"Bracing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with him, and then he went out somewhat dizzily to take counsel with himself how he should put the matter to her. She would be sure to ask what the price of the new room would be, and he debated whether to take it and tell her some kindly lie about it, or trust to the bracing effect of the sum named in helping restore the lost balance of her nerves. He was not so rich that he could throw six hundred dollars away, but there might be worse things; and he walked up and down thinking. All at once it flashed upon him that he had better see the doctor, anyway, and find out ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... from the brown cup-board, found appropriate glasses and, in the ice-chest, club-soda and ginger ale. He poured himself a drink reminiscent of Paris—not that he felt he needed it for the reaction from bracing himself to die like a Pythias had left him elvishly grotesque in mind—gathered the bottles tenderly in his arms like small glass babies and went ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... hard study rather than in hard riding, had overworked, had brought back his Cuban fever, and was in poor shape to face the tropics. So, for two months before the transport was to sail, they ordered him to Cape Cod to fill his lungs with the bracing air ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... lies some twenty miles north of Landiani Station in the province of Naivasha. Here we started in earnest on our big game expedition, which I am glad to say proved to be a most delightful and interesting one in every way. The country was lovely, and the climate cool and bracing. We all got a fair amount of sport, our bag including rhino, hippo, waterbuck, reedbuck, hartebeeste, wildebeeste, ostrich, impala, oryx, roan antelope, etc.; but for the present I must confine myself to a short account of how I was lucky ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... qualities the wholesome, invigorating effects and the specially refreshing properties of the Borage are supposed to be mainly due. For which reason, the plant, "when taken in sallets," as says an old herbalist, "doth exhilarate, and make the mind glad," almost in the same way as a bracing sojourn by the seaside during an autumn holiday. The flowers possess cordial virtues which are very revivifying, and have been much commended against melancholic depression of the nervous system. Burton, in his [61] Anatomy of Melancholy (1676), ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of these pioneers returned to the Golden State and civilization with the burden of their treasure, saying they had not come to Arizona for their health. Now in these present days there comes a throng of people in quest of health solely, and many are they who find its blessing in the sunny and bracing air of this climate, in hot springs and the balmy breath of the fir and juniper of our mountains. I found employment in a mercantile establishment of this little mining town and grew up with the country, as the saying is. I formed new acquaintances and made new friends. Among others, I met William ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... procured for him the use of the Imperial baths. His mind being thus relieved from the restless ecstasy which he had suffered in Rome, and the intensity of interest being diminished by the circumscribed nature of the society of Leghorn, together with the bracing effects of sea-bathing, he was soon again in a condition to resume his study in the capital. But the same overpowering attacks on his feelings and imagination soon produced a relapse of his former indisposition, and compelled him to return ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... considerations of rank and station. We were just a man and a woman whose fates were linked irrevocably by love. I stooped suddenly, under the sway of an impulse, I could not resist, and kissed her upturned face, turning almost dizzy in the act. Then I broke from her clasp, and bracing myself for the task to which we ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... ground alike leaves and remaining burs? There is something especially pleasant in the warmth of color and the crackle of sound on the forest floor, as one really shuffles through chestnut leaves in the bracing November air, stooping now and then for a nut perchance remaining in the warm and velvety corner of ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... of those intensely clear, sunny days which only our Lady of the Sunshine can produce, a day when the thermometer announces that it is very hot, but when Nature denies the slander and the blood dances to the time set by the bracing air. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... novelty of the scene, one becomes a little fatigued by the long, hot ride; but as we draw nearer to Matanzas, the refreshing air from the Gulf suddenly comes to our relief, full of a bracing tonic which renders all things tolerable. The sight of the broad harbor, under such circumstances, lying with its flickering, shimmering surface under the afternoon sun, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... size, shape, curvature, bracing and material, are all important. A great deal depends upon the curve of the surfaces. Two machines may have the same extent of surface and develop the same rate of speed, yet one may have a much greater lifting power than the other, provided it has a more efficient curve to its surface. Many people ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... satellites like swatting flies!" Fay proclaimed as the portent faded. "Bracing! Gussy, where's your tickler? I've got a new spool for ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... swept the gap between the cars was bracing and cool. There was a moon, he saw water shine and dark pines stream past. The snorting of the locomotive broke in a measured beat through the roll of wheels; the rocks threw back confused echoes about the clanging cars. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... great mudbanks had disappeared, save that here and there their dun-coloured convexity rose above the surface like the back of a sleeping leviathan. Overhead a great flock of wild geese were flapping their way southward, like a broad arrow against the sky. It was an exhilarating, bracing scene, and accorded well with her own humour. She felt so full of life and hope that she could hardly believe that she was the same girl who that very morning had hurled away the poison bottle, knowing in her heart that unless ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... since she had come home. She kept Betty gossiping for half an hour, and as the stream of the village life poured about her, in Betty's racy speech, it was as though some primitive virtue entered into her and cheered her—some bracing voice from the Earth-spirit—whose purpose ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interesting, being addressed to his mother and other friends. I have several other letters concerned with Borrow's Bible Society work in Russia, but they are not inspiring. Borrow's correspondence with Hasfeld, of which Knapp gives us glimpses, is more bracing, and the two or three letters from that admirable Dane that are in my collection I am glad to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... diagonals, the former being made of four angle-irons, and the latter of one angle-iron. Each pair of arches, longitudinal girders and uprights, is transversely 3 meters (9 ft. 10 in.) from center to center, and is connected by cross and diagonal bracing. On the top of the longitudinal girders are fixed cross pieces of single Barlow rails, upon which again are fastened two longitudinals of wood 12 in. square in section, and which in their turn carry the rails of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... attempt at decoration had been made, for tall glasses stood in the centre of the tables filled with ripe grasses and pretty autumn leaves, but, strange to relate, we were more interested in the contents of our soup plates and what was to follow. The cold and bracing air during our short walks on deck had given us all famous appetites, and we ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... are some exotics from the North, which droop with a homesick aspect. Plants, like human beings, will pine for their native atmosphere. If it be more rigorous and less genial at the North, still there is a bracing, tonic effect, imparting life and strength, which is wanting in the low latitudes. On one side of this fine square is the government house and barracks, opposite to which is an open-air theatre, and in front is the cathedral with any number ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... said them, he put some of his own life into them and gave them a greater value than they deserved. The turn of his head was comic; a queer little helpless movement of his hands was comic; the way in which he seemed to stop short and gulp as if he were bracing himself up was comic; the swift downward and then upward glance of his eyes, followed by an assumption of complete humility and resignation, these were comic. And when he appeared on the stage, the audience, knowing something ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... to force a door—that is, an ordinary door—and at the same time make very little noise. It is done—if the door opens inward—by seizing the knob firmly with both hands, having turned it, and then by bracing the body with one knee pressed firmly against the door directly under the knob. In this position, if it is assumed by a strong man, every effort may be centred upon one sudden impulse forward, which, while there ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... TIMES.—'These are bracing songs, full of the Imperial spirit, of healthy sentiment and fresh air, and not without a true ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... scarcely interest the reader to follow Guy Elersley in his rambles, from the time he passed out of the dingy doorway of the village public-house until he drew up, after a long drive, before the imposing entrance of "Beauport Asylum." The bracing air of the country road that leads to this establishment had had a most beneficial effect on Guy's temperament, and therefore as he alighted from his caleche, his step had resumed something of its old lightness, and his face had lost ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... contented that thou art alone!" Fortunate was it, then, for Maltravers, that he was in his native land, not in climes where excitement is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in the exercise of duties. In the hardy air of the liberal England, he was already, though unknown to himself, bracing and ennobling his dispositions and desires. It is the boast of this island that the slave whose foot touches the soil is free. The boast may be enlarged. Where so much is left to the people, where the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... curiosity, turned to examine the picture, while Barraclough embraced the opportunity to slip the crook of his stick through the handle of the bag and tug hard. But the bag was heavier than he had imagined. It scarcely moved and only by bracing his foot on the seat opposite was he able to upset its balance. Just a fraction of a second too soon the man turned. Conceivably he saw murder in Barraclough's eyes or else he was unusually quick at grasping a situation. He ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... could not but conquer; and they will conquer to the end. All attempts to restore the monastic and feminine ideal, like that of good Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding, failed. They withered like hot-house exotics in the free, keen, bracing English air; and in our civil wars, Cavalier and Puritan, in whatever they differed, never differed in their sound and healthy conviction that true religion did not crush, but strengthened and consecrated ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... although Shakespeare's outlines are drawn with more regard to fidelity than to actual beauty, yet, like a great painter, he brings all Nature into sympathy with man. We feel the ghostly shudder of the November night in Hamlet, breathe the bracing Highland air in Macbeth, the air of the woods in As You Like It; the storm on the heath roars through Lear's mad outburst, the nightingale sings in the pomegranate ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... It was as if the common atmosphere had been purified of all grosser particles—as if its component gases had been mixed afresh, for Canadian use only. The cold was hardly felt, though Mr. Holt was sure the thermometer must be close upon zero; but a bracing exhilarating sensation strung every nerve with ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... stories by W. H. H. Murray, in both which appears John Norton, the trapper, a character that promises to become as much of a favorite as is the hero of the Leather Stocking novels. These stories have a bracing outdoor freshness and a delightfully crisp realism: are vigorous in tone, and strong and picturesque in the relation. Taken altogether, they may be pronounced in the most artistic of Mr. Murray's excursions into the realms of fiction, and ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... hero bribes him once and again to unconscious false dealing. In his "Voltaire," and in his "Rousseau," Mr. Morley is so lofty in tone, expressing himself against the moral obliquities of the men with whom he is dealing, that often you feel the ethic atmosphere of the books to be pure and bracing, almost beyond the standard of