were designed to prevent the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and their constitutional justification was found in the supremacy of the States and bolstered by the opinion of Judge Story, delivered in 1842,[11] which said that no private citizen need obey an unconstitutional law, state or national, but he takes the risk of having the courts decide it constitutional and of ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... what we want; to be known by our character, and not by our color; to be permitted to take whatever position in society we are fitted to fill. We do not want to be bolstered and propped up on the one hand, nor to be crushed and trampled down on ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... to come and see her. When he went he found the little, dry, hard-eyed woman in a terrible passion. She had forgotten all about Marcus Aurelius and the composure of a philosopher, and the effect of anger on the nervous system. She was bolstered up in bed, for she had had another bad fit, but she was brisk enough in her manner and fierce enough ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... illustrious Farinaceus and Matthaeus, 'confessio extrajudicialis in se nulla est; et quod nullum est, non potest adminiculari.' It was totally inept, and void of all strength and effect from the beginning; incapable, therefore, of being bolstered up or supported, or, according to the law phrase, adminiculated, by other presumptive circumstances. In the present case, therefore, letting the extrajudicial confession go, as it ought to go, for ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... and both to answer the etymology of the name, which in the Phoenician tongue is a word of great signification, importing, if literally interpreted, "The place of sleep," but in common acceptation, "A seat well bolstered and cushioned, for the repose of old and gouty limbs;" senes ut in otia tuta recedant {60}. Fortune being indebted to them this part of retaliation, that as formerly they have long talked whilst others slept, so now they may sleep as ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... in the bloom of his power, the Supreme Legislature were hacking out a Bill for the Sub-Montane Tracts, a revision of the then Act, smaller than the Punjab Land Bill, but affecting a few hundred thousand people none the less. The Legal Member had built, and bolstered, and embroidered, and amended that Bill till it looked beautiful on paper. Then the Council began to settle what they called the 'minor details.' As if any Englishman legislating for natives knows enough to know which are the minor and which are the major points, from the native point of ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... these persistent suitors, however, Hypatia gently broke the news that she was wedded to truth, which is certainly a pretty speech, even if it is poor logic. The fact was, however, that Hypatia never met a man whose mind matched her own, otherwise logic would have bolstered love, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... any deep and deadly stab of sin— Let vengeance gorge a gross Cerberean sop, Grovel and snore in swinish sluggardness, Yea, quite forget his dagger and his cup— It is enough, for any retribution, That guilt retain remembrance of itself. Guilt is a thing, however bolstered up, That the great scale-adjusting Nemesis, And Furies iron-eyed, will not let sleep. Sail on unscarred—thou canst not sail so far, But that the gorgon lash of vipers fanged Shall scourge this howler home to thee again. Yes, yes, rash man, Jove and myself do know That from this wrong shall ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... two or three other calls, and on the way noticed a carriage passing with two or three people in it. My attention was startled by the appearance in that carriage of what seemed a case of extreme invalidism. The man seemed somewhat bolstered up. My sympathies were immediately aroused, and I said to my son, "Look at that sick man riding yonder." When the carriage came nearer to us, my son said, "That is Mr. Blaine." Looking closely at the carriage I found that this was so. He had in two hours ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... harder here, up and down the rock-strewn slopes. Fatigue lay very heavy on Plutina, after the strains of the two days. Only her hate of the man at her side bolstered up pride, so that she compelled herself to keep moving by sheer force of will. It was already dusk, when, at last, they issued from the wood and went forward over the shore of the ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... overview: Estonia continues to experience strong economic growth after its economy bottomed out in 1993. Bolstered by a widespread national desire to reintegrate into Western Europe, Estonia has adhered to disciplined fiscal and financial policies and has led the FSU countries in pursuing economic reform. Monthly inflation has been held to 2% in 1995-96. Following four years of decline, Estonia's GDP grew ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the regimental history records of their career "there is not a scene, a day, nor a memory from Camp Dutton to Grapevine Point that can be wholly divested of Kellogg. Like the ancient Eastern king who suddenly died on the eve of an engagement, and whose remains were bolstered up in warlike attitude in his chariot, and followed by his enthusiastic soldiers to battle and to victory, so this mighty leader, although falling in the very first onset, yet went on through every succeeding march and fight, and won posthumous victories ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill

