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Strait   Listen
verb
Strait  v. t.  To put to difficulties. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Strait" Quotes from Famous Books



... he said, when I had signified my eagerness to hear, "that I graduated at Leroy College. It was a little one-horse institution, but blue as a whetstone in its orthodoxy; and with my father, who was a clergyman of a very strait sect and staid views, that fact covered a multitude of shortcomings. I was nineteen when I entered, and consequently twenty when, at the beginning of sophomore year, I came under the charge of Professor Regnier. He was a Frenchman, but spoke English with perfect ease and precision and a very slight ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... master went away, and he stayed not long, he asked David how he lived, and offered him food. And David being then in a strait—for he had lately vowed to take no life, said gladly that he would have anything they could give him. So the master gave him some victual. And it happened, just at this time, that some of the boats from the village had a wonderful escape ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... experienced now. He moved mechanically toward the spot where the moose had been grazing. Why he did so he could not tell. He reached the border of the forest, and flung himself down upon the grass. With his last cartridge gone, what chance had he of life? He had been in many a dire strait in the past, but nothing to equal this. He was face to face with death, more surely and in a far more terrible form than he had ever encountered ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... provided that it were en petit comite, and that such men as my Lord Steyne and my Lord Colchicum were of the society. "Give the young men their pleasures," this worthy guardian said to Pen more than once. "I'm not one of your strait-laced moralists, but an old man of the world, begad; and I know that as long as it lasts young men will be young men." And there were some young men to whom this estimable philosopher accorded about seventy ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... elk, and the old Silurian ass, and some people thought that man was about due. But that was a mistake, for the next thing they knew there came a great ice-sheet, and those creatures all escaped across the Bering Strait and wandered around in Asia and died, all except a few to carry on the preparation with. There were six of those glacial periods, with two million years or so between each. They chased those poor orphans up and down the earth, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... unmerciful,' (here Trim waved his right hand) 'a strait-hearted, selfish wretch, incapable either of private friendship or public spirit. Take notice how he passes by the widow and orphan in their distress, and sees all the miseries incident to human life without a ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... boy's ear, knocked a man down, and attacked numerous human beings and dogs that made use of a path leading past the tree; and these episodes were in fact of daily occurrence until some one shot the bird. Another pair of barn owls nested in a wood on the shore of Menai Strait, and in this case the young birds managed to fall out of the nest, and lay on the ground in full view of a public right of way. Why the old birds did not put their offspring back in the nest no one knew. ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... pinned to the wall, jammed in the strait waistcoat, and throttled in the round saw. Weakened by fever and unnatural exertion, he succumbed sooner than the inquisitors had calculated upon. The next time they came into the yard they found him black in the face, his lips livid, insensible, throttled, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... ammunition tenders of the aerial fleet had been winging their way to and fro across the Strait constantly renewing ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... straightway comes the chance of working evil. The temptation is great, the opportunity is eagerly seized, and wickedness is done; it is so easy to step into the "broad way," so difficult to find footing in the "strait ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... that America was even the cradle of the race, or one of several cradles, though most scientific writers prefer the view that our species came hither from Asia. De Nadaillac judges it probable that the ocean was thus crossed not at Behring Strait alone, but along a belt of equatorial islands as well. We may think of successive waves of such immigration—perhaps the easiest way to account for certain differences among ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... sons of men Thou hast a book prepared, Where, without hand or pen, Their deeds are all declared: Yet for the pure in heart shall be A pardon found with Thee. The life and soul Thou didst create Thou hast redeemed from evil strait, Thou hast not left ...