biblical and Christian. But in his "Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," such fine severity is conspicuously absent. Mr. Morley is so deeply convinced that atheism is what we all most need just now, that when he has—not halting mere infidels, like ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... outrival that "Punic-faith" which has hitherto been the by-word for perfidious treachery. The heartening surprises of gallant little Belgium and Serbia; the renascence of Russia; the wonderful upleap to the needs of the times by Great, and still more by Greater Britain; and, not least, the bracing of the loins of our closest ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... desired her company, that she would not for the world have tried to destroy it. "I hope you will enjoy yourself very much, dear, and come back with some colour in your cheeks, though I am afraid that particular part of the 'seaside' is not very bracing. Tell Mrs Hilliard with my love that I shall be charmed to see ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... woman had been—were out of place on the spirit which was incarnated in Susan. Amid the cramping customs of the period, she moved large, free, and simple, as though she walked already in the purer and more bracing ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... would fall across mother's face, and she would murmur softly, "Poor little Darsie!" Darsie's own eyes filled at the pathos of the thought. She was filled with commiseration for her own hard plight... Father's letters were bracing. No pity here; only encouragement and exhortation. "Remember, my dear, a sacrifice grudgingly offered is no sacrifice at all. What is worth doing, is worth doing well. I hope to hear that you are not only an agreeable, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... air, the bright sunshine, entered in quivering rays. Without, the snow-covered roofs stood out clearly against a soft blue sky, limpid and springlike. Light wreaths of smoke floated upward in the bracing atmosphere. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... part of this lovely island: indeed, it may well be looked on as the Paradise of the East; for though, in the low country, the climate is relaxing and enervating to European constitutions, in the higher regions the air is bracing and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... which denied the existence of death, naturally could not stoop to burial; but Midmore had to leave London for the dank country at a season when Social Regeneration works best through long, cushioned conferences, two by two, after tea. There he faced the bracing ritual of the British funeral, and was wept at across the raw grave by an elderly coffin-shaped female with a long nose, who called him 'Master Frankie'; and there he was congratulated behind an echoing top-hat by a man he mistook for a mute, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... currants were glossy black and lusciously ripe. It was the season which Jolly Roger loved most of all, and it was the beginning of Peter's first September. The days were still hot, but at night there was a bracing something in the air that stirred the blood, and Peter found a sharp, new note in the voices of the wild. The wolf howled again in the middle of the night. The loon forgot his love-sickness, and screamed raucous defiance at the moon. The big snowshoes were no longer tame, but wary and alert, and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... in the city and those who do not dislike raw, bracing winds from the ocean pronounce Los Angeles to be the only place worth living in in all Southern California. Each place has its supporters ignoring all other attractions, and absolutely opposite accounts of the ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... whose potent seed Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore And cast upon Virginia's shore, I'll think,—So fill the fairer bowl And wise alembic of thy soul, With herbs far-sought that shall distil, Not fumes to slacken thought and will, But bracing essences that nerve To wait, to dare, to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... varies in different regions, at different seasons of the year, and even different hours of the day. The odorous, fresh sea-breezes are distinct from the fitful breezes along river banks, which are humid and freighted with inland smells. The bracing, light, dry air of the mountains can never be mistaken for the pungent salt air of the ocean. The air of winter is dense, hard, compressed. In the spring it has new vitality. It is light, mobile, and laden with a thousand palpitating odours from earth, grass, and sprouting leaves. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... either side seemed to Dorothy Thornton to close in and stifle her, and the bracing, effervescent air of the high places had become dead and lifeless in her nostrils, as to one ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the girls thought they must have missed "their own particular four" and were bracing themselves to stand ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... "It's bracing, tones up the mind," said Paul Lane. "But what about this new note? All we know is a Cornish extraction, a banker ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... any conspicuous or public position. Her health was as we have said impaired somewhat by her assiduous devotion to her duties in connection with the Association, but she made no complaint, and her family did not take the alarm. The spring of 1866 found her so feeble, that it was thought the pure and bracing air of the Green Mountains might prove beneficial in restoring her strength, but her days were numbered. On the 30th of August ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... AFT. To throw the breast backstays out of the cross-tree horns or out-riggers and bear them aft. If not done, when suddenly bracing up, the cross-tree horn is frequently sprung or ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... charm of the Transvaal lies in its climate, which is among the best in the world, and in all the southern districts very healthy. During the winter months, that is from April to October, little or no rain falls, and the climate is cold and bracing. In summer it is rather warm, but not overpoweringly hot, the thermometer at Pretoria averaging from 65 to 73 degrees, and in the winter from 59 to 56 degrees. The population of the Transvaal is estimated at about 40,000 ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... stage-coach. An hour and a half had elapsed when I perceived that the horses were dragging the vehicle slowly up a steep hill. The full-leaved trees are arching for us, overhead, a verdant canopy; the air becomes more bracing and elastic: and even I feel its invigorating influence, and cease to drop slily the gravelly dirt I had collected from my shoes, down the neck and back of a very pretty girl, who sat blushing furiously on my left. Now the summit is gained and, in another ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the abrupt change of field and atmosphere—after what I have put in the preceding fifty or sixty pages—temporary episodes, thank heaven!