... considerations were sacrificed to the appeal to the eye. But this, so far from proving any "faithlessness," shows, on the contrary, an entire faith in their Art, that it was able to accomplish what was required of it, and needed not to be bolstered up by anything external. Mr. Ruskin wants language to express his contempt for Claude, because, in a picture entitled "Moses at the Burning Bush," he paints only a graceful landscape, in which the Bush is rather inconspicuous. But Claude might well reply, that what he intended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... towards the victims of nervous complaints. But even while he did this his own mind was in a turmoil. For this woman had let fall statements with regard to her dead husband which most curiously bolstered up Cuckoo's fantastic assertion that Valentine and Marr were the same man. Marr had been cruel to animals, to dogs, had evidently taken a keen enjoyment in torturing them, and on hearing Valentine's voice she had turned pale and declared that it was the voice of her husband. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... I found my friend bolstered upright in bed, with a small two-legged crutch at hand to prop his head on when he became weary of the perpendicular position. This had been his attitude for fifty days. Whether from its impeding his circulation, the distribution of his nervous currents, or both, the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... accommodate the dome, and across the hallway a desk had been set up, and at it sat a clerk in a pale blue tunic, who was just taking the audio-plugs of a music-box out of his ears. A couple of policemen in green uniforms, with ultrasonic paralyzers dangling by thongs from their left wrists and bolstered sigma-ray needlers like the one on the desk inside the dome, were kidding with some girls in vivid orange and scarlet and green smocks. One of these, in bright green, was a duplicate of the one he had seen rubbing ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... myself, as I draw a chair to the bedside. The bed is an old-fashioned, dark mahogany four-poster. It was never that which made the noise of something moving. It is too heavy to be pushed about the room.—The Little Gentleman was sitting, bolstered up by pillows, with his hands clasped and their united palms resting on the back of the head, one of the three or four positions specially affected by persons whose breathing is difficult from disease of the heart or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a large handkerchief about her head when she went to bed, and on the night in question, the two ends of the handkerchief being tied in a knot stood up from her head like two enormous ears. She was bolstered up by pillows, as she declared she could not breathe in any other position, and at every breath she drew she opened and shut her mouth with a sudden jerk. Effie had looked up from her reading suddenly, and caught the reflection of cousin ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... sees that. But then he says ... to go to the country again having bolstered up Education and quarrelled with everybody will be bad enough ... to go having spent fifty millions on it will dish us all for ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... to follow but, evidently, he also wished to have his courage bolstered by the presence ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... four weeks after this eventful night. Pliny was bolstered back among the pillows in the rocking-chair, resting after a walk half way across his room. It was a clear, sharp winter morning, but there was freshness and sunshine in Pliny's room. Both Theodore and ...
— Three People • Pansy

... some fifteen minutes from Temple Colney that the red-headed Pinner boy, bolstered up with prayer, commended his soul to God; slipped with painful thud from the ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... Wyman had scarcely stirred from where he lay bolstered against the rock. Sometimes he became delirious from fever, uttering incoherent phrases, or swearing in pitiful weakness. Again he would partially arouse to his old sense of soldierly duty, and assume intelligent command. Now he twisted painfully about upon his side, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... the breath of life. For did you not tell me, my poor sir, that by order of the great chemist in Baltimore, for three weeks you were never driven out without a respirator, and for a given time of every day sat bolstered up in a sort of gasometer, inspiring vapors generated by the burning of drugs? as if this concocted atmosphere of man were an antidote to the poison of God's natural air. Oh, who can wonder at that old reproach against ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... exists in Thibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization. It stops life short. It simply depopulates. Claustration, castration. It has been the scourge of Europe. Add to this the violence so often done to the conscience, the forced vocations, feudalism bolstered up by the cloister, the right of the first-born pouring the excess of the family into monasticism, the ferocities of which we have just spoken, the in pace, the closed mouths, the walled-up brains, so many unfortunate minds placed in the dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of the habit, the interment ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... of November, the deacon and his niece were alone together in the "keeping-room,"—as it was, if it be not still, the custom among persons of New England origin to call the ordinary sitting-apartment,—he bolstered up in an easy-chair, on account of increasing infirmities, and she plying the needle in her customary way. The chairs of both were so placed that it was easy for