— Hebrew Literature

... most of the year covered with snow. Evergreens relieve the aspect of sterility, in places that are a little sheltered, and there is a meagre vegetation in spots that serve to sustain animal life. The first strait which separates this cluster of islands from the main, is that of Magellan, through which vessels occasionally pass, in preference to going farther south. Then comes Tierra del Fuego, which is much the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... second-largest country in South America (after Brazil); strategic location relative to sea lanes between the South Atlantic and the South Pacific Oceans (Strait of Magellan, Beagle Channel, Drake Passage); Cerro Aconcagua is South America's tallest mountain, while the Valdes Peninsula is the ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... was afeard she might a took a fit o' madness, as she did fifteen years befoore, and was buckled up, many a time, in a strait-waistcoat, which was the very leathern jerkin I sid in the ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... was an old deserted room; There was a skylight strait above, And the blue sky lookt thro' like love, Softening and coloring ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... ended, and Mr. Puddicombe took his leave. As he left the house the Doctor declared to himself that the man was a strait-laced, fanatical, hard-hearted bigot. But though he said so to himself, he hardly thought so; and was aware that the man's words had had effect ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... they long carried on war with the Ongkilon (Ang-kali) aborigines, gradually merging with the survivors and also mixing both with the Kusmen Koryaks (q.v.) and the Chuklukmuit Eskimo settled on the Asiatic side of Bering Strait. Their racial characteristics make them an ethnological link between the Mongols of central Asia and the Indians of America. Some authorities affiliate them to the Eskimo because they are believed to speak an Eskimo dialect. But this is merely a trade jargon, a hotchpotch ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... I have worked out a very elaborate and complete system of Great Circle courses from the Lizard to the north- west end of the Little Bahama Bank, which is a spot that must be hit off very accurately if one would avoid disaster. Thence I shall run down the Florida Strait to Key West, the course which I intend to steer being the shortest possible distance to that spot. And we must not run a mile farther than is necessary, Jack, for Macintyre tells me that it will take him all his time to make his coal ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... shallow bays of the southern division, they become extremely saline in consequence of the intense evaporation. The Aral Sea, though supplied by the Jaxartes and the Oxus, has brackish water. There is evidence that, in the pliocene and pleistocene periods, to go no farther back, the strait of the Dardanelles did not exist, and that the vast area, from the valley of the Danube to that of the Jaxartes, was covered by brackish or, in some parts, fresh water to a height of at least 200 feet above the level ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... is," answered Pierce, stoutly. "I'm a crank,—strait-laced, if you like. It's the fault of my bringing up. But I know, and you know, that that little woman, in her loneliness and in her natural longing for some congenial spirit to commune with, is simply falling madly in love with Sam Waring, and there ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... and dissuasion, and a little encouragement. The strongest, because the most intelligent, dissuasion comes from Dr. Hepburn, who thinks that I ought not to undertake the journey, and that I shall never get through to the Tsugaru Strait. If I accepted much of the advice given to me, as to taking tinned meats and soups, claret, and a Japanese maid, I should need a train of at least six pack-horses! As to fleas, there is a lamentable concensus of opinion that they are the curse of Japanese ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... strait to end his loving strife He took Sweet Williame for his wife. The like before was never seen, A serving ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... grand roads, a strait direction seems to have been their leading maxim. Though curiosity has lead me to travel many hundred miles upon their roads, with the eye of an enquirer, I cannot recollect one instance, where they ever broke the line to ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... Wide Bay Bar, which was buoyed and lighted in July of last year, maintains its depth and direction. Some changes have taken place in Sandy Strait, notably at Stewart's Island Flats, where the cutting has silted up; and a new channel to the eastward of the cutting, carrying a depth of 18 inches more water, has been beaconed and lighted. The gales and floods experienced during ...
— Report on the Department of Ports and Harbours for the Year 1890-1891 • Department of Ports and Harbours

... Don Antonio, "and seeing that the lady was in a strait which permitted no delay, I said nothing more, but offering her my hand, I conducted her by the by-streets to our house. Our page, Santisteban, opened the door, but, commanding him to retire, I led the lady in without permitting him to see her, and took her ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... who had deposed their king fell at once into dissension and anarchy. In this strait they sent a Deputation to a neighbouring tribe to consult the Oldest and Wisest Ape in ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... Waller, rising from his seat, "I'll trust to the negroes' God, to mine, and to yours, for that help which you deny them. May you never be in the same strait and seek in vain for help. Good ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... though humble home. And though there were those among the aged or the discontented who never ceased to pine for the heather hills of the old land, the young grew up strong and content, troubled by no fear that, for many and many a year to come, the place would become too strait for them ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson

... a woman, who was not over-well dressed, was sailing with her husband in a boat towards the suburb across the strait; they met on their way some men of this faction, who took her away from her husband with threats, and placed her in their own boat. When she entered the boat together with these young men, she secretly told her husband to take courage, and not to fear any evil for her. ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius

... length opened the door, and cried, "Come in, lads; it's all right!" they found the widow Marston with confusion and happiness beaming on her countenance, and the Wild Man himself in a condition that fully justified Bounce's suggestion that they had better send for a strait-waistcoat or a pair of handcuffs. As for March, he had all along been, and still was, speechless. That the Wild Man of the West was Dick, and Dick the Wild Man of the West, and that both should come home at the same time in ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... magister answered, that he had already, to serve his Grace, consulted divers spirits as to what could be done in this sore strait, but none would undertake a contest with Sidonia's spirit, which was powerful and strong, and, acting in concert always with the spirit of old Wolde, had the might in himself, as it were, of two demons. For this reason ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... always ready to do so," cried John, laughing bitterly, "but what good will it do? They will wind cunning shackles enough round my feet to make me fall to the ground; they will manacle my hands again, and put my will into the strait-jacket of loyalty and obedience. I cannot do what I want to; I am only a tool in the hands of others, and this will cause both my ruin and that of the Tyrol. I am willing to sacrifice my life for the Tyrol, and yet I shall be unable to save it. For the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... prepared for such holy and sublime emotions. The lingering and gradual departure of one among us for those unknown shores, the mysterious solemnity of his secret dreams, his commemoration of past facts and passing ideas when still breathing upon the narrow strait which separates time from eternity, affect us more deeply than any thing else in this world. Sudden catastrophes, the dreadful alternations forced upon the shuddering fragile ship, tossed like a toy by the wild breath of the tempest; the blood of the battle-field, with the gloomy smoke of artillery; ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... life so overmuch, Sleep in my urn. It is so horrible I dare at times imagine to my need Some future state revealed to us by Zeus, Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire of joy, —To seek which the joy-hunger forces us: That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait On purpose to make prized the life at large— Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death, We burst there as the worm into the fly. Who, while a worm still, wants his wings. But no! Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas, He must have done so, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... fish. I have never heard of their being caught in Kamloops Lake. With reference to the run of Pacific salmon, it is interesting to note that large silvery fish have been caught by minnow and spoon in the Shuswap Lake, notably in the narrow strait mentioned above. Mr. Inskip has within the last year or two written some letters to the Field describing the capture of a number of silver fish up to 10lb. weight near Spence's Bridge, at the mouth of the Nicola river, where it joins the Thompson. He believes these fish to be salmon, and ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert

... write, my dear child, and, as I before observed, the mind and the body influence each other. I am about to write a strictly moral dialogue, and I never could do it unless I am strait-laced. Now I feel fit for the wife of ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... Atlantic towards the coasts inhabited by the Mosquito Indians, and towards the shores of Honduras. The New Continent, stretching from south to north, forms a sort of dyke to this current. The waters are carried at first north-west, and passing into the Gulf of Mexico through the strait formed by Cape Catoche and Cape St. Antonio, follow the bendings of the Mexican coast, from Vera Cruz to the mouth of the Rio del Norte, and thence to the mouths of the Mississippi, and the shoals west of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... an ungenteel though lucrative office, an office which, the writer begs leave to observe, many a person with a great regard for gentility, and no particular regard for principle, would in a similar strait have accepted; for when did a mere love for gentility keep a person from being a dirty scoundrel, when the alternatives were "either be a dirty scoundrel or starve?" One thing, however, is certain, which is, that Lavengro did not accept the office, which if a love for ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... actually cutting through the skin of his arm, etc. On being handed over to the police, the unfortunate man made a desperate resistance, and has ever since been so violent that it has been necessary to keep him in a strait-jacket. Most of our esteemed contemporary's other writers are still ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo was written from material gathered in the Bering Strait District during three years' residence: two on the Diomede Islands, and one at St. Michael at the mouth of the Yukon River. This paper is based on my observations of the ceremonial dances of the Eskimo of ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... have dredged the channel and moored a bell-buoy off this headland. There was nothing alive in sight; some prone black objects I saw, with a start, were only a few fisher-boats drawn up on the sand, and none too safe. I looked out to sea; the tide was making, and, where the strait drew in toward the Cat's Teeth, the waves fought and clamored with a horrid vigor, like living monsters. Their huge voices outdid the winds, and, as one after another made forward, towered, and broke upon the reefs, the Teeth disappeared in a welter of foam. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... her late middle age the rather singular strait of being entirely alone in the world. She was unmarried, and as far as relatives were concerned, she had none except those connected with her by ties not of blood, ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Now France is in prison, on bread and water, punished, humiliated, throttled and well guarded; be tranquil, everybody; Sieur Bonaparte, gendarme at the Elysee, answers for her to Europe; this miserable France is in her strait waistcoat, and ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... Bois Blanc, on the opposite side of the strait, and passed echoes from island to island to the shutting down of the horizon. Choppers detailed to cut wood were getting boatloads ready for the leachers, who had hulled corn to prepare for winter ...