—I restore my book to the bracing and buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the only permanent reliance for sanity ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... turning out after a long sleep, felt quite different creatures to the tired band who had wearily crawled into the village. The bright sky, the fresh morning air, the pleasant odor of the great pine forest around them, and the bracing atmosphere—at the height of fifteen hundred feet above the sea—at once refreshed ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... hearts are crass, but to stir them properly they must have men entering into glory with some pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of bracing moral influence, are more valuable to England than any material benefit in all the books of political economy between Westminster and Birmingham. Greenville chewing wineglasses at table makes no very pleasant figure, any more than a thousand other artists when they are viewed ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... such advice cannot even seem to have an improper motive." Here she paused, feeling the difficulty of her task— aware that she could not conclude it without an admission which no woman willingly makes. But she shook away the impediment, bracing herself to the work, and went on steadily with her speech. "Coming from me, such motive may be imputed—nay, ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... for her on the verandah with his face turned up to the sky. He scarcely looked like a man bracing himself for a stiff ordeal, but it was not his way to stoop under his burdens. He had learned to tread jauntily while he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the inner bolt melted and the lock inoperative; and, placing his forearms on either side of the middle crack of the door, he stood bracing it. ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... make the effort necessary to move or to turn away, lest the shunning motion should carry conviction to her heart. Alas! conviction of the probable danger to her father's life was already there: it was that that was calming her down, tightening her muscles, bracing her nerves. In that hour she lost all her ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... come—she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede, her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a stroke of the wind's brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air—and the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would divide, fifty masculine eyes would start, stare, as she gave back forgotten dreams to the husbands of many obese and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of his long arm. And as she looked, a lusty bass—heavy, full of fight—took the hook, and she saw the man stand motionless, intent, alert, at the instant he first felt the fish. Then she caught the skillful turn of his wrist as he struck—quick and sure; watched, with breathless interest as—bracing himself—the fisherman's powerful figure became instinct with life. With the boiling water grasping his legs, clinging to him like a tireless wrestler seeking the first unguarded moment; and with the plunging, tugging, rushing ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... side of the swell, passed a clump of bushes, and came face to face with Sylvia Morgan. She, too, leaving the speech, had been walking, and the color of her face was deepened by the exercise and the crisp, bracing air. It had given her, also, an obvious exhilaration, probably physical, that Harley had not seen before in a long time, and her smile was of ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... itself, the fire had rushed on to the ocean, the atmosphere had became comparatively clear and the weather cool and bracing. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... of inner steam, hot, close, and sticky as a brother: a brother whose wants are many and whose resources are few. The morning after the storm, there will be a keen thrill in the air, keen but wholesome and bracing as a good resolution and not necessarily more lasting. The asphalt has been washed as clean as a renovated conscience, and the city presses forward again to the future in which alone it has its being, with the gay confidence of a sinner who has forgiven ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... on "The Curlew" at Portland made a bill of a hundred and nine dollars; seamen's wages to Gloucester, with car-fare back, nineteen dollars; bracing and strengthening the schooner, sixty-seven dollars; cost of getting in fuel and water, thirty-three dollars; and other bills to the amount of forty-nine dollars: in all, two hundred and seventy-seven dollars. We had thus to pay out at ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... were dry again. The day was intensely pure: one of those incomparable bits of California winter, warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the purest influences of the spring, and at the same time enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable. Instead of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the house of a friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature has always something rare to show us, and the danger ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... indicated a range of hills. Here Tolly Trevor, unable to restrain his joy at the prospect of adventure before him, uttered a war-whoop, brought his switch down smartly on the pony's flank, and shot away over the plain like a wild creature. The air was bracing, the prospect was fair, the sunshine was bright. No wonder that the obedient pony, forgetting for the moment the fatigues of the past, and strong in the enjoyment of the previous night's rest and supper, went over the ground at a pace that ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... or what else should he do? As he was a little more inclined now to bet on calmness than on passion, he decided to take a seat in the parlor, and keep it, at least, till he could dispose of his present doubt. Easily might he have measured three miles over the Waltham hills, in the bracing morning-air, with his own locomotive apparatus, while he had been looking in vain for artificial conveyance. But if that plan had occurred to him at all at first, it would have been dismissed with contempt as unbusinesslike. He must not, by any possibility, appear to Captain Grant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the white