either to look out upon that bay, now of a wintry aspect, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... moment he saw, or thought he saw, a form sitting at the table, then it disappeared, and then, after a good while, Charley got himself composed to sleep again, this time with his head well bolstered, to reduce the circulation in ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... before it with clouds of fine drifting snow, I was glad to get under the lee of the providential wall, in the hospitable shelter of which, before two minutes had elapsed, "Stephano, my drunken butler," was snoring away like a phalanx of bullfrogs, with his head bolstered up somehow between the great moose-horns, and his brawny limbs rolled carelessly in the warm but somewhat unsavory skin of the dead monarch of the forest. I gloried in his calm repose; for the day was yet young, and I flattered myself that a three-hours' snooze would restore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... mean time time, one could not help observing the swell of his shirt before, that bolstered out, and pointed out the condition of things behind the curtain: but he soon removed it, by slipping his shirt over his head; and now, as to nakedness, they had nothing to reproach ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... supper, with the glowing embers of a fire at their feet. The night air in these higher altitudes of the mountains had grown chilly, and Bruce rose long enough to throw a fresh armful of dry spruce on the coals. Then he stretched out his long form again, with his head and shoulders bolstered comfortably against the butt of a tree, and for ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... one of the knives—a folding knife with a broad single-edged blade, locked open with a spring; the handle was of tortoise shell, bolstered with brass. ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... been led up to this faded old relic that's bolstered with pillows in the armchair by the window, and listened to her wavery, cracked voice, I couldn't see anything ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... excellent friend for bolstering up an ailing conscience, especially if itself is bolstered by an inability to see the point of view of the other ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... often spent them in hard study. Her system, naturally frail, could not stand the strain. She contracted a fever and for three months despaired of life. In the third month dropsy of the chest set in; and, on account of smothering spells, she had to be bolstered up in ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum

... magnificently from an illuminated manuscript, had stuck a nosegay in his bosom, culled from "The Paradise of Dainty Devices," and having put Sir Philip Sidney's hat on one side of his head, strutted off with an exquisite air of vulgar elegance. A third, who was but of puny dimensions, had bolstered himself out bravely with the spoils from several obscure tracts of philosophy, so that he had a very imposing front, but he was lamentably tattered in rear, and I perceived that he had patched his small-clothes with scraps of parchment from a ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... and from it she took her school relics,—a tattered ribbon watch-guard fastened by a flat gold buckle that Mrs. Rowson had given her as a reward for good conduct, and a package of letters. She spent an hour reading these, and old ties strengthened as she read. I can see her now as she sat bolstered by pillows in her reclining chair, a writing tray upon her knees, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... other people, Jerry had a habit of talking to himself under stress of excitement Perhaps he believed that in this way he bolstered up his courage, just as some men whistle when they find themselves trembling in the face ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... Overview: Bolstered by a widespread national desire to reintegrate into Western Europe, the Estonian government has pursued an ambitious program of market reforms and stabilization measures, which is rapidly transforming the economy. Three years after independence - and two years after the introduction ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... from assertion to assertion, if authorities may be so plentifully had? We cannot conceive, unless the object be to deceive the unwary, or those who may be willingly deceived. An assertion merely, bolstered up with a "See note," here or there, may be enough for such; but if, after all, there be nothing but assertion on assertion piled, we shall not let it pass for proof. Especially, if such assertion be at war with truth, we shall ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... visited the house in Anthony street. As I opened the door of the sick woman's room, I was startled by her altered appearance. Her eye had a strange, wild light, and her face already wore the pallid hue of death. She was bolstered up in bed, and the little boy was standing by her side, weeping, his arms about her neck. I took her hand in mine, and in a voice which plainly spoke ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Lawford's senior. She was a heavy, lymphatic girl, fast becoming as matronly of figure as her mother. She still bolstered up her belief that she had matrimonial prospects; but the men who wanted to marry her she would not have while those she desired to marry would not have her. ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... were good. He honestly believed that he was doing well by his city in veiling the nature of the contagion. Scientifically he knew little about it save in the most general way; and his happy optimism bolstered the belief that if only secrecy could be preserved and the fair repute of the city for sound health saved, the trouble would presently die out of itself. He looked to his committee to manage the secrecy. Unfortunately ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... twice every day, so that by opening the sash I might reach out my hand and pet her. But the second day, no sooner had she reached the street, than she broke suddenly from the groom and dashed away at full speed. I was lying, bolstered up in bed, reading, when I heard the rush of flying feet, and in an instant, with a loud, joyful neigh, she checked herself in front of my window. And when the nurse lifted the sash, the beautiful creature thrust her head through the aperture, and rubbed her nose against ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... had the statement confirmed by himself within the last two or three years. This was somewhere between 1795 and 1800, further our memory does not serve for the precise date at present, nor is it indispensable. A manufacture thus, as may be said, artificially created and bolstered up, we do not say unwisely, does not assuredly answer the first condition required. With respect to the measure of the manufacturing development, the data are unfortunately wanting for precise verification; for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... is silent, or echoes only the fierce note of the cyclist's bell. The coaches and curricles, wigs and hoops, bolstered saddles and carriers' waggons are gone with the beaux and fine ladies and gentlemen's gentlemen whose environment they were; and the Castle Inn is no longer an inn. Under the wide eaves that sheltered the love passages of Sir George and Julia, in the panelled halls that ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... centre, where it came to a peak. In the outer room were two rough wooden benches, and on a rickety table a dirty kerosene lamp without a chimney shed gloom rather than light. An old stove, the sides of which were bolstered up with rocks, filled the hut with smoke to the point of suffocation when a fire was started. The floor and everything else in the room were innocent ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... of Doble made during the day. His anxiety to see Steelman immediately. A certain manner of ill-repressed triumph whenever he mentioned Sanders or Crawford. These bolstered Shorty's growing opinion that the man had deliberately fired the chaparral from ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... money-results from manufactures, mines, artificial exports—so many millions from this source, and so many from that—such a seductive, unanswerable show—an immense revenue of annual cash from iron, cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundred other things, all bolstered up by "protection." But the really important point of all is, into whose pockets does this plunder really go? It would be some excuse and satisfaction if even a fair proportion of it went to the masses of laboring-men—resulting in homesteads to such, men, women, children—myriads ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... would be repeated several times, till at last Captain Claret, thinking, that in the eyes of all hands, his dignity must by this time be pretty well bolstered, would stalk towards his subordinate, looking him full in the eyes; whereupon up goes his hand to the cap front, and the Captain, nodding his acceptance of the report, descends from ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... to tell you, that I have had my hair cut and pippered, and singed, and bolstered, and buckled, in the newest fashion, by a French freezer — Parley vow Francey — Vee madmansell — I now carries my head higher than arrow private gentlewoman of Vales. Last night, coming huom from the meeting, I was taken by lamp-light for an iminent poulterer's daughter, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... wasn't strong enough for the strain. Of course my body went back on me, and my mind, too, for that matter. It had to be bolstered up with whiskey, which wasn't good for it any more than was the living in clubs and hotels good for my stomach and the rest of me. That was what ailed me; I was ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... Shortly after this Stubbs left the two men to go below and look after his charges. Danbury brought out a bottle of Scotch and a siphon of soda and, lighting his brierwood pipe, settled back comfortably on the bunk with his head bolstered up with pillows. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... there remains the chance that, somehow, Gaston may arrive in time: otherwise—why, otherwise I shall be hanged, and as to what will happen afterward I decline to enter into any discussion even with myself. I have my belief, but it is bolstered by no iota of knowledge. Faith, let us live this life as a gentleman should, and keep our hands and our consciences as clean as may be possible, and for the outcome trust to God's common-sense. There are people who must divert Him vastly ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... attached. These pulleys were rigged with cords, one end of which was made fast to the upper part of the bed. By hoisting on these cords he could be raised to any desired angle; and, instead of being bolstered up, he hung as if in a hammock. ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos

... violent. All the Dickey children had done as they chose, and they had agreed well. They were not a quarrelsome family. Their principal faults were idleness and a general laxity of morals which was quite removed from active wickedness. "All the Dickeys needed was to be bolstered up," one woman in the village said; and the Dickey boy was being bolstered up ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... private means," suggested little Miss Westlake, who had her own reasons for suspecting this: reasons bolstered by many and frequent manuscripts, turned over to her for typing, recast, returned for retyping, and again, in many instances, re-recast and re-retyped, the result of the sweating process being advantageous to their literary quality. Simultaneous advantage had accrued to the typist, also, in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... - triggered severe social unrest which led to more than 1,500 deaths, widespread destruction of property, and an 8% drop in GDP. The new government, installed in July 1997, has taken strong measures to restore public order and to revive economic activity and trade. The economy continues to be bolstered by remittances of some 20% of the labor force that works abroad, mostly in Greece and Italy. These remittances supplement GDP and help offset the large foreign trade deficit. Most agricultural land was privatized in 1992, substantially improving ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... she loved him. She had never seen anything like him before;—so glorious in his beauty, so gentle in his manhood, so powerful and yet so little imperious, so great in condition, and yet so little confident in his own greatness, so bolstered up with external advantages, and so little apt to trust anything but his own heart and his own voice. In asking for her love he had put forward no claim but his own love. She was glad he was what he was. She counted at their full value all his natural advantages. To be an English Duchess! ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... of activity on the western front gave rise to the hope that the deadlock might yet be avoided, that the two great armies might come to handgrips again. Bolstered up by reenforcements, General Manoury checked the German attack and regained all the ground that had been lost. Concentrating on the need of driving the invaders out of the quarries of Autreches, the French succeeded. This eased the western end of the line, and the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... this follows the trimming and tricking of their heads, the laying out their hair to show, which is curled, crisped, and laid out on wreaths and borders from ear to ear. Lest it should fall down it is under-propped with forks, wires, and what not. On the edges of their bolstered hair (for it standeth crested round about their frontiers, and hanging over their faces like pendices with glass windows on every side) is laid great wreaths of gold and silver curiously wrought. But this is not the worst ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... foreheads, their fine, straight dark hair, their serious gray eyes and sensitive mouths, pensive but not without humor and sweetness. But the twins in evening dress, their unwilling hair flower-crowned and bolstered into pompadours, their big-boned thinness contrasted with Amelie's plump curves, their elbows betraying the red disks of serious application, were quite another matter, and they knew it. The night of the dance ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... philosophers came to the conclusion that God does not know individual things. For if he knows and does not order them as is proper, this must be due either to inability or to jealousy, both of which are impossible in God. Having come to this conclusion in the way indicated, they then bolstered it up with arguments to justify it positively. Such are that the individual is known through sense and God has no sensation; that the number of individual things is infinite, and the infinite cannot be comprehended, hence cannot be known; that ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... kept cats were probably witches, when Paul Revere made false teeth in Boston preparatory to arousing the great commercial people, when our ancestors were gloriously deserting Washington in droves. Since those days the house had been bolstered up in a feeble corner, considerably repartitioned and newly plastered inside, amplified by a kitchen and added to by a side-porch—but, save for where some jovial oaf had roofed the new kitchen with red tin, Colonial it ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Worth Gilbert will sleep well to-night—in jail?" I stopped him, and instantly differentiated the two men before me. Cummings took it, with an ugly little half smile; Dykeman rumpled his hair, and bolstered his ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... still put off their return to the late spring trapping, and among these were Jean de Gravois and his wife. Jean waited until the third day. Then he went to see Jan. The boy was bolstered up in his cot, with Cummins balancing the little Melisse on the edge of the bed when he ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... associations. It was extraordinary with what a microscopic minuteness of loathing he hated it all: the grimy carpet and wallpaper, the black marble mantel-piece, the clock with a gilt allegory under a dusty bell, the high-bolstered brown-counterpaned bed, the framed card of printed rules under the electric light switch, and the door of communication with the next room. He hated the door most ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... alone. The former lay on his back, his head bolstered, and his face upturned toward the vault of heaven. The pain was over, and life was ebbing fast. Still, the mind was unshackled, and thought busy as ever. His heart was still full of Ghita; though his extraordinary situation, and more especially the glorious view before his ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... they