— The Black Feather - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Sarras with his ringing cheer and battle-laughter, shaped them into wedges of sharp iron and drove them home through the knotted wood of their foemen, till the Avars fled hot-foot to Danube water, and through the water, and beyond, and so reached the strait doorways of their earth-bound stronghold, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... on their way home. Carol hated him for his manner of assuming that they two had a mysterious understanding. Without quite winking he seemed to wink at her as he gurgled, "What do you folks think about this Mullins woman? I'm not strait-laced, but I tell you we got to have decent women in our schools. D' you know what I heard? They say whatever she may of done afterwards, this Mullins dame took two quarts of whisky to the dance with her, and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... that a necessary step towards reform "must be to impose the responsibility of the Civil Service upon the Executive." Senator Evarts argued that the existing law was incompatible with executive responsibility, for "it placed the Executive power in a strait-jacket." He then pointed out that the President had not the legal right to remove a member of his own Cabinet and asked, "Is not the President imprisoned if his Cabinet are to be his masters by the will ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... set of prophets, they were all so busy prophesying, and never anything good. They kent (believe them) that we were to be smote hip and thigh; and that to oppose the vile Corsican was like men with strait-jackets out of Bedlam. They could see nothing brewing around them but death, and disaster, and desolation, and pillage, and national bankruptcy—our brave Highlanders, with their heads shot off, lying on the bloody field of battle, all slaughtered to a man; our sailors, handcuffed and shackled, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... the water gently, with their fields Of corn and lentils smiling in the sun. Ten days we voyaged through that placid land, Until we came to shoals, and sent a boat Upstream to find,—what I already knew,— We travelled on a river, not a strait. ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... wall of a house for the purpose of carrying out a corpse.[737] Some of the Canadian Indians would never take a corpse out of the hut by the ordinary door, but always lifted a piece of the bark wall near which the dead man lay and then drew him through the opening.[738] Among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait a corpse is usually raised through the smoke-hole in the roof, but is never taken out by the doorway. Should the smoke-hole be too small, an opening is made in the rear of the house and then closed again.[739] When a Greenlander dies, "they do not carry out the corpse ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... whisper among the country folks that the old man himself had been in prison in some foreign country, but no one had ever proved it; in his many "yarns" at the village store, he had not even hinted at such a strait. If Marjorie had not stood quite so much in fear of him she would have enjoyed his adventures; as it was she did enjoy with a feverish enjoyment the story of thirteen days in an open boat on the ocean. His boys were fully aware that ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... himself. With anything that is false or artificial he cannot sympathize, nor with such faults as baseness, cruelty, rancour; which seem contrary to human nature itself; but in dealing with faults of mere weakness he is far less strait-laced ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... pieces bearing the name of the Emperor. Being told I had only this, he bade me look elsewhere for breakfast. Now I had designed going to the great city to kiss the hand of the Patriarch, of whom I have always heard as the wisest of men, before coming to thee; but the strait I was in was hard. Could I expect better of the innkeepers there? I had a button of gold—a memorial of my entry into the Lavra. That day Father Hilarion blessed it three times; and it bore a cross upon its face which I thought might make it acceptable as if it were lettered ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... and currents carried him away from the squadron, which, at the break of day, was six leagues west of Cadiz. The day before yesterday the British ships were descried from the coast, and a French ship in the Strait; but the latter did not appear to be captured. This may give us some hope, if the signals are correct. Nothing remains to me but uncertainty, with a great deal of fear; I do not ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... offence, even to the most sensitive, on questions of delicacy and decency. That is surely saying a good deal, but it is not all; precisely the same may be affirmed of what is mentioned above as high-class Chinese literature, which is pure enough to satisfy the most strait-laced. Chinese poetry, of which there is in existence a huge mass, will