memorial monument to Prince Albert, with its sculptured panels bearing the arms of Llewellyn the Great, the red dragon of Cadwalader, the symbolical leek and the motto, Anorchfygol Ddraig Cymru ("The dragon of Wales is invincible"). The air is very cool and bracing on this hill. But the greatest crowd is on the sands and on the rocks of the cliff immediately backing the beach. It is difficult for one who is familiar only with the beach at Long Branch or Cape May to comprehend such a scene as this which I am trying to picture. In the first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... in a state of nature, but singularly beautiful as a landscape. It was an open prairie, traversed by what was called the North Platte River, with scarcely water enough in it to be called a creek, with rolling hills on either side, and above, a clear sky, and air pure and bracing. It was the first time I had been so far out on the plains, and I enjoyed it beyond expression. I was soon able to eat my full share of the plain fare of bread and meat, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the weather be intensely cold. I dislike fires in bedrooms, especially for children; they are very enervating, and make a child liable to catch cold. Cold weather is very bracing, particularly at night "Generally speaking," says the Siecle, "during winter, apartments are too much heated. The temperature in them ought not to exceed 16 deg. Centigrade (59 deg. Fahrenheit); and even in periods of great cold scientific men declare that 12 deg. or 14 ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... and placed him beside Emily, where, by bracing themselves against the wall of the state-room, they might prevent their being dashed about by the rolling of the vessel. Emily welcomed him with an affectionate smile, and taking his hand, which now sometimes answered the clasp of hers, told him that he must not be afraid, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... over the tail, which he twisted about his right arm in a flash, at the same time throwing up his feet and bracing them against a wheel of ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the fourth act—that in which Fogg was going to do something. He had in the meantime been bracing up. When he made his entry and spoke, his manner of speech was somewhat thick, but his acting was more energetic. Fogg never could take anything stimulating without its going to his head, and as his brain exercised a peculiar influence over other members of his body, they all ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... a more open country, where I became conscious of a considerable change in the atmosphere. Hitherto the air had been tolerably warm, though bracing; it now grew sensibly cooler. Thick clouds were gathering in the sky. The wind, before a gentle breeze, now rose rapidly, and blew with violence. It soon became icy cold, and flakes of snow began to fall. Without ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... left me at a day's notice. The amount and kind of moral courage I had to summon up before I could go home alone the first evening after my comrade left me can only be appreciated by those who have undergone some similar torture. It was not like the bracing up a man goes through when he has to face some imminent known danger, but was of a more subtle and complex kind. "There is nothing to fear," I kept saying to myself, and yet I could not shake off a nameless dread. "You are in your right mind and have all your senses," I continually argued, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... of paper came as a bracing tonic to Arthur Dean. It was an order, and just now he ached to be ordered. The curt message out-weighed all the burning words of the preacher. Even from three thousand miles away Lars Larssen could grip hold of the mind of the young ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... stood on the Wyddfa, in a cold bracing atmosphere, though the day was almost stiflingly hot in the regions from which we had ascended. There we stood enjoying a scene inexpressibly grand, comprehending a considerable part of the mainland of Wales, the whole of Anglesey, a faint ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... morning we proceeded in the same way as on the previous day. Thus for several days we travelled on, resting during the night at rude tambos, the inhabitants of which, directly Don Jose spoke to them, willingly undertook to give us accommodation. The weather was fine, the air pure, bracing, and exhilarating; and in spite of the fatigue we underwent, none of us suffered. Ellen and Maria bore the journey wonderfully. Although we were making our way towards the east, frequently we found ourselves riding round a mountain with our backs to the rising sun. Now we were ascending ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... Through the snow-storm hurl'd, Drives our English hearts of oak Seaward round the world. Come, as came our fathers, Heralded by thee, Conquering from the eastward, Lords by land and sea. Come; and strong within us Stir the Vikings' blood, Bracing brain and sinew; Blow, thou ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... latter to remain stationary on the sward, keeping a good look-out to guard against surprise. As by this arrangement his master would be kept in tolerable proximity, the old negro, whose repugnance to be left alone in that melancholy spot was invincible, offered no longer an objection, and Gerald, bracing more tightly round his loins, the belt which contained his pistols, proceeded cautiously to secure the stool, by the aid of which he speedily found his feet resting on the edge of the water butt, and his face ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... became necessary to change to thick garments. I went to St. George's in the morning clothed in the thinnest of linen, and reached home at five in the afternoon with two overcoats on. The nights are said to be always cool and bracing. We had mosquito-nets, and the Reverend said the mosquitoes persecuted him a good deal. I often heard him slapping and banging at these imaginary creatures with as much zeal as if they had been real. There are no mosquitoes in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of any such adaptation will be a changed spirit in the general body of society. We have come to a serious condition of our affairs, and we shall not get them into order again without a thorough bracing-up of ourselves in the process. There can be no doubt that for a large portion of our comfortable classes existence has been altogether too easy for the last lifetime or so. The great bulk of the world's work has been done out of their sight ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... some of which I lingered at leisure, were tonic, bracing, inspiring, and made me ashamed because I was not young. I saw geography being taught with the aid of a stereoscopic magic-lantern. After a view of the high street of a village in North Russia had been exposed and explained by a pupil, the teacher said: "If ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... harbour and he were here with them, or even if she had had good tidings from him, Kate Bonnet would have been a very happy girl, for her present abode was vastly different from any home she had ever known. Her uncle's house on the highlands beyond the town lay in a region of cooler breezes and more bracing air than that of Barbadoes. Books and music and the general air of refinement recalled her early life with her mother, and with the exception of the anxiety about her father, there were no clouds in the bright blue skies of Kate Bonnet. ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... a very good dinner, and contrary to his custom drank the best part of a bottle of old port after it. He had an unpleasant business to face that evening, and felt as though his nerves required bracing. About ten o'clock he took his leave, and getting into a hansom bade the cabman drive to Rupert Street, Pimlico, where he arrived in due course. Having dismissed his cab, he walked slowly down the street till he reached a small house with red pillars to the doorway. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... could be said to weaken the frame, or lower the action of the heart. There are only certain things they may eat and drink. They must have the right amount of sleep, and no more. Exercise of the most bracing kind they must take every day, and eschew every practice that could weaken the nerves or muscles in the ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... Peninsula the rainfall diminishes to 10 in. or less within the Arctic circle; the summer temperature is quite endurable but the winters are exceedingly rigorous.2 East of the mountains in south-eastern Alaska the atmosphere is dry and bracing, the temperature ranging from -14 deg. to 92 deg. F. In the farther interior, in the valleys of the Yukon, the Tanana, the Copper and the Sushitna the summers are much the same in character, the winters much more severe. On the Yukon at the international ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Lepcha, imprudently remaining for the night in the valley. Owing probably as much to the great exposure they had lately gone through, as to the sudden transition from a mean temperature of 50 degrees in a bracing wind, to a hot close jungly valley at 75 degrees, no less than seven were laid ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Lastly, I would have you consider especially the moral atmosphere in which they have habitually breathed: according to the nature of this the mental health varies as certainly as the physical strength varies in a bracing or relaxing air. A strong bodily constitution may resist longer, and finally be less affected by a deleterious atmosphere than a weak or diseased frame; and so it is with the mental constitution. Minds insensibly imbibe ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... in, and Mrs. Cody got breakfast for us. He refused the drink I set out for him. I felt that I needed a good deal of bracing in this writ of replevin business, so I drank ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... Moyat declared cheerfully. "More bracing, and suits his constitution better. I've heard him say ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you on the accesion of your State to the new federal constitution. This is the last I have yet heard of, but I expect daily to hear that my own has followed the good example, and suppose it to be already established. Our government wanted bracing. Still we must take care not to run from one extreme to another; not to brace too high. I own, I join those in opinion, who think a bill of rights necessary. I apprehend too, that the total abandonment ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... am speaking chiefly of the western part of Normandy: the parts about Caen approach more nearly to the flatness, monotony, and dreary treelessness of ordinary French and German scenery. The air is pure and bracing,—especially in the little towns built on old castled heights. Why do we not always build our towns, when we can, on heights, in what Shakespeare calls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... work is as bracing, as tonic, as instinct with the spirit of vigorous youth, as the mountain air which has never before been breathed. Woodberry well says: "He created lasting pictures of human life, some of which have the eternal outline and pose of a Theocritean ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... pine or spruce. Although the work was heavy, Stephen's heart was light. Not only did he feel the zest of one who had grappled with life in the noble effort to do the best be could, but he had Nellie's approbation. He drank in the bracing air of the open as never before, and revelled in the rich perfume of the various trees as he moved along their great cathedral-like aisles, carpeted with the whitest ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... his head in his neck as though bracing himself. "I learned of it yesterday, Martha. Pray accept my condolences. I should have called on you ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... The sky was pure as crystal, except a soft white fleece that veiled the snowy pinnacles of Taurus, folding and unfolding, rising and sinking, as if to make their beauty still more attractive by the partial concealment. The morning air was almost cold, but so pure and bracing—so aromatic with the healthy breath of the pines—that I took it down in the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... thankful and relieved if you will manage this and take Mary to some fresh scenes, a place or country that she has not visited before. There is nothing like an entirely novel environment for distracting the mind, bracing the nerves, and ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... run out of water. But just then the whole Turkish reserve turned up on their right front and flank, having been hurried back from the right flank to which our feint had drawn them, across the bridge D. whence they deployed in crescent formation. Apparently this new danger had a very bracing effect on the thirsty ones; it is a rash man that stands between T.A. and his drink. They went straight for the centre of the crescent, as far as I can make out, with the Turkish reserves on their front ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... fact that he had a friend who lived in a village high up on those same downs. Many years ago he had visited her in the breezy place in which she had chosen to make her home, and if his memory served him rightly, and he had no doubt on that point, Windy Gap, as the village was called, would be bracing enough to please the doctor, and quiet enough to satisfy him. To the best of his belief there was scarcely another house within three or four miles, and even if she had possessed near neighbours Mrs. ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... had reached my neck. I cried out with terror as I felt myself borne from my feet. But Georgie kept hold of me, and bracing ourselves against the first low rock, we waited the coming of the great green wave that rolled surging toward us, raising its whitening crest high over our heads. It broke directly above us, and for a moment we stood dizzy with the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... I slept very badly. I went for a walk yesterday evening for my health's sake; and I finished up at the club and read a book about a Polar expedition. There is something bracing in following the adventures of men who are battling ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... lord of the manor on duty as doorkeeper, and in no mood to see strangers. He held his door down by inserting his fangs in two fine holes near the edge and bracing himself, or, rather, herself (as, of course, it is the female), offered a degree of resistance surprising in an insect. If one persists with a needle, there is often danger of breaking the door. But when one has made a ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... life is great. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man's stomach digest mince pies—how's that? Notice the air out here? How pure and fresh and bracing! You ought to go out and run a ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... a winter resort for consumptive patients, though, indeed, many people simply needed the change of a bracing climate went there to spend a few months; and came, away wonderfully better for the mountain air. This was what Bernardine Holme hoped to do; she was broken down in every way, but it was thought that ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... the new goal posts and ball, which Mr Freshfield, a junior master, was heard to explain was a present from the head-master to the school, had also a mollifying effect. And the bracing freshness of the air and the self-respect engendered by the sensation of their flannels (for most of the players had contrived to provide themselves with armour of this healthy material) completed their reconciliation to their lot, and ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... and listen to its gentle music, than might be seen when Mrs Huntingdon, her children, grandchildren, and sister-in-law issued forth for a morning stroll along the beach, to gather shells, or drink in the bracing air, as they watched some passing ship, or the sea-birds as ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... region of fire, now in the region of unmelting ice and snow. Here, I passed over trembling domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was roaring; and here was received under arches of icicles, of unspeakable beauty; and here the sweet air was so bracing and so light, that at halting-times I rolled in the snow when I saw my mule do it, thinking that he must know best. At this part of the journey we would come, at mid-day, into half an hour's thaw: when the rough mountain inn would be found on an island of deep mud in a sea of snow, while the baiting ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Pine and fir on the mountain-slopes, and figs, olives, oranges, lemons, and grapes on the hillsides and plains below, were characteristic of the land. Fishing, agriculture, and the raising of cattle and sheep were the important industries. A temperate, bracing climate, short, mild winters, and a long, dry summer gave an opportunity for the development of this wonderful civilization. Like Southern California or Florida in winter, it was essentially an out-of-doors country. The high mountains to the rear, the sun-steeped ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... doorway, erect, his feet a little apart, like a man bracing himself against some shock. He seemed frozen in this tense attitude, so that he did not alter the rigid line of his body or shift a single immobile muscle when Hollister and Lawanne stepped in. His eyes turned sidewise in their sockets to rest briefly and blankly upon the intruders. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... bored and pounded and wrenched, piercing his body with nervous, nagging drills; propping up his backbone, cutting out tender bits of flesh, carving—bracing—only to carve again. He had tried to wriggle and twist, but the mountain had held him fast. Once he had straightened out, smashing the tiny cars and the tugging locomotive; breaking a leg and an arm, and once a head, but the devils had begun again, boring and digging and the cruel wound ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thoughtful now, but cheerful and alert) was talking with the foremost driver. As Vendale stretched his limbs, circulated his blood, and cleared off the lees of his lethargy, with a sharp run to and fro in the bracing air, the line of carts moved on: the drivers all saluting ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... bracing of which hemicycle or arch, worthie of admiration, of a rare and subtile deuise, and exquisite polyture, did thus obiect and present ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... at the camp a few days and had begun to get acquainted, they let drop hints regarding Jimmy's prowess that aroused the interest of the lumbermen. He was covertly watched at meal times, and as the bracing woodland air and long hikes combined to give an added edge to his appetite, his ability began to command attention. There were several among the woodsmen who had a reputation for large capacity, but it was soon evident ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... the sun shone bright - the air was fresh and bracing; but a slight breeze rippled the waters, and there was little or no surf. The various fragments of the wreck were tossed by the little surf that still remained; many things were lying on the beach which had landed during the night, and many more ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... Withal, he never failed to hold up to ridicule anything showing a tendency to the sentimental; he would test me on this point in various ways, and always betrayed pleasure when he found me quick to detect the sentimental or mawkish taint in literature or life. I breathed a manly, robust, and bracing atmosphere in his company, and when I reflect upon what were my proclivities to folly during this impressionable period, I thank my stars ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... health. And the promotion of health is now regarded, in every enlightened community, as one of the objects of government. The enjoyment of life