were identified. None the less, they accepted the inevitable for the moment, pitched their voices in a lower key, and decided to approve the Rumanian thesis that Neo-Bolshevism in Hungary must be no longer bolstered up,[151] but be squashed vicariously. They accordingly invited the representatives of the three little countries on which the honor of waging these humanitarian wars in the anarchist east of Europe was to be conferred, and sounded them as to their ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... fed by the assistant nurse and put to bed; that is, all who could limp or wheel themselves about the room were back in their cribs, and the others were no longer braced or bolstered up. As she had expected, gloom canopied every crib and cot; beneath, eight small figures, covered to their noses, shook with held-back sobs or wailed softly. According to the custom that had unwittingly established itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep. Not that it knew ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... six years our free world security arrangements have been bolstered and the bonds of freedom have been more closely knit. Our friends in Western Europe are experiencing new internal vitality, and are increasingly more able to resist ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower

... Trinity-college, in "the exquisite comedie of Pedantius," where, under "the finical fine schoolmaster, the just manner of his phrase, they stufft his mouth with; and the whole buffianisme throughout his bookes, they bolstered out his part with—euen to the carrying of his gowne, his nice gate in his pantofles, or the affected accent of his speech—Let him deny that there was a shewe made at Clarehall of him and his brothers, called Tarrarantantara turba tumultuosa Trigonum Tri-Harveyorum ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... it up," groaned Pelliter, weakly. "I'm glad of it, Mac, for I'm— I'm— dizzy." He was lying on the sledge now, with his head bolstered up on ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... about census frauds," Hamilton said, "soon after the taking of the census, in which it was suggested that some enumerators—who were paid per capita—had bolstered up the figures in order to ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... that General Wooster was shortly to come with re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin relented, and I was bolstered up in bed ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... nothing compared with such a north-easter; Charlie heard the grand music of the wind. By and by he heard Aunt Stanshy's step on the stairs. She came slowly up, up, and then Charlie saw her turning from the entry into his room, bringing the sick-table and Charlie's breakfast She bolstered him up in bed, putting two or three fat pillows behind his back. Then she put the little sick-table before him. One side had been hollowed in, so that an invalid could draw it close about his body. Charlie was now the invalid to ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand

... were all muffled, and a solemn stillness reigned over the mansion. She left her bonnet and shawl in the hall, and softly entered the chamber unannounced. Unable to breathe in a horizontal position, Cornelia was bolstered up in her easychair. Her mother sat near her, with her face hid on her husband's bosom. Dr. Hartwell leaned against the mantel, and Eugene stood on the hearth opposite him, with his head bowed down on his hands. Cornelia drew her ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... travesty of a trial was going on, and every suggestion in favour of the accused was being trampled on, and every one of the chartered liars who had sworn falsely for the honour of the army was being bolstered by the authority of the court, I had many opportunities for conversation with Zola, and in the course of one of them, he offered me an almost passionate justification of his literary methods. He did not complain, he said, that he had been misunderstood; he had ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... he seemed surprised at his own weakness. They gently raised him, bolstered him with pillows, and told him ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... something more than overdone home town pride in Rockvale, however. The narrow streets were filled with men, women and curious, wide-mouthed children. Horses, packed for long riding, with rifles bolstered to the saddles, were tied all along the rails of both the main hotel and the station. Curt Sikes was the center of a changing but ever interested group, but two of the Haines posse who had just come in without any report of capture, but with all the vivid news of ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... Christian soldiery have perpetrated massacre and outrage with the blood-bolstered phrases of ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... settle comfortably bolstered up with the soft pillows, and a little fire crackling on the hearth, Esther looked about the sitting-room and began to think it a very pleasant place. Faith brought all her treasures to entertain her little visitor. Chief of these was a fine book called "Pilgrim's ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis

... friendship of the dean. If he believed that the judgment of his late father-in-law in so weighty a matter were the best to be relied upon of all that were at his command, then he would have done well to trust to it. But in such a case he should have bolstered up a good ground for action with no collateral supports which are weak,—and worse than weak. However, it shall have my best consideration, whereunto I hope that wisdom will be given to me where only ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... held theory is that hypnosis is a transference phenomenon in which the prestige of the hypnotist and his relationship to the subject plays an important role. This theory is bolstered by the fact that all schools of psychotherapy yield approximately the same results even though the methods differ. This would logically indicate that the relationship between the therapist and the subject was the determining factor. The only trouble ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... end, that he has promised too much. For the question whether the new belief answers the same purpose as the old, or is better or worse, is disposed of incidentally, so to speak, and with uncomfortable haste, in two or three pages (p. 436 et seq.-), and is actually bolstered up by the following subterfuge: "He who cannot help himself in this matter is beyond help, is not yet ripe for our standpoint" (p. 436). How differently, and with what intensity of conviction, did the ancient Stoic believe in the All and ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... self-sufficient. Have you observed how he stands at the fire? Oh, the caricature of 'the English fire-side' outdone! Then, if he sits, we hope that change of posture may afford our eyes transient relief: but worse again; bolstered up, with his back against his chair, his hands in his pockets, and his legs thrown out, in defiance of all passengers and all decorum, there he sits, in magisterial silence, throwing a gloom upon all conversation. As the Frenchman ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... abilities extending into a field into which his peculiar talents did not reach. Yet no one would have been sharper at discerning the worthlessness of the judgment of the old women had it been other than very flattering to himself. Who is there that does not know that sometimes clever young men are bolstered up into a self-conceit which does them much harm with the outer world, by the violent admiration and flattery of their mothers, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... their implied threat bolstered their belief in the infallibility of the Company, their conviction that no independent dared stand up against the might and power ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... letter of Bray to Aguinaldo, dated January 12, 1899, seems to me to throw much light on the question of how these claims relative to the promised recognition of Filipino independence sometimes originated and were bolstered up:— ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... twenty-eight. When she was a child she had assumed airs of superiority on the strength of her age, Mary remembered, but now she and her cousin seemed suddenly to match their years. Mary was glad of this, however, and bolstered Elinor's argument by admitting her own maturity. "I don't want a companion-maid, please," she said, with the mingling of meekness and violent resolution which had ended her novitiate. "It will be better for my Italian, to get one ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... this reasoning was more remarkable than its logic, the pirates were not the men to find fault with it. Indeed, how many human hopes have been bolstered up with arguments no sounder? Desire is the most eloquent of advocates, and the five ruffians had only to listen to its voice to enjoy in anticipation all the fruits of their iniquitous schemes. The sight of the golden coins intoxicated them. They played with the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... and fifty miles to the south, there was day—day that was like cold, gray dawn, the day one finds just beyond the edge of the Arctic night, in which the sun hangs like a pale lantern over the far southern horizon. In a log-built room that faced this bit of glorious red glow lay Peter, bolstered up in his bed so that he could see it until it faded from the sky. There was a new light in his face, and there was something of the old Peter back in his eyes. Watching the final glow with him was Dolores. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... evening, three days later, when Jolly Roger and Peter returned. The windows of the cabin were brightly lighted, and McKay came up to one of these windows and looked in. Cassidy was bolstered up in his cot. He was very much alive, and on the floor at his side, sitting on a bear rug, was the girl. A lump rose in Jolly Roger's throat. Quietly he placed the bundle which he had brought from the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... talking of. The plate-tax has made some noise; the ministry carried one question on it but by nine. The Duke of Newcastle, who reserves all his heroism for the war, grew frightened, and would have given up the tax; but Mr. Fox bolstered up his courage and mustered their forces, and by that and softening the tax till it was scarce worth retaining, they carried the next question by an hundred. The day before yesterday the King notified the invasion to both Houses, and his having sent for Hessians. There were some ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... matter with me?" she asked herself. "Nothing to be afraid of. He's gone. I'll do as I please." With such assertions she bolstered her courage, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... a very flimsy kind but "bolstered-up" and carried through by the bluster of the serjeant and the smartness of his junior. It rested first on a dialogue between Mr. Pickwick and his landlady which was overheard, in fact by several persons; second, on a striking situation witnessed by his three friends ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... Flora was bolstered up in bed, and had on a dainty dressing-gown of pink muslin tied with white ribbons. But there was a bandage about her right wrist, and a soft strip of cotton was bound about ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... was sitting, alone as usual, bolstered up in bed. Her little hymn-book was clasped in her hand; though not equal to reading, she felt the touch of it a solace to her. Half-dozing, half-waking, she had been perfectly quiet for some time, when the sudden and not very gentle opening of the room door caused her to start ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Felipe bolstered up in the bed, his eye bright, his color good, his voice clear, eating heartily like his old self, she stood like a statue in the middle of the veranda for a moment; then turning to Alessandro, she said chokingly, "May Heaven reward you!" and disappeared ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... Austria, but also over the other States of the peninsula which were, in theory at least, independent. The kingdom of the two Sicilies in the South, the grand duchy of Tuscany on the West, and the smaller duchies of Parma, Modena, and Lucca were only stable in so far as Austria bolstered up their corrupt and unpopular governments. Even the Papal States themselves, equally undermined with corruption and unpopularity, ultimately rested upon the same support. Thus Austria represented for Italy all that evil past of which she wanted to ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... delighted to offer you the hospitality of my packing-case, as you call it," said Brent, "but the dining-room ceiling fell down Wednesday, and I'm having the others bolstered up as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... steamer Farringford, on the upper Missouri, in which my father and mother and myself—then a child two years old—were passengers, I had been committed to a raft formed of a state-room door, and bolstered with pillows to keep me from rolling off. By an accident this frail craft was carried away from the burning steamer, then aground, and I was separated from my father, who, I grieve to say, was intoxicated at the time, and unable to do all that he would have accomplished in his sober senses. ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... some time I discovered that he was with Kate in the garden, and I could hear their voices. I listened with all my ears, that I might steal his true opinion of myself; for I concluded that Kate was having a private consultation, and arranging plans by which I was to be bolstered up with prepared accounts, and not told the plain facts of the case. I had before suspected that they did not tell me the worst. I could just catch my name now and then, but no more; and I wished ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... extracted the whole story from her. He would not listen to the delusion in which she had worked herself into believing, founded upon the negations for which she had sedulously avoided seeking positive refutation, and which had been bolstered up by her imagination and wishes, working on the unsubstantial precedents of novels. She had brought herself absolutely to believe in the imposture, and at a moment when her uncle's condition seemed absolutely ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... morning, after a late sitting of the negotiators, I was summoned to attend the grand vizier in his very anderun, a place to which none but his most confidential servants were ever admitted. I found him still in bed, bolstered up with many soft ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... a tight turban of many colored stripes cocked up over one ear; he had bared his legs, and bound sandals on his small feet; and round his waist, over the sash that held his dagger, he had fastened a web belt sustaining a bolstered pistol. He never left the side ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... museums and restorations, notably those at Williamsburg, Cooperstown, Old Sturbridge Village, Winterthur, the Henry Ford Museum, and Shelburne; at the latter in particular the extensive collection has been bolstered by Frank H. Wildung's museum pamphlet, "Woodworking Tools at Shelburne Museum." The most informative recent American work on the subject is Eric Sloane's handsomely illustrated A Museum of Early American Tools, published ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh

... rational, I resolved that a miner's life was too rough for me; and, as soon as I could be bolstered up in a corner of the coach, I set out to reach the railroad, where I was to take a palace-car for home. I gained strength rapidly during the change and excitement of the journey; so that, the day before ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... incidents may appear to different eyes. Perhaps some of the "points" are stated unfairly, to give strength to the argument. Bare assertions are not proofs and some of the "points" are nothing but assertions. Opinions are not arguments. Some of the statements would need to bolstered up by facts and "authorities" before they could be accepted ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... which I might acquire to correct the error which had been instilled into the minds of the people of the North in relation to Southern sentiments and Southern institutions, that they should have received both aid and comfort from Southern newspapers, and been bolstered up in the attempt to misrepresent my political position. When the charge was made, which was copied in Northern papers, that I had abandoned those with whom I co-operated in 1852, to produce a separation of the States, my friend, the ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis



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