be searched in vain for suggestions of impropriety, for sly innuendo, and for the other tricks of the unclean. This extraordinary purity of ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... proportion to my resistance—I will not dwell upon the arts, the infamous arts, used to induce me to comply with his wishes—neither will I dwell upon the desperate measure I had determined to resort to, if driven to the last strait—nor would I mention the subject at all, except to assure you I escaped ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... she was removed to an out-house, and a nurse appointed to look to her; who, being once absent, the maid got out of the house at the window, and run away. The nurse coming and knocking, and having no answer, believed she was dead, and went and told Mr. Wright so; who and his lady were in great strait what to do to get her buried. At last resolved to go to Burntwood, hard by, being in the parish, and there get people to do it. But they would not; so he went home full of trouble, and in the way met ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... But strait the gate, the path unkind, That lead to life immortal, And few the careful feet that find ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... its northern and eastern shores, has been the scene of numerous surveys, among the latest of which was that by Captain Blackwood in the Fly. One important result of this survey was the finding of a passage through the great Barrier Reef for vessels navigating Torres Strait; but as more than one passage was considered essential to the safety of a route so much frequented, the Rattlesnake was commissioned, in September 1846, for a further survey, to be carried on in what is called the Coral Sea, having New Guinea, the Louisiade ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

... opposing force. There are the race-horses, and the drag, and Major Tifto. No doubt you have heard of Major Tifto. The Major is the Mr. Worldly-Wiseman who won't let Christian go to the Strait Gate. I am afraid he hasn't read his Pilgrim's Progress. But we shall prevail, Lady Mary, and he will get to ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... Islands hove up above the horizon, at which moment, as it happened, Nakamura and I were in the captain's cabin, where indeed we had spent most of the time of late, when we were not in our bunks. The Hanish Islands are, roughly speaking, within about one hundred miles of the Strait of Bab el Mandeb; and as we had not been interfered with thus far, we had practically made up our minds that if the Russians intended to molest us at all, it would be here, the back of the islands affording an excellent ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... get a strait-waistcoat for your mother, George Barnes," Lady Kew said, scorn and hatred in her face. (If she had been Iago's daughter, with a strong likeness to her sire, Lord Steyne's sister could not have ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... who would abridge or repress these dreams and aspirations. They are the very warp and woof of life, and the teacher who would eliminate them would suppress life itself. That teacher is in sorry business who would fit her pupils out with mental or spiritual strait-jackets, or mold them to some conventional pattern, even though it be her own. These pupils are the prototypes of the people in our panorama, and are, therefore, animated by like inclinations ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... to a narrow strait, on one side of which was Charybdis, a dread whirlpool from which no ship could escape, and on the other was the cave of Scylla, a monster having six snake-like heads, with each of which she seized ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... that he could get no passage to the westwards, the admiral stood back that same day to the east, designing to pass the Boca del Drago, or that strait which he had seen between Trinidada and the land called Paria by the Indians. In this strait there are four small islands to the east, next that point of Trindada which he named Cabo de Boca, or Cape Mouth, because it was blunt; and the western cape upon the continent he called Cabo de Lapa. The ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... their desperate strait, feeling as they did that they would starve sooner than go back to slavery, those two bent to their oars in the darkness that closed them in, and rowed on with the swift tide. The lights on the shore grew fainter, the tide swifter, ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... disposed to inquire, with one of the hearers of Christ, "Lord, are there few that shall be saved?" But Scripture checks such investigations, and admonishes us rather to cherish an availing solicitude for our personal salvation: "Strive to enter in at the strait gate." ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... of the northwesterly bounds of the Downing Farm in 1681, recorded in Salem town records, gives the line from the extreme northwestern corner by Putnam's land as running "strait on to a ...
— House of John Procter, Witchcraft Martyr, 1692 • William P. Upham

... the more recent sects and heresies for which, as well as for those older and more familiar, the First Parliament of the Protectorate had been, with the help of Dr. Owen and his brother-divines, preparing a strait-jacket. Of that Parliament, however, and of all its belongings, the Commonwealth was to be rid sooner than had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... virtually declared, that the laws of Almighty God are no rule for human legislation." We will give one more extract from these remarks, to enable our readers to form a judgment of the writer's character. He must certainly belong to that unfortunate class of the community, for whom "strait-jackets and a spare diet," are ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... fixed by God at a certain figure, there would be more saved than lost. Yet the contrary follows from Matt. 7:13,14: "For wide is the gate, and broad the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life; and few there are who find it!" Therefore the number of those pre-ordained by God to be saved is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... the door a fly and pair, with three keepers from an asylum kept by Burdoch, a layman, the very opposite of the benevolent Suaby. His was a place where the old system of restraint prevailed, secretly but largely: strait-waistcoats, muffles, hand-locks, etc. Here fleas and bugs destroyed the patients' rest; and to counteract the insects morphia was administered freely. Given to the bugs and fleas, it would have been an effectual antidote; but they gave it to the patients, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... dazzling gold burst into the east above the distant hills. But the glory of the sunrise called forth no admiration from the three men hurrying a fourth urgently along the Sleepy Cat trail. Between breaths de Spain explained his awkward meeting with Nan, and of the strait he was in when Lefever's strong lungs enabled him to get away unscratched. But for a gunman a narrow squeak is as good as a wide one, and no one found fault with the situation. They had the advantage—the only question ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... taken. The Druid Boroc but an hour ago brought the news. The Romans having reached the strait, constructed flat bottomed boats, and in these approached the island, the horsemen towing their horses behind them. There were assembled the women of the Silures and the Druids from all parts of Britain, with many fugitives who had fled for shelter to the ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... million sq km comparative area: slightly more than 1.5 times the size of the US; smallest of the world's four oceans (after Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Indian Ocean) note: includes Baffin Bay, Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Greenland Sea, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, Northwest Passage, and ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... Derby and Prince Gortchakoff (Feb. 19) that the Russians would not occupy the lines of Bulair close to Constantinople, or the Peninsula of Gallipoli commanding the Dardanelles, provided that British forces were not landed in that important strait[160]. So matters rested, both sides regarding each other with the sullenness of impotent wrath. As Bismarck said, a war would have been a fight between ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... 20 And I also beheld a strait and narrow path, which came along by the rod of iron, even to the tree by which I stood; and it also led by the head of the fountain, unto a large and spacious field, as if it had been ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... "of this little house. Strait are the walls of it, and narrow the windows, and from them always the same things to see. I must be free; I must fly, or of what use are ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards

... not to listen to them, and the soul can only think of what it hears when Jesus speaks to it. Moreover, all the discussions on this subject are uncertain, for one does not enter of one's own will into the strait way, as the Church calls it, we are led, and even thrown into it often against the will, and resistance is impossible, phenomena occur, and nothing in the world has power to check them; witness Saint Teresa, who, resist as she would by humility, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... five guineas has neither beginning nor end? Arms! What would he do with arms, or what would any man do with them that is not a regular soldier under government, or else a thief-taker? I have had enough of arms, I trow, although I carried them for King George and the government. But this is a worse strait than Falkirk field yet. God guide us, we are poor inconsistent creatures! To think the lad should have made so able an appearance, and then bolted off this gate, after a glaiket ne'er-do-weel, like a hound upon a false scent! Las-a-day! it's a sore thing to see a stunkard cow kick down ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... rarely mixing in society, I could not make use of home influence, as I might have done if I had had any kind sister to assist me in the way that kind sisters sometimes can assist their brothers when they fall victims to the tender passion. Whom should I ask to help me in my strait? I could not go round everywhere, asking everybody after two ladies dressed in half-mourning, could I? Not exactly. People might take me for a maniac at large; and, even should I be one, still, I would naturally wish to keep my mental derangement to ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... consists of five shining stars, arranged in two diagonal rows. Towards the end of the month Madame Pfeiffer gazed upon the sterile cliffs and barren mountains of Patagonia, and next upon the volcanic rocks, wave-worn and wind-beaten, of Fire-Land, or Tierra del Fuego. Through the Strait of Le Main, which separates the latter from Staten Island, the voyagers passed onward to the extreme southern point of the American Continent, the famous promontory of Cape Horn. This is the last spur of the mighty mountain-chain of the Andes, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... lived in a granary which became, after a while, the frequent resort of a Cat. The Mouse was in great fear and did not know what to do. In her strait, she bethought herself of a Rat who lived not far away, and who had said in her hearing a hundred times that he was not afraid of any cat living. She resolved to visit the bold Rat and ask him to drive the Cat away. She found the Rat in his hole and relating her story, besought ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... need not remind you how cursedly bad Our affairs were all looking, when Father went mad;[2] A strait waistcoat on him and restrictions on me, A more limited Monarchy could not well be. I was called upon then, in that moment of puzzle. To choose my own Minister—just as they muzzle A playful young ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Thou that strait to thy children appearedst, Thou that knew'st not in peace how to tend them, Fatal land! now the stranger thou fearedst Receive, with the judgment he brings! A foe unprovoked to offend them At thy board sitteth down, and derideth, The spoil of thy foolish divideth, Strips the sword from ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... gentlest Saviour! God of might and power; Thou Thyself art dwelling In us at this hour. Nature cannot hold Thee, Heav'n is all too strait For Thine endless ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (of 4) • Anonymous

... in coaxing people to do as he wished. Quite meekly, though she had a quick temper, she bore his teasing remarks as he watched her 'binding up her hair to make her a fair large forehead, and with strait-bracing in her body to make her middle small, both twain to her great pain'; while she on her part was frequently vexed that he 'refused to go forward with the best,' and had no wish 'greatly to ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... cromlech province, beginning at the Strait of Gibraltar, extends eastward along the African coast past Algiers to the headland of Tunis, where Carthage stood, at a date far later than the age of cromlechs. Were it not for the flaming southern sun, the scorched sands, the palms, the shimmering torrid air, ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... Orleans lo! she goes—the mission'd Maid! The Victor Hosts wither beneath her arm! And what are Crecy, Poictiers, Azincour 280 But noisy echoes in the ear of Pride?' Ambition heard and startled on his throne; But strait a smile of savage joy illum'd His grisly features, like the sheety Burst Of Lightning o'er the awaken'd midnight clouds 285 Wide flash'd. [For lo! a flaming pile reflects Its red light fierce and gloomy on the face Of SUPERSTITION and her goblin Son Loud-laughing CRUELTY, who to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... quick I pray thee, draw the curtain strait, The Prince of Arragon hath tane his oath, And comes to his election presently. Enter Arragon, his ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... of men unacquainted with compassion of civility, but recollecting at the same time that the intent of my journey was such as might give me hopes of the divine protection, I banished all thoughts but those of finding a way into AEthiopia. In this strait it occurred to me that these people, however barbarous, have some oath which they keep with an inviolable strictness; the best precaution, therefore, that I could use would be to bind them by this ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... which actually came into existence for gentle purposes and was not steeped to its very battlements in crime; for Chateauneuf was built purely as a pleasure-place, to which the Popes—when weary with ruling the world and bored by their strait-laced duties as Saint Peter's earthly representatives—might come from Avignon with a few choice kindred spirits and refreshingly kick up their heels. As even in Avignon, in those days, the Popes and cardinals did not keep their heels ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... the inquiry into Nature, keeping far away from the hampering influence of transcendental dogmas. The liberal, intellectual tendencies of the Reformation were not yet fettered in England with the new dogmatic strait waistcoat of a narrow-minded, melancholy sect. And Shakspere's views, which he has embodied in 'Hamlet,' were not in divinatory advance of his age; they were easily comprehensible to the best ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... following year the government decided to continue its researches, and the Travailleur was again put at the disposal of Mr. Alph. Milne Edwards and the commission over which he presided. Mr. Edwards traversed the Gulf of Gascogne, visited the coast of Portugal, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and explored a great portion of the Mediterranean. In 1882 the same vessel undertook a third mission to the Atlantic Ocean, and as far as to the Canary Islands. The Travailleur, however, being a side-wheel advice-boat designed for doing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... of isolation will satisfy the growing needs and opportunities of America. The provincial standards and policies of the past, which have held American business as if in a strait-jacket, must yield and give way to the needs and exigencies of the new day in which we live, a day full of hope and promise for American business, if we will but take advantage of the opportunities that are ours for the asking. The recent war has ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... principally in the vilayet of Yemen, a district of southeastern Arabia. Yemen extends from the north, southerly along the line of the Red Sea, nearly to the Gulf of Aden. With the exception of a narrow strip of land along the shores of the Red Sea, the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Aden, it is a rugged, mountainous region, in which innumerable small valleys at high elevations are irrigated by waters from the melting snows of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... but for a week past, even while my inclinations and my will were set upon Christ, something followed me in my down-sittings and my uprisings, urging me to hate the Lord Jesus; asking if His strict requirements were not too strait to be endured; and it has grieved me deeply that such a thought could find its way into my mind. "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not" is my last refuge. How graciously did Jesus provide a separate consolation for each difficulty ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... descended, has also been found in these beds. It is thought that the descendants of this creature, and of the other "Old-World" forms above referred to, found their way to Asia, probably, as suggested by Professor Marsh, across a bridge at Bering Strait, to continue their evolution on the other hemisphere, becoming extinct in the land of their nativity. The ape-man fossil found in the tertiary strata of the island of Java in 1891 by the Dutch surgeon Dr. Eugene Dubois, and named Pithecanthropus erectus, may have been a direct descendant of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... out into the strait— Out into the strait in the early morn; His step was light and his brow elate, And his shirt was as new as the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... of any secret by-way, lest it lead them wrong: At hic, via quaeque tritissima maxime decipit. Here the high-pathed way leads wrong, and O, far wrong!—to hell. This is the meaning of Christ's sermon, "Enter in at the strait gate, but walk not in the broad way where many walk, for it leads to destruction." Therefore I would have this persuasion once begotten in your souls, that the course of this world,—the way of the most part of men,—is dangerous, is damnable. O consider whither ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Bertie—he's really very astute. I must say, that she's quite a sweet-looking woman; but absolutely nothing's known of her here except that she divorced her husband. How does one find out about people? Miltoun's being so extraordinarily strait-laced makes it all the more awkward. The earnestness of this rising generation is most remarkable. I don't remember taking such a serious view of life in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... The last strait in which Riddell found himself was worse than any that had gone before. For he could not deny, and to say nothing would be the same as assenting. The secret was out, and what could he do? The only thing seemed to be to appeal ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... of gun-cases in the court-yard of the one hotel in Bardur. They had made a record journey up country, stopping to present no letters of introduction, which are the thieves of time. Now, as Lewis found himself in the strait valley, with the eternal snows where the sky should be, and sniffed the dry air from the granite walls, he glowed with the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... many tumultuous years at sea, the symbol of the safe and happy end of an arduous voyage; just as the high black rock of Java Head thrusting up over the horizon promised the placidity and accomplishment of the Sunda Strait. Whenever he noticed the plate he felt again the relief of coasting ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... see you are so well disposed. Listen now. To-night I send for Quaid to alter my will. My sister's son, Maurice Frere, shall be my heir in your stead. I give you nothing. You leave this house in an hour. You change your name; you never by word or deed make claim on me or mine. No matter what strait or poverty you plead—if even your life should hang upon the issue—the instant I hear that there exists on earth one who calls himself Richard Devine, that instant shall your mother's shame become a public scandal. You know me. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... America at Bering Strait, on the other hand, is comparatively easy. The Strait itself is fifty-six miles wide, but in the middle there are two small islands so that the longest stretch of water is only about thirty-five miles. ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... the mad torrent in order to get beyond these terrible rocks, forming a narrow strait, was an undertaking only to be thought of if the case were desperate. I believed that there must be a path somewhere running up the cliff, and after going back a little I found one. It led me four or five hundred feet up the side of the gorge; but on looking down ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... Thanet was still cut off from the mainland by an arm of the sea, and the Jutes were strong enough to hold it against all assailants. Their numbers rapidly increased as shiploads of their fellows landed, and they crossed the strait to win fresh lands from the Britons on the mainland of Kent. In several battles Vortigern was overpowered. His rival and successor, Ambrosius Aurelianus, whose name makes it probable that he was an upholder of the old Roman discipline, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... and it flew and it flew till it found the brothers. The eldest unfastened the letter from the pigeon's neck, and read what his sister had written: 'I am in a great strait, my brothers. If you do not rescue me to-night, to-morrow I shall be no longer living, for the man-eater has broken open six doors, and only the iron door is left. So ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... on the lake. This lake was named after one Mike Labarge, who was engaged by the Western Union Telegraph Company, exploring the river and adjacent country for the purpose of connecting Europe and America by telegraph through British Columbia, and Alaska, and across Behring Strait to Asia, and thence to Europe. This exploration took place in 1867, but it does not appear that Labarge then, nor for some years after, saw the lake called by his name. The successful laying of ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue



Words linked to "Strait" :   Strait of Georgia, North Channel, Strait of Messina, Strait of Dover, pass, Strait of Calais, Cook Strait, situation, Solent, Torres Strait, Menai Strait, Skagerrak, Bering Strait, dire straits, Pas de Calais, strait-laced, Bosporus, Hellespont, Korean Strait, Kattegatt, straits



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