depends in great measure upon the state of our health. When the air feels bracing, and food and drink taste sweet to us, much else in life tastes sweet which would otherwise taste sour and disagreeable. Good drainage and vaccination are not the only means available for the promotion of the public health. People should be encouraged ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... couldn't get around and she couldn't go through. My natural gallantry got the better of my resentment, and I went out to help her over, notwithstanding what she had said when I was under the counter. Planting one foot firmly in the center of the puddle and bracing the other against the curb-stone, I extended ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... clear, bracing afternoon and evening, wherein were blended the characteristics of both autumn and winter, and the young people returned with ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... produced in instalments all that goes to make cake and cocoa. She did not speak. Presently, filling Space, there sprang into being an Odour; and as it reached him Mr Ferguson stiffened in his chair, bracing himself as for a fight to the death. It was more than an odour. It was the soul of the cocoa singing to him. His fingers gripped the arms of the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Wisconsin territory as the finest portion of North America, not only from its soil, but its climate. The air is pure, and the winters, although severe, are dry and bracing; very different from, and more healthy than, those of the Eastern States. At Prairie du Chien every one dwelt upon the beauty of the winter, indeed they appeared to prefer it to the other seasons. The ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... this scene of watery commotion and got out into the deeper water, the sea smoothed down a great deal; but sea-sickness began to claim its victims, at first a few, then more and more, till the greater part were quite badly affected. I had a touch of it myself, but managed to keep my feet by bracing out pretty wide, and hugging everything I could get hold of that seemed to offer a steady support, and I did not lie down until after I had thrown my ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... earnestness of the converts, all bespoke a future of much promise. At last, however, completely prostrated by repeated attacks of illness, the only hope of restoration seemed to lie in a voyage to England and a brief stay in its more bracing climate; and this necessity, painful though it seemed at the time, proved to be only another opportunity for the manifestation of the faithfulness and loving care of Him "who worketh all things after the counsel ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... husband!" For hours afterward, if I could have stopped the mail, I would have done it. I hated the conductor, the kindest of men. I hated the Spanish ponies that drew us, the cheeriest animals that ever jingled a string of bells. I hated the bright day that would make things pleasant, and the bracing air that forced me to feel the luxury of breathing whether I liked it or not. Never was a journey more miserable than my safe and easy journey to the frontier. But one little comfort helped me to bear my heart-ache resignedly—a stolen morsel of Eustace's ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... greatest interests and pleasures we have in life is the realising of different temperaments and different points of view. It is not only interesting, it is wholesome and bracing. It helps us out of egotism; it makes us sympathetic; and I wish with all my heart that people would put more of their own unadulterated selves into books; that would be real, at all events. But what writers so often do is to tell the adventures of imaginary people, write plays where persons behave ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground, that broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that stirred the flag by the barracks away to the left; hope smiled in the wide prospect over which the thrilling, bracing air trembled. Sally had ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... few, and their displeasures and their griefs so great, so continual, and so many. It maketh me think on a good worshipful man who, when he divers times beheld what pain his wife took in tightly binding up her hair to make her a fair large forehead, and with tightly bracing in her body to make her middle small (both twain to her great pain) for the pride of a little foolish praise, he said unto her, "Forsooth, madam, if God give you not hell, he shall do you a great wrong. For it must needs be your own ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... he said. "And curiously enough, I did not either realize or fear the news at the time; it left my feelings almost blank. I won't deny that it has caused me some painful thought since.... He gave me a few simple directions: I was to avoid bracing climates, hard physical work, or, indeed, mental effort—anything exhausting; to keep regular hours, avoid hot rooms and society and smoking; but that I might do, in moderation, anything that interested me, write or read; and, above all things, ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... them different, but all of them raving in one common darkness and with one common gesture plucking out their vitals for exportation? There is no doubt that our continuous receipt of this commodity has had a bracing effect on our national character. We used to be rather phlegmatic, used we not? We have ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... morning of November 23d, in a clear, bracing atmosphere of twenty-five degrees below zero, we arrived at the mouth of the large river called the Penzhina, which empties into Penzhinsk Gulf, at the head of the Okhotsk Sea. A dense cloud of frozen mist, which hung over the middle of the gulf, showed the presence there of open ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... turn to their leader and search his very soul to see of what quality he was. Far better a man should die than falter. He had not failed to notice the startled look in Cameron's eyes when Hobbs blurted out his news. Some way must be found for the bracing up of the nerve, the steadying of the ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... [Preservation of health] hygiene; valetudinarian, valetudinarianism; sanitarian; sanitarium, sanitOrium. V. be salubrious &c adj.; agree with; assimilate &c 23. Adj. salubrious, salutary, salutiferous^; wholesome; healthy, healthful; sanitary, prophYlactic, benign, bracing, tonic, invigorating, good for, nutritious; hygeian^, hygienic. innoxious^, innocuous, innocent; harmless, uninjurious, uninfectious. sanative &c (remedial) 662; restorative &c (reinstate) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget |
